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, November 9, 1986.

Indeed, the Lord will comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places, and her wilderness he will make like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and sound of a melody. Pay attention to me. O my people, and give ear to me, O my nation. For a law will go forth from me, and I will set my justice for the light of the peoples. My righteousness is near. My salvation has gone forth, and my arms will judge the peoples. The coastland will wait for me. and for my arm, they will wait expectantly.

Lift up your eyes to the sky, then look to the earth beneath. For the sky will vanish like smoke and the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants will die in like manner. But my salvation shall be forever and my righteousness shall not Listen to me, you who know righteousness, a people in whose heart is my law. Do not fear the reproach of man, neither be dismayed at their revilings, for the moth will eat them like a garment and the grub will eat them like wool, but my righteousness shall be forever and my salvation to all generations. Awake! Awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord! Awake, as in the days of old, the generations of long ago!

Was it not thou who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon? Was it not thou who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a pathway for the redeemed to cross over? So the ransomed of the Lord will return and come with joyful shouting to Zion, and everlasting joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and silence will flee away. I, even I, am he who comforts you.

Who are you that 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 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! Rouse yourself! Arise, O Jerusalem! You who have drunk from the Lord’s hand the cup of His anger, the chalice of reeling you have drained to the dregs.

There is none to guide her among all the sons she has borne, 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? 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. You are drunk. but not with wine. Thus says your Lord, 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 with your strength, O Zion. Clothe yourself with beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city, for the uncircumcised and the unclean will no more come into you. Shake yourselves 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 lasting 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, Lord, we would look to you and receive again by your word, which we have heard, your encouragement, correction, reproof. We ask our Lord that taking to heart your word, we might be content to live in keeping with what we have observed in our Savior Jesus Christ. For Lord, it is true that hidden in him are all the treasures of wisdom. We rejoice, Lord, in this provision given us and that of your grace for our health, strengthening and salvation. Amen.

We have now covered the third servant song. of Isaiah. The third servant song appears in verses four through nine of chapter fifty. Now, in that song, those verses there recorded for you, the servant speaks for himself, and he speaks about himself, his perpetual vigil and his ready discipleship. In describing himself in this fashion, he also makes plain that his stand for the Lord as the Lord’s servant is not without cost.

In fact, the cost is extreme. Hostility multiplies together with the severity of the servant’s humiliation. Therefore, as you look at that servant’s song, you are struck by the fact that here, described for you in a very rudimentary way, is the suffering of our Savior. I gave my back to the smiters. and my cheeks to those who pluck out the beard. I did not cover my face from shame and spitting.” Hostility, then, multiplies in the face of the resolute character and determination of the servant of the Lord, his perpetual vigil and his determined discipleship. That hostility generates the severest kind of humiliation as humiliation described here for you in a rudimentary way. But note that the sufferings that are incurred through this discipleship of the servant are nothing that the servant himself shuns. For precisely in the sufferings the servant finds his vindication.

As it is apparent, he has no one to come to his aid but the Lord. He commits himself to the Lord and calls upon the Lord to vindicate him. In New Testament language, he calls upon the Lord to justify him. Now this song ending in verse nine. Issues in a twofold response by the Lord, at least as Chapter fifty comes to an end. In verse ten, the Lord extends an invitation. It is couched well in the pastoral tone of which we have spoken repeatedly. The pastoral tone that characterizes the Lord’s speaking at this time to his people.

Nevertheless, this invitation, at the same time that it is given with the pastoral tone, seeks to unmask the pretense of many. the many who imagine themselves amongst those who fear the Lord. Therefore, verse ten, who among you fear the Lord? Who imagine themselves as those who obey, or are ready to obey, the voice of God’s servant?

When in actual truth these walk in darkness, and have no life. Third line of that 10th verse. The divine plea, therefore, is for all such presumptuous, though they may be for all such before it is too late to trust in the Lord and rely on him. So you have there, including statement of the 10th verse. Now the urgency of this plea is accented by Judah’s circumstance.

You see what surrounds Judah at this time by taking stock of the historical circumstances that prevail. The northern kingdom has already succumbed. Samaria has been destroyed. And the people have been taken away captive, dispersed as it were never to be began. Judah had escaped Syria through no merit of her own, but by the skin of her teeth. The power of chapters thirty six through thirty nine. We’ve spoken of those chapters before. The power of these chapters serve as a prelude to all we read here in chapters forty through sixty six.

