I'm very thankful for music, too. And this has always been a singing church. Back in the Tanglewood Baptist days, it was a singing church, a church that rejoiced to not just hear the word, but to sing praise back to God. And we love hearing that here today. So if you'll turn back again to Isaiah chapter 63, Isaiah 63 and 64 we're looking at together. I am curious, this is not for a guilt trip or anything other than that sort, but I'm curious, how many were not here this morning? Alright, well that is enough for me to say. I just wanted to know whether there would be a good purpose in me taking time for your sakes to read the entire passage again, and I think we will. I see it's your tradition to stand when we read the Scriptures, so If we'll do that, I would like to read from Isaiah 63 verse 15 through 64 verse 12, which is, even though it crosses a chapter line, it is one thought. It's one continuous prayer. 63, 15, starting there. Look down from heaven and see from your holy 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 and 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. 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. When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. For from of old no one has heard or perceived by the year, no one 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 are angry and we sinned. In our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? 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. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you, for you have hidden your face from us and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. But now, O Lord, you are our father. We are the clay, and you are our potter. We are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. 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, O Lord? Will you keep silent and afflict us so terribly? Amen. Please be seated. When we have prayed as we heard of this morning, and that is trying to join our hearts with a prayer like this, and when I mean we have prayed as we heard this morning, not just once, but when we have been praying this way, out of a burdened heart, as a way of life, it's exhausting. It's almost exhausting just to read that passage when you take it seriously. You can imagine praying that day in and day out as a way of life and it can even be discouraging. The man who prays in this way had better have a strong faith in God because so praying depending upon what he sees come to pass it can lead to greater faith and greater confidence in God or it can lead to an onslaught of doubt if God does not answer him favorably and much of how he will make spiritual progress or regress or backslide depends upon his faith in the God that he's calling on. In other words, as you probably already know and don't need me to tell you, perseverance in prayer takes everything you've got and plenty more. We need all the resources that are given to us in the grace of Christ to keep at it. And so we saw this morning that in verses 15 through 19 He openly grieved and mourned at the absence of God's presence in his nation, at the evidences that God was judging his nation, the same way we might feel at times looking around at our nation. And then in verses 1 and 2 of chapter 64, he cried out, he made an appeal to God to come, to show up, to work, to work in a powerful way, and to persuade the peoples that He is God. Well, if you're going to pray that way, as I said, and you're waiting on the Lord for that kind of answer, you're grieved over the absence of God's power and presence being seen in your nation, and you keep appealing to God to revive us again so that your people will rejoice in you, you're going to need some source of joy-giving encouragement to keep you going and to keep you persevering in prayer like that. And where this section goes next, where our man who's praying goes next in his thoughts, is probably a pointer to something exactly like that. He needed encouragement. He needed a source of joy to keep him praying. And where he found it was, and this is my third point compared to those that we were talking of this morning, he goes to think about a recollection of God's power manifested in the past. He encouraged himself that it's still worth praying because he remembered what God had done in the past. And that's from verses 3 and 4. Just reread those again because this is where we left off in the morning. He says, verse 3 and 4, When you did awesome things that we did not look for. Some of your versions will say, When you did awesome acts that we did not expect. You came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. For from of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no one has seen a God besides you who acts for those who wait for him." You notice the past tense there. We saw things that you did. You did awesome things. You came down. Now the writer might not have even been speaking of times that he had lived through. It's very possible the way that Jewish people thought, the way that Hebrew people thought about these things, he could be recalling times that he had heard about. in the great stories of Israel. Times that he calls from of old, verse 4. Times of old. Times when God had done awesome