Isaiah 34-35
Let’s give our attention to God’s
word beginning, Isaiah 34, verse one. Draw near, O nations, to
hear and give attention, O peoples. Let the earth hear and all that
fills it, the world and all that comes from it. For the Lord is
enraged against all the nations and furious against all their
host. He has devoted them to destruction, has given them over
for slaughter. Their slain shall be cast out
and the stench of their corpses shall rise. The mountains shall
flow with their blood. All the host of heaven shall
rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll. All their host
shall fall as the leaves fall from the vine, like leaves falling
from the fig tree. For my sword has drunk its fill
in the heavens. Behold, it descends for judgment
upon Edom, upon the people I have devoted to destruction. The Lord
has a sword. It is sated with blood. It is
gorged with fat. with the blood of the lambs and
goats and with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the Lord
has a sacrifice in Basra, a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
Wild oxen shall fall with them and young steers with the mighty
bulls. Their land shall drink its fill of blood and their soil
shall be gorged with fat. For the day, or for the Lord
has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of
Zion. and the streams of Edom shall
be turned into pitch and her soil into sulfur. Her land shall
become burning pitch. Night and day it shall not be
quenched. Its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to
generation shall lie waste. None shall pass through it forever
and ever, but the hawk and the porcupine shall possess it. The
owl and the raven shall dwell in it. He shall stretch the line
of confusion over it and the plum line of emptiness. Its nobles,
There is no one there to call it a kingdom, and its princes
shall be nothing. Thorns shall grow over its strongholds,
nettles and thistles in its fortresses. It shall be the haunt of jackals
and abode for ostriches, and wild animals shall meet with
hyenas. The wild goat shall cry to his fellow. Indeed, there
the nightbird settles and finds for herself a resting place.
There the owl nests and lays and hatches and gathers her young
in her shadow. Indeed, there the hawks are gathered,
each one with her mate. Seek and read from the book of
the Lord. None of these shall be missing. None shall be without
her mate. For the mouth of the Lord has
commanded, and his spirit has gathered them. He has cast the
lot for them, and his hand has portioned out to them with the
line. They shall possess it forever.
From generation to generation, they shall dwell in it. The wilderness
and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and
blossom like the crocus. It shall blossom abundantly and
rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be
given to it. The majesty of Carmel and Sharon,
they shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.
Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say
to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, fear not. Behold,
your God will come with vengeance. With the recompense of God, he
will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall
be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame
man leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.
For waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the
desert. The burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty
ground springs of water in the haunt of jackals where they lie
down. The grass shall become reeds and rushes, and a highway
shall be there, and it shall be called the way of holiness.
The unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those
who walk on the way. Even if they are fools, they
shall not go astray. No lion shall be there, nor shall
any ravenous beast come upon it. They shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransom of the Lord shall
return and come to Zion with singing. Everlasting joy shall
be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and
joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Amen. This is God’s word for us. Well,
in a couple weeks, a couple months, actually, month and a half, it’ll
be 2025. Can you believe it? And we’re
all going to kind of reflect on this past year. We’re going
to set some goals for the new year. Hopefully one of them will
be to read the Bible through. Hopefully that’s something you
do every year. It’s really difficult, but very much worth it. And one
of the things that you see as you read through the scripture
is you see the common threads that pass through. You see the
threefold creation, fall, redemption over and over again. You see
God makes the world. Man falls, but God works to redeem
it. You see that in Genesis 1, 2
and 3, but you also see it after the flood when God makes things
new and tells the family of Noah to begin creation again, to be
fruitful and to multiply and to fill the earth. He tells the
same to the animals, creation, fall and redemption. One of the
other themes you begin to see as you read through the scripture
is the generations of people. You begin to see the thread of
some of those same people you read about in Genesis. Like tonight
we read about Edom. Those are the descendants of
Esau. Remember Jacob I have loved,
Esau I’ve hated. He sends Esau off into the land
of Seir and from him come the people of the Edomites who constantly
are a thorn in the side of God’s people. And they get their due
as we see in scripture tonight. But you get the generations,
the rise of the line of Cain, who ultimately leads to the flood. The people of Cain only do evil
all the time, and God is sorry that he made them. But then you
get the line of Seth. You get the line of Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. You get the line of godly generations
that ultimately lead to the coming of the Lord Jesus, who is an
offspring of Abraham and of the generations of David. And you
read through the scriptures, glimmers of hope and glimmers
of glory. For example, God told Adam and
Eve, when you eat in the day you eat, you will surely die.
