This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “New Heavens & New Earth” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 7, 1990.
About this sermon
Two things make the Old Testament prophets hard for us to read. Premillennial and postmillennial schemes both stumble here, because they fail to see events from God’s side. Isaiah 65:17-25, with the wolf and lamb feeding together, describes the heavenly kingdom itself.
Sermon transcript
Today we are reading from Isaiah chapter 65. This is the word of God. I permitted myself to be sought by those who did not ask for me. I permitted myself to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, hear my, hear my. To a nation which did not call on my name.
I have spread out my hands all day long to a rebellious people who walk in a way which is not good, following their own thoughts. A people who continually provoke me to my face, offering sacrifices in gardens, and burning incense on bricks. Who sit among groves, sit among graves, and spend the night in secret places, The weak spine’s flesh and the broth of uncleaned meat is in their pots. Who said? Keep to yourself. Do not come near me, for I am holier than thou. These are smoke in my nostrils, a fire that burns all the day. The cold is written before me. I will not keep silent, but I will repay.
I will even repay into their bosom, both their own iniquities and the iniquities of their father together, says the Lord, because they have burned incense on the mountains and scorned me on the hills. Therefore I will measure their poor work into their bosom.
Thus says the Lord. As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one says, do not destroy it, for there is benefit in it, so I will act on behalf of my servants in order not to destroy all of them. I will bring forth osprey from Jacob, and an heir of my mountains from Judah, even my chosen ones shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there. And Charon shall be a pasture land for flocks, and the valley of Accord a resting place for birds, for my people who seek me.
But you who forsake the Lord, who forget my holy mountain, who set a table for fortune, and who fill cups with mixed wine for destiny, I will destine you for the sword, and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter, because I called, and you did not answer. I spoke, and you did not hear. And you did evil in my sight, and chose that in which I did not delight.
Therefore thus says the Lord God, Behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry. Behold, my servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty. Behold, my servants shall rejoice, but you shall be put to shame. Behold, my servants shall shout joyfully with a glad heart, but you shall cry out with a heavy heart, and you shall wail with a broken spirit.
And you will leave your name for a curse to my chosen one. and the Lord God will slay him. But my servants will be called by another name, because he who is blessed in the earth shall be blessed by the God of truth, and he who swears in the earth shall swear by the God of truth, because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from my sight.
For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, And the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing and her people for gladness. I will also rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people. And there will no longer be heard in her the voice of weeping and the sound of crying. No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days.
For the youth will die at the age of one hundred, and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred shall be thought a curse. And they shall build houses and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit, they shall not plant and another eat. for as the lifetime of a tree, so shall be the days of my people, and my chosen ones shall wear out the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, but bear children for calamity, for they are the offspring of those blessed by the Lord, and their descendants with them. It will also come to pass that before they call, I will answer, and while they are still speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall graze together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food.
There shall be no evil or harm in all my holy mountain,” says the Lord. we ask you our father that the hymns and psalms that we sing would seal the certainties of our heart that we are devoted to you we ask that the prayers that we offer would in fact be prayers that arise from our souls that we would be intent upon hearing your word that we would give ourselves before you for the sake of service in your name and lord we ask that your word be lodged well within us that we hearing it would keep it before us and that it lord would then be and that ends it that standard that banner that goes before us, that declares for all, that we in fact follow the way that our God has outlined for us by His Word. All of this reflecting, of course, the perfections of your Son, our Savior, for indeed we follow His training. Praise be to your name, our God. Amen. Our journey in considering the New Heavens and the New Earth has taken us from passages that consider indirectly that subject, now to those passages that take up the subject directly and properly. We have looked at the end of Hebrews, the suggestion there in the 12th chapter, of the coming shaking of all things the consequence of that shaking being the abiding character of a kingdom granted to us which cannot be shaken this is our inheritance this is the gift of grace through God and His work. This is God’s gift to us through Jesus Christ.
We have also looked at 1 Corinthians 5.17.
In that passage, the Apostle Paul has told us that the very patterns of the new creation are already asserting themselves for us. The very patterns of that new creation are asserting themselves for us. If any man be in Christ, he is new creation. Old things are passed away, old, all things are become new. We, by the reconciling work of God, have been made participants in the new creation order. We are a part of the new creation.
