Isaiah 64:1-3 – Please Come Down!
These are plaintive words, plaintive words that come from hearts that are grieving, grieving over sin in their own hearts, grieving because of the sin all around them. What Isaiah is wanting is for God to tear open the heavens, to come down even as He has done so in the past. Jehovah does not change. As He acted in the past is how He acts today and how He shall act. This gives hope. For though He is a holy God and He brings judgment upon the wicked as well as bringing discipline upon his erring children, at the same time, at the right time, He brings mercy and turns again to His people. Through the history of the people of God, up until Isaiah’s time, God had come down many times to deliver and to bless His people in the covenant of grace. This great God, this covenant God, Jehovah, was strong to smite his and his people’s enemies, moving heaven and earth to deliver them in the past. The people now cry out through Isaiah, oh, that He might do so again. That He might deliver us from the enemies round about and from the great enemy of sin within.
This cry, that God would rend the heavens and come down, is exactly what God has done in the person of His Son. There were shepherds abiding in the fields, watching over their flocks by night. The angel appeared to them, and after he was done telling them about the babe that was lying in the manger, suddenly the whole sky was filled up with these angels, the heavenly host. That’s the rending of the heavens. God had come down. He had taken to Himself a real body and a reasonable soul. He came to deliver His people, to deliver any sinner who wants to come to Him. He came to deliver us from our greatest enemy of all, our own sin.
God came in the past. God is come in Christ. That’s our blessed present situation. And Christ shall come again. That’s the future. Christ is coming again to deliver His people from what remains of this sinful earth and to everlasting life. He is coming back in the same way He left – personally, visibly, physically, literally, and in power. He will come in great glory, and He shall come to deliver His people. God’s people in Isaiah’s day had a hope to look to. We have a hope to look to — One Who has come. This person has been among us as Emmanuel. His work is completed, and He continues to save sinners and build up and protect his people!
Question
- Name some times that God rent the heavens and came down.
Prayer Points
- Give thanks that Christ has come to deliver us from sin.
- Use prayer points from your congregation.
- Pray for family matters.