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Well, I would invite you to open your Bibles. My sermon text this morning, as we return to our study of the prophet Isaiah, is Isaiah 54, verses 1 through 10. You will find this passage on page 730 in your Pew Bibles. This passage comes immediately after the well-known suffering servant passage in Isaiah 53, a passage that foretells the sufferings of Christ, our Savior, on the cross. Now we learn of the eternal covenant of peace in this chapter. Isaiah 54, verses 1 through 10.

Friends, hear the word of God. Sing, O barren one, who did not bear. Break forth into singing and cry aloud, O you who have not been in labor. For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the Lord. Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your dwellings be stretched out. Do not hold back. Lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations, and will people the desolate cities. Fear not, for you will not be ashamed. Be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced. For you will forget the shame of your youth and the reproach of your widowhood; you will remember it no more.

For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name, and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth He is called. For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you. But with everlasting love, I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer.

This is like the days of Noah to me, as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth. So I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

Let us pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of his word. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the soul food that you give us in the scriptures. We pray that by your Spirit’s illuminating grace you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word this day. We ask, Heavenly Father, that you would cause us, Lord, to hear what the Spirit is saying in this portion of your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible word, and that we would take these truths to heart. And once again, Lord, we ask that you would set a guard over my lips, enable me to declare your word with clarity, power, and faithfulness. We ask, Heavenly Father, that you would build us up this day and that you would cause much spiritual fruit to be born through that which is preached today.

We pray these things through Christ our Lord, and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. Well, friends, the title of my sermon today is The Covenant of Peace. I would encourage the young people to listen for these four key words in my sermon today: fertility, covenant, husband, and promises. Well, dear ones, we have all made promises, haven’t we?

And we have all been guilty, at times at least, of breaking our promises. As you may know from personal experience, broken promises are rarely innocent. In fact, broken promises can erode trust. They can undermine relationships. They can lead to bitterness. They can result in various sins and harmful behaviors. Broken promises can end friendships, destroy marriages, divide families, split churches, damage communities, harm businesses, and even divide nations.

When it comes to human relationships, one of the most solemn and serious promises made among people is the wedding vow. Many of you, I am sure, remember your wedding day and the promises you made to your future spouse.

In a traditional Christian wedding service, the bride and the groom stand before Almighty God and before human witnesses to solemnly pledge and promise to love, honor, cherish, and comfort one another, and to remain faithful to each other, forsaking all others until death separates them. These are serious commitments. These are serious promises made in wedding vows. These promises emphasize that marriage is a binding covenant relationship, a relationship entered into voluntarily and involving solemn promises and mutual responsibilities between husband and wife. Of course, no marriage in this fallen world is perfect.

Marriages in which both husband and wife are seriously, prayerfully, and earnestly striving to keep the covenant promises of their wedding vows. In such marriages, these marriages will usually be characterized by overall peace and harmony. But on the other hand, marriages in which the wedding vows are routinely violated, where one spouse or both spouses are not loving, honoring, cherishing, comforting one another, or being faithful to one another, and thus breaking the marriage covenant. Such marriages will tend to be characterized, of course, by disharmony, disunity, dysfunction, and strife.

Well, Pastor, why are you bringing up marriage in the context of this passage here in Isaiah? Well, friends, I bring up this matter of marriage and promises, in particular the promises that couples make to one another in their wedding vows, because the Bible, God’s word, reveals that our God is a God who makes covenant promises to his people.

And also because the Holy Scriptures sometimes portray God as a divine husband to his covenant people. We find that in our passage for this Lord’s Day morning. Our passage for this Lord’s Day morning indeed depicts the Lord, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, as the husband, the divine husband of his people, and his people are depicted as Yahweh’s wife. Look again at verses five and six, where Isaiah says to the people of God: “For your maker is your husband. The Lord of hosts is his name, and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth, He is called. For the Lord has called you like a wife, deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off,” says your God.

