Now, let's turn back to Isaiah
chapter 64. When I pick the hymns, I try
to pick those God honoring, Christ honoring hymns that are relevant
to the theme of the message. But on Sunday evening, if we
don't have a special, sometimes Joe will He just picked that
one day by day, and I didn't tell him to do that, but that
is a great, great hymn that expresses the theme of this message in
Isaiah 64. What we have here is a continuation
of the prayer of the remnant, the prayer of Isaiah as an intercessory
prayer. where He, as the Prophet of God,
prays this prayer, speaking for the elect remnant of God, the
remnant according to the election of grace. And I've entitled the
message, God's Preparation of Grace. I took that title from
verse 4. Paul quotes this in 1 Corinthians
2, and we'll turn there in just a moment. But look at verse 4
of Isaiah 64. He says, For since the beginning
of the world Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, neither
hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what God hath prepared
for him that waiteth on the Lord." Now, in order to understand the
last part of this prayer, this prayer began back in Isaiah chapter
63, and it concludes here in 64, and then in chapter 65 we
have the response of the Lord recorded, and it's a great and
comforting and merciful and gracious response. But in order to understand
this prayer, just think about yourself and ask yourself this
question. Have you ever been in the depths
of despair? Have you ever been down in the
dumps? Have you ever thought that everything
and everybody, even yourself, is against you? and that there's
no way out, that you can see. Have you ever wondered, God,
do you really love me? Am I really saved? Have you ever
had those thoughts enter into your mind? Well, first of all,
if you're a believer, I can honestly say that you have, and you be
honest too. This is the life, day by day,
that we go through. Some days we're on the mountain,
some days we're in the valley, but James, as the song says,
he's the God of the mountain, he's the God of the valley, he's
the same God. And what we do, just like that
song in that last verse said, we trust in faith's sweet consolation. What is that? Well, faith's sweet
consolation is leaning and living by God's Word, His promises that
He has given. And you know He has never failed
to keep any of His promises. And then it is mentioned here
in this prayer of Isaiah 64 that we haven't seen with our natural
eye the things, the glorious things that God has prepared
for them that wait on Him. Christ told His disciples when
they were in despair because of His going to Jerusalem, they
knew what was going to happen. And he said, fear not, he said,
don't worry, don't despair, he said, I go to prepare a place
for you. And he says, if I go to prepare
a place, I'm coming back again. And that's what we want to look
at in this chapter tonight, the preparations of God's grace,
God's preparation of grace. Now, the first thing that the
prophet here prays for in despair, again, speaking for the remnant,
And you have to understand now, Israel, at this time, this is
a prophecy. This is stated in light of the
future of what's going to happen to Jerusalem, what's going to
happen to the Temple. You remember there in the last
few verses, he talked about Zion's wilderness, Jerusalem's desolation,
and God's holy house, the Temple, is burned up with fire. Well,
that hadn't happened yet when Isaiah is praying this prayer.
That comes later. That comes later, and it's going to happen.
God told them. He promised it. And it's because
of their sin and their unbelief of the nation, the nation as
a whole. And included in that despair
and in that chastisement is the elect remnant, believers. They're
going to experience these things too, just like us here on this
earth. You see, when God saved us and brought us to a saving
knowledge of Christ, He did not from that point on say, and make
everything easy and happy and a bed of roses. In fact, if you
want to be honest about that, that's really when a lot of our
troubles began. Isn't that right? I almost spilled
the water. But you think about that. When
you're in despair, down in the dumps, you see, you say, well,
You know, what do we deserve? Now Isaiah gets to that. Do we deserve anything better?
And the answer is no. No. So then how can we look to
God who is holy? How can we depend upon Him? So
let's look at this. The first thing that he does
in the despair and being down in the dumps is he pleads for
Christ to come in power and glory. Look at it. Verse 1. Oh, that
thou wouldest rend the heavens. You know what that means? Split
the sky, Lord. Tear open the clouds and come
and deliver me. Lift me up. My hope is in God
above. My hope is not in the earth.
