Good News is Worth the Wait

God Has Every Reason

12.3.23 [Isaiah 63:15-64:9] River of Life (1st Sunday of Advent)

It’s almost like he’s a completely different person. Have you ever said or thought that about someone? Maybe it was a good friend who seemed to flip a switch in the workplace. Outside the office, they were kind and generous and fun to be around, but in the office, they were demanding, difficult, and no fun to be around. It doesn’t always go that direction. Sometimes, it’s the grumpy neighbor whose heart opens up for little kids or puppies. It’s almost like they’re completely different people. Of course, it’s not just other people who seem to change dramatically under different circumstances or in new situations. We do, too. Maybe you’re normally kind of quiet and introverted until you get around long time friends. Then suddenly you become the life of the party. It’s almost like you’re a completely different person. It might go the opposite direction, too, for you. Perhaps you’re normally patient and kind and forbearing, but put you in the middle of a nasty traffic jam and you transform into the Incredible Hulk faster than your car can go from 0-60. It’s almost like you’re a completely different person.

Sometimes, that’s how people look at the Lord God. They hear about what he says and does in the Old Testament and it’s hard to square with what we see and hear from Jesus in the Gospels. How can the same God who sent the Flood be the One who sent his Son? How can the same God who annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah be the One who rebuked James and John when they wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy a village that wouldn’t welcome Jesus? How can the same God who instructed the Israelites (Josh. 9:24) to take no prisoners and leave no survivors also love and redeem people from (Rev. 7:9) every nation, tribe, people and language and (1 Tim. 2:4) want all men to be saved and to come a knowledge of the truth? It’s almost like he is a completely different God in the Old Testament from the New!

Maybe you have felt this way in reading through the Old Testament. More than likely, you know someone who does and you felt ill-prepared to answer their questions and respond. Isaiah 63-64 helps us see that the God who gets angry and the God who is love is one in the same. In fact, as we explore this text better we will see that God’s anger is an expression of his love and a reason for us to be hopeful.

Isaiah’s prayer might seem like a stream of consciousness to us. But then again, don’t our prayers sound that way more often than not? If you look at 63:15 and 64:1 you see two requests to God from Isaiah.

The first is (Is 63:15-16) Lord, our Father, look down from heaven & see what’s happening to your children.

What did Isaiah want the Lord to see? That his children were (Is. 63:17) wandering, their hearts were hardening, and the place where they worshipped God had been (Is. 63:18) trampled down by their enemies.

But he didn’t just want God to see what was happening. He wanted God to do something about it. That’s where Isaiah 64:1 comes in. He says, Lord, I wish you would tear open the heavens and come down here and do something about all this. Make your name known to your enemies. They would quake in their boots. Come & help your children. Show us your zeal and might! Let us see your tenderness & compassion.

In our minds, this is probably a bit of a strange way of praying. See what your enemies are doing to your children and sic’ em. I don’t think most of us pray like this. So why is Isaiah? Why does King David? Why did Israel?

Think about Israel’s history. When God saw what was happening to his children in Egypt, what did he do? He came down and showed his zeal and might. The Lord sent earth-shattering plagues. The Lord parted the waters of the Red Sea. But he didn’t just rout their enemies. He also provided for them as a Father. The Lord protected them, guided them, and fed more than a million people in the wilderness for decades with manna. Then the Lord gave them the land he promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When the Lord stepped into their lives and world, Israel was blessed and better off. So you can understand why Israel might be confused as they watched Assyria run roughshod over the northern 10 tribes and Babylon ransack the Temple in Jerusalem and carry off into exile the best and brightest Judah had to offer. God don’t you see what’s happening to us? Why aren’t you doing anything?

But that really shouldn’t have been their question. Because God told them what he was doing. Back in the days of Moses, before they even moved into the Promised Land, God warned them that if they disobeyed him and chased after false gods that (Dt. 28:64) he would scatter them among all the nations. That’s what was happening now. The Lord had not lost track of his people. He knew they were disobeying him and chasing after false gods and he was following through on the discipline he threatened exactly as he promised.

Israel thought they could fool God. They thought they could just keep the festivals and the Sabbath and throw God a bone now and then by offering a ram or a bull and then live however they wanted.