And of course, this analogy of God’s covenant relationship to His people being similar to a husband’s relationship to his wife carries over into the New Testament scriptures, where our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is revealed as the spiritual head and husband of His church, and the church, by implication, is revealed to be the bride of Christ.

We saw this, at least by implication, in the passage that I read earlier in the service from Ephesians chapter 5. Let me read a couple of those verses again. Ephesians chapter 5, verses 25 and 26, we read the following: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.” We see here an analogy. Husbands are to love their wives as Christ, the divine head and husband of His church, loves the church, giving Himself up for her. Then skip down to verses 29 and 30.

Paul writes, “For no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body.” The union of one flesh pictured in marriage is a depiction pointing to the union of Christ with His church. Then look at verse 32: Paul makes it clear, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Yes, he is talking about duties and responsibilities between husbands and wives, but behind that is this mystery of Christ’s relationship to His church.

Now, friends, with this analogy in mind, we have seen throughout Isaiah that even though God has been perfectly loyal to the covenant as a divine husband toward his people, God’s people under the Israelite theocracy have been disloyal, persistently and often impenitently so, to the covenant relationship that God established with them. Just as a wife breaks her marriage covenant through persistent and impenitent unfaithfulness to her husband, Israel broke the covenant by following the idols of the nations around them and by forsaking the Lord and disobeying His holy law. This is why God predicted that they would be sent away into exile in Babylon.

But, friends, our passage for this Lord’s Day morning anticipates a time in redemptive history beyond Babylonian exile. It looks to the joy of the new covenant, after God would graciously restore His faithless bride from exile, never again to rebuke her as He did during the exile, and promising her His covenant of peace—a covenant that would be ratified by the promised Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ. As it says in verse 10: “For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you. And my covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you. So, friends, let us turn our attention to our passage for this Lord’s Day morning.

The first thing I want us to consider as we investigate verses one through four of our passage is what we learn here about the spiritual fertility of the new covenant age. We learn first of all in this passage about the spiritual fertility of the new covenant age.

Now once again, our passage for this morning is well situated in the flow of Isaiah’s prophecy. Isaiah 54 is connected to what comes before it in Isaiah chapter 53. It is also connected to what comes after it in Isaiah 55. In Isaiah 53, we read of and studied the messianic prophecy concerning Jesus the suffering servant. In this prophetic passage of chapter 53, we see how our Savior’s sufferings were described in great detail hundreds of years before he came into human history. But that redeeming work of Christ, through which he paid the penalty for sin, made it possible for the church to expand to the nations. We learn about this in our passage for today. As one commentator expresses it, in Christian terms, the crucifixion of chapter 53 is followed by the growth of the church in chapter 54 and the gospel call of chapter 55.

Some would suggest that our passage for today anticipates only the joy and restoration that would be experienced by the Old Testament Jewish community after its return to the promised land following the Babylonian exile. Therefore, these commentators would find the fulfillment of this passage solely in the post-exilic Jewish community. And friends, we may certainly view this passage as having at least a partial and initial fulfillment in the return of God’s people from their Babylonian exile. However, the fact that this passage ultimately speaks about the joy and restoration brought about by Jesus the Messiah in the new covenant era is confirmed by what the Apostle Paul says about it in the New Testament. For Paul quotes from this passage in Galatians 4, verses 26 and 27.

Let me read, first of all, verse 1 of our passage for today once again. It says, “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear. Break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor. For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married,” says the Lord.

But when we look at this passage, if you turn to Galatians 4, verses 26 and 27, we see that Paul applies this passage from Isaiah to the true church, which he describes as the Jerusalem above. In other words, the true people of God, those who are born from above, born again by the Holy Spirit. As it says in Galatians 4, verses 26 and 27, Paul writes: “But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 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.'”

So again, this confirms that our passage for today is ultimately a prophecy about the realities of our new covenant age in Christ. Therefore, returning to our passage for today, with all of this in mind, what we find in verse 1 is a summons for God’s people to rejoice in the spiritual fertility that is promised in this new covenant age. Sing, O barren one who did not bear. Break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor.

