Dennis Tuuri

We just sang that line about the grass withering and the flower fading and the word of God stands forever. It’s a reminder of actually last week’s sermon and I’m not really sure I made that point at the time, but we so often sing those verses from the scriptures as a warning of our mortality. Well, it is certainly that. But in context, the point of the verse was to say that the only thing we can rely upon is what we’re going to now turn to, the word of the Lord.

It’s not really so much to belittle you. It’s to build you up with confidence that God’s word endures forever. So, let’s turn to that word again today. Our sermon text is kind of long. It’s Isaiah 51:1 through chapter 52:12. Now, we have people stand for the reading of the word because it’s a reminder to us of respect for God’s word and that we’re standing as the army of God to get our instructions and to commit to obeying him.

Now, since it’s a little longer, you know, and we’re getting a little older, you know, if it’s going to be difficult for you, don’t bother standing. It’s okay to sit. It’s not sin. I just sat during one of the opening songs. I’ve got a little weird nerve thing happening in my leg that happens occasionally, and I just could sing better sitting down. So, if you can hear better sitting down, that’s okay. For the rest of you, please stand for the reading of God’s word, Isaiah 51:1–52:12.

One other brief comment, the sermon outline has the text in it, and it has it broken out the way the sermon will be, addressing things. So, if you want to follow along from the notes, and you’ll see that it’s broken up into these sections.

Isaiah 51: “Listen to me, you who follow after righteousness. You who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you. For I called him alone and blessed him and increased him. For the Lord will comfort Zion. He will comfort all her waste places. He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord.

Joy and gladness will be found in it. Thanksgiving and the voice of melody. Listen to me, my people, and give ear to me, oh my nation, for law will proceed from me, and I will make my justice rest as a light to the peoples. My righteousness is near. My salvation has gone forth, and my arms will judge the peoples. The coastlands will wait upon me, and on my arm they will trust.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look on the earth beneath. For the heavens will vanish away like smoke. The earth will grow old like a garment, and those who dwell in it will die in like manner, but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will not be abolished.

Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people in whose heart is my law. Do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults. For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool, but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation from generation to generation.

Awake, awake. Put on strength, O arm of the Lord. Awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Are you not the arm that cut Rahab apart and wounded the serpent? Are you not the one who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, that made the depths of the sea a road for the redeemed to cross over? So the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads.

They shall obtain joy and gladness; sorrow and sighing shall flee away. I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you should be afraid of a man who will die and of the son of man who will be made like grass? And you forget the Lord your maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. You have feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor when he has prepared to destroy.

And where is the fury of the oppressor? The captive exile hastens that he may be loosed, that he should not die in the pit and that his bread should not fail. But I am the Lord your God who divided the sea, whose waves roared. The Lord of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in your mouth. I have covered you with the shadow of my hand, that I may plant the heavens, lay the foundations of the earth and say to Zion, ‘You are my people.’

Awake, awake. Stand up, O Jerusalem. You who have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury. You have drunk the dregs of the cup of trembling and drained it out. There is no one to guide her among all the sons she has brought forth. Nor is there any who takes her by the hand among all the sons she has brought up.

These two things have come to you. Who will be sorry for you? Desolation and destruction, famine and sword. By whom will I comfort you? Your sons have fainted. They lie at the head of all the streets like an antelope in a net. They are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of your God.

Therefore, please hear this, you afflicted, and drink but not with wine, drunk but not with wine. Thus says your Lord, the Lord and your God, who pleads the cause of his people. See, I have taken out of your hand the cup of trembling, the dregs of the cup of my fury. You shall no longer drink it. But I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, who have said to you, ‘Lie down that we may walk over you.’ And you have laid your body like the ground and as the street for those who walk over.

Awake, awake. Put on your strength, O Zion. Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. For the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no longer come to you. Shake yourself from the dust. Arise. Sit down, O Jerusalem. Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.

For thus says the Lord, you have sold yourselves for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money. For thus says the Lord God, my people went down at first into Egypt and dwelt there, and then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. Now therefore, what have I here, says the Lord, that my people are taken away for nothing? Those who rule over them make them wail, says the Lord, and my name is blasphemed continually every day.

Therefore, my people shall know my name. Therefore, they shall know in that day that I am He who speaks, behold, it is I.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’ Your watchmen shall lift up their voices. With their voices they shall sing together, for he shall see eye to eye when the Lord brings back Zion. Break forth into joy. Sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem. For the Lord has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations. And all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

Depart. Depart. Go out from there. Touch no unclean thing. Go out from the midst of her. Be clean, you who bear the vessels of the Lord. For you shall not go out with haste, nor go by night, for the Lord will go before you and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.”

Let us pray. Lord God, use this word to transform us, to comfort us unto action, strength and holiness. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

—

It has been an absolute delight. Well, much work for my dear wife and for the teachers producing the Sunday school curriculum on Isaiah this year. But it’s been an absolute delight working our way through the whole book and finding these wonderful texts and understanding how they work together and the great messages of comfort that are found in them. I pray to God, you know, that he’ll use me today to bring comfort unto equipping for you and for anybody else that might hear this talk.

We are jumping ahead from last week, but we’re in the second half of Isaiah, right? The gospel section that began in chapter 40 with the word comfort. And what I said last week was that comfort really is the indicative word for that fifth section of the seven sections. Each begins with a particular word. This one’s comfort. But really, comfort is the foundation for the entire second half of the book as well.

It’s kind of like the 37 chapters of the Old Testament and the 29 of the New Testament in Isaiah. And so it begins with comfort. And comfort really informs chapters 40-66. And so when you find yourself in that portion of Isaiah, you somehow remember that the header to the whole thing is this comfort of having our sins paid for, delivered, having an Exodus, etc., that we talked about last week.