But God saw through all that. All their righteous acts were for show. They didn’t flow from hearts that actually loved the Lord. They were nothing more than repulsive rags. Even when God communicated how angry he was with their wickedness, they didn’t stop. They tried to spin it—calling evil good and good evil. They tried to shift the blame and say that if God really cared about righteousness and justice he would focus more on all the wicked people out there.

As we look at this situation, it’s hard not to recognize an all-too-familiar pattern. How many times don’t we do what we know angers our God? We know God loves truth, but we prefer lies. They’re more convenient, more advantageous, more effective. We know that God tells us that godliness with contentment is great gain, but we chase after the things of this world. We tell ourselves it’s not about the money. We just want the security. We just want to be comfortable. But God promises us that he will take care of us. Isn’t that enough? Don’t we trust him to take care of us as a Father does his children?

At times, we act as if we can fool God. We praise his name on Sunday mornings but live a lie and speak words of deceit the rest of the week. We greedily chase after earthly securities and temporal comforts—never sure that we have enough, never content—and then we give God his cut of what we got. We treat him like he’s our partner or maybe more like a mob boss we’ve got to keep happy.

We live like this because we don’t understand God’s love. It’s not just warm and fuzzies. It’s not just showering good gifts down on us. God’s love is the reason for his anger toward sin. He sees what sin does to us—our sins sweep us away—& it makes him deeply angry.

The comparison the Bible uses again and again for God is as a Father. It’s something we can relate to, a connection we get. Parental love is deep and powerful. A good father will go to the ends of the earth to take care of his children. A good father will stop at nothing to protect his kids.

But what do you do, as a father, when the greatest danger to your child is your child? When they’ve gotten caught up in something that will destroy them? You get angry. But your anger is measured, specific, and purposeful. Even though it breaks your heart, you may withhold your tenderness from your kid. You don’t want to become an enabler. You draw hard and fast lines and you stick to your guns because you know that if you give in—even on something small—you might lose them forever. Your child might begin to doubt your love, they may accuse you of giving up on them, changing, but you know you haven’t.

That’s how God responds to our sinfulness. He could tear open the heavens and scare us to death just by his presence. But he doesn’t. He looks on us because, despite all our sins, he still loves us as his own. has every reason to be angry with us. But he also has every reason he needs to be our Redeemer. Our God doesn’t just remember his threats, he remembers his promises. It is for that reason that we are saved. That’s the third request that Isaiah makes. Look on us, we are yours.

And God has. (1 Cor. 2:9) What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no human mind has conceived is this, the things God has prepared for those who love him. This is what God has revealed to us in his Word by his Spirit. In the Bible, we see how God kept all his promises. He does not change. God doesn’t get angry because he is capricious, volatile, or prone to mood swings. He gets angry when he sees his beloved people wandering away from him and piercing themselves with many griefs. God gets angry with sin because he recognizes how sin sweeps us away from him and heaven.

That is why he sent his Son. Because none of us could muster up an ounce of righteousness on our own. So God acted on our behalf. He came down in flesh and blood and did an awesome that we did not expect. He revealed his face to us. We have seen God, (Heb. 1:3) the radiance of his glory, the exact representation of his being, in Jesus Christ. He is the Son of God with us. The Immanuel who has come down in our place. He never feigned righteousness. He loved righteousness and lived righteously in thought, word, and deed.

But God did more. He granted us his tenderness and compassion. On the cross, Jesus stepped in our place. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our sins. He was the target of God’s wrath and anger and absorbed it all so that we might be redeemed.

And that is what we are. What we could never imagine, we have heard and seen. God tore open the heavens and took on flesh and blood so that heaven might be opened to us. We are the work of his hand. He is our Father, providing all we need. Changing us. It’s not just like we are completely different people. God has transformed us. More than any other life event, people say that becoming a parent changes you. I see what they are saying. But seeing that God is your always loving Father has a greater power to transform. God is love to you, every single day.

So remember his ways. Meditate on why we needed his Son to live, die and rise again. Recall his unimaginable love. Praise him for the awesome things he has done for us. Gladly do what is right. Because your Heavenly Father has fashioned and made you to be his own.