For the children of the desolate, one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the Lord. This predicts that God will add multitudes to the ranks of His people in the age of the promised Messiah. Multitudes of sinners will be converted from among the Gentile nations to faith in the true and living God, Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God whom we worship, the blessed Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, multitudes will be added to the membership of those who are children of Zion. This is what I mean by spiritual fertility. It is not necessarily about physical fertility or the natural multiplication of children. It is about the spiritual multiplication of the church, as multitudes are brought to faith in the true and living God in the age of the promised Messiah. This spiritual fertility of the new covenant age, which is anticipated in our passage for today, will be the ultimate fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham.

After all, consider this, brothers and sisters, especially those of you who are familiar with what God promised Abraham. God not only promised Abraham that he would have many children, physical descendants who would populate the promised land, but God also promised Abraham that through him, the nations would be blessed. Ultimately, this refers to Christ, for Christ, who was a son of Abraham, came as the promised Messiah and blesses the nations with His saving mercy. If you go back to Genesis chapter 12, verses one and three, these verses recall the Lord’s promise to Abraham in His covenant with Abraham. Chapter 12, verses one to three.

Now the Lord said to Abraham, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse.”

And notice the end of verse three: “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God’s covenant with Abraham was not about blessing only his Jewish descendants. It is about blessing all the nations of mankind. This is confirmed when God reaffirms His Abrahamic promise to Jacob. If you turn to Genesis chapter 28, and look at verses 13 and 14, it says: “The Lord said to Jacob, ‘Behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, 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. 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. In you and in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.'”

Praise be to God. Here God reaffirms His covenant promises to Jacob. So it is likely, my friends, that in our passage for this morning, Isaiah had these covenant promises in mind as the Holy Spirit moved him to write this passage and to use this imagery. Then he goes on to say in verse two: “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out. Do not hold back. Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.” How many of you live in tents? I do not think many of you do, or any of you do.

But in Isaiah’s time, there were people who lived in tents in that particular culture and era. There still are nomadic peoples today in certain parts of the world. This passage uses the imagery of nomadic life, which would have been familiar to the original audience Isaiah was addressing. In this passage, Isaiah speaks of expanding the place of your tent and stretching out the curtains of your dwelling. What is the meaning of this imagery?

The meaning is that God will increase the number of those who are children of Zion. He will increase the number of His covenant people in the new covenant age. He will add many more people to the community of His covenant. This anticipates the church’s great commission and the gathering of the Gentiles into Christ’s church.

Then, in verse 3, it says: “For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities.” Notice, your offspring will possess the nations, not just one nation, but the nations. This again anticipates the expansion of Christ’s kingdom to all nations of humanity. Dr. E.J. Young comments that “to the right and to the left” has adverbial force and indicates that this expansion will be worldwide.

The Church is outward-moving and active in its mission. Isaiah uses Old Testament imagery to symbolize the great spiritual victory over the nations through the worldwide preaching of the Gospel. This victory is not achieved through military conquest, but through the conquest of the Gospel, so that the Lord’s people will, in a spiritual sense, possess the nations.

And then verse 4: fear not, for you will not be ashamed. Be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced. Oh, the people of God in exile had been disgraced, and their captors no doubt mocked them. They said, “Your God, Yahweh, was not powerful enough to prevent you from being conquered and brought into exile.” But here Isaiah, in the spirit of prophecy, foresees a time after the exile, when the people are told: fear not, for you will not be ashamed as you had been in the past. Be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced, for you will forget the shame of your youth and the reproach of your widowhood. You will remember them no more, because God will certainly accomplish His redemptive purposes. The people of God, we as the people of God, have no need to fear. Let us not fear, for the Lord has promised never to expose us to shame. Christ took that shame upon Himself on the cross of Calvary.

