Filthy Rags or We Are Your People

Read Isaiah 64:1-9

How many think that the end of the age can’t be far off now?  We are obviously closer to that point than we were yesterday, but who thinks it’s getting really close now?

I’m going to upset a few people.  I don’t believe you.  Why?

How many have increased their evangelistic efforts by 2 or 3 or 20 times what they were?  If you know that there is not much time left, what better thing to do with our time than reach out to those that are perishing.

There should be a lot of dissonance between thinking, “It can’t be long now,” and not increasing our evangelistic efforts.  Our minds should never be at peace harboring those oppositional thoughts.

The Hebrew people wanted God to come down to the earth and do mighty acts and put the pagans in their place.  They knew well the history of what God had done to free them from slavery in Egypt.

Actually, they didn’t just want God to come to earth and do mighty acts once again; they wanted him to rip through the heavens and make a grand entry.

There is no other God like him.  He acts on behalf of those who wait for him.  Understand, that this is a God who is sovereign, mighty, holy, and who has created everything that we know; yet, he is and has always been a God of compassion.

He is always there for those who seek him and wait upon him.  He is always there for those who know no other gods.

Oh, if he would but rip open the heavens and put the world right, right now.

But, then, there is that sin thing.  There is that rebelliousness that we can’t seem to shake.  There is that constant missing the mark that seems to define us more than anything else.

We are but filthy rags.  I don’t know anything that can motivate you any more for Christmas that the thought of being filthy rags.  “We’re filthy rags, we’re filthy rags, how filthy are our rags.”

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to live as God’s Chosen People in the age before Christ came?  What everyone knew about the one true God came through you.  It would be like living in a glass house. 

So the question would be, would we remain faithful to God and stick out like a sore thumb in the world; or, would we do our best to blend in with the world?  Maybe nobody will notice that we are different.

The choice of God’s chosen people in Isaiah’s time was that they tried to blend in.  The one true God was ignored while the ways of the world prevailed.

OBTW—God was really angry about this.  The favor that his people had enjoyed was being withdrawn, at least for a time.  Ungodly nations would have their way with not just Jerusalem but all of God’s Chosen People.

It was as if God turned his face away from his people.  They had enjoyed the world so much that God let them know the ways of the world.  Those ways are seldom merciful and compassionate.

God was still at work in this people.  They had not been abandoned.  Testimonies were very evident in the captivity of this age, but the nation of Israel and Judah—the full compliment of God’s Chosen were taken from or driven from the land that God had preserved for them.  That land was now desolate.

Some of God’s people had seen this coming.  Perhaps they had believed their prophets.  They had the savvy to know that their leaders were not listening to God’s prophets and they fled the land before the invaders came.

Isaiah cries out for his people.  We are wasting away.  We shrivel up like a dead leaf.  We have angered you.  You have turned you face away from us.  We are all unclean.  We are like filthy rags and deserve everything that you are sending our way.

We don’t even have the courage to come to you in prayer anymore.  How can we be saved?

But, yet, there is this one thing that we have going for us.  You are our Father.  For everything that we turned into a mess, you are still our Father.

You are the Potter.  We are the clay. 

It is interesting that Jeremiah would go down this same path—use the same metaphor—in his prophecy of this same age.

You are the Potter.  We are the clay. 

We are a mess.  We are a total mess.  Filthy rags is the best representation of who we are.  Other metaphors might have been more accurate and condemning, but we will go with filthy rags.

What can we do?

We know from Jeremiah that the Potter can remake the marred pot in any way that he desires.

We know from King David, when he had made a mess of things with Bathsheba and Uriah and just neglecting his leadership duties, that only God could make him right.  Remember his words from Psalm 51:  Lord, create in me a clean heart.

David asked God to create in him a pure heart.  He said that he had messed things up so badly that he could not fix his own mess.  Only God could make him as he once was.  Only God could give him a pure heart.

Isaiah cries out to God.

·       Hold back your anger

·       Don’t hold our sins against us forever

·       We are but clay in your hands

Isaiah confessed that “all were unclean;” yet he asked God to remember that we are your people.  Consider this ninth verse once more.

Lord, do not be terribly angry

or remember our iniquity forever.

Please look—all of us are Your people!

Sometimes the only thing that we seem to have going for us is that we are his people.  When everything that we do seems to rebel against God, God is still faithful.  Isaiah’s plea was to a God whose love was greater than his anger.

Let’s leave the glass house of God’s Chosen People from centuries ago and come to the glass house of the disciple of Jesus Christ.  You won’t need to image this part.  You live there.

You may or may not be aware of this on a daily basis, but you live in a glass house.  People are watching.  You are unique. 

When Rick and I went to Africa and got out of the metro areas to western Kenya and eastern Uganda, it was not uncommon for people to point at us and say, “white people.”  They were not being disrespectful.  We were unique.  We were something that you didn’t just see every day.

One father pointed us out to what we figured was his son.  Perhaps, he had never seen white people before.  Perhaps, the father had told his son about white people, but his son was skeptical until then, when he saw two of them—of us.

We who follow Jesus are unique as well.  We are different from the world.  We are God’s people.  I ask the same question now that I asked when I prompted you to put yourself in the time and place of God’s Chosen People.

So the question is, will we remain faithful to God and stick out like a sore thumb in the world; or, will we do our best to blend in with the world?  Maybe nobody will notice that we are different.

It is the difference of just existing or being people who have a mission. 

Just existing or on a mission?

God’s Chosen People had become a mess—an absolute mess.  They were as filthy rags.  They were deserving of God’s wrath full strength, but they had one thing in their favor.  They were God’s people.

Later, the Hebrews would abuse this standing as an excuse to do whatever they wanted.  They would proclaim that they were sons of Abraham and that living a holy life was not as important as some thought.  That’s the world that Jesus came into as a babe in a manger.

Today, so many in this world are a mess—as filthy rags.  Some have professed Christ but apparently that profession seemed to be lip service as their lives remain unchanged.  But a profession of faith is a profession of faith and in that moment, the man or woman became one of God’s people.

We who are growing in grace understand the power of confession.  We understand the assurance of pardon for those who faithfully confess.  We know that no matter how filthy we may have become, God can and will create in us a clean heart.

Why would he do that?  We are his people.

His anger burns against our sin but not against us.  He knows that we are broken without him.  He knows that only he can make us the people he wants us to be.  He longs for us to embrace his way over that of the world.

So do we just throw up our arms and say, “OK God, You are doing the driving.  I hope that you don’t make any mistakes for me today?”

No.  We say, “You are the Potter.  I am the clay.  I embrace that relationship.”

You have loved me long before I learned to love you.

You spilled your blood for me long before I knew the extent of my sin.

Your grace exceeds anything that I can imagine.

I am going to mess up again.  I might even hit the filthy rags mark.

But I know that I am yours.

I will seek you and petition you to create in me a clean heart each and every time that I transgress.

I don’t want to sin, but I am so, so human and flawed.

I will believe your promise—your assurance of my forgiveness.

I am yours.

I thank you that your anger that burned against my sin was satisfied on a cross on a hill called Golgotha.

I am yours.

I will confess to you every day for I want nothing unclean to make its home in my life.

Clean me daily, Lord.  I am yours.+

Amen.