(Psalm 32:1-5, Isaiah 64:1-8; Acts 19:11-20)
In order to understand what’s going on in Isaiah 64, we need to understand more about the book as a whole. The driving concern all through Isaiah’s ministry is the contrast between what Israel is called to be—namely, God’s servant among the nations, through whom he will draw all the nations to himself—and what Israel actually is—their idolatry, their injustice, and their insistence on putting their trust in themselves and their military power (such as it was) instead of in their God.
The first five chapters set out the broad themes of the book; chapter 6 tells the story of God calling Isaiah as a prophet. Chapters 7-39 are the first main section of the book, showing us Isaiah’s prophetic ministry. When the kingdom of David and Solomon split, the ten northern tribes took the name “Israel” with them; the south became known as “Judah” after its dominant tribe. Isaiah was a prophet in Judah, beginning under the reign of King Ahaz. At that time, the main threats Ahaz worried about were Israel and Syria. Isaiah went to Ahaz and told him, “This is what God says: Israel and Syria are plotting to invade you, but just trust me—they won’t do it, because I’m going to stop them. Ask me for a sign—anything—and I’ll give it to you to confirm this.” Ahaz refused, because he had already decided to ally himself with the Assyrian empire and use them to take care of Syria and Israel.
Now, that was like calling in a lion to drive out a stray cat. It made God angry that his people would rather trust their bloodthirsty enemy than him, and he gave Ahaz a message through Isaiah: because of the king’s refusal to put his trust in God, Assyria would bring disaster on the nation. Judah would be saved from being conquered, but only by the skin of their teeth. Over the course of time, that’s exactly what happened. At the worst, which we see in Isaiah 36, the Assyrian armies held every city in Judah except for Jerusalem. By this time, however, Hezekiah was king. Unlike his father Ahaz, Hezekiah put his trust in God, and God drove out the Assyrians and delivered the nation.
And then came disaster. All through his ministry, Isaiah had been telling the king and the people that the real threat to them wasn’t the Assyrians but the empire coming along behind them, the Babylonians. In Isaiah 39, Hezekiah made a critical mistake. When envoys came from the king of Babylon, Hezekiah did everything he could to make an ally of them. He made the same mistake Ahaz did, choosing to put his trust in his enemy rather than in God—God whom he had already seen deliver his nation from the power of Assyria. In response, the word of judgment comes: Babylon will conquer Judah, and your people and treasures will be carried off into exile.
With that, the book of Isaiah leaves historical account behind. The prophet has seen the worst; now he has to deal with it. The story of the people of God couldn’t end there, or it would invalidate everything God had ever said about himself. For God to be faithful, he would have to bring his people back from exile—but how? On what basis? What will God do with this people who refuse to be the servant people he called and created them to be? Will they respond to their exile by repenting and changing their ways, or will God’s work have to go forward some other way?
Beginning in chapter 40, Isaiah receives a series of messages from God which deal with those questions. He’s given words of comfort and hope, such as we saw two weeks ago in Jeremiah 31, which is written a little later on. He’s also given hints that God’s people will not respond in their exile as they should, as we saw last week in reading Daniel 9. Most of all, he’s given the promise of God’s anointed Servant who will carry on his work, to redeem not only Judah but the nations. Isaiah is standing before the catastrophe to come, looking ahead to both disaster and deliverance, and seeing the sin of his people persist through all of it. He’s seeing the unworthiness and faithfulness of Israel, and the unyielding faithfulness and mercy of God. The contrast moves him to anguish, and at the end of chapter 63 he cries out, “God, we can’t break our pattern of sinning because you aren’t helping! Why not? Why do you let us live as if we’d never known you?”
That’s where chapter 64 begins. Our English translations give the wrong impression, because this is actually past tense, not future; the language of the first three verses is disjointed, full of powerful emotions. “O, that you had torn open the heavens and come down, your presence shaking the mountains—like fire burning the brush and boiling water—revealing your nature to your enemies, your presence shaking the nations, doing awe-inspiring things we could never have imagined—had you come down, your presence shaking the mountains . . . No one has heard of a God like you, no one has ever seen such a God, who acts for those who are waiting for him!”
The gods of this world claim the power to split the heavens and shake the mountains—whether we turn to the god called Ba’al, or the one called Technology—but they’re just copying your power; and yet they impress people, and the nations follow after them. They can’t be trusted, they aren’t faithful. God, you alone are faithful; you can be trusted! Why don’t you come down and show the world the real thing that we keep trying to fake?
Two things need to be said here. One, God doesn’t act for anyone who calls out to him once, but for those who wait for him. As John Oswalt writes, “‘to wait’ is to manifest the kind of trust that is willing to commit itself to God over the long haul. It is to continue to believe and expect when all others have given up. It is to believe that it is better for something to happen in God’s time than for it to happen on my initiative in my time.” It refers to those who live by faith in God even when it seems to be pointless.
What does that look like? We see that in verse 5. First, the one who waits for God is one who does what is right out of joy in the Lord, and finds his joy in doing what is right. Second, the one who waits for God is one who is devoted to God, who is pursuing God himself, nothing else. To quote Oswalt again, “to wait for the Lord is . . . to commit the future into God’s hands by means of living a daily life that shows that we know his ways of integrity, honesty, faithfulness, simplicity, mercy, generosity, and self-denial.” It is to do so not to impress others or to win any worldly advantages, but simply out of the desire to know God and to please him. These are the people for whom God acts; they are the ones whom God meets, and often when he’s least expected.
Now, you might say, “People who live like that—it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and they get eaten. That’s just not a reasonable expectation to put on people.” You know what? I won’t argue with you. That’s why we’re in the mess we’re in, that Isaiah describes in verses 5-7—a lament that’s probably as true in our own mouths as in Isaiah’s. That’s why Isaiah cries out as he does in the beginning of this chapter, because we have no other hope. If we put our trust in ourselves, as King Ahaz did, then even our most righteous acts—even the ones where we’re most trying to please God—are just filthy rags. If we’re trying to make things happen our way in our own time, even the best of it is filthy rags, nothing more.
We need to wait for God, knowing that if he doesn’t meet us here and he doesn’t act for us, then yeah, we’re going to get eaten. That’s the place of faith. In faith, we need to cry out to God that he will do as Isaiah wished he had done: that he will show up in power, his glory tearing open the heavens and his presence shaking the earth. And as we wait, and as we pray, we need to call others to join us, both within the church and without. We need to call our fellow Christians so that the joy of the Lord in us will refresh and renew the church; we need to call out to those who aren’t so that the joy the Lord has given us will freshen their spirits for the first time. I encouraged you some time ago to be praying for four non-believers, and asking God to give you opportunities to share the gospel with them; I hope you’re still doing it, for the sake of their souls, and for the sake of your own.