A Heartfelt Conversation - Isaiah 64-65:16

Whenever I read the Old Testament and read about men who talked with God I wonder what that would be like. I bet it is very different from what we would imagine it to be. God does not see life the same way that we do. We see things only in terms of how they relate to us. God sees the much bigger picture. We think it would be nice to tell God some things, but, He already knows more about those things than we will ever know. I have concluded that it would be a very humbling experience to talk with God.

In Isaiah 64 and the 65 we have one of those conversations between Isaiah and God. In Isaiah 64 the prophet comes to the Lord with His requests (the pleas actually begin in chapter 63). He does not speak as a spokesman (using “they”); he speaks as part of the citizenry (he uses “we” to link himself with the people.) In Isaiah 65 we will look at the first part of God’s answer and leave the powerful conclusion for next week.

A Yearning for the Presence of God

Oh, that you would burst from the heavens and come down!

How the mountains would quake in your presence!

2 As fire causes wood to burn

and water to boil,

your coming would make the nations tremble.

Then your enemies would learn the reason for your fame!

3 When you came down long ago,

you did awesome deeds beyond our highest expectations.

And oh, how the mountains quaked!

4 For since the world began,

no ear has heard

and no eye has seen a God like you,

who works for those who wait for him (64:1-4)

As you look at the world around you, isn’t there a part of you that yearns for the Lord to make an appearance to show everyone he is real and to straighten things out? We would be OK with some New Testament miracles and maybe even some Old Testament “judgment on the wicked.” We would love to see the power of God at work in dramatic, show stopping, “we interrupt this program with a special report” way again. And this is the same way Isaiah feels.

Isaiah knows when God shows up in this powerful way, the nations will tremble, the mountains will quake, and the glory of the Lord will be seen by all. He knows this because this is what we see in the Old Testament. The mountain at Sinai shook as Moses went up to receive the Ten Commandments. Nations ran away in fear. God brought the Egyptians to their knees, and He sent Babylonian and Assyrian Kings running. We would love to see evil powers put in their rightful place once again.

The Barrier to God (5-7)

5 You welcome those who gladly do good,

who follow godly ways.

But you have been very angry with us,

for we are not godly.

We are constant sinners;

how can people like us be saved?

6 We are all infected and impure with sin.

When we display our righteous deeds,

they are nothing but filthy rags.

Isaiah knows the Lord is eager to welcome those who seek Him. The problem is that no one seeks Him (see Romans 3). Isaiah includes himself in this statement. He says “when we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags.”

This is an important but very hard thing to admit. Even our best deeds are tainted with sinful undercurrents. What looks good on the outside is often a form of manipulation or deception on the inside. Let me give you some examples,

· We show kindness to someone so we will look good before others or assuage the guilt in us.

· We do righteous (or “Christian”) hoping God will bless us in return (do you see the self-centeredness here?).

· We witness to others not out of love, but out of a sense of guilt.

· Our “worship” is more about our enjoyment than God’s glory.

· We learn about the Bible to make a good impression on others or even to win an argument rather than to know and obey the truth.

Even our most noteworthy deeds are often tainted with selfish and/or sinful motives. In God’s response in chapter 65:3-5 the Lord writes,

3 All day long they insult me to my face

by worshiping idols in their sacred gardens.

They burn incense on pagan altars.

4 At night they go out among the graves,

worshiping the dead.

They eat the flesh of pigs

and make stews with other forbidden foods.

5 Yet they say to each other,

‘Don’t come too close or you will defile me!

I am holier than you!’

These people are a stench in my nostrils,

an acrid smell that never goes away.

This is a fierce indictment. The Lord observes that the people were living just like the pagans, yet they thought of themselves as righteous and holy. They were that deceived. They felt they were good even while they paid no attention to the Lord in the way they lived their lives.

We want to live life our way and yet lay claim to God’s blessings! It doesn’t work that way! God is not fooled, and He is not “bought.” Before we can get anywhere in our relationship with God we have to stop pointing to our “good deeds” (which are not, in fact, all that good) and cry out to the Lord for mercy, grace, forgiveness, and a transformed life.

The indictment is this: superficial Christians (those who claim to be Christians but do not live like it consistently) are perhaps not genuine believers at all. Their faith may be more show than relationship.

The Appeal to God’s Heart (64:8-11)

Isaiah knows the people (including himself) are guilty. He does not try to convince God that it is anything other than what it is. However, He does appeal to God’s compassion.

8 And yet, O Lord, you are our Father.

We are the clay, and you are the potter.

We all are formed by your hand.

9 Don’t be so angry with us, Lord.

Please don’t remember our sins forever.

Look at us, we pray,

and see that we are all your people.

10 Your holy cities are destroyed.

Zion is a wilderness;

yes, Jerusalem is a desolate ruin.

11 The holy and beautiful Temple

where our ancestors praised you

has been burned down,

and all the things of beauty are destroyed.

Isaiah points out that Israel (and is also true of us) was made by God. He is the potter. He had a purpose in what He did. In essence Isaiah is saying, “Remember Lord, we belong to you, the city that you called your own, is being trampled.” The plea is simple, “O God, please save us!” He appeals to the mercy of God.

This is the prayer of a true believer. Our only hope is the grace and mercy of God. Isaiah is boldly saying, “Lord, it is true that we deserve your wrath, but your glory is at stake!” God is the One who called Israel to be His children. If His children are destroyed, it would tranish His reputation. Isaiah appeals to God’s heart of love.

To present our good deeds as a reason God should bless us is a futile activity. We know even our best efforts are filled with sin-filled notions. Most of the time when we have a choice between doing what God says and doing what we consider to be “fun,” we will sell our faith for a few drinks at the bar, or a night of passion.

