“Your Light Has Come”
Isaiah 60:1-22
June 11, 2023 (You Tube)
In chapter 59
of Isaiah, we saw that Israel thinks they have been sent into exile because God
is unable to help them, but they are wrong – their sin sent them into exile.
God is Merciful and Just, and in God’s Justice, sin must be paid for in kind. This is not fully completed in their exile,
but the seriousness of their sin is made clear to them. As the chapter ends, God says He will save His
people, He will redeem His people, He will save His chosen, and remember the covenant
He made with them through all generations.
And the
future of Israel will look like this:
First, the Light and the Glory of
the Lord has come.
“Arise, shine, for your light has
come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall
cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon
you, and his glory will be seen upon you.”
Israel had been in a pagan land – in
darkness – for her sin. They were in the
darkness that covers the earth – even today – the thick darkness that covers
the people who do not believe, and God raises His Light and His Glory among
them – and they see it. God delivers
them from captivity and brings them back to Jerusalem – to the City of Zion.
But Who is the Glory and the Light
that they see when they return to Jerusalem?
Zechariah prophesies:
“And you, child, will be called the
prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to
give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because
of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide
our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:76-79, ESV).
And we see very quickly that the fulfillment
of God’s promise to Israel does not all come to pass at once. They are freed from captivity. They return to Jerusalem. God’s Light and Glory is among them, and they
recommit themselves to the covenant God made with them. But the fullness of the Redeemer in Light and
Glory as Zechariah prophecies does not come for some hundreds of years.
“And nations shall come to your
light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all
around, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall
come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. Then you shall
see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and exult, because the abundance of
the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.”
Nations and
kings will be drawn to the light of the Redeemer that is seen in Israel – in
all those who believe in the Savior.
They will come from all around the world.
These are the
Gentiles – the non-Jews. The people of
Israel are a witness to all the other peoples of Who Salvation is. And the Gentiles will continue to come until
the end of the age – as Jesus says, “They will fall by the edge of the sword
and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot
by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:24,
ESV).
Also, the
sons and daughters of Israel will return from captivity, and the world – the
Gentiles – will see this miracle that Cyrus – remember Cyrus? – would let
Israel return and instruct the nations to give Israel everything they need to
rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple.
“Moreover, I make a decree regarding
what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of this house
of God. The cost is to be paid to these men in full and without delay from the
royal revenue, the tribute of the province from Beyond the River. And whatever
is needed—bulls, rams, or sheep for burnt offerings to the God of heaven,
wheat, salt, wine, or oil, as the priests at Jerusalem require—let that be
given to them day by day without fail, that they may offer pleasing sacrifices
to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons” (Ezra 6:8-10,
ESV).
The Light and the Glory of Lord have
come in delivering Israel from captivity.
It also comes in the Person of Jesus, Who saves all those who will
believe until the end of the age – from the Jews and the Gentiles.
Second, the Gentiles and their
sacrifices are accepted.
“A multitude of camels shall cover
you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They
shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of
the LORD. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you; the rams of
Nebaioth shall minister to you; they shall come up with acceptance on my altar,
and I will beautify my beautiful house.”
Believing Gentiles were only allowed
in the outermost part of the Temple.
They could not engage in the regular worship and offering of sacrifices
that the Jews did. But the day would
come – as we see here – when Gentile believers and their sacrifices would be
accepted in the Temple alongside the Jews.
The Gentiles and Jews are equal before God in their Salvation in Jesus
Alone.
Paul writes, “For as many of you as
were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all
one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring,
heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:27-29, ESV).
No matter who
you are or where you have come from, if you believe savingly in Jesus – the
Gospel – you are one with all other believers in Christ, and you are welcome – with
all other believers – to come into the throne room of God to worship.
Third, the
nations come with joy.
“Who are
these that fly like a cloud, and like doves to their windows? For the
coastlands shall hope for me, the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your
children from afar, their silver and gold with them, for the name of the LORD
your God, and for the Holy One of Israel, because he has made you beautiful.”
Have you ever
watched the clouds moving along through the sky? Or a dove – or another bird – flying
down to land on a windowsill or some other perch? The nations around Israel are
moving towards Jerusalem – all those who believe – are joyfully longing, both
physically and spiritually to experience being in Jerusalem – in Zion. They come expectantly from near and far –
from the coastlands near Israel – all the way to Tarshish in modern Turkey.
The nations come
from far and near, bringing the children of Israel that had been lost to the
many exiles and captivities they had endured.
The nations bring their silver and their gold to offer up to God in
sacrifice and praise and worship. They
expect to meet with God in a special way in Jerusalem, so they come rejoicing
in the Name of the Lord because the Holy One of Israel has caused them to
believe and become one with Christ and His people. And because God has made them beautiful.
In Zechariah
3, a vision of the high priest Joshua is given where Joshua is pictured as
wearing filthy clothes – his sin had made his clothes filthy. We are born
sinners, and we are filthy throughout our being because of it. In Zechariah 3, Joshua is dressed in
beautiful, clean robes, and all those who believe in Jesus savingly are
cleansed and made beautiful. If you
believe, you are beautiful.
Since God has
changed us in this way, doesn’t it seem right that we – like the nations –
should come to worship joyfully, expectantly, ready with our sacrifice of
praise and our gifts of thanksgiving?
Fourth, repentance
leads to humble action.
When Israel
was taken into captivity, the Temple – among other structures – was destroyed. But when King Cyrus freed the Jews and sent
them back to Jerusalem, he commanded that the nations should give them
everything they needed to rebuild – as we saw earlier.
