Doug McMasters: Take our Bible and go to the book of Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: The book of Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: And we'll be in chapter 63 and chapter 64.
Doug McMasters: Sadly, this is the penultimate time that I'll be saying that.
Doug McMasters: Next week will be my last message in Isaiah, and we'll head off to London, and Micah will be closing off our book series.
Doug McMasters: It's gonna be hard to say goodbye to Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: This passage of scripture is particularly moving.
Doug McMasters: It's moved me for the past few weeks as I've meditated upon it.
Doug McMasters: I thought particularly those of us who might be in a place of spiritual depression, to use Martin Lloyd-Jones' condition.
Doug McMasters: Not depression in a clinical sense, but a spiritual depression in which our soul is not where it should be.
Doug McMasters: And oftentimes when that happens, we haven't moved.
Doug McMasters: We are in the same place that we've been week after week.
Doug McMasters: We still show up to church, we still say the right words, we still nod when the scriptures are spoken in the right way.
Doug McMasters: But we know deep down inside there's something wrong.
Doug McMasters: There's something just not right about us.
Doug McMasters: We feel the distance between ourselves and God that once was so close.
Doug McMasters: We feel the thinness of our souls.
Doug McMasters: And we know that there's an ache in our heart that longs to be back with God, but we're filled with discouragement and puzzlement because even though we're not outwardly rebellious, and even though we're not faithless, we're just worn down and drifting, and oftentimes we don't know the way back.
Doug McMasters: How do I get back to where I was?
Doug McMasters: Is often the question I hear as a pastor.
Doug McMasters: We know we've wondered, and but we don't know how to return.
Doug McMasters: We don't know how to come back from where we're at.
Doug McMasters: And that feeling is not an unusual one.
Doug McMasters: In fact, it's the very condition of the people that Isaiah is writing to in Isaiah 63 and 64.
Doug McMasters: This section of Isaiah that we're in right at the moment is a section in which Isaiah is speaking to the future, to a generation of people who have already gone through the Babylonian exile and are now returning from that exile and coming back to the wasteland that is called Jerusalem and Judea.
Doug McMasters: They've been carrying the weight of their failure for many, many years.
Doug McMasters: And they're now staring at the ruin that's called Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: And they're wondering a very important question is God ever going to draw near to us again?
Doug McMasters: And so they're weak, they're discouraged, they don't know even how to pray, they don't know how to interpret their own story, and they're unsure if they can ever move forward again out of all of these decades of dryness.
Doug McMasters: Long before they ever existed, though, Isaiah steps into their shoes.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah prays a prayer on their behalf in order to instruct them how to find God coming back from exile.
Doug McMasters: It's a remarkable passage.
Doug McMasters: He places a prayer into their mouths and teaches them how to return to God.
Doug McMasters: And that's why this passage is so important for us today.
Doug McMasters: Because you may be looking at your life and realizing that something's broken, but you don't know how to fix it.
Doug McMasters: You know that there's a distance between you and God, but you don't know how to close it.
Doug McMasters: Well, Isaiah 63 and 64 shows us just how to do that.
Doug McMasters: It shows us what the awakening of our soul is like, it shows us what an honest return is like, and it shows us a God who meets us in our distance with a mercy that far exceeds our ability to perceive.
Doug McMasters: And so Isaiah guides us, just like he guided them, he guides us to show us how to return to God, not simply rebuilding what's lost, but learning to speak to him with honesty and humility and hope.
Doug McMasters: Here, as we look at these passages, we'll understand how God's truth awakens us and how it reshapes our understanding and how his mercy draws us into a future that's worth living for.
Doug McMasters: So let's take a journey through this.
Doug McMasters: I want to give us three points.
Doug McMasters: First of all, that this is a prayer of honesty, that this is a prayer of humility, and that this is a prayer of hope.
Doug McMasters: And so Isaiah begins that journey right here with a people who are beginning to be honest in their prayer.
Doug McMasters: And then honesty begins with an awakening, an awakening.
Doug McMasters: An awakening when they start to feel the distance, they start to feel the separation.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verses 13 to 16 of chapter, 15 and 16 of chapter 63.
Doug McMasters: Look down from heaven and see, from your lofty home, holy and beautiful.
Doug McMasters: This is the people speaking to God.
Doug McMasters: Where is your zeal and your might, your yearning and your compassion are withheld from me?