The Lord responded in Isaiah 65:8-10

8 “But I will not destroy them all,”

says the Lord.

“For just as good grapes are found among a cluster of bad ones

(and someone will say, ‘Don’t throw them all away—

some of those grapes are good!’),

so I will not destroy all Israel.

For I still have true servants there.

9 I will preserve a remnant of the people of Israel

and of Judah to possess my land.

Those I choose will inherit it,

and my servants will live there.

10 The plain of Sharon will again be filled with flocks

for my people who have searched for me,

and the valley of Achor will be a place to pasture herds.

The Lord says not everyone will be destroyed even though they deserve it. Instead, he will save some of the people. The Holy Spirit will draw a group of people to the Lord and make them new. He says those He chooses will be spared and made new.

Some try to explain these words by saying, “God chooses to save those who choose Him.” If that were the case, no one would be saved! If God had not changed our heart and redeemed us by His grace, we would never choose Him. In Romans 3 Paul says, “no one seeks God.”

Immediately, some people will cry, “Hey, that’s not fair! God should give everyone a chance to be saved!” But isn’t that what He has already done? Didn’t we ignore His mercy and love, to go our own way? Has He not been holding His arms out to the people only to be ignored?

So why does He choose to save some and not others? This much we know, it has nothing to do with how good we are. God doesn’t tell us why He chooses, only that He does. The fact that it is not due to anything we have done, doesn’t mean there is no reason for what He has chosen. Romans 9 asks the simple question, “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” (Romans 9:20). Paul points out that the potter has the right to do what He wants with what he makes.

God’s choice and man’s freedom is a knotty issue that has been debated since the beginning of time, but the real question is: How can I know if I am one of those He has chosen? It sounds strange, but you can know you have been chosen by the fact that you respond to the message of the gospel by repenting, believing, and following. Don’t rush past those terms.

Repenting means we see our sin the way God sees it (as rebellion against Him), we mourn over it, and we desire to turn from our rebellion-filled ways. Believing is more than intellectually agreeing to the facts. It is about placing your hope of forgiveness and new life solely on what Jesus has done for us. As I say so often, it is to be willing to bet your life on Him. It means to live out what you say you believe. It is a willingness to work at living the way God commands us to live through the power and influence of the Holy Spirit. This is where the following comes in.

True faith is not about trying to live right or being a “good person” in the eyes of the world. It is to enter into a relationship with the Lord that empowers and governs every part of your life.

To all who repent, believe, and follow, The Lord promises He will guide, protect and empower them in this life and give new and incorruptible bodies for life in the New Heaven and New Earth.

Applications

What does all of this mean to us? First, it means we have to tell ourselves the truth about our condition. There is this sense in which we should never feel we deserve God’s blessings because we are such good people. We have come to believe the government for some reason, owes us, our employers owe us, our co-workers owe us, so why not believe that God owes us?

We are habitual sinners, selfishly insistent on doing things our own way. We are, at times, proud of how humble we are and we even wear our low self-esteem or self-effacing manner as a badge of honor (proud of how broken we are) which we feel entitles us to get special treatment from God and those around us! We must face the fact of our sin, before we will ever be open to receiving the gift offered by God with humility and gratitude. Sin is pervasive in us!

I don’t say this to beat us up. God does not try to bludgeon us into His Kingdom. He wins us by His love and mercy. Once we grasp this truth and get down off our self-made pedestal, we will relate to others with more compassion even as we relate to God with an overwhelming sense of love and appreciation. We must stop being so impressed with ourselves (even for what we suffer), expecting something from God. The sooner we recognize our true status, the sooner we will relate to God with the appropriate reverence.

Second, we must take seriously the indictment that we can look good and still be lost on the inside. The genuineness of our faith and discipleship does not depend on public perception, but on the genuineness of our hearts. It is not about what we know or experience; it is about whether or not we walk with the Lord. As Jesus said in Matthew 7,

On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ 23 But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’ (Matthew 7:21-22)

We must prayerfully examine our lives before the Lord. It is not about fitting in with other believers or learning the right words, it is about having a supernatural change of heart. It is not even about doing it right all (most?) of the time . . . it is about walking with Him.

We must embrace the sovereignty of God without falling into fatalism. Fatalism is the belief that life is scripted, and it doesn’t matter really what we do. The fact that God chooses us does not mean we do not have responsibility for the way we live our lives. The concepts of divine sovereignty and human freedom are concepts that, in a mind-stretching way, are both true.

People are often guilty of using the idea of God’s sovereignty as an excuse for not working at their lives and for avoiding responsibility for the choices they make. People sometimes believe that since their destiny is determined by God, it does not matter what choices we make. Some go so far as to say, they are merely helpless servants of God’s choice. The result? We become helpless victims looking for the government, the church, or God Himself to bail us out.

How many times have you heard someone excuse their abrasive behavior with the statement, “That’s just the way I am!” Or, even more offensive, “This is the way God made me.” We must reach that place where we stop using the circumstances of our lives as an excuse for not working to rise above them. God calls us to root out sin in our lives. He knows how weak we are, so He gives us the Holy Spirit to lead and work in and through us.

If we have any hope of seeing a revival in our land, we will need to seriously pursue holiness in our lives. That means we must,

· Stop justifying and excusing sinful behavior

· Make walking with Christ the top priority in your life and approach His word and prayer as if these things are your priority.

· You must do all this not to earn salvation, but to show the world what Christ has done in us and for us through His salving grace and mercy.

Yes, it would be nice to share some of our wisdom with the Almighty. But He is already WAY smarter than we are. God invites us to ask Him questions. He would love to talk with us. However, before we can ever hope to hear from God, we have to actually be ready and willing to listen.

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