“Foreigners shall build up your
walls, and their kings shall minister to you; for in my wrath I struck you, but
in my favor I have had mercy on you. Your gates shall be open continually; day
and night they shall not be shut, that people may bring to you the wealth of
the nations, with their kings led in procession. For the nation and kingdom that
will not serve you shall perish; those nations shall be utterly laid waste. The
glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the cypress, the plane, and the pine, to beautify
the place of my sanctuary, and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The
sons of those who afflicted you shall come bending low to you, and all who
despised you shall bow down at your feet; they shall call you the City of the
LORD, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.”
God justly struct
Jerusalem in His Wrath and sent them into exile, but in His Mercy, He brought a
remnant back – as He promised. Even
today, God is bringing His remnant to Himself out of all the peoples of the
earth, and He will bring us – and them – in through the gates to Zion until the
last of the remnant has returned, and then His Wrath will be loosed on all the people
and nations who rejected Him.
Jesus says,
“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal
life” (Matthew 25:46, ESV).
All those who
persecuted believers and then came to believe themselves will come into the
church – into Zion – humbly – and they will seek to support and beautify His
Temple – and that includes all of us, does it not? Yet, all we who have believed will be made
holy and glorified, and we shall all be “the City of the Lord, the Zion of the
Holy One of Israel.”
Fifth, God
promises His people transformation.
“Whereas you have been forsaken and
hated, with no one passing through, I will make you majestic forever, a joy
from age to age.”
Israel had been hated, Jerusalem had
been destroyed, everyone avoided it, and the people were sent away into
captivity, but God brought them back, and God will bring the whole remnant He
intends to save back, and He will make us majestic and a joy forever and ever –
not just majestic and a joy to each other, but to God. God will make the remnant a people worthy of
Him until the last day.
“You shall suck the milk of nations;
you shall nurse at the breast of kings; and you shall know that I, the LORD, am
your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. Instead of bronze I
will bring gold, and instead of iron I will bring silver; instead of wood,
bronze, instead of stones, iron.”
God promises – as the Lord and
Savior and Redeemer of His people – that the greatest of nations, the greatest
of people will provide the sustenance of Jerusalem. God will provide more than
is asked for – gold instead of silver, and so forth.
John records how it will be in the
perfected Zion: “Then the angel showed
me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne
of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on
either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit,
yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of
the nations” (Revelation 22:1-2, ESV).
“I will make your overseers peace and
your taskmasters’ righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation
or destruction within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation, and
your gates Praise.”
Israel will come out of a time of
violence and death and destruction, and God promises that – at the end of the
age – their overseers and taskmasters will no longer be the people who
oppressed them all of those years, but peace and justice will reign over them. Violence, devastation and destruction will no
longer occur in Zion – in the land of the remnant – the people of God. Rather, the city of the remnant will be
within Salvation and Peace.
Can you believe it? Do you believe that God will gather the
remnant into the New Jerusalem at the end of the age and there will be no more violence,
devastation, destruction? When we turn
on the news for five minutes, do we still believe this will be?
In the New Jerusalem – I don’t think
there will be TVs or news programs, but if there was a news program to watch,
it would be all glory and worship to God our Lord and Savior and Redeemer for
bringing us into Salvation and Peace through Jesus Christ.
Peter writes, “But the day of the
Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar,
and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the
works that are done on it will be exposed.
“Since all
these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in
lives of holiness and godliness, waiting
for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens
will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they
burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new
earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:10-13, ESV).
Everything –
including all we who believe – will be transformed and made glorious.
Sixth, God’s
people will be righteous.
“The sun shall be no more your light
by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the LORD will be
your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more
go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the LORD will be your everlasting
light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. Your people shall all be
righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the
work of my hands, that I might be glorified. The least one shall become a clan,
and the smallest one a mighty nation; I am the LORD; in its time I will hasten
it.”
The sun and the moon won’t be the
light in the New Jerusalem; the Lord will be our light.
There are cultures that worshipped
the sun and the moon among other natural objects – and we know that God’s
people gave in to worshipping pagan gods – like we worship money and power and
so forth, but in the Kingdom, there will be no delusions about what is true and
glorious.
John writes, “And night will be no
more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their
light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5, ESV).
And the people of God – all those
who believe after the exile – and all believers throughout time and space –
will be made righteous. God has chosen a
remnant for Himself, and when the time of trial has ended for all of us, God
will make us righteous us for His sake – that He would be glorified.
This is not something we do, as John
tells us, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave
the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the
will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13, ESV).
And, again, Paul writes, “For by
grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is
the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are
his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10, ESV).
And we have no need to fear that
God’s will for His people will be kept from coming to pass: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a
good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ”
(Philippians 1:6, ESV).
There is good
news for the people of Israel – Jerusalem – Zion – the remnant who are God’s
chosen people. After we have endured
discipline, God, our Savior, the Lord Jesus, will bring us into the New
Jerusalem and make us righteous to live with Him in peace and joy
forevermore. So, let us not lose hope,
and let us tell everyone the Gospel – that God came to earth in the Person of
Jesus, lived a perfect life under God’s Law, suffered and died for all of the
sin of all of His chosen, rose from the dead, and ascended back to His throne
at the right hand of the Father – and God will bring the entire remnant to
Himself by Himself and for Himself. May
all glory be His.
Let us pray:
Almighty God,
we thank You that You did not let sin and its consequences be the end of
humanity. We thank You that You have
chosen a remnant for Yourself from all people throughout time and space, and
though we need discipline, You will bring us – righteous – into Your Kingdom on
the last day. For it is in Jesus’ Name
we pray, Amen.
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