Is. 54:1 “Sing, O barren, You who have not borne! Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, You who have not labored with child! For more are the children of the desolate Than the children of the married woman,” says the LORD. 2 “Enlarge the place of your tent, And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; Do not spare; Lengthen your cords, And strengthen your stakes. 3 For you shall expand to the right and to the left, And your descendants will inherit the nations, And make the desolate cities inhabited.

I was supposed to preach on this passage at Presbytery, but due to my seizure was not able to do so. And several have asked if I would be willing to preach it today. Initially I was not inclined to do so, but there have been enough discouraged people in our congregation who wonder if God can work through them, that I think this is a message that all of us need to hear - myself included. We need to be constantly reminded that our inadequacies and failures are not larger than God's grace. That's the theme of this message.

And before I go through the text in Isaiah, I want to point out that the apostle Paul gave an inspired interpretation of this passage in Galatians 4. He takes this astonishing image of a barren woman rejoicing by faith and applies it directly to us — to both the individual and also to the supernatural growth of the New Testament church against all expectations. And so, I am going to be leaning heavily on Paul's interpretation.

Isaiah 54, verses 2-3 give a wonderful image of the expansion of the church that is so great that the tent of the church needs to keep getting added to, and added to, until finally it spreads so far and wide that it takes over the nations of the world. That's quite a huge tent! It seems like an impossible vision on any level. But what makes this charge for a vision of kingdom growth even more astounding is that it was a charge that was given to a barren woman who couldn't do what God commanded. This is not a charge for those who think they can take on the world, or for those who think they have all the answers to all of life's problems. No. It is an encouraging vision of kingdom growth for a barren church that can do nothing in itself. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:

1Cor. 1:26 For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. 27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29 that no flesh should glory in His presence. 30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— 31 that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the LORD.”

This vision for New Covenant kingdom growth in Isaiah 54 is so audacious that it makes us realize that no one but God can receive the glory when this vision is achieved. Paul applies this whole passage to the New Testament church and admonishes her to not operate like Abraham and Hagar did, but to operate in faith like Abraham and Sarah eventually did. Not right away, but they eventually got what the vision of God for kingdom growth really is. There are five things that I want to extract from this passage directly relating to having a vision for kingdom growth.

The Starting Point for this Vision: Acknowledging Our Barrenness

And the starting point for this incredible vision of kingdom growth is to acknowledge our own barrenness. Verse 1 says, "Sing, O barren, you who have not borne! Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, you who have not labored with child!" This command to embrace God's vision of kingdom growth was given to a barren woman - a woman utterly incapable of fulfilling God's will in her own strength. But God wanted her to live by faith. And the first condition to living by faith was that she needed to acknowledge that she couldn't do it in her own strength. The starting point for a vision of faith today continues to be that we must acknowledge that we are barren and cannot achieve God's will on our own. To me that is hugely encouraging! The apostle Paul used this passage to teach believers to walk in the Holy Spirit's power and not in their own abilities. You wouldn't think that Abraham's mess-up with Hagar and Ishmael would have anything to do with us, but it does. Paul says that even though Abraham was a believer, he messed up when he followed Sarah's advice and when he sought to fulfill God's promise in his own strength and by his own means. And why did Abraham do that anyway? Because Sarah was barren and God's promise seemed so impossible that Abraham and Sarah decided that they needed to settle for something less than God's Word had declared; something a bit more achievable.

And this is the default that many Christians fall into. They fool themselves into thinking they are living the Christian life by having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Outwardly they are Christians just as much as Abraham was, but they don’t have the power of Christ. Let me repeat an illustration I gave you a few months ago. Picture a room full of people. Some are deaf and some are not. You see a man tapping his feet, clicking his fingers, swaying, with a smile on his face, and really getting into the music. A deaf man sees him thoroughly enjoying himself and decides that he wants to have the fulfilled life too. So he sits down beside the man who can hear and begins to imitate him by tapping his feet, clicking his fingers and moving. And after a while, he thinks to himself, “Man! This isn’t really all its cut out to be, but I guess it’s O.K.; at least I fit in.” Now a third man enters the scene and looks at these two men. If he hears the music himself, he can immediately tell that the movements of one man come from the music and the movements of the other are mere conformity. Right?

