What God is going to do is more than their lives and more than what they can imagine. God’ work sweeps across history and creation. What does God’s Word have to say about the relationship between God and His creation?
(A) Everlasting Light and life (Isa 60:19-20)
What aspects of creation are brought into focus? (c.f. 19a) Using the table below, summarise how these aspects of creation have informed us about God’s relationship to our world. (c.f. Rom 8:20-22)
Isaiah 60:19a picks up by speaking about the sun. It no longer serves to provide them light by day, and therefore, the moon, too, will not provide light by night.
This serves to bring certain aspects of creation into focus. In Genesis 1:1-5 and Genesis 1:14-18, we see that God calls forth light amidst darkness (and chaos). God also establishes an order to the light in the day and in the night. The point here is that the sun and the moon — great emblems that order our lives — are caused by God. God also blesses His creation. This order that arose out of chaos is a function of God blessing His creation. God does these things so that the world would flourish. God is a light-loving, life-giving God.
Creation rightly ordered reveals God’s design.
However, we get a picture of de-creation earlier on in Isaiah 13:9-11. Creation brings darkness where there was meant to be light. God judges His creation because of sin. Specifically, it is for their evil, their iniquity, the pomp of the arrogant and the pride of the ruthless.
Whatever we see in creation communicates the Creator’s disposition. We see His anger at sin! From creation, we see that this world is not in relationship with the Creator as it should be.
A disordered creation shows us the problem of sin.
Instead of fierce judgement, the change in creation in Isaiah 60:19b-20 indicate that the LORD will be their everlasting light and their glory (Isa 60:19b-20). Earlier, in Isaiah 60:2, while darkness covers the earth, God’s people will have the LORD and His glory will be seen by them.
So what? God’s own presence will define our existence, and there is no need for time (as the sun and the moon were given to mark time and seasons).
With that, our days of mourning shall be ended (Isa 60:20b). These are a people that have known fierce opposition, animosity and rebellion against God. They also know the realities of their own sin, and the judgement from God that it has brought. These are a people that know they are not right with God. They hope for light but walk in darkness. They know grave and sorrowful things.
The promise here is that when God makes all things new, sin and death will be defeated. The effects of sin in this world, our hearts will also be removed and dealt with. The brokenness between us and God, us and fellow man, will have no place in this new creation. Sorrow and sighing will flee away (C.f. Isa 35:10b).
And the chief of these promises is that God will be their everlasting light. He will be their glory. (c.f. Rom 1:21-23) Paul’s words in Romans 1 tell us that creation revealed who God is, yet, claiming to be wise, we became fools, selling His glory for pittance. In the coming day, creation will return to its right order. He will be our God and we will rightly glory in Him.
Friends, what does it mean to stand in right relationship with God? Have you given it some thought? Spend some time today!
But if you know the sweetness of worshipping Him rightly, and also struggle with doing it all the time, cling on to this! Ask God to purify your heart, and long for that day when worship will be as it should be.
(B) Everlasting Land (Isa 60:21-22)
God’s people — all of them — shall be righteous, and will possess the land forever (Isa 60:21a). They will dwell securely where God sets them at.
Why does this happen? It’s God who planted and He worked, that He may be glorified (Isa 60:21b). This stands in stark contrast with what was written about them in the previous chapter, in Isaiah 59:14. How can this be? The whole of Isaiah has been revealing how God is going to make it possible. They have no way of making it possible themselves. God has to do it and intervene.
All of Scripture has been clear about the righteousness that is needed to come before this holy God. His standards and commands have been clear. His holiness does not compromise on anything.
Today, we may struggle with this idea of righteousness. We may even struggle to define what is true righteousness. But God makes it clear here that this is the priority, and His hands have to make it happen. When we trust in Jesus, we don’t trust that He exists, but trust in His righteousness and the right standing that we have before God that He imputes to us. We struggle with believing that this is true. Why else are we so frantic about how brilliant we look? Why are we so worried about how productive we are? Or maybe we worry about whether we make things that are beautiful enough?
See, friends, how God sends us a Saviour. In the gospel of Matthew, in Matthew’s account of the crucifixion from (Matt 27:45-46) there was darkness from 12pm to 3pm. God’s holy wrath and His just judgement against sin fell on Jesus, who was forsaken. This is God’s righteousness on display, and purchased for us. We have to
What are you letting shake your confidence this day? What is affecting your standing before God? Are you letting anything stand in the way of you knowing His glory?
Isaiah closes this chapter with one thing that he wants us to remember in Isaiah 60:22. Isaiah wants us to remember who this God is. He is the LORD, and in His time, He will hasten it (Isa 60:22).
What is to come in creation renewed is far better than we can imagine. At the end of the book The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis, we see, perhaps, a sense of what we will feel and enjoy in that day. Lewis writes, "The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis
What do you look forward to in the renewed creation? How does this hope change the way you live today?