My hope is not in myself. My hope is not in you. Your hope
is not in me. We must look to the hills. We
must look up above. We must look to God. That's how
That is our only deliverance. "...for God to intervene and
split the sky, O that thou wouldest rend the heavens, tear them up,
and come through those clouds, and deliver me, that thou wouldest
come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence."
He says, "...as when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth
the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries."
We know his name. He's our Lord. He's Jehovah,
our Savior. He's the God of grace. He's the
God who saved us by His grace in Christ. Well, make your name
known to our adversaries, those who are putting us in this despair,
as we see it. And He says, known to thine adversaries,
and the nations may tremble at thy presence. And He says in
verse 3, when thou didst terrible things which we look not for,
thou camest down. The mountains flow down at thy
presence." What he is saying here is this, if salvation is
to come to earth, God must intervene from heaven. All of man's ideas
and all of man's inventions and all of man's defenses, his philosophies,
his religions, will not do. Cannot save us from our sins
and save us from ourselves. Salvation is truly of the Lord
in Christ. Come, Lord Jesus." Now, He has
come. Isaiah, I believe in this prayer,
looks forward to both his first coming and his second coming.
I mentioned that in the last chapter. You know, the commentators,
they don't argue over who it is. You remember back there in
63, verse 1, it said, Who is this that cometh from Edom? He
came out of Edom in judgment. He himself was judged for the
sins of his people, but he himself will judge his adversaries, and
his garments will be stained with the blood of judgment against
all who stand incensed against him." And so Isaiah is looking
forward both to his first coming and his second coming. Well,
he's come. We look back on that great and glorious first advent
of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has split the heavens, who God,
coming down and uniting with human nature without sin, and
walking this earth and saving us from our sins. But now, as
we walk this earth in the New Testament, in these last days,
we pray, Lord, come again. Come back again. Deliver us from
this evil. Somebody says, well, it's not
right to desire that the Lord come just so you can be rid of
your problems. I disagree. I disagree. This world is not
our home. We're in this world, but we're
not of this world. And I certainly, and I know you
do too, I pray for the salvation of sinners. I've got family members,
I've got friends that are lost, and I don't want to see them
go to hell. And I should say this, and I
believe I can from my heart of hearts, I don't want to see anybody
go to hell. It's a terrible thing. James and I were talking about
that this morning. It's a terrible thing to think of somebody coming
before God at judgment without Christ, and being totally, eternally
separated and alienated from God. Shudder at the thought. But in our despair, we pray,
Lord, split the sky. Come again, Lord Jesus. Even
so, come again. Look here, he says, the mountains
shook at your presence. Earlier, in Isaiah 63, He made
mention of the great work of God for Israel in the days of
the Exodus, when He led Israel out of Egypt. All that great
and marvelous work which they didn't expect. He sent Moses
to come in. That's what they're talking about
here. When He says, when thou didst terrible things which we
look not for. The nation wasn't looking for
that. They weren't looking for God to come and send those plagues
and to do all that He did in the Passover. But it happened.
You see, and that's a testimony to our sin and our depravity,
as you know. We ought to expect great things
of God, but sometimes we just get so down because we can't
handle it. Well, we're not supposed to handle
it. You know, God's the one who's going to handle all this. But
here he talks about Moses and the Exodus and how they walked
across on dry land through the Red Sea. Well, here in this chapter,
he remembers how the Lord shook Mount Sinai. That's what he's
talking about when he speaks about the mountains might flow
down at thy presence. On Mount Sinai, the mountains
shook, the earthquake, when Israel camped there on their way from
Egypt to the Promised Land. And certainly this shows God's
gracious intervention on behalf of the nation Israel. There's
no way they could have been delivered from Egypt and formed as a nation
and established as a nation without the power and the goodness and
the mercy of God. And I want to tell you something.
