November 10, 2010
Restoration
Isaiah 24:1-27:13 and 32:1-35:10
• A Divine King 32:1-20
• The Joy of the Redeemed 35:1-10
Heartbroken people gathered in a field in Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed, on September 11, 2001. They were having a Memorial Service for the people who had died there, that awful day. Lisa Beamer, the widow of one of the heroic men, who had led the revolt against the hijackers, was among the people present, who had gathered there, to honor those who had died. Later on, she wrote this about her impressions of that experience:
“I couldn’t help but compare this service to the one in Cranbury, the day before. Todd’s personal Memorial Service had been so uplifting and so inspiring and I know, that it was because the emphasis at his service had been based on “holding on to hope” in the middle of a crisis. On that Monday, though, as I listened to the well-intentioned speakers, who were doing their best to comfort us, but were using, very little, if any, direct reference, to the power of God to sustain us, I felt like I was sliding helplessly down a high mountain, into a deep crevasse. As much as I appreciated the kindness of the wonderful people who tried to encourage us, that afternoon was actually, one of the lowest points in my grieving. It wasn’t the people or even the place. It was the fact that I couldn’t get over the truth of how hopeless the world is, when God is factored out of the equation.”
No matter how sincere the sympathy cliché’s and heartfelt condolences are, they are not enough when our hearts are broken in two. We need our Heavenly Father. ( Dale and I are teaching this class on raising little girls and I have been struck over and over again about how important a daddy is in a girl’s life, no matter how young or old she is----- and the parallels between our earthly fathers and our Heavenly Father, in all the ways that we need them and in the ways that they take care of us, is remarkable.) We need God beyond our human comprehension. If we factor Him out of the equation of our lives, we wind up stripping ourselves bare and exposing ourselves to the fury and blast of the cruelties of satan and this sin-torn world. But, if we always factor God into the equation--------He becomes our hope, and we can face anything!
God has made a commitment to us. He has made us promise after promise that He will take care of us, no matter what kind of situation we have to face or weather.
(Here are just a few scriptures of the countless ones that Hr gives us in His word: Psalm 32:8 “I will counsel you with My eye upon you.” John 14:3 “I will come again and take you to Myself, that where I am, you may be also.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you.”
Genesis 15:1 “Fear not…I am your shield: your reward shall be very great.”
Joshua1:9 “Do not be discouraged, do not be terrified, for the Lord your God, will be wherever you go.”
Matthew 6:32 “For your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.”)
Knowing and believing in God’s great love for us and trusting in His promised power, on our behalf, enables us to walk through the heartbreak of this sin-filled world without fear and with the assurance that Jesus’ victory already exists, as an accomplished fact. Understanding this, empowers us to face life, not with resignation and trepidation, but with a soul-enriching, joy-filled expectancy. Jesus is our great Hope, period and He is all we need. (The book, Adrift, is the story of a man who built a vessel that was supposed to sail him around the whole Atlantic Ocean, in a big loop. He hit bad weather and his vessel went down. He existed on a raft for almost 80 days. The thing that kept the man alive was hope. His lowest days were the days when he could see no hope; when he couldn’t see the possibility of being rescued or making it to the islands or coming into the shipping lanes and being found by one of those big vessels, on its way to the trade routes. His hope kept him alive and he eventually was rescued. Someone has said, “We can live 40 days without food, 8 days without water, 4 minutes without air, but only a few seconds without hope.)
• A Divine King Isaiah 32: 1-20
In this chapter 32, we are given another wonderful glimmer of the glorious future, which is waiting for the nation of Israel and for all of the Redeemed, when we we’ll dwell with Jesus, as the divine ruler, in the Millennial Kingdom and for all eternity. Time and time again, Isaiah has given us little glimpses of what the millennial kingdom will be like. But, in this temporal world, we can only see little snatches of that future place, shining through his words, as they part the clouds, a lot like the sun does, on a beautiful April day. The sun is a constant reality and we know that it’s there, whether we can see it shining or not. We know that it hasn’t disappeared it’s just that the clouds sometimes go across it and obscure its light from us. It only seems to disappear from time to time. The Millennial Kingdom is the same way---it is a constant reality; it is there, whether we pay attention to it or not; it’s there, even when the clouds of judgment and discipline and God’s long-suffering, have to provide a temporary curtain, which fleetingly veils the full impact of its promised glory. Sometimes, we think that we’ve lost sight of it, but it is always there!
