We're in Isaiah chapter 64, and
we're going to read from verse one. Isaiah chapter 64, and reading
from verse one. O that thou wouldst rend the
heavens, that thou wouldst come down, that the mountains might
flow down at thy presence. As when the melting fire burneth,
the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make thy name known
to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence. When thou didst terrible things
which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed
down at thy presence. 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. Thou meetest him that rejoiceth
and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways.
Behold, thou art wroth, for we have sinned, in those is continuance,
and we shall be saved. But we are all as an unclean
thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all
do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us
away. and there is none that calleth
upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee,
for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us because
of our iniquities. But now, O Lord, thou art our
Father, we are the clay, and thou our potter, and we all are
the work of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, O Lord,
neither remember iniquity forever. Behold, see, we beseech thee,
we are all thy people. Thy holy cities are a wilderness,
Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our
beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with
fire and all our pleasant things are laid waste. Wilt thou refrain
thyself for these things, O Lord? Wilt thou hold thy peace and
afflict us very sore? Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this heartfelt reading from his word. There is a cry that Issues from
the Lord's people under duress. A cry that asks the Lord for
respite and relief in the midst of trial. A cry that seeks ease
from pain and from suffering. Or it might be deliverance from
the hand of an enemy. Let me give you an example from
the scriptures. In Acts chapter 12 we have an
account of the church of Christ under fire. We read there, Herod
the king put forth his hands to vex certain of the church. Now, this is not Herod the Great. He's the one who slew the infants
at Bethlehem at the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not
Herod Antipas. He's the one who beheaded John
the Baptist. This is a man called Herod Agrippa. There are three Herods in the
New Testament. But whether he was slaying the
babies, or whether he was beheading John the Baptist, or whether
he was, as here, putting James to death, each of these men assaulted
and persecuted the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. This Herod
slew James, and what a blow that must have been for the young
church. James was one of the key apostles. There were only 12. As we read together and look,
it was Peter, James, and John. He was chosen out by the Lord
to be one of that three that was beckoned repeatedly into
the closest revelations and dealings and interactions with the Lord
and then almost as soon as the New Testament church was begun,
one of these three was taken and put to death. And seeing
that it pleased the Jews, Herod prepared to do the same thing
with Peter. However, Luke tells us in the
book of Acts that a prayer meeting was called where the Lord's people
prayed for Peter. And in the hours after that prayer
meeting, Peter was delivered from prison miraculously. And soon afterwards, Herod himself
was slain by the Lord. You see, a cry went up from the
church for the Lord's help in the matter of Peter's deliverance. And yes, I accept and I know
that it was an angel who came to release Peter. But in a very
real sense, it was the Lord himself who came down to rescue his servant. At the end of the previous chapter,
chapter 63, it was a couple of weeks ago, so maybe you don't
remember, but there we read that the prophet cried to the Lord
to look down from heaven and see the need of his people. Here,
in the opening verses of chapter 64, he raises a cry. he speaks of, he prophesies,
he's writing about what is going to happen in the future. Isaiah
is writing about what will happen in the future. He is writing
about how the remnant church, the Old Testament believers,
the elect of God amongst the Jews will cry out to the Lord
and call him to come down, to rend the heavens and come down
in order to deliver them from their need. Just as the New Testament
church prayed for Peter, so the Old Testament church also knew
persecution and also knew what it was to cry out to the Lord
in their duress, in their time of persecution. And we don't
know the act, we don't know the particular thing that would make
these people cry this prayer, to shout out this prayer. I suspect
it was repeated. I respect that such a prayer
went up frequently, in every generation, frequently in every
generation, when need arose. Maybe it was when the Assyrians
came. Maybe it was when the Babylonians
came and they came against Jerusalem to carry away its people and
they destroyed its temple. What urgent prayers must have
gone forth from the Lord's elect amongst the Jews? What Fear and
anguish must have filled the hearts of parents and children
at the destruction of their city. Maybe they stood on the battlements,
maybe they stood on the walls and they watched the Babylonian
army come closer and closer and closer and they knew that there
was no possibility of fleeing. and they anticipated the destruction
of their city and the destruction of their families and the destruction
of their way of life and the destruction of their own lives. We read in the opening verses,
oh, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence. Well,
you know, Isaiah speaks of mountains, but if instead of mountains we
read kings and princes of the earth, because often in scripture,
these kings and princes, like the Babylonian kings and the
Assyrian kings, are likened to mountains. because of their hardness,
because of their permanence, they seemed to be dominant over
long periods of time, constant, because of their strength, their
might. So if we read instead of mountains, these kings and
princes of the earth, this is a plea, this is a cry for help
against the enemies of Israel that are coming against the Lord's
