As we have seen over the last several weeks, we cannot just jump into the assigned text without stepping back and seeing the context. The context for Chapter 65 is the exile in Babylon which will not be for another 100 years.
Sometimes we think that all of the Jews remained faithful in exile and were patiently waiting for the return to Jerusalem. Actually, it was only a minority who felt that way. Some accommodated themselves to the new life and made the best of it. Some discovered a new life in Babylon and forgot about Jerusalem entirely. When the opportunity to leave came they chose to stay. Some over the course of the 70 years literally turned their backs on God and adopted the culture and religious practices of their captors. For them, the exile was not discipline but the last step in a long process of falling away from the faith. They found something better than God and truth. Here is how Isaiah describes them:
Chapter 59:1-4.
“Your lips have spoken falsely,
and your tongue mutters wicked things.
4 No one calls for justice;
no one pleads a case with integrity.
They rely on empty arguments, they utter lies;
they conceive trouble and give birth to evil.”
14 So justice is driven back,
and righteousness stands at a distance;
truth has stumbled in the streets,
honesty cannot enter.
15 Truth is nowhere to be found,
and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.”
Yet, there was still a remnant and we meet them in Chapter 63:
“I will tell of the kindnesses of the Lord,
the deeds for which he is to be praised,
according to all the Lord has done for us—
yes, the many good things
he has done for Israel,
according to his compassion and many kindnesses.
8 He said, “Surely they are my people,
children who will be true to me”;
and so he became their Savior.
9 In all their distress he too was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.[a]
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.”
In Chapter 64 we hear their confession and prayer:
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!
3 For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
4 Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
you were angry.
How then can we be saved?
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
7 No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and have given us over to our sins.
8 Yet you, Lord, are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord;
do not remember our sins forever.
Oh, look on us, we pray,
for we are all your people.
10 Your sacred cities have become a wasteland;
even Zion is a wasteland, Jerusalem a desolation.
11 Our holy and glorious temple, where our ancestors praised you,
has been burned with fire,
and all that we treasured lies in ruins.
12 After all this, Lord, will you hold yourself back?
Will you keep silent and punish us beyond measure?
They recognized their rebellion and that their false righteousness was simply hypocrisy. No one desired God – just the blessings of God. They had been given over to their sins and their hearts for God had shriveled up like leaves and then been blown away by their sin. God was silent. He had left them to their own devices.
But the remnant continues to plead for God to reveal himself again and to do awesome and unexpected things again. It is not simply the blessings they desire but they now desire the presence of God.
And in Chapter 65 God responds:
“I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me;
I was found by those who did not seek me.
To a nation that did not call on my name,
I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’
2 All day long I have held out my hands
to an obstinate people,
who walk in ways not good,
pursuing their own imaginations—
3 a people who continually provoke me
to my very face,
If you turn to Romans 10:20 you will see how Paul interprets these words of Isaiah:
“And Isaiah boldly says,
“I was found by those who did not seek me;
I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.”
But concerning Israel he says,
“All day long I have held out my hands
to a disobedient and obstinate people.”
This is Paul’s way of explaining how God has extended his grace to the Gentiles and how the Jews have been disobedient causing God to turn to the Gentiles to make the Jews jealous.
For Isaiah, these words are addressed to Israel in Babylon. I don’t think he is talking about the Gentiles here. It is the people in exile who have not asked for God and they have not sought him. They have not called on his name even when he has called out to them, “Here I am, Here I am.” All day long God has held out his hands to an obstinate people who walk in ways not good pursuing their own imaginations.
These are the same people we saw in the previous chapters who have turned their backs on God and have not only accommodated themselves to the Babylonian culture by compromising their beliefs and practices but they have become indistinguishable from the pagans.
All of what is described in verses 3-5 are cultic practices. They are practices that say they have moved their loyalty from God Almighty to Babylon and the gods of Babylon. The gods were never private gods in ancient times. They were always the gods of the State that supported the rights and powers of the State. If you worshipped the gods then you had moved your allegiance from God to the State and that became your primary loyalty. Your religion supported the State. It was not just a religious cult but a national cult and you became a part of the State as part of your worship. Not to do so was to be unpatriotic and enemies of the people.
Their imaginations have become distorted and they have opened themselves up to delusions. They have found a truth that is hidden from others. They have secret knowledge. They see behind the curtain.
“For those awash in anxiety and alienation, who feel that everything is spinning out of control, conspiracy theories are extremely effective emotional tools. For those in low status groups, they provide a sense of superiority: I possess important information most people do not have. For those who feel powerless, they provide agency: I have the power to reject “experts” and expose hidden cabals.” David Brooks
Those who do not hold the beliefs of Babylon are unclean. Only those who have bowed their knee to Babylon are true believers. They have, as Paul says in Romans 1, exchanged the truth of God for a lie. They have made an intentional choice to be deluded. They have not been overwhelmed or taken by force but have made an exchange of one thing for another.