In the Millennial Kingdom, the presence of the Lord Jesus, will overshadow and envelop the people, as their protective covering and they will be hidden from the wind and from any tempest. This makes us ask the question, “What will the wind and tempest be doing there, in the Millennial Kingdom? I think that is one of the mysteries of God that we aren’t going to be able to understand, until we experience it, when we’re there. But, even though we don’t completely understand it, I think we can safely assume and be assured, that Jesus will calm whatever storm or wind that blows there, just like He did on the Sea of Galilee. I think we can trust that no storm will ever touch us again when we are living in the presence of the Lord Jesus. Isaiah prophesied that the Millennial Kingdom will be characterized by peace and that---- that peace will be the direct result of the Lord’s presence. King Jesus will control every aspect of His kingdom.
The nations of the world will still inhabit their mortal bodies during the Millennium. Some people will actually die, but all physical handicaps will be removed. There will be no blindness, no deafness, no ignorance, no mental deficiencies and no speech impediments, there. This shouldn’t be a surprise to us; it’s a big part of what we can look forward to. If God is going to restore nature back to its perfect state before the fall of Adam and Eve and restore it to a place where lions will eat straw like an ox----------it will be nothing----a piece of cake----for Him to restore handicapped bodies to their full and perfect potential. (When my children were little, we listened all the time, to scripture that had been set to music------one particular one that I loved was about God having everything under control—it used scripture from Daniel that was about him in the Lion’s den and about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace----and my favorite part was, “the God who caused that Lion to roar and who caused that fire burn had everything under control.) When God is in control, anything can happen. God directed that stone in the middle of Goliath’s eyes; God split the Red Sea right down the middle and then closed it back up again; God leveled the wall around Jericho and God brought His son back from the grave. Knowing that God did all those things, we can only imagine what world-changing glories, await us in the Millennial Kingdom!
In that great kingdom, mankind will be acknowledged for what he actually is, instead of what he wants people to think that he is, or what he wants to appear to be. There will be no hypocrisy there; there will only be honesty. Imagine that, we won’t lie or even deceive ourselves anymore? Apparently, though, there will still be a certain amount of wickedness present, during Jesus’ Millennial reign. The truth is, after the 1000 years of perfection, there will still be people, who will flock to satan’s banner and they will choose to fight on the losing side, at the Battle of Armageddon. Unbelievable!!!!!! It was that same way when Jesus walked upon the earth the 1st time-----people knew Him, they talked to Him, they heard what He had to say---- and they still chose to turn away from Him. Judas Iscariot was the perfect example. He lived closely with the Lord and He fooled everybody, except the Lord. Well, in the Millennial Kingdom, mankind will still have the propensity to sin because of his free-will. But the sin won’t be able to be hidden. It will be out in the open for everybody to see, and everybody will recognize it. Discernment will be raised to a new level. And Jesus, will rule with an iron fist and He will make sure that sin will be strictly limited and immediately punished.
Isaiah addressed the women of Jerusalem, in this passage, not because he was picking on them but because he wanted to single them out and remind them, once again, that women have a huge impact on their husbands and their children and in their spheres of influence. Isaiah saw the women of his day as being too complacent and too willing to go along with whatever happened and too accepting of the world’s standards. How different are we today? Do we make too many compromises with the standards that God has laid out in His word? We need to ask ourselves hard questions about that and we need to change our ways if we do. There is nothing wrong with a life of quiet pleasantness or a life that is lived out with gentleness and forgiveness and grace to others, and a life that recognizes that we are supposed to love people into the kingdom of God, not judge them there------but there is something very wrong with women who live their lives with the idea of keeping peace at all costs and with living a life that is willing to tolerate sin, because they don’t want to rock the boat or make somebody mad at them, or with living a life that accepts wickedness because they want to fit in with a certain group. The women of Isaiah’s day were choosing to live with a false peace, which came from satisfying themselves with momentary indulgences. Those women couldn’t see beyond their own little worlds. The most important thing to them, on any given day, was whatever bargain they could find in the marketplace. They had no foresight; they weren’t worried about anything, much less the future. Those women represent the kind of foolish complacency that leaves God out of the equation—they searched for and tried to be satisfied with, earthly contentment and didn’t even acknowledge a longing or a dependency for their Heavenly Father. In the Millennial Kingdom, a woman’s greatest asset to her beauty will be her humility in the Lord and in Him alone.
