Isaiah Lesson 82

All right, we were just talking about King David and Psalm 23.

For those listening online, go to YouTube, put in Sight and Sound, Psalm 23, and you can hear this rendition of the 23rd

Psalm. When I think of David, I am always reminded that he's a man after God's own heart.

It didn't mean that he was sinless by any stretch of the imagination, right? But he was a man of prayer, and one of his defining characteristics was just that time he would spend alone with God, out in the fields with the sheep, writing psalms as a king, continuing to be the psalmist of Israel.

Looking at the stars, writing Psalm 19. Yeah, absolutely. He was a man of prayer.

How would you rate your own prayer life? Don't answer out loud.

In comparison with David? Yeah. How would you rate your own prayer life?

As we come to the end of the book of Isaiah, today we're going to go to the 64th chapter, and the theme of it is prayer.

You'll notice that the entire chapter is prayer. It actually picks up from the end of Isaiah 63, and continues on from verses 15 to 19.

The prayer continues to the end, and then we'll have two concluding chapters. So let's turn there. If you're going through the

Bible in a year, according to my schedule, this is tomorrow's devotional.

So you're a day ahead of them through the Bible in a year. Wow, that's cool.

Have you ever gotten to a point in your prayer life where you ask something of God, but in the back of your mind you're thinking,

He's not going to do this for me anyway? Yes. Have you ever thought, well, maybe

I'm just going to sit back on God's sovereignty and whatever will be, will be? He knows best.

But is that the posture that we should have? How do you pray? What is the right way to pray?

Jesus taught us that our Father, Lord, and heaven first is to glorify God, and how many answers do we need?

The Lord's Prayer is a great place to start learning how to pray. How many of you have heard of the acronym

ACTS? A -C -T -S Anybody know what that stands for? Sounds like this is a popular one.

That's my favorite one. Even to this day, I still use that as a construct in my brain to keep me focused on starting where you need to start in prayer, with adoration.

And then confession. Really get a clean slate with your heart. Search me, O Lord. Psalm 139. And look at me.

Examine me. Isaiah 19 ends that way. So we're to look and ask the

Lord to cleanse us. And then give thanks. Before we start asking things, to remember and give thanks.

I love ACTS. Anybody know APTAT? What's that? John Piper's?

I don't know. APTAT? I don't remember. Yeah. APTAT stands for Admit, Pray, Trust, Thank, Act.

And then you thank God at the end after he comes through with you. Comes through for you. Now TRUST. So that's in your notes.

We can look at that at the end. But it's another acronym. The Lord's Prayer is a great example. Well, as we get into Isaiah 64,

I see him, Isaiah, moving through these areas of prayer that we should emulate.

It's another example. It doesn't come out quite as well as ACTS or even APTAT. Mine comes out as ERCA.

So not so memorable. E -R -C -A -H. ERCA. But let me go through that as we do.

Let's pray. So Father, we're here to study prayer. But really we go with Christ into the school of prayer when we kneel before you, when we get alone with you and spend time in your presence.

Help us as students, as disciples, to learn how we should pray. The disciples asked,

Lord, teach us to pray. How do you pray? And you taught them the Lord's Prayer.

So we pray that we would learn by that and also by Isaiah, who models prayer in the 64th chapter.

Teach us to pray. Your servants are listening. Teach us how to seek your face and to trust you and to wait and expect and hope that you will give answers to the things that we ask.

So help us, Lord, to grow in our prayer life today. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so I mentioned that the 63rd chapter ends in prayer.

If you turn back to verse 15, Isaiah 63, 15, the one that Isaiah is addressing at that particular point becomes

God. So he has laid out some truth of what God is going to do when he comes back.

And that is a very descriptive picture of him trampling the grapes of wrath in the 63rd chapter.

But he remembers mercy for his people. Well, in verse 15, he says, Look down from heaven and see.

