Isaiah 54
In CH54, Isaiah gives us 2 Beautiful Images of what the Suffering Servant accomplished in CH53.
IMAGE #1: God’s People are like a Deserted Wife >> who has been RESTORED!
IMAGE #2: God’s People are like a Devastated City >> who has been REBUILT!
I suggested that the 2 Images in CH54 teaches us 4 Lessons:
LESSON #1: We are deserted and devastated by our sin.
LESSON #2: We are unable to restore and rebuild ourselves.
LESSON #3: The Gospel of Jesus restores and rebuilds what sin has ruined.
LESSON #4: Bonus! What is restored and rebuilt is somehow BETTER for having been broken!
The text calls God’s People to Respond by:
Singing for Joy! (1)
Enlarging your Tent! (2-3)
Living without Fear! (4-10)
Looking to the Future! (11-17)
That was my sermon on Isaiah 54. All fine and good, but as a pastor, I get to spend more time with the text than the people I am teaching and most of what I think about doesn’t make it into the sermon. I know that’s hard to believe when the sermon was 52 minutes long! The text was so encouraging to me, personally, this week that I thought I’d post what I jotted down on Friday afternoon during a Prayer Walk.
Q: What has Isaiah 54 done in my heart this week?
A: It has created a sense of …
CERTAINTY that Jesus, the gospel, Christianity is the only way for broken people to be restored and rebuilt. It cannot happen through self-improvement, religion, education, success, etc. The restoration and rebuilding we need is only found through the Gospel of Jesus.
HUMILITY knowing that it is not only original sin of Adam, but my own sin that brought and continues to bring on the devastation in my life.
GRATITUDE that God has NOT leave me deserted and devastated, but that he made a Way to be restored and rebuilt.
AWE that God sacrificed his own son (CH53) to restore and rebuild what we have destroyed by our own sin.
LOVE for God because of HIS LOVE for me. Why would he love me? I am as unfaithful as Gomer. Yet he just keeps alluring me away from the adultery of my sinful loves and wooing me back to Himself.
DESIRE to follow God’s Servant into restoration and rebuilding. It’s God‘s way in God‘s Word that gives us the path forward to restore and rebuild our lives. If we try to restore and rebuild according to our own way and our own wisdom it will be nothing but brokenness again.
SECURITY that my restoration and my rebuilding it’s not up to me. God is the one who can and will do this. “He who began a good work in me will complete it.” And His work in completed over the long haul it’s not going to be finished until the Day of Jesus Christ. I should be patient but confident and secure that God will do the work. And I should not only be patient with myself, but with others. God plays the long game. So should I.
ENERGY to do my part of the work in rebuilding and keep on working. God calls us to “work out our own salvation because HE works in us.”
HOPE that — because of God’s grace — my past failures have not permanently damaged my future. What we see here is that the Gospel of Jesus is SO power, SO transformative that what is restored and rebuilt is not just better than before, but somehow BETTER for having been broken! My restored and rebuilt life is not less valuable (like a car after a wreck), not more fragile (like a vase that’s been glued), and not a shadow of what it could have been (like missing a good meal and settling for warmed up leftovers). The Gospel of Jesus says I am not defined by my failures, not devastated by my sin, not beyond repair. Instead, my restored and rebuilt life can be somehow better for having been broken. I can think of example after example of how God has taken something that I messed up and used it to make me better. Wow! is that ever good news!
ANTICIPATION that the final fulfillment of Isaiah 54 is still in the future and better than any restoration and rebuilding in this life.