Isaiah chapter 54, and reading
from verse one. Sing, O barren, thou that didst
not bear. Break forth into singing, and
cry aloud. Thou that didst not travail with
child, for more are the children of the desolate than the children
of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy
tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy inhabitations.
Spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes. For
thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left, and
thy seat shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities
to be inhabited. Fear not, for thou shalt not
be ashamed, neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to
shame. For thou shalt forget the shame
of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood
any more. For thy maker is thine husband,
the Lord of hosts is his name, and thy Redeemer the Holy One
of Israel. The God of the whole earth shall
he be called. For the Lord hath called thee
as a woman forsaken, and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth,
when thou wast refused, saith thy God. For a small moment have
I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee. In
a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with
everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord
thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters of
Noah unto me. For as I have sworn that the
waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I
sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For
the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my
kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant
of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. O thou afflicted, tossed with
tempest, and not comforted! Behold, I will lay thy stones
with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And
I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles,
and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children
shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace
of thy children. in righteousness, shalt thou
be established, thou shalt be far from oppression, for thou
shalt not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near thee.
Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by me. Whosoever shall gather together
against thee shall fall for thy sake. Behold, I have created
the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth
forth an instrument for his work, and I have created the waster
to destroy. No weapon that is formed against
thee shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against
thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants
of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. I would like to begin our thoughts
today by drawing attention to Isaiah's little phrase in the
opening verse, more are the children of the desolate than the children
of the married wife. More are the children of the
desolate than the children of the married wife. I suspect these
words puzzled Isaiah's first readers and it might still appear
strange to us that more offspring should be given to the desolate
or the abandoned wife than when she still had her husband. The reference is of course prophetic
and it's probably a reference to the experience of the disciples
that were left behind or left alone when the Lord Jesus ascended
to his father's presence. And at a time when the church
comprised relatively few believers at that time. The disciples,
of course, when the Lord left and returned to heaven, they
felt bereft, they felt leaderless, they felt desolate. And what
wild swings of hopes and fears these disciples must have experienced
over this short period of time. You'll remember, first of all,
they had these grand aspirations that they would reign with Jesus
in his earthly kingdom. And then their hopes were dashed
when the Lord was crucified. And then their expectations rose
again when they learned that Christ had risen from the dead,
only to be shaken again when Christ told them that he was
leaving to return to his Father in heaven. These are the desolate ones.
This is the desolate one. This is the church, desolate.
of whom Isaiah spoke, the Lord's bride, alone in a world surrounded
by her foes, feeling vulnerable and abandoned. And yet had not the Lord said
that he must go away so that the Holy Spirit could come, had
they not understood the significance of the Great Commission, to go
out into all the world and preach the gospel, This worldwide work
of evangelism is what Isaiah is referring to as the children
of the desolate. and it was only now commencing. From this very small beginning,
many, many more saints would be gathered than ever had been
numbered among the Old Testament remnant people. There was to
be a flowering, a blossoming, an explosion, if you like, of
the gospel in the days of the apostles and thereafter, as the
Lord gathered his people to himself. And in this way Isaiah's prophecy
was fulfilled and in this way his references to the tents in
which the church dwells being enlarged and expanded find their
meaning and their true significance. But I want to make another application
of this little phrase to you as well. And just leave this
as a thought. Perhaps a little bit more personal
and perhaps a little bit more intimate. Because what was true
of the church in the days of the apostles has, I think, parallels
still in a continuing way for the Lord's people. Individually
speaking. It is in times of extreme adversity,
when we feel desolate, it is at times when we feel under strain,
under stress, at times when we feel alone, at times when we
feel weakest, that the Lord comes and speaks
to his people. It is times when we feel most
threatened and that the challenges of our life are likely to overwhelm
us, that the Lord blesses most to our souls, His gifts and His
graces, employs these trials and difficulties to enlarge our
faith It is at times when we are most tried and tested that,
like Peter, when the storm is around us and the waves are the
highest, and we're ready to sink, that the cry, Lord help me, is
uttered with the greatest need and suggests the most sincerity. and discovers the most precious
response from the Lord. It's then that we truly learn
our need of Him and learn to seek Him and to find Him when
He is ready to save. So let me just say this by way
of application in this opening thought of the desolate woman
having more children. No one likes trial. No one likes
suffering. No one likes hardship. But these
things come to us all. They come to God's church. They
come to God's people. They come to us individually.