things, he says. You know, now and then, there's a proper place for the word awesome. Kind of got overused by youth in our era, in our time. Everything's awesome. This pizza's awesome, you know. Well, overuse of awesome. But there's a proper use of it. There was a time, he says, when God did awesome, awe-inspiring, shocking things that took our breath away. That we did not expect. Outcomes that even the people praying did not anticipate. Maybe so much more than they had even prayed for. Way beyond what they had even asked. More than had occurred to them in the language of Paul. More than they ever asked or thought. As he said in Ephesians 3. Well, brothers and sisters, it can be especially valuable to you When you are earnestly praying for revival and asking God to powerfully work, it can be a help to you to keep going if you will keep track of some of those times when God did awesome things. Remember answers to prayer. Remember those times when God did more than you thought he would, when he did differently than you thought he would. There were times in this very building, in my own pastoral ministry here, back in the 80s and 90s, that I got discouraged. And God did some striking things. He saved some remarkable people. He saved some very interesting people who went on to serve Him in dramatic ways. And so it makes me wonder at times, how many answers to prayer like that have I forgotten? That I've just lost track of. Striking though they were at the time, amazing, awesome things that God had done at the time. I wonder how often it passed me by altogether and I did not, maybe a matter of weeks later, I ceased cherishing what God had done. Sometimes, if we had really seen what He did, it would be like what the writer says there at the end of verse 3. Some of the awesome things that we did that you did that we had not looked for was notice verse 3, you came down the mountains quaked at your presence. In other words, there in verses 1 and 2 he prays that God will shake the mountains with his presence because he's saying I remember a time when he did. Are some answers to prayer more like that than we think they are? I want to show you something interesting. After I say this, You may spend a lot of time praying that God will shake mountains, and you may live your whole lifetime and not see a mountain shake. But I don't think that's what it's all about. That's figurative language for something bigger than seeing the mountain shake, okay? Look at Psalm 18. Keep your bookmark or something there in Isaiah 64, because we're not moving off our camp. We're staying right there. But to illustrate the point, Something in Psalm 18 really stunned me at one time. David, we can't study this whole Psalm because, you know, we're studying Isaiah 64 tonight, so we haven't got time to do this one too, but King David asks here in, well, verses six. Yeah, just verse six. Think about this. Psalm 18, verse 6, "...in my distress I called upon the Lord, to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ear." And he realized, reading the first six verses, he's in trouble. There are people that consider him an enemy. They're treating him badly. He needs the Lord to be his fortress. And so he says, "...I was distressed, I called upon God, and I cried out for help." Look what he says is the answer. verse 7. Then the earth reeled and rocked. The foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked because he was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils and devouring fire from his mouth. Glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens and came down. Thick darkness was under his feet. He rode on a cherub and flew. He came swiftly on the wings of the wind. He made darknesses covering his canopy around him. Thick clouds dark with water. Out of the brightness before him, hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds. Well, that would be quite a day if you had an answer to a prayer like that, don't you think? You ever pray to get out of trouble, have all that stuff happen? The foundations of the earth are exposed. I just asked you to get me out of trouble. I didn't want the whole world blown up. So, what happened here? What is David saying? Well, I think David is recording that as the... He's not saying, you know, I asked God to deliver me and he shook the entire created world to pieces. No, that's not what he's saying. He is saying, you know, I now understand that when I prayed, God went to work. And he puts in a metaphor in the figure of speech how dramatic that answer really was. Maybe the earth didn't shake under his feet, but he says to me, God delivered me in such a powerful way, it was an earth-shaking answer. That's what's being communicated there. And that's the same thing that we're getting there in Isaiah 64. Yes, you may pray all your life that God will shake mountains and not see it, but we want to see God work powerfully for His cause, for His glory. That's the point in this case. Alright, back to Isaiah 64 as I said. In verse 4, this phrase is going to be familiar to you when he says, "...from of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no one has seen a God besides you who acts for those who wait for Him." You think, that sounds like