Unfortunately, some people live the Christian life by going through all the actions. But they are not doing so by the life and power of Jesus. And I've got three fingers pointing back at myself on this sermon - at least on some things. It's very easy to live certain aspects of the Christian life by the power of the first Adam, not by the power of Jesus. And for some Christians, this is the norm. They want the fulfilled life, so they try to live the Christian life. They go to all the meetings, they learn doctrine, they pray, but they don’t have supernatural life. They still find themselves dry and spiritually barren. In fact, they have tried to be spiritual so many times without success that they decide that they better just continue to go through the forms rather than let everybody know that they are dry and barren. But God does not give the power to fulfill His vision of kingdom growth to any but those who acknowledge that they cannot do it on their own. All Christians realize that the beginning of their Christian life is by grace alone, but too many try to do the things that Christians do in their own strength, and they are miserable and tired and discouraged as a result. They are Christians, and they want kingdom growth in their own lives - just as Abraham and Sarah did. But they have not learned how to tap into the power of Christ. But in Galatians Paul says, "Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?"

It's crazy! It's irrational! But we do it all the time. I've done it many times. Paul says that when we live our Christianity by trying harder and by pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, we are living like Abraham did with Hagar. It requires the Holy Spirit every day in our lives to produce God's Isaac.

And what do I mean by God's Isaac? I mean living out God's word by His power. For example, no Pharisee can possibly fulfill the Sermon on the Mount. Who can rejoice with exceeding great joy when being persecuted? I challenge you to try that in your own strength. You can't. So evangelical Pharisees think, "Surely that command must be hyperbole!" Who can love their enemies? Who can truly bless those who have cursed them? Who can return good for evil? Who can go the second mile with jerks who insist you go one mile - and do so without their joy being robbed? Surely these things are hyperbole? But they are not.

The whole Sermon on the Mount cuts the legs out from under a pretense Christianity and forces us to live in the realm of the miraculous; of the impossible. Jesus said that each of those kingdom blueprints are evidences of our sonship and our being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And Paul does the same. According to Galatians it takes faith to be sanctified because faith must receive everything from our bank account in heaven where we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. So the first lesson from this verse is to acknowledge with Paul (when he said) I know that “nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” It is to agree with Jesus when He said, “without Me you can do nothing.” Not just nothing important, but nothing in God’s kingdom. Everything produced from the strength of the first Adam will be burned up as hay, wood, and stubble. Only that which is produced in us by the Second Adam will last for all eternity.

But here is the crucial point: God does not reveal our barrenness to make us despair—He reveals our barrenness to drive us to faith.

Our temptation is to say: “I can’t do this—so I give up.”

But faith says: “I can’t do this—so I will depend entirely on Him.”

So, ironically, the precondition to living a life of faith is to acknowledge our barrenness - that we cannot do any of our Christian calling on our own. Some people are discouraged because they can't do much. They still haven't come to the end of themselves - which is the precondition for faith.

The Confident Rejoicing in God's Vision: “Sing, O barren”

The second thing to notice is the confident rejoicing in God's vision that is possible when faith comes. That can be seen in the command, “Sing, O barren… you who have not borne! Break forth into singing...” And Paul interprets that singing in Galatians 4 as rejoicing by faith.

And interestingly, God calls us to rejoice—not just after fruitfulness comes, but before fruitfulness comes. Faith rejoices in what God has promised before it is seen in history. Faith gives us a vision of kingdom growth long before we witness any kingdom growth. Hebrews says faith is “the evidence of things not seen.” It treats God’s promise as already accomplished before we see it accomplished.