And you see not only is it a matter of the Northern Kingdom having been taken away, captured and Judah, the Southern Kingdom, having been spared by the skin of her teeth. It is also this fact that is made clear by those chapters in Isaiah thirty six through thirty nine. There is Certainly, coming the captivity whereby God’s people in the South shall themselves be carried away out of the home and into a foreign land. In the face of that. We are confronted by the impotence of the leaders of Judah, especially their kings, in particular, Hezekiah, to say. Now, the impact of these circumstances is this. The picture that we are given is one of absolute desperation.

Thus, the divine plea for a people loved by God. The divine plea for a people loved by God. If they fail to respond in faith and trust, then the imagined light of which they boast becomes the fire of their consummation and destruction. In one of the most graphic and horrifying descriptions of God’s wrath and the fires of hell, the Lord puts before His people the warning about the inevitable end and its corollary judgment.

Verse eleven. But now we move on into chapter fifty-one. And notice just how the love of God persists. As if with a desperate, no, the Lord takes to shaking his people. In light of what we have said, there comes the invitation to the people of God, in light of the circumstance, there comes as well the warning. But now, as we move into the fifty-first chapter, We hear a desperate note from the Lord, as if the Lord himself is being shaken by the desperateness of the circumstance.

His people are in the balance. So it is that the Lord, shaken himself, as it were, takes to shaking his people. His judgment is revealed. No one sees as clearly or understands as deeply as he does the significance of that judgment. So now, as we begin chapter fifty-one with renewed intensity, with greater yet urgency, he grabs hold of the lapels of his people, and he shakes them.

As if to shake them away from their distractions. As if to shake. If, in fact, they had slipped. Into an indifference. Or even an hostility. To him. He shouts at them. Listen to me, he says in verse one. Pay attention to me. In verse four, and again in verse seven, listen to me. The power of those words are meant to communicate the shape that has grabbed hold of God himself. Consequently, that shaking of his people, which he is involved in himself. He shall Listen. Pay attention. You know, as the passage progress. You have an interlude. You have an interlude that moves from verses twelve through sixteen. And here the Lord pictures himself.

As a trusted friend. or possibly a dear relative. Who seeks to around one to awaken one within the household. Seeks to awaken one possibly who has drunk too deeply. Of the war. And now is really sleeping off the effects of their drink. Verse seventeen, while you’re well yourself.

First one chapter five away away. I’ll take stock of the image here, and the power of the Lord uses them in the fifty-first and then into the fifty-second chapter. You see what he’s doing You see how he’s interweaving the images used here and those that have been employed before? For you see, those images employed here are precisely the ones that were employed when the servant himself spoke earlier. Go back to the fourth and fifth verses of chapter fifteen. Note there that the servant speaks of his own awakening. His own awakening by the Lord. And how beautiful description that is of the servants awakening the Lord himself awakens me. He opens my eyes.

But he does not find, namely the Lord, does not find an unwilling servant. He does not find one here who resists, not in the least He finds one who awakes willingly to the touch of the Lord, and that one responds. He responds from within himself to the constraints of the Lord and the Lord’s word and will. It is as if the servant is so ready to do the Lord’s will, that the Lord encounters no resistance, no hesitancy whatsoever in him, even if it means the humiliation and the suffering that is described subsequently.

Likewise, the Lord finds in the servant no one at whom he must shout Listen to me. Pay attention to me. The Lord finds in the servant no one at whom he must shout. The servant hears and delights in what the Lord says. The image is then of hearing and awakening, used by the servant first, and now passed on into the description of the people as God addresses them. You see, in contrast to the server. The Lord’s people addressed here. Are not as alert. Are not as ready. Are not as willing. To do the Lord’s They, in fact, do hesitate. They, in fact, do pause. And why? And why? Well, there are many reasons, you see. You might say that the reason why the people pause and hesitate is because of the stubbornness of their own heart and their wilfulness.

And pointing out the sin of the people is a proper exercise on our part in trying to understand why he that they. But you see, there’s more. Quite a bit. Remember, the Lord is being pastoral at this point. And while it is true that you cannot dismiss the sin. In our consideration of the people’s hesitation. It’s much more that to the front has come. The suffering of the people. The sufferings of the people. Of God. Listen to me. You who pursue righteousness. Would you count yourself amongst those people? Listen to me, all my people, give ear to me, all my nation. Listen to me, you who know righteousness, that people in whose heart is my law.

