Translation and Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS 13 Jan 2008
1. Sing, barren one – she has not given birth;
Break forth into song and cry aloud, she [who] has not been in labour,
for the children of the desolate one are more than the children of one who has a husband,
says Jehovah.
2. Enlarge the place of your tent,
and your bedroom curtains, they will stretch them out!
Do not hold back!
Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.
3. For right and left you will burst forth,
and your seed will take over the nations!
And they will cause desolate cities to be inhabited.
4. Don’t be afraid, for you will not be shamed,
and don’t be embarrassed, for you will not be caused to blush.
For you will forget the shame of your youth,
and the reproach of your widowhood you will not remember again.
5. For your Maker is your Husband – “Jehovah of Hosts” His name.
And the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, and He is called “God of all the earth.”
6. For when you were a forsaken woman and one grieved in spirit, Jehovah called you
- even a wife of youths when she is rejected, says your God.
7. With a little moment I forsook you, but with big compassions I will gather you.
8. With flood of wrath I caused my face to be hidden from you for a moment,
but with everlasting lovingkindness I will have compassion on you, says Jehovah your Redeemer.
At a rest stop in Germany I got out my Bible and opened it to the back cover where I had recorded God's hard answer to a prayer that I had made. I sipped my coffee and remembered the night in Yugoslavia when I had made it. I had been feeling lonely that evening too. "Lord," I had said, "in a year I'll be thirty. You made a helpmeet for man, and somehow I have not found my own. Lord, I'm going to ask You for something. I ask You tonight for a wife." I'd noted the specific prayer request in my Bible: "April 12, 1957, Nosaki. Prayed for a wife." Beside the notation I had left a place for an answer. And five days later the answer had come. In my Quiet Times I had suddenly known—with quite uncanny certainty —that Isaiah 54:1 was God's reply to me. I flipped excitedly through the pages of the Old Testament and read, "The children of the desolate are more than the children of the married." Again and again I read the words, trying to apply them to myself, trying to rejoice in God's will. I might feel desolate, but He was going to give me more "children," spiritual children, than I could ever have as a flesh-and-blood father. I had written the answer beside the request.
But now as I drained my coffee cup beside a field of spring flowers, I knew that spiritual children were not at all what I had in mind. I wanted real, live, noisy, running-and-jumping children, with sticky faces and wooden shoes to mend after the fights. Above all, I wanted a wife, a living, loving human being who would make my life one fabric, instead of this patchwork quilt of places and people based nowhere, instead of this heading home to no one.
Suppose I asked Him again, right now? Suppose I just opened my Bible anywhere, just let my finger fall where it would, and took this new verse for His real answer? I had always laughed at people who looked for guidance this way. But it was a glorious spring day when anything could happen, and so I closed my eyes, opened the Bible at random, and plunged my finger down on the page. When I looked down, I could hardly believe my eyes. My finger was pointing to Isaiah 54:1. "The children of the desolate are more than the children of the married." I told myself I must have creased the Bible open to that page from reading it so intently before. But it was no good. Thoroughly chastened, I recorded in the back of the Bible the repeated question and the reiterated answer. "I don't like the message, Lord, but at least it's clear."
Well, Brother Andrew ended up marrying Corrie pretty soon after that. Impressions in our minds and flip-and-dip Bible reading are not the best way to get life direction. But the question remains: what is this verse talking about? Rather than a contrast between a child-bearing couple and a celibate who gives himself to making spiritual disciples, I think this passage is talking about a different contrast. It is the contrast between the present and the future of God’s people, between what the Jewish believers were experiencing during the exile and what the church would experience in the age to come. Remember that this chapter follows on the heels of Isa. 53 which outlines the redemption accomplished in Jesus Christ which lays the foundations for a dramatic change in the way God will relate to mankind.
Three figures are laid out here in chapter 54.
· Think about all the women who were unable to have children and who bore key children in the line of God’s covenant people: Sarah who bore Isaac, Rebekah who bore Jacob, Rachel who bore Joseph and Benjamin, All three of the patriarchs of Israel had barren wives. God arranged that intentionally to underscore that this was not a natural human nation to which God was giving birth, but a spiritual one. I am also reminded of Elizabeth who bore John the Baptizer and Mary who bore Jesus in the New Testament at the birth of the church. These were children of promise, children who were more than just physical offspring but spiritual offspring also. And you are a child of promise, spiritual offspring of these great men and women of God if you share their faith in Jesus as your Redeemer.
· This is what we heard in the call to worship in Galatians 4:22-28 “For it is written that Abraham had two sons… 23 the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants… 25 Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written, ‘Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.’ 28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.”
· We have already seen this promise in Isaiah 49:13. “Heavens, sing for joy, and earth, rejoice! Let mountains break forth into singing, for Jehovah has comforted His people, and will show compassion to His afflicted ones. 14. Yet Zion said, ‘Jehovah has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.’ 15. Can a woman forget her nursing baby - from having compassion on a son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I, I will not forget you… 19. Surely your wastes and your desolate places and your demolished land – surely now you will be cramped from the settler, and those who swallowed you up will be far away… 21. Then you will say in your heart, “Who has given birth to these for me while I was bereaved and barren, exiled and rejected? And who has brought up these? Look, I, I was left all alone; How did they get here?” 22. Thus says the Lord Jehovah, “Look, I will lift up my hand to nations and raise my signal to peoples, and they will bring your sons in the bosom and your daughters will be carried upon the shoulder, 23. and it will come about that kings are your supporters and their princesses are your nurses! …Those who will not be ashamed wait for me!” Many children brought to life miraculously will be gathered to the people of God after the exile.
