"Sing, O Barren One!"
Download MP3If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to Isaiah chapter 54 as we're continuing our study in the book of Isaiah. And I wanna go ahead and warn you for for those of you who like to underline things or highlight things, your your hand is likely to get a cramp over the next couple of weeks because as we are looking at chapters fifty four and fifty five, these chapters just drip with joy. They are some of the richest chapters we have in all of scripture. And the reason that they just drip with joy is because they're coming out of Isaiah 53. What happened in Isaiah 53 leads to these two chapters.
Joel Brooks:For those of you who weren't here two weeks ago, Isaiah 53, this is when we looked at the suffering servant of the Lord. And we got to look at through his death and through his resurrection, the new life that He brings. Actually that passage of the suffering servant is the last time you will hear in Isaiah about the servant singular. From this point on, there will still be servants. There will be servants plural.
Joel Brooks:And the reason for that is because of what the servant accomplished in Isaiah 53, he has now produced many servants moving forward. Now there are many people being led by God's spirit who are listening to his word, who are being filled with this indescribable joy. And for the next two chapters, we will be looking at every benefit that the cross and the resurrection has provided for us. And so Isaiah 54, I have the first 10 verses, listed there. We didn't get past the first three last service.
Joel Brooks:So I'm just gonna I'm just gonna read the first four. How about that? 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.
Joel Brooks:Enlarge the place of your tent and let the curtain of your habitations 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. We'll stop there. This is the word of the lord.
Joel Brooks:If you would pray with me. Father, thank you for your word, for preserving it for us over the centuries, and we might have it and listen to you what you have for us. I pray that through your word and through your spirit, you would begin to write these things on our hearts and change us. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away, not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. If you've ever read through the book of Acts, I you will have noticed there's some pretty unusual stories in there. One of my favorites comes from Acts chapter eight. It's the story of Philip and the eunuch.
Joel Brooks:The story begins with Philip. He is in Samaria and he's preaching at what we would call today a Holy Ghost revival. People are getting saved. People are getting healed right and left. Demons are being cast out.
Joel Brooks:And yet, in the middle of this revival, the Holy Spirit calls Philip away. Philip's the one who's who's orchestrating this. He's the he's the spearhead of this revival and yet the Holy Spirit calls Philip away and tells him to go for unknown reasons to some place in the middle of nowhere. He's to travel all the way to the road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza and that's a 165 miles away. Anyone here from Uriah, Alabama?
Joel Brooks:Didn't think so. Population 294. It's a 165 miles away. It'd be like the Lord in this moment telling you to get up and and to go to Uriah. Except you would get to drive there and it's a long drive.
Joel Brooks:Philip doesn't have a car. So Philip is running there. He he's the first ultra marathoner. He doesn't walk. He actually just runs a 165 miles to get there.
Joel Brooks:And he doesn't even know what he's supposed to do when he gets there. He's just he's just running. And then the spirit leads him to this chariot and says, see that chariot up there? I I want you to to keep up with that chariot. So now after a hundred and sixty five miles, Philip has got to keep up with a chariot.
Joel Brooks:And he's he's running next to this chariot and he he sees there's this Ethiopian eunuch in there who is reading from Isaiah 53. And so Philip asked this man, do you understand what you are reading? And he says, well, I'm reading from Isaiah. So no, I don't. Some of you are like, we're we're right there with you, okay?
Joel Brooks:It's not the easiest to understand. In the story, we're told a number of important details about this man who is reading this scroll. We find out not only that he's from Ethiopia, not only that he's a eunuch, but he is over all of their finance. He is the treasurer. He's the minister of finance there.
Joel Brooks:It's an extremely important position. It's it's one that he would have given not just only countless hours of work towards in order to rise up the corporate ladder to to achieve that position. This man has made the ultimate sacrifice. He had himself castrated so he could have this position. Because if anyone was to work in such close quarters with the queen, one had to be castrated.
Joel Brooks:So this man has paid a huge price to get where he is in life. And yet despite having this prestigious career, this man is obviously going through some deep emotional and spiritual crisis. You don't travel 2,000 miles to go on this journey in order to explore some new form of spirituality if you're pretty healthy. This this man is in having a deep crisis of the soul. It's like, you know, people going to Colorado to find themselves.
Joel Brooks:Or now people go to Nashville. And I'm always like, see you in a few years when you come back. But but this is a man who is He's desperate. We read that Philip That when Philip met him, this guy was returning from the temple. So he's going back home to Ethiopia.
