Isaiah 52:3 - Free Grace

Sermon Text:

Let’s open our Bibles together this morning to the 52nd chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah.

Since we read the chapter for our Old Testament reading, I will read only the first six verses of the chapter to help bring them back to our memory.

[READ ISAIAH 52:1-6]

You might remember from last Sunday morning, in the 51st chapter of Isaiah, verse 9, the people cried out to God:

Isaiah 51:9 “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?”

And we saw God reply to them in verse 17: Isaiah 51:17 “Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.”

So then, we see in the first verse of our chapter this morning the same command from God:

Isaiah 52:1 “Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for there shall no more come into you the uncircumcised and the unclean.”

This is still God talking here; we see in v. 3 “FOR thus says the Lord”

Awake! Awake! ...The Lord is speaking.

But notice the change in the command.

In 51:17, it is God telling these people to “Wake yourself!”

But here , at the beginning of this great 52nd chapter, it is God who is waking His people: “Awake!”

Not “wake yourself”, but “Wake up!”

And that sets the tone for this entire chapter - it is a chapter of what God is promising to do in His Messiah.

We will just manage a bare introduction this morning, but I invite you for the three or so weeks we will look at this chapter to spend some time reading it each week.

Allow yourself to be awed by the great mercy of God to His hardened, entitled children.

Calling them to repentance and bringing them to repentance through His Servant, Jesus Christ, and His Holy Spirit.

You might ask, “But is the difference in the wording of the command really important?”

I would reply - Yes.

Does it mean something different if you tell your teenager “Wake yourself” than if you tell them “Wake up!”?

Of course:

It is the difference between Jesus standing at the tomb of Lazarus and calling out to the corpse, “Lazarus, raise yourself” or standing in the same place and commanding “Lazarus, come forth”!

“Wake yourself” shows us the utter futility of the act.

“Obey the Lord” - for the unconverted sinner, is there any more hopeless command?

It is hard enough for a Christian, saved by grace through faith, to obey.

For someone without the Spirit of God - it is just as possible as raising yourself from the dead.

God is sovereign, but how shall we do it? How can we wake ourselves? How can we obey a holy God, even with our best intentions?

It’s not just by WANTING to do better.

Good intentions are not obedience.

Trying hard, doing your best, is not obedience.

Romans 7:18–19 “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”

It’s not by CLAIMING to do better.

There are deluded people today who think they can declare themselves into righteousness.

That they can cast sin out of themselves and thus be clean.

They think they can claim God’s promises, and the power of their words, and their faith in those words, will cleanse them from all their sin and temptation.

1 John 1:10 “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

It’s not by TRYING OUR HARDEST to do better.

All your efforts, all my efforts, apart from Christ, will be an utter failure.

Isaiah 51:19–20 “These two things have happened to you— who will console you?— devastation and destruction, famine and sword; who will comfort you? Your sons have fainted; they lie at the head of every street like an antelope in a net; they are full of the wrath of the Lord, the rebuke of your God.”

Striving against sin is a good thing, but it’s not enough to wake you.

Disciplining yourself, becoming the most strident Christian you know, isn’t enough to wake you.

It’s a good thing that is a necessary outcome of faith, but your willpower has no power at all to save.

Zechariah 4:6 “Then he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.”

The gospel of God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, is at the heart of “Awake! Awake!”

It is God’s call, and all the beautiful things that means to His people.

We see in v. 1 strength: strength that you never had before.

Not “lift a car over your head” strength, but “stand firm against temptation” and “flee youthful lusts” strength.

Strength to NOT fall to temptation.

Strength to lift up others when they have fallen.

Strength to carry your burdens and theirs before the throne of God for His aid.

After strength, we see beauty.

“Put on your beautiful garments”.

He isn’t talking about your best dress or suit;

This is the garment of righteousness before God.

What we see in the New Testament in the command “put on Christ”

Romans 13:14 “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

With strength and beauty, we see holiness:

“put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for there shall no more come into you the uncircumcised and the unclean. “

Holy = set apart.

Devoted to God’s worship and His pleasure.

And useful in His work and praise.

Not just one person, but ALL God’s people.

Israel, the nation, was a mixed multitude.

There were those sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who were faithful to God.

And there were some of those sons and daughters who were not.

They were scoundrels, idolaters, covenant-breakers.

In short - UNHOLY.

But the NEW Jerusalem, the NEW people of God, is not made up of a mixed multitude.

This is the CHURCH - and it is made up exactly of those God promises here:

Not the UNcircumcised and UNclean.

Why?

Because the Servant of God, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, MAKES His people clean.

And with a circumcision of the heart, not one made with hands.

Romans 2:28–29 “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.”

Colossians 2:9–12 “For in him [Jesus Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.”

In verse 2 of our passage today, we continue to see two results of God’s salvation through Jesus Christ:

The first is a new nature.

Shake yourself from the dust and arise; be seated, O Jerusalem;

We are men and women of dust.

We have been formed from the dust of the ground.

But in the kingdom of the Son of God, we have a new nature.

When the rabbi Nicodemus came to our Lord in the night, he has hmming and hawing to Jesus until:

John 3:3 “Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.””

John 3:6 “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

We have bodies still, to be sure, but we also have this promise in the present:

2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

And we see the result of it in the words of Christ in John 11:25–26 “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.””

If you are in Christ, you are no longer just a person of the dust;

When this dusty tent is put off, you will see with your own new eyes what God has prepared for you.

1 Corinthians 2:9–10 “But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”

The second promise in v. 2 is FREEDOM.

loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.

What does it mean to be free, truly free?

