Isaiah 18

Chapter 18. The Passion of GodFor a long time I have kept silent,I have been quiet and held myself back.But now, like a woman in childbirth,I cry out, I gasp and pant.(Isaiah 42:14)This impassioned text has been appropriately and not irreverently described as the passion of God. But it is not the only passage in this intense prophetic volume which expresses the majestic appearing of Jehovah as He arises for the vindication of His glory and the deliverance of His people. Again and again we find the prophet’s soul enkindled to the most sublime enthusiasm as he describes the march of God’s glorious purpose toward its end. The picture becomes a sort of heavenly drama in which the heart of God upon the throne and the Holy Spirit in the church below move in sympathy in mighty conflict. Our text is really associated with a number of similar texts which together afford a striking picture of the intense conflict in the heavenly places which is ever going forward with intense force as the crisis of the age draws nigh. Section I—The CryThe first passage in this sublime drama is Isaiah 64:1-4, 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. This is the cry of the waiting soul for God to reveal Himself in the majesty of His glory and His power. There are times when the hearts of men seem to have become so stupidly indifferent, when the church herself is so fast asleep, and when even earnest hearts seem to have settled down to such a dead life of self-content, that the praying souls who look out upon the religious conditions of our time are compelled to send up this passionate cry as they feel that nothing less than the very dynamite of God can clear the air and wake the dead. It is like one of those days which sometimes come in summer when the atmosphere is so sultry and the air so dead that we breathe by gasps, and after a while we instinctively look out upon the horizon and long for the electric storm, the cleaving lightning and the crashing thunder to break the awful spell, to clear the air and restore our vital breath. Such a condition is upon us today in the religious history of our time. The public conscience is so corrupted that vice has ceased to stir us. The horrors of war grow insipid through the hardening influence of habit. The moral and social standards of mankind and the tone of public opinion grow looser and lower. The chief interest of the study of even God’s Holy Word is centered upon the excitement of higher criticism. Intellectual doubt has pushed aside the simple faith of other days. The world has swept away the barriers for separation and the church is sleeping on the enchanted ground of self-complacency. Even those who know and love the Master best feel paralyzed by the presence of depressing conditions in the air, and Zion’s watchmen are crying out in desperate earnestness, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!” (Isaiah 64:1). This is not a figure of speech referring to God’s historical manifestation at Mt. Sinai and in the wilderness or as He came in Isaiah’s time to destroy the armies of Sennacherib and deliver Jerusalem; for as we read the passage through, we find that verse four forms part of one of the most important quotations in one of Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). There he applies all this directly to the Holy Spirit, “‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’— but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” The mighty revelation of God for which the prophet cries is not a mere miraculous display of His glory and His power before the nations, but a spiritual coming of the Holy Spirit to the hearts of His people as they seek Him in earnestness and faith; for he adds, “You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways” (Isaiah 64:5). God is waiting therefore to reveal to earnest souls the glory of His grace and power in a measure such as “no eye has seen [or] ear heard,” nor our highest spiritual conceptions have ever dreamed. Will we meet His challenge? Will we send up the cry until the heavens open and God comes down in the revelation of His presence and His power, and the mountains of opposition and iniquity melt away at His presence, and the melting fire of apostolic love kindles the heart of the church of God, and the waters boil in the engines of our spiritual machinery, and the power of God goes forth into every agency of Christian work and worldwide evangelization? That is what the prayer may mean according as our faith will dare to claim it. God give us the prayer and the answer until the church of God shall wake from her debasing slumber and once more stand forth “fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession” (SS 6:10). Section II—The AnswerOur text proper is the answer to this cry. “For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth” (Isaiah 42:14). “The Lord will march out like a mighty man, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal; with a shout he will raise the battle cry and will triumph over his enemies” (Isaiah 42:13). Yes, God waits and suffers long. The cry of the needy seems unheeded, the triumph of the proud appears unchallenged, the prayer of the saint finds no answer, but God is not asleep or dead. Prayer is accumulating before the throne. God is waiting till the cup of sin is full and the moment strikes when all the forces of His omnipotence are let loose in a cyclone of glorious power and victorious majesty. What a blending of splendid figures we have here! There is the shout of the warrior. There is the cry of the travailing woman. There is the convulsion of a great cyclone. There is the gasp and the panting of a mighty wrestle, and there is the final overthrow of every obstacle and opposition. What does all this mean? The Heart of God