It's the same way with us. It's the same way with spiritual
Israel. There's no way this elect remnant
could have been delivered from the bondage of sin and Satan
and the curse of the law without Christ intervening by his great
glorious person in finished work on Calvary. There's no way that
we could have been formed and established as a spiritual nation,
the Church of God, without God's intervening sovereign mercy. If left to ourselves, we'd still
be in the bondage of sin in Egypt, wouldn't we? If left to our own
wills, our own ideas, we'd still be in that despair, thinking
we were okay. And that's the sorrow of it,
isn't it? The people were in bondage in Egypt, and they thought
that was the best of all the worlds. You know, that's why
when they complained and murmured, they said, why don't we just
go back to Egypt? We had it better there than we have it here. My
friend, I have not seen, nor ear has heard, I have met, what
God has prepared for them that wait on Him. That's what he's
talking about. We see the sovereign, powerful,
gracious, and merciful presence of God in Christ. Thank God he
intervened. Thank God that he saves us, he
keeps us, he blesses us, and he'll bring us to glory in spite
of ourselves. That's what we have to see. Look
at verse 4. Here's this verse that I took
the title from. For since the beginning of the
world men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, neither
hath the eye seen. O God, beside thee, what he hath
prepared for him that waiteth for him. What he's talking about
here, this waiting for God, first of all, that's an expression
of faith and trust and dependence on God. You see, this is not
like waiting for the doctor to see you, where you get frustrated
and all that. This is trusting the Lord to
do what He knows to be best, what He has sovereignly purposed,
working all things after the counsel of His own will, in his
time and in his way. And I want to tell you something,
that's the hardest thing for this old sinner to do. You too,
isn't it? Because we so often want to jump
in and work it out ourselves, you see. And that's the thing,
you see, this is an expression of faith. It's also an expression
of expectation and hope and love to God. Look over at 1 Corinthians
chapter 2. The Apostle Paul quotes this
verse, and you're familiar with 1 Corinthians 2, you might be
surprised at the context of what he's talking here. First of all,
what he's talking about here is the preaching of the Gospel,
the commission to preach the Gospel and our message, and God
has made it so in salvation, in the ministry of the Gospel,
that no flesh should glory in His presence. He said that in
1 Corinthians 1. Christ is the power of God. Christ is the wisdom
of God. And he says in verse 1 of chapter
2, Our brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency
of speech or wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.
For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. So what he does here is he connects
the prophecy of Isaiah with the preaching of Christ and Him crucified. the person of Christ, who He
is. He's God and man in one person. He's God in human flesh. He's
the Son of David. He's the Messiah. He's the Anointed
One. He is the representative and
substitute, the sin-bearer, the sin-offering. Our great high
priest would go on and on. Every book of the Bible relates
some glorious truth and theme concerning the glorious person
and finished work of Christ. And we preach the crucified Christ.
That means He did His work. He fulfilled all righteousness.
He met all the conditions of salvation. He fulfilled all the
requirements. As we say, everything that God
requires of me, I find complete and finished and full in Christ. And that's grace. That's salvation
by grace. That's what He's talking about.
And what He's saying here is that we don't have the power
by our eloquent words and our excellent speech and our carnal
reasonings to make sinners believe what we preach. We don't have
that kind of power. We try, we preach the gospel,
try to preach it as clearly as we can, set forth Christ in His
glory and His finished work. We command in the preaching of
the gospel, sinners, come to Christ. There's no salvation
in anyone else, anywhere else. Submit to Him. His blood is the
only thing that can cleanse you from your sins. His righteousness
is the only thing that can give you a right standing, an eternal,
divine place in heaven with God. And then we say, come unto Him,
repent of your dead works, repent of your self-righteous thoughts,
repent of all your sins, and come to Him. for salvation, and
He will save you from your sins. I don't say He might, He will
save you from your sins. Come like the publican. But now,
we can't make sinners do that, we can't even make ourselves
do that. We can only pray that God, the Holy Spirit, will make
it effectual in the hearts of sinners. And so he goes on, he
says that verse 7, look down here, 1 Corinthians 2, he says,
We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom,
which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none
of the princes of this world knew. For had they known it,
they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Man by nature
doesn't know this, even the best of men, the princes of the world. We can talk about the dregs of
society. We know they don't know anything,
but even the leaders, the princes here, are the nobles, the religious
leaders, the political leaders. You can get them all together
in a room and try to figure this one out, and they can't do it.