But now we’re in the sixth of seven sections. So Isaiah is broken up into seven sections. And this fifth section started with comfort and that was really for the whole of the rest of the sections. But there’s a separate section here, the sixth section that we’re in now. And that sixth section begins with the word listen, which is just what our text begins with. But the sixth section actually begins in chapter 49. And in Isaiah 49:1, we read, “Listen, O coastlands, to me. Take heed you peoples from afar. The Lord has called me from the womb, from the mouth of my mother. He has made mention of my name.”

So this sixth section of Isaiah is about the servant. The servant speaks in what we just read and he says, “Listen to me.” So this is the section of Isaiah that focuses with very strong focus on the servant, the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know there’s some references here. We could see part of the servant work that God is doing is coming about through Cyrus who will help bring this deliverance out of Babylon. But ultimately it’s very obvious if we look at the suffering servant sections of, for instance, Isaiah 53, that the servant section in that sixth slot is the new Adam. It’s the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s the new man. It’s the sixth day and a new creation is coming to be because of the servant who has been called by God to affect his work.

So that’s where we’re at and we’re in comfort time. And we’re focusing on the servant and his work. And this section has this beginning to it. And the beginning of our text as well is listen. Listen, Shema—open your ears. Hear the word of God. Be attentive to what God says. That’s important. I don’t want us to be comforted and then have closed ears. That’s false comfort. That’s wishful thinking. Biblical comfort results in a call from God for us then to listen to him, now that we’ve been comforted because he’s got things he wants us to do.

We’re supposed to do some things which we’ll get to in a couple of minutes.

The section we’re dealing with today is kind of at the center of that sixth section, the listening section, the servant of Yahweh section. These verses we read here are right at the center of that. Dorsey puts them as the middle of the three sections—David Dorsey in his book, Literary Structures of the Old Testament. And right around the section we just read are these servant references.

For instance, in Isaiah 50:10, as chapter 50 begins to come to an end, we read, “Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of his servant?” So fear of the Lord is equated with listening to the voice of his servant. And then so it’s servant and then we get to this stuff and then we’ll go back to servant in Isaiah 52:13. Our text ends at verse 12. Verses 13 and 14 say this: “Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. Just as many were astonished at you, so his visage was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.” Clearly a reference to the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Jesus as the servant are the bookends to what we’re going to deal with here. And so this is in that context of recognizing the work of the servant. And if we do that, we will listen to that servant. And our comfort is to that end that we would move to listening.

Okay. Now, the text we just read, I know it’s long. I know it’s hard to sort of get a grasp of the development of things, but that’s my job is to help you do that. And basically what I’ve done in the outline is there are three listens. Okay? So there’s three specific sections that begin with listen. And there’s a bit of a progression to that.

And I’ve kind of used that indent thing with the middle of the three. I’m not sure that it’s, you know, when I see three things, I tend to look at the third. The second one is the center and I think there’s some truth to that in this as well. But there’s a progression: three listens, and then there’s three awakes, right? And you heard that as we read through it. You saw it on the text that’s provided in your outline.

So there’s three awakes, and those are separate sections. Those are pericope identifiers, I believe. And then finally, at the end within that third awake, the thing that we ultimately see as the object of the awakening are two words that are repeated: Depart, depart. So the repeated references of key words in this section are, I think, the right way to think about it. And so we’re to listen, listen, listen. We’re to awake, awake, awake. And as a result of all that, we’re to depart, depart from some place to another.

So that’s where we’re going. And we’ll just work our way through the text. You can use the handout if you like, or just not pay attention to the handout. That’s fine too. The handout does have some bolded words that I’ve placed in it to make it a little clearer—the words I’m speaking about as I give my sermon.

One more thing before we go on: Paul in his epistle to the Romans cites the second half of Isaiah—40-66, right? The New Testament so to speak of Isaiah. He either cites directly, alludes to, or echoes chapters 40-66 over 20 times in his letter just to the Romans. Isaiah, you know, is tremendously alluded to and quoted in the New Testament. Paul does it over 20 times in Romans alone.

And as we look at some of these texts, particularly related to righteousness, that’ll be useful for us to kind of understand how that is informing Paul and how to understand what Paul is telling us in the book of Romans. For instance, in Isaiah 51:4-8, which we’ll see in a minute, God reveals his righteousness to the Jews first, peoples and then to the coastlands, to the nations. And so Paul picks this up in Romans: the gospel is being preached to the Jews first and then to the Romans.

The gospel is the declaration that Jesus has come to fulfill all righteousness as he said at his baptism. Well, these are important texts to understand the background of the New Testament as it explains to us the work of the Lord Jesus Christ as fulfillment of the book of Isaiah specifically.

Okay. So, let’s look at the first listen. If you turn to those first few verses, look at him now. Listen to me. He says, “You who follow after righteousness”—let’s stop right there.

We read in the New Testament the Beatitudes that, you know, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled. And I’ve heard this exposited regularly, even as recently as a couple months ago, you know, it’s about the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I don’t believe that for a moment. And I don’t believe it because this text surely does not talk about that.

They’re not looking for the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. They’ve been beat, tormented, afflicted. They’ve been made fun of. As the text goes on to say, God’s been derided. They’re looking for justice. They’re looking for righteousness. They’re looking for what Christians across this nation are looking for in this nation as we see ourselves more and more under the foot, the hobnail boot of the state. We’re looking for righteousness. And we’re looking for righteousness when gangs trouble our cities and kill people, as happened yesterday to a relative of a member of this church.

We’re looking for righteousness when the stupid civil state lets teenage girls and teenage boys think they’re adults and do stupid things. My son was run into by a teenage girl who probably had no business driving. Now, praise God, he survived it. But we have a nation that is awash in unrighteousness, sexual sin. I mean, the mass is telling us what sort of light bulbs to put in our house. We are in increasing tyranny and we want righteousness. We want to see God’s justice. We don’t want the world to tempt us in all the different ways that it does and to oppress Christianity and to exalt Sharia law when they would shudder to think of exalting Christian law.

