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"O that you would rend the heavens and come down," prays the prophet Isaiah. What a preposterous prayer. Isaiah expects God to come to him. He expects God to come down out of His high and lofty abode and enter into this corrupt and stinking world. The world that God made and declared to be very good, but which we, by our sin have turned into something that God could never bless, Isaiah summons the living God to come down from heaven and clean up this mess that we've made.

What presumption. What arrogance. It takes a lot of guts to ask God to come down from heaven to do 'awesome things.' Who does Isaiah think that he is to ask such a thing? And, who does Isaiah think that God is that he should expect God to stoop so low and humble Himself so totally as to come down from heaven.

Any decent and self-respecting God would tell Isaiah to fix his own mess. 'You made the mess. You clean it up. And don't bother me again until you've got your life and my creation back to the condition in which I gave it to you.' At the very least, a God worthy of calling Himself a worthy God should expect to be properly persuaded to come down. 'What will you give me that will want me to come to you?' 'What will you do for me that will motivate me to do something for you?' Certainly He could not be expected to offer His services cheaply, let alone freely.

The overwhelming majority of the people living in Thailand and Cambodia know nothing of a God who comes down to them. They would never think of praying as Isaiah prays. They only know of a god or gods who are far away and who would never come down. Their religion teaches them how to escape this world and reach up to God.

The religion is both of these countries is the same. They call themselves Buddhists, but in practice, it's a blend of Buddhism, Hinduism and animism. There is a heavy concentration on reincarnation, which comes from Hinduism. Successive reincarnations are necessary before one achieves Nibbana. It is said that it typically requires 300 to 400 lifetimes to escape this world.

The conditions and circumstances of the next life are determined by the way you live your present life. This is your Karma. Managing your Karma gets a little complicated because the way you live your present life is determined by all of your previous Karma from previous lives. The circumstances and incidents that happen to you now are all a consequence of previous lives. If you are blind, it is because in a past life you used you're your eyes to look at something that you shouldn't have looked at. If you are poor, it is because in a past life were greedy or you stole something.

The way to overcome your past and improve your Karma in the next life is to believe Buddha's Four Noble Truths and follow his Eightfold Path.

According to the Four Noble Truths, man's great problem in living a good life is due to his 'desire.' 'Desire' for what is good can be just as harmful as bad 'desires.' So the remedy is to get rid of all desire. They way you do that is by following the Eightfold Path. The more you progress along the Eightfold Path, the more awakenings you experience and each awakening sets you free from one more connection to your past. The goal is to attain the final awakening and become a "worthy one." At that point, you live out your present life with Nibbana, the peaceful assurance that there are no more rebirths for you. At death, rather than being reincarnated, you enter Paranibbana – total Unbinding. You become an 'awakened one,' which is the meaning of the name – Buddha.

Along with this blend of Hinduism and Buddhism, there is also a heavy dose of animism that also comes from Hinduism. Animism is a belief that souls or spirits exist in non-humans. Buildings, animals, plants, all have spirits or souls living in them. These spirits control the actions of what they possess just like our spirit or soul determines our actions. So you want to be sure that you're nice and friendly to the spirit of your home or your business. Every business and every home in Thailand and Cambodia has a shrine or a 'spirit house' in front of it. The hotels I stayed at in Bangkok and Phnom Penh both had shrines to the spirits of the hotel outside and inside. Everyday as I ate breakfast in Bangkok, I would watch as one of the staff would carry a tray of food and water, flowers and incense to the shrine. They would place the food on the shrine and kneel down and recite prayers. These shrines and spirit houses were present everywhere, every home, gas stations, 7-11, even the taxi cabs.

I wrote to you all about the Loi Krathon festival that took place while I was in Bangkok. Loi Krathon is an annual festival to appease the water spirits. Everyone took bouquets of flowers that were mounted on slabs of Palm tree so they would float on the water. They put incense in it, sometimes some coins on it, prayed over it and set it adrift in the river or whatever body of water was nearby. This was their offering to the spirits in the water, made in the hopes of appeasing the spirits to behave and not overflow the banks of the river and produce good fishing. One of the Deaconesses in the Bangkok class, Tongkip, told me how, as a little girl, this festival was so much fun and such a joy, but now that she is a Christian, the whole thing is so terribly sad.