And we know that the new creation, unlike the prior creation, the former creation, the new creation will not pass away. The new creation is eternal. This creation will pass. But the new creation will not. And you, who believe in Jesus Christ, you who have been reconciled, are a part then of that new creation, that new creation for you. As it endures, so do you. Jesus himself, in the 19th chapter of Matthew, speaks about the regeneration of all things.
He makes mention to his disciples. He makes mention of it to those whose vision is very short, very limited, quite provincial, very narrow, improperly so. The scope of their vision extends nearly to events close at hand. The expectation that they have, that in fact, when they reach Jerusalem, Jesus is going to take up his reign, an earthly kingdom will be established, and they will be given primary positions of authority within that. Jesus speaks of a new order, an order in which that whole Jerusalem, with its administration, will pass. A new order coming about in which, through regeneration, there will not be any diminishment whatsoever. The glory of this kingdom, which Jesus Christ is in fact establishing, do not grow dim one with.
What is spoken of us, what is spoken to us concerning the new creation, the new heavens and the new earth, what is intimated on earth, what is spoken of, spoken about so far, also has a foundation in the angels. And we have turned specifically to the prophet Isaiah. And this is what we have said about the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is a prophet of the vision of God’s fullness. We all remember his call. Isaiah 6, an incredible account given us concerning Isaiah’s confrontation with God in the temple, and how there goes forth from God’s messengers in that scene the acclamation of God’s holiness. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with His glory. Now, that vision of God’s holiness is also indicative of God’s actions with regard to His people.
For they are coming under the sentence of judgment, that rightly, due to their sin. And because of that, then, God will visit His people with a chastisement, a severe chastisement. a chastisement so severe that it appears as if there is no escape whatsoever. There is, in fact, no hope. Such is the vision of God’s holiness that God’s people, in their sin, are left devastated. They are left facing the grave. Thus, the message of the exile, the coming exile, is a message of death read out over the people of God. God’s holiness, His justice, their sin, His judgment, their exile, their death. Hope? It is gone. Their circumstance and situation is utterly hopeless before God’s just judgment. Amazing.
Isaiah is not merely the prophet of that vision of God’s holiness. He is the prophet of God’s promised comfort. As we move to the latter chapters of Isaiah, chapters 40 through 66, we see that comfort spoken of time and time again. God’s justice will come.
The exile is certain. But there is that message of remedy. Comfort ye my people, says the Lord. We know those lines, we know that passage. Speak kindly to Jerusalem, call out to her that her warfare has ended. that her iniquity has been removed and she has received at the Lord’s hand double for all of her sins.
Death, hopelessness in exile, but yet restoration. God’s comfort working yet for those who have no hope. If they have been given over to death by God, now He restores them and brings them back to life. If they have been given over to the grave, their restoration will mean resurrection. If the exile is death, the restoration is resurrection. That’s what’s going on. God is preparing His people for the greatness of His work which shall be consummated in the Lord Jesus Christ. For even here, in the Prophets of the Old Testament, resurrection is preached. Life out of death.
Rescue for God’s people. even though their circumstance is utterly hopeless. We must not see ourselves far removed. It must not become to us just one more rehearsal of the same old story. For we are told that we are dead in trespasses and insults, and only because of God’s gracious work has our hopeless condition been remedied. The prophet Isaiah is not without his vision of the Lord Jesus Christ.
While he is the prophet of God’s holiness and just judgment, the prophet of God’s promised comfort as well, restoration from exile, he is the prophet of God’s servant, that one through whom he shall achieve deliverance, through whom he shall work his salvation, the one through whom he shall accomplish atonement for his people.
We know of the servant songs that appear in the latter portions of Isaiah’s prophecy. Some time ago, we spent some time studying four of those servant songs. We concentrated upon the most famous of those servant songs, Isaiah 53. which the servant of God is portrayed for us as that one through whom God will work his restoration. All of this spoken by a prophet who lived 700 years before the birth of Christ.
Finally, the outcome of the work of this servant is not merely to restore us to a condition a condition that is capable of loss, interruption, diminishment. No, the work of this servant shall be unto an environment that cannot be lost, that will never be diminished in glory at all. So Isaiah the prophet, of that vision of God’s holiness, the prophet of God’s promised comfort, the prophet of God’s servant, and the prophet of the new heavens and the new earth, the point to which he has been pressing throughout the prophecy all along, so that in the concluding chapters, chapters sixty-five and sixty-six, we find him specifically speaking about the new heavens and the new earth as the end point to which he has been pressing all along. Now it is important for us as we take up specifically the particulars of this prophetic vision to catch something of the angle to the prophet’s point of view. Why is it? that when we read the Prophets, we so easily become confused. Why is it that there are only certain portions of the Prophets to which you turn? Why is it that wading through prophecy becomes an ordeal?
