Jeffrey Heine: Well, it is wonderful to be with you all this morning and to be, opening up God's word. We we are concluding today our series as we've been studying the prophecy of Isaiah. It's been twenty two weeks that we have been in this study. It's been going on since the May, and we have we have had 28 sermons in this study from nine different preachers, and now we come to the end. Isaiah chapters sixty five and sixty six.
And so if you've got a bible with you, we're gonna we're gonna read, here at the start. Most of our time is gonna be spent in Isaiah 65, but we're also gonna be jumping around a little bit back in Isaiah, a little bit forward to 66, and then to some different spots in the New Testament. But to begin our time together, we are we're gonna read from Isaiah chapter 65 beginning in verse 17. And let us listen carefully for this is God's word. For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people. No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days or an old man who does not fill out his days.
For the young man shall die 100 years old, and the sinner a 100 years old shall be accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit. They shall not plant and another eat.
For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be. And my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord and their descendants with them. Before they call, I will answer. While they are yet speaking, I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall graze together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the lord. This is the word of the lord. Let's pray together.
Oh lord, we are grateful to gather together today in your name and to open your word. We ask that you would meet us by your spirit and lead us in truth and grace. Lord, whether we know it or not, we are desperate for you. Each one of us here. So, will you show us your grace by tending to our souls?
Would you speak, lord, for your servants are listening? We pray these things in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen. The American Western expansion of the eighteen hundreds saw scores of settlers migrate across the country. The Oregon Trail, the California Trail, they were both established in the eighteen forties, and the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869.
But beginning in the eighteen hundreds, private investors, railroad companies, and even the US government commissioned artists to travel on westward expeditions to document the landscapes. They knew that they needed artists to represent in images what words could not adequately convey, and one of those artists was the German American painter Albert Bierstadt. And one of his most celebrated pieces created to inspire and draw men and women to the West is entitled looking down Yosemite Valley. It's a stunning landscape painted on a canvas that's over five feet tall and eight feet wide. And the painting resides just a few miles down the road at the Birmingham Museum of Art.
But before he put oil to canvas, Bierstadt stood in one of the most overwhelmingly beautiful scenic views in our country. And at a time before video or photographs, he took in everything that he could, every aspect that he could behold and retain so he could convey the magnificence of the Mercede River, the golden sunlight breaking through the granite expanse of El Kafitan and Sentinel Rock. This art had a purpose, not only to depict the beauty of this country, but to inspire, to move men and women, families and communities to point their wagons westward and set off together. And that is what we have here in Isaiah sixty five and sixty six. It's a picture.
A picture of paradise, of heaven. The prophet is painting a picture, which means it's not a photograph. It's not a documentation describing every exact detail. It's a picture meant not only to convey beauty but to inspire men and women, families, and communities to point their lives heavenward and to set off together. And this picture that the prophet conveys from the lord is that of new creation, a new heavens, and a new earth.
Throughout our study of Isaiah, we have heard the lord speak promises through the prophet about the future for the people of God. A new life lived in the land transformed by the power and holiness of God. We've seen this in chapter 11, chapter 24, chapter 42, chapter 62, And we have followed these promises throughout Isaiah's prophecy. So when we look at these closing chapters, what are we beholding? What's being reemphasized and reiterated one final time?
Let's look again at verses seventeen and eighteen of chapter 65 together. For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind, But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy and her people to be a gladness. These verses begin with a call to look, to behold. And we are told to behold a promise.
I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things, that would be the sin soaked broken chaos of the fallen world that shall not be remembered or even come to mind in this new land. The goodness of this new creation will overwhelm all that has been evil and wrong so much so that it is the ultimate creation wide divine working of all things together for the good of God's beloved. It's more than a restoration. It's more than going back to Eden.
