Well once again we have the incredible privilege this morning of hearing the Word of God, of being changed from the inside out by that living and powerful Word. I'd like for us to turn to a paragraph in the Old Testament that was written many centuries before Jesus was ever born, certainly long before He was crucified and resurrected. But this paragraph describes by way of predictive prophecy the effect of the Word.
The effects that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ would have on creation. The passage is Isaiah 65 verses 17 through 25. Let me read it and as I read it understand that this is the Word of the living God.
Come into 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 a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred 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.
Before we consider what these verses mean, let me just pause and pray and ask that God would help us understand his word this morning. Lord, you are the one who has created everything in heaven and in earth, and you sustain everything. Without you, our very existence crumbles. But according to what we've just read, you're going to recreate everything. You're gonna make a new heaven and a new earth, and this new creation is going to be so wonderful that the old world, the former things, as Scripture puts it, will not even be remembered.
God, that is unbelievable, yet we know it's true because you never lie. So, Lord, if this is to be the case, if you are going to create a new world in which there is no pain or trouble, we want to know how to be a part of that world. We want to be new creatures in your new world. Lord, would you please show us that today?
Show us the way that we might enjoy every delight you intend to give. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, the book of Isaiah was written during a time when Israel, God's special people, were in rebellion against God. They had God's word, they had God's presence, they had God's blessing on their lives, and yet they had chosen to reject those benefits and live life their own way, by their own standards of right and wrong, and for their own pleasure and self-gratification. And so in response to Israel's rebellion, God, as a loving Father, had to do something. He had to bring His children back in line. He had to intervene in order to keep the people He loved from destroying themselves. Well, God, through the prophet Isaiah, promised that hard times were in store for Israel. They would have to go through some excruciating experiences to learn the importance of faith and obedience and loyalty to God.
But after giving warning to Israel, Isaiah's preaching takes a sharp turn. He reaches a point where the themes of doom and gloom and chastening fade into the background, and he begins to preach about a future day when everything would be set right. Instead of difficulty, there would be ease. Instead of sadness, there would be joy. Instead of trouble and pain, there would be goodness and delight.
All would be well. In our text today, Isaiah has been going on now for several chapters about how wonderful this restoration is going to be, but in chapter 65, verse 17, Isaiah takes this prediction of a restoration to a whole new level. He begins to use creation language, like we read in the beginning of Genesis when God was creating the world as we know it. But Isaiah says that God will actually create a new heaven and a new earth. Now, when we use the word heaven, we typically use it in a different way than Isaiah is using it here. We speak of people dying and going to heaven, and what we mean is that they have gone to the place where Jesus is until his second coming, a place where saints dwell until the resurrection of their bodies occurs. But the word heaven, or heavens, can also refer to the sky, the stuff up there, the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, the vast expanse of space.
Isaiah's heavens and earth refer to the same heavens and earth that Genesis 1 speaks about, the same type of heavens and earth. God is going to recreate this physical world of time and space into a new physical world of time and space, and this new place will be so incredibly phenomenal that the world as we know it now, the one that exists at the present, will be forgotten. Look with me at verse 17.
The former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. This new world that God is going to create is so wonderful and so real that it wipes away the memory of life in this troubled, fallen world. What kind of an amazing place must this be that it could erase from memory the former things, all the trouble, the pain, the weeping, the death of life as we know it? Well, that's what the following verses are all about. They describe in glorious detail what this new world is going to be like. They describe what it is that will make these new heavens and new earths so unimaginably wonderful.
In fact, Isaiah describes five different aspects of the new heavens and the new earth that make them so wonderful. First, we learn that this new creation will be characterized by joy. It's a place that's characterized by joy. The word joy, or some form of the word joy, is repeated over and over in verses 18 through 19.
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. And Jerusalem in this context refers figuratively to the society that exists in this new world. Jerusalem is the ideal city with ideal citizens, all functioning in perfect harmony with each other and with creation.
And even God himself will find joy in his new creation. Verse 19, 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. The Jerusalem of our world in the present has had its share of weeping and distress, hasn't it? Think of the wars and the upheavals, the sieges and atrocities that have characterized this place that was in ancient times the center of God's presence on earth. In fact, the greatest suffering that has ever occurred in human history, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, took place just outside the gates of this city.
Jerusalem has had a front row seat to all the turmoil and the weeping of human history. But in this new Jerusalem, there will never be heard the sound of weeping or the cry of distress. There'll be no more tears. They'll all be wiped away in the new heavens and the new earth. And in their place will be joy unspeakable and full of glory.
