Series:  Inspiration in Isaiah, #18

November 12, 2006

“COME DOWN!”

Isaiah 64:1-4

          You have probably seen the signs on billboards or on some churches around town, that have pithy little sayings about God on them.  One of them says something about Let’s get together Sunday—we’ll meet at My house.  Another one says, When I said I love you, I meant that.  And I think there’s another one that says, “Don’t make me come down there!”  The implication is that God is up in heaven, and if He comes down, He will certainly come in judgment to punish us for our sins, so we better clean up our act. 

          Almost all people of all religions think of God as living “up there” somewhere.  That’s because we know He is higher than we are, in terms of being a higher level of being, of being stronger, wiser, faster, older, better than we are in every way.  So it makes sense that when we want God to show up, to reveal Himself in a more clear way, we would ask for Him to “come down”.  And that is exactly what the prophet Isaiah did pray.

I.        Come Down   Isaiah 64:1 (|| Psalm 144:5);  Ex 3:8;

          A.          Rend the heavens

                    “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,

                    that the mountains would tremble before you!” (Ps 64:1)

          He thinks of the sky as a veil, or a curtain that hides the spiritual realm from us, and he asks God to tear through it, to make Himself known, to let us see into that spiritual dimension.  I’m sure many of us have felt this way.  We peer into the physical world with microscopes, and telescopes, or we sit on a rock and stare at the mountains or over a lake, and we wish that somehow we could see past this material world to the spiritual world that we know is all around us.  We sing songs about this, like “Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus, to reach out and touch Him, and say that we love Him.  Open our ears, Lord, and help us to listen.  Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus.”   And “Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord[1],

Open the eyes of my heart, I want to see you, …To see you high and lifted up, Shining in the light of your glory…”  Here in Isaiah 64, the prophet is asking for something like that.  He wants God to manifest Himself in a clearer way, to “show up” as we would say, so that all can see Him.  Tear through the veil that separates us from you, and come down.

          B.          Make the mountains tremble

                    “Come down,” he says, in such a way “that the mountains would tremble before you.”  (Is 64:1) He is looking for God to do something really dramatic to deliver His people from their bondage in Babylon, and he has in mind something like a second Exodus.  He’s remembering what God did hundreds of years before, when they had just come out of Egypt.  In Exodus 19:11, God told the people to get ready because He was going to come down on Mt. Sinai in the sight of all the people.  Here’s what happened then:  Exodus 19:16-19, “On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. [17] Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. [18] Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, [19] and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder.”  That’s what Isaiah has in mind when he prays, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!” 

          God made it clear to the Israelites that no one could see Him directly and live; His holiness would consume a mere mortal.  But even when God condescends to make Himself somewhat detectable by our limited human senses, as He did on Sinai, He is fearsome, powerful, awesome.  So there’s a tension in us: we want Him to come down to us, but we realize, in the words of C.S. Lewis, that Aslan is not a tame lion.  He is not “safe”. 

          And yet, that is part of why we want Him to come down to us.  Because a tame, safe God is not worth worshiping.  In some ways, we have domesticated God, and He’s no longer that interesting.  We’ve got Him caged in our little theological boxes, and confined in “the way we’ve always done it”, and there doesn’t seem to be any room for Him to get out and roar.  But we desperately need to hear Him roar. 

          Isaiah prayed for God to roar and set them free from Babylon in some powerful way.  I pray for God to come in a revival.  The accounts of revivals throughout history indicate that when God does come down, all bets are off as to what to expect.  People may be knocked down on the floor by the presence of God;  they may weep for hours in agony of repentance over their sin; they may be moved to apologize, and make restitution for their sins; the hardest hearted people in town may be broken and come crawling to the altar begging for forgiveness; marriages are restored; estranged friends are reconciled; people can’t help speaking about what they have seen and heard; they hear God calling them to missions, or into ministry.  But above all, the manifest presence of God just dominates the entire community. 

          I’m not asking for any of those particular manifestations of God’s presence; I just want Him to come down.  He will know best how to come to us, and what we need. But I long to see God show up in such a powerful way that no one can deny it or stop it.  Don’t get me wrong: I love our church.  I read somewhere that the majority of pastors wouldn’t go to their own church if they had a choice.  I would. I love the way we worship—in both services.  But I still long for God to come down and make the mountains tremble!  I really don’t want to just go through the religious motions of worship.  O God! We are your people; come down to us! 

          In the next verse, Isaiah has another saying about God coming down which uses the image of fire. 

