For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him.
—Isaiah 64:4
The previous verses in Isaiah, especially Isaiah 63:15, refer to the low state of God’s people. The prayer has been poured out, “Look down from heaven” (verse 15). “Why hast Thou…hardened our heart from Thy fear? Return for Thy servants’ sake” (verse 17). And 64:1–2, “Oh that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that Thou wouldest come down…as when the melting fire burneth…to make Thy name known to Thine adversaries!” Then the plea from the past, “When Thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, Thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at Thy presence” (verse 3). “For”—this is now the faith awakened by the thought of things we looked not for—“neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him.”
God alone knows what He can do for His waiting people. As Paul expounds and applies it: “The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11). “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit” (verse 10).
The need of God’s people is as urgent in our days as it was in the time of Isaiah. There is now, as there was then, a few who seek after God with their whole hearts. But, if we look at Christendom as a whole, at the state of the church of Christ, there is infinite cause for beseeching God to rend the heavens and come down. Nothing but a special interposition of almighty power will avail. Unless God comes down “as when the melting fire burneth…to make [His] name known to [His] adversaries” (Isaiah 64:2), our labors are comparatively fruitless.
What is to be done? There is only one thing. We must wait upon God. And what for? We must cry, “Oh that Thou wouldest rend the heavens…[and] come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence” (Isaiah 64:1). We must ask and expect, that God will do unlooked-for things. We must set our faith on a God of whom men do not know what He has prepared for them who wait for Him. The wonder-doing God, who can surpass all our expectations, must be the God of our confidence.