The Children of the Desolate One - Isaiah 54

If you wanted to understand Egyptians, I guess it would be helpful if you learned how to walk like one.   But I think they walk pretty much like the rest of us do, except for those Egyptians depicted in ancient reliefs - those pictures we see of people with the funky hair-dos walking with their arms in the air and their hands held horizontally.  Looks very awkward.  I don’t know why anyone would want to walk like that.

If we want to understand how people think, especially people from other cultures, it is helpful, as some say, to walk a mile in their shoes.  To get into their lives, speak their language, eat their food, live in their culture and experience the world from their perspective.  

When we’re reading about the Jews of Old Testament days, part of rightly understanding them comes through the study of Jewish culture in that day.  They were very different people from what we are here today.  They didn’t think the way we do.  They had a totally different worldview.  They did not know who their Messiah was because He had not yet come.  They had extremely faulty expectations of Him.  They had different values and different priorities than most Americans do today.  Men and women were not treated equally at all.  Their family structures and values were different from ours.  Theirs was a world completely alien to the one we’re accustomed to.

In our text today, we read about a cultural norm among the Jews of the Old Testament that is fairly uncommon in American culture.  Unlike our culture today, it was the desire of all Jews everywhere to have very large families.  The more children, the better!  It was this mindset that provoked men to have more than one wife.  There were a number of reasons for this.  If you were a farmer (and most Old Testament Jews were farmers) and you had six or eight or ten sons, it certainly lightened your work load, it allowed you to produce more, and create a larger inheritance for the generations that followed.  Then, in your old age, your children would care for you.  They were your retirement plan.

A large family was so desirable it was commonly understood to be a curse from God if a man and his wife didn’t have children.  They believed (and rightly so) that ultimately it was God who caused wives to become mothers.  If a woman did not have children, many children, it was a great burden to both her and her husband.  It was not simply a cause for sadness, but to be infertile was cause for shame and disgrace.  

Their world was very different from ours.  Barren women were ridiculed and scorned.  The Jews assumed a woman was childless because of some spiritual problem.  God had chosen to withhold the blessing of children because of some fault in the woman.

In the book of Genesis we read of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.  She was childless until age 90.  That’s a lot of years with a lot of reproach and disappointment.  But long after all hope was lost that she might have a child, the Lord miraculously gave her a son, according to His promise.  This was so unexpected and so unheard of that she named her son Isaac, which means “laughter”.  A very appropriate name for a baby born to a 90 year old mother.

Abraham had another son by another woman, but only “according to the flesh”.  Ishmael was the natural and expected product of a man having relations with a woman.  But when 90-year-old Sarah finally conceived and gave birth it was obvious to everyone for miles in every direction that God had blessed her.  The ONLY explanation for her pregnancy was God.  God had caused her to become pregnant.  And through Isaac, Abraham would have descendants more numerous than the stars, just as God had promised.

In the book of 1 Samuel, we read of Elkanah and Hannah.  Hannah was one of two wives of Elkanah.  His other wife, Peninnah, had “sons and daughters but Hannah had no children because the LORD had closed her womb.“  

Well, maybe.  Probably not.  It’s hard to be happy when your husband’s other wife cranks out a baby every time he touches her!  For years, Hannah remained barren until she went to the temple and prayed.  It was then that the Lord answered her prayers and gave her a child who became one of the greatest prophets of Israel: Samuel.  Her husband’s other wife had many sons and daughters, but only “according to the flesh”.  Hannah’s son, like Sarah’s, was from the Lord.  So she dedicated Him to the Lord, and he was used mightily of the Lord.  In 1 Samuel 2, Hannah prayed these words of praise and gratitude to God: 

She is saying this because she was given a baby.  She exults, she rejoices in this salvation of sorts that she has been granted.  And now, she derides her enemies who have scorned her because of her barrenness, and more specifically she derides Peninnah, her rival.  This shows us how important child-bearing was among Jewish women on those days.  Then Hannah continues:

Can you imagine praying like this as a result of God’s blessing you with a child?  Hannah’s competition for the heart of Elkanah seemed to be easily winning the race even though he loved Hannah dearly.  But Peninnah had plenty of children, while Hannah had none,.  Year after year, when they walked to the Temple to worship, Peninnah always had a new baby on her hip, and Hannah was empty handed.  So her co-wife became her rival, her enemy.  But now that Hannah has been given a little baby boy, she feels vindicated and she rejoices in the grace and goodness and the deliverance of God.  Imagine living in a culture where wives compete for the affection of their common husband based upon their ability to give them children.

This was the mindset of the men and women of Israel.  To be unfruitful in marriage and childbearing was to be under God’s curse.  But to have many children was a sign of God’s favor and cause for rejoicing.  Now look with me at Luke 2.  

Here’s a priest and his wife who are described as righteous and blameless before the Lord, BUT they had no child!  How does that work?  They are righteous BUT with no children?  That would be a contradiction in the minds of the Jewish people.  If you’re good and God is pleased with you, He gives you children.  If you don’t have children, then something must be wrong.  And at their ages, it’s not looking very promising.  Zechariah and Elizabeth and everybody who knows them are pretty sure at this point that they will die without having had any children.  No heir, no continuation of the priesthood through Zechariah’s son.

“Your prayer”?  What prayer?  Zechariah is STILL praying for a baby?  Why pray for a child in your old age?  Didn’t he know that old women don’t have babies?  Well, at least one woman they knew of had had a very important baby in her old age.  So they prayed for years, for decades for a child, and God finally answered.  

Not only were Zechariah and Elizabeth given a child, but a son of whom the Messiah would say “among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11 ESV).  Once again, here is a child that is not “according to the flesh”, but a direct answer to the prayers and longings of a godly man and his wife.  How would you like to have attended that party?  You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth!  Those were two proud and thankful parents, and you know all those Jewish women passed that baby around and around and around, looking at a living miracle, marveling at what the Lord had done.  I’m surprised the Lord didn’t say, You shall call his name Isaac!  Lots and lots of laughing and rejoicing, no doubt.

This was the mindset of the Jews in biblical times.  Children were a great blessing from the Lord, and many children equalled much blessing!  But a lack of children was generally a sign of God’s displeasure.  In these texts, we see the ungodly being blessed with many children (Peninnah) and the righteous being given only one.  But that one was given because of faith, because of prayer, and as a sign of God’s unusual blessing and favor upon them.

Now that we’ve walked like a Jew for a few miles, we want to bring that Jewish worldview with us as we look at Isaiah 54 today.  While we could read the entire chapter, I want to focus on three verses in order to help you understand what is going on here:

To whom is the Lord speaking through Isaiah?  To the tiny remnant of Judah in Babylon.  There are almost no Jews left.  They have been nearly extinguished by their enemies, the Chaldeans (i.e. the Babylonians).  This is why God speaks of them collectively as a woman who is barren, who has not given birth to children. 

Spiritually speaking, the Jews have been childless, barren, and a reproach to God.  The evidence of it is obvious.  They have no king.  They have been nearly destroyed and they are spending 70 years in exile among their enemies.  Their own nation no longer exists, their capital city no longer exists, their Temple no longer exists.  Even their Jewish culture is being lost as their children are assimilated into the Babylonian culture.  The people of Israel are like a barren woman who has produced no children for God.

But something is about to change.  Barren, childless Jewish women don’t sing.  But she can start singing now because the children of the woman who is desolate are going to be many!  How is this going to happen?  Because God Himself will be her husband!  He will give her multitudes of children, and all of them shall be taught by the Lord, “and great shall be the peace of your children.”  Her children will be so many that Isaiah says to her in verses 2 and 3: 

Now the two questions we need to answer are: 1) Who are all these children? and 2) When will this happen?  Well, I just happen to know the answer to both of those questions!  That’s the advantage I have when I’m asking the questions.  I try not to ask questions I don’t know the answers to.  And I know the answers to these questions.  Turn with me to Galatians 4.