something I've heard somewhere else. Well, it is. The Apostle Paul probably is quoting that in his Greek version of it in 1 Corinthians 2. When he says, I have not seen nor heard the great things that God can do, that God does do for those who love Him. We know he is such a God, and so did they. And what he's saying in this case is that people who serve other gods, those who are servants of idols, they have never seen or heard of a God who acts with impressive power like this. They don't see this kind of thing. Other religions claim that their God is active, but have any of them seen these kinds of answers to prayer? and God working powerfully to change things, their God's doing or saying anything in their lifetimes which is powerful. As you know, the God of Islam and so many other gods on the world scene which are nothing but idols, they don't do anything for their disciples. Their disciples always have to perform for them. They have to live up to their laws. It's all about your performance. It's not about what God does for you. It's about what you do for God. And you just hope and pray that you've done enough for him to accept you at the end. That's how Islam operates. In the Christian gospel, we say, no, we look to a God who has done all for us and given it to us in the gospel. What a difference. What a marvelous difference. They have not seen a God like ours. And you see, this is a vivid reminder that so much of our life is lived by faith. We have to trust in our Lord who will work in His time and in degrees that You know, at times in remarkable striking degrees, but then we might not see an act like that again for some time. But he still acts on behalf of the one who waits for him. Sometimes, as the book of Paul's letter to the Hebrews reveals, chapter 11, when he talks about those who waited, and they waited on the promise, and the promises that were given to them in some cases, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they didn't even see some of those promises fulfilled in their whole lifetime. And so they passed it on to their son, you wait for it. And he passed it on to the grandson, you wait for it. In other words, sometimes answers to your most longing, intense prayers might come after you're gone. Might be realized in your family lineage later on. Does that make it not worth your while to pray? I like to ask, have you got anything better to do? Can you think of something else that's better to do? You're not seriously going to say it might be a waste of time because God will use up your whole life praying for something that will come to pass at a later time. No. There's nothing that would be a better use of my time doing regardless of how long God makes us wait for the answer. But I only mention that because Hebrews 11 defines faith in that way, as ones who kept waiting on God, kept pursuing God, kept clinging to the promises even though they didn't see it come to pass. But still, anyone who is eagerly in continuance on God in prayer and looks to see Him respond, you will see answers to your prayers. But you've got to remember them. You need to take time to recall them. So how do you encourage yourself this way? As Isaiah does, do try to recall the awesome things that God has done that you did not expect. Record memorable answers to prayer. They don't have to be earth-shattering. They don't have to all be life-changing. They just have to be significant and something that you can say, I asked the Lord and He did this. He worked. Do not let God's answers to your prayers go forgotten and become ignored for they'll do your faith little good if you don't remember them. But what's next? That's verses 3 and 4. That is when he encourages himself by recalling God's power that was shown in the past. But as someone who is admitting so much that we lack God's presence, we lack the nearness and power that we want to see, he comes to that point where he confesses, we know this is due to our sinful unworthiness. It's not that God's forsaken us. He hasn't really forsaken us at all. But we are sinfully unworthy of sensing sometimes the blessing of His presence. And so verses five through seven are a confession of our sinful unworthiness. Let's read those three verses, five to seven. He starts it on a positive note. You meet him who joyfully works righteousness. Those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you are angry and we sinned. In our sins we have been a long time and shall we be saved? 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. