Come to Us
Isaiah 64:1 – 9
Today is the First Sunday in Advent, the first day of a brand new church year. The season of Advent is a time of waiting, a time of spiritual preparation, as we wait for the coming of our King. Christ is coming, our Savior and Redeemer. Today we begin to prepare for the celebration of our Savior’s birth at Christmas.
The Bible encourages us to “wait upon the Lord.” This is a special kind of waiting. It means “waiting with hope,” not “wait and see what happens.” It is not just the passing of time. It is anticipation. We have God’s promises to anticipate. He cares for us. His plans are for good, not evil, toward us. We can trust Him. He keeps His promises.
In this advent season we are going to be spending time reading from the Old Testament in order to get a better understanding of the prophesies that were the foundation of hope for the Messiah upon which they would eagerly wait. It is this coming that we will celebrate at Christmas.
We will be looking at the words of Isaiah and we will listen to how he was pointing the Jews, and us, to the when the time was right and God would come to be with us as he sends His Son.
When the time was right, He sent himself in the person of his own Son to bring us freedom and to release us from our sins. He sent a way, the Way, for the lost to find their way back into a relationship with their Father.
Last week the prophet Ezekiel sent words to us from within his exile in Babylonia. The Jews were there because of the failed leadership, the righteously flawed shepherding of those that had been raised up to lead God’s flock.
As we remember last week however, God promised to intervene for His sheep and to become the shepherd of His own people. He would seek them out and find the scattered, bind up the injured, feed the hungry, and strengthen the weak. He would rescue them himself. That is what He is doing at Christmas.
This week we hear from the prophet Isaiah, who lived over a hundred years before the desolation of Jerusalem that we talked about last week. About a hundred years before the time when Ezekiel was preaching on street corners of Babylon to the Jewish nation that was in exile there.
With prophetic foresight, inspired by the Holy Spirit, Isaiah wrote these words that foretold the desperate situation that would befall the people of Judah at that time. Isaiah is envisioning what it will be like for the people of Judah after Babylonian army comes and defeats Judah and plunders and pillages the nation and takes the people captive. As we saw last week it would be a trying time to be the people of God.
Our message lesson for today is a fitting lesson for this season of Advent. It’s a prayer, really, this reading from Isaiah 64. Isaiah the prophet is voicing a prayer to the Lord that is most appropriate for us to pray as well. It’s an Advent kind of prayer.
It is a prayer to God to Come to Us and deliver his people and make his glory known. It is a prayer of remembrance, as we remember how God has acted in the past. It is a prayer of repentance, as we mourn our sin and turn to God for forgiveness. And it is a prayer of quiet trust and patient waiting. As we’re about to see, this prayer from Isaiah 64 is “A Prayer to the God Who Acts.”
Isaiah begins by praying to God:
“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down to us”.
This is the plea of the prophet Isaiah in the first verse. Isaiah is asking God to tear open the heavens and let mortal man see and understand the glory of God. To let us come to know you and feel your goodness. To tear open the curtain and Come to Us, be with us and make things right between us again.
We’ve all prayed that prayer: “Come and make it right, Lord. Step in and do something about this mess.” At Advent, Jesus is sent as the answer to that prayer.
In sending Jesus, God comes down to his people.
Advent is a season of intentional waiting, longing for the arrival of the promised Messiah. As we enter into this season of waiting today, we recall the longing of humanity for a Savior, the longing of Israel for the true King, the longing of every heart for healing.
And we marvel at the mystery of how God fulfilled this longing – by opening up the heavens and coming down to us by sending His son Jesus. In the Incarnation, God becomes flesh and lives among us. He steps into creation, into our brokenness, and enters our pain.
This is the thrill of Advent: in sending Jesus, God comes down to deliver his people and make his glory known. We would like to see God do that in our day also. It’s an understandable desire. Yes, it’s OK to call on God to act. He has in the past and we know that he will, in the end.
In sending Jesus, God Reveals Himself
Throughout history, God has revealed His will to His people. He shows us His heart and character through the beauty of creation, the covenants and Law, His miraculous acts of power, and powerful words of prophets.
Our lesson today is a prayer of remembrance, remembering how God has acted in the past. The prophet Isaiah ponders the mighty deeds of old that the Lord did for Israel. The Exodus from Egypt, the awesome presence of the Lord at Mount Sinai, the delivery of the Jews into the Promised Land. Isaiah is telling the Israelites that they would do well to remember how God has acted in the past.
For us He has also done great things for us to remember at Advent, He did the unthinkable. He showed himself to us. Do you want to know what God is like? Look to Jesus. Do you want to know how He acts? Look to Jesus. Do you want to know how He loves? Look to Jesus.
God sent his own Son to be our Savior. Jesus Christ came down from heaven for us and for our salvation. Not even the prophet himself could have anticipated this hope, in sending Jesus, God reveals himself like never before. Jesus is the full revelation of God’s character, will, and heart. He is God in the flesh. In sending Jesus, God Reveals Himself
In sending Jesus, God Restores Us (Isaiah 64:5-9).
It is stirring and thrilling to recall the hope of Advent, Jesus sent to us, God coming down, revealing himself in the flesh. Here, Isaiah reminds us with chilling clarity why we needed Advent in the first place. Mankind’s slavery to sin, persistent failure, and cursed disobedience all continued to condemn us.
But Jesus is sent to restore us. Isaiah prays,
“Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look on us, we pray, for we are all your people” (v. 9).
In Jesus, we see that God is set on answering our prayer through restoration and healing. He comes down and He reveals himself, all for the purpose of restoring us and our relationship with Him. This is Advent. Our hearts are weighed down with gratitude. Out of our history of brokenness, Jesus crafts a future of restoration. In sending Jesus, God Restores Us
Hear the Good News my friends…..
Like the Israelites of years ago, for us the waiting is a time of spiritual preparation. It’s time to come to grips with ourselves and our sins. Confess them. Be honest with God about them. Seek your forgiveness and find your healing in the holy wounds of Christ. God has acted to deliver you from your sins. “In our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?”
Yes, we shall be saved because God has acted in Christ to save us. You can count on this. Your salvation is secure, because of Christ’s death and resurrection. The righteous end to a mortal life that starts at Christmas. But we must wait. Just like the people of Judah had to wait till the deliverance came from the Babylonian Captivity–and it did come.
Again, the prayer from Isaiah 64 is instructive. Listen to the patient trust in the prophet’s voice:
O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Behold, we are all your people.
This is a prayer of quiet trust and patient waiting. We turn the timing over to our heavenly Father. How and when he will deliver us in the end is up to him. Until that day, we will wait and trust, putting our trust in God’s promises and his mercy. How he has acted in the past, to act on behalf of his people, this bolsters our confidence that our God will indeed come through for us in the end.
For now we wait. But it is a busy and productive waiting. We use this time to remember and reflect, to repent and to be restored. Quiet trust, patient waiting, remembering and repenting, calling on God to act. Knowing that he is the God who does act, and will continue to act, and will finally act, to save his people, you and me and the church. That is Isaiah’s Advent prayer. And this should be our prayer during this Advent season too, simply praying Come to Us!