So he says in verse 9, but I, but as it is written, I hath
not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of
man. This is not even a notion in the mind or the affections
of the will of man. The things which God hath prepared
for them. And Paul says, that love him.
So that word, waiteth on him, is an expression of love to God,
too. Faith, trust, worship, respect,
love. But look at verse 10 now. Now
this is what Isaiah is saying. He's praying an intercessory
prayer for the elect remnant. The elect remnant is surrounded
by unbelievers. And here's what he says, but
God, there's another one of those, but God, hath revealed them unto
us by His Spirit. God the Holy Spirit has revealed
them unto His people, those that wait on Him, those that love
Him and trust Him. For the Spirit searches all things,
yea, the deep things of God. The Spirit is God. He's the third
person of the Trinity. He knows the mind of God. He
knows the will of God. He knows the purpose of God.
He's one in essence of nature with the Father and the Son.
And then he says, let me show you what I mean by that. In contrast
to that, verse 11, for what man knoweth the things of man save
the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the things of God
knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. And so he says in verse
12, now listen to this, Now we have received not the spirit
of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might
know the things that are freely given to us of God. Now go back
to Isaiah 64. What do we know? What has the
Spirit taught us? We know because the Spirit has
taught us that all of salvation, all of eternal glory, all blessedness,
is freely given sovereignly by God to us in Christ. And then,
as you know, he goes on to say, well, the natural man cannot
receive that. Well, that's right. Why can't he receive it? Because
he doesn't want it free. He wants to work for it. He has to have
room to boast. You've got to give him something
to do to earn it, merit it, a condition to meet, to get it. so that he
can boast. That's why the natural man will
not receive the things of the Spirit. That's why he doesn't
know. The freeness of grace. You say, what does that do? That
humbles us. That means that we're totally
dependent upon God for everything in salvation. There's not one
thing in salvation that's dependent upon man. It's all of God in
Christ. And so Isaiah, back here in this
prayer now, this is what he's saying now. Here's this elect
remnant. who've had some things revealed
to them by the Spirit of God concerning the preparations that
God has made. God's going to send a Savior.
He's going to save us from our sins. Oh Lord, come, split the
skies. Come on now. And He's going to
die, and He's going to be buried, He's going to be raised again
the third day, He's going to ascend into the Father, and He's
going to come again. We pray, oh Lord, come, split
the skies, you see. These are the preparations of
God. And so what does he say? He says, well, the Spirit of
God has revealed all that He's freely given to His people, and
we'll wait on the Lord. We'll trust Him. We'll worship
Him. Look at verse 5 of Isaiah 64. Waiting as opposed to trying
to work things out for ourselves, you see. Alright, here's the
next part. Here's the reason Christ must
intervene to save us. And you know why it is? Because
of our great sinfulness. Look at verse 5, he says, Thou
meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness. Some say
that should read, Thou meetest him, thou wilt meet with him,
commune with him, that rejoice in working righteousness. And
he says, Those that remember thee in thy ways, behold, thou
art wroth, they are angry, for we have sinned. In those is continuance. We continually sin. Not just
today. Somebody says, well, I sinned
yesterday, but I haven't today. Oh, no. That's not the prayer
of the remnant. He said, for we sin, and in those
is continuance. Now, look at this. It says, and
we shall be saved. Now, in the original language,
in the original manuscripts, that's put in the form of a question.