Now notice in the language of verse 4, Isaiah, through the Spirit, promises the people: for you will forget the shame of your youth. What does this refer to? The shame of your youth? This may refer to their time as slaves in Egypt. They will forget that shame. And the reproach of your widowhood may refer to the Babylonian exile, when the people felt utterly deserted by Yahweh, their divine husband. They felt as if He were dead to them. He says, do not fear.

Things will change when the Messiah comes. Beloved, let us be confident in the success of the church’s missionary and evangelistic labors. We are promised in passages like this that the gospel will go forth throughout the world, that the great multitude of God’s elect will be gathered to Christ and into His church from the four corners of the earth, and in God’s good time. We are promised that the nations will be discipled.

How that looks in terms of number and extent is debated by theologians and Bible scholars. We are not told exactly, but we can trust that God will carry out his saving purposes. This confidence should not make us apathetic or passive, nor should it lead us to sit back and say, “Well, God will bring his own home in his good time.” God uses means. He uses us as his church, his people, to witness for Christ and to shine the light of Christ. Therefore, we must be active, using the gifts that God has given us and doing what we can to contribute our part to the cause of the Great Commission. Nevertheless, we need not be afraid and we need not be ashamed. God’s purposes will prevail. Why?

Because he is faithful. In fact, this leads me to my next point: we consider Yahweh as the faithful husband of his people. Yahweh, the faithful divine husband of his people. Verse five says, “For your maker is your husband.” Why is it that we need not fear? Why is it that we can be confident that God will carry out his purposes, brothers and sisters? Because the Lord is loyal to his covenant with us. He is our divine husband. Your maker is your husband.

The Lord of hosts, Yahweh of hosts, is his name. Yahweh, the covenant name for God, is indicated in English translations when the word Lord appears in all capital letters. This is the translator’s way of indicating God’s covenant name. God is a faithful covenant-making and covenant-keeping God. He is Yahweh of hosts. He is the God of the armies of heaven. And that is his name. The Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer. The God of the whole earth is he called. He is the God of the whole earth. He is not merely a national or tribal deity. He is the God of the whole earth. And brothers and sisters in Christ, we as the church can be confident, for he is our faithful divine husband.

Again, as I mentioned before, not only in this passage but elsewhere in Scripture, God is sometimes portrayed as a divine husband to his people. To provide another example from the Scriptures, let us turn to Hosea 2, verse 16. In the Old Testament, Hosea, Joel, and Amos contain this passage. Here, notice what the Lord says to his people at a time when they were unfaithful. Verse 16: “In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband and no longer will you call me my Baal.” Then skip down to verses 19 and 20: “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.”

Friends, this depiction of Yahweh’s relationship to his people, analogous to a husband’s relationship to his wife, serves to underscore the truth that God’s relationship to us, his people, is a covenant relationship. That is, a relationship in which God graciously binds himself to us through solemn promises. He requires from us a response of true faith, expecting loyalty that arises from such faith. Yet he remains faithful. He is loyal to his covenant promises. Praise be to God. Then we read verses 6 and following:

“For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off,” says your God. “For a brief moment, I deserted you, but with great compassion, I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment, I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love, I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer. Are these not comforting words? Now, some might say, wait a minute, God does not abandon his people, right?

And yet it says in verse six, the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off. Has God ever cast off his people? No. When we compare Scripture with Scripture, we know that God does not abandon His people. God remains faithful even when we are faithless, and we see that throughout the history of Israel in the Old Testament. So I would agree with Calvin’s view that God had not actually deserted His people when they were in Babylonian exile, for He always remains true to His promises. But no doubt the people in exile would feel as though God had deserted them and abandoned His covenant promises to them, which is probably how we should understand this kind of language of divine desertion here. God is speaking from the standpoint of how His people would understand and view themselves in their exiled condition. Yet He had not ultimately abandoned His people. And He says, in overflowing anger for a moment, I hid My face from you. Yes, He disciplined them. He sent them into exile. He chastened them sorely. But then He says, that is not the end.