It is a new creation. Verse 18 also begins with a call, a call to be glad, to rejoice forever in that which God creates. This tells us that what God is making, this new creation, is for our eternal gladness and our forever rejoicing. And that reaffirms for us that that we're not simply going back to Eden, back to where temptation could fracture and rebellion could ruin what God has created. Our eternal gladness and forever rejoicing are both an invitation and a promise.
We're told, behold, God creates this new land to be a joy and the inhabitants to be a gladness. It's both God's holy work and his holy design. His holy work is designed for our gladness. So the invitation and the promise are to behold and to rejoice. We are not the first to receive this promise of new creation.
Isaiah was not the last to receive the oracles of God concerning what is being promised in the new heavens and the new earth. In the New Testament letter to the Hebrews, the author writes about the people of old who lived by faith, trusting in the promises of God. The writer specifically names Abel and Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah. In Hebrews chapter 11 beginning in first thing 13, it says this, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak to us make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
If they had been thinking of the land from which they had gone out, they would have had the opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country. That is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their god for he has prepared for them a city. So with their faith rooted in God, these men and women of old, they desired a better country.
It says they're not looking backward to the land which which they left, because otherwise, they just go back to it. If they were just homesick, they could go home. This is a different kind of homesick. They knew that they were strangers and exiles on this earth. They knew they were far from what was promised to them in God's kindness, and so they were resolute in seeking a homeland that could not be found anywhere on this earth, a country that would require a new earth.
They were seeking a kingdom that the hands of man could not establish because this kingdom, this heavenly country, this city would have to be prepared for the children of God by God himself. Now there can be considerable confusion about how to think biblically about the kingdom of God and the creation of the new heavens and the new earth. That's because so much of our cultural understanding of the end times or life after death or, what N. T. Wright calls life after life after death, so much of it is shaped by fiction.
Everything from Dante's inferno to the left behind series. Right? Both titans of literature, objectively speaking. But that leaves us with wondering how in the world we're supposed to understand these scriptures. A simplistic way, a rudimentary way, but I think a helpful way to summarize these, as two trends, two ends of a spectrum.
One being, one advocates do everything to create and build the kingdom of God ourselves. The other end advocates do nothing because the kingdom is inevitable. And as often the case when we've made a convoluted polarizing mess of theology, the scriptures don't lead us to either of these things. The invitation isn't to do everything and somehow establish the kingdom, the new creation through our own efforts, nor is the invitation to do nothing and live indifferent to God and his commands. The promises delivered by Isaiah form in us how we are to respond.
They help us prepare. They shape us as we trust in God for this promised new creation. And so the way that I want us to consider these promises and how they form us and shape us is through four invitations. Four invitations based on what the lord is encouraging us to do beginning here in Isaiah's prophecy and continuing throughout the scriptures regarding the new creation of the kingdom of god. Four invitations that help us know what to do and how to live in the already, but the not yet of the kingdom.
So the four invitations. God invites us to desire his kingdom. He invites us to await his kingdom. He invites us to seek his kingdom, and he invites us to receive his kingdom. We desire his kingdom with longing.
We await his kingdom with hope. We seek his kingdom with rest, and we receive his kingdom with rejoicing. We begin with desire. You may recall me sharing this quote before in some context or another. It's because I come back to it so often.
It's so concise and poignant. It's from Malcolm Muggeridge in his work Jesus Rediscovered. He says this, quote, the only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realize, is to feel ourselves to be at home here on Earth. The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves to be at home here on Earth. I'm sure there are many of us here this morning, here today who do not feel at home on Earth.
There's been too many things, too many losses, too many breakdowns, too many tears, too many goodbyes, too many pains and sorrows and grief. You are well aware that you are not at home here on Earth. And then we read things like Paul's letter to the Romans chapter eight beginning in verse 22 that says, for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves. We who have the first fruits of the spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons and daughters, the redemption of our bodies.