That's a prayer. He's asking God to look and see from your holy mountain and beautiful habitation.

Where are your zeal and your might? The stirring of your inner parts and your compassion are held back from me.

For you are our father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us.

You, O Lord, are our father. Our redeemer from of old is your name.

O Lord, why do you make us wander from your ways? Harden our hearts so that we fear you not.

Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage. Your holy people held possession for a little while.

Our adversaries have trampled down your sanctuary. We have become like those over whom you have never ruled, like those who are not called by your name.

Now, what's interesting about how this prayer begins, and as that chapter ends, is that actually, at Isaiah's point in time, the sanctuary has not yet been trampled by the

Chaldeans. Remember the Assyrian threat in Isaiah's day?

How close did they get to the sanctuary? Very close. They got right up to the walls of Jerusalem and surrounded the city.

But Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed. He sought the face of the Lord. Actually, he turned his face to the wall when he was sick, but in this case, again, he sought the

Lord, and what did the Lord do for Israel? When he killed 185 ,000?

Yeah, he sent the angel to kill 185 ,000 Assyrian soldiers. So the threat was repelled, and there was a time where Israel had a bit of a revival, but they're falling back into that, and now

Isaiah is actually seeing things prophetically. The trampling.

So as you get to the end of Isaiah, he's looking very much future. It kind of makes sense. As the book is coming to a close,

Isaiah being a prophet, we knew this from all the prophecies of Messiah, right? What are some of the prophecies that Isaiah had of the coming

Messiah? Do you remember any of them? Isaiah 7 -14?

He would be born of a virgin. Born of a virgin, right. Isaiah 9 -6? His peace would never end.

Right. Government upon his shoulders. He shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 11? 1 -4? Isaiah 11. A shoot comes up from the stump of Jesse.

A branch from his roots bears fruit. The Spirit of the Lord is upon him, and you have that 7 -fold description of the

Spirit. What about Isaiah 53? All his sufferings on the cross.

Was there anything else prophesied in Isaiah? Namely, a king before he came? Not the king, but another one called

Anointed. Although he's not the Messiah, he's called the Anointed One.

What was that? No, Isaiah, oh yes! Very good. In Isaiah chapter 40,

John the Baptist is foretold. But he wasn't a king. No. But yes, he was foretold. That's another one.

Anointed Lord. Yes. Isaiah 40 verse 3. It was actually in the 45th chapter,

King Cyrus of Persia. Well, Persia hasn't even come on the scene yet. So how is

Isaiah talking about Cyrus? He calls him by name. So that's one of the things that actually wowed

Cyrus when he looked back in the book of Isaiah and saw his own name there. That's part of why he softened towards Israel.

Wow. Who is this God that knew me 100 years ago? Like 150 years before you were born. Yeah. Exactly.

Well, this is happening again at the end of the 63rd chapter because look what it says in verse 18. Your holy people held possession for a little while.

Our adversaries have trampled down your sanctuary. Wow. Well, there's a sense in which that's happened not in terms of being overrun by the enemy, but being overrun by corruption.

It's trampled down by false prophets and teachers or priests that are unfaithful to God.

But it won't actually get trampled down until Babylon comes still almost 100 years later and tramples it down, destroys.

And Isaiah is already lamenting this. This guy must be a prophet or a son of a prophet, right?

Clearly Isaiah is like the prototypical prophet. He can see things into the future.

What does the world say about that? Do they believe in predictive prophecy? It's written proactively.

Right. So they theorize because they will not allow the supernatural, they have three parts to Isaiah.

So proto -Isaiah is the first 39 chapters. And then there's deutero -Isaiah, the second part.

And then this third part, they just say, well, this is way late. So they call it trino -Isaiah. Right. And yet when the

Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the whole book of Isaiah was intact as one unit.

Perfectly. Perfectly, all 66 chapters. And it dates very early. It seems that, of course,

God does speak prophetically. So we come in now and Isaiah's already praying for restoration. Has there ever been a time in your life where you wanted to see something restored?