Joel Brooks:Which means he had to be absolutely devastated. Because upon arriving at that temple, he would have been greeted with a sign outside the doors that said, no lame, no diseased, no blind, no eunuchs allowed. He would not have even been allowed into the court of Gentiles. I mean, could you imagine the the devastation you'd feel at such a moment? I mean, he just wasted ten year or ten months of his life.
Joel Brooks:And now he's returning back to this to this empty career that he has sacrificed everything for. And I mean everything. He gave up the most important thing you could have in his day, the ability to have children. He gave up having an heir. He gave up any hopes of a family.
Joel Brooks:All because he believed if I make these sacrifices in the end, it will be worth it. And so he's returning devastated. He brings a scroll of Isaiah with him. He's just pouring over Isaiah 53 about the servant who was wounded for our transgressions, who was crushed for our iniquities. And he asked Philip.
Joel Brooks:Philip's there and says, do understand what you're reading? He's like, no. And he goes, tell me, who is the servant? Who is the man who is doing this? And he got asked the question, why why is that so important for the eunuch to know?
Joel Brooks:Why does he need to know the identity of this man? I mean this text was so important to him. You know, he he didn't have just his bible app open because he didn't have bible apps. He went and he found a scroll of Isaiah which would have been really rare, bought a scroll of Isaiah which would have been extraordinarily expensive. Also, he could have his own personal copy so he could read over and over and over again this passage to try to figure out what it meant.
Joel Brooks:Why does he so desperately wanna know who the servant is? It's because he wants to experience Isaiah 54. Sing, O barren one, who did not bear. Break forth into singing. Cry aloud, you have never been in labor.
Joel Brooks:For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the Lord. Somehow he's he's reading Isaiah 53 and he sees that through the death and the resurrection of this one righteous servant, the one who is childless, the one who has no family, the one who is barren can break into song. And not only will this person have a family at this point, the family will be so large. We read that they're gonna have to do house renovations. They're gonna have to start blowing out some walls because the family won't even be able to fit in the existing room.
Joel Brooks:The eunuch says, I want that. That that's that's what I want in my life. I want what the servant provides. And this is why when Philip tells him that the servant is Jesus, he says, pull over right now. There's some water.
Joel Brooks:Baptize me now. He cannot wait another minute to be baptized. He has to respond. And just as the eunuch could not wait another minute to respond, chapter 54 is not gonna wait either. It it just explodes with with the joy that the gospel brings us.
Joel Brooks:The phrase we have there, break forth into singing. It can be translated, let joyful song explode out of you. It explodes out of us because the good news of the gospel demands rejoicing. Church, I know there's a number of you who come from various different backgrounds. Some of you, I won't name the den denominations.
Joel Brooks:You know what they are. You you've you've maybe perhaps grew up in a place that's very quiet, reverent. You know where you would have to dress a little bit nicer. You would have to speak in more hushed tones. You know, you would say you are, thanks be to God, very quietly.
Joel Brooks:You you would be scared to clear your throat because the person next to you would think you're speaking in tongues. And then and that's great. That's wonderful if you came from that. But hear me, do not ever confuse being reverent with being reserved. Don't ever confuse the two.
Joel Brooks:We are always to be reverent, but we are never to be reserved in our worship. Ever. Search your bibles over and you will never find a verse telling you that you're to worship Jesus with half a heart. You'll never find Jesus saying, I want you to sing but I need you to tone it down just a little. Let's not go crazy.
Joel Brooks:You don't find that anywhere. What you do find is Jesus telling these very reverent and reserved Pharisees who are trying to keep people quiet. He says, if you were to keep these people quiet, if they were to be quiet, the very stones would shout out my praise. That's what Jesus says. And if you read through the Psalms, I mean it's just filled with commands to to shout, to sing, to dance, to lift up your hands.
Joel Brooks:It's It reads like a pitbull song minus a profanity. I mean like the amount of times you're told to lift up your hands. It's it's really It's astonishing there. And the reason is because rejoicing is the only appropriate response to the gospel. You once were dead.
Joel Brooks:Now you're alive. So you're not gonna rejoice? Hear me. The test of a church's faith is not just in the precise wording of its doctrine. The test of a church's faith is in the joyfulness or gladness of its worship.