Those who follow after righteousness, who seek it and its manifestation in their present state—that’s where this text begins. The description of us, if we’re going to listen to God, is we’ve got to be striving for righteousness. We’ve got to be hungering and thirsting for the justice of God in our nation. What did we just read in Psalm 119? “Rivers of water run down from my eyes because men do not keep your law.” I, you know, that’s the state we’re in now in our nation that was founded on the basis of Christian principles, and we should seek after the nation once more keeping God’s law.

I could go on, but that’s what it means. Follow after righteousness. Seek God’s justice. You who seek the Lord—parallelism. Don’t tell me that you’re a seeker of the Lord Jesus Christ and a disciple of his if you’re not seeking after righteousness. That’s who the object of this whole section begins with. That’s who’s supposed to listen. Okay? It equates those two.

And then it tells us something very interesting that took me quite a bit of meditation this week to sort of think this through. Look to the rock from which you were hewn. It talks about Abraham and Sarah. And you know, rock. So I get these normal biblical associations: strength, solidity, the covenant, the Abrahamic covenant. Certainly all those things are there. But I don’t think that’s really the first emphasis of what’s happening here.

Look to Abraham. Remember the past. That’s first of all an important thing to tell ourselves. And he’ll say that over and over again here. If you remember the past, you’ll have comfort in the present and you’ll have hope and you’ll get involved in the future. It’s when we forget our past that we’re just in the midst of all this and it frightens us and demoralizes us.

He says, “Look to the rock from which you were hewn. Look to Abraham. Look to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you.” Now, I just said there’s this parallelism of seeking after righteousness and seeking the Lord. Okay? So now we’ve got you’re looking to a rock and you’re looking to a hole, a quarry, a quarry hole that’s been dug out, that you are brought out of—this quarry hole, a big hole in the earth. Okay? A rock and a story, and then after that he talks about Abraham and Sarah. Okay. And later in this section he says, “For why I’m telling you this is I will comfort you. He will comfort all the waste places. He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Okay.

I believe that this text is telling us: remember the helpless state of the ones that created God used to bring to pass his people—Sarah and Abraham. He’s saying, “Look to the dead, inanimate object of Abraham, almost completely unable, one would think, from being able to generate a child, and look to the completely dead womb of Sarah, the quarry from which you were dug.” I’m sorry if it offends you. The Bible uses plain language like that. This term quarry is frequently used to refer to women. So the quarry from which you were dug was barren. It was dead.

He says, “Remember how helpless Abraham and Sarah were to do anything about their state. They were a wilderness. They were barren. They were worse than you’re at. You’re at least, you know, young and many of you and you’re breathing,” he tells him in Babylon. But he says, “I know it’s hard. I know you’re in a like wilderness. I know you have no sense of being able to get out of this situation, but listen to me. Remember that I am the God who did this wonderful thing of bringing a child and from that child all the descendants, the hundreds of millions of people who are faithful to the Abrahamic covenant.

The kids’ coloring sheet today is Abraham looking up at all the stars. Remember that man had no ability. He had no hope on his own to bring that to pass. And these people in Babylon had no way. They couldn’t, you know, make munitions and do political intriguings or look to somebody else. They’d already tried that. They were dead in the water. And God says, “In your deadness, look to me. I’m the God of life.” He says, “And I demonstrated it to you through this great example of Abraham and Sarah.”

And now Christians, we remember our past every Lord’s day. And he says, “Look to me. I did the greater demonstration of my love for you and my power in the world. I raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. Look to me. Your troubles are real. They’re as real as Sarah’s barren womb. They’re as real as Jesus lying in the grave dead. They’re as real as Abraham’s incapacity to produce children. They’re as real as the sufferings of the church in Babylon spit upon, derided—their Lord being made fun of.”

You know the psalm. “Oh yeah, play us one of those Jewish songs of your great God as we march you back, you know, with many of you dying along the way back to Babylon. Yeah. Yeah. That’d be a fun thing. You sing one of those psalms like you Reformed people like to do, you know—mocked, derided, no land, right? Where’s their quarry? It’s gone. They don’t have any land. Where’s our land increasingly? Gone. You can’t get land anymore unless you’re in tremendous debt and then do you own it? No.”

We’re in like circumstance. Not as bad. You know, I’m thankful for the blessings of the freedom we have in this country. We’re post-Christian, but we’re post-Christian. Okay? And there’s a lot of benefits to that. But as a nation, we struggle with these same things of a growing sense of hopelessness to do anything. And now the clarion call comes forth a week ago from Glenn Beck, a Mormon. This is the way we’ll solve everything: moralism. Glenn Beck’s sure a great guy. I pray to God that all his interaction with Christian preachers brings him to true faith in Jesus Christ and to repent of his sins.

But look where we’re at. 20 Christian pastors met with Glenn Beck in preparation for that rally. Evangelicals, leaders, all the leaders, Jim Dobson, for instance, guys like that. And he said, “Well, I’m a Mormon and here’s what I think about the atonement, but I believe in Jesus Christ. I’ve got personal faith.” And they said, one of the black ministers hit the table and he says, “Man, it took a Mormon alcoholic to call us to step forward and announce that we’re with God.” That’s where we’re at.

But still, you know, the call is not to stand behind the God of the scriptures. It’s some kind of moralism. We’ve gone from, you know, Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. I mean, that’s where we’re headed. Okay. It’s helpless. Some of you, “Dennis, I don’t really, you know, I know all that stuff’s going on. I don’t really want to hear about it every week because, you know what? I can’t get along with my wife. It’s dead. My relationship. It’s worse than dead because we’re chained together. I can’t, you know, believe that my children are going to be able to make it, to get work, to feed themselves and put a roof over their heads anymore. Certainly not at the way that we’ve had it the last 50 years in this country. And I, pastor, I have depths. I’ve got quarry holes, you know, of I don’t know what they are. I’m depressed. I don’t I couldn’t tell you why. It’s a strain on me.”

