Please Come Down
Opening Prayer
“Restore, O Lord, The honor of Your name, In works of sovereign power, Come shake the earth…” (Graham Kendrick).
Read Isaiah 64:1–12
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
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!
3 For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
4 Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
you were angry.
How then can we be saved?
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
7 No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and have given us over to our sins.
8 Yet you, Lord, are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord;
do not remember our sins forever.
Oh, look on us, we pray,
for we are all your people.
10 Your sacred cities have become a wasteland;
even Zion is a wasteland, Jerusalem a desolation.
11 Our holy and glorious temple, where our ancestors praised you,
has been burned with fire,
and all that we treasured lies in ruins.
12 After all this, Lord, will you hold yourself back?
Will you keep silent and punish us beyond measure?
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
How is our culture similar and different to the days of Isaiah?Many Christians, particularly in Western countries, feel that they are in a desperate situation. Churches are emptying. Moral and ethical values, shaped by the Gospel over centuries, seem to
have been abandoned in a moment. For the first time, some are facing issues of persecution and loss of freedom.
We look back with envy on past revivals when whole nations and societies were changed. If only God would do that again, we say.
This is nothing new for God’s people. Isaiah’s prayer echoes our experience. God’s enemies don’t even know him (2). His face is hidden and no one seeks him (7). Jerusalem and their Temple, symbols of his presence and the focus of worship, are in ruins (10,11). Like James and John when the Samaritan village rejected Jesus, we can be tempted to call down “fire from heaven” (Luke 9:54). Why doesn’t God do something about them?
Isaiah, however, doesn’t focus on them. He says that it is we who continue to sin (5), we who are unclean (6). God has hidden his face from us (7). So, he calls on God our Father, the potter who created and shaped us (8), to rip the veil between heaven and earth and come down to earth (1). The question is, will God answer his prayer?
Apply
If God did come down as in verses 1–3, what do you think he would want to change in you?
Closing prayer
God, show me how I can be an agent of change in my community. How can I show Your light?
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