Joel Brooks:All good theology leads to doxology. It leads to us bursting in praise. And can I tell you, I just love to hear our church sing? The times that I'm not, preaching, a lot of times I'm I'm doing various tasks around the church, and sometimes I'm out in the parking lot, and you can hear the voices just bleeding out of these walls all into the parking lot. Is the most glorious sound.
Joel Brooks:This past Easter, our girls, we live two miles away and, our girls were woken up to the sound of singing from Lauren Starnes. They were like, we hear Lauren Starnes, singing over in Avondale Park. At first they thought that they had In the earlier service I said, were listening to an m p three player and I was like, can I pull that back? Not an m p. They they First they thought they were just somebody had on the music, in our house but it wasn't.
Joel Brooks:It was coming from two miles away. We could hear the voices singing from our church. It's glorious. Here in Isaiah 54, the Lord tells this barren woman, it's time for you to to put away the crying, to put away the mourning, and it's time for you to sing because the servant has carried away all of your sorrow. You cannot have more shocking words than sing, O barren one.
Joel Brooks:Those two phrases right next to each other could not be more shocking because the last thing a barren woman would ever do in that day is sing. In this culture, a woman had one great avenue to live a fulfilled life. And that was through the bearing of children, in particular the bearing of sons. This was seen as a woman's purpose and enormous pressure was put on them to fulfill this calling. Women, if you think you feel this pressure in the bible belt, nothing compared to the pressure in this day.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you had to have sons because sons were needed to work the fields. Sons were needed to provide for you in your old age. Sons were needed to protect the tribe. And so as a result, the women who could produce sons, they were the cultural heroes of the day. And the women who couldn't produce sons, let alone any children at all, well, they were considered useless, a drain on society.
Joel Brooks:The Talmud actually says that they were as good as dead. And this is why barrenness, if you read throughout your bible, barrenness is a symbol that's used to describe someone who's living this this fruitless, meaningless, empty life. Barrenness describes the person who whose dreams have died. You know when you were younger, you were once a person full of potential. You could become something.
Joel Brooks:To be barren is when potential's never realized. It's gone. Barrenness describes the person who's worked and who has worked sacrificed all in the hopes of something more than they're currently experiencing for sure. That's how the eunuch felt. Besides having a physical inability to have children, he had given up everything for his career, for his nation, and all of this, and yet he still felt empty inside.
Joel Brooks:So to be barren is to be spiritually dry. It's to be alone. I'm just imagining that there's likely some people here today who feel that way. Perhaps you're in here and you feel like not only have you been a disappointment to yourself, you've disappointed pretty much everyone around you. Perhaps you're constantly, you know, surrounded by people.
Joel Brooks:They're always laughing. They're smiling. But you are just so lonely. And actually, all all you want to do is just like cry out in these moments when you're surrounded by all these friends with all the laughter and the chatter and just say, what are we doing? Does any of this actually matter?
Joel Brooks:Can we actually talk about something real? And you just you just wanna scream that because you just feel so empty inside. There's some of you who who take and you retake and you retake pictures of of your latest adventure, your latest vacations, or whatever food you're eating, or just of yourself. And you you pull it up on your phone and you analyze and you scrutinize every single detail of that picture. Why?
Joel Brooks:Be because you're you're hoping to actually see a person who's satisfied. You're hoping that you'll actually see like that's a meaningful life there. And then you post that and you hope to get some likes, and you hope to get some good comments. Why? Because what you need now is evidence that your life does matter.
Joel Brooks:You want other people to validate and say, yes, you are something. You are fruitful. You're not barren. And yet, when the dopamine hits go away, all you feel is emptiness. That's barrenness.
Joel Brooks:When Isaiah here, he says that the barren one will have more children than the one with children. What he's saying is that you can have more value, actually. More value, more purpose, more joy, more fulfillment, more of a rock solid identity than even the cultural heroes of our day. And that's what Jesus provides us because now our life is found in him. Our happiness is no longer dependent upon us.
Joel Brooks:Our happiness has been relocated to his happiness. Our success no longer depends on us. It's been relocated to his success. Whatever he has achieved has now been given to us. Earlier this week, I Sunday night or Monday morning, however you wanna call it, I could not sleep.
Joel Brooks:Normally, that's that's not a new thing, but normally it's my body that keeps me up. You know, I've had all these surgeries and arthritis and stuff and something's always aching and moaning. But it wasn't my body this time. I I couldn't turn off my mind. And that's rare.