Well, he didn’t kill them instantly. He clothed them and let them
live until their natural deaths. We get glimmers of hope in the
deliverance of Israel from Egypt or the landing and taking of
the inheritances in the promised land. Or we get glimmers of hope
when there’s a return from Babylon from exile. to rebuild Judah
and Jerusalem and then of course with the coming of Jesus we get
down payments on redemption when we see him as he fulfills the
promises of the book of Isaiah. We see him healing the lame and
making the mute speak that blind can see. He raises people from
death to life. He heals not only sin sick people,
but he heals people with diseases that could not be touched by
human hands. And so we begin to see these
down payments of redemption. Well, tonight we get a glimpse
of not only cosmic judgment and destruction, but we get a glimpse
of cosmic, redemption. And so it’s a wonderful thing
for us as the people of God to see these strands through the
scripture. Certainly, as you read through
with us together, Isaiah 34 and 35, perhaps your mind jumped
to theological things you know and understand, but it jumped
back into the Old Testament and forward into the New Testament
because these things are also great and wonderfully connected. Well, I want to speak positively
first, and that comes from Isaiah chapter 35. We know that God
has promised great blessings to his people. And we have some
of those blessings now, some will come later. I think sometimes
Americans, not Americans, Christians, I believe Christians live below
their blessing level. If you went out tonight, and
swung through the Rego Mart next door and bought a lottery ticket,
and you won the jackpot. Let’s just say it’s a billion
dollars, right? You’re probably not going to
stay in the same house. You’re probably not going to drive the
same old car. You’re probably going to get some new clothes.
You’re going to do some things you couldn’t do. Money changes
you, doesn’t it? And usually money ruins lottery
winners. We see that over and over. But
as you come into money, you don’t live out of the poverty. You
spend it, right? You live out of that new wealth.
But why is it that Christians live like paupers? Why is it
that Christians live below their spiritual blessing level? We
have so much in Christ. We’re raised with him. We’re
seated in the heavenly places. All the riches of glory are ours.
All that Christ has accomplished, he accomplished for us and so
we live out of our union with Christ and all the things that
he has granted and gifted us, both personally, but also for
the whole church. I forgot to mention this morning,
the prayer of Paul that the Thessalonians would be sanctified is a y’all
plural. He’s praying that the whole church Thessalonica would
be sanctified. We usually think of personal
sanctification and well, we should. But that was a corporate blessing,
so something we ought to, as a church, pray for is for corporate
sanctification, that our whole church would be sanctified. But
we often live below our spiritual blessings and we live at a spiritual
poverty level, though so much more is in the banking account,
the checking account. Well, what can we expect in the
redemption that God has purchased? There are some now and some not
yet things. Now things of course are in union with Christ, all
the blessings of heaven. We have the blessings of the
church, the sacraments, the scripture. We have fellowship of the saints.
Yes, we have suffering and that is a blessing, but we also have
the gift of prayer. But what about the future blessings
where we will be in the presence of God forever? There’ll be no
more sin, suffering, sickness, sorrow. All things will be made
right. All things will go back to like
they were in Eden. And this world will be remade
into an Eden-like world where there is no curse. There are
no thorns and thistles. The ground is only prosperous. The earth is only fruitful. There
is no decay. There is no second law of thermodynamics,
is it? The law of entropy. There is
only life and life in abundance. And that’s the picture that you
get in chapter 35. And there is a highway through
it, like a causeway through it. And it’s the way of holiness.
And so we have now on the way to that blessed and perfect place,
we have all the things we need to grow in grace. We are on the
path to holiness. We know the way of holiness.
And we go to that place where there are no beasts. There are
no, people killers. There is no unholiness, but only
blessings and joy. But if you flip back to the sad
chapter of 34, we remember what a lot of people will say is the
Old Testament God. This is a God who is holy. There is no unrighteousness in
him. This is a God who is a just God and He can by no means clear
the guilty. He cannot sweep sin under the
rug. He must see it judicially dealt with. And he does so through
his son, sending his son as the second Adam, the spotless lamb
to live and obey, but also to suffer and die in our place.
He is the scapegoat who will take on the sins of mankind and
pay for them through the wrath of God being poured out on him.
But this God, we’re told in Chapter 34 is a furious God. He’s a God
with a sword that is sharp and ready, and it’s already covered
in blood. It’s already covered in fat. It’s already covered
in the things of war. And he speaks of people being
slain, their corpses stacked up as a stench. He speaks of
the host of heaven rotting away or rolling up like a scroll. The host of people falling, by
the sword. And this is our God. And we say, Oh, that’s Old Testament
God, the mean nasty one. But if you fast forward to the
book of Revelation, Jesus is the one after the seal is opened,
who comes on a mighty stallion. He comes with a sword, or as
we say, he comes with a stick. He’s coming to judge the nations
and the divine warrior of the old covenant Is Jesus the divine
warrior of the new covenant? Jesus is the same yesterday,
today and forever. And we think, Oh, the new Testament, Jesus
is the good side of God. He’s not angry and mean and nasty.
