Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1538
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, May 16, 1880
“When You did terrible things which we looked not for, You came down, the mountains flowed down at Your Presence.” Isaiah 64:3.
THE people of God were in a very sad state when this chapter described them. Isaiah pictures them as brought into the lowest degree of fear and sorrow. He pleads with God to return to His chosen people and restore their former peace and prosperity. He makes use of the past as an argument for the future and recites the wonderful acts of God in days gone by as an encouragement to expect that He would do the same again. If it were not that God is unchangeable, no inference could be drawn from His past behavior toward us, but inasmuch as He is immutably the same, yesterday, today and forever, we may safely infer that what He has done He will do again.
They say that history repeats itself—it were more true to say that God abides the same, that His ways are everlasting and His mercy endures forever. Therefore it is good and sound pleading to say, “You have done this and that, therefore again make bare Your arm and once more let Your people rejoice in Your faithfulness and Your power.” While we may all do this on behalf of the Church of God and find a rich store of arguments in her past history, we may also do it for ourselves. Some of us are now getting into years and we have known the Savior for 30 years or more—we ought to be well supplied with reasons for trusting Him and I am sure we are. Let us look back on the past and remember how He has forgiven our transgressions, how He has recovered our backslidings, how He has relieved our necessities, how He has cheered our despondencies and strengthened our weaknesses—He that is our God is still the God of salvation and He will continue still to bless us, even to the end. Because the Lord is my shepherd and now makes me to lie down in green pastures, therefore I conclude that, “surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
I. First let us meditate upon the fact that THE DIVINE PRESENCE IS THE ONE HOPE OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD. The Prophet shows that he believed this, for he commences the chapter by a most ardent cry to God that He would come into the midst of His people—“Oh that You would rend the heavens, that You would come down.” A little before this, (in the 15th verse of the previous chapter), he had prayed, “Look down from Heaven.” But it is the characteristic of true prayer that it grows as it proceeds—he begins by asking God to look down but he gathers intensity of desire and confidence of faith and here he cries, “Come down.”
So eager is Isaiah that God should come and come at once, that he speaks to Him as though addressing a warrior who lingered in his tent while a battle was raging—who would be so eager to rush to the help of his friends that he would not stay to remove the canvas or to lift the curtain, but would tear a way for himself through the canopy to come at once to the deliverance of those who called him to the rescue. “Oh that You would rend the heavens.” Stay not, Great God, to pass through the gate of pearl, but rend Your heavens—let the blue firmament be torn in two and descend from Heaven upon rushing mighty winds for the help of Your people!
When our Divine Lord opened the way by which God could come to us poor guilty men, He did not lift the curtain nor fold it up, but the veil of the Temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom and so the door was left wide open forever—for none can ever fix the veil in its place again. It was through the open heavens that Christ went in where He now stands to plead for us and by that open Heaven the sacred Spirit descended to rest upon the Church. The impetuous character of the simile here used shows that the Prophet looked upon the Divine visitation as the one thing needed for Israel. O Lord, we do not ask You to cause the earth to bring forth plentifully, or to make our wealth increase, or to make the kings of the earth favorable to Your cause! But come, Yourself, to bless Your people and they will need no more! Oh that You would come down! Even so, come quickly.
Is not this the prayer of every true heart here that knows the need of the Church and the need of the age? We do not so much require more ministers, or more eloquent teachers, but more of the sacred Presence. We do not need wealth in the Church, or magnificent buildings, or ornate services, but we crave, above all things, that the living God will refresh His people! If the Lord were in the midst of us, if the shout of a king were heard in our camps, then would our armies march to the victory and our foes would be defeated! The desire of the Prophet in the present instance is abundantly justified by the history of God’s people in all times, for when the tribes were in Egypt, what could set them free from the iron bondage? What but the Presence of God?