The whole creation has been and continues today to groan, groaning for Christ to return, for new creation to come. And not only does creation groan, but Paul says, we ourselves groan. The Lord speaks to these pains in his promises in Isaiah 65 when in verse the end of verse 19, he says, no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days or an old man who does not fill out his days. Within the promise of the new creation is the promise of the end of suffering.
The end of weeping, the end of distress. What the lord is declaring in Isaiah 65 is ultimately the end of all groaning. And stated both here and in Isaiah as we we saw in Romans, the end of all groaning is more than just the ceasing of suffering. The end of all groaning is more than just the ceasing of suffering. It's the beginning of the new creation.
It is not surprising that with the amount of suffering and groaning in the world and in ourselves that we often miss what we are groaning for, what we are truly longing for. We look around at this world in our own lives, and we long for more, for better, for other. But what is it that we're actually desiring? Again, the apostle Paul helps us in his letter to the Corinthian church in second Corinthians chapter five where he says, for we know that if the earthly tent we live in is dismantled, meaning our bodies, If we know that the earthly tent we live in is dismantled, we have a building from god, an eternal house in heaven, not built with human hands. For in this tent, we groan, longing to be clothed in our heavenly dwelling.
Whether we know it or not, our groaning, your groaning, your deepest longing is for the fullness of the presence of God in his kingdom. You are longing for new creation, the new heavens, the new earth. You are longing for thy kingdom come. When we understand that our groaning and longing are ultimately a desire for God and his kingdom, then we stop looking to everything else that we've ever hoped would satisfy us or that the world has led us into believing will finally quell the groaning of our souls. Because when we see rightly, when we realize that what we're longing for will never be found here on Earth, but only in the fullness of new creation.
Our souls can rest in Christ. Some of you are groaning today, and you think it's because of your family. Things are in disarray. And if only your family could just get it together, then the groaning would stop. For others, it's a singular relationship.
It's a dating partner, a friend, a sibling, a roommate, a spouse. If they would just get it together, this groaning would stop. Still others, we look at society and culture, economy, our politics. If these things were just set right, then the groaning would stop. If we are seeking fulfillment for our deepest longings, then we must acknowledge our deepest problem.
Those other issues, as real as they are, and as much as they do need health and holiness, they are not our deepest longings. Our deepest longing is for Christ and his new creation, which ushers in our eternal rejoicing in God alone. When those men and women saw the paintings that Bierstadt and other artists painted, enticing people West, when those men and women loaded their families, their possessions in their wagons, and they pointed them westward, it would be a long time before the golden valley Of Yosemite would be seen not in a painting but with their own eyes. Two thirds of the way on their journey. Do you know what the people on the California Trail would encounter?
The desert at 1.4 miles of barren, waterless, brutally hot wasteland. And the other option, the Oregon Trail, well, they'd run into a small surprise that we now call the Rocky Mountains. When you are facing what appears to be an endless desert or when you look out at a mountain range that is absolutely impassable, it is then that the painting of the Golden Valley is most necessary. It is most vital because in those moments, we where we decide to keep moving toward the promised destination, even though nothing in front of us looks like what we have been promised, we keep moving forward. That is faith.
When nothing around us or ahead of us resembles where we thought we were going, we must return to the picture of promise and prophecy set before us in god's word. And when we behold these promises, we groan with an honest longing for what has been promised, and we keep following Jesus. So first, we desire the new creation, the kingdom, with a longing ultimately for God himself. Second, we await the new creation. In the previous chapter in Isaiah 64, we read in verse four.
From of old, no one has heard or perceived by the ear. No eye has seen a god besides you who acts for those who wait for him. As we long for the fullness of God's kingdom, we wait for the one who acts on our behalf. The apostle Peter later picks up this theme in the New Testament in second Peter chapter three when he says, since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness? Waiting for the hasten waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of god because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn.