Can you sing and rejoice in the face of impossibilities? And I can guarantee that you do have your own impossibilities - calls on your life that are just as impossible as God's call to Sarah to produce Isaac. And the reason I can guarantee it is because God calls all of us to do the impossible - to love the unloveable, to forgive the unforgiveable, to live out the Sermon on the Mount, to rejoice when our bodies are calling us to sadness, etc. And the Spirit of God may be reminding you of something this morning that may seem as impossible for you to do as it was for Sarah to believe that she would have a baby. Your impossibilities may be emotional in nature, or financial, or social, or something else. And the very fact that you don’t think you can do what God has commanded you to do is a call to faith, not unbelief. Isaiah reminds us that God's vision for kingdom growth is an audacious vision. It is an impossible vision that can only be achieved as we have faith in God's supernatural ability. It is a faith that enables us:

• to sing even when fully conscious of our own inability and barrenness. • to sing even before God gives the answer. • to sing simply because God has spoken, knowing that He is a God who cannot lie.

The Great Temptation: Living by the Flesh

What's the alternative to this singing? Galatians says it is to resort to the default of living in the strength that comes from the first Adam rather than to live by the strength that flows from the Second Adam. With Abraham we plead, "Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!" (Gen. 17:18). But God says, "No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son..." And when God calls us to do impossible things today, we often default to trying harder to do the possible in order to please God. Galatians 3:3 says, “Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?” Our flesh, our old man, is not capable of living the new life in Christ.

All it can do is the imitation of that deaf man who was clicking his fingers, tapping his toes, swaying, and imitating something that he has never personally experienced. When the Spirit of God indwells a person by faith, the Holy Spirit brings the life of Christ powerfully to bear in our ordinary living. Ephesians 1:19 says, “and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places.” Wow! He is saying that the exact same power that raised Christ from the dead, is an exceedingly great power that can work in you right now by faith. And that in no way conflicts with our effort. In Colossians 1:29 Paul said, "To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily." Both are true. Paul never advocates passivity. Rather he advocates looking to Christ continually as we labor and strive. It is Christ’s resurrection life that enabled Paul to say, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” But what's the default? Living our Christian life in our own strength.

The Scope of the Vision: Personal, Generational, and Cultural

But third, the scope of the vision for kingdom growth that we are called to engage in is also an audacious vision. Verse 1 says, “'More are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman,' says the LORD.” God doesn’t just promise fruitfulness—He promises abundance. I love that expression in the bible: “more…than.” God’s grace enables us to do much more than what our flesh can do. Where sin abounds, grace abounds much more. Though sin destroyed what was given to Adam, Christ will restore and give much more than was lost. Even in terms of church growth, Isaiah will go on to speak of the church outnumbering the unbelievers and eventually inheriting all nations. Paul applies the much more to church growth. We should be willing to believe that God's grace achieves much more than sin and the flesh has achieved. Do you believe that? A new believer might be discouraged with all the sin and all the mess that he has produced, but by faith that new believer should believe the Scripture promise that where sin abounds, grace abounds much more.

Verse 2 continues that theme of kingdom growth using another image - the expansion of a tent that will become too crowded. But as John Oswalt's commentary points out, the command to expand the tent to accommodate many more people occurs while the woman is still barren. In other words, God calls for quick action before there are children. As his commentary says, "... the insistence of the essentially repetitious commands connotes an urgency and an exuberance that will brook no hesitation. God will do what he says. A wider space must be found where a bigger tent with necessarily longer cords and stronger pegs can be stretched out."¹ This passage indicates that it is the very nature of faith to do this. What does it mean?

Well, let's look at each phrase in verse 2. God says, "Enlarge the place of your tent..." And remember that Paul by inspiration applies this to the church. Why does the church need to be commanded to prepare for growth? Perhaps because the status quo feels more comfortable. Some people find change very uncomfortable. Perhaps because growth will cause messiness and more work. Perhaps because of the inconvenience. We are not told, but it is certainly true to life. Without this command to extend the geographic boundaries from Jerusalem to Samaria and outward from there, the church would likely not have done it. Apart from an aggressive faith, there is a tendency for the church to degenerate into a holy huddle.

