This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Suffering Servant” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 14, 1986.

This is Isaiah fifty-one, verse twelve. I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you are afraid of a man who dies, and of the son of man who is made like grass, that you have forgotten the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, that you fear continually all day long because of the fury of the oppressor as he makes ready to destroy. But where is the fury of the oppressor? The exile will soon be set free, and will not die in the dungeon, nor will his bread be lacking.

For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea and its waves roar. The Lord of hosts is his name, And I have put my words in your mouth, and have covered you with the shadow of my hand, to establish the heavens, to found the earth, and to say to Zion, you are my people. Rouse yourself, rise, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the Lord’s hand the cup of his anger, the chalice of his reeling you have drained to the dregs.

There is none to guide her among all the sons she has born, nor is there one to take her by the hand among all the sons she has reared. These two things have befallen you. Who will mourn for you? The devastation and destruction, famine and sword. Who shall comfort you? How shall I comfort you?” Your sons have fainted.

They lie helpless at the head of every street like an antelope in a net. full of the wrath of the Lord, the rebuke of your God. Therefore, please hear this, you afflicted, who are drunk but not with wine. Thus says your God, the Lord, even your God, who contends for his people. Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of reeling, the chalice of my anger. You will never drink it again, and I will put it into the hand of your tormentors. who have said to you, lie down, that we may walk over you. You have even made your back like the ground and like the street for those who walk over it.

Awake, awake, clothe yourself in your strength, O Zion, clothe yourself in beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city, for the uncircumcised and the unclean will no more come into you. Shake yourself from the dust. Rise up, O captive Jerusalem! Loose yourself from the chains around your neck, O captive daughter of Zion!

For thus says the Lord, You were sold for nothing, and you will be redeemed without money. For thus says the Lord your God, My people went down at first into Egypt to reside there, then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause, Now, therefore, what do I have here, declares the Lord, seeing that my people have been taken away without cause? Again, the Lord declares, those who rule over them, how?

And my name is continually blasphemed all day long. Therefore, my people shall know my name. Therefore, in that day, I am the one who is speaking. Here I am.” Now, our Father, we as humble children would listen to you. Our Father, we ask that with obedient hearts we might draw near and respond in faith to all that you say. We ask it from the youngest to the oldest. Amen. the images.

The images of sleep and slumber found in this section of Isaiah’s prophecy. Maybe something that overtakes you on a winter’s evening while sitting in church. The image of sleep and slumber about. In this section of Isaiah’s prophecy, remember first that image of the sleeping servant of the Lord, the sleeping servant of the Lord in Chapter fifty verses four and five. And we spoke about that image before and how beautiful it is for there we are told morning by morning. Without interruption. Morning by morning.

So the servant himself claims the Lord. Awaits him. Awaits him to service as that proved the site. He awakens me, says the servant, morning by morning. He awakens my ear to listen as a disciple. The Lord has opened my ear, and I was not disobedient, nor did I turn back. It is a beautiful image. The servant of the Lord awakes to obedience as soon as he hears. Think of yourself. Awakening in the morning. You hear as you awake.

Such is the response of the servant. Not only is the Lord awakening him, but as he awakes and he is ready to obey. but more than the immediacy and willingness of the servant’s response is in view. Actually, it is as if the Lord Himself is present. So, says the servant, the Lord Himself is present to awaken him, to literally open his ears And as he does this, he finds the servant willing.

This combination of the image of sleep and the image of the ear to hear, and the willing listening of the servant, then is contrasted. It is contrasted by the portrait the picture we are given of the people. It is as if the people, then spoken of as they are in chapter fifty one verses one through eight, it is as if these people are sleepwalking. And we are given, as the consequence of that, the seeming desperate and impassioned portrait of God, who out of his great love for them, as it were, grabs hold of them in an effect to awaken them to the immeasurable glories that await them as the people of God. Listen to me,” he says, first one chapter fifty one. Pay attention. He said. Listen to me grabbing hold of the lapel once more. He said.

But the description of these glory here given by the war are so provocative so compelling so wonderful. That This description moves the Prophet himself. The one who then speaks in verses 9 through 11 of that 51st chapter. The description of these glories is so provocative, so compelling, so wonderful, that it moves the Prophet to cry out in prayer. in prayer.

This prophet moved by the spirit of the servant, moved by the spirit of the servant who hears and willingly and immediately obeys. So it is The prophet, after the pattern of the servant, in the spirit of the servant, cries out at the description of the glory given here by the Lord.

