“Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble. Say to those with anxious hearts ‘Take courage, fear not. Behold your God will come with vengeance; the recompense of God will come, but he will save you. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. For the waters will break forth in the wilderness and streams in the Arabah. The scorched land will become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of living water; in the haunt of jackals, its resting place, grass becomes reeds and rushes.
A highway will be there, a roadway, and it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it. But it will be for him who walks that way, and fools will not wander on it. No lion will be there, nor will any vicious beast go upon it; there will not be found there. But the redeemed of the Lord will walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord will return and come to Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads. They will find gladness and joy. And sorrow and sighing will flee away.” (Isaiah 35: 3-10)
These verses should actually be in hymn form, they are in my NAS. They are full of promise but in some aspects might seem discouraging. I say that because the verses say that nothing unclean can be on this Highway. But remember it is the redeemed that are there. They are also referred to as the ransomed. This is a picture of the Church; those that the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed.
J. Alec Motyer writes in the Tyndale commentary on Isaiah:
"The Lord never reduces his standards to match the weaknesses of his people; he raises his people to the height of his standards. How this will happen Isaiah does not say; he simply leaves us to assume that such meeting of the requirements of the law is achieved for the Lord’s people by his work of salvation (4f) and redemption (9d, 10a), for the redeemed of the Lord walk there! …Those disqualified from walking the Way of Holiness are therefore self-disqualified through failure to use the means of grace available to them."
These verses truly speak to the renewal of the Church. They also speak about God's love and protection of his people. He is the Redeemer and Sanctifier.
6 comments:
Viola,
Are these wonderful verses not a picture of the church triumphant? It sounds as if you are holding the passage up as a model for the contemporary church, which Jesus described as containing wheat and tares (which he would separate at the end).
Am I misreading you here?
Robert Austell
Charlotte, NC
Robert,
I meant it as the church triumphant. But isn't the church triumphant always there with the tares. I know there is that future church that we refer to as the church triumphant, but that church exists today, in the past and in the future. And I understand that we are all sinners now, and won't be then, but in are unity with Jesus Christ we are still today clothed with his righteousness.
Perhaps you are thinking of the highway as heaven. I don't see it that way.
Robert,
I just went to Calvin on this, and it is interesting he goes back and forth. On the "no unclean person" he places as a future fulfillment. But then writing about the lion he sees God's perfection today.
I would say it’s a bit of all ready, not yet.
I would have also said there is a bit of both (so glad to find support in Calvin!).
We do indeed experience a foretaste of Heaven in so many ways, including in the Church, but there is also a "not yet" and hope that what we see now is not yet what it will be.
I'll be interested what you think of my Timothy series on my blog - there is an analogy offered not unlike the wheat/tares and for me it is a helpful way to think through some of the challenges of the imperfect, visible church.
Robert Austell
Charlotte, NC
It's the next post on my blog that deals with this analogy. It was going up in the morning, but I'll go ahead and post it tonight.
Robert
I will read it. I have been reading them all.
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