These are people who do not know that the only true God has come down to them. Apart from the knowledge of the truth that God has come down to us, we concoct all kinds of religious schemes by which we try to raise ourselves up to God.

Isaiah prays, "O that you would rend the heavens and come down…" And the one true God has answered his prayer. The God who dwells in the highest heavens has humbled Himself by coming down from heaven to live with us. The God of the Bible made Himself nothing, took the form of a servant and was born in the likeness of men. He was born of the virgin Mary in the little town of Bethlehem, in a manage in a stable.

Anyone who says that all religions are the same doesn't understand what he's saying. Only the God of the Holy Scriptures comes down to us. God tore open the heavens and came down to us, not because we offered Him food and drink, flowers, incense, our prayers or anything that pleased Him. He came down to us while we were still sinners. Sinners are not capable of pleasing God. Sinners having nothing to offer God which He would be pleased with. "All our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment."

God came down from heaven to be the offering that pleases God. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and was placed on the shrine of the cross and offered up to the Father. In Him, there is no sin. With this offering, the Father is propitiated – well pleased. "This is my Son, whom I love, with Him I am well pleased." The offering that He offers moves the Father to be gracious and merciful to us.

God has rent the heavens and come down to you. He came down to you to dwell with you, and He is your Karma. You life is not determined on your past but on His past. "You died and your life is now hidden with God in Christ." (Colossians 3:3). He is your "all in all." All of your past has been blotted out by His blood shed for you. All of your future is already prepared for you, prepared before the creation of the world, not by countless reincarnations, but by the new birth of the Holy Spirit in the waters of your baptism.

Through your Baptism, you are a living spirit house, for God the Holy Spirit, has come down from heaven and lives in you. By His indwelling presence, you are an 'awakened one.' Awakened by the Holy Spirit to the truth. Not a fourfold truth but a single truth – that God so loved the world that He came down to you.

Not an eightfold path that you must follow to ascend up to God, but single path that Jesus Christ has followed to descend to you. Jesus followed the path that led to the cross and the tomb. And because He followed it perfectly, you know the real 'paranibbana,' the true unbinding. He has unbound you from all of your sins and set you free to rise up from your grave, not to an endless succession of lives on earth, but to an endless life with Him in His Father's house in heaven forever.

As I watched the men and women bring their trays of food and drink to the shrines as an offering to the spirits, I could not help but wonder what they would think if only I knew how to tell them about the God that I call my Lord. A God who does not want me to serve Him with food and drink but who wants to serve me with food and drink. Food that is His own body and drink that is His own blood. The true God has rent the heavens and come down and offers us these precious gifts and He is delighted when we receive them from Him for the forgiveness of our sins and the assurance of His presence with us where ever we are.

Let me conclude by making one, simple observation that stands out for me from this experience. I think that it's pretty standard stuff to return from a visit to a 3rd world country where the standard of living is so much lower than ours and be struck by how much we take for granted all that we have. But my observation is that I am even more deeply struck by how much we have here in this Christian Church in America. The training and instruction we have, the preaching and teaching that we enjoy, and vast resources which we have, Sunday School curriculums, bible studies, books upon books that are written in languages that we can read about the Christian faith that encourage us and increase our knowledge. The convenience of a building to meet in with space to carry out our work comfortably, a worship service with comfortable pews and wonderful music to carry the Word more deeply into our hearts. All of this is ours and sometimes, we fail to realize what a wonderful privilege this all is and take it all for granted.

The Christian Church is present in Thailand and Cambodia right in the midst of all of this false religion. It's very small, poorly trained and severely lacking in resources. But how much they appreciated the opportunity to receive instruction and grow in the knowledge of the faith. Isaiah's prayer has been answered for them just as it has for us. God has come down from heaven and dwells among His Church in Thailand and Cambodia just as He does in America. His voice is being heard through the preaching and teaching of His Word. Men and women, boys and girls are being awakened from death through the new birth of Holy Baptism. And the Lord's Supper is being administered and received according to Christ's command. The light of the world has come into the darkness. And we can be sure that the darkness will not overcome it.

For some reason, the Lord has called the attention of this particular congregation in far away Waterville, Maine to help and support the work of His Church in Thailand and Cambodia. We should consider it a blessed privilege to have this opportunity and do all that can to be faithful to the calling we have received.