In John chapter 8, we see Jesus challenging some Jews who claimed to believe Him:

John 8:31–32 “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.””

Obedience to God through Christ is, then, freedom.

There aren’t a lot of people around who believe that, are there?

The Jews in that day didn’t either.

John 8:33 “They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?””

There is nothing new about the paganism and unbelief of today - people had the same objection to this declaration in Isaiah’s day and when Jesus preached it to the crowd.

I think it may be because we don’t really get what freedom is.

It’s like we stumble over ourselves when someone asks us what we should be free from or what they should be saved from.

For many of us, we have got it into our heads that freedom is the ability to do whatever our sinful hearts desire.

There are people sitting in churches across our country at this hour who think freedom means being able to do whatever you want with no negative consequences.

The only thing wrong with that definition is that it is completely wrong.

That only leads you deeper into slavery, deeper into bondage.

It’s where Israel and Judah went wrong.

They were waking themselves, reviving themselves, and pleasing themselves - and they were enslaving themselves ever more surely to the real enemy: sin.

John 8:34-36 - “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

That’s exactly what God is promising here in Isaiah through the Christ: The Son will set you free from the most evil and destructive slavery this world has ever known: SIN.

Sin is a horrible master, but its slaves love him until it’s too late.

By comparison, even the cruel and immoral slavery the world has practiced in history is mild.

Those masters may not have loved their slaves, but it was in their best interest to care for their slaves.

To keep them healthy, fed, useful.

It was in their interest that the slave was useful.

But the master Sin has no such concern for his slaves.

He kills them.

They spend their lives on him and he pays them with DEATH.

The philosopher Karl Marx, in his book The Communist Manifesto, called religion “the opiate of the people”, meaning it’s a drug that puts them to sleep.

But the real opiate of the people is sin.

It slowly wraps its bonds around his victims until they are helpless to resist.

I know I will offend some by saying this, but the behaviors we have labeled “addiction” today are little more than late-stage slavery to sin.

No one can be addicted to drugs if they never take them in the first place.

No one can be addicted to alcohol if they never drink.

Even the pop-psychological diagnosis of “anxiety” today is most often nothing more than an addiction to selfishness.

A habit of asking “but what about ME?” over and over again.

EVERY sin carries with it its own bonds that lead to addiction and death.

Every one of them.

Every sin is addictive.

Every sin encases your neck in a collar it will use to drag you down and kill you.

And that is why God speaks through Isaiah telling His people that they have been set free.

If you are in Christ, you CAN remove that cruel iron collar from your neck.

You CAN be free from that addicting sin.

You CAN be freed from the captivity of sin that long ago lost its appeal to you.

And you CAN be freed from the temptation of new sins to come along.

Because the SON HAS SET YOU FREE.

Galatians 5:1 “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

Jesus has saved His people, not to free them to run back into the arms of another sin, but to run into His arms and be free from it.

To live a life where you can say “No” to sin and make it stick.

To live a life where you can stand firm, not being dragged by your neck back into bondage.

If you are in Christ, you are the most free person on the planet - free indeed.

You can walk in the Spirit and make no pre-plans for the flesh.

You can endure the slings and darts of the enemy through the armor and support of God Himself.

Not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord.

What does God say in our passage today about the sin He frees you from: it is worthless.

Isaiah 52:3 “For thus says the Lord: “You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money.””

The people who chase after sin sell themselves for nothing.

Nothing.

I have never known anyone who spent a lot of time in a casino or betting on the internet who was one dollar ahead.

I have never known anyone who was addicted to drugs or alcohol who was a better person for it.

I have never known a thief who considered they had stolen enough to stop.

Or an adulterer who woke up one day and decided that life wasn’t for them.

Or someone addicted to pornography disconnecting from the internet for good.

I have heard a LOT of them tell me how that was just the way they were made;

I have heard many of them say God made them that way.

I have heard others defend themselves and say “That’s just who I am”

Or have their families defend them by saying “That’s just the way they are. It isn’t their fault.”

But these sins serve only as examples - there are thousands of others.

And NONE of them lead to anything but death and destruction.

2 Peter 2:19 “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.”

Sin may promise you the world, but it only delivers a hole in the dirt.

No one is better off because of the sin in their lives - even the ones who sell sin in the commercials.

Even the ones who try to recruit you to their sin.

They promise freedom - but they are just recruiting slaves.

They stand there with that iron collar on their necks and try to make you believe it’s a fashion statement.

But notice the promise of God in v. 3: You shall be redeemed without money.

In many slaveries, the slave could eventually buy themselves and free themselves from slavery - it was called manumission.

But the promise of God here is that you don’t have to buy yourself.

Even if you sold yourself super cheap, even free, to sin, you will never be able to buy yourself out of that bondage.

You need a Redeemer.

You need someone who loves you enough to buy you out of bondage.

That’s what it means to be REDEEMED.

But you will be redeemed without money.

The price paid for you is much more precious: the blood of the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Not money - blood.

Your worthless life paid for by the infinitely worthy life of Jesus Christ.

And it gets better - you are, in that transaction, eternally adopted by God through Jesus Christ.

He saves you and He keeps you.

At the end of v. 6, God says to us: “Here I am”

I am right here, and I am telling you to repent and trust me.

Turn your back on your sin and come to Me.

I will loose your bonds; I will set you free.

Anyone - ANYONE - who comes to Him in faith will be accepted.

John 6:37 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

If you need that freedom, that redemption.

If you are crying out from your sin.

If you have tried to escape over and over again, only to be re-enslaved more.

Come to Jesus.

Trust in Him to save you.

And you will find He is not only able, but willing and ready to save you.