Doug McMasters: And yet you are our father, even though Abraham does not know us and Israel doesn't recognize us.
Doug McMasters: You, Lord, are our father.
Doug McMasters: Your name is our redeemer from ancient times.
Doug McMasters: Now, these are not the words of the people who have been walking closely with God and then all of a sudden find themselves in a place of discouragement.
Doug McMasters: Not at all.
Doug McMasters: In fact, these are people who have lived such a distance from God for such a long period of time that they've almost forgotten what nearness to God actually looks like.
Doug McMasters: For generations they've wandered.
Doug McMasters: For generations they've treated God as peripheral, and they've established patterns of resisting God, of grieving his spirit, of treating his covenant as something they could pick up and put down at will.
Doug McMasters: They've lived on the very edges of obedience, drifting steadily away from God, from father to son to son to son to son.
Doug McMasters: But now, but now all of a sudden, they feel it.
Doug McMasters: They feel it.
Doug McMasters: And they look at their life and they look at their life as a nation and they realize this isn't what should be.
Doug McMasters: The condition I'm in is not how this ought to be.
Doug McMasters: And what was once very, very tolerable for them, not even talking to God, now becomes unbearable.
Doug McMasters: This absence of God that they had completely enjoyed becomes excruciating to them and they plead with God.
Doug McMasters: There's something pressing on them with a spiritual weight.
Doug McMasters: They look around and they see the drift that's been caused.
Doug McMasters: They recognize that their worship had grown thin generations ago, that their leaders had lost the way, that the temple had been defiled, the people had forgotten their calling.
Doug McMasters: So now they do the one thing they haven't done for a long, long time.
Doug McMasters: They turn their attention to God and they ask God to look at them.
Doug McMasters: Look down from heaven and see.
Doug McMasters: This is the first cry of a people who are waking up.
Doug McMasters: Who are waking up from a long spiritual sleep, the sound of a heart that's starting to soften, that's this first stirring to their conscience that's been seared and ignored.
Doug McMasters: And almost surprisingly, and here you'll notice that they they reach for a name that they haven't used in a long time.
Doug McMasters: Yet you're our father.
Doug McMasters: Though Abraham doesn't know us and Israel doesn't acknowledge us, you, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old, is your name.
Doug McMasters: Right at the moment, these are words that are just starting to come back into their vocabulary.
Doug McMasters: And they know that their spiritual forefathers, Abraham and Jacob, they wouldn't even recognize them.
Doug McMasters: All those years when those men lived in trust and faith and obedience, well, those are a long way away from there.
Doug McMasters: These guys wouldn't recognize their children.
Doug McMasters: But no matter how unlike their fathers they might be, they reach for a deeper reality.
Doug McMasters: They're reaching down and they're saying, you know what?
Doug McMasters: We may have changed, we may not be like Abraham, we might not be like Jacob, but God, you haven't changed.
Doug McMasters: You're still our father.
Doug McMasters: And there's this honesty that's beginning to awaken in them as they speak to God.
Doug McMasters: It's the first sign of hope in them.
Doug McMasters: Because now these people are no longer indifferent to God.
Doug McMasters: The distance that was once normal is now painful to them.
Doug McMasters: But beneath all of it isn't is a truth that they can't yet see, and we'll get to, that this father is going to do things for them far beyond what they could imagine.
Doug McMasters: And this is where the passage speaks very, very clearly to us.
Doug McMasters: To those who might be today drifting in their hearts, still here, still singing, still saying amen when amen is yanked out of you.
Doug McMasters: But you know deep down inside something's really wrong.
Doug McMasters: Something's really, really missing in your soul.
Doug McMasters: It speaks to us who remember seasons when we were near to God and know that today is not that day.
Doug McMasters: And it tells us when we can't quite put our finger on what's wrong, how to begin.
Doug McMasters: And Isaiah teaches us this: that it's very simple.
Doug McMasters: Feel the distance and bring that distance to God.
Doug McMasters: Recognize you're not where you should be, but also recognize God is always who He was, even in the best of your days.
Doug McMasters: Start there.
Doug McMasters: Start with this honesty that wakes up and says, Lord, I feel far from you.
Doug McMasters: Lord, I'm not where I should be, but you're still my father.
Doug McMasters: That hasn't changed at all.