If they are not here now, they are coming soon. And when they
do, as they must, let us expect, in the trial, in the difficulty,
on the stormy sea, tempest-tossed, let us expect, as with the case
of the desolate woman, the Lord to bless us more in adversity
than he does in our apparent prosperity, more in the days
of our trouble than in the times of stability. The hymn writer
says, ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds ye so
much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessings
on your head. Today I want to take three headings
from this portion of God's Word and while recognising that I
cannot begin to do justice to such a rich passage as this. I felt this especially last week
and I feel it again this week. I cannot do justice to such a
rich passage. I feel I feel in these chapters
that we're dwelling in the summer pastures of the high mountains
of Isaiah's prophecy. Nevertheless, as the Lord enables,
we'll try to gather some flowers as we find them. So I've got
three headings, and they're coming up in a moment, but I want us
to note again just by way of introduction to
these three headings, I want us to note again the central
theme of God's covenant of grace and peace in this passage. The promises that God was going
to do his people good. The promises that were given
to an Old Testament people to comfort them in their troubles
as they look forward to see Yes, it'll be hard, but God will be
faithful to his word. And that knowledge, that faith
that they had in God's faithfulness was a spiritual comfort to their
souls in their own troubles, in their own times. It's this
central theme of God's covenant purpose, his grace and his peace
that undergirds Isaiah's comforting ministry to his age. And I've
mentioned a lot about the covenant recently because Isaiah has been
revealing a lot about it. And here in this chapter also,
Isaiah, or the Lord tells Isaiah and Isaiah tells us how firm,
how established, how permanent are His promises, is His purpose
of grace. And He says explicitly, The covenant
of my peace shall not be removed. The promises of my salvation
shall not be taken away. The foundation of our hope is
fixed and sure and certain. All these comforting, reassuring
messages that Isaiah was supplying to his generation are built on
the promises of God to send a saviour to redeem his people and these
promises flow from the love and mercy of God displayed in the
covenant of peace. He calls it the covenant of my
peace. That eternal agreement formed
and settled between the persons of the Godhead to reconcile the
elect and redeem God's people that were sold under sin. So this is the context, this
is the foundation upon which these three headings come to
us today. It is within this everlasting
covenant that we learn these three things. First of all, Our
maker is our husband. Our maker is our husband. Secondly,
Christ has a heart towards us of everlasting kindness. And thirdly, all God's elect
people shall be taught of the Lord. So I'm gonna take each
of these headings one by one, move through them, and trust
that the Lord will give us some sweetness, some blessing, some
comforts from these thoughts as we seek his face and his mercy. Here then is our first one. Our
maker is our husband. I've said often as we've progressed
through these chapters in this book of Isaiah, I've mentioned
numerous times about the amazing language used by Isaiah and perhaps
more even than the words, it's the concepts, the images, the
powerful images and the types that he employs to describe and
explain and convey his message to his readers. And of course,
we attribute this to the Holy Spirit by whose inspiration Isaiah
wrote. Nevertheless, the phrases are
theologically profound and powerful. They have wrapped up in them
such wonderful heavenly truth. And what an extraordinary statement
this is. thy maker is thine husband. Where on earth did Isaiah get
a notion like that? How can you just write something
like that down? Thy maker is thy husband. Now
we know at once that we're speaking about the Lord Jesus Christ because
The Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal word who created all
things. Without him, nothing was created. And it's not my intention today
to speak about creation, but we know it from this little phrase
here that neither Isaiah nor his readers doubted that God
made us. God is our maker and as such
we have a duty to honour, serve and obey him. And yet the surprising and astonishing
thing is that Isaiah tells us that this maker, this Lord Jesus
Christ, our maker, is also our husband. He not only rules us
as a master, he has joined himself to us as a husband and there
is all the difference in the world between a ruling master
and a loving husband. By taking our flesh, by becoming
incarnate, Jesus assumed our nature and married himself or
joined himself to us so as to represent us as our head and
our husband. And it's important that we grasp
the extent of this. Christ, now we're talking about
this everlasting covenant, this eternal covenant. Christ chose
his bride in the eternal covenant and he asked for, individually,
he asked for those people to be given to him and was granted
them, you know what, I'm going to change that, I'm going to
start speaking about us, was granted us by his father. He undertook to represent us
and to satisfy every righteous demand, every just obligation,
