SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP BEFORE YOU CAN FIND REST – Isaiah 51 & 52

Isaiah 52:1-2

1. Take the time to perform a full evaluation of your life and where you are at.
   1. We need to do this often.
2. 1. 1 Corinthians 11:28-32 – “²⁸But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. ²⁹For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. ³⁰For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. ³¹For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. ³²But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.”
   2. We have Communion in remembrance of the Last Supper of Christ. These scriptures proceed Paul’s reiteration of Jesus’ instruction on how to hold Communion.
   • In saying that, each and every day, when you make the decision to follow Christ (I die daily) you are drinking from that cup and tasting of that bread.
   1. If you are not fully evaluating your life and where you stand, you may very well be condemning yourself with the statement, “I am a Christian”.
   2. Do you day in and day out feel weak and sickly, yet no signs of that ole Covid.
   3. Are you sleep walking through the motions, a fog on the brain, muddling through life.
   • If we judge ourselves………
3. Isaiah 51:1 - First, look at this rock you have become embedded in; this pit you have dug for yourself.
   1. A lonely petrified tree.
4. 1. Petrification is the solidifying and hardening of wood as sediment rich moisture fills the hollow places of the tree or wood. The lack of oxygen due to the moisture slows decay in the wood allowing time for the sediment to replace the very cell walls of the wood.
   2. This don’t happen over night.
   • Is it dead, is it alive.
   1. Frozen in time the tree never grows.
   2. It no longer fulfills its purpose of absorbing the carbon dioxide from the air and replacing it with oxygen.
   3. It has grown to hard and rigid to be a suitable habitat, a refuge, for the weary wildlife.
5. We get trapped in places, and when we aren’t continually examining our lives, our Christian walk becomes a lot like a petrified tree.
6. 1. That weak, sickly feeling of death overhanging.
   2. Wait, I’m fine, I profess Christ.
   • But why am I never growing?
   1. Why do I feel I am not achieving my purpose?
   2. Why is it so hard to remain in fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ?
7. The first words in this verse were, “Hearken to me”.
8. 1. Do not stop your evaluation at your circumstances. We have a bad habit of that.
   2. When we continually do this, we deplete every drop of joy that God has provided us.
   • We become more hardened, more sickly.
9. Isaiah 51:2 - Look unto Abraham your father.
   1. Father Abraham had many sons.
10. 1. Terah, Abraham’s father, died.
    2. His brother Lot draws away over temptation and disputes.
    • Hagar and his son Ismael are exiled by Sarah because of jealousy.
      1. It was her idea in the first place – Genesis 16:3
    1. He was instructed by God to lay his very son on the altar for sacrifice. The only son he conceived with Sarah. His promised heir.
11. 1. At any moment he could have stopped and become one with the rock face wallowing in his own self pity at the events that had transpired through his life.
    2. Yet then he never would have known his true purpose.
    • God called him, blessed him, increased him because of his faithfulness.
    1. Because he was awake to God’s love.
12. Isaiah 52:3-5 – Sold for nought, oppressed, and blaspheming God
    1. When we fall asleep in our faith, and remain there, a series of unfortunate events take place.
13. We sell ourselves short.
    1. Every bit of value God has placed in our life through the sacrifice of the King of Kings and the Lord of Hosts becomes a sweet bedtime story for the slumber we have slipped in.

1. Paranoia sets in as we become isolated in our dreams and feel that people are out to get you.
   1. It becomes burdensome to fellowship.
   2. It becomes burdensome to congregate.
   3. It eventually becomes burdensome to even conversate.
   4. Then, due to the guilt of our isolation, we start to think people who normally cherish and adore us are now seething in anger and contempt for us.
2. Then doubt consumes our minds and we begin wondering…….
   1. Is this the right church?
   2. Am I really saved?
   3. Does God love me?
   4. Is there even a God?
   5. What’s the point anymore if I’m always going to feel like this?!?!?!
3. Isaiah 52:3 – Ye shall be redeemed!
   1. Ye shall be redeemed, not by anything of this world, but by the very one who created it all!
   2. Hot verse time!
   3. John 1:1-4 – “¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²The same was in the beginning with God. ³All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴In him was life; and the life was the light of men.”
4. Isaiah 52:1-2 & 6-7 – Awake! Awake!
   1. We must shake ourselves from the trance we’ve put ourselves in.
   2. That we may behold the beauty of God as he ushers in good tidings, peace, and salvation.
   3. That we may SEE, with open eyes, THAT GOD, OUR GOD REIGNS!
5. Isaiah 62:10-12 – “¹⁰Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a standard for the people. ¹¹Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. ¹²And they shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed of the LORD: and thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken.”
6. Quote by Mona Lisa Nyman
   1. “Positive people are not positive because they’ve skated through life. They’re positive because they’ve been through hell and decided they don’t want to live there anymore.”
   2. Wake up and let God fulfill the needs in your life.
   3. Wake up and let God be your life.
7. Isaiah 51:9-22 – Altar call reading.