Doug McMasters: That's where this prayer begins, this prayer of honesty.
Doug McMasters: And it moves, interestingly, as we progress through this, through stages of understanding.
Doug McMasters: Because this awakening of honesty brings with it some confusion.
Doug McMasters: It's an honest prayer, but it's a confused prayer.
Doug McMasters: And this brings us into the second part of this prayer of honesty in verses 17 to 19.
Doug McMasters: Listen to these words.
Doug McMasters: Why, O Lord, do you make us stray from your ways?
Doug McMasters: You harden our hearts so that we do not fear you.
Doug McMasters: Return because of your servants, the tribes of your heritage.
Doug McMasters: Your holy people had a possession for a little while, but our enemies have trampled down your sanctuary.
Doug McMasters: We have become like those you never ruled, like those who did not bear your name.
Doug McMasters: What are we hearing here?
Doug McMasters: We're hearing people pray with a spiritual grogginess, is what we're hearing.
Doug McMasters: They're waking up, but the room is still dark.
Doug McMasters: They're feeling the distance, but they don't even yet understand what created that distance.
Doug McMasters: Their hearts are beginning to stir, but their interpretation of what's been happening is still shaped by their drift.
Doug McMasters: They don't quite get it.
Doug McMasters: And so they pray these prayers, honest prayer, but wrong.
Doug McMasters: Lord, why do you make us stray?
Doug McMasters: Lord, why do you harden our hearts so that we don't fear you?
Doug McMasters: Now, these aren't words of defiance, these are words of disorientation.
Doug McMasters: Not every time somebody prays this way is it a prayer of rebellion.
Doug McMasters: It can be a prayer of confusion.
Doug McMasters: And what's wrong with them is that they're instinctively placing the blame on something outside of themselves rather than looking inward and finding the source of the problem here.
Doug McMasters: And tragically, they're putting the blame on God.
Doug McMasters: Now, perhaps you've prayed this way.
Doug McMasters: Lord, why didn't you stop me before I got here?
Doug McMasters: You ever pray that prayer?
Doug McMasters: Lord, you're sovereign.
Doug McMasters: You could have stopped me.
Doug McMasters: Lord, why didn't you intervene sooner?
Doug McMasters: Lord, why did you let things get so bad?
Doug McMasters: It's the exact same prayer.
Doug McMasters: These these these people to pray.
Doug McMasters: It's a confused prayer.
Doug McMasters: Honest, but confused.
Doug McMasters: Their hearts are starting to wake up.
Doug McMasters: They're trying to make sense of the ruin around them, but all they see is what's going on around here, and they're saying, God, why did it get like this?
Doug McMasters: The temple is trampled, the cities are desolate, everything is emptiness, the ruins are there.
Doug McMasters: And they even say to God at the very end of this chapter, we're like those you've never ruled, like those who've never even taken your name.
Doug McMasters: We're just like another one of those nations that some big ruling power has taken over and squashed.
Doug McMasters: We're just that.
Doug McMasters: What they're saying to the Lord to the Lord is, Lord, we look more like the outsiders than the outsiders are.
Doug McMasters: And in a sense, they're right.
Doug McMasters: But they're right for all the wrong reasons.
Doug McMasters: Because what they're looking for is for God to fix the world around them.
Doug McMasters: What God's going to do is fix the world that's in them.
Doug McMasters: Okay?
Doug McMasters: They're looking at the trampled temple and saying, what a tragedy, God.
Doug McMasters: Why did that happen?
Doug McMasters: And they're not looking to the fact that they trampled the covenant themselves.
Doug McMasters: They're looking at the ruins of Jerusalem, but they haven't looked at the ruins of their rebellious lives yet.
Doug McMasters: So this is the spiritual condition of a people who are now awakening, but still coming into the fullness and understanding of what repentance is all about.
Doug McMasters: They feel the ache of it all, but they misread the cause.
Doug McMasters: They misinterpret it.
Doug McMasters: But wonderfully, the confusion is not the end of the story here.
Doug McMasters: And their misreading is not the final word, because this prayer is not over.
Doug McMasters: But Isaiah speaks on their behalf so that when this time comes, they might even know how to pray.
Doug McMasters: Because Isaiah's already put it here for them to reach for.
Doug McMasters: And what he's telling them is you have to speak your aching heart into the void.