In the Millennial Kingdom, the Spirit of God will dominate everything! God has promised to pour out His Spirit on us with life-enriching abundance. In this passage, Isaiah wasn’t talking about a little drop of the Spirit. He was talking about an outpouring of such magnitude, of the Spirit ,that He will totally wash away all complacency, from our hearts and minds, like a flood---and that He will replace everything that gives us counterfeit joy, with the real joy and peace and quiet trust in the Lord, that can only come from the Holy Spirit.
God has already started pouring out His Spirit. He started keeping that promise over 2000 years ago, at Pentecost. And He does pour out His Spirit with astonishing abundance, as He pours His love into our hearts. Our responsibility is to be open to receiving the Spirit into our hearts. The “work” of righteousness is peace. And peace will be the overall dominant reality of the Kingdom. Peace is produced when righteousness rules hearts. Jesus will rule, with and in righteousness. The by product or effect of righteousness is quietness and assurance. This peace frees us from anxiety and guilt and it isn’t something that can be switched on and off when the mood strikes us. Righteousness is not something that man can achieve by his own effort. It is a gift from God and it is produced by the Holy Spirit. It is part of what happens when the Spirit is poured out on us. The Holy Spirit + Righteousness = peace and quietness and confidence in the sovereignty of God. We don’t have to wait for the Millennial Kingdom to experience that peace—---the Holy Spirit makes Millennial Kingdom peace available to us, right now, every minute of every day. We just have to take hold of it. (Horatio Spafford, a businessman in Chicago, sent his wife and 3 daughters to Europe by ship while he remained back in the U.S., intending to join them later. En route, there was a terrible storm and a shipwreck, during which their 3 daughters drowned. Mrs. Spafford made it to safety and wired back saying,, “all of our daughters have been lost. Only I have been saved.” He took the next vessel. As they came near the place where his daughters drowned, the skipper of the ship pointed to the place where the other ship had gone down. It was there on the deck of the ship that he wrote these stirring words: ‘When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, ‘it is well with my soul.’”) Horatio Spafford had Millennial Kingdom peace.
• The Joy of the Redeemed
Walter B. Knight said that, “Joy is the flag that flies over the castle of our hearts, announcing that the King is in residence today.” Joy is the surest sign of the presence of God.
Although, the Promised Land is is still a long way from what the Lord will change it into being, in the Millennial Kingdom, and then, in the New Heaven and the New Earth---------the small nation that we know as Israel, today, has done remarkable things with the land that it is fighting to hold onto. Salt marshes have been drained and barren, desert wasteland has been reclaimed and turned into lush, productive farms. Fruit, of all descriptions is being raised in huge quantities. And, this bounty doesn’t just satisfy the needs of Israel’s population, but it has also become a very profitable export trade. Forests have been planted, one tree at a time, so that now, a comparatively treeless land is well-stocked with timber. In other industries, such as medicine and technology and research, Israel is challenging the world with cutting-edge developments. It is truly remarkable to see what this young man-made nation has done and achieved, in less than 65 years. But all of this is just a shadow of the beauty and abundance and bounty that will one day be made manifest, when Jesus comes to set up the Millennial Kingdom.
Praise God that He has already started His renewing work of grace in the life of every believer. Before we are saved, our lives are just dreary, barren deserts. But, when we are saved, God is able to give us new life and He is able to grow such lush, sweet fruit in us, which is so appetizing, that the people we come in contact with can’t help but want to reach out and pick it. The joy He plants in us is contagious. Joy permeates chapter 35, of Isaiah. His description of the great goodness of God, makes it clear to his readers, that salvation is not just when we stop sinning; salvation is when we are able to delight in God’s glory and His majesty. How unbelievably amazing God must be, if just the sight of Him can transform us from death into life. We are able to see God’s glory in the face of the Lord Jesus. And we can see the face of Jesus, as the Holy Spirit makes Him real to us, through His word. What we have already experienced in the Lord Jesus, so far, is nothing, compared to what we will experience when we see Him face to face!