II.                Fire   Isaiah 64:2; Exodus 13:21; Judges 13:20 1 Kings 18:38; Acts 2:3; 1 Thes. 5:19

          Is 64:2,

    “As when fire sets twigs ablaze

        and causes water to boil,

    come down to make your name known to your enemies

        and cause the nations to quake before you!” 

          The point of the comparison here is that just as fire has the power to burn kindling, and boil water, so God has power on earth to make Himself famous.  Isaiah is praying for God to come down to earth and do just that:  “make your name known to your enemies; cause the nations to quake before you!”  God has power, like fire does.  He does stuff; He accomplishes things; He makes things happen.  We do not worship an idea; we are not just comforting ourselves by telling ourselves that there is a God, therefore everything is going to be OK.  Our faith is not an empty deception, the opiate of the masses, as Karl Marx said.  We worship the God who can do things as powerful as a mighty forest fire.  So we pray with Isaiah, do it, Lord!  Come down and do it!

          Throughout Scripture, fire is a symbol of God’s presence, His power, and especially His judgment.  The pillar of fire that led the Israelites through the wilderness of the Sinai desert was a visible representation of God’s presence with them (Exodus 13:21).  In Judges 13, a man named Manoah and his wife had an encounter with the Lord, who ascended in the flames of the sacrifice Manoah had offered.  When they saw that, they fell with their faces to the ground.  When Elijah had his famous encounter with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench (1 Kings 18:38).  God was there, in power, and the fire was a dramatic way of showing the people that. 

          Then we come to the New Testament, and the day of Pentecost.  The apostles, who had been praying for ten days in the upper room, heard the sound of a mighty rushing wind, and, “saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them” (Acts 2:3).  The Holy Spirit had come, and the most appropriate visible symbol of His presence in their lives was fire. 

          We sometimes talk about being on fire for God. The phrase suggests that we are passionate about God and His concerns; that we are emotionally engaged, maybe even consumed with love for Him and others.  That our love for God and our desire to serve Him are the things that get us up in the morning, that drive us through the day, that provide the emotional energy to walk across the street to visit with a neighbor, or drive to the hospital to care for a friend, or to lead a Bible study, or to pray for lost friends, or whatever. 

          But I wonder how many of us would say we are “on fire for God” like that?  In 1 Thes. 5:19, Paul says, “Do not put out the Spirit's fire,” but I’m afraid that many of us have done just that.  We are often lukewarm, not hot for Him.  We take our faith casually, sort of like a jacket we might throw around our shoulders when it is chilly.  It’s nice to have, but it doesn’t change our lives.  It doesn’t drive us, empower us, control us, move us. 

          Someone once said, “Make me thy fuel, O flame of God.”  I think Isaiah’s prayer is saying much the same thing:  Come down, Lord! Come to me, burn in me, make a difference, be the motivating force in my life, use me to make a difference in other people’s lives, to make your name known to everyone around me, including those who think of themselves as your enemies.  That’s a prayer for revival. 

          Oddly enough, another image that Isaiah uses for revival is that of water.  It would seem to be the exact opposite of fire, but he doesn’t mean water to put out the fire.  He has changed gears altogether, and is playing off the fact that Israel was a very arid country.  Water was a scarce, and therefore very precious, resource, absolutely necessary for life.  That’s the picture in chapter 44: 

III.      Water   Isaiah 44:2-5; John 7:38-39

Isaiah 44:2-3,

    "[2] This is what the Lord says--

        he who made you, who formed you in the womb,

        and who will help you:

    Do not be afraid, O Jacob, my servant...

    [3] For I will pour water on the thirsty land,

        and streams on the dry ground.”

          We are like the dry ground, the thirsty land, and we need the Holy Spirit of God to come and saturate our souls.  We are cracked, and parched, hard and resistant to the seed of the Word, and we need the Spirit to soften us up.   God goes on in v.3ff.,

    “I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring,

        and my blessing on your descendants.

    [4] They will spring up like grass in a meadow,

        like poplar trees by flowing streams.

    [5] One will say, 'I belong to the Lord';

        another will call himself by the name of Jacob;

    still another will write on his hand, 'The Lord's,'

        and will take the name Israel.” (Is 44:3-5)

          We live in a pretty dry part of the country. The average annual rainfall in Ft. Collins is only eighteen inches a year, so we’re always glad when we get some moisture: rain, snow, sleet, whatever—we’ll take it.  We’re pretty conscious of the fact that only God can make it rain or snow, and that without Him, we are doomed to a destructive drought.  We should be just as eager to see God pour out His Spirit on us and on our children, as we are for God to send the moisture.  No one living in this generation can remember seeing a true revival.  The last big revival to come to Colorado was in 1904, when stores in Denver and the legislature closed down so people could go to the revival meetings.  Folks, we need to pray that God will do just what He promises here in this passage:  pour out His Spirit on our descendants, so that they will flourish spiritually like grass in a well-watered meadow, or like aspen trees beside a mountain stream. 