Oftentimes, an experience that leaves us utterly bewildered We have trouble sorting things out. It’s not just the words they use, the references they make to various sites and locations in the ancient world, Israel and beyond. It’s not merely the allusions that they make to various features of that world in which they live, or even past history, Israel’s past history. It’s the difficulty that we have seemingly sorting out the time frames. We become confused because it’s as if a number of elements from different periods of time collide. We’re confused also because the language that the Prophet uses often seems to us much more realistic, or shall I say, unrealistic, then we can accept. In certain portions, restoration seems to bring before our eyes a gathering of all of the nations of the earth at Jerusalem.
All the nations, not just some, all of the nations are gathered to Jerusalem for this incredible feast. Everybody’s going to have a great time at this magnificent feast. There’s going to be the best of wine and no end to it. They’re going to make their wine from bunches of grapes that weigh a hundred pounds. There’s going to be the choicest cuts of meat.
No one do that. No one. No one gets the poor cuts. Everybody gets a choice cut. From the greatest And everybody gathered together at Jerusalem for this great feast to celebrate in such a way that there will be no emptiness in them, there will be no recollection of former times of distress, And whatever sorrows or whatever problems there have been formerly, those will be removed completely. Every eye will be dry. No sorrow, no sighing, no dissatisfaction whatsoever.
So we have. In the language of the prophets, things that confuse us, they speak of a future time in which all present blessings seem to be heightened immeasurably. Fountains of living water pouring out from under the temple. Temple priesthood so expansive that it’s beyond even the territory of Israel. to comprehend the vision, the item. But with respect to time as well, don’t think it’s strange that you have trouble understanding. Here is the generation to which Isaiah speaks. He talks to them as if the exile were already accomplished. He lived more than a hundred years before the exiles of Phrax.
In his day, it was the Assyrians who came down and laid siege to Jerusalem. And Isaiah sees that siege of Jerusalem as if it were a prophecy of the coming siege of the Babylon in a hundred years. Yes. And he treats that siege by the Assyrians as if it were successful, as if human. The Assyrians succeeded, they showed, and Israel, Jerusalem were laid waste. That’s it. Give it up for the devil. And in their success, carrying off the Israelites, which exile, just as they have done to the ten northern tribes, say, in 22 BC.
So, against the background of the same, of the experiences of his own time, he’s looking forward with this eye of the spirit, and seeing things work out, he’s tearing apart, he’s becoming extracted, and it’s going to take at least 100 years yet in the future. Death is imminent. The Lord has not made a call. The circumstance is utterly hopeless. If there is any hope for forever, you must trust in the Lord.
And where Israel is to be saved, when Jerusalem is saved, in Isaiah’s day, he’s treated as the restoration, as the resurrection. But that’s not all. As he looks down to the core of the earth, he sees distant events close at hand. He sees yet distant events close at hand, not up into the immediate district, not just the exile into Babylon in a certain white-faced place, not just the restoration, but with that, The ultimate purpose of God’s work out is final time for His people. He sees repeatedly the events of His own time, yet time, that future time of God, God said, shall come. God Himself. How was Hrusyant saying, day by day, and ideally by the coming of God? How are the Israelites going to progress from Babylon 100 years, 150, 100% years later? By the coming of God.
But in keeping, but in keeping With that prophetic vision, Isaiah sees even beyond the advanced media and the advanced media. This is a hundred years, a hundred and seventy years’ recognition. He sees one born out into the wilderness, as if that one, born out into the wilderness, were identifying himself implicitly with the people of the new generation, That walking in the wilderness, fly back, prepare me and raise the wolf. And every mountain will be brought low, and every valley will be made numb. The Lord Himself comes.
The kind of binoculars that the prophet has, those close, distant events, and as long as, as if he sees those distant events then, marked out for him on a mural, a big note, and there’s no differentiation time-wise with regard to anything, he sees, the rescue of Jerusalem from the Assyrians on the same plane as the rescue of Israel from the Babylonians, as he does the coming of John the Baptist in the wilderness and the appearance of God’s Messiah, and the beginning, the commencement of the day in which God will establish the new heavens and the new earth.