Joel Brooks:And I just kept thinking of all these different things I needed to do, all these problems that I can't fix, all these anxieties, all of a sudden just started flooding in. I kept trying to sleep and sleep. I could not do it. And so finally, I gave up. And at 02:00, I got up and I got in my car and I drove here.
Joel Brooks:And so I came in these doors. This church is so creepy at 02:15 in the morning. It's it's it's terrifying actually. I came here, I turned on all the lights, and I I walked up here on stage, and I literally just laid down here face to the stage prostrate. I just laid there.
Joel Brooks:And I said, Lord, I have problems, like, that I cannot solve. I feel weights I cannot carry. I don't know what to do. And all I know what to do is I just I just I just wanna come I'm just laying here. That's all I know how to do, is just surrender and just lay here.
Joel Brooks:I did ask our security team if they would you know, do you all have like a security footage of that night? Do you mind deleting that? Like, just, you know, set that Sunday night between the hours of, you know, 2AM and 4AM? Because it gets weirder. So after I I laid down for a bit, and I'm like, Lord, I don't know what to do.
Joel Brooks:And I kept saying that, I don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do. And he says, well you could, you know, maybe you could sing. You've been reading Isaiah 54, haven't you? Hey, barren one.
Joel Brooks:You feel so empty and dry. Why don't you sing? And so I started singing. I I wouldn't say it was off key because that would imply it had a key. There there was no actual melody.
Joel Brooks:There was no, like, real song. I I just I just I just started singing out my heart as much as I could to the lord. And as I began singing, just singing my heart, my my heart became thankful. It became warm. It became filled with joy.
Joel Brooks:You know, we all have temporary problems. That's what I started realizing. We All of us do. It's not not just me. All of us.
Joel Brooks:We have these these prob temporary problems that we cannot solve. But do you know what? Through Jesus, the biggest questions we have in life have been answered. I mean, we know there's a God. We know that he loves us, that he has sent his son to die for us.
Joel Brooks:He has secured for us a life that endures past death. Like, we know that we go to heaven when we die. We enjoy everlasting life with Christ. The big questions in our life have been answered. Do you realize the rest of the world would kill to have the answers to those questions?
Joel Brooks:Like, we have that. Yes, I don't know the answers to these temporary little things, but the big questions in my life, Jesus has answered. And so I just began to thank him for those things. And then he began to lead me in thankfulness for other things. Just Thanking him not only for my forgiveness that he's given me or for the life he's given me.
Joel Brooks:I thanked him for our lack of parking here at the church. I thanked him for the fact we only have four toilets here at the church. I began thanking him for like all of our restraints, all these things, because you know what? How amazing that we don't have room. And I began thanking the Lord for the unique work that he's doing.
Joel Brooks:And then I began once again, I'm so glad this is like it's not on tape here. It probably still is. I just began walking up and down and praying over every 649 chairs or places we could sit here in the church. I began praying for you. But what would happen this Sunday?
Joel Brooks:Saying Lord, people are gonna be are gonna be battling to get here. There's gonna be like, I I pray that people aren't just happy that they got a parking spot. They're not just happy that they got a place in here. Lord, I pray that you would, through your spirit, do something extraordinary in our midst. And that whoever comes in here, you would make the barren person sing.
Joel Brooks:That's why I began praying. Like just could we sing? Here's a barren woman singing, not because she has children. She's actually singing because she's been promised children. You notice that?
Joel Brooks:She doesn't have any kids yet, but she's been told she will have these. And she's not just gonna have one or two. She's gonna have children that cover the entire earth. They're gonna possess nations. God here is, in particular, he's he's speaking to Israel, in particular Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:Jerusalem and its inhabitants, they were supposed to be a blessing to the whole world, but through their idolatry, they became fruitless. They became barren. Now, through the work of the servant, the Lord says, you'll be barren no more. Now because of the atoning work of Jesus, they're gonna need to get a bigger building because he's just gonna flood that place with his offspring. In the immediate context, this prophecy was fulfilled when, God had, the Israelites return.
Joel Brooks:He brought them out of Babylonian exile and he brought them back to Jerusalem. And, it was a glorious day, but only 42,000 Jews returned. It's not the complete fulfillment of this prophecy. It's obviously talking about more. The much bigger fulfillment of this happened at Pentecost.