Your family, your faith, somebody restored from a sickness. And we want to go to God and pray, and we call out to Him.

Sometimes our faith wavers. Here is how Isaiah does it. That'd be good to know, right?

Yeah. Yeah, let's look at it. Verses one and two. John, totally, if you wouldn't mind reading that.

Sure. 64, one and two. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence, as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil, to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence.

Okay. The first point is that prayer exalts God. It is for His name, notice in verse two, to make your name known to your adversaries.

The appeal begins with exalting the name that, Rick, this is your wheelhouse, brother, the name that is above every name.

Rick has done a study where he's outlined every place that the name is mentioned in the scripture. And that's what's so important to God, His name,

His glory. He actually holds above all things. Remember Isaiah 48, 11?

In the notes there, if somebody wants to read it. For my own sake, for my own sake,

I do it, for how should my name be for vain? My glory

I will not give to another. Okay. So what Isaiah understands is that God, first of all, needs to be exalted in prayer.

For your name's sake, Lord. This is what Isaiah had said in 48, 11. He's recognizing that it's the name.

It's not our need that's prominent here. It's His glory.

And look how he's appealing. This is a desperate need here in verse one.

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down. Here's the picture. When God made the heavens and the earth,

Genesis 1, 1, it looks from our vantage point here on earth that the heavens are like a cloth with paintings, bright little stars on the blackness of the night, the sun running its course.

It looks from us, from our vantage point, like it's a cloth. The picture here is God tearing that cloth and Himself coming down.

He is invisible to us. He's somehow behind the veil. We can't see Him, but we can see the glory of the things

He made. And the appeal here is God rend the heavens and come down.

Reveal yourself. We're calling on you to come yourself. We want you. Not just the things that you've made.

We're calling on you. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down. That the mountains might quake at your presence.

It's the presence of the Lord. He desires not just the gift, but the giver.

He wants the presence of God. And all things would quake and shake at the coming of the

Lord. So I see in the first two verses an exalting in who God is. You see that?

Especially where He says, to make your name known. The concern is the name that is above every name.

So prayer exalts God because it depends on His power to answer. If God comes in power, then we're okay.

If He rends the heavens, we've got everything we need. So the first thing is it exalts.

Now, here's where I think many of us, myself included, go wrong in prayer.

There's something we need, and that burden is heavy on us, right? If it's a sick child.

If it's a mother that you love who's ill. Whatever it is you're going through, the loss of a loved one.

These burdens that we have, and the need feels so strong that we begin to fixate on it.

And we pray, but we think, ah, I don't think He'll do it. And here's where we're going wrong.

We're not remembering His faithfulness. We don't remember.

The Israelites were famous for this, right? They always forgot. Every time that God answered prayer, they would forget, and they'd go right back to old patterns.

Well, we have a similar temptation. It's the flesh. We don't remember His faithfulness. So let's look at 3 to 5.

Rick, would you mind reading that? When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down.

The mountains quaked at your presence. From a hole no one has heard or perceived by the ear.

No eye has seen a God besides you who acts for those who wait for Him. You meet

Him who joyfully works righteousness. Those who remember you in your ways.

Behold, you were angry and we sinned. In our sins we have been a long time.

And shall we be saved? Okay. The key word there in verse 5 is remember.

Prayer remembers. Those who remember you in your ways.

So going back to verse 3, he begins to think back on a time when the mountains actually did quake.

Remember where that was? Exodus 19 and 20, at the Mount Sinai, when

God came and met with Moses, the people were so terrified. They didn't even dare approach the mountain.

It was quaking in His presence. He came down and He spoke and He gave them the law through Moses.

He kept meeting with the people again and again. You did awesome things. That needs to be a part of our prayer.

Remembering the awesome things. So before we just dive right into supplication, right? Because that's what's on our heart.