1. It is a picture of the heart of God. Our heavenly Father is not a selfish embodiment of isolation and power like the Buddhist’s dream of Nirvana, but a great, loving, living heart in constant touch with the needs of His people and the conditions of the world over which He reigns. He that made the heart of the soldier has in Him all the heroic qualities which have illuminated the battlefields of earth. He who made the tempest and the lightning has in Him all the force of which they are but heart throbs. He who gave the mother her passionate love has in Him all the depths of maternal tenderness for His suffering children. He who created the father’s heart is the great Father Himself. Look at Him as He seeks for His lost Adam amid the shades of Eden crying, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). Listen to Him as He cries out over a sin-cursed world, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth” (Genesis 6:7). Listen again as He cries over the sufferings of Israel in the brick-fields of Egypt, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering” (Exodus 3:7). Hear Him as He wails over Ephraim, His prodigal child, “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused” (Hosea 11:8). Listen as He pleads through Jeremiah with His wandering bride, Israel. “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert” (Jeremiah 2:2). Hark again as there falls from heaven the sweet cadence of His love. “As the father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust” (Psalms 103:13-14). And yet once more a softer cadence falls and the words breathe out the tenderest depths of maternal love. “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem” (Isaiah 66:13). Yes, that is the great Heart whose pulse beats move the mighty universe and throb responsively to His children’s need and His people’s cry. He will not always be silent. He will respond. Oh, watchers on the mountain height, Stand firm and steadfast there; Oh, wrestlers in the vale beneath, Cease not your seven-fold prayer; God will not always wait; He will accept your sacrifice; Oh, loving hearts and praying hands, God will in love arise. The Passion of Christ2. It means not only the heart of God, but the passion of Christ, His beloved Son. Isaiah has given us a picture of this passion (Isaiah 63:1-5). He beholds a mighty Conqueror marching from Edom, glorious in His apparel and yet with garments stained with blood; and as he listens the Conqueror proclaims His mighty name, “It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save” (Isaiah 63:1). But the prophet asks, “Why are your garments red, like those of one treading the winepress?” (Isaiah 63:2). Once more comes the answer, “I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me…. I looked, but there was no one to help, I was appalled that no one gave support; so my own arm worked salvation for me, and my own wrath sustained me” (Isaiah 63:3-5). This is a picture of the Son of God in the mighty conflict of redemption. The passion of His Father’s heart was passed on to Him, and with obedience and willing love He has hastened down to meet the awful emergency and lead the mightiest battle of the ages. The hate of Satan, the opposition of men, the power of earth and hell were all arrayed against Him. And as He pressed through to the cross, He cried in the intensity of His agony, “But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50). The curtain rises for a moment on that agony in Gethsemane and His sweat is as great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Once more He seems to sink in dying anguish on the cross, but again we hear the shout of victory, “It is finished” (John 19:30), and we see the rending gates of death as He comes forth a conqueror in His resurrection. He passes through the heavenly gates in His ascension glory, but even there the conflict does not end. Still He is regarded as the great High Priest and mediatorial King. Still He is leading the hosts of God as the Captain of our salvation, and still we hear the shout of the Conqueror, and we feel the falling tear of the Sufferer as “He is able to be touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15). Bending from the throne, He whispers to persecuting Saul, “Why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). Pleading at the closed heart of the sinner, He cries, “I stand at the door and knock” (Revelation 3:20). Yes, it is the passion of God still in the heart of Jesus, and the conflict must still go on until the last enemy is subdued and the last saint is gathered home. The Passion of the Holy Spirit
2. The Father passes on the burden to His beloved Son, and the Son in turn has transferred it to the Holy Spirit. It is His high vocation to finish the work which Jesus began on earth. Unlike the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit has no body of His own, and therefore His conflict is carried on in the body of Christ, which is the church. It is our hearts that must feel His agony. It is our lips that must breathe His prayer. It is our hands that must be responsive to His touch. And in all this we are but representing our Living Head, the Lord Jesus in heaven as well as our Living Heart, the Holy Spirit on earth. Now, the Spirit is constantly represented in the New Testament as a suffering, sympathizing Being. We can “grieve” Him, thus implying that His heart is sensitive to slight and to sorrow. The Apostle James tells us that “The spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely” (James 4:5). Therefore we can wound His jealous love by failing to meet His expectations and give to God our whole devotion. In a very remarkable passage in the eighth chapter of Romans, He is said to intercede “for us with groans that words cannot express” (Romans 8:26). These groanings represent the agony of prayer by which He works out in the hearts of His people the victories of grace. In yet another passage (Ephesians 6:10-18) we find Him leading the great conflict in the heavenly realms where the weapon is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God,” and the agency of victory is “[praying] in the Spirit on all occasions with all kind of prayers and requests.” So we find the Holy Spirit sharing the passion of God and all through the Christian age representing the suffering of heaven in the long agony of the redemption’s conflict. The Cooperation of the People of God
