ISAIAH 65:17-25

Isaiah 65:17-25“Mountain Strong”
Good morning. If you have your Bible, you can make your way to Isaiah chapter 65. I have titled this sermon “Mountain Strong,” but for reasons that will not be apparent until the very end of the sermon. I have no desire for the church to co-opt the catchy bumper-sticker that was plastered all over the high country for the past year. Part of me really wants to feel triumphant in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Look at how strong we are…look at how quickly we rebuilt! But the truth is, I have never felt that way. And I’ve talked to enough people to know that very few people feel triumphant. The problem is that nobody wants a bumper sticker that says MOUNTAIN TIRED. MOUNTAIN BROKEN. MOUNTAIN SCARED-WHEN-IT-RAINS-A-LITTLE-BIT. WATAUGA WOUNDED.
I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the tragic events of September 27, 2024, this week. (It was fitting that it rained all week). We saw God move in powerful ways. People cried out to God in their desperation & people were saved. Countless needs were met. Our church swung open the doors & overnight we 1) became Walmart, 2) a Red Cross shelter & 3) the operation center for the best disaster relief agency in the world. You left your damage homes & worked around the clock to bring the love of Christ to the community. Samaritan’s Purse brought in 16,000 people through this room. Our church raised & distributed over a half million dollars. Can you believe we got to be part of that? ALL PRAISE TO THE LORD! Over the next few weeks, we will be telling some of these stories on Sunday morning. I want to encourage you to take some space in your life groups to tell those stories. Give them voice & never forget what God did.
And yet… it is OK to acknowledge that we were dealt a catastrophic blow one year ago. It hurt. We don’t need to stuff the pain. Lives were lost. Homes were swept away. Fathers & children were swept away. These beautiful hills that brought stability & comfort are marked with ugly brown scars. The rebuilding is going great, but not everything can be rebuilt. It is OK to look back on that dark day one year ago & feel unspeakable sorrow & grief. I love this strong mountain community, but we carry a heavy burden.
For the morning, I want us to leave our burden behind & visit the future. I want us to behold the beauty & the glory of our king Jesus (who bears the scars of our redemption) in his completed kingdom. We can get discouraged in messy rebuilding process here & forget what God is building for his people. I don’t want us to forget. You might think this is escapist, but it is biblical. And it is the secret that has sustained the church for 2,000 years. We talk about heaven & we sing about heaven a lot. We don’t just tell stories about our past; we tell stories about our future! As we look at Isa.65 this morning, my prayer is that this vision of our future glory with king Jesus will shine some healing light on our wounds & help us through these heavy days. This is the only way we will be able to move forward with confidence.
I don’t think that modern Christians are dwelling on the future nearly enough. I know this because 1) I rarely hear people talk about our future life with Christ (we like to solve problems), & 2) I go to a lot of funerals where people are forced to talk about the future. It gets weird. It’s not fully formed. I think that a lot of Christians imagine that when we die, we will go to heaven, & that’s it. We will live with Jesus forever somewhere, up there. It’s going to be good because the Bible says it’s going to be good. Life is hard here, & it won’t be hard there. But that’s as far as our imagination will take us. But we must remember that our story does not end when we die & go to heaven. Heaven just the next step in God’s unfolding drama. We ultimately await the return of Jesus. When he comes back to the earth, he will resurrect the bodies of his saints. And then Isaiah 65 says that he will recreate the earth. Heaven will come down & we will dwell together with God on earth for all of eternity. That’s where our story is heading.
Let me try to explain why this matters. If your story ends with heaven when you die, that means that the only bit of truly human life that you will ever get to experience will take place here & now. So, you better start living. Once you die, you will never get to travel or eat food or plant a garden or pretty much anything else that you like to do as a human. But according to the Bible, we will enjoy a physical & human & earthy eternity with Jesus who will share a physical body. Our future life with God on the new earth will be more like this place than most of us imagine.
But I must quickly say that it will also be radically different. There are some significant differences between our lives on this broken planet & what we will experience on the new earth. And that’s basically what Isaiah will describe for the rest of the chapter. There are some key differences. For one, the burdens that we currently carry will not exist there. At the end of v17, Isaiah says that the former things will not be remembered or come into mind. Some people read this verse & suggest that we get a complete memory wipe when we get to heaven (like the way that you wipe the hard drive of a computer). But that’s not right. We will remember the cross. In some way, our memories must carry over into the new earth. I think Isaiah means that will not remember our current sorrows. The burdens that weigh us down here will not weigh us down there. As the poet Samwise Gamgee says, all the sad things will come untrue.