Joel Brooks:For it was at Pentecost that God's spirit fell on a group of people gathered in upper room and they were reborn. That's how Jesus grows his family. That's how he has his offspring. Through his spirit, people become born again into his family. This is what Jesus meant when he says, you must be born again.
Joel Brooks:Not of flesh and blood. You must be must be born of my spirit. That's how I become part of my family. That's how I have my offspring. And God began growing his family first there in Jerusalem and then you have it spreading to Judea, more family there, and then Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth to now where over a third of the world's population confesses Jesus as Lord.
Joel Brooks:Now most people probably are not aware of this, but a sermon on Isaiah 54 actually launched what we know as the modern mission movement. In May 1792, William Carey preached on this chapter. He's the father of missions. It became his most famous sermon and it's simply known as the deathless sermon. You could go and look it up.
Joel Brooks:And after that sermon, it launched the modern mission movement. His sermon only had two points that came from the three verses we read this morning. Some of you wish I would preach sermons with just two points. Well, sorry. Here's his two points.
Joel Brooks:Expect great things from God. Attempt great things from God for God. Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God. The barren woman could expect great things from God because he had promised them.
Joel Brooks:God promises us through Jesus that we will have so many children, they're gonna cover the globe. That's his promise and he always keeps his promises. That's the great thing we can expect. He's growing his family. And because we can expect this, we can now attempt great things for God.
Joel Brooks:Out of faith, this barren woman, she's told what she's supposed to do. She's to enlarge the place of her tent. She's to let the curtains of her habitations be stretched out. It says, do not hold back. Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.
Joel Brooks:Let me ask you this question, church. Are you holding back? Do not hold back. This this woman is being asked to live into what God has already promised. She was to buy more land, buy extra fabric, put more stakes in the ground.
Joel Brooks:She better not hold back because God is saying, I'm not gonna hold back. That's what it's all dependent upon. I'm not gonna hold back and my blessing's coming your way, so don't you dare hold back on me. Enlarge those tents. Church, we're supposed to go ahead and live into what God has promised.
Joel Brooks:Knowing God will do great things as his children. We now attempt great things. We should attempt great things in our giving. God cares for his children, so now we have this freedom to just be generous with others and to give away because we know our father takes care of us. We should attempt great things with our time.
Joel Brooks:We should be asking the Lord constantly, what would you have for me to do at this time and at this place? I don't want to spend the rest of my life just trying to numb my soul scrolling on my phone. What would you have for me, Lord? What what do you want me to do? Is there someone I should talk to?
Joel Brooks:Is there someone I should help? Is there someone I I should send a text, an encouraging text of what what should I do, spirit? Lead me. He's asking you to be bold and to be courageous here, daring. Church, as we have seen from the last few weeks, evil and violence are still very much a part of this world.
Joel Brooks:And can I tell you that politics will never change that? There is not a law out there that could change the human heart. Law can restrain some evil. But there's no legislation that can make people sing. And that's what we find here.
Joel Brooks:Hearts being transformed and people singing. Only the gospel can actually take someone who is evil and not just restrain that evil, but actually change their heart and make them rejoice in God. And we're told to live into this bold proclamation of that. In larger tents. Don't hold back in the way you use your funds, finances, the way you use your time, the way you use all your talents.
Joel Brooks:Talents do not hold back, church. God's not holding back. So why are you? Through the death and resurrection of this one righteous servant, he says, I'm now raising up many servants. So get out there and boldly declare the gospel of Jesus with every resource you have.
Joel Brooks:Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God. So let the world hear you sing. For those of you who've come into this place and you're just empty, dry, all you feel is barren. Please hear me say, what you need is not to just try harder.
Joel Brooks:What you need is not to try to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, turn over a new leaf. What you need is to be born again and become part of the family of God. And that is something that Jesus offers. Through his life, death, and resurrection, he offers you a entirely new life to be reconciled with God. He will give you a life that even death cannot take away.
Joel Brooks:So if that's you, call out to Jesus because he says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Let's pray, church. Jesus, you did not hold back. You did not hold back, and it is through your work, through your righteousness, through your suffering, through your death, through your resurrection. Lord, that all the blessings of Isaiah 54 and Isaiah 55, they come our way.
Joel Brooks:Thank you. Thank you that we can expect to be blessed for all eternity. And because we can expect that, I pray that we would not hold back, that our church would be bold in its witness. Thank you, Jesus, for all that you have given us. We pray this in your name.
Joel Brooks:Amen.