But according to his promise, we are waiting for the new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. According to the promise of God, we are invited to wait. This waiting, it can seem counterproductive, counterintuitive, because it does not appear to be achieving anything outwardly. But in our hope filled waiting in the Lord, God is doing a transformative work inwardly in our souls. Waiting on God cultivates a resilient dynamic trust, a trust that confesses that we are not in control and that God is.
We cannot make this new creation with our own hands, And so we learn to trust when we learn to wait. As we read in Isaiah's prophecy in chapter 65, as we've already seen in verse 17, it's God who says, for behold, I create new heavens and new earth. When we wait, we take up this invitation to learn to wait for the new heavens and the new earth, and we grow in trusting God and his promises. Our posture of waiting testifies to our confidence, our hope, our resilient belief in his promises. And the Lord acts for those who wait for him.
So we're invited to await the kingdom with hope. The first invitation was to desire the kingdom with longing. The second is to await with hope. But this waiting does not mean that we lock ourselves away and wait out the clock. We don't retreat from the world or hide from life.
We are called to desire the kingdom and to wait for the kingdom while living in this world day to day. So the third invitation for how we are to live out this desiring and this waiting is that we seek the kingdom. We're invited to an active and dynamic faith that desires, that waits with hope, and that seeks the new creation. So what does that look like? The Lord speaks to the prophet Isaiah in the final chapter of 66 verse two.
All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look, he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. We are called to seek the kingdom with humility and a holy wonder of God's glory. We seek the new creation through loving obedience and heartfelt awe of God and his word. The apostle Paul wrote to the Colossian Christians about how we live seeking after this new creation in Colossians chapter three, saying, therefore, since you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. We are to seek the kingdom by setting our minds on the kingdom, and we strive by setting our minds on the new creation and living as citizens of that coming kingdom in the here and now. Jesus told his disciples as recorded in Matthew six, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Our minds are to be set on the things that are above, and they are set on the things above when they are set on the righteousness of God. We seek him, and we seek his kingdom when we seek after his righteousness.
Paul says that when we do this, when we remember that we've been raised with Christ and that the glory and the power of Easter has made its way to us, we then strive for that which is above. So what is above? Jesus himself. He was bodily raised from the dead, and he bodily ascended to the heavenlies, and he bodily sits at the right hand of God the father almighty, which we confessed in the apostles' creed just a little while ago. That is where our minds are to be focused.
Our minds are to be calibrated by the reality that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the father right now. Him being at the right hand of the father right now interceding for you is how you live and breathe and have your being right now. But what does this have to do with righteousness? When you hold fast in your hearts and minds that Jesus is at the right hand of the father, that that means that your soul is anchored to the truth that we are forever made right with god the father through Jesus the son. Your life is caught up in his.
His righteousness is your righteousness, which means you are liberated to live in the freedom of righteousness to the glory of God. You aren't called to set your mind on the rules above, neither are you called to set your mind on the chaos of this world and your scarce ability to do anything about it. You are called to set your mind on the things above where Christ is seated in victory over sin and death from which he will bring the fullness of his kingdom. The new creation comes from above where Christ is. In the letter to the Hebrews, we read in chapter 13, for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.
It is often through trouble, through sorrow, and through pain. But when we are awakened to the reality that we have no lasting city here, we are also given the grace to seek the promised city that is to come. As I said, this reality, this realization that we are not at home, it usually comes with a great deal of pain. And I know some of you are walking in that pain today. Pain that results in the groaning, a longing for the kingdom.
And as that pain comes, it is met with the grace of believing that we have a city to seek, a city that is promised to the children of God, it is far more dangerous to believe that you are already home, that this is all that there is or ever will be. But that is not the picture that Isaiah is holding out for you to behold today. You are invited to desire the kingdom with longing, to await the kingdom with hope, and to seek the kingdom with righteousness and rest. Lastly, we are to receive the kingdom with rejoicing. In the final section in Isaiah's prophecy, in chapter 66, the lord says in verse 22, For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain.