We can begin to understand, I think, how former things will begin to fade away from memory in light of this new place of exquisite gladness. Joy has a way of making us forget joylessness, doesn't it? Think of the little child who scrapes her knee.
As soon as her mom gives her a popsicle, she forgets about the bloody leg. Or the mother who has just delivered her newborn baby. As soon as she's holding the infant in her arms, the moaning and the agony of labor is replaced with elation. Joy cancels sorrow. And God's new creation is full of joy. Another thing we learn about this new creation is that it is characterized by longevity of life, longevity of life.
Look with me at verse 20. 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 100 years old shall be accursed.
The infant mortality rate in this new creation will be zero percent. The lifespan in this new creation will be so incredibly long that a 100-year-old man will still be considered a youth. You know, we weren't made for death. We aren't designed to cope with something as repelling and irreversible as death. It grieves us, it disturbs us. We may pretend that death isn't really as bad as it is, but there's no way around the fact that death is not natural. It has become normal in this fallen world, but it is not how God designed the life of his creatures to naturally progress.
It's an aberration. And so it hangs over us like a threat, like a vulnerability that we just don't quite know what to do with. Hebrews 2.15 puts it so poignantly. It describes humanity as those who through fear of death are subject to lifelong slavery. Death is scary. Death is foreign. Death is strange to us who are made for life, and breath, and health, and joy. And yet death is an unavoidable reality to which we all must succumb.
Why? Because the just punishment for sin, the fair wage of breaking the law of God, is death. But what of this new world that God is going to create? Death in that world, according to 20, is going to be a diminishing norm. In fact, as we'll see in a moment, it will become not merely a diminishing norm, but non-existent in the new heavens, in the new earth, and in its place, long life, and health, and joy. Thirdly, we learn that God's new creation is characterized by fruitful productivity. Think with me for a moment about how much time, and energy, and resources we expend in this world, oftentimes to no avail. We have a fig tree in our backyard that we have nurtured for years.
We've pruned it, we've fertilized it, we've babied it, but it has yet to produce a single fig. Sometimes whole crops are planted and succumb to drought, or blight, or natural disaster before they ever yield the first thing. Just talking to someone recently about the decline of once great cities in our nation that are now just a shell of their former glory.
Our nation is sprinkled with them. Life in this present world is full of waste and atrophy, of unfulfilled hopes and dreams, of destruction and theft. But the new world that God is creating is quite the opposite. Look with me at verse 21. 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. Not only will farms and homes be fruitful, but families will be fruitful. Verse 23, 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. Just as we plant crops and don't know whether they'll grow or not, and just as we build homes and don't know with certainty if we'll ever even live in the homes we've built, so we have children and don't know what will become of them. Will they succumb to calamity? Will this dark and dirty world ruin them? Will their existence be a delight or a trouble to our souls? Some people in fact forego having children altogether for fear that they would simply be bearing children for a life of calamity in a dying and decaying world. But in God's new creation, it won't be so. There will be no such thing as children who were born for calamity because God will ensure that his blessing, the blessing of long life and of a fruitful life, will fall on the parents and the children, the young and the old, the ancestors and the descendants, even on the vineyards and the houses. This new creation will be a place of fruitful productivity. Next we see that God's new world is characterized by heightened answers to prayer. Heightened answers to prayer. In verse 24, God is speaking.
Look at what he says. He says, before they call, I will answer. While they are yet speaking, I will hear. And this speaks of the unity that exists between God and his people in this new world. It's like a husband and wife that are so unified, so at one with each other that they start finishing each other's sentences. They're on the same page. They're forming one front. They're together and united.
And it's a beautiful thing in a marriage. Well, something similar is being promised in God's new creation. God's people are so unified with God that their prayers get answered even before they pray. Now, we understand, don't we, that this in no way implies that God has changed. God never changes. But his people certainly will have changed in this new creation. If God and his people have become so united that the people's prayers are answered before they even ask, it implies that the people of God have finally attained such a degree of sanctification, of conformity to the will of God, that everything they ask, and even their motivation in asking is perfectly aligned with the will of God.
That's incredibly beautiful unity. You know, this aspect of the promised new creation reminds me of something Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount when talking about prayer. Jesus said to his disciples, don't be like the Gentiles who repeat themselves and just make much ado about their prayers as if that's how a mere mortal gets the attention of God. No, Jesus says, don't be like that, Christians.