I imagine that when we get to the new earth, it will be like waking up from a bad dream. You know how horrible a nightmare feels, when people are dying, & you can’t do anything about it. But you also know the rush of joy that floods you in the morning when you wake up & remember that none of it was true. I think that is how we will feel when we are resurrected. I bet we talk about Hurricane Helene there. But we will talk about it the same way we talk about a dream over breakfast. In that world, hurricanes can’t form in the Atlantic & assassins don’t lurk on rooftops. Sad things do not belong in God’s kingdom. Only joy.
This is another key difference in the new earth. We will be flooded with an overwhelming sense of joy that will never diminish. Look at v.18. God says, “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;” When we wake up in the new earth, the first emotion that you will experience is joy. Pure joy. And once you catch it, it will never fade.
Unlike our own world, there will be no TRAGIC DEATH in the new earth. •You will never hear the cry of distress that a mother makes when she weeps over the casket of her son. •You will never have to consider the horror of a 2-foot-long casket in the new earth. They don’t make those there. •You will never have to grieve the loss of a young husband & father assassinated in the prime of his life. •You will not have to mourn the loss of a beloved football coach & friend who died far too young. •You will not have to say goodbye to a courageous pastor who died in his 50s and left 9 kids behind. Our life is filled with tragic death, but it is not invited there.
But that makes the next line a little confusing. Look at the end of v20. “For the young man shall die a hundred years old, & the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.” Wait… God creates new heavens & a new earth in v17, he eliminates tragic death in v.19, and then we conduct a funeral in v.20? This doesn’t add up. I didn’t realize how tricky this was when I decided to preach Isaiah 65, but we’re here, so we need to deal with it.
The big issue in this text is the timeline. Everybody agrees that God is going to destroy death forever. But when & how? Some of my commentaries believe that Isa65 is talking about the very last, final stage in redemptive history (& I’ve been preaching it that way). So, when we get to v20, they say that Isaiah is simply using a metaphor for eternal life. When it says that people will die at a ripe old age, it really means that people will live forever. I don’t want to be snarky, but that doesn’t make much sense to me. I tend to agree with John Piper who says that death is an odd metaphor for eternal life. So I have another stack of commentaries that tell me that v20 is describing the millennial reign of Christ & not the very end of history. When Jesus returns & sets up his millennial kingdom, tragic death will be eliminated but people will still die & sinners will still walk the earth – for 1,000 years at least – and then God will create the new heavens & the new earth. The hard part about this explanation is that Isaiah has already signaled in v17 that we are in the new heavens & the new earth. So, it’s not perfect there, either.
Have you ever thought about what you are going to do in the new creation? If we’re talking about similarities & differences, surely work is off the table. Heaven is rest, it is paradise. We will drink lemonade. Perhaps – but according to the Bible, we’ll also grow the lemon tree. Of course, as we just mentioned, Isaiah 65 could be referring to the millennial reign of Christ, but there are enough signs pointing to the fact that we will, in fact, work for all of eternity on a recreated earth. But there is a key difference between the work there and the work here. Work in the new earth will actually work! We will build houses & dwell in them. We will plant gardens & eat the fruit. You can actually grow a tomato!
God will make a new creation – but if you are in Christ, you are already a new creation.God will bring perfect joy – but you can already rejoice in the Lord!God will destroy death – but death has already been defeated!God will remove the curse – but we can already work with purpose here!God will walk with us in the cool of the day – but we can already enter his throne!God will remove our fears – but we have already been freed from anxiety!God will make his mountain strong – but our church is already united with a resurrected savior. Our strength is in Jesus.
I’ll close with this word. You can’t spend a week living in the earth without also being extremely conscious of hell. I wasn’t expecting this, but the descriptions of an eternal hell are always right next to the descriptions of the new creation. Look at the last verse of Isaiah in the next chapter. Hell is the terrifying reality for the rebellious sinners who refuse to repent. Don’t leave this place without giving your life to Christ. He died on the cross to save you from that dreadful eternity. Turn to him.