It would read like this. We sin continually. And shall
we be saved? Or how can we be saved? It's
a rhetorical question. Because the only answer can be
given in the Gospel. So what does he say here? Now
look at it. He says, God meets him who rejoices and does righteousness. What kind of person does the
Lord commune with? Answer his prayers. Meet in mercy
and grace. Well, he'd already said, the
one who waits on the Lord. And here further he describes
him, the one who rejoices in working righteousness, the one
who remembers the Lord in his ways. Now this, along with the
following description of our sinfulness, and it's a graphic
description of what we are by nature in our sin, This, along
with that, proves that worketh righteousness here does not mean
us making ourselves righteous before God, us working out our
own righteousness before God, or us establishing our own righteousness
before God. That's not what it means. What
proves it? He said, and look at it again,
thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those
that remember thee, as those who remember God, in God's ways. Let me ask you a question. What
is God's way? What's God's way of making a
sinner righteous? He's only got one way to make
a sinner righteous. And that's by grace in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Grace reigns, Romans 5.21, grace
reigns through righteousness by our Lord Jesus Christ. For Christ is the end, the finishing,
the fulfillment, the establishment of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believes. So whatever he means by rejoicing
and working righteousness, it has to be consistent with God's
way. What is he saying here? Here's
who God meets with. All who rejoice in Christ. Isn't that simple? You rejoice
in Christ? Paul said, for we are the circumcision
which worship God in spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have
no confidence in the flesh. That word rejoice, our glory
in Christ. God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. For of him he is
made unto us wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption, that
no flesh should glory in his presence. We don't glory in the
flesh. We have no confidence in the
flesh. We glory and have confidence in Christ and Him crucified. That's who God will meet with.
That's who God communes with. That's who is accepted before
a holy God. Walking in His ways, that's the
way of grace. That's the way of mercy through
Christ. Now, so though God meets the
righteous and receives them, we have no claim upon His goodness
by virtue of our own righteousness or our own goodness. Why? Because
we sin. Now, look at verse 5 again. Now, here's what I'm saying.
See, he's talking about Christ here. And our standing in Christ. We're righteous in Him. How do
you know that? Well, look at it again, verse
5. In the middle of it, he says, Behold, thou art angry. God's
angry with the wicked. For we sinned. That means if
I'm going to rejoice in righteousness, or rejoice even in working righteousness,
it can't be mine. Why? I've sinned. You can't listen. I've sinned. I've fallen short
of righteousness. And he says, in those is continuous. That's not just a time thing.
It's all the time for me. Paul said it in Romans 7. O wretched
man that I am, not have been, not am today and not tomorrow,
O wretched man that I continually am, who shall deliver me from
the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
my Lord. And shall we be saved? Look at
verse 6. Here is a four-fold description
of our depravity. He says we are always an unclean
thing and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Twice in
the book of Job, it's asked, shall a man born of woman be
clean? How is that possible? We're always
an unclean thing. That's what we are in ourselves,
by nature. And all our righteousness, even
our best, in the sight of God is a filthy rag. And you know
what that means. The Bible doesn't hold back.
That's a woman's mistress clause. And that's how he sees it, you
see. Listen. Listen. Our only hope is Christ and His
blood and righteousness. And he says, here's the next
one, we all do fade as a leaf. Listen, he says we're all unclean,
all our righteousness is filth, even our best is polluted, and
we all fade as a leaf. There's no eternal, lasting power
before God. Anything we do is destined for
death, fading like a leaf. That's right. Now, anything God
does is for eternity. Anything Christ does. You see,
that's why we don't need man's righteousness. Listen, if God
would come down here and say, now, I'm going to give you back
the righteousness that Adam had in the garden, what would you
say? That's not good enough. Proof,
Adam fell. We all do fade as a leaf. But
what if he came down and he said, I'm going to give you an everlasting
righteousness of eternal value that never fades away, no matter
what you do. I know people don't like to hear
that. You know what? Well, you're just giving people excuse. No,
no, no, no. Now, I'm talking about salvation
here. Well, I'd say I want that. I want that everlasting. Well,
the only place you're going to find it is in Christ by imputation. That's the only way you're going
to find it. Because your supposed goodness is going to fade away
like a leaf. I can see a bunch of it's fading
away already. And you can see it in me, it's
fading away already. It's starting to fade. Whether
it's gray hair, wrinkles, hurting joints or clogged arteries, whatever
it is, it's fading away. Let me tell you something, even
our good things, even our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. So it's not
going to last. Here's the third thing he says.