Doug McMasters: He's guiding them toward clarity and pushing them closer and closer to the place where they need to be.
Doug McMasters: And so when we feel far from God, we do exactly what the Israelites do.
Doug McMasters: We look around at our circumstances and we say, this is just overwhelming.
Doug McMasters: This is troubling.
Doug McMasters: My prayers are empty.
Doug McMasters: What's the problem?
Doug McMasters: And we look outside of ourselves and we try to find the problem out there.
Doug McMasters: Churches do this too, in the middle of a declining spiritual vitality, and assume that the problem must be external.
Doug McMasters: Well, we just need to hold on, the culture's shifting.
Doug McMasters: As if that was the answer.
Doug McMasters: People are busy, the world is dark.
Doug McMasters: And we look up at God and say, God, why didn't you do something sooner?
Doug McMasters: It's not a harsh question, it's an honest one.
Doug McMasters: It's a confused one.
Doug McMasters: These people are feeling the absence of God, but they haven't quite understood that that's because of their own wanderings, not God's inability to work on their behalf.
Doug McMasters: And so there has to be more here.
Doug McMasters: And this prayer of honesty moves from an awakening through confusion into desire.
Doug McMasters: And that brings us into the next chapter in the first five verses.
Doug McMasters: Because now we see the confusion beginning to lift, and their questions are starting to give way to longing, and their bewilderment is starting to give way to desire.
Doug McMasters: And these people who have drifted and have been unconcerned about it are now yearning for God in a way they've never done for years.
Doug McMasters: Listen to these words.
Doug McMasters: If only you would tear the heavens open and come down so that the mountains would quake at your presence.
Doug McMasters: Just as fire kindles brushwood and fire boils water to make your name known to your enemies, so that nations would tremble at your presence.
Doug McMasters: When you did awesome works that we did not expect, you came down and the mountains quaked at your presence.
Doug McMasters: From ancient time no one has heard, no one has listened to, no eye has seen any God except you who acts on behalf of the one who waits for him.
Doug McMasters: You welcome the one who joyfully does what is right.
Doug McMasters: They remember you in all your ways.
Doug McMasters: Now they desire God.
Doug McMasters: Now they want him to act.
Doug McMasters: This confusion is beginning to become clarity.
Doug McMasters: And they're praying these vivid words.
Doug McMasters: Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down.
Doug McMasters: Wasn't many years ago they would say, please keep away from us, God.
Doug McMasters: And what they're praying is not just some polite request, is it?
Doug McMasters: Some carefully measured petition.
Doug McMasters: No, this is a cry of people who have felt the aching distance of God for so long that they're screaming in their bones for it to be different now.
Doug McMasters: And notice the imagery here.
Doug McMasters: The sky ripping apart like a curtain, mountains trembling in earthquakes and fire consuming everything that's dry and brittle.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 3, they talk about that.
Doug McMasters: When you did awesome works that we did not expect, you came down and the mountains quaked at your presence.
Doug McMasters: What are they doing here?
Doug McMasters: What is Isaiah pointing them back to?
Doug McMasters: What are they remembering?
Doug McMasters: The remembering Sinai is what they're remembering.
Doug McMasters: They're remembering that time when God humbled the most powerful nation on earth at the time, Egypt and the Pharaoh, when he had laid them low in humiliation, and when he had parted the waters and allowed his people to be free from slavery, walking on dry land, where he carried them through the wilderness and brought them to the place where his very voice was heard, and mountains literally shook, and fire filled the sky.
Doug McMasters: The remembering the God who descended in fire, who split the sea, who shook the nations, and who made himself known in power.
Doug McMasters: And they're saying, God, do that again.
Doug McMasters: Do that again.
Doug McMasters: Be that same powerful force now.
Doug McMasters: But here's the problem look at how they pray.
Doug McMasters: They pray this verse two to make your name known to your enemies so that the nations would tremble at your presence.
Doug McMasters: They want God to fix the world.
Doug McMasters: God's going to fix them.
Doug McMasters: They want the mountains to shake.
Doug McMasters: God wants their hearts to shake.
Doug McMasters: They want a restored land and a restored dignity.
Doug McMasters: God wants restored hearts and a restored people.
Doug McMasters: But God's going to do something more for them than they know.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 4.