You see, whether our situation is individual or think about it nationally. This listen—the first thing God wants us to listen to is that hey, he’s the God of resurrection. He doesn’t call you to “gee whiz, I hope things get better.” Things are going to get better. He says believe my word. And then if you don’t believe my word, look at what I’ve done. Look at your very origin. Where’d you come from? A dead womb. An inorganic man, so to speak. A rock. You came out of wilderness and I created Eden. Now you’re back in wilderness because of your sins. But listen, listen to the hope that I have for you.

The Lord God says, listen, listen, listen, listen to the assurance of comfort to helpless people. That’s where this text begins. And as I said, Matthew 5:6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; they shall be filled.” There is only one future in this world. There is only one future—the kingdom of God. That’s given to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness and don’t let their circumstances so demoralize them and create a torpor and an inactivity like in a dreamlike state to do anything.

God says he wants to awaken us, give us comfort, call us to pursue righteousness and to know that the only future left for anybody on this world—the kingdom of God—belongs to such a people. Belongs to such a people. That’s us. Praise God.

Abraham was patient. You know, Hebrews, we always think of patience of Job, but Hebrews 6:15 says, “And so after Abraham had patiently endured, he attained the promise.” God isn’t saying, “I’m going to do it right now.” He’s calling you to remember the helplessness of Abraham and his patient endurance. Now also to the exiled people, Abraham was like exiled, right? He had to go find food other places. He had to go to Egypt and places. He very patiently endured awaiting the promise. Never really got all of it, of course. And he’s telling them, you’re not in the land. Be patient. You’ll get it. He’s telling us, you don’t now visibly manifest yourself as the rulers of this earth. Be patient. That’s what God’s bringing to pass. The meek inherit the earth. Be patient like Abraham. Don’t rush. Don’t try to force things, but be confident in the Lord Jesus Christ, in God.

Okay. Second listen: a universal establishment of law, justice, righteousness, and salvation. So we’re at the second listen now. “Listen to me, oh my people. Give ear to me, oh my nation.” So you see the progression. So you know they were searching after justice. Now he refers to them as his people. And not just as a people—he refers to them as a nation. We’re a nation. Are some people say a race, a spiritual race, not a physical race. They use that sort of language because this is what they were sitting in Babylon. They were no nation to it in the side in the eyes of men. But God says, “Think of yourselves corporately. You are a nation. You’re my people.”

So he wants them to think of themselves both individualistically, but he also wants to think of themselves collectively. You know, we keep veering back and forth in this country: the collective socialist vision, then the libertarian individualistic, totally anarchic vision. You know, God says we are a people. We’re individuals, but we’re a nation. And he wants us, as we begin to prepare for his exodus, to see ourselves differently from the way we feel about ourselves.

We feel completely disoriented. We feel completely disunified. I mean, we don’t feel like a nation. In fact, Christianity a lot of times they are some of our worst collaborators in what we’re trying to go through of those who persecute us.

So, but he wants us to envision reality declared by his word, not look with our eyes to our circumstances. He desires us to see beyond them to the reality. And the reality is they’re a nation. And then he says, “For law will proceed from me. I will make my justice rest as a light to the peoples. My righteousness is near. My salvation is gone forth. My arm will judge the peoples. The coastlands will wait upon me.” Theonomic postmillennialism.

That’s the second listen. What is salvation? It’s the law. It’s justice. It’s righteousness. We have this, you know, certainly it includes being saved from our sins. Of course, as we saw last week from Isaiah 40, that’s what begins—is the atonement of our [sins], but it doesn’t end there. As we saw in Isaiah 40, salvation is the righting of the world by God. It’s the establishment of his law. It’s the establishment of justice, his righteousness in the context of a people, a family, a church, a nation, and ultimately the world because the coastlands wait for what God is doing.

Listen, listen, and understand the comprehensiveness of what salvation is all about. It’s not about personal peace and affluence. It’s about the righting of the world. And he could look, he hasn’t looked to the heavens now and look to the earth. My salvation will be forever. My righteousness will not be abolished. So now we look around in some way say, “Well, all those things will change, but his righteousness won’t.”

So we’re to listen.

Third listening: “Listen to me, you who know righteousness. You people in whose heart is my law. Do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults.” So they’re to listen. They’re to listen in their helplessness. They’re to listen to understand the theonomic postmillennial message of what God has said from the beginning of the Bible to the end—that salvation involves law, justice, and righteousness. And a law, justice, and righteousness that will be brought to fruition in all the earth.

Jesus had his baptism, right? John doesn’t want a baptism. And what does Jesus say? “Well, this has to be done to fulfill all righteousness.” What does that mean? Well, it means that he’s the servant. It means he’s the one that was described in Isaiah and the rest of the Old Testament. He’s the one that’s going to come and bring salvation, righteousness, justice and law to the whole world. And the acknowledgement of that is the spirit of God will be upon him at his baptism to demonstrate that he is the anointed servant that Isaiah talks about who will bring about, accomplish, put in place, fulfill all righteousness—not the imputation to you of some character or state of who he is. Of course, that’s true. But that is a small part. That’s not what these verses are talking about.

Remember, Paul uses this section of Isaiah 20 times in Romans alone as he articulates the doctrine of justification. Jesus came to fulfill all righteousness. And he fulfills all righteousness by doing what this text says. We’re to listen to understand that it is him who is going to bring justice to all the world. He’s going to bring justice. He’s the spirit-empowered instrument for establishing God’s righteousness to the coastlands as well as to Israel.