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you. For you have hidden your face from us and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. So he starts with those promising positive words. You meet him who joyfully works righteousness. But he's about to admit, but that's not us. We haven't been like that. Israel hasn't been like that. We haven't been rightfully walking in righteousness and we haven't been remembering your ways. You've done awesome things that we did not expect and we just forgot and neglected to praise you for them. And before we get to their confession, let's pause at least long enough to think about how gracious that is of God to be recognized for us to understand that He is the one who actually joyfully meets the one who meets up with the one who joyfully works righteousness. How gracious that shows him to be. Merely for being who and what we ought to be. Happy to obey God. Happy to do the will of God, which is in our best interest anyway at all times. He says for doing that God draws near and meets you. Merely for walking as we ought to walk, thinking as we ought to think, giving him credit and thanks for his works. He says, you draw near and you meet with those people. Isn't that gracious of God to do that? But unfortunately, he says, here's us. Well, we have sinned and we have been in our sins for a very long time. And the result being, he says, you were angry. So there's an admission here that our prayers have not been answered because we have made God angry. Do we really have grounds to expect God to meet with us and draw near to us and hear us when He has said that the one who hungers and thirsts after righteousness will be filled? You draw near to the ones that draw near to you, working righteousness. But He says we have been the opposite of that and He says unfortunately we have to admit we've been the opposite of that for a long time. In verse 6 He declares that we're like ones who are unclean. a very awkward word in our language that we would say as a very forceful way to speak of someone who is very, very dirty. We might say impure. It's the idea of someone who is so far from being approved, so far from being recognized as righteous, that he is deserving of a curse and deserving of being rejected by a holy God. And he says, and even though men observing us, they think we're righteous. We have what appear to be righteous deeds. People look at us and say, well, you're, you're pretty good. You're better than the average guy and all of that. He says, no, in our sight, in your sight, God, we're polluted. We're filthy and we know it. We don't even qualify. Our good deeds don't even qualify as righteous. They just look good to men. That's why verse 6, there's a phrase there that you probably have either used in your witnessing or you have heard other believers use in their witnessing quite frequently to make the point to non-believers that even our best works, our best deeds can't save us. And it's that phrase about we have become like one who is unclean and our righteous deeds, they're all like a polluted garment. But what it means here in the context is even something more than that. He's saying effectively to the nation of Israel, you know what? Even the good deeds that you do, the worship that you offer, the obedience you present, it's not from the heart. It's all rote. It's going through the routine. You're mouthing the words. Because it's not in your heart, he says, God looks on it and says, you know what? It's still dirty. It's not righteous worship. He says, we've gotten in the habit, if he was to fill this out more with comment, he would be saying, we've gotten in the habit of singing the Psalms and bringing our sacrifices and all of those acts of worship, and without hardly any heart thought, we're just going through the motions. And that, he says, that makes it polluted. Because you've been very clear, you want more than that. You want the devotion of our hearts, not just the actions. And we're not giving our hearts. And then in the latter part of verse 6, he moves to less graphic terms, but equally effective to make the point. When he says, we fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. Well, you've seen that. You know exactly what that looks like in the fall. We're like leaves falling off a tree. The leaves are dead and brown now. They're in complete contrast to being fruit-bearing and beautiful and green like they are now. They don't look this way now. They look brown and dead. And so what happens to those leaves? He says, well, the wind blows and they just blow down the street. And they fill up your yard and you have to rake them. And it's an apt illustration here for the leaves are helplessly blown about by the wind. And you know what? Continuance in sin has this definite effect. It just not only increases the death, but it increases the instability. You're bound to be blown anywhere. And one cannot determine his own course anymore. First, men choose not to control themselves. Soon, they find, I'm out of control. And I'm being blown around by the wind. And so he would say, yes, really, can people in that dilemma really expect to have their prayers answered when they're formal about their worship, thoughtless about it, not giving their heart, lacking in fervency or real concern for the glory of God? We pray, but do not call on your name. We don't rouse ourselves to take hold of you. We just say the words of a prayer. We don't pray as people who really need God. The fact is, and you know this to be so if you know lost people who try to pray. You know how often lost people you've known who try to pray give up after a while, and they'll eventually tell you, their Christian friend, that, I don't do that anymore, it didn't work. Nothing happened. But the lost, you see, they not only make prayers that are not heard, but like these people in this passage in Isaiah, they aren't even seriously praying. It's very ritual. He says, no one among us is calling on your name, no one rouses himself to take hold of you, and so this is a further evidence of how desperate their condition of bondage to sin is. He says, not only are we really immersed in sin, really in bad sinful habits, deeply ingrained in us in this way, but we're not even concerned enough to cry out to God about it and say, please change us! Our spiritual lethargy is so potent, we've ceased to even ask God to fix it. We melt, he says in verse 7. You've made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. It's just a plain word for when wax turns to liquid. When what is solid has softened. It's a picture of weakness. All the inner resilience and strength has vanished and we're unable to muster the resources to do better. Sin is powerful. It changes us. It defiles us. It weakens us. It sets our course in a direction that we did not wish to go. And he is wise enough to know, you know, we, this author is wise enough to know we don't need to be delivered from our enemies. We need to be delivered from ourselves, from our own hearts. We need God to reshape us. Now, in this case, the sinful habits of the nation are so endemic, so pervasive, so habitual, there's a question that he raises. He actually raises the question about his own people. Can we even be saved? Are we even saved people? there are grounds for hope because I want you to want to make sure that if you are a person who prays, if you are someone who doesn't just go through the rituals and motions of worship, if you're serious about walking with God, I want you to understand this. The one praying this prayer, he's among the people that he says this about. He himself is praying fervently and he's saying nobody prays fervently. So what does that mean? Well, he's observing this about the rest of the nation. He's praying fervently. He's asking this. And so he comes back to this gospel reality and recognizes that the Lord has plucked some out of the fire and has made some to call out. And he realizes there's a gospel truth that we all know that, you know, did merciful answers to our prayers ever depend upon us being perfect anyway? They did not. Is there only hope for God to work with power when we have been perfect saints? No. Can we cry out from the depth of our misery and weakness and failures? And even when we've been guilty of some of the sins of our own culture and say, man, I've sometimes walked in an ungodly way like the ungodly people around me, but I'm not one of them. There's still hope for you. How do we rightfully apply a passage like this to ourselves as believers, not under the old covenant, not members of the nation of Israel who are constantly, we're told in the scriptures that we're a nation of people with hard hearts. who were not interested in obeying the commands of God. How do we rightly apply this as members of the New Covenant? New Covenant believers, as members of a kingdom and covenant in which Hebrews 8 says, we all know Him. We all have His commandments written on our hearts. By His grace we're different. We know that we're accepted in the Beloved in Christ. That is settled. That's not in question. We're His. We have a heart after God. Well, if that's you, you know what? You're not the nation being prayed for in this passage, you're the man praying for the wicked nation. That could be you. And those whom Isaiah is describing are the equivalent to the self-made religion around us in the nation, but we need to be urgently and fervently seeking the face of God for them the way that Isaiah does for his people. And his burden should be our burden. And so despite the many evils of the nation, Isaiah finally closes this prayer, as we will, with verses 8 through 12, which is his final appeal to God, a final desperate appeal to God to work, regardless of the wickedness of his nation. He accepts the righteousness of the judgment of God on them. He accepts that we are just the clay. You know, to say, God, you are the potter, we are the clay. That is, you've got to understand, that's not just a sweet admission that God's the Creator. That's an admission that, you know what? You have the right to do with us and to mold us and shape us into whatever you want to. And you have a right to bring this to whatever outcome you want to. If you want to mold us into something useful and permanent, you can. And if you want to tear us apart and start over, you can do that too. You've got the right. And so he accepts the righteousness of God's work among them, and he only asks, he only asks, Lord, please don't let it go on to our extermination. Please don't let it go on there. He doesn't ask that even the severity of God dealing with his nation be suspended or stopped, but he does ask that the extremity of it not be permanent, and that it not be, that it be alleviated. Because, he says, Look in verse 9. Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. Surely you'll not go so far as to repudiate the relationship you have with us. We are your people. Even though you're justifiably angry with us. Even though we admit having done wrong. When he says, Don't remember iniquity forever. What does that mean? Of course, God remembers everything forever. He's never forgotten anything. But when he says not to remember iniquity, it doesn't mean just being aware of it or knowing of it, but he means please don't keep inflicting wrath because of it. Please don't keep pouring out punishment because of it. May what we have suffered be enough? Could it be enough? Would you bring it to an end and revive us again so that we walk with you? History indicates often, and if you've been a student of church history you know this to be true, that God allows His people to go through great suffering. God will send His people through suffering for His purposes, for their sanctification. But also it reveals that He's not willing to allow this to go on and on and on without intervention. And we're always warranted in asking God to please treat us better as almost unjust as it sounds to ask. We may ask God, please treat us better than our sins deserve because that's grace. We're just asking Him to be gracious. And so He calls out for that. We still call on You because You are our Father. This is one of the only places you'll find, by the way, in the whole Old Testament, where one of the Lord's people speaks to God in the way that you and I are accustomed to speak to God all the time. Our Father. You didn't hear that a lot in the Old Testament. You may say that every time you pray, because you and I are instructed by the Lord in the Lord's Prayer, when He said, pray this way, our Father, who art in heaven. thinking of ourselves as not just the obedient servants of God, not just as slaves of God, but as children of God. We're the fruit of your hand. We're the fruit of your life. Without you, we can do nothing. You brought us into being. And so may we ask you who have formed us and birthed us and made us your own, may we ask, do not be so angry that you forsake us, O Lord. It's a request for that basic gospel blessing again that we know we need every day of our lives. Forgive us our sins. And it's put in verse 9 as remember not our iniquity forever. And that's just another facet of what the Lord Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our sins. I'm going to tell you something. I like to bring this up because it's so important to emphasize to people. A teaching went around the churches a few years ago from someone who wrote a book quite persuasively about the subject of the forgiveness of sins. And he had an effective book and it impacted many people, but all I can tell you is the author must have had a very immature relationship with God, at best if he had one at all. Why do I say that? Because he said in his book, the thesis of the book was that since God forgave us all of our sins when we first came to Jesus, when we first gave our lives to Christ, He forgave every sin, past, present and future, all of our sins, He said, that means you don't ever need to ask God to forgive you again because it's done. You don't need to ask that anymore. In fact, you shouldn't even bring it up. If you have faith, you just claim the forgiveness that you were given when you were saved and it's done. You don't have to ask God for forgiveness at all. And you know what? That's just another sorry form of the idea that we do ourselves harm by any negative confession. And that's a terrible lie. And it flies in the face of Jesus teaching us that just as daily bread we ask for, even though your fridge and pantry are full, you can ask God for daily bread. Because if you eat today, it's because God decided you would. And you ask God for daily grace to resist temptation, so you ask God for daily forgiveness of sin. And if we were just supposed to grab onto our initial one-time forgiveness that we were given in Christ and never bring up our sins again, then tell me what in the world was King David thinking about as an old man when he prayed in one of the Psalms, don't hold against me the sins of my youth. There's a Psalm that's actually titled, The Prayer of an Old Man, and he says, don't hold against me, Lord, the sins that I committed when I was young. He thinks back 30, 40, 50 years and remembers stupid things he did, sinful things he did, and they bother him again. And you know what he does? He asks God again, forgive me for that. That's how you got to handle it. That's how you've got to deal with it. Every time your sins come to your mind and distress you, the best way for you to resolve that is go right to God and say, you know, I have been a sinner all my life. Please forgive me. Forgive me. And I know you already forgave me for that, but it'll get the guilt off your plate and get the guilt off your mind and remind you of how gracious He is and how He has forgiven you every time you ask. So back to verse 10. Moving on down. When he says, "...