Doug McMasters: In verse 4, they speak from of ancient times no one has heard, no one has listened to, no eye has seen any God except you who acts on behalf of the one who waits for him.
Doug McMasters: Little do they know that this is the hinge of the whole prayer right here.
Doug McMasters: This is where their longing brushes up against God's unbounded, unimaginable mercy.
Doug McMasters: They don't know it yet, but it's there.
Doug McMasters: The remembering of God who intervenes, and they're asking him to act in the way that he did before.
Doug McMasters: But God doesn't want to just repeat the past.
Doug McMasters: As dramatic as it was.
Doug McMasters: They want God to come down in power, but God's going to come down in person to this earth.
Doug McMasters: You see, what they're longing for is really just a shadow of what God's actually going to do.
Doug McMasters: The substance they can't even grab hold of here.
Doug McMasters: They feel this emptiness, they feel the thinness of their prayers, they feel the weight of their choices, and they're saying, Lord, we need you to break through here.
Doug McMasters: Lord, come near to us again.
Doug McMasters: Break through all of this hardness.
Doug McMasters: Shake what has grown cold.
Doug McMasters: Do what only you can do, Lord.
Doug McMasters: That's a real longing.
Doug McMasters: But it's still mistaken.
Doug McMasters: Because what they want is a return to what was rather than a reach for what will be.
Doug McMasters: And we'll get to that in just a second.
Doug McMasters: This prayer of honesty continues and unfolds.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah is teaching them through prayer how to address their own hearts.
Doug McMasters: And so this honesty that begins with an awakening, that moves through this fog of confusion, that pushes them into an honest prayer of desire now gets to the heart because it's now in the second movement, a prayer of humility.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 5 at the very end of it.
Doug McMasters: But we have sinned, and you were angry.
Doug McMasters: How can we be saved if we remain in our sins?
Doug McMasters: All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment, and all of us wither like a leaf, and all our iniquities carry us away like the wind.
Doug McMasters: No one calls on your name, striving to take a hold of you.
Doug McMasters: For you've hidden your face from us and made us melt because of our iniquities.
Doug McMasters: You see, they finally understand what the real problem is.
Doug McMasters: It's no longer God, why did you harden our hearts?
Doug McMasters: It's now God, we have hard hearts.
Doug McMasters: We've done this to ourselves.
Doug McMasters: This is devastating admission of their sin.
Doug McMasters: And it's the humility that they're expressing.
Doug McMasters: Lord, and the ESV puts it this way: we have been in our sins a long time.
Doug McMasters: This isn't some new problem.
Doug McMasters: This has been going on for a long stretch, but we're just now aware of it.
Doug McMasters: We have been the problem the whole time, and now I see it.
Doug McMasters: I see myself for what I should have seen before.
Doug McMasters: Sin has deceived me to think the problem was out there and up there, but I now see it, it's in here.
Doug McMasters: It's me.
Doug McMasters: We have become like one who's unclean.
Doug McMasters: All our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
Doug McMasters: They feel the distance now that they have created.
Doug McMasters: And they own it.
Doug McMasters: They recognize that their own iniquities have shaped their present, have weakened them, and have carried them further than they ever intended to go.
Doug McMasters: The problem isn't God.
Doug McMasters: The problem isn't circumstances.
Doug McMasters: The problem aren't the enemies out there.
Doug McMasters: The problem's me.
Doug McMasters: Not my mama, not my papa, but it's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer.
Doug McMasters: And so Isaiah here is bringing this diagnosis to their hearts, and he's lifting up the mirror.
Doug McMasters: And he's saying, Take a look.
Doug McMasters: What's your problem?
Doug McMasters: Look in the mirror.
Doug McMasters: That's your problem.
Doug McMasters: It's us.
Doug McMasters: And so he invites them and us to stop explaining the distance in terms of circumstances, to consider more deeply the issues of our heart that have grown cold and accustomed to taking God's name in vain, emptiness.
Doug McMasters: To let Scripture name what we haven't named, sin.
Doug McMasters: But also to believe that this isn't the end of the story.
Doug McMasters: Because look at the posture of humility in the next phrase.
Doug McMasters: Yet, Lord, you are our Father.
Doug McMasters: We're the clay.
Doug McMasters: You are the potter.
Doug McMasters: We're all the works of your hands.