We have this big need. We need to stop and say, God, I remember the awesome thing you did when a baby was born in Bethlehem.

The awesome thing you did when that baby grown walked on water. When that grown man was hung on a cross.

Remember the cross. Remember that he was buried, but remember that on the third day, he conquered death.

It's done in the past. He did this and he ascended right before their eyes. So you remember the things of the word of God, which is what

Isaiah is doing here. He's going back in his memory. You did awesome things that we did not look for.

You came down. The mountains quaked at your presence. From of old, no one has heard or perceived by the ear.

No eye has seen a God besides you who acts for those who wait for Him. Have you ever in your life needed

God to come through for you? And you waited and you waited and you waited and He did.

How many times? How many times have you been sick? Can you remember?

Hundreds, right? Have you been through a surgery and He brought you safely through?

How many times has He come through for us in the past? So we begin to remember there's no God like ours.

What makes our God different is that those who wait upon the Lord, He will come through for them. Now He might make us wait a long time, right?

And there's some afflictions in this life that don't get healed until glorification, right? We all die.

But He is a God that will come through for those who wait on Him. And as we start to remember those things, we forget really easily, don't we?

Anybody here have something that He's brought you through that you prayed and in time He answered?

Yeah. All the things you just mentioned, yeah? Sickness, surgery. Sicknesses, surgeries, yeah.

And there's still things you're waiting on, aren't there? Yes, yes. But He's been faithful in the past.

Just because He's saying to us sometimes, wait on the Lord. That key word there is wait.

I was just going to say one of the things that we pray for is other salvation and that's something that we have minimal control over.

I mean, we can try to be faithful in our witness, but it's still God who draws them.

Does anybody have somebody on your prayer list that you've prayed for for more than five years? Ten years?

Twenty? Wow. Yes. Keep waiting on the Lord. Do you see that word?

Look at verse four. See, this is what is so different about our God. There's no one but our

God who acts for those who wait for Him.

And Jeff, can I say that not only does that glorify God, but it builds our faith, doesn't it? When we remember what He did for us, we remember and it does give us confidence and builds our faith.

Yeah, and that's why I open with, have you ever kind of thought like, I'm going to pray for this, but I don't really believe it's going to happen?

I'm just sort of, I just don't really have much hope in this actually happening? Well, that's why we need to remember because how many times has it happened?

How many sicknesses have you prayed for? How many people have you prayed for? I mean, we pray for people all the time in the church, and how many answers, when you go back and look over the years, how many answers to prayer have we seen?

And all of us can testify to so many of them. I think it is important for us to sometimes record it too, especially as our memories fade.

Yeah, yeah, write down. Make a journal entry. Well, I was going to write a short story about my father's womb because there was just so many incredible things that took place to give to my grandchildren.

Beautiful, you should do it. Yeah, my mom gave me a gift like that in writing this little poem book, and it kind of records so much of her life of prayer.

And she was just writing poetry to the Lord, but it's been a blessing to me, or my grandfather when he wrote his story from coming out of the gulag.

It's 20 pages long, but to go back and read that, like wow, what God did.

What he's done. Have you guys heard that song on the radio? What he's done. Oh, and we've done it here at church.

We did it last Sunday. What he's done, what he's done. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't heard that before.

I didn't either. Love it. Yeah, that might have been my first time hearing it too. It reminds me of a story

I just heard from Gregory. Gregory prayed for his mother for years and years and years that she would get saved, and it was just days before she died.

Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's a common thing. It happens many times, right? Yep. Yeah. All right, so we don't necessarily just need to go right into asking.

Maybe we need to start by exalting. And then secondly, remember. Spend some time thanking

God, remembering the things he's already done. Then third, confessing. We need to get clean before him.

We need to confess our sins. And so, Richard, you do six through seven. I would if I had my

Bible or my phone. Don't you have a Memorize? Carol, would you?