There is so much more for us, in our relationship with the Lord, than we can even begin to comprehend. When we choose to follow Jesus, we will never, ever come to a dead end; with Him, we will always be on the threshold of new and wonderful possibility and blessing. What can we contribute to this beautiful relationship----- nothing but blindness, deafness, lameness and silence-----physically, spiritually and emotionally? What does the Lord contribute to it----- everything wonderful------ everything that is full of sight, sound, agility and joyful song? Charles Wesley described the impact of the Gospel this way, “Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb, your loosened tongue employ; ye blind, behold your Savior comes; and leap, ye lame, for joy.” God is in the business of turning spiritual cripples into spiritual heroes. We should never give up, no matter what we have done and no matter what others have done to us. Because what we spoil, God will renew. God will restore anyone, now, who will come to Him in saving faith, Jew or Gentile------and in that future day, He is going to restore Israel in a way that they cannot even begin to imagine and He is going to restore the earth, and turn the whole world into the Garden of Eden, forever, with Jerusalem as its focal point. (An audience watched the artist, Thomas Nast, paint a pastoral scene with green hills, fleecy clouds and a babbling brook. When he moved away from the easel, accolades resounded around the room. “But it’s not finished,” said Nast. He dipped his brush into dark, somber colors as people looked on in surprise and silence. Then rashly, he made daubs and blotches on the painting much as a child would. At last he said, “Now it’s finished and perfect.” Not a sound was heard. Nast turned the picture on one end and the crowd gasped in awe! Before their eyes was a breathtaking scene. A magnificent waterfall cascaded over moss-covered rocks and rainbow hues appeared to dance over the whole scene. The first painting had not been ruined; it had merely been changed, by the touch of the master’s hand.)
The highway that Isaiah described in this passage, is like a raised causeway, which is going to be high enough in the air, that it will be clearly visible. It will be so obvious that even fools will be able to find their way to it and will have no trouble walking down it. In the world that we live in right now, we have to hold our breath and we have to get inoculations and we have to have locks on our doors and we have to have policeman and we have to have prisons and we have to have hospitals and we have to teach our children about strangers and drugs and abuse. But God has a planned a world for us, and for Himself, where those things will never be necessary ever, again. This world is going to be a special place for the Redeemed-------the people that God has taken on as His personal responsibility. That is what it means to be redeemed-------God allowed Jesus to pay the price for us, so that we could be bought back from sin and the world and be restored to Him as His perfect possession. Thanks to Jesus, we will get into God’s beautiful Kingdom for free. That is the deal that God made with us and that is the deal He paid the price for. Gladness and joy will overtake us and the blessings of God will overtake us and all sadness and heartbreak will disappear forever.
Some people are content with the self-importance and pettiness and materialism of this present world we live in. We fill our bellies and our bank accounts and our egos with the gluttony of this world. But what we should do, is yearn for something more. Because what we have been promised, is so much more than we already have or what we could ever possibly have, in this temporal place. We should long for God and for the fullness of His presence, in our hearts and in our minds, and for the kingdom that we are already citizens of. We can have it now, not because we deserve it, but because Jesus has already, paid the price for us, on the cross. He lived and died and lives again for us. The pursuit of our joy, in Christ, may cost us everything here, in this world. We shouldn’t mind though. We should be able to gladly leave it all behind and press on toward a joy that will never end.
(The story is told of a young art student who had great admiration for the Danish sculptor, Bartel Thorvaldsen. To his great delight, the student had an opportunity to go to Copenhagen, to visit a church and see the sculptor’s famous statue of Christ, known as Come unto Me. As the student stood before the statue, great disappointment registered on his face. A bystander noticed the young man and said, “Sir, you must go close, kneel down before Him, and then look up into His face.” The student hesitantly did as he was told. On his knees he was overjoyed when he looked up and saw the beauty in the face of Jesus, a beauty that can never be seen by people, who remain at a distance.)
We can’t know Jesus, if we don’t come close to Him. Knowing Jesus is what it means to be Redeemed.
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