His cry, as we said, is a prayer that God then would approach afresh His people, as He did when he delivered his people originally from Egypt and from the superstitions of ancient myth. Therefore, not just Ray have in verse nine, Ray have another word for Egypt, but the dragon at the conclusion of that ninth verse, not just Egypt, but the tyranny of superstitions from ancient myth. The Lord then, in that deliverance, brought his people into glorious joy. But now, what does the prophet pray for? It is that joy of which the Lord himself has been speaking.

The joy that is described repeatedly through those first eight verses of chapter fifty-one. that joy for which there is no possibility of interruption, a joy that is absolutely full and complete, as the prophet prays in the eleventh verse, an everlasting joy that will be upon the heads of the people of God. Therefore, The Prophet must be understood as asking for more than just a resolution to present problems, more than just a resolution for even some distant distress that’s coming upon Israel, like the exile. The Prophet must be understood as asking for that full and final visitation of God. nothing through the profit is great by income. By kingdom. Or in the language of the expectant church the profit is praying come Lord Jesus even so more quickly. Take note.

The image used by the Prophet in his prayer is again that image of slumber, where formerly it was the servant and then the people who were seen as sleeping and who were in need of awakening. Now it is the Lord Himself who seemingly sleeps and is called upon by the Prophet in his prayer to awaken. He said, awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord, awake as in the days of old, the generations of long ago.

And the desperate and impassioned plea that we’ve already heard about spoken by God to the people as he pleads with them to awake. That plea is now reciprocated by the prophet as he speaks to God. As impassioned as the Lord himself was in his attempt to awaken the people, so impassioned is the prophet as he speaks to the Lord and cries out for the Lord’s attention. Thus we have the picture of God. who so desires his people, and the prophet who so desires his God. You see it, the love of God for his people, that there seems to overtake in the Lord, as he describes his attitude toward them.

A desperation. As he pleads with them, so he loves them. But so love the Prophet, the Lord. That a similar passion. Overtakes him. I so love the Lord. that nothing less than the Lord and his coming. Will satisfy me. But you might be thinking. How is the prophet able to say these things to the whole. What kind of man is he?

Is he not vain and presumptuous as he says, Awake, Lord, awake. Isn’t it amazing that God is asleep? God is asleep. We must not think that this prayer of the prophet is irreligious or profane. Even though we may be tempted. To think how dare the prophet speak of God. As if he were asleep, doesn’t he know that he that watch it is really slumbers or sleeps. But how perfect.

A prayer this is. How perfect a prayer this is. It is not a prayer of unbelief or presumption. It is not a prayer given over to profanity or to the irreligious notions that abound in the world. Rather, it is a prayer filled with faith, built upon a serene confidence in God’s former redemptive act.

And it is a strength in its eagerness For God’s concluding redemptive act, the act in which God will grant the full and perfect kingdom of eternal joy, the prophet’s passion to have the kingdom has been trained by the Lord’s desire to give it. And therefore the prophet is told and says, Awake. Act now. Bring in the kingdom. And all this misery will be passed. All the sorrow inside will flee away. And we will know only, only perpetual, unending joy.

But now, you see, we come to the Lord’s answer. And the Lord’s answer is found in verses twelve and sixteen. And what a strange, strange answer it is. It is fraught full of a built-in complexity and difficulty that may well alluded. If we are not careful. You see. How the Lord respond. Complexity brought out. A difficult one out. In the language itself. The Lord begins in what appears to be a response to a singular about. One you. One you. If you have a King James, the number of the pronoun becomes clear. The response is as if to a singular thou.

As if, then, you see, Against the background of the Prophet’s prayer in verses nine to eleven, the Lord is making his response specifically to the Prophet as the singular vow. But, note, by the end of the Lord’s response, the conclusion of verse sixteen, that that singular vow has been translated into a collective or plural vow. Thou art my people, he says.

More than the prophet, therefore, is imbued as the Lord makes his response. In fact, there seems to be a reversal of roles for the prophet and the people as the Lord speaks in his response. On the one hand, this response by God to the prayer of faith from the prophet makes the prophet, as you read down through it, makes the prophet look very bad. The prophet here, then, as the Lord responds to the prayer, is actually dressed up in the foibles and failures, shortcomings, and sins of the faithless people.

