Make Your Tent Larger

Make your tent larger, stretch your tent curtains further out! Spare no effort, lengthen your ropes, and pound your stakes deep. – Isaiah 54:2 (NET)

The prophet Isaiah, speaking on behalf of the God of Israel, speaks to the covenant people of this God and tells them to “Make your tent larger.” This is in the wake of the vivid description of the cruelly inflicted death and glorious resurrection of the suffering servant of chapters fifty-two and fifty-three. If anything, the death of the servant, that we understand to have represented their messiah that was to come into the world for the redemption and salvation of God’s people, would have caused an inward turning and isolation, with shock and shame and grief being the well understood order of the day. God, however, directs His people to “Shout for joy” (54:1a), primarily because they were acquitted by the actions of the servant (53:11), and because he carried away their sins (53:11), thus ending their cursing and exile.

Yes, because God’s servant intervened on behalf of His rebellious people (53:12), they were to shout for joy, and having entered into joy, made their tent larger. What did it mean to make their tent larger? What is this stretching out of curtains? We are generally not a people that dwell in tents, whereas the people to whom this was written, though they did dwell in permanent structures, understood the tent-dwelling, nomadic lifestyle quite well. So even though most of us are removed from such a lifestyle, we can understand this to mean that they needed to make room for a larger family. We can look into this and see that the death and resurrection of the suffering servant that represented Israel, which would see the servant being cursed and then obviously accepted by God in spite of the cursing, had the effect of acquitting God’s people Israel, while also having the effect of extending God’s covenant to all of mankind, thus creating a worldwide covenant family, no longer confined to national Israel.

At that point, and even through the time of Christ, it was the opinion of Israel that all that were not members of the nation of Israel, and therefore outside of God’s covenant family, were cursed, standing outside of the realm of God’s blessing. Expanding on this and reiterating, with the benefit of hindsight, we are able to look back to these words from Isaiah, as did men like the Apostle Paul, and see that the cursing (crucifixion) of the suffering servant put him into the same category that Israel had reserved for the Gentile nations. The redempted (resurrection) servant, since he had been considered to be as a Gentile through the cursing, meant that the Gentiles were now pulled into the family of God. For this reason, Israel is instructed to prepare to welcome and accept a larger covenant family. Not only are they instructed to welcome and accept, but they themselves are to actively prepare the larger dwelling place to accommodate this rapidly growing and ever-expanding family. In fact, Isaiah includes the directive to “spare no effort,” as they were to do whatever was necessary to open wide their arms of acceptance.

This was not simply the inclusion of Gentiles, but in reality, it was the growth of Israel, the people that were said to be “God-governed.” The new family members were not to be looked upon as outsiders, but as an extension of Israel, and it is in this way that we hear Isaiah saying, “For you will spread out to the right and to the left” (54:3a). Furthermore, Israel is informed that their “children will conquer nations and will resettle desolate cities” (54:3b). This conquering of nations fits well with Isaiah’s previous insistence that Israel’s servant would startle nations and shock kings with his exaltation (52:15). Though Isaiah wrote his prophecy in the wake of conquest, while experiencing attempts at conquest, and looking forward to expected conquest, there was always the hope of restoration involved. Within this hope, Israel fully expected to be set above all nations, through the conquering activity of their God through their messiah, so hearing that their children would conquer nations and that they would be able to forget the shameful experiences and abandonment about which Isaiah prophesied (54:4) was probably not surprising. What would have been surprising was the inclusion of Gentile peoples, for whom they were having to expand the size of their covenant tent.

As we look back on this text and look forward, as people that have been brought into that expanded tent of covenant blessings, we seize on the claim that God’s people will be responsible for the resettling of desolate cities. We know that the Gospel, with its message of power, has already conquered nations by making all kings and authorities subservient to its claims (whether they know it or not), but with this issue of the desolate cities, we get a glimpse of our vocation, as the Israel of God, to be the agents and the instruments by which He brings the life and light and immortality of His Resurrection power into an often desolate world. This occurs as we become the righteousness of God, embodying His covenant faithfulness by the working of the Holy Spirit through us, putting God’s saving God’s power to work within this creation through the convincingly spoken and compassionately lived out message of our crucified and resurrected King Who is Lord of all.

When we speak of Jesus, the servant that is set on high, we spare no effort in setting God’s power to work; and like the Israel to whom Isaiah was speaking, we make larger the tent of God’s kingdom, stretching out its curtains and pounding its stakes deep. Though the cry of “foolishness” will be long and loud, we are called to speak of our resurrected Lord without intimidation, without humiliation, and without shame (54:4); for in this, we speak of the Creator, the commander of armies, our Protector, and the “God of the entire earth” (54:5).