Well, read the book of Revelation. I don’t want to say God is angry,
mean and nasty or Christ, but no, they’re just and they’re
holy and they will come to execute judgment. We’ve seen glimpses
of judgment, just like we see down payments on redemption.
We see little glimpses of judgment in the scriptures. We see like
Sodom and Gomorrah get destroyed. We see the judgment on Israel
when they fail to obey God and go out to war, not in his name,
but in their own strength. We get little judgments like
David. David loses the child from the fruit of the union with
Bathsheba. We see that sin has its tentacles and it leads to
local, maybe personal judgments, but local geographical judgments
through The earth shaking and quaking or storms and whatever
coming our way, but they are nothing like the great day of
the Lord, the great day of vengeance, the great day where God will
come and put an end to all unrighteousness and only usher in peace and everlasting
joy. I love the great hope that chapter
35 speaks of. And I think we sang a song about
it when I was a kid, we used to sing the I think when I was
a kid on Wednesday night at prayer meeting, we had Elon inner varsity
students. They would play their guitars
and we would sing the Jesus movement songs from the sixties and seventies.
I think they were the Calvary chapel kind of Bible songs and
we would sing Isaiah 35. Uh, I can, I can remember it
very well, you know, from 35, 40 years ago. And when God’s word gets in your
head like that, you don’t forget it. And then you go read it and
you say, there it is. And it pops up a great memory,
but we will, enter into Zion with singing and with shouts
and exultation. You think of the Israelites pilgrims
on their way up to Jerusalem to worship God. And they sang
the pilgrim songs along the way. They were in the land of the
wicked, but the closer they got to Jerusalem, the closer they
got to God and the closer they got to righteousness. One of
the things that pops up in this chapter, or these two chapters,
is a glimmer of hope. And it’s the desert crocus. This past spring, when Patrick
and I went through the Grand Canyon, we went through late
April, early May. And it’s when spring was springing
in the desert. It was maybe in the thirties
at night, maybe the eighties during the day. And then it got
up to where it was in the fifties at night, maybe close to a hundred
during the day. But we saw as we went through
the canyon and through all these little side hikes, we began to
see the desert start to bloom. Now that’s an oxymoron, isn’t
it? The desert does not bloom. But one of the first things that
does bloom in the desert is the desert crocus. And in a sense,
it’s like a harbinger of good things to come. You know, we’re
living right now with the trees emptying themselves of their
leaves. And in a few weeks it’ll be, just little gray stalks and
the sky will be gray behind it and it will be winter. And we
will wonder when spring will come. And, you know, perhaps
like Lucy and the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, they, they
crowd as it always winter and never Christmas. But then we
get the first signs of spring. You look up on your trees that
you were cursing because of all the leaves that dropped from
them. And you start to see those little buds set and you think,
Oh boy, they’re going to leaf out again in a few weeks or a
few months. Then by fall, you’ll be cursing them because they,
make you do what I have to do. It’s about eight hours on a Saturday.
But those little blossoms, those little signs and hints of spring,
the desert crocus, that for these folks was a sign that the desert
will have an oasis. And there will be water, there
will be streams, there will be signs of life. And so what a
wonderful, great thing this is to think of. We need to tremble
at God’s threatenings, his coming judgment, and be found in the
ark of God, in the safety of Christ. We need to yield to his
commands, the way of holiness. If he commands it, we should
do it. If he expects it, we should fulfill it. But also we should
embrace his promises. You know, this world is not all
there is. We’re passing through and perhaps you’re pretty excited
about this past week’s elections and you think, oh, I can breathe
a sigh of relief. No, we still live in the present
evil age. We are still ruled by people who are unrighteous.
We are still living in the land of darkness and we are marching
to the city of light. And so we need to embrace God’s
promises that there is yet a far and better country, a far and
better city whose foundations are not of this earth, but are
of almighty God. So let’s think of those things
in the week to come and embrace them. And let’s do pray now.
Lord bless us as we think of both destruction and redemption,
and let us fear the destruction and hide in Christ. We don’t
have to hide in the cliffs of rocks like those who are unrighteous,
but we can hide in the cliff of the rock who is Christ. And
so help us to be comforted by that in Christ’s mighty name.
Amen.