And if we understand this, then the third lesson tells us, don’t be afraid. You know, God talks to us where our need is. Are you afraid? I was afraid yesterday. Got things going on in my life. Yeah, I’m fearful. It comes upon me at times. I was fearful last Monday night having a nice day with my daughter at the state fair. Her water breaks. Okay, no problem. Drive up to Oregon City and okay, no problem. I stop off at home to do some stuff I’ve got to do and I go up there and by the time I get up there, things are going badly.

Baby doesn’t have signs that it’s doing well at all. They finally put an internal monitor on her and, they immediately when they do that, get the results of that [and] do an emergency C-section. You know, they’re in that room, they are working. This child is going to be saved or die. My wife and I are sitting in the waiting room knowing that this has happened. Sitting there for 20 [minutes]. I was afraid. I mean, I wasn’t, you know, out of my mind fearful. I was calling on the Lord. Fear is our state many times.

These people had every reason to be fearful. Fearful when my son gets an accident on Wednesday. You know, God brought those things to an, you know, nothing horrible happened. Praise God. We got a baby daughter. Then we had to worry about my daughter because though she had things going on inside of her that weren’t right. A little more concern and anxiety.

People are tempted to fear. And he tells us in this third section, “you who know righteousness, you people in whose heart is my law.” So you are the ones who don’t have to fear. Now if you don’t believe in God’s law and don’t want his justice, and that’s not what you’re about—if you’re just about a personal relationship with Jesus somehow apart from all of that—he doesn’t tell you not to fear. In fact, I think he wants you to fear, because he wants your salvation to be comprehensive. He wants your whole life changed. He wants you obeying him at everything.

So, but you know, assuming that yeah, we’re Christians. We got the spirit of God indwelling us. That spirit is one of seeking after justice and knowing it and hearing God’s law. He tells us, “Don’t fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults.” They had lots of them in Babylon. We are getting lots of them now in the last five years in this country. You turn on various stations, you’re guaranteed to hear insults and derisions about Christians.

When you go trying to talk to people what the Bible says about this, that, or the other thing, and they will mock you. They’ll make fun of you. Don’t fear them. Don’t stop talking because you think they’re going to think less of you. Fear is horrible. Fear is a paralyzer. Fear puts you to sleep. And the Bible says here, he wants us to awaken out of our sleep.

So he tells them to be comforted in the midst of great difficulties and great fear. You know, he tells us, “Put it away—that fear. Trust me.” Okay? Fear is the marriage killer. Fear is the community killer. Fear is the deathbringer to us. Okay? Fear is bad. And this fear here has been taken care of in part by remembering—if fear is the mind killer, failure to remember is the fear-bringer.

And when we remember what God has done and when we remember his word of promise to us, you see that casts away the fear. It empowers our mind. It empowers our spirit. And this is what he goes on to say.

Awake—the three wakeups. Awaken to the past and out of fear in the present. And this is a longer section: verses 9-16. And you know, I’ve often wondered—I’ve done a little study on this text because we’re going to sing “Arm of the Lord Awake” at the end today. I love that song, and it’s, but again, you have to be careful when you read the scriptures what is he saying. “Awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord. Awake as in the ancient days in the generations of old. Are you…?” And then see it goes to it goes to them talking about him. He doesn’t say “Am I not the arm that cut Rahab apart and wounded the serpent.” No, I think that this is us talking, wanting God to wake up.

And so the description is, “Aren’t you the one that cut Rahab apart?” Well, of course, you know, this needs a little explanation. He didn’t cut Rahab, the saved prostitute at Jericho, apart. Rahab here refers to the crocodile. It’s a word. It’s a kind of a long explanation, but Rahab is used as a verb in the scriptures as well as a name. It’s parallel here with the serpent, right? Wounded the serpent. This is probably the sea serpent. Rahab was used actually—where is it at? Do I have the text? Let’s see. Well, I can’t find the text right now, but later in Isaiah, there’s an explicit reference to Rahab. I can’t find it now, but later in Isaiah, Rahab is specifically mentioned in relationship to Egypt.

So, one thing that’s going on here is Rahab and the serpent are sort of, you know, seen in parallel with the Egyptians that got drowned in the river. And Rahab also refers to a crocodile. And so there was, you know, Egypt was like a crocodile. God says, but God ripped the crocodile apart and killed it in the water. So that’s what’s going on. They’re looking to their past and they’re now calling upon God in the present to awaken the way he delivered them then.

“You dried up the sea.” So there’s the obvious reference to the Exodus, etc. “So the ransomed of the Lord shall return.” And then he says, “I, even I, am he who comforts you. In verse 12, ‘Who are you that you should be afraid of a man who will die and of the son of a man who will be made like grass?’”

So this awakening again is to remember. It’s to remember the past and as a result put away fear in the present. “Verse 13, you forget the Lord your maker who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth.” So now he’s saying that, you know, you’re remembering is creation itself. And so God, the God of creation, the God of everything that is, you’ve got to remember that and as a result of that, put away fear and do things in the present.

One last comment on this text before we move on to the last two. The captive, verse 14. I read this last week. I think I might have misinterpreted it. “The captive exile hastens that he may be loosed, that he should not die in the pit and that his bread should not fail. But I am the Lord your God who divided the sea, whose waves roared. The Lord of hosts is his name. I have put my words in your mouth.”

So I think partly what he’s saying is don’t worry about your bread. Worry about whether my word is in your mouth. Don’t seek to deliver yourself out of the pit. Recognize I’m going to bring you out. And don’t value bread more than what it represents to you, which is my word, which I’m going to put in your mouth. So God calls us to awaken, again, to remember the past and change what we do in the future and specifically to put off fears.

The next awakened section is in verses 17 to 23: “Awaken to your sins, forgiveness and vindication.” And this would be the center of the three awakenings. He says, “You’ve had the cup of my fury. By whom will I comfort you?” He says, “Your sons haven’t done very well.” “Thus says the Lord,” verse 22, “the Lord and your God, who pleads the cause of his people. See, I have taken out of your hand the cup of trembling, the dregs of the cup of my fury. You shall no longer drink it.”