What am I doing, six and seven? Yeah, just six and seven. We are all infected in and impure with sin.

When we proudly display our righteous deeds, we find that we are fine.

They are but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins like winds sweep away.

Yet no one calls on your name or pleads with you for mercy. Therefore, you have turned away from us and turned us over to our sins.

Okay, so clearly what we see here is confession, right? Prayer should have this aspect of confession.

You see it in the Acts model that many of us use. The C is confession.

We need to be humble before God. First John 1 -9, who knows it? If we confess our sins,

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all our sins. Amen. Was that written to believers or unbelievers?

Believers. Believers. We need to go before God and confess our sins, not just when you get saved, but it's a lifelong, keeping a short list, a short account before God, spending time confessing our sins.

Now, what Isaiah does here, kind of on behalf of the nation, is confess, this is a great gospel verse right here.

All of you guys probably have used it before, right? Verse 6, our sins are like, I mean, even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.

Or the ESV has polluted garments. A polluted garment. Now, that's not our bad deeds.

That's our best deeds. Isn't that something? Yeah. That's when we're being religious.

That's when we're trying our hardest. How could Isaiah say that? What do you think drove him to call our righteous deeds polluted rags?

I think when he first saw God in Isaiah 6, he said, I am undone. I am filthy.

I'm a man of unclean lips. I think he saw it all from there. Yeah. He had seen a glimpse of the holiness of God, comparing the holiness of God to what we are, even our righteous.

So the idea here isn't that the righteous deed per se, itself, is sinful.

It's not sinful to pray, right? That's a contradiction of terms. It's the idea that even while we're doing good, there's still a taint of selfish motives or areas in our hearts that are not perfectly pure because we're not yet glorified.

Our sin nature is conquered under the blood, but it's still present with us until glorification.

It's still clinging and rearing its head. So when the preacher gets up, there's still that indication in his mind,

I hope that people like what I have to say. It's like,

I hope I don't mess up and forget something I was trying to quote. I'm quoting John 1. There's a little bit of fear of man, but you're here to conquer that, crucify it.

You have to die to it daily. Are there areas in your life that you still see the sin nature?

You better answer that one, yes. I think, too, when we go to pray, we see it as an obligation, often as a chore.

Wow, that's a good one. Rather than just necessary communication with somebody who loves you.

Yeah, we fall into the habit of just checking boxes. Yeah, and our heart isn't always fully in it.

Knock out my quiet time, got to read this number of verses so I can check Facebook. Yeah, so here we have confession.

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind take us away. Interesting, picture a leaf that flowers for a time, and then it just starts to fade, and then it's going to just blow away.

There is no one who calls upon your name. Now that is convicting. Certainly there were people in Israel who prayed, right?

But not as we should. And that's why it's in this area of confession.

When we think of our own prayer life, how does it compare to George Mueller?

Remember him? Hours a day on his knees, never had to fundraise, even though he housed thousands of orphans.

Because he prayed, and he trusted God, and by prayer the need was always met. Wow, how convicting is that?

What about Jesus? Mark 1 .35, while it was still dark, he got up and went off to a solitary place.

That's before sunrise. He's up praying. And he doesn't need prayer for the power, because he himself is omnipotent.

But he does everything in accord with the Father. He says, none of these works

I do on my own, but I do it of the Father. So he would pray.

His prayer life, I think that was a daily habit. I think he was spending time with the Lord, with the Father, every day.

Early in the morning, and then of course, communing all day long. Remember 1 Thessalonians 5?

It says, pray continually. Unceasingly. So when it says here, there is no one who calls upon your name, it doesn't mean that Isaiah and no one in Israel has ever prayed.

It means we're falling short in this area. We should be constantly trying to grow in our prayer life.

To really talk to him all day long. When we're driving, when we wake up, when we lay down. Day in and day out.