The next imperative is "And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings..." Commentators point out that the word used is not pulling stretchy material, but adding material to the tent. And notice that the command is "let them..." There are people willing to stretch out the curtains and others who aren't so keen to do so. Who wants their tent inconvenienced by workers who are lifting it up and sewing on extra fabric to it? So he says, "Let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings." Let them do it. There are always people in every church who drag their feet when the first few start to reach out and bring people in. Bringing in crowds spoils the nice clique that they have enjoyed. But God says, "let them do it." "...let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings..." The whole body needs to gain God's vision for missions and kingdom growth. And keep in mind that this preparing for new people occurs before the new people arrive. It is developing a vision of kingdom growth, and a culture of expectation, and a culture of receiving the blessing of new people.

The next imperative verb is, "Do not spare;" In other words, don't be stingy. Don't hold back with whatever skins, needle, thread, effort, money, and time is needed to prepare for New Covenant growth. God's will is for sterile, barren, desolate congregations to have children - to grow, to have diapers, and immature new believers coming into their midst. It isn't supposed to be a club for specialists. Everyone should pitch in and reach out. Do not spare. This is what the New Covenant commits us to.

Gary Smith’s commentary points out that God wants the church to have a wild optimism for growth during New Covenant times. He says,

The initial imperatives encourage the listener to be optimistic in the expansion of the tent. “Make it wide” and “stretch it out” encourage the woman to not be shortsighted or pessimistic about how many children will be added and how much space will be needed. She is not to hold back her imagination in dreaming just how big the tent might need to be.²

The fourth and fifth imperatives deal with preserving what is about to be expanded. It says, "Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes." Once every provision for growth has been made, there will be the opposition of winds and storms that have the potential of blowing the tent down and reversing the progress made. Church growth can be messy, and many a church has fallen apart after rapid growth. Since there is more fabric to catch the wind, the potential for the tent collapsing increases. And the same is true in the realm of the church - with more people come more potential problems. So God commands the church to make preparation to make sure that we anticipate the winds of change and to not be surprised by them. Strong cords of love need to be added and stronger stakes that anchor us into Christ and into His grace need to be pounded into the ground if the new growth and the expanded tent are to last.

Again, the promise is so grand that it seems almost insane - unless of course you are used to living by faith; then it seems normal. So this verse is a promise of fantastic generational growth of the kingdom in the New Testament era. And over the past 2000 years there is no question that the church has been growing enormously – from 120 disciples in the upper room to multiplied millions in every nation. In fact, I was reading a Wikipedia article that claims that there are more Christians in the world today than at any other time in world history. Are they messy Christians in diapers? In some cases, yes. But the church has been growing. Some people think that Iran may well become the first Muslim nation to become a Christian nation.

But I should point out that not every segment of the church has grown. Only those segments willing to make the sacrifices of faith that are needed (that’s verse 2) and who have the faith to rejoice and to confess this victory as a reality (that’s verse 1). So we have seen the audacious nature of this vision for kingdom growth. But let's traverse verse 3 again and see four anchors that help us to maintain this vision. (Easier said than done.)

Four Anchors for Kingdom Growth

The first anchor is that kingdom growth requires not just corporate faith, but individual faith. Even if Paul had not quoted these verses and applied them to the individual mandate to live by faith and to walk in the Spirit, we would have still assumed that individuals must have these characteristics, not just the church as a whole. After all, what is the corporate? It is just a union of what is present in the individual. Corporate faith is simply the expression of many individual faiths walking hand in hand. All of us are responsible to believe God's promises for the future - what we call eschatology. And it applies to so many different things. End Abortion Nebraska has an audacious vision of not just making abortion rare in Nebraska, but non-existent. Is this what God commands? Yes, it is. Is it impossible? It sure seems so. Yet God promises that it will eventually happen when the church rises up in faith. But there is both individual faith and corporate faith. And many similar examples could be given of how both individual and corporate faith needs to take God’s commands seriously.