So what he says here is, look, you’ve had a really hard time. And the hard time you’ve had is in part punishment for your sins. He wants them to awaken. And now notice they say, “Awaken, God,” and he tells us to awaken, right? “Awaken. Help us out.” And the response is, “Awaken, awaken. Stand up, Jerusalem. Don’t just lay there and call on me. Stand up. You wake up. You’re my people. Wake up. Wake up out of your spiritual torpor, out of your fear, and out of your sense of condemnation.”

That’s what this central section is about. The people, we know that our sins have created a situation in which whatever happens to us is less than we deserve, right? And we have this sense of condemnation. And God doesn’t say, “Oh, no, no, no. Don’t worry about sin.” He says, “Yeah, you do feel condemned. You’ve suffered the cup of my wrath upon you. You’ve drunk the dregs of my punishment to you. Yeah, remember that, too.” He says, “But here’s what I’m doing now. It’s over. Your sins have been made atonement for, and now I’m going to forgive you so that you can stand up with confidence, not because you lightly deal with your sins in the past, but because you recognize the depth of your depravity to sin against God the way that nation did prior to its captivity—the way we so often do prior to us being in a position of helplessness and derision.

The church brought this country upon itself through her torpor, through her weird view of various doctrines funneling down everything to just personal relationship to Jesus and going to heaven. That’s not the biblical faith period. I mean, unless we just want to throw the Bible away. And this text we got here in Isaiah—I, who cares what it says? Unless we want to do that and chop our Bible way down, that is not biblical Christianity.

What we’re seeing here in the text of God’s word, echoed over and over again in the New Testament—20 times in Paul’s letter to the Romans—that’s God’s word, and it’s comprehensive. He wants us to know how great our sins are. And he wants us to know that we’ve been redeemed out of all our sins and misery. Both those things together. Heidelberg Catechism question one: “How great my sins and misery. But God’s redeemed us out of all our sins and misery.”

And because of that, “Yahoo!” We stand up. We awaken. And this text doesn’t end there. He doesn’t just say you’re forgiven. And this is again, that’s where the gospel stops today in all too many people’s minds. But it goes on to verse 23. “I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, who said to you, ‘Lie down that we may walk over you.’” Vindication is a concept over and over and over taught in the scriptures. He is going to punish people that are punishing the people of God and who are his enemies.

He is not about just giving us a place of personal peace and affluence in the midst of Egypt. No, he wants us to understand that our message is calling people to repent or they will drink judgment from him. He is about vindicating his people, vindicating his Christ from all those who would mock it or would raise up Muhammad or Joseph Smith or whoever up against it. God says, “I’m not putting up with that stuff.”

The new creation, Jesus, comes to fulfill all righteousness by punishing and bringing down his wrath upon people who obstinately raise up anti-Christian religion, anti-Christian taunts, et cetera. Vindication is an essential part of the Christian message. We need to return to that.

So we’re to awaken. And then finally, the third awakening section: “Awake. Awake. Put on strength, O Zion. Put on your beautiful garments, Jerusalem.”

Okay. So he’s caused us to awaken to the past, to remember the past, to remember what the point of all of this is, what the goal of our lives is supposed to be. He’s removed a sense of condemnation and guilt for our sins. He’s given us the assurance that our cause will prosper in the future. He’s done this to a people who are in a quarry and a hole in nothingness with no visible power, no visible reason to think that any of this is going to come to pass except they’re serving the Lord that created everything—who created a whole nation out of a dead man and a dead woman, basically a dead womb, and who raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead.

But other than that, you know, he’s telling all this stuff to people who haven’t come out yet. Okay, he’s telling them it’s happening but it’s [that] you need to awaken to it.

So the second third awakening: “Put on strength, O Zion.” Now see this is really important. The first awakening—”Awake, arm of the Lord”—and God’s response to that is “Awaken, you people.” Does it twice now? “Awaken, Zion.” We sit around waiting for the arm of the Lord to awaken and God says wake up. We cry out to him. Do something. Please. And then we don’t do anything. And he says, “Wake up.” It’s like those old Tom Petty ads on the television screen. Wake up. Watch what God’s saying here. Wake up. Put on strength, man. Don’t be discouraged. Don’t be fearful. Don’t have a sense of personal condemnation. Jesus paid the price for your sin. Be powerful. Be strong people. Have courage and get involved. The ball is in your court.

He said, “Is you want to knock it into my court, calling on me to wake up. And I’m telling you, it’s in your court. It’s firmly in your court. You’ve got to do some things. You’ve got to do some things here. Wake up. Shake yourself from the dust. Arise and sit down.” The first thing he tells us to do is liturgical warfare. Put on those robes like Aaron had, those beautiful garments. Go to the holy city, the beautiful city, which is the temple. That’s what he says first. Wake up. Start your week by going to church. Beautiful garments. Begin your warfare in worship and praise of God and asking for him to destroy your enemies. Do that.

He says, “Wake up. Put on strength.” And then he says, “Shake yourself in the dust. Arise. Sit out.” That’s what we do. You know, if we had kneelers, we’d use them. We come in and we’re in the dust and we confess sins and God says, “Get up. Stand up.” And then we get to sit down as he has the meal with us. That’s the liturgical action of the church right here in this verse. One little verse. Shake yourself from the dust. Arise, sit down—enthroned, forgiven, enthroned, having strength from God to change the world that you hear about, consider, and pray for in this worship service even today.

“Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck.” These people, they can’t keep you down. My people went down to Egypt. Assyria oppressed them. What does that mean? Who was Assyria? Well, what he’s saying is the reason you’re in exile is you trusted in Egypt while you were in Jerusalem. And I don’t care where you think you were. You were in Egypt.

