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‘I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me;
    I was found by those who did not seek me.
To a nation that did not call on my name,
    I said, “Here am I, here am I.”

‘Prayer is a mighty instrument, not for getting man’s will done in heaven, but for getting God’s will done on earth.’ Robert Law

This is God’s first answer given to Isaiah’s prayer: a prayer full of passionate concern for the Jewish people. He says, in effect, I’m going to bring the Gentiles into my Kingdom! Yes, He does far more than all we can ask or imagine.

‘And why should it seem absurd that the prophet here should speak of that to which all the prophets bore witness? 1 Pet 1 10, 11. The rejection of the Jews, and the calling in of the Gentiles, are often mentioned in the New Testament as that which was foreseen and foretold by the prophets, Acts 10 43; 13 40; Rom 16 26.’ Matthew Henry.

‘In the very beginning, the Lord seeks us and finds us. Once we are found, we must then seek Him – and keep on seeking Him, seeking His fellowship, seeking His guidance – so that our relationship with Him will grow stronger. We seek Him because He first sought us. We love (Him) because he first loves us (1 John 4:19).’ Tom Hale: ‘Applied Old Testament Commentary’, p.1070.

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?

In his prayer, Isaiah anticipates the punishment the Babylonians will inflict on God’s people as the agents of His judgment (10,11). This will be the outcome of long years of the people’s waywardness. He cares about what is going to happen. He cares deeply, and he prays intensely.

When we see our nation become a ”wasteland” (and much of the church the same), does it move us to pray personally, and motivate us to gather with other believers to seek God’s face? Do we care enough to give ourselves to prayer? I fear that increasing numbers of Christians in the Western world are content to turn up at one Sunday service every few weeks (so long as it doesn’t personally inconvenience them). I know you can’t measure spiritual life by church attendance, but I believe I increasingly see a lackadaisical carelessness about ‘churchmanship’. I think something is seriously amiss. Where are the ”hunger” and ”thirst” for righteousness?

‘Isaiah’s prayer ends with a question; God’s answer to the question will be given in the final two chapters of Isaiah…Note that Isaiah’s prayer begins in the previous chapter with praise (Isaiah 63:7); here it ends with the humble expectation of God’s answer. That’s a good beginning and ending for any prayer.’ Tom Hale: ‘Applied Old Testament Commentary’, p.1070.

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.

As this great prayer moves towards its conclusion, Isaiah appeals to the Lord on the basis that:

• He is their Father: even a sinful earthly father, though angry with his child, will still love them and want the best for them. ‘Foolish and careless as we are, poor and despised and trampled upon as we are by our enemies, yet still thou art our Father; to thee therefore we return in our repentance, as the prodigal arose and came to his father; to thee we address ourselves by prayer; from whom should we expect relief and succour but from our Father? It is the wrath of a Father that we are under, who will be reconciled and not keep his anger for ever.” ‘ Matthew Henry;
• He is their Sovereign Creator and Lord. He is ”the potter”. They are ”clay” in His Hands. He who made them has the right to shape them and re-shape them according to His good will. ”Then the word of the Lord came to me.  He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.” (Jer.18:5,6);
• They are in a covenant relationship with Him: They are His ”people”. Like many other great intercessory pray-ers in the Bible, Isaiah ‘wrestles’ with God, appealing to great truths about who He is, and His special relationship with His own.

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.

The last line of the above verse reminded me of Romans 1:18-32:

 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵ They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

²⁸ Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. ³² Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Note the threefold ”God gave them over”. It came as quite a revelation to me when I heard a preacher say about this passage: ‘When people give God up, He gives them up. When people give God up for idolatry, He gives them up to immorality. However, his sermon ended on a positive note. He pointed out that this act of giving up (or giving over) is in itself an act of mercy. God says, in effect, ‘If you want to live without me, see what it’s like. Go ahead and experience the full consequences.’ It’s rather like the father in the story of the prodigal son, letting him go, knowing he’ll head for home when he tires of pig food.

‘God had put them in the furnace, not to consume them as dross, but to melt them as gold, that they might be refined and new-cast.’ Matthew Henry.

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.

The doctrine of ‘total depravity’ does not mean that every person is as bad as they possibly can be, but rather that sin has affected (infected) every part of the human personality. Warren Wiersbe comments that if ”our righteous acts are like filthy rags” in God’s sight, how must our unrighteous deeds look to Him? The truth is that even the best things we do are tainted by sin.