people. It's an urgency. that is upon
the lips of the elect, it is the church's prayer for help. And these elect people amongst
the Jews, let us not pass over the reality of their anxieties. They were real people with real
fears, they felt real pain. Like the church in Acts, they
feared for their existence, for the well-being of those that
they loved. They were husbands and wives
and fathers and mothers. They were real people. They feared
for the future of their nation. They feared for the faith that
they believed in and the promises of God. We look back now and we think,
well, yes, they were anxious, but it all worked out according
to God's plan. In the end, the Lord Jesus Christ
still came. Sure it did, sure it did. And it always will for the Lord's
people. because all things work together
for good to them that love God, to them that are called according
to his purpose. But it is still hard to bear
in the moment, it is still grievous to endure in the experience. And I think we probably know
from our own experience, from our own knowing, that though
all things work together for good, being able to believe it
for comfort in the midst of our trials is quite a different thing. The truth is, that we reason
and we wrestle with God as to why these troubles should intrude
into our lives and into the life of the church and into the lives
of those beloved of God as they do. And I want to look at this
passage practically today. Some might say experimentally
or experientially. I want to look at it practically,
in the context of the remnants wrestling and reasoning with
God. Because the same principles that
applied to these Old Testament folk, these who were his remnant,
these who were loved by God, apply to us today. Let me put it like this. Because
this is what Isaiah is anticipating in this chapter. Let me put it
like this. Bad things happen. Bad things happen. Things we
prefer didn't happen, happen. Things we don't want to happen,
occur. How do we react? How do we respond
when they do? And you can think about your
own life, you can think about the lives of people you know,
you can think about the lives of your family. All I'm saying
is that the Lord's people know hardship and they know trial
and they know difficulty and they know pain. And how do we
react and how do we respond when that occurs? So I've got my three
points today. how hard it is to know God's
ways, that's my first one, the certain fulfilment of covenant
promise, that's my second one, and the purpose of faith. Faith that is bestowed has to
be exercised and it has to be strengthened. So I'm going to
work through a few points and hopefully as we get to the end
of our time we will have some reason to thank the Lord for
his faithfulness to us even in the midst of our troubles. Just
let me say by way of introduction then as we come to these three
points. We ask invariably, we ask the
Lord in our prayers for those things that we wish to happen. We have our preconceived ideas
about what would be good, what will be helpful, what will be
constructive, what will be God honouring, what will be good
for us. It may be the experience of some
comfort, it may be the lifting of some trial. We ask the Lord
for what we want, and this is what Isaiah is saying in these
opening verses. He is asking, or he is putting
the words in the mouths of the people who are facing the challenges
of their day. He is asking that the Lord would
rend the heavens and come down to deliver his people in a strong
and in a powerful way. Now, in the case of the Assyrians,
And I'm not going to go back into the history, but we read
about this as we were going through with some of the young people.
Actually, we read about it in our passage to do with Hezekiah
earlier in the book of Isaiah and with the young people as
well. But in the case of the Assyrians, the Lord did come
down. That was the occasion when the angel passed through the
Assyrian camp in the night. They all got up in the middle
of the night. They were overtaken with fear. They drew their swords
and they killed one another. The Lord did come down in that
case, mightily from heaven, and he caused the mountains to flow
down at his presence. In the case of the Babylonians,
he didn't. I said yesterday, in a little
introduction, the Lord did come down to deliver his people at
the cross. He will return to deliver His
people at His second coming. He comes into the hearts of His
people in conversion. And He comes to receive us into
His presence when we die. There are lots of times and lots
of ways in which we might think about the Lord coming down for
His people. However, what I want to think
about here is the personal and the intimate appeals for Christ
to come in practical and in timely and in providential ways to minister
to our daily needs. And this is what I have in mind
today. The deliverances that we seek
every day in this world from its sinful influences, from the
subtleties of the old man with whom we have to battle and fight,
from the temptations of the devil. These are spiritual enemies from
whom we must be protected. And we are. We are protected. Be in no doubt, when we pray
these prayers, the Lord does come down to protect His people.
No devil, no man can touch one of Christ's little ones without
our Saviour's permission. And we are safe in Christ. And yet the Assyrians come. And yet the Babylonians do conquer
and break down the walls and burn the temple and carry the
people into captivity. Maybe it's the doctor who diagnoses
an illness or a child that gets sick. Maybe we lose a loved one. and we face years of loneliness. And we wonder why the Lord allows
such sadnesses to grieve us so. Our own flesh deceives us and
the old man sows dissent. in our minds and in our hearts
and he causes us to regret so much as we look back in our lives
and so much that we have to be ashamed of. We try to withstand
temptation, but so often we fail and we fall. We discover with
Paul that the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which
I would not, that I do. This is the Lord's people. We
learn that the Christian walk is not free from pain. It is
not immune from temptation and sin. And we are not exempt from
sorrow, from loss and disappointment. And this is my first point then.