Doug McMasters: Lord, do not be terribly angry or remember our iniquity forever.
Doug McMasters: Please look.
Doug McMasters: All of us are your people.
Doug McMasters: It's a plead for mercy, isn't it?
Doug McMasters: It's a posture of humility.
Doug McMasters: We're just dirt.
Doug McMasters: We're just clay, Lord.
Doug McMasters: We're really nothing better than that.
Doug McMasters: You're our Father.
Doug McMasters: Please, as we yield ourselves to you, shape us.
Doug McMasters: We can't make ourselves beautiful.
Doug McMasters: But you can, Lord.
Doug McMasters: You can.
Doug McMasters: And please, please remember your mercy to us.
Doug McMasters: They're appealing to the very character of God here.
Doug McMasters: Remembering that he's the Redeemer.
Doug McMasters: Remembering that He's the Father.
Doug McMasters: Remember He's the one that moved in power.
Doug McMasters: Remember He's the one who has compassion.
Doug McMasters: Remember He's the one who has mercy.
Doug McMasters: Lord, please look, we're your people.
Doug McMasters: As much as we didn't want to admit it, as much as we tried to deny it, as much as we acted like we weren't, we are.
Doug McMasters: Don't forget us.
Doug McMasters: They acknowledged their failure without excusing it.
Doug McMasters: And now they're affirming that they belong to God, but they're not using it as a presumptuous way to live their life carelessly and callously.
Doug McMasters: This is a heart of surrender.
Doug McMasters: This is the yielding of their heart.
Doug McMasters: It stopped resisting and it's begging to be able to trust.
Doug McMasters: This is where Isaiah wants to bring our hearts when we feel cold and distant, to awaken to the realization that we've been distant, to try to move through the confusion of our understanding of our circumstances and the interpretation of those things.
Doug McMasters: To get to the place where we want what we should have always wanted, God to come down and do something.
Doug McMasters: But now the channel is open.
Doug McMasters: It's open because we have recognized the problem isn't out there, it's in here.
Doug McMasters: And we're submitting ourselves in humility to Him and asking Him to show mercy.
Doug McMasters: We're in the right spot when we get there.
Doug McMasters: Now, I give this last point as a prayer of hope.
Doug McMasters: And it may not sound like hope as we look at this, but there's more than enough hope to hang on to.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at this last section of this, beginning in verse 10.
Doug McMasters: Your holy cities have become a wilderness.
Doug McMasters: Zion has become a wilderness.
Doug McMasters: Jerusalem, a desolation.
Doug McMasters: Our holy and beautiful temple, where our ancestors praised you, has been burnt down.
Doug McMasters: And all that was dear to us lies in ruins.
Doug McMasters: Lord, after all this, will you restrain yourself?
Doug McMasters: Will you keep silent and afflict us severely?
Doug McMasters: This prayer that began with a lament.
Doug McMasters: Where is your zeal, God?
Doug McMasters: Where's your might?
Doug McMasters: Moved into a prayer of remembrance.
Doug McMasters: You are our Father.
Doug McMasters: It's deepened into confession.
Doug McMasters: We have been in our sin a long time.
Doug McMasters: It's moved into surrender.
Doug McMasters: You are the potter and we're the clay.
Doug McMasters: And now it gathers up all that honesty and all that humility, and it lays it before God in one final prayer.
Doug McMasters: Lord, will you remember us still?
Doug McMasters: You see, these losses aren't just historical losses.
Doug McMasters: They're actually emblems of what had been an inward collapse.
Doug McMasters: They're looking at ruined Jerusalem, ruined temple, ruined cities, desolation, all of it emblematic of the desolation of their own soul.
Doug McMasters: And they're now crying out.
Doug McMasters: And they turned to God with the only hope that they have left.
Doug McMasters: Will you restrain yourself after all these things, O Lord?
Doug McMasters: Because if you do, I'm done with.
Doug McMasters: I have nowhere to go.
Doug McMasters: They grab a hold of God as the only hope left.
Doug McMasters: It's no longer trying to finagle an alliance with Assyria or Babylon or Egypt.
Doug McMasters: It's no longer puffing their chest about how righteous they are, and all the other nations are just idol worshiping fools.
Doug McMasters: It's none of that anymore.
Doug McMasters: They can't lay their strength anywhere but before God and say, God, if you don't do something, we're done.
