-When I was at seminary in St. Louis, we had to do several practicums in different areas of ministry. They were first come – first served but I was very blessed in the areas I had the opportunity to learn and grow. I did a cross-cultural module with Apple of His Eye Mission Society. I found out that outside of New York and Los Angeles, St. Louis has one of the largest populations of Jewish Americans in the U. S. Steve Cohen, its founder and former Jew himself, set us up with opportunities to interact with Jews in our community. One weekend, we were assigned to attend Shabbat at a local synagogue and we set up a meeting with the rabbi after the service was over.
-I asked her what she thought about Jesus and His resurrection from the dead. She didn’t deny that what Jesus’ disciples saw but believed that it was a figment of their imagination.
-One of her objections to Jesus being the Messiah was that there are many Biblical passages like the one in our Old Testament lesson for today that talk about the peace and tranquility that will be manifest in our world when the Messiah comes
-When Jesus came, the world was not made appreciably better. Therefore, the logic goes, He must not have been the Messiah.
-So, how do we understand these verses in our text for today?
-Well, let’s look at a little history to understand the context in which Isaiah was working
-He was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah between the years 750 and 681 B. C. during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah
-If you recall, after Solomon’s reign, the nation of Israel was split in two. Ten northern tribes formed the kingdom of Israel and the two southern tribes formed Judah.
-It was a tumultuous time in both Israel’s and Judah’s history. The Assyrian empire was gaining strength under Tiglath-Pilezser III. His kingdom swept into Aram, modern-day Syria. The kings of Aram and Israel, tried to get King Ahaz of Judah to join them in a coalition against Assyria but Ahaz joined forces with Assyria to defeat the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B. C. This left Judah very vulnerable to invasion.
-Isaiah, over and over again, warned the people of Judah to stop their evil ways and turn back to God, otherwise, God was going to allow them to feel the full negative repercussions of their covenant with Him at Sinai. He would allow the Babylonians to sweep in, conquer them, destroy the temple and carry them off in captivity. That would eventually occur in 586 B. C.
-There are a couple simple things about prophecy that you need to understand in order to better understand our text and understand the bible in general.
-First, when a prophet sees a vision of a forthcoming event or gets words from God to speak or write, they may or may not get the entirety of what they are to relate to the people. There might be more to it than what meets the eye. There may be multiple fulfillments of the same prophecy. We will see that more next week.
-Second, but closely related to that it there may be multiple events that they speak of or write about in terms of one event. In other words, they see events in compressed time compared to the way they actually play out in history. {PAUSE}
-Have you ever spent any time in the desert? What do you think of deserts?
-They are pretty austere
-I spent some time at the National Training Center, Ft. Irwin, California in the Mohave desert
-It is pretty deserted. Not much can live there. It is pretty Spartan.
-Can you imagine the desert all of sudden bursting forth in fragrant flowers and teeming with wildlife?
-That’s what Isaiah says it will be like when the Messiah comes
-But that’s not what happened when Jesus came
-We still have deserts today so what happened? {PAUSE}
-It also says in our text that God will come with vengeance, with divine retribution
-What gives?
-God hasn’t poured out His wrath on any nation – He didn’t exact vengeance against the Babylonians for their conquering Judah
-However, God did pour out His wrath on Jesus.
-As Jesus hung from the cross, He cried out, “My God, my God, why have Your forsaken Me?” God has saved us by coming with vengeance and divine retribution {PAUSE}
-After the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, I’m sure it was in shambles.
-Where there was once a thriving metropolis, now only critters ruled
-It reminds me a little of scenes from the new Will Smith movie coming out, “I am Legend” which is really a remake of the old Charleton Heston movie, “The Omega Man”
-It shows scenes of New York, now deserted because all the people have died from a virus
-Now the animal life that once ruled all the land have taken over again
-In verse 7, God is reversing the curse that came on Jerusalem. Where jackal once ruled, vegetation has taken back over again and amidst a road appears – the highway of holiness {PAUSE}
-Have any of you ever returned to the land of your forefathers?
-Did you go and try to find where your grandparents or their parents before them had lived?
-That is what happened in Israel years later
-After King Darius of the Medo-Persian empire signed a declaration to allow the Jews to return to their land in 538 B. C., a remnant of those that had left returned to rebuild Jerusalem
-They made their way back to the land that God had promised to Abraham
-That is part of what Isaiah is talking about in verses 8-10
-However, there will be a day when only those who have trusted in Jesus will enter into the new Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven that John talks about in Revelation 21
-And that is what Isaiah is talking about in the beginning of our text as well
-Isaiah in chapter 11 speaks about the end of the world. He writes, “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain.”
-We would not even consider doing that today.
-But it sounds familiar
-Doesn’t that sound like the Garden of Eden
-Isaiah speaks of the end of the world in terms of the Garden of Eden
-God will again restore what He originally made
-And that is how we understand the beginning of our text today
-When Jesus returns again, what was prophesied by Isaiah will come about
-Where there is only wasteland, there will come about fruitfulness, because God will again restore the glory on this earth that He once created and we will live with God forever