Look at verse 6. He says, "...and our iniquities, like the wind,
have taken us away." What that means is that we have no power
to stand against Satan. We have no power to stand against
temptation. We have no power to stand against
the world. We have no power to stand even
against ourselves. Our sins would carry us away
like a hurricane wind. You ever been in a tornado? Go
up there and try to whip up on it. Go up there and try to stand.
You see, that's the way our sins are. What do we need? We need
Christ to split the skies and intervene. We need God's grace. He can handle it all. Where sin
abounded us and overwhelmed us like a flood, grace did much
more abound. He's the Savior of sinners. And
He saves us from our sins. Here's the fourth thing. Look
at verse 7 here. He says, now listen to this one.
Mark this verse in your Bible. And there is none that calleth
upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee. Do you hear that? He says, for thou hast hid thy
face from us, and hast consumed us. That means melted us. It's
the same kind of thing like Daniel. You know, when the prophet Daniel
got that great vision of the glory of Christ, and he said,
all my comeliness, all my beauty, melted into corruption. That's
what that means. It has consumed us. That is,
we have no beauty compared to Christ. Again, all our righteousness
is ours. What? Filthy rights? Is that
beauty? No, sir. Compared to Christ, we're nothing.
He is our beauty. Christ is our beauty. You see? And so you consume us because
of our iniquities. That speaks of the bondage of
our wills to sin. Did you notice that? None calleth
upon thy name that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.
There is nobody of his own free will that will call on the Lord
and come to the Lord, stirreth himself up. You see, you cannot
make yourself by nature will to believe, to trust and serve
the Lord. If left to your own will, What's it say here? There's none
that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee. We've got to lay
hold of Christ. We've got to take hold of Him.
You see, that's what we do by faith. There's not one sinner
ever born on earth, the best or the worst, who'll stir himself
up of his own will to do it. Salvation is not by the will
of man, it's by the will of God. The new birth is not by the will
of man, it's by the will of God. He gives us a new will. He makes
us willing to serve Him and to believe Him and to lay hold of
Him in the day of His birth. So that's a great description
of the sin of man, isn't it? All unclean, filthy rots, fade
as a leaf, taken away like the wind, and will not come to Him. And so He's hid His face from
us. But look at verse 8. Now here's a plea for mercy.
And you've got to understand here, when he says you've hidden
your face from us, what he's simply saying there is that sin
results in broken fellowship. So if we're going to have fellowship
with God, if we're going to commune with God, this matter of sin
has to be taken care of. It has to be dealt with. God
cannot just overlook it. It has to deal with it. And then,
the Lord has consumed us because of our iniquities, our sinful
condition, has demanded the righteous judgment of God. In other words,
what he's saying there is this. If I got what I deserve from
God, it would be death. So, Lord, don't give me what
I deserve. Don't give me what I've earned. What do I need?
Look at verse 7. Here's a plea for the mercy of
the Lord. He says, But now, O Lord, thou
art our Father. That's language of election.
