Isaiah 50–57: Lesson 123

Isaiah 51–52

“Hearken to Me”

Through Isaiah, the Lord spoke to His covenant people, both anciently and today. He extended beautiful promises to them if they chose to hearken to His loving invitations. As His covenant people, the Lord extends these same promises and invitations to us. This lesson can help students hearken unto the Savior’s invitations.

Student preparation: Invite students to ponder when they or someone they know obeyed one of the Lord’s invitations or commandments and were blessed. The lesson will provide an opportunity for willing students to share.

Possible Learning Activities

Who do you listen to?

Consider listing on the board the individuals mentioned below or others you feel are influential for teenagers.

Parent, Friend, Teacher, Coach, Social Media Influencer, Celebrity

• Who do you think teenagers are most likely to listen to and follow their counsel? Why?

• Why does it matter who we listen to and follow?

As students read the following verses, you may want to point out that writers in scriptures often repeated key words and ideas to emphasize important ideas. Your students can practice finding repeated key words and phrases with the following verses.

Read Isaiah 51:1, 4, 7, looking for who the Lord counseled His covenant people to listen to and follow. You may want to mark what you find.

Invite students to share what they found. If students need help understanding the word hearken, consider explaining that President Russell M. Nelson taught that to hearken means “to listen with the intent to obey” (“Hear Him,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2020, 89).

• Why might someone want to listen to and follow the Savior’s counsel over anyone else?

Ponder any challenges, worries, or questions you might have in your life right now. Consider ways you could benefit from hearkening to the Savior’s counsel and invitations as you study Isaiah 51–52.

“Hearken to me”

Read Isaiah 51:1–2, looking for images and symbols that Isaiah used to describe an invitation from the Lord.

Invite students to share what they found and what they feel these images mean.

Explain that the phrases to “look unto the rock whence ye are hewn” and to look unto Abraham and Sarah (Isaiah 51:1–2) refer to the Lord’s invitation to remember Abraham and Sarah, with whom God made His covenant (also called the Abrahamic covenant). This implies that we should remember to keep this same covenant with God.

You could invite students to write the following incomplete statement in their study journal: As we keep our covenants with the Lord, He will …

• What does it mean to you to keep our covenants with the Lord?

Read Isaiah 51:3, looking for the blessings the Savior promises if we hearken to Him to keep our covenants.

• What did you find?

  Students could add … bless us with comfort, joy, and gladness to the incomplete statement.

• How do you think keeping our covenants with the Lord helps us receive His comfort, joy, or gladness?

Invitations and blessings

Create or display the following chart on the board. Students could also copy it in their study journals. As a model, you may want to add what students discovered in Isaiah 51:1–3. For example, you could add “keep our covenants with the Lord” to the left column and “bless us with comfort, joy, and gladness” to the right column.

Isaiah recorded many invitations and promises from the Lord in Isaiah 51–52. Record the invitations and promises you find in your journal as you study these chapters.

The Lord’s Invitations to His covenant people	The Lord’s Promises to His covenant people
The Lord’s Invitations to His covenant people	The Lord’s Promises to His covenant people

The handout “The Lord’s Invitations and Promises to His Covenant People” can help students identify and understand the Lord’s invitations and blessings to us.

One way to help students study the handout is to organize them into small groups. Each group could select a portion of the handout to study and prepare to share what they learned. After sufficient time has passed, organize the class into new groups with students who studied a different set of verses. Each student can then share what they learned with their new group.

As groups discuss what they discovered, invite them to add to the chart on the board. Consider discussing specific invitations or blessings that students found meaningful. Questions like the following can help:

• What do these invitations teach you about what it means to keep your covenants?

• Which of the Lord’s blessings do you really want? Why?

• Which of the Lord’s invitations do you think will help you receive the blessing you seek?

