Isaiah 65:17-25
Third Sunday of End Times - 13 November 2016
Rev. John Derme
When politicians run for government office, what do they say to get elected? From this past election cycle, you might think that all they say is how horrible their opponents are. Fair enough. But what else do they say? They make promises. And after one is elected, how often are all of those promises fulfilled? Almost never. Why is that? It is not only because politicians sometimes break their promises. When they are campaigning, politicians tell everyone that everything will be great if they are elected. But even if they do what they promise, it is impossible for everything to turn out as wonderful as they tell you it will be.
Now the elections are over, so most of the politicians are done making their promises. You may be tired of hearing them anyway. But the Lord has not stopped making promises. He makes a promise to you in the First Lesson for today from Isaiah 65. At first it may sound like a campaign promise, one that is so wonderful that there is no way it can be fulfilled. But it is no campaign promise. It is wonderful and it is true. Today the Lord promises, "I will create a new heavens and a new earth."
Isaiah chapter 65 has a lot in common with the end of the book of Revelation. That may surprise you, at first, if you think that Revelation foretells events that will happen at the end of the world, but the Old Testament prophets foretold the coming of Jesus. Isaiah did write many beautiful prophecies of Jesus' first coming. But in this chapter he also wrote about Jesus' second coming at the end of the world. The first half of Isaiah 65 tells how believers will be saved, but unbelievers will be judged and purged from among the Lord's people. The second half of Isaiah 65 is our First Lesson for today, and in it the Lord tells us what happens to his people after the unbelievers are defeated and taken away.
The Lord promises, "Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind." When Jesus returns to this world at the end of time, he will raise all people from the dead. He will separate believers and unbelievers. His enemies will go to hell. And he will create a new heavens and earth for his people.
This new heavens and new earth that the Lord promises to make for us is not the same thing as what we usually mean when we say that when we die, we will go to heaven. When our lives on earth end, our bodies stay here and our souls go to be with the Lord. That is a wonderful place for us to be. But it won't be that way forever, because the Lord has an even better place planned for us. After Jesus comes back on judgment day, he will create this new heavens and new earth, where our reunited souls and resurrected bodies will live with him forever.
When the Lord says that he will create a new heavens and a new earth, it reminds us of the first time that he created the heavens and the earth, at the beginning of time. There he used his almighty Word to make everything there is out of nothing. Unfortunately, this first creation was ruined when the devil took the form of a serpent and led Adam and Eve into sin. Therefore this creation will have to be destroyed on the last day.
That is when God will make his new heavens and new earth. His second creation will be no less spectacular than the first one. It will be just as beautiful as this world, and even more beautiful, because it will never be spoiled by sinful human activity. It will also be just as real as this world is. We're not talking about a spirit world. We're talking about a physical reality. You'll be able to see it with your own eyes, feel it with your own hands, smell its smells with your own nose, hear its sounds with your own ears, and taste its food with your own mouth.
Sometimes we see, touch, smell, hear, and taste bad things in this world. We experience all sorts of problems here and now. We suffer from sadness, pain, disease, terrorism, war, and death. All of it is caused by human sin. But in the new heavens and new earth, we won't even remember what it is like to experience anything bad. These will be the "former things" that the Lord tells us will be forgotten there. Since no sin will be there, nothing that causes us sadness will, either.
The Lord continues, "But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy." In the time of the prophet Isaiah, Jerusalem was the city where God dwelled among his people in the temple. You would think that since the Lord was there, it should have been such a perfect place. Unfortunately, Old Testament Jerusalem was actually a pretty dysfunctional city. During much of the Old Testament time, the spiritual leaders were corrupt, people worshiped false gods there, and eventually the Lord had the place destroyed. But none of that will happen in the new Jerusalem, in the new heavens and new earth. There God will be among us, and we will enjoy serving him perfectly.
The Lord says, "I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more." Weeping and crying is an everyday part of our lives here on earth. Sin and all of the problems that come from it make us sad. But since all of that will be gone in the new Jerusalem, there won't be any more sadness, either. The Lord will be delighted in us. We will rejoice in him.
"Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed." It can be difficult for us to understand why the Lord describes the new heavens and new earth the way he does. For example, in our Gospel of the Day Jesus said that those who have been raised from the dead can never die again. But here in Isaiah's words it almost sounds like the Lord is saying people will still die there, it's just that they'll have a long lifespan first. But that isn’t the point here.
The Lord was using Isaiah to describe what to us is indescribable in terms of the world in which he lived. At Isaiah's time, there were probably many babies who died shortly after they were born. The Lord says that will never happen in the new heavens and new earth. There probably weren't many or even any people who lived to one hundred. The Lord says that it will happen all the time in the new heavens and earth, that one hundred years will be just getting started. The hymn writer tried to put this mind-blowing concept into human words when he wrote, "When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bring shining as the sun. We've no less days to sing God's praise than when we'd first begun." There will be no death. The joy will go on forever.
"They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands." Here again the Lord describes the new heavens and new earth in terms that Old Testament believers would appreciate. Because they were unfaithful to the Lord so often, the Israelites were often conquered by other nations. When this would happen, other people would come and live in the houses they had built and eat the fruit of the vineyards they had planted. So you can imagine what a fantastic promise it was that this would never happen again!
I don't know whether we're literally going to build houses in heaven or not. Elsewhere Jesus tells us that we'll live in his Father's house. Either way, the point of the Lord's words here is clear. Nobody is going to defeat us and kick us out of the new Jerusalem. We will live there permanently, just as permanently as a tree lives where it is planted. There we will prosper forever.
"They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them." This promise that we will not toil in vain is the undoing of the curse on Adam when he left the Garden of Eden because of his sin. God told him that he would have to engage in toilsome labor to grow his food. You and I know what it is like to work hard, to toil and labor, and sometimes have nothing to show for all of it. But in heaven there is no labor or toil.
Another curse that accompanied sin is that God told Eve that childbearing would be difficult. And it is so difficult that children sometimes die in the process. Even if they survive that process, all of our children eventually die. The Lord promises that this curse will be undone, as well. He's not saying that the children we have in heaven won't have any problems. Jesus tells us clearly in the Gospel of the Day that we won't bear any children in heaven. But the children who come with us to that place won't suffer any misfortune. We will all be blessed together.
"Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear." This is what it was like in the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve. They enjoyed seeing and talking with the Lord each day. That blessing was lost for us when they sinned. But in the new heavens and earth, it will be restored to us. We will communicate with God perfectly. There won't be any barriers between us and him. We'll be united to him. You won't be just another face in the crowd to the Lord. He will hear and speak to you personally.
Finally, "The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,' says the Lord." The restoration of what it was like in the Garden of Eden will be complete. It will even extend to the animals. We don't have any promise that animals will rise from the dead. Yet just as the Lord made animals a part of his first creation, we have no reason to believe that they won't be a part of his second creation. But they won't be there as predators and prey. They will be at perfect peace, just as they were before sin affected them.
There is only one aspect of the new creation that will not be the same as the first. One curse will remain, and that is the curse on the serpent. When Satan tempted Adam and Eve to sin, he took the form of a serpent. Because of what he did, God cursed the serpent, telling him that he would eat dust. That won't change in eternity. The great serpent, Satan, will remain cursed. As Revelation puts it, he will be cast into the lake of fire. He won't be able to come back and ruin God's creation again.
Satan will never defeat us again, because the Lord will defeat him for good. Jesus already has defeated Satan. In fulfillment of the promise that the Lord spoke to Adam and Eve, the Son of God became a human being. Jesus crushed the serpent's head by perfectly defeating every temptation and never sinning. Jesus crushed the serpent's head when he died on the cross for us. And Jesus will defeat Satan forever when he locks him up in hell so that he may never bother us again. So the home that the Lord will give us will be even better than the Garden of Eden, because it will never be ruined. It will last forever.
Many people think of Christianity as mythical and heaven as ethereal, but Christianity is true and our eternal home is real and solid. We will enjoy real, solid joy, security, and peace there forever. This is not a campaign promise. It is a certain guarantee. The Lord will fulfill it for us, just as he promised, "I will create a new heavens and a new earth."