Isaiah 12 “Singing Lessons”

A sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, 01 October 2006

(v.1) And you will say in that day

“I will thank You, Jehovah

For You were angry with me

Your anger turned away

And you showed compassion to me

(v.2)     “Look, God is my salvation

            I will trust and will not dread

                        For Yah Jehovah is my strength and song

                        And He has become my salvation”

(v.3) With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation

(v/4) And you will say in that day

“Give thanks to Jehovah

Call on His name

Make known His deeds among the peoples,

Remind that His name is exalted

(v.5)     Sing praises of Jehovah,

for He has done gloriously;

letting this be made known in all the earth.”

(v.6) Shout and sing for joy, dweller of Zion,

for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel!

Intro: voice lessons

• Teaching Tim to sing.
• I want to use an old text from Isaiah this morning to give you a singing lesson!

A. Two Conditions for our song of praise (What has to happen first “In that day”)

• In voice lessons, you start with your posture before you ever begin to sing. You start with sitting straight and breathing properly. Just as there are certain conditions for singing well, there are conditions that have to be in place before we can begin praising God:

12:1 “In that day, you will say, I will give thanks to you, Jehovah…”

1. Hebrew yadah – literal root meaning “cause to throw forth”
2. BDB = Give thanks, Praise, Confess
3. LXX = bless
4. French: celebrate

• Remember that the chapter divisions were added in two thousand years after Isaiah wrote the book, so “in that day” is the same day as “that day” mentioned in the previous chapter. What happens first that day?

1. The suffering of Jesus on the cross: 11:10 “In that day the root of Jesse will stand as a signal for the peoples, to Him the nations shall resort, and His resting place shall be glory”
2. The resurrection of Jesus, sending of the Holy Spirit, and institution of the church: 11:11 “In that day the Lord will extend His hand a second time to acquire the remnant that remains of His people from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Ethiopia, from Iran, from Iraq, from Syria, and from the coastlands of the sea.”

B. Four Reasons for our song of praise – “for”

• Now that the basic conditions are met, we can praise God, but sometimes we need a little encouragement.
• Most singers start out a little shy and need encouragement to open up and sing and let the sound resonate through their head and support it firmly with their diaphragm.
• Example of teaching Grace to sing “Jesus Loves Me.”
• Here are four reasons Isaiah gives us to encourage us to open up and sing praise to God, each starting with the word “for” in the text:

v.1 “FOR You were angry with me, Your anger turned away, and You showed compassion to/ comforted me”

· That blows me away! God was angry with me, but He decided to have compassion on me instead; I deserved to be smitten by God’s wrath, but I got comfort instead! Hallelujah!

v.2 “FOR Jah Jehovah is my strength and song and He has become my salvation”

· How about it? The strongest person in the universe becomes your personal strength. The most carefree being in the universe becomes your personal song. The God of the universe becomes your salvation and enters into a deeply personal relationship with you. Here is reason indeed to praise!

v.5 “FOR He has done gloriously”

· How glad I am that He is not merely a transcendent being who sits up in heaven somewhere being glorious, but He is an imminent being who shows his face on earth and does wonderful things every day.

· This includes His acts of salvation throughout history – what can be more glorious than the death and resurrection of Jesus, the son of God? – as well as the everyday answers to prayer. God gives us reasons to praise Him not only for saving our soul, but also for the little things like giving us a good idea for answering a question when someone asked us a hard question and we offered up a quick prayer for help.

v.6 “FOR great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel”

· i.e. He has shown Himself to be great in your midst.

· We have already focused some on God’s greatness, but this phrase also speaks of God being “in our midst.” God is present with us. And with this statement, Isaiah closes the “Immanuel/God with us” section of his book. You are not alone. God’s own Holy Spirit lives in you and goes with you everywhere you go. He is always there to hear you pray, to give you the words to say, to help you, and to save you and protect you. Praise God for being a “friend who is closer than a brother!” (Prov. 18:24)

C. Who should hear our song of praise?

After going through voice lessons, the time comes for a recital! The new singer has to actually sing his songs in front of an audience. When I studied this passage in Isaiah, I was floored when I realized who the audience was. I assumed that songs of praise to God would just be addressed to God, but that is not what Isaiah says here:

• v.2 “Look, God is my salvation!” This is a statement directed not so much to God (who is not “you” but a 3^rd person “He”) as to someone who can look and learn that God saves people.
• v.3 “With joy you (plural) will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Again directed at an audience of multiple people (plural “you”) who can be saved
• v.4-5 Five imperatives also addressed to a plural audience:

1. “Give thanks to Jehovah”

2. “Call on His name”

3. “Make known His deeds”

4. “Proclaim/remind/make mention that His name is exalted”

5. “Sing praises to Jehovah”

• v. 4-5 Praise is not for God alone to hear; it is for “the peoples” “in all the earth”

Application

1. Cultivate an attitude of thankfulness
• v.1 “I will thank You, Jehovah”
• Try beginning your prayers by thinking of something to thank God for)
• Throughout the day, actively look for things to thank God for.
2. Tell your testimony
• v.2 “You were angry with me; Your anger turned away, and You showed compassion to me.” = testimony in a nutshell!
• Example: My testimony = Spankings let me know I was bad, but then my Mom taught me that Jesus died to forgive my sin, so I asked God to forgive my sin and He did!
3. Tell “God stories”.
• V. 4 “make known His deeds among the peoples” (v.5 “He has done gloriously”) well, what kind of glorious things has He done for you and your friends? Tell these God-stories!

• God story: Our son, Josh, had clogged tear ducts and chronic eye infections. Just before we scheduled surgery to open up the tear ducts, our fellowship group came and prayed for him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, as the book of James instructs. A day or so later, the ducts suddenly opened up while Paula was in the checkout line at the grocery store. The clerk asked about Josh as Paula was cleaning up the blood and pus that had gushed out, and Paula was able to tell her the story of how God answered our prayers!

4. Call others to trust in God

• Make it winsome!
• V.1 God comforted me!
• v.2 “God is my strength, so I’m not afraid anymore! God saved me, so I have joy and can sing!”
• v.3 “you can have joy and drink from the wells of salvation too!”
• Jesus with the woman at the well John 4:4
• Be directive
• I have heard many times of people who went to a church all their life and never heard the Gospel.
• How much more lost about what to do are those who have never been in contact with a church?
• Isaiah says, “Give thanks to God and call upon His name.” This is the essence of faith: to thank God for sending Jesus to die for our sins and call upon Jesus to save us.
• For “whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Rom. 10:13)

5. Make God your song:

• There are lots of things we humans like to sing about –
• men sing love songs to show how much we love a woman,
• we sing country songs to show a love for the good things in our culture or
• patriotic songs to show our love for our country,
• advertising jingles proclaim love for a certain product or service, or
• we have songs for a favorite sports team.
• Let us work to be people who sing consistently about the most important thing in our lives, and that is Jesus Christ, our Redeemer!

6. Be willing to look somewhat uncool or undignified

• Show some excitement about what God has done.
• When my wife took voice lessons, her teacher had some undignified exercises like “brrrraaaaaaaah,” but they really helped her singing style.
• Notice that the wording in the last verse is not describing quiet, rational discussion: “Cry out loud and shout,” or some translations say, “Shout and sing jubilantly” Eugene Peterson captured the idea pretty well in his translation of the Bible called The Message; it says “Raise the roof! Sing your hearts out”
• If your worship, testimony, witness is blah, stale, and lifeless – done only out of duty – go back to the cross and remember how worthy you are of the wrath of God that fell there on Jesus. Then drink deeply of those “wells of salvation.” You will sing then!