This passage in Isaiah pictures the ultimate fulfillment of the Kingdom of God. This is the paradise of God. Perhaps John Milton had it right when he wrote Paradise Regained after Paradise Lost. Isaiah is picturing Paradise Regained or Paradise Restored. Obviously, all these images portrayed are incomplete or unfulfilled because we do live in a world where there are real tragedies and accidents and divisions among people. We see that every day. We see it politically as with our government shutdown. We see it socially in divided groups and we experience it personally with family disruptions. We read about bad news in our newspapers and social media both at home and abroad. And what I share with you today is certainly not to deny real issues and real problems that we see every day in Paradise Lost. But in the midst of our greatest struggles there is a greater reality coming. This is what Isaiah is picturing in this passage. This is a true vision of what God is going to accomplish in His complete work of salvation.
Incredibly, this vision came at one of the darkest and bleakest time in Israel’s history. Can you imagine your home being taken over by a foreign power and family members being killed right before your eyes? The cities that you know are overtaken and destroyed. And if you are spared then you are taken captive and displaced in a foreign place. Everything familiar is taken from you. You become a stranger in a strange land. This is precisely what had happened to the people of Israel. And this was the time frame in which Isaiah relayed this vision. It was like the proverbial “the darkest hour before dawn”. God is using Isaiah to help bring pictures of paradise in the minds of hurting people about the coming kingdom of God and the full reality of God’s kingdom. Great hope is seen in these pictures.
There are 3 pictures here that I would like for us to focus on today. I call them Pictures of Paradise.
The First Picture: NEW JOY. This new joy is particularly for Jerusalem then, but it finds great application for the church today. Isaiah says, “All that belonged to her shall rejoice. You shall be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create”.
Here and now in the midst of Paradise Lost we know that our joys are often interrupted. Or joys are experienced very inconsistently at best. This is like watching your team play. The first half things are going great. But in the 2nd half you wonder if this is the same team!
Or you take a trip to the beach. The day starts beautifully, and you are enjoying the sun and nice breeze. But suddenly dark clouds roll in and lightning flashes in the distance. And now you are forced off the beach as your joy is interrupted by the storm.
Or in an educational setting, the first half of the exam goes great. You know the answers to those questions. But then there is the second half of the exam, oops! You know very few of the answers. And you wonder where the professor gathered all the unknown information When I was going through the process of ordination I had to appear before the Board of Ministry which consisted of four committees. The first 3 went great and I was overjoyed. The last committee was another story. It was much more difficult. My joy was quickly interrupted knowing that the meeting was over before it started. We live in a world where our joys are often interrupted. But this is the reality of living amid Paradise Lost.
Let me be quick to say, even in Paradise Lost, we who are the people of God still have the joy of the Lord in our hearts, the joy of God’s kingdom in our hearts. It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit that brings joy to our life. And although joy as we know it here may be interrupted, yet we have the permanence of God’s joy in our hearts through the Holy Spirit even now. But this is only a foretaste or the first installment of even greater fulfillment of God’s joy over all creation. I think we need to have joy on this journey, even fun on this journey. Last July I came into this church and was met with great warmth and encouragement. I was immediately moved by a great sense of joy and freedom that pervaded the atmosphere. It was unmistakably of the Lord. I am grateful that joy continues to abound here!
To be sure Christianity is a serious religion. Heaven and hell are eternal realities we must keep in our minds. We all have an eternal destiny. But the good news is that we have an assurance in Christ which brings us great joy in our journey and in the fellowship we share together as the people of God. This is a journey where we encounter hardships and difficulties, but we can take great joy and delight because we know the end. We know the final chapter. And God wins!