3. But it is through the hearts of His people that the Holy Spirit must work; and if we are not responsive to His touch, how can He work? If you had a paralyzed tongue and arms and limbs enfeebled by disease, your brain might think ever so wisely, your will might purpose ever so forcibly, but all would be futile if your tongue refused to speak a word, your feet to move to the message and your hands to fulfill the plan. So the Holy Spirit is hindered by the unresponsiveness of His people. And the agony is often caused chiefly by His struggle to awake our slumbering souls to understand His thought and to enter into His prayer. As we look back through the history of earnest lives, we find that the servants of God were sufferers. Jeremiah was like a sensitive harp echoing every sorrow of his suffering people. “Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears!” was his cry, “I would weep day and night for the slain of my people” (Jeremiah 9:1). Again he cries, “But if I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:9). We find the great Isaiah crying out as he watches the burden of Dumah, “At this my body is racked with pain, pangs seize me, like those of a woman in labor” (Isaiah 21:3). “‘Watchman, what is left of the night?’ The watchman replies, ‘Morning is coming, but also the night’” (Isaiah 21:11-12). Habakkuk, the poet prophet, pleaded with God, “Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy” (Habakkuk 3:2), and God answers his prayer by a hurricane of power. “His glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the earth” (Habakkuk 3:3). “The mountains saw you and writhed. Torrents of water swept by; the deep roared and lifted its waves on high” (Habakkuk 3:10). “You came out to deliver your people” (Habakkuk 3:13). We find Deborah raised up in Israel as the counselor of Barak; and while he leads the battle in the front, she waits in her tent in a greater conflict of prayer. As she prays, the whole panorama passes before her until the enemy is scattered and the shout of triumph rises over the land and Deborah is in it all. And as the cyclone in her soul subsides in peace, she breathes out her glad relief in the cry, “march on my soul; be strong” (Judges 5:21). It was thus that Elijah prayed on Carmel when his body was bowed together in soul travail until an answer came. It was thus that Paul described his spiritual sufferings for his flock. “I want you to know how much I am struggling for you” (Colossians 2:1). He explains it all in that profound passage, “I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24). And a little later, “I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Colossians 1:29). Writing to the Galatians he says, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth, until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). And to the Philippians he says, “God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:8). It is with reference to them he writes, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have” (Philippians 1:29-30). This is the very mystery of fellowship with Jesus. This is the deepest secret of power. This is the highest service that we can render to Christ and His church. Sometimes the prayer becomes a groan until we think our prayer is lost, but that is the very moment when it has overcome. Sometimes God lays upon a praying one the burden of a worker. While the one is active, the other is silent, and yet the silent force is the real power. Anna Shipton tells of having had upon her heart for some weeks a minister of Christ in a ceaseless agony of prayer. During that time, ignorant altogether of her prayer for him, he was led into the fullness of Christ and became the instrument in the salvation of scores of souls, and never knew till afterwards that the secret of it all was a silent, suffering life which was not even in outward contact with him. This was the secret of that wonderful revival that swept through the valleys of Wales. This was the secret of the power of David Brainerd, Jonathan Edwards and William Burns. It is this that is to set the church on fire with consecration and holiness. It is this that is to awaken a zeal which will give to her languid work something of the energy of the great enterprise of modern commerce. It is this that is to bring the great evangelistic and missionary campaign which will give the gospel as a witness to the world and prepare the way of our coming Lord. And it is this which is to set in motion the mighty forces of providence among the nations which will bring about “A ruin! A ruin! I will make it a ruin! It will not be restored until he comes to whom it rightfully belongs; to him I will give it” (Ezekiel 21:27). There was a man in ancient Babylon to whom God gave the name, “Oh, man of desires.” The secret of Daniel’s character was a great capacity for holy desire. He had insatiable longings for the kingdom of God, and he prayed them out for weeks together in an agony of love. What followed? The mightiest conqueror on earth was sitting upon the throne of the empire. Cyrus, sated with conquests, had nothing more to ask of earthly success. Suddenly there came to him a strange purpose and he issued a decree telling the world that the Lord God of heaven had commanded him to build Him a house in Jerusalem and to send back the captive Jews. But behind that decree and that band of returning captives and that restored city and temple, see that “man of desires” silently praying in Babylon. Or shall we look at a still grander vision? There is silence in heaven. The voice of God has hushed every angelic song, for the prayers of the saints are being brought in. They have been long accumulating; they have been treasured up in golden bowls. God sends for them to be presented at His throne, and as He breathes in their sweetness, mingled with the incense of the great High Priest Himself, no sound is permitted to disturb the sacred hour. But this is not all. The command is next given to take these prayers and pour them out upon the earth again; and as they are emptied back upon the world from which they came, lo, there are voices and thunderings and a great earthquake, and the mighty angels of the coming advent begin to sound the trumpets that proclaim that the consummation of the age has come. And come through prayer; come through the passion of holy desire, in loving, longing Christian hearts. Oh, that we might understand our high calling! Oh, that we might enter into the Holiest by His precious blood! Oh, that we might know the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings! Oh, that we might be saved from the curse of lukewarmness and “kindled with the passion fire of love divine”!