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." Terrible ruins. There's been desolation. We don't know what caused this. We don't know what he's describing exactly here in the way of an incident. Have you ever seen pictures of certain neighborhoods of Detroit? You know, there's a meme out there that talks about, you know, the difference between, you know, how, I don't know if I can describe this correctly, but it shows, you know, Hiroshima in 1945, after the atomic bomb was dropped, and then Hiroshima in 2017, and it's a prosperous, glittering city with beautiful buildings. And then they'll show you Detroit, 1945, and it's a prosperous, beautiful city with glittering buildings. And then they'll show you Detroit, 2017, And it's a train wreck. It looks terrible. And you say, well, here's what happens when you have these kinds of policies for 70 years. Apparently having policies, a government that interferes with business so much for 70 years has a worse impact than an atomic bomb. And a more lasting impact than an atomic bomb. Flint, Michigan. Look that up on Google sometime. You'll find there are whole neighborhoods that have returned to nature. They've become earth again. You can't even find the houses anymore due to economic miseries and intense unemployment problems and homes abandoned, one home after another after another, and a whole housing development is gone, and then another one, and another one. It really happens. My wife Naomi and I saw it hiking an Ozark trail last fall. There was a zinc mining town called Rush, Arkansas. It was once the second largest city in Arkansas after Little Rock. It was the wealthiest city in the state per capita, the highest income per capita in the state. And I'll drive you there sometime and you can hardly find it. It's gone. And you walk around there in the woods and you'll find an occasional rock chimney or foundation somewhere if you know where to look. It's mostly gone. It's rubble, and it's gone back to nature. What's he saying here is what I'm illustrating with you is this spiritual neglect bears the same kind of tragic fruit. What was once thriving, your holy cities, they're a wilderness, he says. Jerusalem, which was the joy of the whole earth, a beautiful city, it's a desolation, he says. And it can happen one by one. What was once a thriving heart and voice which lifted vigorous praise to God can become a soul that never speaks such things. Well, you don't want to get there. And in this case, yes, he has confessed their sins. He has abraded himself and themselves for failing to be the people that they should. But we mustn't ever stop there. He calls out to God. He says, Lord, this is not really going to be turned around by our own efforts. Look at verse 12. Will you restrain yourself at these things, O Lord? Will you keep silent and afflict us so terribly? Ask God to work. Ask God to turn that around. If your own heart and soul is a wreck, don't just try to fix it yourself. Ask God to turn it around. If you feel like your nation's a wreck, and we know it is, ask God to revive. If your church is in need of revival, maybe somebody in your family goes to another church that you say, boy, I'm glad I don't go there. That church is a mess. That church is in need of revival. They need a pastor who preaches God's Word. Pray for them. Pray the Lord will restore. You know He can work in power. You know that He can do it. Why do we hear so few prayers that resemble this at all? Why do we hear so few prayers that resemble this prayer in Isaiah at all? I'm afraid it's because so few are taught biblically to pray. and how to pray biblically. Is praying just a matter of requesting things for myself? Requesting my own favors, my own gifts, my own healings? God, give me this. God, fix that. God, take care of this for me. God, please give me this better job, or this house that I want, or the girlfriend that I want. Is it just all a matter of that? You know what? What I've got to point out to you is we see so few prayers like this because we see so many prayers, in which people pray as James chapter 4 says never gets any answers. Remember when James said in chapter 4, why do you pray and not receive what you ask for? Remember his answer? He says you pray and you don't get what you ask for because you're just asking for the things you desire. In other words, a pretty sure route to having God ignore your prayers is have your prayer list be all about you. You may as well ask God to just turn the other way and not listen to you at all. If your prayer list is just gonna be about, Lord, do this or that or the other for me. No, far better. What we need to do is we need to pray the things that he told us to pray for. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Exalt your name, hallowed be your name. Pray that God will work in ways that glorify himself. And when you pray about your own life, pray that your life will glorify Him. When you pray about your own mission, pray that God will call you to what He wants you to do. This man, Isaiah, does seem to have captured that our life is meant to be lived for the glory of God, not for us. And that if Jerusalem was to be restored, They had to turn back to the Lord and ask him, glorify yourself in this city. And eventually they did, as we know. And they returned from that Babylonian captivity. They did glorify the Lord. Well. I pray this will be useful to you today. It's been a privilege to be here and worship with your church. Study this passage more, and I encouraged you this morning, go on and read chapters 65 and 66 and see how encouraging this entire section really is and the outcome of it. So, brother, where's the brother who closes with him? There you are, brother. I'll just let you come and lead us in a closing song. Thank you.