This is what Isaiah is telling us in verse four. How hard it
is to know the Lord's ways. How hard it is to know the whys
and the wherefores of the Lord's dealings with us. Isaiah says,
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. and we have to acknowledge that's
true. None of us can tell what this
life holds for us, what God has prepared for us. Even us who
wait on Him, we do not know. Proverbs 27, verse one says,
boast not thyself of tomorrow. Tomorrow, not next year. Tomorrow, don't boast yourself
of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Only God knows what the future
holds. He knows the truth about our
lives, about this world, about the future. He knows about global
warming. He knows what the future of AI
will mean. He knows about the future of
the armed conflicts which will be in this world and the competing
world powers who perhaps worryingly already seem to be flexing their
muscles in different parts of our globe. He knows about the
future of world pandemics. He knows the days of our lives. He knows the trials we must face.
He knows the sickness that will ultimately bring us down to the
grave. He knows how we will catch it,
he knows when we will catch it and he knows the process by which
it will destroy our flesh. He knows the when and the where
and the how. He knows what will befall our
children and our grandchildren. He knows their spiritual state
and he knows their eternal destinies. And the remnant looked out from
the walls of Jerusalem wondering what the Babylonians would do
to them and their children and their children's children. And
neither they nor we know what a day may bring. However, Here's my second point. Isaiah also tells us something
else. He speaks in verse five about
the certain fulfillment of God's covenant promises. Though we cannot tell what an
hour holds, though we cannot tell what tomorrow will bring,
that does not mean that we are without hope in the world. God's
promises are certain and sure. And verse five is really a fine
gospel text of confident trust in the covenant promises of God. Now, you just need to look at
verse five quietly in your own time, some other time, but just
meditate on that verse. and think about it, and I think
that as you do so, you will discover that there are layers of blessing
in it. The Lord says, or Isaiah tells
us in this verse, thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh
righteousness. Thou meetest those that remember
thee in thy way. The Lord meets. That means the Lord comes to
those. The Lord engages with those. Thou meetest him that rejoiceth
and worketh righteous. The Lord meets those to whom
he is reconciled and with whom he is at peace. because of the covenant promises
made to the Lord Jesus Christ. The only way that any person
in this whole world ever has righteousness before God is because
of the covenant promises made to the Lord Jesus Christ. That
is just a fact. If we have peace with God, if
we are righteous before God, it's nothing to do with us. it is all to do with the covenant
promises of grace. Therefore, when it says here,
thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, what
Isaiah is saying is that the Lord comes to those who are his
elect, the Lord comes to his remnant people, the Lord comes
to those who are made righteous and reconciled with him. He meets us. He comes to those
to whom his promises are given in Christ. Those who are justified
by grace. Those who are encompassed with
the everlasting love and redeemed by the blood of the fit sacrifice. And he meets us. He meets us
when we're calling out to him for help. the Lord never forgets
his own. And when the Babylonians come,
he comes too, to meet us and to comfort and uphold us in the
midst of our trial. We know what salvation is. We have learned the gospel of
God's free grace and we have found the way of life and peace
through the death of our substitute and surety. We trust in the Lord
and we have learned that the Lord has put away our sin never
to be remembered against us and we have learned that he has fitted
us with a righteousness to make us holy and acceptable in his
sight. These things we know. And the
Lord reminds us of these things when he comes to meet us. But at the same time, we know
something else as well. We know that we are sinners. And yet here, Isaiah is telling
us that despite our sin, In those things, that is the things that
we have just spoken about, those gospel truths, there is continuance. So that what Isaiah is telling
us is that knowing the covenant promises of God, knowing that
we are sinners, we still know that there is a continuance with
the Lord. That is, in those justifying
promises there is an unchanging continuance of divine grace despite
our sinfulness. We shall be saved. When the Babylonians came to
the walls of Jerusalem, the remnant people knew the covenant promises
of God. They knew and they believed what
Moses had taught and what Abraham had said. They believed Isaiah's
prophecies concerning the coming Messiah. They had faith. They believed God was omnipotent.
They believed that their enemies were but tools in his hand. They knew he was faithful. They
knew he would never let them down. They believed that their
faith was not in vain. And yet, here were the Babylonians
at the gate. And it was hard not to be afraid.