The pastoral tone here of the Lord in treating his people and that before the circumstances that they pray. You see the predicament? The righteous here, because of suffering, because of their distress, are liable to be distracted in their devotion to God, and as they view that suffering, as they take it to heart, as it weighs in upon them, they are liable to forget, therefore, and forget what He has done and what he has accomplished. Therefore. The Lord says to them, look to the rock from which you were here. And to the quarry from which you were done. The rock is Abraham. The quarry is Sarah, but note what is said about Sarah.

Sarah gives birth to you in pain. It is the pain there that’s the problem, and the pain presently in Israel’s experience, that is the problem, too. Not just for the unrighteous and those who run the other way from God, but for those who are the Lord. those who would be the righteous, those who would seek and pursue righteousness and seek after the Lord himself. That problem of pain is introduced there because, you see, it then is the fact that stands common in the experience of Sarah and in the experience of Israel itself. But note what the Lord said in the midst of the pain. Think about the pain. Was the pain just the fact that she had labor pains in birth? Or was the pain also the fact that she had to wait so many years for a child and struggle of Sarah, the struggle of Abraham in their faith.

Abraham was in fact one when he was called, but the blessing. The blessing was promised. And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. The Lord then kept his word. It was through the pain, the privation, the distress that the glory of the promise was revealed and promise was kept. Note then. How. The Lord and this particular section. First three. He tells his people, I will comfort Zion. I will comfort all her waste places. And her wilderness will be made like Eden. It will become like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her thanksgiving and found.

Can you see yourself inside the city walls of Jerusalem? Can you imagine having been under siege for a year or two? Can you imagine how all of the crops and all of the trees have been stripped and torn down in the surrounding countryside and the devastation that you would see as you peered out over the city wall? The Lord is saying to his people that all that you see will be transformed. Now you may be thinking that this is a remedial promise, quite limited in its scope. But the promise in view here pertains merely to the return from exile.

But you see, what is envisioned here by the Lord is not some narrow, restricted blessing, but rather a blessing that is incomparable and immeasurable. The comfort spoken of here by the Lord is not the kind that will ever end. The comfort here spoken of by the Lord lasts forever. The condition of the garden spoken of here in the third verse, the conditions of that garden are the conditions that shall endure forever. The joy and the gladness spoken of here, the thanksgiving and the sound of the melody, these things shall never be diminished. They shall never cease.

Now you ask, how I know that this is the proper interpretation of the third group. And I suggest to you that no other interpretation is possible as you move on to the fifty-first chapter. Take, for instance, the description given by the Lord of the salvation that is to be revealed. Look down at verse six.

He is telling you there that what is in you shall come about when the sky, the heavens and the earth. He tells you that these things will come about when the earth has worn out like a garment and inhabitants have gone. In contrast to the temporality of all that we see, the Lord declares my salvation shall be forever. My righteousness shall not win. He speaks similarly in the eighth. He concludes that verse with these words, but my righteousness shall be forever and my salvation to all generations. It doesn’t end. But. More pointed still. Is the 11th.

For here you see the images of the return from exile and the image of eternal joy and habitation are combined. So the ransomed of the Lord will return and come with joyful shouting design and everlasting joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy.

And no sorrow and sign. The Lord is describing no city of this creation. On the background of the events that transpire in Jerusalem in the eighth century B.C., he is describing for you the eternal habitation of all those who seek righteousness and pursue the Lord. One final thought. The matching of the images here. Remember, hearing and awakening. As the people of God are in need of shape. as they need to be around.

So, they are contrasted by the one who does not need to be around. The one who does not need to be shaken. And therefore, as we talk about pursuing righteousness and seeking the Lord, and as we think about our eternal habitation, and the glory that are our because of the promises of God. We need not flatter ourselves at all.

Rather, you see, the perfection of our listening and the perfection of perfection of our arousal, our awakening to the command and the demands of the Lord. These things are found. The perfection of that is found in Jesus Christ, the servant. who is described previously. So now, how will it be that imperfect servants such as ourselves shall attain an eternal habitation where sighing and weeping flee only through Christ?

Our Father in Heaven, it may well be that we need to be shaken so that we might become alert. It may well be, Lord, that we have sunk into a drunken stupor because of the chalice of your wrath and that we need to be aroused. There is one Lord who listens attentively always and who awakens perpetually to do your will and that without prodding. O Lord, we would be found in him having his righteousness, which is by faith, not the righteousness that is by the law. We plead with you, therefore, that as the Lord speaks to his people, we would hear, understand that the habitation granted us is no habitation of this creation, but rather it is the habitation above And it is to that habitation you shall eventually bring us through Jesus Christ.

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.