That we just be constantly praying. Prayer should be as natural as breathing. Who said that? I think it was

Spurgeon. Yeah, that sounds like a Spurgeon one. Yeah. Prayer should be as natural as breathing.

And it says here, who rouses himself to take hold of you. I mentioned the story in the pulpit about Jonathan Isaac, who was an

NBA basketball player who had to make a stand for what he knew to be true, despite all of the cultural pressure in his team and around him.

Well, the thing that he accredits to that, having the strength, was the 5 a .m.

prayer meetings. His pastor had him in there praying, and the first time he did it, he couldn't stay awake for 10 minutes.

He would lay down before the Lord, and then he'd be sleeping. And the pastor was merciful. But over time, he built endurance.

That's what's meant by rousing yourself. And it doesn't always have to be the wee hours of the morning. It's just the idea of taking deliberate time to rouse your heart and say,

I will pray. I will go spend time with God. I'm not going to let the distractions keep me from this.

I'm going to do it. I'm going to rouse myself to take hold of you. Isn't that an exaggeration, though?

There's no one who calls upon your name? I mean, people make effort to do that. Yes. Maybe they don't do it as they should.

Right. That's my point, yeah. Isaiah himself prays, right? He's praying right now.

He's praying to God. So, that can't be the meaning of it. So, exaggeration can be a word, or it's...

The concept there is there's no one who really calls as he should.

Right. No one who's just rousing himself and praying. And Isaiah's counting himself in that, right?

He doesn't see himself as having arrived. Paul, as much as Paul was the apostle of, you know, he's just like the example for us.

How does he see himself? Chief of sinners. Chief of sinners. Yeah. And he says in Romans 7, you know, what

I want to do, I don't do. That's probably something to do with his prayer life. Like, he probably wants to be a better prayer than he is.

He's still in the flesh at that time. Alright, so there's three things so far, and sometimes we skip these steps.

We just dive right into asking, asking, asking. But what are they? Spend some time exalting. And spend some time remembering the things that he's answered in the past.

We need that to stir our faith, as well as to give thanks. Spend some time confessing.

Lord, I have fallen in this area. I have this person who's angry at me, or I'm angry at that person.

I need to lay that before you and confess my sin in this, and keep a short account before God, and now you can talk.

So that's three things. Now, what's the fourth one? Appeal. Appeal, right. So that's the

S in Acts. Supplication. Barbara, would you like to read 8 and 9?

Very good. So this is the be, the do, and it is a submission to the will of God.

Even though he's taking hold of God to ask specific things of him, namely that Jerusalem would be restored and the sanctuary be restored after being trampled underfoot by the

Gentiles. There is a submissiveness to the will of God. Where in the

New Testament do we see this analogy of potter and clay? Remember? Did I put it in the notes?

No, I didn't. Romans chapter 9. That high view of sovereignty.

Does not the potter have the right over the clay to make of it what he will, some to noble purposes and some to ignoble?

In some cases he displays mercy to those that he would fashion for mercy.

Compassion whom he compassions. It's a verb in the Greek. And on those vessels of wrath, doesn't he have the right even over them?

It's this really high view of sovereignty. What do I mean by sovereignty? That God is ultimately the one who has the right to answer as he wills.

So do you see that in how Isaiah acts? Look at verse eight. But now,

O Lord, you are the father. Father means a loving and caring protector, provider.

That's how Jesus taught us to pray. Our father who art in heaven. So you're coming to one that you know loves you.

But you're not coming to tell him what to do. You're coming to ask as a child with faith, right?

So then the analogy goes to a potter and a clay. We are the clay. You are our potter.

We are all the work of your hand. A loving father will punish us when we do wrong. Yeah, there's discipline from the potter's hand.

Yeah, from the father's hand, I should say. Yeah, Hebrews 12. The idea here is

God, we're in your hands. We're on the wheel here. You're spinning it and you're molding us and making of us what you will.

We're not in control. That's why we're praying. We know the one who is. And from our perspective, we don't know what he's decreed, right?