He sees it all together. to those kind of binoculars, that he looks at the future. So everything comes together, and it’s not a single plane. And it’s only then, by the outwardness of God’s presented program, that everything then begins to be differentiated. He begins to make a distinction. Now, that helps us with regard to defying God. As God then works, everything starts to fall out.
We gain the three-dimensional perspective to this mural. We begin to perceive the distant timeline between events pre-spoken. But I say, I think it all depends. He’s honing the outworking of the history of redemption that will make his plan appear to us.
This is the mistake, I must say. This is the mistake that most of the Believers make in their understanding of prophetic literature. They refuse to take into consideration the historical exegesis that God made himself of the prophetic vision. Their binoculars still see things quite one-dimensional, ain’t they? God’s grace, however, the fact that we’re given to the Church, and we’re itself given to God’s seed, is three-dimensional.
So that helps us timewise, but what about all of this realism for other people’s language? Here we have it. Chapter 65, verses 17 and following. You can read it there. Now let me ask you, let me ask you, of what is this a vision? What is the Lord, through Isaiah the prophet, describing for us here, in the 17th verse of the 65th chapter, earlier?
Is it not the eternal state? Will there be any end to the new heavens and the new earth? Verse 17. Are you expecting there to be any end to the new heavens and the new earth? Do you have any reason to imagine that from what you know of Scripture and the outworking of history, there’s going to be an end to the New Heavens and the New Earth? No, you don’t!
This is the eternal state that’s being described for you here. God is giving His answer to His people with respect to their hope. And here it is, reaching its apex. For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. whole new environment, former things will not be remembered or come to mind,” he says. And he goes on, “…but be glad and rejoice forever in what I create. That is, what I create by way of the recreation. For behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing, and her peoples for gladness.”
That’s the character of the city now. And in the city, there’s not one note of sorrow, that’s all. The city which is being established here is completely filled with rejoicing and gladness. What he’s describing here is the eternal state, and not only will the city be rejoicing, his people will be filled with gladness. That’s describing them perpetually, but he will rejoice in his city and be glad in his people.
Verse 19. We have it given to us at the end of that verse. It will no longer be heard in her voice of weeping or the sound of crying. We know that what is being described here now is a circumstance, a situation in which distress is an impossibility and in which death cannot be true.
So you come to verses 20 And following, particularly verse 20, what is the prophet’s intention when he talks about, no longer will there be an infant who lives but a few days. What’s the intention? Will there be any end to the life of anyone who is innocent?
This is where people become confused. He begins to use language the intent of which is to place before you an exaggeration of such a nature that should push beyond the limits of the natural, into the realm of the supernatural. He’s not here saying to you that infants will be born and that old men will in fact live out their days with satisfaction, he is not here saying to you that the youth will in fact live only to the age of 100, and the one who does not live to the age of 100 will be thought a curse. That’s not what he’s saying. What he’s saying there is there will be no end of days for any of God’s people, and death will be a complete impossibility. Why? Because in this city there is no weeping and there is no sorrow. But how do people take this verse?
Well, there must be coming a day in which, you see, Everybody is going to live to the age of 100 or more. And we’re going to have the perfect society on the earth. And only then can we live for hundreds of more years, and then we can be fully satisfied with our days, and we’ll die and never have to search God’s eyes anymore. This is the only way, the only way to this perfect society which is coming.
And this is not the justice of the prophetic vision and word. We go on with verses 21 and following. They shall build houses and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards, eat of their fruit. They shall not build, and another inhabit, and not plant, and another eat, and suffer, etc. What’s the intent here?
The intent is between the Almighty and the perpetual One. and one that is completely unearthly. Perfect spirit. Absolute soul. He takes those elements of the life of the people of the sun and ingests with hyperbole, exaggeration, so that those things that the people know very well become the media in which they see the rest. Why in the never-ending times, show us pieces of peace for everyone, all of the nations gathered in a city that cannot be destroyed, their labor not in vain, the absoluteness of that validity for the work of their hands, their service unto God.
Verse 24, the immediate proximity of God to them, so close, that he will answer before they call while they still speak. Verse 25, the undoing of the curse. The lamb raising together with the wolf a lion eating straw like an ox. Do you expect in glory lions and oxes, lambs and wolves? What’s the point? Those who are utterly preoccupied with millennial dreams and fantasies It seems we have to insist upon these things. The point that God is making is He is establishing perfect peace.
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