Lord Jesus, Come to Us Now!

1st Sunday in Advent, 12/3/23 Isaiah 64:1-9 Lord Jesus, Come to Us Now! I. With your power II. With your honesty III. With your mercy Have you ever wished you would win the lottery? Have you ever thought about what it would be like to earn the kind of money the Cincinnati Bengals pay their starting quarterback? It’s $55 million a year. Imagine all the things you could do with that kind of money. Good things for yourself and others. But there are those who would tell you to be careful what you wish for. Suddenly coming into possession of unimaginable wealth has its drawbacks, too. There are accounts of people who spent it all foolishly in a short amount of time and now are worse off financially than they were before. And with that kind of money comes those who would like to share in your wealth. Suddenly family members and friends view you as a personal ATM to whom they can go whenever they need a little cash. As I mentioned in my greeting to you this morning, today marks the first Sunday in Advent. This is the season of the church year in which we prepare our hearts and lives for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Since this is the month of December, our thoughts naturally focus on our Lord’s coming to this earth as the Child of Bethlehem, an event we celebrate as Christmas every December 24 and 25. And that spiritual preparation to celebrate the birth of Christ brings us God’s blessings. But in this season of Advent our thoughts also turn to the day when the Lord Jesus will return to this earth on the Last Day. His return requires us to be prepared by having hearts that are repentant—sorry for our sins and trusting in him as our Savior for our forgiveness. How do you view that day of his return? Is it with a heart full of joyful expectation, or is it with some fear and trepidation? Shouldn’t we as God’s people look forward to his return, or is this another one of those situations in which you should be careful what you wish for? When you first heard these words of our text from Isaiah 64, perhaps it was a little of both. What’s that all about? Well, let’s find out. Let’s find out by speaking the prayer in the opening words of this text. Lord Jesus, come to us now! Let’s do so confident that Jesus will answer our prayer, as he promises to do. Part I. As I just stated, this morning’s text takes the form of a prayer and we’re focusing our discussion of this text through the use of a prayer for the Lord to come near us now. But let me ask you something. When you pray to the Lord, what do you often ask him for? Usually, isn’t it for him to use his power to do something that you can’t do on your own? We ask him to use his power to solve some issue or problem we or others are facing in life. That’s precisely what this prayer in our text asks. Listen to the opening verses once again. “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! 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! For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. 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.” Think about the history of God’s people in the Old Testament. When God’s people faced danger or difficulties, what did the Lord often do? He performed a miracle. We recall the 10 plagues on Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, water from a rock and manna from heaven, the walls of Jericho that came tumbling down, the sun standing still while God’s people waged war against their enemies. Those events were all in Israel’s past when Isaiah wrote these words. Their present situation seemed to be fine, at least outwardly. God’s people were enjoying life, but they had forsaken the Lord. Their spiritual lives were wasting away. And through Isaiah he announced that their future looked bleak at best. Actually, it was filled with horror. The kingdom of Judah would be decimated by the Babylonians. Exile was coming. The unthinkable would happen—God would drive his people away from the Promised Land because of their idolatry. And God’s faithful people among the Jews took his words to heart and spoke this prayer. “Rend the heavens and come down, Lord. Use your almighty power to bring an end to evil and the wicked people who are causing it. You are perfectly holy and just, so act now in your justice and bring an end to the oppression your faithful people are enduring. We’re waiting for you to act, Lord.” Does that prayer sound vaguely familiar? For more than some of you it sounds like a prayer right out of your daily prayer book. We’re groaning under all the evil our world is perpetrating. The longer things go on the worse they seem to get. The people of our world are becoming more godless, not more godly. So, Lord Jesus, come near us now! Part II. And most people, by and large, feel they’re ready for his coming near now without any help from the Lord. A phrase that I hear quite frequently is this, “I’m trying to be the best version of myself that I can be.” Please don’t get me wrong. It’s a good thing when we try to be the best person we can possibly be. In fact, that’s all we can expect from ourselves. But that’s not what the only true God expects. Listen to his honest evaluation of every human being. “But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? 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. 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.” Here’s the honest opinion we don’t want to hear: Even the best versions of ourselves isn’t good enough. It’s still a sinful version and no amount of effort or self-improvement is going to get us up to God’s standard, which is holiness, perfection, purity. The Lord doesn’t sugar-coat his negative evaluation of us. And that’s the way we need it. It would do us no good to hear that everything is fine when it’s not, not even close. The worst lies we tell are the ones we tell ourselves because we want so much to believe them to be true. But that always ends in disaster. We need to hear God’s truth about us. And here it is: We’re unclean. Even the good things we do are worthless trash when it comes to trying to make us look good to God. He sees right through it. He knows even our sinful hearts and minds. And our sins sweep us away. God rightly condemns us. The Lord Jesus comes to us with his honesty about us. Part III. Lord Jesus, come to us now? Really? Now? Yes, now. But doesn’t that leave us in a precarious position? What I mean is this. We want Jesus to return in power and put an end to evil, but we’ve also just admitted that there’s nothing good in us by nature. We’re all spiritually unclean. Our sins sweep us away. We want Jesus to deal with evil, including evil people, but we’re evil ourselves. Come to us now, Jesus? Really? Indeed, and do so on the basis of these final words of our text. “Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. 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.” What are we talking about here? In one word: salvation. Salvation. Our God’s most fervent desire is to bring his people salvation. That’s why Jesus came the first time, and he won that salvation for all people. That’s what his death and resurrection were all about—accomplishing our salvation and making us certain of it. So, yes, our sins sweep us away, but the Lord forgives. He wipes them away. He washes us and makes us clean spiritually, and then, as Isaiah’s words remind us, he forms us into his own people whom he loves dearly. He shapes us and molds us and unfolds opportunities before us to glorify him with all that we think, say, and do. What a marvelous, saving transformation! And it’s nothing we do ourselves. It’s all God’s doing. He does so out of his endless mercy toward us. So, yes, Lord Jesus! Come to us now, with your mercy. We began by reminding ourselves that there are situations in life in which we need to be careful what we wish for. But this isn’t one of them. Jesus coming to us here on earth the first time caused the night sky to be filled with the glory of the heavenly host of angels. His return on the Last Day will be far more glorious. How can I be sure? Because he comes to bring salvation. He fully accomplished our salvation the first time he came. His holy life was lived for you and me and every other sinner. His death on the cross fully paid for every sin of all time. How can we be sure? His resurrection from the dead on the third day. That’s our assurance that Jesus took care of everything for us forever. And now, he will come again to us to claim us as his own forever. That’s it. Just to claim us as his own and bring us into the eternal bliss and glory that he has prepared for us. People of God, whom the Lord Jesus formed for himself, that’s not just a wish; that is your saving, eternal reality. Jesus has chosen you for it. It will happen just as he has planned and just as he has revealed it to us. So, yes! Lord Jesus, come to us now! We’re ready by faith in you! Amen.