Doug McMasters: We're done.
Doug McMasters: It's over.
Doug McMasters: And they're not exactly sure if God will do it here.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it is too late.
Doug McMasters: They see the ruins and they wonder, maybe this just is the end.
Doug McMasters: But they're still gonna pray.
Doug McMasters: They're still gonna pray.
Doug McMasters: They're still gonna ask God to rebuild.
Doug McMasters: To rebuild this earthly city, to restore their temple, to return them to what once was.
Doug McMasters: And God is going to say to them, that's not good enough.
Doug McMasters: That's not good enough.
Doug McMasters: That's all you want.
Doug McMasters: Oh, I I can put a building up, no problem.
Doug McMasters: God and Son Incorporated, best construction company going.
Doug McMasters: I can put a building up.
Doug McMasters: That's what you want?
Doug McMasters: I can rebuild Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: That's what you want?
Doug McMasters: It's not good enough.
Doug McMasters: Look at verse 4.
Doug McMasters: From ancient times, no one has heard, no one has listened to, no eye has seen any God except you who acts on behalf of the one who waits for him.
Doug McMasters: They're now starting to wait on him.
Doug McMasters: That's the last verse of this chapter.
Doug McMasters: They are waiting on him now.
Doug McMasters: The problem is they're not looking forward enough.
Doug McMasters: They're still looking back a bit.
Doug McMasters: And what they don't know it yet is they're asking for God's mercy, but they don't know the depths of God's mercy yet.
Doug McMasters: They're asking for God to build them a future.
Doug McMasters: They don't know what that future is yet.
Doug McMasters: They have no idea just how great a God they're actually talking to.
Doug McMasters: Do you?
Doug McMasters: Let's go to 1 Corinthians and finish there.
Doug McMasters: 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
Doug McMasters: Paul is speaking to a church that feels just as small and weak as the people of Israel, just as overwhelmed as they are, just as tempted to measure God by the things that they can see.
Doug McMasters: And probably like the Corinthians, in the midst of their troubles, are feeling weak, and what they want is visible power.
Doug McMasters: What they want is visible wisdom.
Doug McMasters: What they want is visible vindication.
Doug McMasters: And so Paul speaks to this church at Corinth who's grasping at worldly wisdom, who's looking for worldly power and answers, who's thinking that the explosion on the stage shows them the reality of God.
Doug McMasters: And he says to them, in verse 6 of chapter 2, we speak a wisdom among the mature, not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing.
Doug McMasters: On the contrary, we speak God's hidden wisdom in a mystery, a mystery God predestined before the ages for our glory.
Doug McMasters: You want glory, it's coming.
Doug McMasters: But it's not going to come the way you think it's going to come.
Doug McMasters: None of the rulers of this age knew this wisdom, because if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Doug McMasters: But as it is written, what no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived, God has prepared these things for those who love him.
Doug McMasters: They wanted a rebuilt temple, a rebuilt city, a rebuilt national identity.
Doug McMasters: They wanted to be able to puff themselves before the nations and show themselves strong again.
Doug McMasters: And God says, No, it's not good enough.
Doug McMasters: And Paul tells the Corinthian church just what Isaiah was trying to push the people of Israel toward coming back from the exile.
Doug McMasters: That God is going to answer and he's going to act and he's going to give you a future far beyond what you've longed for.
Doug McMasters: And Paul quotes Isaiah here because we as believers ought to know a little bit about what I has not seen, nor ear heard, nor entered into the hearts of men.
Doug McMasters: What he's saying here is that God has revealed himself on earth in Jesus the Christ.
Doug McMasters: And that God himself has gone to the cross in order to save sinners.
Doug McMasters: And that he broke through the grave in the resurrection.
Doug McMasters: And that Jesus ascended into the heavens and sent forth his spirit on this earth through the proclamation of the gospel to transform dead souls into living, living children of God.
Doug McMasters: Oh, you want glory?
Doug McMasters: You can keep your fog machines on your platforms.
Doug McMasters: Glory is here in Christ.
Doug McMasters: And Paul is saying this unimaginable future that the Israelites longed to see as they begged, finally, in hope, the mercy of God.
Doug McMasters: Church, you're seeing it.
Doug McMasters: You're seeing what I has not seen, nor ear heard, nor entered in the hearts of men.