Isaiah, as we have seen, wonderfully describes the God ”who acts on behalf of those who wait for him” (4). He also shows that such a stance – this prayer posture – involves a lifestyle of holiness (5). It is not that we can earn answers to prayer by perfect living. If that were the case we’d all be snookered! But our overall commitment should be to living God’s way, with a desire for holiness, no matter how many times we may fail or fall. Wilful sin, which we refuse to evict because we enjoy its company far too much, can cause a blockage to our prayers (see Ps.66:18-20).

This was the sad case for Israel. Instead of pursuing the way of holiness, they were habitual sinners (5b). So much so that no-one stirred themselves to pray (7) to the prayer answering God (4,5a).

‘The people of God, in affliction, confess and bewail their sins, owning themselves unworthy of his mercy. Sin is that abominable thing which the Lord hates. Our deeds, whatever they may seem to be, if we think to merit by them at God’s hand, are as rags, and will not cover us; filthy rags, and will but defile us. Even our few good works in which there is real excellence, as fruits of the Spirit, are so defective and defiled as done by us, that they need to be washed in the fountain open for sin and uncleanness. It bodes ill when prayer is kept back. To pray, is by faith to take hold of the promises the Lord has made of his good-will to us, and to plead them; to take hold of him, earnestly begging him not to leave us; or soliciting his return…How few call upon the Lord with their whole hearts, or stir themselves to lay hold upon him! God may delay for a time to answer our prayers, but he will, in the end, answer those who call on his name and hope in his mercy.’ Matthew Henry.

Thought: Are there any sins of which I am aware that are holding me back from praying as I ought? What are they, and what will I do about them?

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.

Many years ago I read a book about ‘the fruit of the Spirit.’ In a chapter about ‘patience’, the author pointed out that the Bible talks about waiting in two senses: we wait on the Lord in prayer; but we also wait for Him in patience. His timing is not ours. We may have to wait a long time for some answers, but God is never too late, and He is always worth the wait.

‘Never was a faithful prayer lost. Some prayers have a longer voyage than others, but then they return with their richer lading at last, so that the praying soul is a gainer by waiting for an answer.’ William Gurnall.

(With regard to the first part of the above verse in Isaiah, Derek Kidner observes that the New Testament points out how unimaginably these great works of God in Old Testament history would be transcended. See 1 Cor.2:9,10)

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.

We are reminded today that our God is ”able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph.3:20). Isaiah is not asking God to do something He hasn’t done before. On the contrary, He appeals on the basis of the Lord’s ‘track-record.’ When did He do something like this before? Why, at the ‘exodus’ is the answer. Isaiah is saying, ‘You’ve done it before Lord; please do it again.’

Warren Wiersbe comments: ‘Demonstrations of divine power are easily found in history books but not readily found among God’s people today. Why? (‘With the Word’, p.491)

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!

Isaiah’s logic is simple and straightforward. When we see ”twigs ablaze” that is an effect, and there is a cause: ”fire”. Again, when we see the effect of water boiling, the cause is to be found in that same ”fire”. The prophet is praying for certain effects in the world: God’s Name made known to His enemies, the nations coming to fear Him, (even physical manifestations in the natural realm). The great cause will be God ‘coming down’ in power. He’s done it before; He can do it again. Let’s join Isaiah in his posture of prayer

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down…

…Oh, look upon 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?

The word ”Oh” is expressive of deep anguish. It is the cry of someone who is in profound pain. Isaiah grieved over the spiritual state of his people, and its terrible consequences.

I venture to suggest that we are seeing such a departure from God’s Word right now, in many parts of the church in the western world, that it should inject an ”Oh” into our prayers, if it hasn’t already.

Sometimes you don’t know what to say other than ”Oh God…Oh God…” The agony is so deep you don’t know how to fully articulate it. But God knows our hearts. He understands; and His pain is infinitely greater.

A reader response to recent article in ‘The Spectator’ included these words:

‘Guess what, a sin soaked society is not going to be impressed by a sin soaked Church. Dark is not challenged by dark but light – in other words when the Church stands up for its Biblical values and proclaims Jesus, then the world will listen. Otherwise, the Church just becomes a branch of the social services.’

Yes, there is much to make us feel aggrieved. But thank God we are not reduced to hand-wringing, for we have the gift of intercession.

”When all things seem against us,to drive us to despair,

we know one gate is open, one ear will hear our prayer.” (From the hymn: ‘Today thy mercy calls us’, by Oswald Allen).