· The gist is to prepare for an influx of children.
· v.2 Many homes in Isaiah’s day (and still today in traditional parts of the Middle East) are actually tent structures made out of animal skins.
· The subject that matches the gender and number of the verb “stretch out” in v.2 is the noun “children/sons” at the end of v.1. You’re going to have so many children, they will be bursting the seams of your tent! Get ready for growth!
· v.3 is a quote from Genesis 28, when God spoke to Jacob and gave him the dream of the ladder after he had tricked his older brother and had to flee from his parent’s home: v.13 “…Jehovah stood above [the ladder] and said, ‘I am Jehovah, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. 14 Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’”
· Isaiah wrote in v.3, “You will spread abroad/break forth/expand” literally “burst/spill out” all over the place on both hands – filling the world “and you will possess/inherit/take over the nations/Gentiles.” God is repeating the prophecy that was part of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying to Isaiah, “The fulfillment is still coming.”
· The “you’s” in this chapter are feminine singulars, referring to Zion or the church.
· This time of blessing to come will bring God’s people into contact with the whole rest of the world in such a way that they will take over the Gentiles and be a blessing to them.
· We’ve already seen echoes of this same prophecy earlier in Isaiah, such as in 14:2 “…the house of Israel will … take captive those who were their captors, and rule over those who oppressed them.
· God is preparing post-exilic Israel for the coming of Gentiles to faith. This is fulfilled in Gentiles joining the church.
·
This kind of growth is also what Jesus talked about
in His kingdom parables in Matthew 13:
“31…The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a
man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is less than all seeds; but when
it is grown, it is greater than the plants, and becomes a tree, so that the birds
of the heaven come and lodge in its branches.
“The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid
in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened…
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the
sea, and gathered of every kind.” An intrinsic quality of God’s
kingdom is that it grows and has worldwide impact!
· STORY: Influence of Isaiah 45 on William Carey:
William Carey, the father of modern missions, realized this too, when he read Isaiah 54. He was a Baptist preacher in 18th Century England before the time when Baptists started to send out missionaries. At one point he had stood up in a church meeting and called upon them to send missionaries, and was told by one of the older men to sit down and be quiet because “if God wants to save the heathen He can do it without your aid or mine!” On Wednesday, May 30, 1792, William was asked to give the devotional message at the annual meeting for the pastors in his Northamptonshire Baptist Association. He preached on Isaiah 54:2-3 and applied it to world missions, saying that if God expects His people to burst out into all the nations, and if He calls His people to “enlarge,” “lengthen,” and “strengthen” “without holding back” in order to facilitate the spread of God’s kingdom to all the nations, then the Baptist Association needed to “Attempt great things [for God and] expect great things!” They needed to start some sort of missionary-sending organization. Nobody knew what that would look like because they had never seen anybody do it before. But through Carey’s influence, they started one that year, and sent him over to India as their first missionary. And despite Carey’s faults, it is largely because of his faith and obedience to God’s message in Isaiah 54 that India has a thriving church and that mission agencies have been started in almost every protestant denomination. (Source: www.wmcarey.edu/carey/baptreg1790-93/418.jpg & /419.jpg)
In v.4, Isaiah brings out another command which he has spoken many times already in previous chapters, and he gives a whole chain of reasons to obey this command:
v.4. Don’t be afraid, for you will not be shamed,
and don’t be embarrassed, for you will not be caused to blush.
· ILLUSTRATION: If you were all by yourself in the car with the windows up and the music on, I bet you could sing most anything, but if I were to bring you up front here and put the microphone on you, and ask you to sing a solo, I bet you would suddenly have feelings of fear and embarrassment. Why would you not have those feelings by yourself in the car, but have them when you are performing them in front of a bunch of people? Because you know that if you choke in front of an audience, they will laugh and make fun of you!
· What if God promised that no matter what you did, nobody would laugh or make fun of you – no matter what you did, you would never have reason to be ashamed? That’s what God promises here. Don’t be afraid to step out in faith and praise God out loud and prepare for large numbers of people to come to faith in Christ, because I’m going to reward that kind of faith and obedience, and you will never have reason to be ashamed of what you have done in faith!
WHY WON’T YOU BE ASHAMED?
BECAUSE YOU WILL FORGET THE THINGS THAT USED TO CAUSE YOU SHAME:
v.4b For you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will not remember again.
WHY WILL YOUR FORGET THE THINGS THAT USED TO CAUSE YOU SHAME?
BECAUSE OF WHO YOU’RE MARRIED TO!
v. 5. For your Maker is your Husband – “Jehovah of Hosts” His name. And the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, and He is called “God of all the earth.”
WHY/HOW WILL YOU BE MARRIED TO HIM?
HE WILL CALL YOU & GATHER YOU TO HIMSELF:
v.6. For when you were a forsaken woman and one grieved in spirit, Jehovah called you - even a wife of youths when she is rejected, says your God. 7. With a little moment I forsook you, but with big compassions I will gather you.
WHY? BECAUSE, LIKE THE DAYS OF NOAH, GOD HAS SWORN OFF THAT MODE OF PUNISHMENT. A COVENANTAL SHIFT IS COMING TOWARDS COMPASSION.
This prophecy of a population boom for God’s people not only applies to Israel flourishing after the exile under Nehemiah and Ezra, not only applies to the apostles and the church at its New Testament beginning, but it also applies to us today. There are a lot of imperatives here:
Nate Wilson’s website – Isaiah Sermon Expositions
Christ the Redeemer Church website - Sermons
