Isaiah 65:17-25 *
In the name of Christ Jesus, dear friends:
If you tune your televisions to Channel 12 at 7:00 PM one week from today you will see the 100th episode of a program that has become a fixture of ABC’s Sunday night line-up. The name of the show is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and in case you have never seen it let me give you a brief description.
Every week the Extreme Makeover design team travels to a different part of the country and builds a house for a family, but not just any family. In order to be chosen potential families must send in a videotape to demonstrate that they have a legitimate need, and their stories of loss and deplorable living conditions will break your heart.
When the team arrives they send the family away on an all expenses paid vacation, and then the work begins in earnest. Within in one week’s time the team of volunteers demolishes the existing house and builds from the foundation up a brand new dream home.
The climax of the show comes when the family returns from vacation. As they stand on the other side of the street the only thing that separates them from their new home is a big coach bus. When everyone shouts in unison, “Move that bus,” the coach pulls away and a big, beautiful home comes into view. At this emotional moment family reactions range from screaming and laughing to hugging and high-fiving, and it is not uncommon to see a few tears.
I don’t know about the hugging and high-fiving part, but if this Saints Triumphant Sunday is anything like previous years I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few tears shed this morning. This morning we honor the memory of those people who have finished their lives in faith and now rest from their labors. Today we remember our Christian friends and family members who have gone on ahead of us into heaven. The fact that they are not with us anymore makes us sad, but the knowledge that we will see them again fills our hearts with joy.
Joy is the thread that runs through our sermon text for today. Joy in spite of our present problems. Joy because of God’s eternal promises. Today I invite you to listen to Isaiah’s prophetic words about the glorious future of God’s chosen people, words that give us great joy, words that might even cause us to shed tears of joy, words that can be called an…
EXTREME MAKEOVER: SAINTS TRIUMPHANT
EDITION
We can’t truly appreciate this beautiful prophecy unless we
understand what was happening where and when it was written. The prophet Isaiah lived about seven hundred
years before the time of Jesus, a dark and depressing time in
With one huge bite the Assyrian armies had devoured the ten
tribes to the north of
Even though God’s people had been spared for the time being, the future did not look bright. They were still surrounded by powerful enemies. They were still being harassed and oppressed. They were grateful for divine deliverance, but in the minds of many the Lord had only postponed the inevitable.
Were they correct in their assessment? Was God’s plan a lost cause? With Spirit-inspired confidence and poetic eloquence, Isaiah answered God’s critics with a clear and emphatic, “NO.” He assured the people that there was hope. He promised the people that God’s plan was on track. And as Isaiah approached the end of sixty six chapters of prophecy he told the people to prepare themselves for a radical transformation, or to put it in another way, an extreme makeover.
Before we look at the prophecy itself, we need to remember something about the nature of Isaiah’s prophecy. Isaiah doesn’t always pinpoint God’s promises to a specific time in the future. Some of his predictions are being fulfilled right now. Other prophecies won’t find their final fulfillment until Jesus returns on the Last Day. And there are also some prophetic passages that can be applied to the present and the future.
When we understand that Isaiah doesn’t always put everything into a nice, neat chronological order, it becomes much easier to appreciate his message, a message of comfort and hope for God’s people, then and now.
Isaiah begins: “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind” (17). If you don’t like your current situation, if you don’t like the way the world is going, if you don’t like the way your life is going, that’s okay. In fact, it’s a good sign that you aren’t attached to this sinful world because it isn’t going to last.
The present world is coming to an end, but that’s not all. So are all our memories of it. And that can be a very comforting thought. Every sin from your past that still haunts you, every thought that fills your heart with fear or keeps you up at night, every wrong you have forgiven but haven’t been able to forget, will be forgotten. Forever.
And that is just one of the reasons Isaiah tells us we can be
glad. Isaiah continues: “Be glad and rejoice forever in what I will
create, for I will create
What is more difficult for my little brain to comprehend is the
idea that God can delight in a sinful person like me. I have trouble understanding it, but I
believe it because that is what he says: “I
will rejoice over
God delights in his people because they are HIS people. He not only made us. He has also made us his own through his Son. Jesus satisfied God’s demands of perfection. Jesus sacrificed his life to save us from death. He takes away our sorrows. He wipes away our tears. And one day he will take us to a place where there will be no more tears.
“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; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed” (20).
This is one of those places in Isaiah where there seems to be a couple layers of prophecy. At the time these words were spoken they meant something very special to the people who heard them. These were people who were almost always at war. These were people who had come to expect that death would take their loved ones before their time. Isaiah offered God’s people hope with the promise: “What is normal for you now will be but a rare exception in the future.”
As comforting as those words were to the people who heard them for the first time, they are perhaps even more special to the people who are hearing them today, especially the Christians who have gathered in this house of God. Many of us have the events of this past week on our minds. Less than twenty-four hours ago there was a funeral for a three year old boy in this sanctuary.
It is only human to be sad when a loved one dies. It hurts even more when a child dies, but even at times like these God’s people are not without hope. We have hope because the sad events of our lives on earth will not even be a rare exception in heaven. In heaven there will be no sadness. In heaven there will be no funerals. In heaven “there will be no more death or mourning or crying on pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
While those words of John recorded in Revelation tell us what heaven will not be like, Isaiah paints for us a beautiful picture of what heaven will be like: “‘The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox…they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain’ says the LORD” (25).
A wolf eating next to a lamb without thinking about making that lamb his next meal. A lion eating straw like the ox instead of actually eating the ox (and lions can eat up to seventy five pounds of meat at one time). These are unlikely pictures. These unlikely pictures take us back to the Garden of Eden. These pictures remind us of a time when God’s creation lived in perfect harmony. These pictures anticipate a time of renewed and lasting peace.
Just imagine what that will be like. No more wars. No more violence. No more hatred. Just peace. The peace of God that surpasses all understanding. The peace that comes only from knowing Jesus. A peace that will never be interrupted. A peace that will never end.
It was exactly one year ago when a
When interviewed the members of the Koepke family didn’t hesitate to talk about their faith and trust in God, but the viewers didn’t get a chance to hear their testimony because almost all of it was left on the cutting room floor. There was, however, one subtle piece of Christian witness that did make it into the program.
Matt Koepke had a little saying he liked to use a lot, and so to honor his memory the Extreme Makeover team had those words engraved on a stone bench that found a permanent home in the backyard. If you saw the episode, you might remember his words: “There’s a lot of things to think about, but nothing to worry about.”
That saying doesn’t mention the name of God, but it speaks volumes about every believer’s relationship with God. In our day to day lives we have so many different things to think about, but if you stop and think about it we really have nothing to worry about.
We don’t have to worry about our loved ones who have died in the Lord because now they are with the Lord. We don’t have to worry about the seven people whose names are printed in the bulletin today because their names have also been written in God’s book of Life.
We don’t have to worry about doing enough to earn our place in heaven because Jesus has done everything for us. We don’t have to worry about paying for our sins because Jesus has paid our debt in full. Because of Jesus we don’t have to worry about what will happen when we die. Because Jesus has made us holy we are saints. Because Jesus has won the victory we are triumphant. Amen.