Sermon Tone Analysis

Isaiah’s prophecy is a wake-up call.

Yahweh, the Ever-living God is everything, idols are nothing.

Give up your idolatry.

Return to God with a whole heart, listen to His voice, and He will turn your wastelands of sin into gardens of eternal life.

Because there is so much talk about turning from idols, let’s revisit, what is idolatry?

The New City Catechism says, “Idolatry is trusting in created things rather than the Creator for our hope and happiness, significance and security.”

This is helpful for understanding the message of Isaiah, especially in today’s passage.

While we don’t necessarily set up carved images of deities any more, we are all looking for meaning and purpose in these four ways: hope, happiness, significance, and security.

When we obtain them, we are fulfilled, feel complete, have shalom, peace.

Our passage today will show us how God fulfills all four of these desires, and this is good news.

This passage is organized in six exhortations.

The first three are “Listen!” and the last three are “Wake up!”.

What are we supposed to hear, and to what are we to wake up?

What we will see is that the gospel gives us our significance, and this leads to our happiness, hope, and security if we purify ourselves of impure loves.

The structure of our passage tells us a little about how to understand its message.

If we could diagram the passage, it would look a little like this:

51:1-3 - Your significance leads to happiness

51:4-6 - Your significance gives you hope

51:7-8 - Your significance gives you security

51:9-16 - Your significance gives you secuirty

51:17-23 - Your significance gives you hope

52:1-12 - Your significance leads to happiness, hope, and security

This is what Bible scholars call a chiasm.

The thought structure works out and back in, and at the center point, where it turns on a hinge, you find a key point.

So, we should find a key point at the turn of 51:8 into verse 9.

51:1-3 - Listen, You Matter, so Be Happy

Everyone wants their life to count for something, to be significant in some way to someone.

This is why many people turn to idols in the first place.

For example, some people worship the idol of achievement.

When we achieve in work or school, people will applaud us and tell us we’re smart, or talented, or gifted, or whatever.

This makes us happy.

But when someone else gets noticed, promoted, awarded, a better grade, our happiness wears off.

And there is the downside that we have other people telling us who we are.

It’s hard to know your true identity.

But what if we look to God for our significance?

What would we hear Him say?

Isaiah 51:1 (ESV)

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord:

look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.

If you are pursuing righteousness and seeking the LORD, you come from a long line of other seekers after the kingdom of God and His righteousness, tracing its ancestry to Abraham and Sarah, who gave birth not just to the Jewish nation, but to a family of faith in God.

And on account of the promise He made to bless and multiply Abraham and Sarah, God will turn wastelands and wilderness into the Garden of Eden.

Wasted lives become fruitful again whenever someone seeks God.

Isaiah 51:3 (ESV)

For the Lord comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord;

joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.

God will fulfill His promise to your spiritual ancestors by fulfilling this blessing in your life.

The question for me is, am I experiencing the joy and happiness this verse says should come?

Does it make you happy when you realize that you might be very insignificant in the measures used by our world, but you are part of something bigger than you, but includes you?

God’s big plan is to bless the whole world through a family of people who will pursue righteousness and seek God in a world filled with idols.

Are you finding your happiness in that?

Isaiah 51:4-6 - Listen to your Instructor and Hope

Like significance and happiness, everyone is seeking hope.

Everyone is hoping that the world will be set right again.

Everyone hopes that all the injustice we see unanswered in this life will be answered with justice somehow.

We all want a just judge to hear our case in the end.

There is great hope for the one who seeks God over everything else.

In verse 5, the LORD says that the peoples of the earth hope for judgment from Him.

Verses 4-6 tell us that justice comes from God in the form of instructions (Torah, verse 4, translated “law”).

The good news is that for those seeking righteousness, justice, and salvation, you don’t have to go looking for it.

Instruction leading to justice goes out from God like a light to all peoples.

His righteousness and salvation reach out to us, and His mighty arm brings the judgment we are all hoping for.

The question for us is, are we listening to God’s instruction in ways that form our hope around His justice and righteousness?

Or are we seeking these in created things that will ultimately disappoint?

Our significance doesn’t come from our achievements to establish justice at the human level.

According to verse 6, long after the heavens and earth vanish and wear out, those experiencing God’s salvation and righteousness will be happy.

51:7-8 - Listen, You Are Secure, so Fear Not

This builds on the last exhortation.

For those that come to God for instruction and receive His salvation and righteousness, they enter the new covenant we saw established last week in and through the Servant of the LORD.

This new covenant imprints God’s instruction on the hearts of His saved people by His Spirit whom He sends out into them.

If you are one of these people, He is saying to you, you should not fear the reproach or revilings of men.

In fact, as Jesus said,

Matthew 5:10–12 (ESV)

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Do you rest in your security, so that the insults of others draw you closer to Jesus Christ?

When we are united to Jesus in His death to sin and in His resurrection to a righteous life, we have total security with God.

If you are experiencing fear of others, it’s time to wake up.

It’s here that the passage turns.

This thought, that God’s people sometimes fear other people more than they fear, love, and trust God, reveals that our hearts have become impure in our affections and faith.

The people of God respond in verse 9 with a cry to God to awake to their need,

51:9-16 - Awake the LORD but Listen for His Answer

The people seeking God hear the exhortation to find their significance, happiness, hope and security in God, but the fear of man is too tempting.

We know God acted in the past to deliver Israel out of Egypt, but will God act for us in our present circumstance?

So they cry out to God...

Isaiah 51:9 (ESV)

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago.

Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?

Rahab is a name that means “stormy” or “raging”.

Isaiah has used it to describe Egypt when Pharaoh stirred up his army to pursue Israel into the wilderness, under the influence of the dragon, Satan.

When we feel insecure in our circumstances, we want to see God do in our time what He did when He parted the Red Sea and brought it crashing down on Pharaoh’s chariots.

But then the answer comes, starting in verse 12.

The LORD says, when you fear men, you have forgotten Me, the LORD, your Maker.

If you think the humans who hate you are stormy and threatening, think about how stormy the sea can be.

Then think about the fact that the LORD God made the sea, and He has all of it under control.

Isaiah 51:15 (ESV)

I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name.

And more than this, He uses all His sovereign power to empower you, protect you, and assure you of your identity in Him.

Isaiah 51:16 (ESV)

And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand,