Word of Salvation – Vol.38 No.03 – January 1993
The Power Of The Lord Come Down
Sermon by Rev. H..DeWaard on Isaiah 64:1
Reading: Isaiah 63:15 – 64:12
Singing: 288,250,301,427,177,182. 52
Beloved congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,
Do you see ads on TV? Of course. Our life is full of ads: cars, holidays, soap powder, cosmetics, beer etc.
Ideal men and beautiful young women seduce us in believing that if we have these wonderful things we will be powerful people. Feel the power!
Ads often appeal to our desire for power.
We want power, because we do not have it. We want power over our own lives, hence our faith in science and human ingenuity. We want power over our own future, hence the appeal of astrology.
Christians too want power.
The heart of our passage this morning is a plea for power.
The power of the Lord come down.
We will see:
1. the longing for God’s power
2. the effects of God’s power
3. the fulfilment of God’s power come down.
- The longing for God’s power.
I can identify with this longing for the power of the Lord to come down, can’t you?. For we struggle with powerlessness and spiritual weakness. I would not be surprised if some of you here this morning are not enjoying being a Christian. You may even feel miserable. Life is tough and everything seems meaningless!
You’ve got to pray more, some will say. But in your experience prayer is like listening to the echo of your own voice. It is like picking up the phone and the line is dead.
The church at times can be powerless. It is like a brand-new Boeing 767. Some years ago Air Canada took delivery of such a wonderful plane. But Flight 143 from Montreal had to make a crash landing because its engines stopped in mid-air due to lack of fuel. Someone had confused pounds of fuel for kilograms. All the latest technology could not help. The plane crash-landed.
So much promise. Yet such needless tragedy!
Likewise, we may seem to have it all together, but it lacks life and sparkle.
If this rings any bells at all, you will understand this plea for the power of the Lord to come down.
Brothers and sisters, you must not think that God is powerless. The Bible is drenched in displays of God’s power. Isaiah had a vision of the glory of the Lord:
‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord, the whole earth is full of His glory.’
God is the source of everything. He is the power from which all life flows. Our life is not a plaything of random forces. Life is born of God and raised by Him.
Yet here in our text God had hidden himself. Why? Because the Church had become unfaithful. Isaiah saw the people at their lowest – captive in Babylon, the land ravaged and Jerusalem destroyed. No wonder he prayed for God to show His power. He prayed out of a deep need.
He first asked for God’s attention. ‘Look down from heaven and see..!’ 63:15. Had not God noticed their wretched condition? Of course. But He hid his face because God has no policy of making peace with sin. He was grieved.
Have we become too easy-going about sin? If we are, we may be missing out on the blessings of God. And we ought to pray: ‘God of mercy, God of grace, show the brightness of your face.’
If you long for the smile of God, don’t psychologize sin or explain it away. Listen to the straightforward approach of Scripture: “Steal no more. Flee temptation. Flee youthful lusts. Confess your sins.”
We can’t do it. Not in our own strength.
Hence the prophet also asks for God’s powerful help.
‘Where are your zeal and your might?’
Only God can shake us out of our apathy and restore us to His favour.
This prayer: ‘Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down,’ is a plea for God to intervene the way He did when He thundered from Sinai amid flashes of lightning. Or the way He did when He delivered His people by killing 185,000 Assyrians in one night. Isaiah asks for a demonstration of God’s power.
Do you feel a need for the power of the Spirit in your life? Is there a sense of your own weakness? We must wait for God. Only He can recreate us through the power of His love. Like an alcoholic or drug addict we acknowledge that we have an ongoing problem. We cannot create a world of good will.
Isaiah also expressed a need for God’s compassion. ‘Your tenderness and compassion are withheld from us.’
Does God no longer love His children when they sin? Of course He does – Vs.16. While God does not stop loving us, He may withhold the expressions of His love.
If any of us here have lost the smile of God, begin to pray: Come down Lord..!
What do you think would happen?
- We would experience renewal in our lives and revival in the church.
I believe that renewal is one of the greatest needs of the church today. A rekindling of our love for God; a renewed enthusiasm; a sense of being happy as a Christian. A time when the Word of God comes alive and the fire of God blazes in our souls. Renewal is a total way of life dominated by God.
Paul expressed it in his prayer as follows: That you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’ Eph.3:17.
Can you imagine what would happen if we were filled with God Himself? Every area of our lives would be touched. We would love God more deeply. We would care more for brothers and sisters. We would do our work well and be concerned for the unemployed, the abused and homeless young people.