The church of Jesus Christ is in Egypt today pretty much in this country. It doesn’t understand. It doesn’t want to do these things. It doesn’t want to wake up. Doesn’t want to talk about the law of God, the justice of God, the fact that Jesus came to bring the gospel message to all men. No, it does, but then it truncates the gospel message to personal salvation. We’re going to see here in a minute the fullness of it.

So we’ve been in Assyria. He says, “Shake yourself from the dust. Get out of there. Get out of there. Wake up. Empower yourself. My name is blasphemed continually every day.” That’s what it is in this country. I hope it troubles you. He wants it to trouble you and he wants you to do something about it.

You know, it’s interesting because the text began with listen. Who are we supposed to listen to? God. But in order to listen to God, who did they have to listen to? Isaiah. And they actually had to listen to people that would read Isaiah’s text to him. Tell them what it meant. We’re the voice of God into the world. It’s, you know, he doesn’t say, “Listen, just put everything out of your mind and quietly meditate and see what God tells you.” People give me this all the time. “The Lord is telling me this. The Lord is telling me that.” How do you know? Is that in the Bible? No, I just feel led. Pastor, God says listen to him. Listen to his messengers. Listen to those as they bring you his word faithfully.

And as a result of that listening, then you can speak.

Look at the gospel then in verse 7: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news.” Brings the gospel—directly alluded to. We don’t need to know the allusion in the New Testament. We know this is gospel all the way. “Proclaims peace, brings glad tidings of good things, gospel, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion.” Here’s the summation of the gospel. “Jesus will save you from your sins.” No. “Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” No. Plan for Isaiah’s life, if I remember correctly, was to be sawn in two. No, the gospel is “Your God reigns.” He rules. Jesus is king of kings, lord of lords. We sit in throne by seating in this situation, hearing the words of the king. And the word of the king to you today is “Your God rules. He reigns. Jesus rules.”

[This is the gospel.] This church for 25 years has taken this message. And I don’t know that a lot of our children understand it. I don’t know. I really don’t. But it’s what the gospel is. Jesus reigns. He’s putting the world to right. You either, you know, get with the program or not. This is the beauty of the gospel and this—resee here you’re proclaiming peace. God’s order in the world. It’s our job to proclaim that order and to work effectively for it to awaken in strength and in confidence and then to sing liturgically.

Verse 9: “Break forth into song together in waste places. The Lord has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations.” I think that’s you. It is his deliverance of you, but they’re watching you to see the strength of God in the world. “All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”

Why is it so hard for the church to miss this message? Why for a hundred years has Christianity been dominated by people that don’t believe this? Don’t believe our Savior when he said we’re supposed to disciple the nations. I don’t understand it. But I know what the word of God says. And the word of God says we’ve got great confidence for the future. We can have nothing but confidence. All the world will see the salvation of God.

And then finally, two more quick things: “Depart, depart.” But so important for us today, I think. You know, this is within that awake section, but I’m kind of looking at it separate because it’s this repeated thing. So, in this entire section, what I’m trying to do is look at those repeated things. And here we got a repeated thing doubled up for emphasis.

“Depart. Depart. What? What are you talking about? Go out from there. Where? Where? Wherever it is that has the conditions that he’s going to describe. That’s what you’ve got to get away from. Touch no unclean thing. Go out from the midst of her. Be clean, you who bear the vessels of the Lord. For you shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight, for the Lord will go before you. The God of Israel will be your rear guard.”

What he’s telling us is we have a positive obligation of holiness. Holiness. We’re to go out from places of unholiness, uncleanness. We live. Now, this was physical for them, but for us, the New Testament takes this theme up and it says, you know, this several times in 2 Corinthians—you know, “Get away from the unclean thing.” It says they couldn’t go anywhere. The Corinthians, it’s not about geography. It’s about separation from ungodliness, from things that would defile your conscience, from things that would keep your commitment from Jesus from being strong and whole.

He tells you to get away from everything and all associations that are going to produce unholiness in your life. We’re to awaken, have strength, be the arm of the Lord in that strength, and we’ll only do that when we depart from unholiness. Holiness, again, an essential element of the gospel of Jesus Christ that is so often overlooked in the church of Jesus Christ today. We’re to awaken to holiness. We’re to listen to what he commands us to do.

And as I said, this text is alluded to, of course, in the scriptures. Now, how do you know what holiness is? Well, first of all, it’s kind of, you know, I think most of us really know when you’re doing something that’s not holy, unholy, and when you’re doing something that’s good. And holiness just means a life of complete consecration to Jesus. It just means being a Christian 24/7. Okay, that’s all it means. Everything you do should be motivated out of a love and a sense of a desire to be set apart from the world that’s going away.

Why would you want to be part of a ship that’s going to sink and instead attach yourself to the ship that’s going ahead into the future? The only future is the kingdom of God. This world will see the kingdom of God become more and more manifest and the old world will die away. Don’t attach yourself to it. You’ll go down with the ship. Okay? That’s what holiness is.

But if we want to get more specific, you young people, I exhort you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to read today Leviticus 19. If you want the Bible—Peter tells us this in the New Testament. He says, “Be holy for I am holy.” He quotes from Leviticus 19. In Leviticus 19 are 70 commandments that are a commentary on the Ten Commandments that tell us how to love God and our neighbor as ourselves in that particular context. And it’s not too tough to make application in your life. I’ve talked about them over and over again. I’ve had them taught in Sunday school class, talked about them in my Ten Word sermons because that’s what it is—a commentary on that. That’s where holiness is.

Let me just give you one. You children, young people 25 and under, listen to me. Listen well. If you don’t listen, it’s to your detriment. You’ll stay in Babylon or you’ll end up there. Listen. The Lord spoke to Moses. “Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.’” What does it mean? Two summary statements at the top of this list: “Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father.” I know that’s not true of some of the children in our church, including some of my own. They don’t revere their mother and their father. Oh, you know, they try to not get too sideways with them. That’s not holiness. Holiness is revering your mother and your father.