Hebrews tells us that Jesus experienced the anticipation of eternal joy even on the cross. “But for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross despising it’s shame.” (Hebrews 12:2). Hebrews is reminding us that Jesus was able to go through the cross because he had in mind the glory of heaven, the paradise of God that was awaiting Him. And even to the dying thief Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Our joy and joyful experiences might be interrupted in this life, but we hold on to the permanent joy of the Lord that is eternal and will never be interrupted again. Isaiah is picturing something greater! We are marching toward a kingdom whose joys never end. And as the psalmist says that “at the right hand of God there are pleasures for evermore.” So that’s the first picture, uninterrupted and unending joy established by God.
The Second Picture: NEW LIFE.
In Paradise Lost we are living under a curse that brings struggles and death. There are corporate dimensions to this – accidents, natural disasters like the recent storms that effected so many. The storm in the Philippines most recently. The storms that affected Texas and Florida and NC last year. Just a few years ago a tsunami took thousands of lives. More recently we endured the horrid Covid Pandemic.
In 2023, nearly 62 million people died worldwide, which averages to about 7,000 deaths per hour.
In the United States, there have been 103,436,829 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
In the US there were 1,228,289 confirmed deaths from Covid 19. This is the most of any country.
Today we think about our veterans as we celebrated Veteran’s Sunday this past week. History records the innumerable cost of war in terms of human life and the sacrifices that have been made. It’s estimated that 50-80 million people between soldiers and civilians died in WWII. More personally, my uncle was killed at the age of 19 in Korea. My father-in-law was a POW in Korea for over two years and made it out thankfully. He was able to have a family. Many never made it home.
Isaiah talks about the untimely deaths especially of children. In one of my first appointments (I did make it through the Board of Ministries thanks be to God) a young girl 19 years of age was pregnant. The baby girl was born but there were complications. She was flown to a Children’s Hospital, but she only lived for 24 hours. As a young pastor, but even as an older pastor we struggle with what to say in these circumstances. What words can you say? I was reminded of the scripture that says With the Lord one day is as a thousand years. And a thousand years is one day. (2 Peter 3:8). It’s true. We know that life here is often cut short in an untimely manner. Isaiah is speaking about this dilemma of living in Paradise Lost. But he’s envisioning a time when our joys as well as life itself will not be interrupted or ended so briefly.
On the other side of this I was reading recently about the oldest man alive. His name is Maba Gotho and he lived in Java in Indonesia. To our knowledge he was the oldest living person. He died in 2017 at the age of 146. But despite his incredible longevity, Mr. Gotho indicated that he really wanted to die. He said, “My grandchildren are all independent. All of his siblings, all ten of them have died. He’s had four wives that have died. All his children have died. He’s outlived them all. His nearest living relatives are his grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren. When I read his story it was a clear reminder of the temporary nature of our life even for those like Mr. Gotho who live to be 146.
Well, what are we to make of this? Again, the reality is a day or even 145 years is still a dash. But even if we live those long years, we are longing for something greater, longing for something better, longing for something more fulfilling, longing for something that is permanent. Like Abraham we are longing for the City of God. Ecclesiastes reminds us, “The Lord has placed eternity in our hearts.” It’s interrupted here -life. It ends here – life. But we are looking to an eternal dimension where God is making all things new and the continuity of relationships continue in that eternal dimension. God is making eternal life available through His power and His kingdom. And we see signs and evidence of it even now in this life. Ultimately, eternal life is given through Jesus Christ. This has been God’s plan from the beginning. So, the Second Picture is: New Life even in the midst of our mortality. This is a vision of hope and life that never ends.
The Third Picture: NEW HARMONY IN CREATION
This one really caught my attention! And maybe it’s because of the context in which we are living right now. In this last picture Isaiah says that the lion will eat straw like the ox. The wolf and the lamb will feed together. There will be unbroken correspondence between people and their neighbors and between humanity and nature itself. This is perhaps the part that I long for the most. A place where there is harmony among people and harmony in the creation among human life as well as animal life. Again, going back Genesis and the original paradise when God brought the animals to Adam who named them all (Genesis 2:19-20). What an incredible picture of harmony and restoration that we see in this vision of Isaiah!
