The LORD Came Down to Save

Isaiah 64:1-12 

1 Oh, that You would rend the heavens!
That You would come down!
That the mountains might shake at Your presence—
2 As fire burns brushwood,
As fire causes water to boil—
To make Your name known to Your adversaries,
That the nations may tremble at Your presence!

3 When You did awesome things for which we did not look,
You came down,
The mountains shook at Your presence.

4 For since the beginning of the world
Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear,
Nor has the eye seen any God besides You,
Who acts for the one who waits for Him.

5 You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness,
Who remembers You in Your ways.
You are indeed angry, for we have sinned—
In these ways we continue;
And we need to be saved.

6 But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;
We all fade as a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind,
Have taken us away.

7 And there is no one who calls on Your name,
Who stirs himself up to take hold of You;
For You have hidden Your face from us,
And have consumed us because of our iniquities.

8 But now, O LORD,
You are our Father;
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all we are the work of Your hand.

9 Do not be furious, O LORD,
Nor remember iniquity forever;
Indeed, please look—we all are Your people!

10 Your holy cities are a wilderness,
Zion is a wilderness,
Jerusalem a desolation.
11 Our holy and beautiful temple,
Where our fathers praised You,
Is burned up with fire;
And all our pleasant things are laid waste.

12 Will You restrain Yourself because of these things, O LORD?
Will You hold Your peace, and afflict us very severely?

As we see also in Micah 1:3 and Habakkuk 3:13, the LORD promised to come down among His people to save them as Immanuel, His Anointed One we know as Jesus Christ.  Isaiah cried out in anticipation and great desire for this as a witness to the nations to tremble in fear and awe at His almighty presence.  He talks of God coming down and doing awesome works as the mountains shook, just as it must have been for Moses receiving the tablets of the Ten Commandments or the opening of the Red Sea.  Likewise when God stepped down in physical presence to walk on water, raise the dead, and turn water into wine the people who saw were in great awe.  Verse four tells how eye and ear did not perceive His great working of any God but the one who exists because He is, the one waiting for active trust like Abraham did (Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3, 20-22).  He rejoices in those doing righteousness as He draws them (John 3:21) to Himself because they realize they are sinners needing deliverance from His wrath on their sin as they seek to follow him according to His word.  They know their own righteousness is sinfully unclean because it is tainted by the inheritance of Adam and reinforced daily by very imperfect thoughts and deeds when compared to His righteousness and standards set before us in the moral law.  Like God’s people then, we also run from Him as His face turns against our sin until we realize and appreciate that we are under His sovereign hand of providence and grace to lead us to Himself as our Redeemer.  He has the power to choose who to mold and which clay of which we are all made to not reserve for His choosing (Romans 9:20-21, 22-23).  Our prayer has been that He would look on us to deliver and mold for His eternal purpose (Titus 1:2, 2 Timothy 1:9-10) as His chosen people from out of both Israel and the other nations of the world.  The cities of the physical nation of Israel had been made a wilderness because of their rejection of their Lord, including the temple where they met God and worshiped Him at that chosen place.  They cried out for the affliction to end and God’s peace to return.  These things are fulfilled in Christ Jesus our Lord who came down to save us!