every required duty falling to us. And to pay every debt levied
upon us as fallen creatures. And in this life, The Lord Jesus
Christ, by coming and joining himself to us, represents us
in every aspect of our life before God. so that in his life and
more especially by his death, Christ bore our sin and carried
our sorrow and made restitution for us under the eye of divine
justice in a formal legal capacity as our representative. And not only is he our maker,
but he is our husband. And as our husband, he bears
this formal, official responsibility because a husband was bound for
the debts of his wife. But of course, there's more to
a husband-wife relationship than merely that suretyship that the
husband has in his representative role. As our husband, Christ
loves us. as well as our husband Christ
cares for us and watches over us and protects us and nurtures
and provides for us as he does his own flesh because we are
his own flesh. These two have become one flesh. He looks after us as his own
body and in assuming our nature and taking our flesh In taking
our humanity, our weakness, our husband feels our need, understands
our frailty, sympathises in our trials, and is touched with the
feelings of our infirmity. And knowing what we are, and
knowing what we are able to bear, He will not suffer us to be tempted
above that we are able, but will with the temptation also make
a way to escape that we may be able to bear it. And again, because he is our
husband and having love and care and to make provision for us,
he has gone to prepare a place for us in his father's house
and will come again and receive us unto himself. So that being
our husband encapsulates so many fertile, fruitful, wonderful
thoughts that Isaiah is binding up in this beautiful phrase that
he sets before us. In stooping to take our nature,
in humbling himself to dwell in the body of our flesh, in
condescending to call himself our husband, all within the covenant
purposes of grace and peace, the Lord Jesus Christ, our maker,
has wholly and completely fulfilled every duty to God on our behalf,
answered every demand of the law and satisfied every need
of his people. And all is done and will be seen
to be done when the marriage of the Lamb is come and his wife
hath made herself ready. That's what we look forward to.
That is what lies ahead for the bride of Christ. Our husband
is coming to take us to the marriage feast of the Lamb. And the wife
making herself ready is not that she does anything to adorn herself
or make herself righteous or anything like that. It simply
means that as the Lord has committed to his church, remember what
we were saying about the desolate? having more children, as the
Lord has committed to his church the gift of preaching and ministering
the Gospel one to another, so every last member will have been
brought into that body, that distinct, particular, named and
known body, the Bride of Christ, every last member will have been
brought through the preaching of the Gospel. And Revelation
tells us, blessed are they which are called unto the marriage
supper of the Lamb. And then it just wraps it off
by saying, these are the true sayings of God. However, that's our first point. The Lord, our maker, is our husband. But there's more. He goes on
to say that Christ's heart, the heart of our husband, is a heart
of everlasting kindness. And I just could not pass over
that phrase in this chapter. This is the only time in our
authorised version that the phrase everlasting kindness is used. So I wanted to nail it down. I wanted to bring it to your
attention and for us to think about it for a few moments. Our
husband has everlasting kindness towards us. Our husband is kind,
loving and kind, patient and kind, thoughtful for our weaknesses
and kind, sensitive to our needs and kind with it, gracious and
tender, full of mercy, gentle, caring, sympathetic. kind. And I say this to you who are
tried and troubled at present. Do not doubt the loving kindness
of your Saviour towards you. Do not doubt the loving kindness
of your husband, Jesus Christ. Do not imagine that Christ's
kindness extends only so far but it has its limits. That it
can ever reach an end. His is an everlasting kindness. He is kind when we are not. He is kind when we sin. He is kind when we doubt. He is kind when we fall. He is kind to grant us repentance
and He is kind to receive us back with mercy and love. A few weeks ago as we were studying
in our chapter, in chapter 40, we read this. He shall feed his
flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with
his arm and carry them in his bosom and shall gently lead those
that are with young. What a beautiful example to us
the Lord is. What a beautiful example to us
the Lord is. Don't come with your law. Don't
come with your rules. Don't come with all these do
this and do that to a child of God. Let the child of God look
beyond Moses. Let the child of God look beyond
the Ten Commandments. Let the child of God look to
the Saviour. Let the child of God look to
the one who has everlasting kindness. And let us with Paul in Ephesians
chapter four and verse 32 say, be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
you. Let that be the standard of our
conduct in this life. So many people want to tell us
how we should live, what we should do and what we shouldn't do.