I was blessed to make a trip to Maui for one of my wife Beth’s triathlon events in 2016. While there we happened to visit the rain forest. It was a true picture of earthly paradise. One of the visitor guides at the place we stayed told us we would see a rainbow every day. I thought he was just advertising the island. But I was wrong. We saw a rainbow every day. (Show pictures of rainbows here). But you know that place was created by a volcano and hot molten lava coming up through the earth’s crust. It is hard to imagine how those elements created the island paradise of Maui. I looked around and saw all this beautiful vegetation, like mangoes and starfruit. Our guide told us there was nothing poisonous there. There were 7 or 8 varieties of ginger. We sliced them off and drank out of the stem of ginger just like it was a straw. And all the time I was thinking this was created by hot, molten lava!! Really? He told us there were no snakes there. And there’s no poison ivy!! Nothing poisonous! As we were walking through that place, I was still looking all around for snakes and poison ivy and all the things associated with walking around the woods in our region. But there was nothing poisonous or harmful there. The only thing they did have there were monster mosquitoes. I’m praying, Lord, let there not be mosquitoes in paradise! If there are they will not bite you! But seriously, for me It was a true foretaste of glory. There were no predators there, nothing that would harm or injure. Wow! Sounds a lot like Isaiah! But it is only a foretaste or prelude to the greater new creation coming. Amazing! It corresponds to the Christmas hymn, Joy to the World…He comes to make his blessings known far as the curse is found! Isaiah is envisioning this picture of paradise where the curse is removed and we have total harmony in creation again. Alleluia!
Well, some may say that this is only hyperbole. It is only a vision… so how literally we take this may be a matter of interpretation. But like other prophecies and visions of Isaiah, I think it’s the real truth of what God desires and what God has always desired even when he first created and placed Adam and Eve in the paradise of the Garden of Eden.
But here’s the thing…and the greater spiritual implications of these pictures of paradise. When the gospel goes out and the kingdom of God enters into our hearts it brings transformation. In a deeply spiritual and real sense, it transforms wolves; it transforms lions, it transforms persecutors of the church like Saul into its greatest missionary. It transforms the hardest hearts and minds to see, to envision, to behold the love of God and experience the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is a great awakening for all of us in Paradise Lost, to behold what our Lord is bringing about when the kingdom fully comes.
Friends, I’m excited about this!! And I’m excited about what the gospel can bring to our world. If we can’t get excited about this, we need to close the doors and go home! But we all should be excited about these pictures of paradise in the midst of the darkness, in the midst of division… in the midst of the things that separate…In the midst disharmony…even in the midst of death… We’re marching to Zion to fairer worlds on high where there is eternal joy, eternal life and eternal peace and harmony over all creation! For as Revelation puts it…all the former things that bring sorrow, death and disharmony are gone! This is the fullness of God’s new creation! Alleluia!
And here is the other part…as we come to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, we know that God has already come to earth in Jesus and that God’s kingdom is initiated in Jesus Christ. And if we belong to Jesus, we are part of this movement of God’s kingdom in our world. And it starts in us and goes through us so others can see pictures of paradise unfolding in our lives as we are being transformed into the image of Christ… In a great sense you and I become pictures of paradise for others… If my friend Leon were here today…he would say, “Let the church say, ‘Amen’”.
May we pray. Lord, we recognize the difficulties of the time in which we live. We recognize problems and issues. We recognize interrupted joys and uncertainties of life. We recognize divisions and disruption in creation… all these things that negatively affect our lives and the whole creation. As Paul put it… the whole creation is moaning/groaning for its redemption…But O Lord help us see these pictures of paradise and the greater reality of what you’re going to accomplish, the fullness of your kingdom even now breaking into our world. May these pictures inspire us to be bearers of the Good News, messengers of hope, light in the midst of darkness, salt to the world around us. In the name of Christ, I pray. Amen.