From new moon to new moon, from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord. Receiving the new heavens and the new earth doesn't simply inspire rejoicing. They were created precisely for rejoicing, where all the flesh should come and worship the lord. The new creation will exist for the exact purpose of worshiping with joy our God. This means that as as we look to receive the kingdom with humility and with longing, we don't have to pretend that the deep pains and sorrows of this life aren't real or aren't present.
Our genuine rejoicing does not require us to ignore our longing. As the writer to the Hebrews said, we desire a better country, a heavenly one. The people of God are rescued and ransomed people, a people who acknowledge their great longings, and their groaning is for a homeland with God. That heavenly country exists, but it is beyond our grasp, beyond our ability, beyond our authority, beyond our strength. We cannot command it.
We cannot create it. We cannot build it ourselves. We are to receive it from the one who commands and creates, the builder and the architect, the author and the finisher. And we don't even have to convince him to do any of this. We don't have to beg him or sway him or coerce him into creating this kingdom.
Jesus tells his disciples in Luke chapter 12, fear not, little flock, for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. It is the creator's good pleasure to give you his new creation. The new heavens and the new earth are a delight for him to give to his beloved. What you most long for, what you most hope for, what your soul is most seeking, god most delights in giving you, And that is himself and his kingdom. Isaiah sixty five nineteen says that god himself will join in this rejoicing.
He says, I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people. Can we dare to imagine such a thing? God in the fullness of his kingdom and his new creation people transformed by his glory and his grace existing in his eternal love and fellowship, and God is rejoicing with his children. That is the great picture of the new creation. Isaiah has given us a prophetic painting, a landscape of the new heavens and the new earth.
He holds it out there for us to behold. He gives us a picture, and he invites us to point our wagons towards the kingdom and journey together with faith, holding fast to his promises. We journey together to this new creation, desiring, awaiting, seeking, and receiving. Around seven hundred years after Isaiah's prophecy and about 700 miles away from Jerusalem, the apostle John was exiled on the island of Patmos. You may recall that John was one of the first disciples of Jesus, and he was often referred to as the disciple that Jesus loved.
John He was the last of the original 12 still living. And while in exile, God gave him a vision. And like Isaiah before him, John was given a glimpse of the new creation, that heavenly country for which the people of God have longed for since being exiled from the garden. And like Isaiah, John does his best to capture this vision and to give us a picture of the land that we long for and what what can often feel so far away. John writes this in Revelation chapter 21.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be any mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, behold, I'm making all things new. The promise of the new heaven and the new earth is the culmination of the story of scripture. John says that he sees these promises fulfilled in the grand passing away of the former things and the inbreaking of all that is new and holy.
And while the hope of new creation is the end of Isaiah's prophecy and the realization of the holy city of God is the end of John's revelation, it is simultaneously both the end and not the end. In the fourth century, Saint Augustine wrote these words that have helped me to orient my heart for this journey that we are on together towards the kingdom of God. And he wrote this. All shall be amen and alleluia. We shall rest, and we shall see.
We shall see, and we shall know. We shall know, and we shall love. And we shall love, and we shall praise. Behold our end, which is no end. Here at the close of Isaiah's great and wondrous prophecy, we behold our end, the heavenly country that we are headed toward together, what Isaiah has been seeking to help us seek all along, our end which is no end.
And so we prepare our hearts to be glad and to rejoice forever in that which our Lord creates. Let's go to him now in prayer. Oh, father, we recognize that even when we spend time in the truth of your word, it can be so hard to believe. I know that some of us are looking out over a desert or the Rocky Mountains and wonder how we will ever get to the kingdom. Lord, would you help our unbelief?
Would you strengthen us by your spirit to trust in you? And that we would, by the strength of your spirit, take another step forward, following Jesus, perhaps even in a season where it seems like the kingdom is so far away. Lord, help us to trust in your love for us, and help us to grow in our trust in you, our love for you, and our obedience to all that you ask of us. We pray these things in the name of Christ our king. Amen.