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I'm glad you're back for day five of week six of our look through the book of
Isaiah. We're looking at how God comforts us and one of the ways he comforts us
is with his strength. Isaiah chapter 51 and then a little bit into chapter 52 is
about how to be a strong believer.

Christian commitment requires tremendous strength. The picture that some have of
Christians as weak or indecisive, as doormats in a world of muddy feet, it's
just not accurate. There is a tremendous strength that grows in our lives as we
grow in Christ.

So let me ask you, are you experiencing that strength? The strength to go
against the flow, the strength to say no, the strength to endure persecution,
the strength to make decisions, godly decisions, the strength to love the
unlovely, the strength to discipline your life, the strength to follow the Lord.
That strength that I'm talking about, we can't muster it in ourselves.

We need God's strength, at least in our lives. So how do you plug into, how do
you begin to live the strength of the Lord in everyday life? Isaiah 51 is filled
with principles for allowing God's strength to enable your life on a daily
basis.

It is written to a group of helpless feeling people exiled on a foreign land
wondering if God had abandoned them. Would they admit defeat or would they begin
to live with strength? And if you're at that point of feeling helpless,
wondering if God's abandoned you, will you admit defeat?

Are you going to begin to live with God's strength? It's a crossroads in your
life. In this chapter, there's in essence an Old Testament admonition for living
out the advice of Paul in the book of Ephesians.

Be strong in the strength of the Lord. Be strong in the strength of his might.
And in one sense, as you read through this chapter, there are four good
confessions that you need to make.

We use the word confess sometimes to talk about confessing our sins, which is
another kind of good confession. But there are other kinds of confessions.
Anytime you confess the truth before God, you are strengthening yourself.

So there are four truths, four things to confess in our lives in order to
receive God's strength. Number one, you confess your identity. You confess who
you are in Christ.

Isaiah 51, 7 to 9, "Hear me, you who know what is right, you people who have my
law in your hearts. Do not fear the reproach of men or be terrified by their
insults, for the moth will eat them up like a garment, the worm will devour them
like wool, but my righteousness will last forever. My salvation through all
generations.

Awake, awake, clothe yourself with strength. " You confess who you are. He talks
to them as my people.

And in Christ, you confess that I am in Christ. You confess that you don't have
to live in weakness. You may feel weak sometimes, but even in that, God will
give you his strength.

You clothe yourself with strength. We need to confess our Christian right to
live in God's strength. At the end, in verse 9, he says, "Awake and awake.

" That's the repetitive call throughout this chapter. You need to wake up. There
are too many sleeping churches.

There are too many sleeping Christians. We need to wake up and flex our faith
muscles. We have no lack of resources.

We've got no shortage of strength. We've got no shortage of power to accomplish
what God wishes because we've got God's resources. We've got God's strength.

We've got God's power. So it's a matter of waking up, beginning to see and to
use those resources to live that strength. These chapters are all about how to
awaken the strength that grows from faith.

You start by confessing who you are in Christ. And then second, you confess your
past. Verse 9, "Awake, awake, clothe yourself with strength.

O arm of the Lord, awake as in days gone by, as in generations of old. Was it
not you who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced that monster through? Was it not
you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the
depths of the sea so that the redeemed might cross over?

" Now, in confessing your past here, of course we need to confess our sins in
the past. But once you've done that and come to Christ, you know those sins are
forgiven. There's also a confession of your past that has to do with the
positive things that God is doing in your life in Christ.

You remember what God has done. That's what he's doing here. You can't fool
yourself into thinking that you don't have strength in your life.

Satan wants to do that, to fool you, when you look at the strength of what God
has done. Now he says here, "You've cut down Rahab. " Rahab is a name that you
sometimes refer to Egypt.

So he's talking about Egypt here, who had held Israel captive. He says here,
"You dried up the Red Sea. " You read throughout Scripture again and again and
again and again.

God shows his strength, whether it's Elijah on Mount Carmel or Peter preaching
to the crowds or Stephen enduring death. He shows his strength in every
circumstance. You look at your life and you remember what God has done.

You look at the lives of the great saints and you remember what God has done.
That's one of the ways that you confess so that you receive God's strength in
daily life. You confess your identity.

You confess your past. The third thing you do is you confess his promise. You
strengthen yourself by confessing his promise.

One of the greatest strength producers for all of us is the promises of God. So
you get a hold of the truth of one of God's promises and you begin to confess
it, to live it out in your life, and a new kind of strength comes into your
life. Look at God's promise to them here.

It's a great promise of hope. Isaiah 51, 12 to 13, "I, even I, am he who
comforts you. " Who are you that you fear mortal men, the sons of men who are
but grass, that you forget the Lord, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens
and laid the foundations of the earth, that you live in constant terror every
day because of the wrath of the oppressor who has been on destruction?