God chose us in Christ. We are the clay, and thou art
the potter. How many times in Scripture did you see that analogy
used concerning God's way of saving sinners? He's the potter,
we're the clay. He can shape us, mold us, do
what He will with us, and we are the work of thy hand. What
a glorious verse of Scripture. God is the Father of all whom
He has chosen, whom He's justified in Christ, who are redeemed by
His blood and regenerated by His Spirit. Who are they? They're
sinners, fallen, ruined by the fall. He's the Father of all
of us by grace, by adoption, by redemption, and by calling.
And it's not that God is the author of sin here when He says,
you've made us like we are, but He's the only One who can mold
us and shape us by His mercy. Ephesians chapter 2 and verse
10 says, His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works
which God hath before ordained that we should walk in. He's
a father, and a father is always a father. He can never truly
disown his children. A potter cannot disown the pot. It's only there because he made
it. It's his. We belong to him. The potter
and the clay. What a great analogy. What a
great way of symbolizing salvation. We're all made from the same
lump of fallen humanity, but God has taken some of that clay,
and that glorious, sovereign, powerful, gracious potter has
shaped his people and molded them into the image of his Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, look on. Look at verse
9. He says, Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember
iniquity forever. Behold, see, we beseech thee.
We are all thy people. Don't be furious, Lord. Don't
remember iniquity forever. You know what he's saying here.
He's asking for mercy on the grounds that we're your people,
bought and paid for by the blood of Christ, redeemed. And then
he asked, he said, he asked God to remember the condition of
Zion. Look at verse 10. The holy cities are a wilderness.
Zion is a wilderness. Jerusalem is desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house,
that's the temple where our fathers praised it. is burned up with
fire and all our pleasant things are laid waste. You see that? That's all the corruption of
earth that comes down on them. You see that? These physical
things that men and women put so much stock in religiously,
they mean nothing to God. And when they're laid waste like
this, they'll mean nothing to man. That's when they'll run
and pray for the rocks to fall on them when Christ comes again.
That means nothing. These buildings and these symbols
that men latch onto and put some significance on, they mean nothing.
There's only hope in the One, in the One whom they typified
and prophesied of, and that's Christ and Him crucified. So
he says in verse 12, "...Wilt thou refrain thyself with these
things, O Lord? Wilt thou hold thy peace and
afflict us very sore?" These things here are not the desperate
condition of Jerusalem and the temple. These things are the
description of our sinful condition. And he says, Lord, You know very
well what we are and who we are. You know our sinful condition. But will you restrain yourself
because of these things, O Lord?" Is that going to keep God from
saving His people? He says, will you hold your peace
and afflict us severely? What he's saying is, Lord, please
show mercy. Will you always give me what
I deserve? No. So in this prayer, the prophet
deals with what seems to be an impossible problem. Think about
it. Because of our sin, we're in
a desperate state. And we need the Lord's salvation.
We need Him to sovereignly come and save us. But the Lord only
answers the prayers of the righteous. And a righteous man wouldn't
be in the place we are. Did you know that? Ultimately,
the answer is found in the New Covenant, where a righteous man
stands in our place and prays for us. He's our Advocate. He's Jesus Christ the Righteous.
And He's the propitiation for our sins. He took care of the
problem on Calvary when He died for our sins. He established
the only righteousness that'll last forever, which God gives
to us and lays to our count. And this is why Christ commanded
us to pray under the Father in His name. When we pray in His
name, He's the righteous man who appeals to God for us on
our behalf. And will God for these things
refrain Himself? No, sir. No, sir. He said, I came not to call the
righteous, but I came to call sinners to repentance. And that
means this, that means He intervened to save us from our sins when
He died on Calvary's cross. And He'll intervene again when
He comes again into this world to gather His people. And thank
God He sends His Spirit to intervene in every individual life of his
people, and stop us on our tracks, and turn us from our sins and
ourselves to Christ. In wrath, he remembers mercy,
and he will once again split the skies, he'll rend the heavens,
and he'll come down, and he'll deliver us ultimately from all
that would trouble us or cause us to despair. And so we look
unto Him.