That’s what we long for, but in the meantime what do I see? I see a church – our church – struggling to maintain its unity.
A church tempted to live on her own resources and ingenuity. A church where we become increasingly careless and influenced by worldly values. A church where there is increasing lack of commitment, growing apathy and members voting with their feet. A church powerless to make an impact on society.
You may have seen the bumper sticker: There is too much apathy in this country, but who cares? That’s the problem when hearts are hardened.
As we lose the presence of God we tend to try harder. We start more cell groups, we hold more meetings, we dress up our services, we read the Bible more. etc. etc. We burn ourselves out trying to be good. Give up..! Give up trying to run your own life. You have been crucified with Christ and you no longer live, Christ lives in you. Gal.2:20. You cannot renew yourself or the church. Revival cannot be engineered. We cannot create it when we choose. Only God through the Holy Spirit can remove our coldness. There is only one thing that can burn up the undergrowth of our sinful hearts. Only one thing that can set us ablaze with the fire of God. The power of Christ within us. For that we ought to pray. Come down with your power, O Lord!
But there is one thing we must do. We must be willing to submit to divine surgery, that is, repent of sin.
Wait a minute, you say, ‘You don’t understand. I can’t get along with my wife. I can’t discipline the kids. I can’t find time to pray. I can’t quit gossiping.’
You can’t, or you won’t? We must stop passing the buck and face our responsibilities. This morning I want you to allow God to speak to your heart.
What might the Spirit be saying to you?
– drift into little sins
– selfishness / cult of self
– nurturing unbelief / insulting God by not believing his promises
– being unthankful
– resentful feelings / complaints about little things
that kill the joy of being a Christian
– neglectful in giving
– sexual impurity
– bitterness
Let all of us who make up the church and long for renewal, pray with Isaiah: Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down. That the Spirit would show me my sins and help me DO the right thing. Vs.5.
- Does God hear the prayer of His children?
Was this plea answered?
Yes, it was. The time came when God changed the fortunes of Israel. One day the High priest put on his robes of office to sacrifice in a rebuilt temple. But there was sin and more sin. A greater intervention was needed.
Another day, much later, the heavens opened again and a great choir of angels sang their Hallelujahs. The promised Redeemer entered the world as a human being. Incarnation we call it. There is no parallel to this. Only Jesus is God incarnate. In him the power and compassion of God was revealed: Is.54:7 ‘For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back.’
To do that He came as a man and not as an extra-terrestrial being whizzing down in a spaceship at supersonic speed. He slowed his pace to that of a man and stopped dead on Calvary. As He died and rose again, He embraced people from every tribe and tongue. (64:2)
Strange Gospel…! Most religions speak about heroes and charismatic leaders, intense effort and self-denial. The Gospel speaks of Jesus, a nobody in worldly terms, groaning on a cross, going down to hell to release people who were helpless to help themselves.
He is so different. True, worldly people want to make a superstar out of Him, but they ignore that He is the eternal “I am”; God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They may admire him, but they do not worship him.
What about you? Do you want to enjoy a blessed relationship with God? Then remember, Christianity is not about stern duty, about boring worship, about budgets and programmes or about length of hair or skirts. To be truly spiritual is to respond to the mystery of God-become-man.
Many people still respond to that mystery. God is still coming down to convert, revive and renew people.
Throughout the history of the church, when the church was at its lowest. God raised men and women to revive the church. Luther. There have been notable revivals. Think for example of the Revival in the time of John Wesley. In 1738 he was listening to a sermon on Romans: ‘I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death.’
Or remember Charles Colson, president of Prison Fellowship. He was a powerful, ambitious man under President Nixon, but went to prison for political crime. He was ministered to by a person who read from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. What got to Colson was the passage on pride. Pride is a spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love or contentment or even common sense. Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-god state of mind.
Convicted, Colson prayed: ‘I’m not much the way I am now, but somehow I want to give myself to you. Take me.’
Are you putting God first in your life?
Or are you quenching the Spirit through lack of faith?
Remember: when God hides his face, it is not because He moved. You did.
I am aware that life is still so unsatisfactory and incomplete. We face many struggles. Life is tough, so we continue to pray: O that you would rend the heavens and come down.
There is another coming of the King of kings. Christ will appear as conqueror and judge of all. We don’t know when this will happen. We do know that the eternal God will be at the end – with-us-forever, Immanuel.
In the meantime, let us join in the pursuit of holiness and goodness as our response to the mystery of God come in the flesh.
AMEN