So the praying person still sees himself as an instrument in the making. We don't know what

God's going to do. So we're not asking God to change his decreed will, what he has decreed.

How can we change the mind of the sovereign, right? That's not what prayer is. But from our perspective, we're clay.

We live in this life and there are things that we have needs and we call to our father and we're going to trust that he is answering.

And somehow this prayer is part of the potting. I'm asking the potter and he's a good father, too.

He's our father. Then in verse nine, what is it that Isaiah wants? Be not so terribly angry at one another, right?

Because it was God's judgment that led to the destruction of the sanctuary, right?

It wasn't that he got overpowered by Baal or Moloch or something, right? He's God.

He doesn't get overpowered by the enemy. He gave them over. It was his wrath.

He was terribly angry with Israel. So he's asking for mercy. Remember not iniquity forever.

Don't look at the sins of Israel. Be merciful. Behold, please look.

We all are all your people. He's pleading for the people. He's pleading.

He's an intercessor here, praying for Israel. In the same token, he made us this way.

We are sinners. Yeah. Inherited. Yeah. In a sense.

So what can you expect from us, God? Yeah, there's a little bit of that. And just being careful that the scripture here, as the potter, never imputes guilt to God.

He's not the author of sin. Any sin that's in us, that's our doing. Inherited from Adam all being.

Yeah. So are we sinners because we sin? Or do we sin because we're sinners?

The answer is yes, right? Yes. Yeah, we have inherited sin and we sin. So Romans 5 deals with this.

It's imputed from Adam because all sin. So it's both and. We are responsible.

But in any case, it's not God, the author of sin. It came in through Adam and we all, like our father in him, imputed from him.

We have sin. That's our nature. So that's what we do. And it's also what we do.

So we're responsible. In all ways, it's on us. It's not on him. Not the potter. It's the problem is in the clay.

Yeah. So, but he's pleading for mercy. Now, that brings me to the point of intercession. Part of the role of the

Christian as a kingdom of priests and the first Peter to sense is to intercede.

For others who are being crushed. Isaiah is actually in an intercessory position here.

He's seeing something a hundred years plus down the road. And then 70 years more with them coming out of captivity to be restored.

He's praying for this mercy that will one day come on another generation. In the same way, we intercede for people, not just ourselves.

Sons and daughters and parents, grandparents, friends, neighbors.

We should be interceding right now for the kids are going to be sitting in here tomorrow night.

Some of them don't know the Lord and they'll be here. They'll hear the word of God. We need to be praying that God will save their souls and have mercy on them.

Behold, please look. We are all your people intercession. OK, then lastly.

Prayer hopes for an entire nation because God will not keep silent.

You see in the last few verses, this hopefulness in God. We might start off thinking that God's not really going to heal my mother -in -law.

You know, I pray to pray she's not healed yet. But there's by the end of this process, when you start exalting him, you remember how many times he's come through in the past.

You you keep praying that way and you you confess your own sin. And then you begin to intercede and ask,

Lord, please do this. Please do this. Well, by the end of it, you have that hope you didn't have in the first place.

Right. So that's why this model of prayer is much better than, you know, just go and start listing your all of the prayer requests that you have your checklist.

Right. So who hasn't read yet? Rich, you don't have the Bible. You can listen.

No, it goes back to John. Oh, sorry. Yeah, it's probably going back there somewhere. John, would you read 10 to 12 and listen for that hope?

Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wilderness. Jerusalem, a desolation.

Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire and all our pleasant places have become ruins.

Will you restrain yourself at these things? Oh, Lord, will you keep silent and afflict us so terribly?

So in the end, he's asking this question, but I think the implied answer is no.

Will you restrain yourself at these things? Oh, Lord, now, will you keep silent and afflict us so terribly?

No. No. Isaiah's expectation, I think there's an implied no in that.

This is our God. This is our father, the potter over the clay. These are his people. Look back in verse 9.

Behold, please look, we are all your people. The intercessor is saying to the father, we're yours,

God. This is the children of Abraham. Earlier he said Abraham's not here, back in chapter 63.

Abraham's not here to see us, but we're Abraham's descendants. We're your people, and I think he's implying the answer here, no.

He's reminding God of what it's going to look like. Your holy cities have become a wilderness.

Whose cities are they? His. Your holy cities.

First of all, they're his. Second of all, they're holy. They're set apart for him. These were consecrated to God.

Zion has become a wilderness. Zion is

God's city. His heavenly city. And it's a wilderness.

Jerusalem, a desolation. In other words, these things cannot be like this forever.

It's the aberration that God's, and it's been like this for so long. But here's what we know with certainty.

We know this from the New Testament. That in the end, the answer does turn out to be no.

Right? Romans 9 through 11, especially chapter 11. They're hardened in part for a time, but in the end, they will be grafted back in.

God will not forget the promise he made to Abraham. That they would be a nation that serves him.

Usually rhetorical questions are yes. Well, there's a double negative.

So it is a yes. Because look at how he states it. Will you restrain yourself at these things,

O Lord? He stated positively. Aren't you going to answer? Well, no, that would be aren't.

That's another negative. Will you answer? Yes. That's the rhetorical answer.

But with a double negative. Will you keep silent and afflict us so terribly? The implication is

God's going to answer. It will be a yes and amen in the double negative sense.

He's not going to keep silent. And that again goes back to the point about waiting on the Lord. Right? Look at verse 4.

Who acts for those who wait for him. We're waiting.

And it seems like the heavens are silent. You look up. You're praying to this brass ceiling.

The sheet. But one day he is going to rend the heavens.

He's going to tear the clouds apart. And he himself is coming to put his foot on that mountain.

He will rend the heavens and come down. And he will reign for a thousand years in a kingdom.

In Israel. With his nation there at the

Holy Sanctuary. He will come to his temple. So often when I start to pray,

I think of the universality of God. I can't imagine.

I admit, you know, I don't understand it. Yes. How he can be God of the universe.

I don't understand the universe. Right. And to think that he is in control of all of that.

And can tear it apart. That's the right perspective. It's submissive to his sovereignty while still asking.

Yeah. So, in summary, in conclusion, you can keep the axe model. You don't have to replace it with IRCOM.

Or Aptat. Or Aptat. Pipers, it's a little off, too. Harder to remember. I like ACTS.

That's a good structure. But this is a good reminder.

What you can keep is in your mind the 64th chapter of Isaiah. Like, you know what?

I need to improve my prayer life. Let me go to Isaiah 64 and do like Isaiah did.

And you'll see him exalting the name. You'll see him confessing. You'll see him remembering.

Then asking and hoping that this answer is yes or a double negative.

And then with the axe acronym, I remember Psalm 4610.

All the earth will exalt. You will be exalted in all the earth. You will be exalted among all the nations,

Father. Amen. Another great one is Psalm 103. Forget not his benefits.

And it just begins to list and remind us of remember all the ways he's come through in the past.

That's what we have to do. That's what Isaiah did here. He spent time remembering and that built his faith to pray that God would come through.

Let's close in prayer. So, Father, today we pray for our prayer.

We pray, Lord, for our prayer lives. That we would be devoted to you in times set apart.

To take hold of you. To arouse our spirits to go before you. Lord, I pray that you would teach us to pray as a church and each one of us individually.

That we would spend time taking hold of you. And that we wouldn't only just bring a laundry list, but that we would always begin with adoration.

Exalting the name. That we would confess our sins before you. Because even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.

Lord, that we would give you thanks. That we would remember the times that you have answered prayer in the past.

And that we would wait on you for the things that haven't happened yet. Increase our hope. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Waiting on the Lord's verse. Isaiah 40, 31.