How easy it all becomes a cause to be judgmental, a reason to
chide and criticise and blame one another for not making the
grade or for thinking ourselves better than someone else. but
how much more lovely is the everlasting, tender-hearted kindness of our
Saviour. How much more blessed to dwell
in Christ where there is no condemnation and where there is no reproach. Does it sometimes feel as though
the Lord hides Himself from us? Do we sometimes feel a coldness
in our spirits and a hardness in our hearts and think we can't
be saved or we would not think like this, we can't be the Lords
or we would not feel like this? Let me explain that to you. Sometimes to remind us of God's
loving kindness to us, He appears to withdraw himself that by his
absence our hearts might grow fonder. He says to Isaiah in
verse 8 and verse 10, joining just a couple of verses together,
in a little wrath I hid my faith from thee. Not in anger, not
in wrath, just a little wrath. I hid my faith from thee for
a moment. but with everlasting kindness
will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. My kindness
shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace
be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. God's mercy
flows from his love and his kindness, both of which are everlasting. And this will be evident in every
situation into which we come, every situation into which the
Lord brings us, every place of desolation, every trial, every
persecution, every extreme adversity into which the Lord brings us. In living and in dying, Christ
is our Redeemer, and having redeemed us at the cost of His own blood,
He will never leave us, He will never hurt us, He will never
lose us, or ever allow us to suffer any harm that does not
rather rebound to our greater good and His glory. What, though
I can't his goings see, nor all his footsteps find, too wise
to be mistaken he, too good to be unkind. When Moses blessed
the Lord's people in Deuteronomy chapter 33, he said, the eternal
God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. Well
those arms are the arm of everlasting love and his arm of everlasting
kindness and they both are underneath us and they are both very suitable
to lean upon. So here are the two things that
we've had so far. The Lord is thy husband and the
Lord Jesus Christ has a heart of everlasting kindness towards
us. And here's the third point that
I want to leave with you today. All thy children shall be taught
of the Lord. How do I know if I'm a child
of God? What if I'm a child of the devil?
How can I be sure that I am a Christian when my own heart so often tells
me I'm unworthy of Christ's love? Well, here's one test that we
can all apply. Has the Lord taught you anything
about the gospel? Answer that question in your
own heart, in your own mind right now. Has the Lord taught you
anything about the gospel? Has the Lord taught you anything
about your sin? Has the Lord taught you anything
about the cross and his atoning work? Has the Lord taught you
anything about glory and judgment? About heaven and hell? Has the Lord taught you anything
about the ground of a sinner's peace with God? Has he taught
you anything about your abject spiritual need and condition
without him? Has the Lord shown you how fearful
it must be in the day of judgment to be without a saviour? Hmm. And where do you think you got
all this knowledge? Was it by your own wisdom? I
don't think so. Or as Jesus might say, I try
not. It is the Lord who teaches us
our need. before he supplies our need. It is the Lord who shows us what
we need before he satisfies that need. It is he who opens the
gospel to us, no one else. John Newton said, "'Twas grace
that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved."
Conversion is a cleansing of our soul from guilt. It is a
felt pardoning of our sins. But it is also teaching our heart
in the ways of grace and in the ways of the Lord. Satan never
taught you the gospel of free grace. Satan never taught you
the preciousness or the efficacy of Christ's blood. It's a characteristic
of God's people that they know the truth. It is a feature of
faith that we have no confidence in ourselves, even as we are
struggling to find any confidence in Christ. It's an indication
and an evidence of spiritual life that we struggle with our
own personal unworthiness. but it all shows that we have
been taught of the Lord as every child of God must be and will
be. So what have we been taught today?
We have been taught that our maker is our husband and he has
represented us for every spiritual need and obligation we ever had
or ever shall have. We have been taught today that
Christ has a heart of everlasting kindness for us and to us. Even when it seems we have lost
sight of him, the mercies of our covenant God will never lose
sight of us. And we have been taught that
we shall all be taught of the Lord. And none of God's children
will be left in the ignorance of sin or without the knowledge
of his grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.