          I know that many of you have children and grandchildren who are not walking with the Lord, and it tears you up.  It is one of the greatest heartaches a Christian parent can know.  God’s promise here, that we need to pray for with great boldness and passion, is that He will turn our children to Himself so strongly that they identify themselves completely with Him and take His name on themselves. If I were to ask you, “Tell me who you are, without mentioning anything about what you do,” what would you say? Would it have something to do with your relationship with God?  We need to pray that God will move in our hearts and our children’s hearts so deeply that our fundamental identity will be that we belong to the Lord, as he says here; that we see ourselves primarily as a child of God, a member of the people of God.  If you are not moved to pray for revival for yourself, will you at least pray for it for the sake of your kids and grandkids?  They need to know the life-giving water of the Spirit. 

          God is a blazing fire, with great power and passion.  God is the water of life, quenching our spiritual thirst.  We pray for this God to come down from heaven, to part the heavens and come to us in power and great refreshment.  But we need to ask,  

IV.     To Whom Does God Comes Down?   Isaiah 57:15

          Does He come to everyone indiscriminately?  Is there anything we can do to make it more likely that He will show up in this way?  In fact, there is:  Isaiah 57:15,

    “For this is what the high and lofty One says--

        he who lives forever, whose name is holy:

    ‘I live in a high and holy place,

        but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit,

    to revive the spirit of the lowly

        and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”

          God is high and lofty, holy, far above us in every way.  But He comes to the person who is contrite and lowly in spirit.  Isaiah’s prayer, “Come down,” is the essence of a prayer for revival.  And this passage in Isaiah 57 tells us something about what we have to do to see God come down to us in revival: we have to get rid of our pride.  God lives with the one who is aware of his sin and is therefore appropriately humble, lowly, contrite in heart.  

          Friends, let me talk a minute about pride and humility.  I see this dynamic most damagingly in marriages that are falling apart, but it crops up in lots of other ways as well.  Almost always, when there is unresolved conflict in a relationship, it can be traced back to pride.  One or both parties are in the grip of pride and are insisting that they are right, demanding their own way. On the back of your sermon outline this morning is a little chart from Nancy Leigh DeMoss on the differences between proud people and humble people.  Let me just read a few of these contrasts to help us get a feel for it. 

          Where would you say you are on this chart?  I’m sure we all find ourselves on both side of it to some extent, but are you mostly a proud person, or a humble person? It would be a good idea for you to get alone sometime this week, sit before the Lord, and go through this comparison, noting honestly which of those descriptions best fit you.  And since pride, by definition, means we tend to think we are right, you will probably need to ask someone else who knows you well.  If you are married, it needs to be your spouse because no one else knows you as well as they do.  If you are not married, ask a close friend to go through it and tell you how they see you.  We all have blind spots, and we need others to help us see ourselves realistically. I dare you to do this! This could lead to a wonderful breakthrough for you in many relationships, if you allow God to use this to humble you. 

          There is an interesting interplay between high and low in the Scripture with regard to humility and pride.  We have the most high God, the exalted One, who humbled Himself to be born as a baby to peasant parents and laid in a food trough, then endured the most humiliating death imaginable.  But if you want to approach this God, you have to humble yourself.  If we try to climb up higher through pride, God will bring us down; if we take a lowly attitude of humility, God will exalt us. 

          So here’s the point with regard to revival.  As long as we don’t think we need it, we certainly won’t get it.  If we don’t see the need for more fire in our spiritual life, God won’t send the fire.  If we don’t feel thirsty for Him, we won’t ask for more of the living Water.  And God will just let us coast on through life with our medium, average, so-so, common, ordinary, lukewarm, run of the mill spiritual experience.  But if we humble ourselves before Him, acknowledge our sin, seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways, then He promises to come down.  God is high and exalted far beyond anything we can imagine, but part of His greatness is that He is willing to dwell with those who are of humble hearts.  He is the high and lofty and holy and eternal One, but He is not too proud to associate with people like us. 

          Oh friends, pray!  Pray for revival!  Pray that God will rend the heavens and come down to us.  Pray for the fire of God to fall, and ignite our spirits in love and passion for Him.  Pray that He will pour out the living water of His Spirit, and refresh and satisfy our thirsty souls.  Pray that He will do such a work that it will draw our friends, and especially our relatives—our children and grandchildren—to a living, vital faith in Him.  Humble yourself before Him, and pray!