Why? Because your Father already knows what you need before you ask him. God is ready and willing and knowledgeable enough to know what we need and how to grant us what we need. What's being promised then in Isaiah is that there is coming a day when we, the children of God, will be ready and willing and knowledgeable enough to know what we need and how to ask for it rightly. On that day, there will be such unity between God and his people that God will be answering prayer even before we ask.
What a wonderful promise. The last reality of this new creation that we see in Isaiah 65 is that it is characterized by a removal of all hurtful things, a removal of all hurtful things. Isaiah makes the point by describing a huge paradigm shift in the animal kingdom between what we know as predators and prey. Look at verse 25. The wolf and the lamb shall graze together.
The lion shall eat straw like the ox, and thus shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord. Now I wonder if sometimes we underestimate the effects of sin by thinking that when a person breaks God's law, it only affects that person and nobody else, or that when the human race breaks God's law, it's only as if it has a sort of spiritual effect on things but doesn't affect the physical world. However, the Bible paints a very different picture. It describes sin as being so pervasive in its effect that it not only affects the sinner but those around the sinner.
As goes Adam and Eve, so goes the whole human race. The Bible also describes sin as being so pervasive that it not only affects the spiritual realm but it contaminates and spoils even the physical realm as well. Romans 8 describes the effect of man's sin on creation, and it says this. It says creation waits with eager longing for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly. The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God, for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. That's a very fascinating and sad description of the effects of our sin on the natural world, on physical creation. The animals didn't choose to sin, and yet even they are subjected to the awful effects of sin. The plant kingdom did not rebel against God like humanity did, and yet even the plants bear the marks of a broken, fallen world that doesn't function the way it was intended to. Creation as we know it is suffering, groaning under the burden of the moral corruption that we, the sons and daughters of Adam, brought into the equation. But when God recreates this new world, one of the wonderful transformations will be that all of that brokenness, all of that destruction and hurt that our moral failures have imposed on the world will be set right. Can you imagine petting a wolf, or a lion, or a bear? Can you imagine having a great white shark for a pet?
Or eating a nice healthy bowl of poison ivy? God's recreation of the world will be so comprehensive and effective that those aspects of the physical world that have suffered the worst at the hands of man's fall will be set right and transformed to serve a good and helpful purpose. It's creation functioning as it was always intended. This new heavens and new earth that God is promising to create is a place of joy and long life. It's a place of fruitful productivity where one's labors always produce good things and even an abundance of good things. It's a place where communion with God is unhindered and the favor of God is instantaneous.
It's a place where all things hurtful and broken and destructive are transformed into their best and most beneficial forms. And this is all well and good, but the question arises, what good is that utopian promise to me? What does it matter that God has promised to fix everything one day if it isn't fixed on this day? Wolves are still eating lambs. Prayers still go unanswered. The ground is still growing weeds. Babies still die in infancy.
Angst and sadness rather than joy is the norm. So what does a promise from God matter? When will he create this new heavens and new earth and how can I be a part of that incredible world? Well, in answer to the question when will this new creation begin, I can't give a definitive answer because scripture tells us that nobody knows.
That it will happen is sure, but when it will happen, God only knows. Nevertheless, God gives us brief glimpses, experiences of that new creation even in this life. Joy, for example, is a real thing even now.
The fact that everyone in this room knows what I mean when I use the word joy indicates that this delightful experience that we call joy is a real thing that real people can at least imperfectly experience. When it comes to an intimate meaningful relationship with God, that too is possible in this life. We already saw how Jesus acknowledged in the Sermon on the Mount that God knows even now before we ask what we need.
And although there is the necessity of faith in our relationship with God as we know it now, he still demonstrates his presence and his awareness of us in 100 different ways every day. Even in the material world, we get glimpses of creation working like it's supposed to. Every time a flower blooms or a garden bears fruit.
Every time a human being lives a long, rich life with a noble and glorious ending. These are glimpses, imperfect flashes of life as it will be one day in God's new creation. And we might ask, why would God give us these glimpses?
Why would God make this promise in Isaiah 65 of a wonderful world yet to come? Is it just to rub in the fact that we don't have that perfect world yet? Is it just a cruel divine joke?
Well, no, it's not a cruel divine joke. God promises a new creation and even gives us glimpses of that new creation so that we will long for that perfection and pursue that perfection and one day find that perfection. You know, seeing the depths of depravity doesn't make me yearn for God's perfect creation as much as seeing glimpses of the beauty of that perfect world.