Hannah Arendt wrote:
“The effectiveness..of propaganda demonstrates one of the chief characteristics of modern masses. They do not believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience; they do not trust their eyes and ears but only their imaginations, which may be caught by anything that is at once universal and consistent in itself. What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.”
Facts do not matter to people once their imaginations have been captured:
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
This is exactly what has happened to the people in Babylon who have lost any hope but that which is a false hope. In thinking they have discovered the hidden truth they have become deluded. In believing they are part of the inner circle they have stumbled into darkness. Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.”
Yet, as it was for Sodom and Gomorrah, so it will be for Israel. If there is but a remnant then God will withhold his judgment. God does not need a majority – only a few. He does not need mass approval – only the smallest number who have not bowed down to idols. For that few, he will save a nation.
“8 This is what the Lord says:
“As when juice is still found in a cluster of grapes
and people say, ‘Don’t destroy it,
there is still a blessing in it,’
so will I do in behalf of my servants;
I will not destroy them all.
9 I will bring forth descendants from Jacob,
and from Judah those who will possess my mountains;
my chosen people will inherit them,
and there will my servants live.”
This is the hope of the remnant in the face of the power of Babylon. While only a few, they will sing out of the joy of their hearts but those who have turned toward the idols will go hungry and thirsty. They will be put to shame and wail in brokenness of spirit. They will be left in the futility of their imaginations. Instead of living in the truth they will live in the lies they have accepted as truth.
Again, Hannah Arendt says:
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
But then this extraordinary passage:
17 “See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
18 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.
19 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.
20 “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;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach[a] a hundred
will be considered accursed.
21 They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 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 work of their hands.
23 They will not labor in vain,
nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,
they and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.
I know very little about the differences between premillennialism, amillennialism and postmillennialism but I do know that each of them interpret this passage differently. For some, this is a description of heaven itself. For others, this is a description of the thousand year reign of Christ. For others, this is a look at the future of the existing State of Israel itself.
After reading a number of interpretations I am going with the one that says what Isaiah is describing is not eternity but a state between here and there. It is what Christ prayed for that what is true in heaven would be true here in some way. The new heavens and earth would be new in the same sense that we have become new creatures in Christ.
- Lewis Johnson was for many years the Bible teacher at Believer’s Chapel in Dallas and here is how he puts it:
You know in the New Testament, it says that when I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I become a new creature. II Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17 says if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. And yet I am not a new creation entirely.
In the light of the context that when this text says I create a new heavens and a new earth, it means that there is going to be a renewing of the creation such as the renewing which took place when I believed in Jesus Christ but is not complete. That is going to be something like a resurrection of the creation here at the conclusion of the kingdom when there is to be a creation of a glorified universe by God like a resurrection in which we shall dwell forever. So it seems to me that what Isaiah is saying when he says, behold I create a new heavens and a new earth, is simply this: The troubles are going to be gone, Israel, because when the kingdom comes, we are going to have a situation in which all of these various blessings are going to be yours.
The final product is the eternal state, but this is the stage on the way and in the kingdom days when the Nation Israel, the living saints, are upon the earth and we are in the new Jerusalem with the resurrected saints of Israel enjoying the presence of the Lord,”
Another commentator put it this way:
“What is clear from the prophet’s message is that there is coming a marvelous new creation that will end the curse and its effects. A return from captivity to Israel could not have satisfied these prophecies, especially since the apostle picks them up and advances them. This, then, remains the glorious prospect of the righteous. But the sequence of the events, and how it will all be worked out, cannot be worked out with absolute certainty at this time.
The passage holds out the hope of a share in the world to come, the new creation of the LORD. God will renovate all things in this world to show what He had intended from the beginning. And that “season of refreshing,” that “world to come” as the Rabbis termed it, will see the removal of the curse and the fulfillment of all the promises. So those who respond to God’s call and serve Him faithfully are the heirs of that new creation.”
It is not the perfect world of heaven but it is a time when creation will return to what it once was. I had a sense of this in the first several weeks of COVID when there was little traffic, no noise pollution from planes and trucks, the sky was clear enough to see stars at night, animals were coming back to our yard and the world was cleaner, quieter and peaceful. It will be a world that is physical but purified in such a way that we will see what the Garden must have been like when there was fellowship with God. We will live in truth.
And that is where we leave the book of Isaiah. Not yet but someday. Not now but it is on the way. And that is why we call today the beginning of Advent. Let me close with this by Frederick Buechner.
Advent
The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised the baton.
In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.
You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart.
The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.
The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor.
But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of yourself somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.