and there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee; for thou hast hidden thy face from us, and hast caused us to melt away through our iniquities.
Isaiah 64 is a long confession of failure, and verse 7 names the worst symptom of all: nobody prays. Why do people in trouble stop calling on the God who could help them?
The prophet's complaint is that the nation's ruined state moved no one to pray about it.
The prophet also had to complain that no one was moved as he should have been by this state of things, so as to call upon the name of God. No one took hold of God in prayer and pleading. The fact was that God, ruling them in holiness, had hidden His face from them. It was a sad state of affairs when no one would stir himself to take the place of an intercessor.
The verse also says God has hidden His face. That hiding was never a case of God being unable to hear.
Unbelieving men would make Israel's plight a ground of complaint and reproach against God. Either He did not care, so His ear never caught their cries, or He was powerless to rescue them. The true state of the case was that their sins had driven a wedge of separation between them and God. They were completely cut off from Him.
A person can say prayers while the heart stays asleep. God does not count that as prayer at all.
Prayer brings us directly before the great God. It is too sacred a duty to do half asleep, with a heavy eye or a drowsy heart. God complained of this: "There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you" (Isa. 64:7). He counts it no prayer where the heart is not stirred up and awake. How we behave in prayer shapes every part of our life. As a man is in prayer, so he is likely to be in everything else. If he is careless in praying, he is careless in listening and loose in how he lives. Prayer is the channel, in which the stream of divine grace, blessing, and comfort, runs from God into the heart; block the channel and the stream stops.
To take hold of God is to hold on to Christ Himself. One writer points to the twelve disciples, who stayed with Him when the crowd walked away.
When He was here on earth, a time came when many who claimed to follow Him "went back and walked no more with Him." But the twelve disciples "held Him, and would not let Him go." The Lord asks, "Do you want to go away as well?" And they reply, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." Now He is absent in glory. The love of many grows cold. Hands hang down and knees grow weak. Again many turn back and walk no more with Him. How urgent it is, then, that we should stir ourselves up "to take hold of Him" — and, having taken hold of Him in the affection of our hearts, refuse to let Him go.
The same complaint fits today. One writer turns the verse into a direct question about who will pray for God's work now.
Evil abounds under the profession of Christ's name, and even where the Spirit of God is working, wholehearted servants of God are all too few. Who stirs himself up to take hold of God about it? Who prays to the Lord of the harvest, that He will send out labourers into His harvest? — as the Lord Himself directed in Matthew 9:38. May God Himself stir us up, instead of hiding His face from us, if we fail to stir ourselves up in this matter.
If no one takes hold of God, hope has to come from God's side alone.
All hope therefore turns on His mercy and faithfulness to His gifts and calling. All must be in vain, unless the LORD tears the heavens open and comes down. He comes in the person of Him who had already come to suffer for all their iniquities, all their transgressions and all their sins, banishing their guilt and wiping it out for ever.
- Sin separates. The hidden face is not indifference. Sin drove a wedge between the people and God, and the ear that could hear turned away.
- Separation silences. The first casualty is prayer. No one calls, no one intercedes — a ruined people stop asking to be restored.
- Silence starves. God counts it no prayer when the heart is drowsy. Prayer is the channel of His grace, and a blocked channel stops the stream.
- Stirring is grip. To take hold is to hold Christ and refuse to let Him go, as the twelve did when others walked away.
- Mercy answers. When no one takes hold, hope rests wholly on His mercy — on the God who tears the heavens open and comes down to put guilt away for ever.
And now, Jehovah, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.
Isaiah 64 closes a long prayer. A broken people find nothing in themselves to plead, so they take hold of two relationships instead — Father and Potter — and rest their whole appeal there.
Why does a ruined people pray like this at all? Commentators trace the prayer back to God's own work in them.
It is clear then that God will work morally in Israel. Outward rescue for themselves is not enough. Neither is punishment of His enemies and theirs. Such things do not serve His great purposes, His own glory, or their real good. So the Spirit will exercise them in confession and in supplication before Him.
The two titles in the verse are the whole argument of the prayer. Faith reaches back to words God spoke at the start of Isaiah.
The very first words of Isaiah's prophecy were, "The Lord has spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me." Very well then, Jehovah had taken the place of Father to Israel. The faith of the prophet counted on that and based its appeal on it. What is more, Jehovah was not only Father to them but He was as a Potter also. Israel was only the clay in His hand.
Could Israel still claim God as Father after such a record? Commentators answer that the bond never rested on merit.
Israel did not deserve such a favour, that is clear. If they could ever have deserved it, they have certainly forfeited all claim to it. But it was not, and it is not, a question of deserving. The question is one of God's sovereignty; He formed the tie by His own will. He will never break it, nor will He stop owning it.
Being clay is not only a confession of weakness — it is a hope. The same picture is worked out later in Jeremiah, where a spoiled vessel is not thrown away.
A little later, in the days of Jeremiah, God made this plain. In Jeremiah 18 we read how God told him to go down to the potter's house and learn a lesson there. He saw the clay vessel "spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do." The Lord then told Israel that they were clay in His hand. He could do with them as seemed good in His sight. Staying with Israel, we know that God will make another vessel. That is what the Lord Jesus was showing Nicodemus in John 3. That which is born of the flesh — even Abraham's flesh — is flesh. Only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Only a born-again Israel will enter the Kingdom.
Does Father here mean what it means for a Christian? Commentators mark off Israel's standing from ours.
They were a nation taken from among the nations of the earth, brought, in a sense, near to God, and having the adoption — God a Father to them (Rom. 9:4; Isa. 64:8; Jer. 31:9). But all this still stood on the ground of a legal covenant, however different things are to be under the new covenant. That covenant brought only condemnation, and through it they could not really draw near. And if God was the Father of the nation, the people who made it up were still not, as such, His children.
What does taking the place of clay look like today?
What one longs for, what the heart yearns after, is to be just like clay in the hands of the potter. As our hymn puts it: "You are the Potter, we the clay." God's thought is that we should be as clay, completely passive, so that the Potter may leave the mark of His own beautiful hands upon us.
The shaping is neither quick nor comfortable.
The clay is in the Potter's hand. His fingers shape it, and it comes out spoiled. The clay needs more of His patient handling and skill. It is not yet smooth and even, nor soft to His hand. He crushes it time after time. The perfect vessel stood before His mind and purpose before His hand had taken the clay and placed it on the wheel.
- Confession first. The Spirit brings the people to own their ruin before He brings them to plead — the prayer is God's own work in them.
- Father as ground. Having nothing of their own, they appeal to a relationship God announced at the very start of Isaiah's prophecy.
- Sovereign tie. The bond was never earned, so forfeited merit cannot cancel it; God formed it by His own will and will not disown it.
- Potter's answer. The Potter does not throw the spoiled clay away. He makes it again into another vessel — for Israel, a nation born again.
- Our place. The same words become a believer's prayer: lie passive in His hands, through the crushing, until the Potter is seen in the vessel.