Second, God's covenant never neglects our children. How many times in history has the vision for kingdom growth been short-circuited because people have neglected their children - or have sent their children to the pagans to be discipled. I love that phrase, "and your descendants will inherit..." That assumes that our descendents will be Christians, right? God's election tends to work through family lines, and our normal expectation should be that our children will expand beyond what we are able to do. There is generational growth. But that doesn't happen automatically. We must have faith for our children. That assumes of course that we are willing to have children, that we are willing to educate and disciple our children, and that we have effectively passed on this contagious faith to our children. And it assumes that you children will actively embrace the faith of the fathers and actively take the actions and attitudes of verses 1-2. But it is generational, not just individualistic.

Third, faith is never surprised by desolation. To me , this is such an important subpoint. Faith is never depressed by desolation. It is never overcome by desolation or unbelief. Remember that verse 1 already showed that we ourselves came from barreness and desolation, right? Verse 3 speaks of inheriting desolate cities - not perfect cities. Why would we not expect to see desolation out there? Paul used verse 1 to say that apart from the Holy Spirit working in us, we are a disaster in the making. Faith looks for the kingdom of heaven to come into our lives, to invade, tear down, cleanse, and transform. Some people get discouraged by looking at the sin and barrenness in their lives, but that is exactly why grace is needed. Some people get discouraged by looking at the sin and barrenness in our nation. But that is precisely the context in which gives God the most glory - bringing life out of barrenness. So faith expects to see desolation and to see that desolation transformed by the Holy Spirit. Don't get depressed by the disaster of humanism in America. That's what we should expect humanism to look like. We don’t want humanism to prosper. And we shouldn’t be surprised when humanism starts producing desolation. Such desolation is no match for the supernatural power of Christ's kingdom.

Fourth, the church must be prepared to tear down anything and everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ and to build up a replacement civilization that is truly Christian - thoroughly Christian. It’s one of the reasons we are going through the book of Deuteronomy- to know how to do that. The last phrase of verse 3 says, “And make the desolate cities inhabited.” That’s talking about rebuilding a new civilization on the ruins of humanistic failure. We must turn desolations around - whether those desolations are individual lives, families, or cultures. But that means that we must be involved in the cities. We must not be escapist. We must have the answers to the problems plaguing our society.

The Nature of Faith: Acting Before Seeing

And that brings us to the last point that I also see in verses 2–3. It is the very nature of faith to act consistently with the vision of kingdom growth before we see any sign of kingdom growth.

The barren woman is commanded to: • Enlarge her tent • Stretch out the curtains • Lengthen the cords • Strengthen the stakes

Why?

Because spiritual children are coming.

And here’s the key: She is still barren when she is told to prepare. Faith does not wait for results before it acts. Faith acts because God has promised. It is like: • Israel eating the Passover ready to leave Egypt • The paralytic stretching out his hand before it was healed

Faith takes steps that only make sense if God keeps His word. During the first Passover meal when Israel was still in Egypt, they were commanded to be clothed, with sandals on their feet, and a staff in their hand - ready to move out. They were eating in faith that as they left Egypt God would do what He had promised. And this is God's way with us. The paralytic obeyed Christ's command to stretch forth his hand even though it had been impossible to ever stretch forth his hand before. In unbelief he could have said, “Uh, you need to heal me first, and then I will stretch it forth.” But he didn't wait for the miracle to happen before taking the steps of faith. The miracle happened as he obeyed Christ in attempting the impossible. And this passage calls us to take the steps of faith to be a receptive and outreaching church. Paul applies this personally, generationally, and culturally.

I urge you to embrace the much more theology of this passage that is willing to believe that:

•	Where sin abounds, grace abounds much more
•	What was lost in Adam is restored and surpassed in Christ

May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Receive the Lord's blessing as I read the benediction from Jude 24-25.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen. (Jude 24-25)