Therefore, while we might think God is simply replying to the prophet, He is actually replying to the people in the prophet. You see, it is the people, it is the people who are afraid of a man who dies. In verse 12, not the prophet. It is the people who have forgotten the Lord, their maker. In verse 13, not the prophet. It is the people who fear continually all day long. And the people have these responses in the spirit of that original unbelieving note of rejection sounded in Isaiah forty nine verse fourteen where the Lord says but Zion says the Lord has forsaken me the Lord has forgotten.

This overlay. of the profit by the people is God’s response. This overlay of the profit by the people in God’s response makes the profit, as I have said, look very bad. But actually, as you take stock of it, it is a marvelous, marvelous thing. For it suggests and identification of the problem with the people in this. Sound familiar. Sound familiar.

As the prophet gives himself over to intercession as he gives himself to prayer As the prophet, in a sense, takes upon himself the form of a priest, the response of the Lord literally translates him into the priest, so that superimposed upon him are the sins of the people, the very pattern of the servant of the Lord becoming plain in him. Yes, the very pattern of that servant of the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, becoming plain and clear in him. But moving further, we see that the Lord, by his response, does more than speak to the people in the prophet. For he also sees the prophet in the people.

It is not the people. who have God’s word in their mouth. First. Sixteen. It is the proper to have the word of the Lord put in his mouth. After the similitude of After the similitude of the promised prophet of Deuteronomy 18, after the similitude of Jeremiah, who has the word put in his mouth. It is not the people who have God’s word put in their mouth, rather it is the prophet. And it is not the people who have been covered with the shadow of the Lord’s hand, like unto most in essence. rather.

It is the. But just as the profit is addressed in ways that involve him in the people in so the people are addressed in ways that involve them in the profits all. The profit. Is humbled. The people are exalted. The prophet is made last, and the people are made first. The prophet is made the servant, the people are made lords. Sound familiar? Sounds something like the prescriptive character of the law and the prophets of which we speak. The prophet is made last and the people are made for. This magnificent reversal. In which the profit becomes like the people and the people like the profit. Is to the end.

That God’s eternal purpose may be made clear. The New American Standard in verse sixteen translates the conclusion of that verse very roughly. I’m not going to attempt a good translation for you tonight, except to say that at the heart of this conclusion of that verse, we are to see that the heavens have been established and the earth founded. so that the Lord may have those in Zion to whom he may say, Thou art my people. To that end, to that end, not just the prophet making himself last, not just Isaiah making himself last, but God himself making himself last.

That I might have my people, and that they may be with me forever. I will not be denied, for as surely as I have made the world, I will bring everything to that conclusion wherein it shall be clear that I have done all things for the sake of my life my own my people and I will not let them go even if it means that I have to become last for their sake even if it means I have to die.

So great. So that. So overwhelmed. Is the law. Of God. And that love you see now. Is playing itself out. In a prophet named Isaiah. Who lived in the eighth century. And it shall, of course, you know, play itself out in that one of whom Isaiah was but a shadow, the Lord Jesus Christ. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting Joy, life, synonyms.

Well, we have some more slumber images to deal with. I think you realize that. Verse 17 talks about slumbering too, a sleeping people. who now become the objects of the profits preaching. And in Isaiah fifty two once more the first verse the profit preaching once again away away. He says that. To the captive daughter of. And we will deal with the profit preaching. With.

O Lord, forgive us in that we have been hard of heart, not only failing to see the Lord Jesus in all the law and the prophets, but failing likewise to live in keeping with what is declared there, with a willingness to be last, that others may be first. Willing to be slaves, that others may be free and exalted. Do be gracious to us, Lord, we pray. In this congregation, our Father, do be with us, as we, with humility, would be clothed in Christ.

Let’s be sure to remember our brothers and sisters in South Africa, the struggles, the very severe, distressing struggles that the churches of Jesus Christ are undergoing there. We certainly do not have to sympathize with those churches in their sin, but as they are our brothers and sisters in Christ, let us be sure we plead to God on their behalf that they may be whole, and in a spirit that doesn’t exalt ourselves at their expense, but rather seeks to see us as servants for their sake. We ought to be remembering our friends in Morgantown.

Some of you know already that the church there is being evicted. And they’ve been asked to leave the Seventh Day Adventist church building by the end of January. It’s a little soon. So I believe that the men in the church are going to try and negotiate in order to get a few more months out of the Seventh-day Adventist church. That will give them time, we hope, to find a place to meet. Not an easy task in Morgantown, where they’ve tried many, many times before to find suitable places to worship. So, pray for Morgantown. It’s the first major crisis for them.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.