You know, I was going to make a crack about beauty a couple weeks ago and how, you know, crown of glory is the gray hair of the old man, right? But it’s actually glory there is beauty. So I’m beautiful. God makes us beautiful, men and women. Don’t hide it. Let it be beautiful. And let it be a reminder to the people of this congregation and particularly to our young children growing up. The first commandment for you to be holy is to revere your parents.

Now, is it any wonder that the world attacks this thing first and foremost? Breaking down the authority of the family, making fun of parents who don’t get it and old people. For you, know, holiness, young people, is revering your father and mother. And what’s the second thing it says? Keeping my Sabbaths. Boy, you know, geez, I could go off on this one for a long time. Why do you guys got that Lord’s day deal and it’s just that people, you know, go to church on Sunday and try real hard not to work on the Lord’s day, and then you can buy and sell and get down to Starbucks and have a cup of coffee.

What is the problem with you guys? If because we know that we didn’t make it up. We didn’t put it here. We read our Bibles and it says to keep the Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day, like honoring your parents is the beginning of holiness. Don’t tell me you’re holy. Don’t tell me about your personal relationship to Jesus if you haven’t departed from an irreverent attitude toward your parents.

And if you haven’t departed from an irreverent attitude toward the first day of the week, the Lord sets apart as special to him. Holiness begins with loving God, committing your time, your resources, and everything you have to him. And particularly, it begins on the first day of the week. And it proceeds on by honoring and revering your parents.

You let me mention another thing. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I want to read another one from chapter 19. “You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty.” I heard this week on I think it was the Beck show. He was playing a liberation theology guy. And he got a question in an interview and the interviewer said, “Well, do you believe in redistribution of wealth?” He says, “Well, certainly that is the gospel.”

And you know what? He’s right. Now, he’s not right the way he thought about it. He’s showing partiality to the poor. He wants a leveling of all income. But you know what? The Bible tells us that the redistribution of wealth is indeed the gospel. The Bible says that the riches of the wicked are saved up for the righteous. The Bible says the only one that gets to own anything at the end of all this are the meek, those who’ve been broken into the harness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Don’t think he’s not in the process of redistributing wealth, children. He ends away from the godless and given to the godly. That’s holiness. We should want social justice by doing away with having an equality of opportunity, so to speak. No, you know, discrimination, of course, but don’t think that we want an equality of results. That’s godlessness. That’s the opposite of holiness.

Now, now here’s another one I think is important. Verse 17 of Leviticus 19. I’m serious, young people. I want you to feel real guilty tonight if you haven’t read Leviticus 19 today. Verse 17: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him.”

I am tired in this church of hearing about people’s sins secondhand, third hand. I thought out things about a certain young lady in our church this week that I should have been told long ago. You young people, you forget all that unrighteous stuff that you’ve got going on in your heads about not snitching. You’re supposed to confront people with their sins. Listen, you want me to treat you like adults, right? And you’re 18 now. That’s what the state says. You want me to treat you like… I’ll tell you how adults deal with sin.

What we do is we try—when we see somebody doing something wrong, lying to somebody, cheating on whatever it is—we go to them. We try to encourage them not to sin and then we rebuke them. And if they still keep at it, we get somebody else involved. And then we go to the church. We go to the people that are involved in their lives and then we go to the church. We don’t sit on it. We try to fulfill the righteousness of that text.

All kinds of things have gone on in the life of this church for a few years now and you know, by the time somebody that should find out about it hears about it, 10 other people know about it and they’re always, you know, “Yeah, well, we were trying to help the person.” You know, well, you really want to help people? Follow holiness. Follow Matthew 18. Let people who are concerned know that if it involves anyone under the age of 20, you have a positive obligation to involve their parents. You know, we have question and answers. You can tell me how you think I’m wrong then. Otherwise, I believe that holiness includes acting like men and women, adults, as it comes to purifying our own church, helping one another to depart from ungodliness. That’s our job. That’s our job—to go to one another and encourage us to depart, to move in the context of holiness.

And when somebody says no or somebody says I can’t do it, it’s your job then to try to, according to Matthew 18 and all kinds of other texts, get somebody else involved. You don’t let it sit because you know when sin sits for a while, week, two weeks, three weeks, things just get stiffened and hardened. Consciences get seared over. The Bible calls us to holiness. It says that we’re to awake to the end that we would be holy.

Now, this same thing—okay, I’ve gone way over time. I’ll wrap this up now. Read a couple of scriptures. We read two scriptures. First in Romans 13:11-14: Here’s one of those allusions to Isaiah 40-66.

“Do this knowing the time, that it is high time to awake out of sleep.” So Paul’s bringing up Isaiah’s “Awake, awake, awake.” “Awake out of sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. And what does he go on to say? The night is far spent. The day is at hand. Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness. Let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness or lust, not in strife and envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

It’s the same thing. Awake to holiness. That’s what Romans does with that text. Same thing is true in Ephesians 5:14. “Therefore, he says, ‘Awake you who sleep, arise from the dead. Christ will give you light.’” See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools. Awake so that you can walk in the context of holiness. Put away condemnation. Put away an improper valuation of your value and worth to God. Put away worldliness. Depart from all those things.

Comfort is to the end that we would be strengthened, equipped, become active and not inactive, and that we would commit ourselves afresh to holiness. That’s the purpose of comfort. And for too often in the church, comfort is just meant holding people’s hands as they struggle through life. Well, that’s the beginning part, but that’s not the end. We comfort people to the end that they would be active people who speak forth and act out the gospel of Jesus Christ and who commit themselves to personal and corporate holiness.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your word. Help us, Father, and let your spirit do his work this week in our lives as we meditate on these things. Bless us as we come forward committing ourselves afresh to depart from ungodliness, depart from unholiness, and consecrate ourselves afresh to putting on Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.