Doug McMasters: Look at the next verse, verse 10.
Doug McMasters: God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit.
Doug McMasters: Since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
Doug McMasters: We know that when a believer dies, they shall live.
Doug McMasters: We know that this whole creation that groans together and travails and pain until now will be liberated from decay.
Doug McMasters: We know that we will see Jesus and we will be like him.
Doug McMasters: We know that God will dwell with his people and wipe away every one of our tears.
Doug McMasters: We know.
Doug McMasters: And those are the things we know.
Doug McMasters: Imagine the things we don't know yet.
Doug McMasters: What the apostle said, we look through a mirror darkly, but then face to face, it does not yet appear what we shall be.
Doug McMasters: But when he appears, we know that we'll be like him.
Doug McMasters: What about those things that I has not yet seen, nor ear yet heard, nor entered in the hearts of men yet, that go beyond the resurrection, that go beyond the new creation, that go beyond being transformed into the likeness of Christ, that go beyond seeing God face to face.
Doug McMasters: What can those things be like?
Doug McMasters: This is where the prayer is moving them.
Doug McMasters: Not just to fix themselves to be like I used to be, but far better.
Doug McMasters: Far better.
Doug McMasters: This prayer ends with a question.
Doug McMasters: It's a question that people can't answer.
Doug McMasters: It's a plea for God's mercy.
Doug McMasters: And they're just saying, God, it would be wonderful if we could just pick up the pieces a little bit.
Doug McMasters: And maybe get on with life a little bit.
Doug McMasters: If we could just sort of have a home again, and maybe a place to go for worship.
Doug McMasters: It'd be nice if we could just do that.
Doug McMasters: And God says, Really?
Doug McMasters: I want to do so much more for you.
Doug McMasters: So much more for you.
Doug McMasters: What is this telling us?
Doug McMasters: Our hearts.
Doug McMasters: Repentance is not just getting back to where you were.
Doug McMasters: Repentance and change and transformation of your heart out of the darkness and depth of your distance with God is getting back into the place where you're cast forward in hope.
Doug McMasters: And your heart is reaching toward that now.
Doug McMasters: Your yearnings are not just to be better once again, but to be completely whole.
Doug McMasters: Completely whole.
Doug McMasters: And so he's calling us to this life that's ahead of us.
Doug McMasters: What a wonderful prayer this is, right?
Doug McMasters: A prayer that Isaiah preached before the people even lived.
Doug McMasters: So that when the day came when they would wake up from their rebellion and iniquity, they would have something already there to shape their hearts.
Doug McMasters: And so that we might have something to shape ours too.
Doug McMasters: And so we might see that God is more, much, much more than a God who just says, Well, yeah, well, come on back in.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, thank you.
Doug McMasters: Thank you for this honest, humble, hopeful prayer.
Doug McMasters: And we thank you that it reveals you to us.
Doug McMasters: That we're invited into your mercy as our Father, that you are our Redeemer, and that whatever emptiness we feel right now, as real as it might be, is not the end of the story.
Doug McMasters: And that this ache of our soul is an echoing of you who is going to draw us to yourself.
Doug McMasters: Father, I pray.
Doug McMasters: That we might in this capture a better understanding.
Doug McMasters: Because the day will come when you will rend the heavens and make them new.
Doug McMasters: And you will not come down, you will draw us up.
Doug McMasters: And you will bring us into a place where there's no need of a temple, because you will be with your people, and we will see you.
Doug McMasters: Father, I pray for any brother and sister in Christ here whose hearts have been in a place of drawdown and distancing from you, who have dried up and wondered if they could ever come back.
Doug McMasters: Lord, I pray you'd reveal your mercy to them in Christ and anchor their heart in the hope that's found in Jesus.
Doug McMasters: And Father, I pray for anyone here who's walked into this place and trembled, wondering if they would ever be at home in such a foreign place as a church.
Doug McMasters: Father, I pray that you'd help them to see that you have received all the people around them, and we're no different than they.
Doug McMasters: Simply sinners.
Doug McMasters: We've been saved by grace, and if they call on the Lord Jesus Christ, they too shall.
Doug McMasters: And Father, we pray for them.
Doug McMasters: And in all of this, Lord, we pray that you would glorify yourself, that you would give us that wondrous understanding of your mercy.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.