This is proof that He has not abandoned them, because He says, with everlasting love, I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer, your Redeemer. Beloved, let us trust God in Christ as the faithful divine head and husband of His church. Let us realize that our God is loyal to His covenant promises. He always keeps His promises, and He can always be relied upon. Do you believe that? God is trustworthy. Do you trust in Him as He is offered to you in the gospel of Jesus Christ? And we can trust in Him finally because of the permanence of His covenant promises. This is my final point as we turn our attention to verses nine and ten. We read here of the permanence of God’s covenant promises. In verse nine, the Lord says, this is like the days of Noah to Me.

As I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you. Though the waters of the great flood of Noah’s time overwhelmed and destroyed the world that then was, eventually those waters receded. And God promised that He would never again send such a destructive flood. Remember His promise in Genesis 9, verse 11, where God says to Noah: “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” He is not saying, by the way, that there will never be any more floods. There have been many floods since the days of Noah.

But there will never be a flood of this magnitude that would destroy all living beings on the face of the earth. And so, God says it will never happen again, and God will never break that promise. Likewise, just as God promises never again to destroy the earth by a flood, just as that promise stands forever, so He has promised to never again express His anger toward His people in the way He did during their Babylonian exile, especially in the New Covenant era.

Why? Because God’s anger was poured out on Christ. And that is one of the things, you know, the Lord, our Heavenly Father, can be displeased with us, and He does sometimes chasten us out of love so that we may share in His holiness. But in terms of anger in the sense of wrath, Believer, God is no longer angry with you, even when you sin. That is not an excuse to sin, but your sins were placed on Christ. He took the anger and wrath of God in your place, in your stead.

So be confident in His love for you in Christ. Likewise, just as God promises never to destroy the world with a flood, He promises never to be angry with His people in the way that He expressed His anger during the Babylonian exile. But then He goes beyond reminding them of this scriptural promise, and He points to the natural world.

In verse 10, He speaks of the mountains. What seems more permanent to us from our vantage point than the hills and the mountains? When Sharon and I were in Ireland a number of weeks ago, we had the privilege of seeing the Cliffs of Moher. A tremendous mountainscape there. It seems so permanent.

The steadfast covenant love of God shall not depart from His people. His covenant of peace will not be removed. His loyalty to His covenant promises is even more stable than mountains and hills, which seem so permanent to us. And so He says in verse 10: “For the mountains may depart, the hills may be removed; they too are temporary, they too are finite. But My steadfast love— in the Hebrew, His covenant love, His hesed— shall not depart from you.”

“And My covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says the Lord who has compassion on you. What is meant by this covenant of peace? Again, to quote from Dr. Young, he says this is a covenant that brings peace to humanity and is an equivalent expression for My mercy. The reference is to the covenant of grace, wherein God freely offers life and salvation to sinners. In other words, it is speaking ultimately about the gospel, the gospel covenant. And so, beloved, let us stand with bold confidence on the unbreakable, unchanging permanence of God’s covenant promises. In particular, the promises of grace and salvation that are offered to us sinners in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Covenant promises like this: John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

There is no fine print in that promise. God says what He means. He means what He says. Take Him at His word. Trust Him. His promises are unbreakable. Dear listener, are you trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and His promises of grace and salvation as revealed in the gospel? May you trust in Him. May we trust in Him this day.

And may we ground our lives in the rock of Jesus and His word. Let us pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank You for Your everlasting covenant of peace with us. We thank You that through faith in Christ, we have peace with You, that we have a standing in grace, a standing that can never be removed, and that Your promises are sure and certain, that there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ. Lord, we pray that these truths would cause us to root ourselves in Christ again, to deepen and strengthen our faith. May we build our lives upon the rock of Jesus Christ and the truthfulness of His word. In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, amen. Let us respond to what we have heard by rising, and we will sing together number 475, “Who Trusts in God a Strong Abode.”