Is this not so with us as well? Is this not how we are too? We
dearly hold the Lord's promises to be true. The Lord has taught
us these things. If the Lord has saved us, if
the Lord has revealed these gospel truths to us, if we have learned
these things, if our faith is in Christ, these things are our
reality as well. And yet, when the Babylonians
are at the gate, they stir up all our old fears again. We believe the gospel to be true
and yet all it takes is one piece of bad news and the old enemy
creeps back in again and the doubts begin to rise. It has
always been thus for God's people. It was in Isaiah's day, it was
in the day of the early church when James was slain and Peter
was imprisoned. And I imagine for you too, it
is just exactly the same. Verse 5 ends on a very confident
high. And then verse six begins with
a but. And you see this is just the
experience of the Lord's people. There's always a but while we're
in this flesh. Isaiah is explaining how the
church truly feels in its dealings with God. We hold these promises
to be true and yet we feel so unclean. And Satan takes advantage
of that. We readily confess that all our
best works are tainted and soil. And so the old man taunts us
with that. Grace makes a sinner feel his
sin more than ever before. And we are tempted to lose sight
of the Lord's mercy because we see our sin so egregiously. We imagine thou hast hid thy
face from us and has consumed us because of our iniquities. And this is the conflict of grace
that we all feel. This is the war in the heart
We know our sin and our failures and the Old Testament Jews lamented
at the destruction of Jerusalem and we mourn the corruption that
remains in our flesh and the effects of sin in our lives.
This is the contradiction within the Lord's saints. We feel our
faults and we believe the gospel that our sins are taken away.
We see our faults and we believe the gospel that our sins are
taken away. We see our sin ever present and
yet we also see our saviour carrying it away. That's inconsistent,
that's contradictory and yet it's how we feel. We lament our
lack of good. And yet we possess God's perfect
holiness, a righteousness which has been imputed to us because
of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And even when we know
and believe the gospel, the enemy of our soul will not let us rest
in peace or dwell upon the promises of the Lord. He comes with his
accusations, and because in ourselves we neither feel holy nor pure,
and because we are flesh, and because Satan entices us to doubt,
we mistakenly interpret our trials and our hardships as rebukes
from the Lord, when actually, and in truth, they are helps
to bring us closer to Christ. Do you know why life is so hard
when you get older? It's because we're on the last
lap of the race. And some of us are on that final
bend. And our faith will be tested
and proved to show that it is real. Do you remember the story
of Pilgrim's Progress? How that Christian came upon
two lions as he approached the celestial city. He'd entered
into a very narrow passage. When he saw these two lions lying
before him on the path, And he was just about to turn around
and to flee back the way that he had come when a friend, a
friend named Watchful, called to him that the lions were chained. They were chained to each side
of the passageway. If he walked in the middle of
the path, the lions could not reach him. and he would come
to no harm. Because there's no good thing
dwells in our flesh, there's nothing within ourself to reassure
a troubled spirit. We see these lions before us
and we cannot look to anything within ourselves to see us through
these challenges. That's why we feel so weak in
the face of them. Our only comfort is in Christ. Our only comfort comes by faith. It is only when we discover God
to be our Father and learn that we are the work of His hands,
He the potter, we the clay. The fact that this life of ours
is being worked, this life of ours is being moulded, that this
is all part of the plan, all part of the purpose, all part
of the great way in which God is bringing about His purposes
and His ends, that we are able to see wisdom in all our trials, even in our pain, even in our
losses. Faith teaches us to trust Christ
despite our guilt and through our trials. And here's my third
point, and I'm going to be quick. This is the purpose of faith.
Listen to this. Faith enables us to hold on to
Christ as the Lord dismantles our flesh. Faith enables us to
hold on to Christ as the Lord dismantles our flesh. Faith,
having been once bestowed, is exercised and strengthened by
trial. and the gospel promises us peace, but it also initiates a war. It brings life, but it shows
us that we must die daily. It assures us that we will overcome,
and yet it constantly exposes our weaknesses. so that the great
lesson of faith is to lift our eyes above even the promises
of God, certain and sure and great and wonderful as they are,
that we might discover that the true source of our peace, the
true source of our life and strength isn't the promises, but the one
who promised. Not the blessings, they must
ebb and flow, they must come and go. The Assyrians were defeated,
the Babylonians were not. And while we remain in this world,
we will see that some prayers will be granted and some prayers
will not. Our trust must be in the one
who will someday come and rend the heavens and take us out of
this world to be with himself in glory. It is through much
tribulation that we enter the kingdom of God. I began today
by saying that we ask for many things. When we're sick, we ask
for healing. When we're weak, we ask for strength. When we're fearful, we ask for
courage. When we see need, we ask for
that need to be supplied. These are all good requests.
But sometimes, dare I say usually, The route to greater experience
of the love and grace and mercy and goodness of the Lord is not
in sidestepping these trials, the sickness and the weakness
and the fear, but in facing them and passing through them with
Christ. For such occasions, our prayer
must be the Apostle's request. Lord, increase our faith. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us today. Amen.