Again, I’d like to read the entire chapter to you and go into detail regarding what Paul is saying here.  But we’re going to break into the middle of his conversation with the Galatians in order to answer the questions we’ve asked.  Look at verse 21.

That may be the coolest verse in the New Testament for non-Jews!  You, brothers, who are all Gentiles spread out all over Galatia, YOU are the spiritual children God promised to give to desolate Israel!  You are the spiritual children of God.  These are the promised multitudes who will be taught of the Lord.  

And so are we!!  Brothers and sisters, WE are included in the fulfillment of Isaiah 54!  This chapter is talking about us!  And God commanded Israel to get a bigger tent and longer tent pegs to make room for us.  We, like Isaac, are the spiritual children whom God promised to Israel.

It is interesting to me that God did not say, “Rejoice, oh barren one, and buy another tent for all the children you’re going to adopt which aren’t really your children, but they are just like your children.  So set up another tent for them.”

No.  God, in essence, said “Build an addition onto your house and make it a big one!  You’re all going to live under the same roof!”  And that is PRECISELY Paul’s argument which he makes from Isaiah 54.  We are spiritual Jews, living under the same tent with our spiritual, Jewish ancestors who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:13 ESV).  In other words, no one, not even a Jew, is a child of God unless he is born of God.  But anyone who is born of God is a spiritual Jew, a member of God’s household, regardless of who he is or where he came from.  This is the freedom we have as believers in the Lord Jesus and as members of the family of God.

That is what Isaiah 54 is all about.  It’s about God saving us.  

You say, “OK, I can see that.  I understand Paul is talking about us as Gentiles being included in the household of God alongside Jewish believers.  So what should my response to this be ?”  Once again, we have a question to which I know the answer.  

There are children.  And then there are spiritual children.  God told the people of Judah to rejoice and sing because of the spiritual children He was going to give them.  There are multitudes of men and women who cannot have physical children.  That does not mean they cannot have any children at all.  In fact, we read this from the apostle John:

There is no greater joy than to know that your spiritual children, those whom God has given you, are walking in the truth.  That is cause for rejoicing!  When you have been given the opportunity to be a spiritual parent others, and they are walking in obedience to the Lord Jesus, THAT is true joy.

But also, there is coming a day when the saved in Israel will sing over us and with us saved Gentiles.  The day is coming when ALL God’s children will dwell under the same tent.  We’re not there yet.  Obviously, we’re not there yet.  But there is coming a day when the Church of the Lord Jesus, comprised of men and women from every nation on earth and from every age throughout history, - the day is coming when ALL of us will rejoice together in His great, great, great salvation!  In other words, this gives us hope.  This encourages our hearts.  We are seeing God at work, bringing His own purposes to pass, drawing all His people to Himself.

And when you see the world around us this time of year talking about peace on earth and joy and glad tidings and the first noel and Mary and Joseph and angels and cattle lowing and stuff,  . . . just know in your own hearts that while so many out there have no idea what they’re talking about . . .  and when they throw around these Christmassy words and phrases, and they sing with great vigor and enthusiasm Handel’s Messiah because it is such a beautiful piece of music, . . . while having no clue as to what the words they are singing actually mean . . .

I want you to know in your hearts that all of this, all of these promises, these words from Isaiah apply directly to us.  We who have believed in the Lord Jesus, who have been birthed by the Spirit of God into this new, spiritual life, into this new spiritual family, we were spoken of centuries ago by the prophet Isaiah.  You and I - YOU and I! - are a small part of God fulfilling His promises to Israel so long ago, to one day give her many, many, many children.  

Now the task we have before us is, not to walk like an Egyptian, or walk like a Jew, but to walk like a Christian.  To walk as Jesus walked.  To live for the One who died so that we might live forever and call Him our Brother and our Friend.