For where is the wrath of the oppressor? Confess his promise. Now you can get
your eyes on the circumstances that are around you, and if you do, you're going
to live in constant doubt, or you get your eyes on God's promise.

Why do you fear mortal man, he says? I'm the Lord, your Maker. Why would you
fear something that's made when you have a Lord, your Maker, that you're
depending on?

The fear that saps our strength, and fear will sap your strength every time, it
is dealt a death blow by the simple confession, Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord. So
you confess that promise of God, and then all of all of that, you come to the
end of it, and you confess your strength.

That's what we've been heading toward, receiving God's strength in our lives.
You confess your strength. Isaiah 52, 2 is a very simple, very powerful verse
about how that happens.

"Shake off your dust, rise up, sit enthroned, O Jerusalem. Free yourself from
the chains on your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. " Look at this list of how
you confess your strength.

Shake off the dust, rise up, sit enthroned, throw off your chains. Let's look at
those. Shake off the dust.

That's when God refreshes you. For them, it was shaking off the dust of unwalked
streets, or empty houses, or a neglected temple. They were going to shake off
the dust, and then live again in their homes.

You and I, to live the strength that God gives us, you got to clean out the dust
places in your life. Shake out the cobwebs. Begin to live a life full of the
Lord once again.

Those empty places in your life that are just gathering dust, fill them with the
serving of God in your life. Shake off the dust. God refreshes you as you do
that.

And then he says, you rise up. God also wants to recharge you. For them, it was
a rising up from the cup of God's wrath that had been poured on them, from God's
judgment of their sin, from ruin, and destruction, from famine, and sword, from
fainting.

They had a lot to rise up from. And you may too. There may be some circumstances
in life that have just devastated you.

Maybe something in a relationship. Maybe someone who has disappointed you. Maybe
a loss that you never saw coming.

Rise up. God wants to recharge you, even out of that. You confess your strength.

God has the power to do that, power that you don't have. And then he says, sit
enthroned. Realize who you are as the children of Israel.

He's reminding them here. He's saying you need to reposition yourself,
reposition your thinking. And you and I, we need to do the same thing.

Recognize that you're a child of the King. You have the strength of God's
authority in your life, given by Jesus Christ himself. The authority to heal,
the authority to have faith, the authority to trust in God, the authority to
call upon God's power and strength in your daily life.

Now the Bible tells us very clearly that it's Jesus who sits enthroned beside
God. It is right hand in heaven right now. But you and I, because of who we are
in Jesus Christ, we in one sense are sitting there with him.

That power is available for your life today. And finally he says, out of all
that, throw off your chains. This is the truth of release.

You break free. The binding chains are thrown off. The binding chains of your
doubt or your fear or your addiction, they are thrown off by the power of Jesus
Christ, by power of God's church.

God has the key to unlock the chains that are in your life. He turns that key in
the lock for his children. Have you thrown off those chains?

He wants to do that in your life. As we think about God's strength, there's one
final verse. It's at the beginning of Isaiah chapter 52.

Isaiah 52-3 says this, "For this is what the Lord says, you were sold for
nothing and without money you will be redeemed. " What a picture. You were sold
for nothing and without money you will be redeemed.

Now this was true of them and that day no one had paid for them to take them to
a land of exile. They were sold for nothing and without money God was going to
redeem them. He was going to redeem them by his power.

But there's obviously a deeper meaning for us here in Jesus Christ. You were
sold for nothing. We sold ourselves to Satan for nothing by our own choice.

He didn't pay any price for us. He didn't have any ownership over us. We just
gave ourselves away.

Started in the Garden of Eden. It's happened again and again and again ever
since. We sold ourselves for nothing and God has redeemed you without money.

He's redeemed you with something much greater than money. Something that no
money could ever do. He's redeemed you by the sacrifice of Christ.

He paid a greater price for you. The fact that you have been redeemed is the
declaration of your right to shake off the dust. To sit enthroned.

To throw off those chains. You have been redeemed. God has paid the price for a
refreshed, recharged, repositioned, released life bought without money, redeemed
by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Do not settle for a weak faith. Begin to stand firm in the Lord in the strength
of his might. Father, the power does not come from us.

It comes from you. The strength is not ours. It is your strength.

But you want that power to be seen in our lives. You want that strength to be
released into our lives. And so forgive us for those times when we've settled
for a weak faith.

For just enough. Help us not to settle for that today. We can only live our
faith one day at a time.

So today help us not to settle for that but to instead live a life of strong
faith. Growing faith. Strengthening faith.

Our Father we thank you that you will strengthen us for all that you have for
us. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.

Well next week we're going to continue to look at God's comfort together
including Isaiah chapter 53. One of the clearest prophetic words in all of
scripture.