As students respond, listen carefully to what they say and think of ways to involve more students in the discussion. When teachers resist the tendency to respond to every comment and question and instead invite the class to respond, they can help create a pattern where students respond to each other. This can help the focus stay on the learners and increase student participation.

One way to do this could be by asking follow-up questions like:

• Who has an experience that relates to what has been shared?

• What impressed you about that comment?

(For additional training on resisting the tendency to respond to every comment and question, see: “Resist the tendency to respond to every comment and question and invite the class to respond” in Teacher Development Skills).

Hearkening to the Lord

Invite students to think about what they have learned from their Father in Heaven through the Holy Ghost during the lesson. The following is one way you could do this.

Ponder what you learned today and any invitations or counsel you feel Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ extended to you through the Holy Ghost. In your study journal, consider answering the following question:

• What do you feel the Lord is inviting you to do to receive His help with your challenges, worries, or questions?

Isaiah 51:3, 12. What are ways the Savior can comfort us?

Elder Ulisses Soares of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught:

In addition to providing the majestic gift of salvation, the Savior offers us relief and comfort as we face our afflictions, temptations, and weaknesses of mortal life. … I can assure you that Christ is ever aware of the adversities we experience in mortality. He understands all of the bitterness, agony, and physical pain as well as the emotional and spiritual challenges we face. The Savior’s bowels are filled with mercy, and He is always ready to succor us. This is possible because He personally experienced and took upon Himself in the flesh the pain of our weakness and infirmities. (“Jesus Christ: The Caregiver of Our Soul,” Liahona, May 2021, 83)

Isaiah 52:7. Who does the phrase “how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that published peace” refer to?

President Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles explained:

Ultimately it is Christ who is beautiful upon the mountain. And it is His merciful promise of “peace in this world,” His good tidings of “eternal life in the world to come” [D&C 59:23] that make us fall at His feet and call His name blessed and give thanks for the restoration of His true and living Church. (“Peaceable Things of the Kingdom,” Ensign, Nov. 1996, 82)

Supplemental Learning Activities

Additional activity for handout

If you would like to add another activity to the handout, consider including the following:

Read Isaiah 51:15–16, looking for blessings the Lord promises His people.

To help you understand the phrase “I have put my words in thy mouth” (Isaiah 51:16), read Doctrine and Covenants 100:5–8, looking for a similar promise the Lord gave Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon.

To help you understand the phrase “I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand” (Isaiah 51:16), ponder what shadows and shade protect us from.

• What promises did you find?

• What do these promises teach you about the Lord and what He does for His people who keep their covenants with Him?

“Awake, awake” (Isaiah 51:9, 17; 52:1)

To help students study these verses, consider displaying an alarm clock and asking the students if they use an alarm to wake up. If so, ask them how successful their alarm is at waking them up.

• What do you think it means to be spiritually asleep?

Explain that in Isaiah 51:9–10, Isaiah wrote that the Israelites felt the Lord was asleep to their problems and trials. They plead that He would awaken and help them as He had done in the past. You could ask students if they ever felt similar to the Israelites.

Then, consider inviting students to read Isaiah 51:11–16, looking for the Lord’s response to the Israelites’ plea.

• What did the Lord say to remind them of who He is and what He can do?

Students could then read Isaiah 51:17, looking for who the Lord said was spiritually asleep. They then could study Isaiah 52, looking for invitations the Lord gives to help us spiritually awaken.

“Rejoice, and lift up your heads forever” (2 Nephi 9:3)

You could choose to focus on why Jacob chose to include these chapters in his sermon to the Nephites in the Book of Mormon (see 2 Nephi 8). Invite students to read 2 Nephi 9:3, looking for one of the reasons Jacob gave. Invite students to study Isaiah 51–52, looking for phrases that could help someone lift up their heads and rejoice.

When blessings do not seem to be coming

To help students choose to continue hearkening to the Lord’s invitations when they do not see His blessings, consider showing the video, “No Blessings Denied the Faithful” (3:01). Afterwards, students could share what they learned or felt.