Far more than ugliness, it is beauty. Even brief fragmentary slices of beauty that stir in us a longing for the world that God always intended for his image bearers to enjoy. So it seems that God has sprinkled even the world as it is now, with hints and clues of something far more beautiful and perfect and right and good so that we would long for that which God has planned and so that we would align our affections and hopes with that future world of perfect, perfect bliss. In the words of C.S.
Lewis, in the words of C.S. Lewis, if I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. The crucial question then is how do I get to that world?
How do I get to that world? The apostle John wrote the last book in the Bible, the book of Revelation, and interestingly, John refers to Isaiah 65. Revelation 21 says, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and I saw the holy city, 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. That's God answering prayers before they're even prayed. John says he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. That's joy. John says, and death shall be no more. That's longevity of life.
That's eternal life. And then listen to how John describes this removal of anything that is harmful or destructive or hurtful. He says, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. So in the context of the book of Revelation, what is it that triggers this new and perfect creation? If we back up from John's reference to Isaiah 65, we learn the answer. The book of Revelation in fact tells the story of Christ's first coming and his second coming and of all that happens in between.
We call it the gospel, the good news, and it goes like this. Mankind began to die the moment that he broke God's law. God's law is good and right and perfect, but man rejected that law, and in rejecting it, rejected God.
And in rejecting God, incurred a life of misery that ends in death. But God being a merciful and good God had already put a plan into place that would provide a way of escape for sinful man. His plan was to provide a person who had never broken God's law, a perfect man who deserved none of the misery and the death of this world. God would send this perfect man into the world where he would endure every punishment that our sin deserved. And by taking that punishment himself, man's law breaking could be forgiven without compromising the holy and righteous character of God.
That man whom God sent into the world was God's own son. And so in the greatest demonstration of love ever shown, God the Father sent God the Son into the world to die in the place of wicked, rebellious law breakers like you and me. That is what it cost God to redeem this fallen world and create a new and perfect world in its place. John tells us in the book of Revelation that before the era of God's new heavens and new earth is ushered in, there will be a day of judgment on which everyone's crimes, their sins, their breaking of God's laws will be judged and punished. On that day, every person will either bear their own guilt or will have their guilt covered by the righteous death of Jesus Christ. And all who insist on bearing their own guilt will bear that guilt in an awful place of torment and misery forever and ever and ever. But all whose sins are covered by Christ will enter the new heavens and the new earth with all of its spectacular glories forever and ever and ever. It is no secret how a soul can have its sin covered by the love of God and the sacrifice of Christ.
It's not complicated. In fact, it's so simple that many proud souls have chosen to enter eternity rejecting God's gracious solution to their sin. Friends, God's solution is this. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Believing in Jesus means that you acknowledge that God is just, that you deserve death for your rebellion against him. It means that you acknowledge the righteousness, the moral goodness of Jesus and that his death is the only hope you have of being lawfully forgiven of your guilt before a holy God.
To put it simply, belief in Christ means giving your sin to him in exchange for his righteousness. God promises that all who do this will begin to experience that incredible new creation immediately. Paul says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
God also promises that all who believe in his son will be ushered into that new heavens and new earth on that day when God makes all things new. If you can find it in your heart today to reject your own solutions and embrace the salvation, the rescue that God is offering, all you need to do is call out to God and beg him for mercy. It doesn't matter how messed up you are.
It doesn't matter how deep into sin and evil you've wondered. God is a God who fixes broken things. He's a God who reverses impossible situations.
He's a God who raises the dead, who makes the wicked righteous, who recreates whole worlds and makes them perfect again. So come to him and live. Let's pray. O Most High God, we've heard your gospel on this Resurrection Sunday, but we are so stubborn that we often resist even the most obvious and simple solutions. So I ask that your Holy Spirit would open our eyes and soften our hearts and, Lord, overcome the intellectual arguments we set up in our minds to resist having to break and bow our wills to you. Overcome our stubborn resistance, and may the gospel, this power of God unto salvation, demonstrate its true power in the hearts of those gathered here today. Save our souls and bring us on that last day into the marvelous new world that you are creating for the redeemed. And, Lord, for those of us who know and believe that you will preserve us for that day, please fill us with the encouragement and the peace of knowing that that day will come and that you will defeat every enemy, every impediment, every doubt, every sin that still besets us. So, Lord God, you who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, save the lost, and encourage the saved, that the preeminence and the glory of Jesus Christ might be seen by all, and it's in his name I pray, amen.
