If you're a word nerd, then you'll understand why I delight in the turn of a phrase like Mark Molnick's in the devotional this week, Year of the Lion devotional, when we have to wait, we get to hope. Love that. You might resonate with the fact that I laughed out loud a few weeks ago when I realized that a recent candidate for governor here in the great state of Iowa, Theresa Greenfield, her name is actually a sentence. There's a Greenfield. Think about it. If you're a word nerd, you might have a passing fancy fascination with palindromes, those words that spell the same thing backwards and forward, dad, mom, level, civic, or more complicated palindromes like race car, or that word that somebody came up with to describe a fear of palindromes, if there is such a thing, ibophobia, which is in itself a palindrome, of course. And it's odd, I know, but sometimes I think about how words are constructed, how the meaning changes, where did this root word come from, and what is this suffix, and what does this prefix do to a word? And speaking of prefixes, we were speaking about, right? I wonder if you've thought about how many words in our English language start with the prefix re, R-E, re, refresh, reverse. Resurrection. Reform. Even this one. Recreation. Re-creation. According to the online etymology dictionary, a website that I'm sure you visit at least once a day, the prefix re- is a word forming element meaning back or back to the original place. It carries the idea of again, or anew, or once more. So, reconstruct is to build anew. Or, redeem. Several centuries ago, in Middle English, redeem was rendered with the word again by. Again. buy, to buy back, or to buy again, which is exactly right. Words that have re at their beginning give us a sense of a fresh start, of new life, of vivacious joy, revitalize, reinvigorate, rejoice. Well, just before the prophet Isaiah inserts four chapters of historical narrative into his prophecy, which we're gonna see in chapters 36, 37, 38, and 39, just before that, he brings this poetic and prophetic third section of his book to a close with what I'd like to call a re-chapter. Isaiah 35 is a masterfully crafted hymn of regeneration and restoration and redemption. But in order to highlight the glory and the majesty of a renewed cosmos that he's talking about here, Isaiah precedes this hymn with a chapter that strikes me as one of the darkest and most disturbing chapters in the whole Bible. And I think Isaiah does this because as you know, the sunlight appears more glorious after a week of clouds. Diamonds sparkle more brilliantly against a black cloth. So juxtaposing these two extreme chapters in this way, Isaiah aims to tell us in chapter 34 that all who oppose the sovereign God of the universe will be overtaken by death and destruction, but then he's gonna reassure us in chapter 35 that burgeoning life and everlasting joy will overtake those whom God redeems. So there's a warning here, and there's encouragement, there's something to make our hearts sink, and there's something to make our hearts sing. So first of all, in chapter 34, we need to be warned by a graphic description of de-creation. Be warned by a graphic de-creation. In the world of prefixes, the opposite of re- is often de-. De- means to undo or to reverse, like defrost or de-escalate. And it occurs to me that chapter 34 describes an undoing of the created order, a de-creation. So the book of Genesis, where we get our creation account. It describes heavenly entities and earthly beings and earthly things being constructed and established out of nothing by our creator God. But in Isaiah 34, it appears that these things are being deconstructed. Creation is being undone. For instance, Genesis has a lot of genealogies. Think about those two words, Genesis and genealogies. They have the same root word, G-E-N, like generations, Genesis, genealogies. Those genealogies, among other things, tell us about God's creation of peoples and nations. But here in Isaiah 34, we're going to see the nations being destroyed. So here's verses 1-3 of chapter 34. Draw near, O nations, to hear, and give attention, O peoples. Let the earth hear, and all that fills it, the world, and all that comes from it. For the Lord is enraged against all the nations. and furious against all their hosts. He has devoted them to destruction, has given them over for slaughter. Their slain shall be cast out and the stench of their corpses shall rise. The mountains shall flow with their blood." That's pretty intense. All the nations are summoned to attention, and then God judges them. But God's judgment here isn't random or capricious. He's not just going off and being angry for no reason. Down in verse 8, you'll notice that it says, Yahweh is acting out of vengeance. and recompense. Those are the words he uses. In other words, the judgment is in response to the sin of these nations. This is God's justified reaction to the nation's rebellion against His unrivaled glory. then verses five and six are really hard to listen to, but we must. The Lord is, verse five, chapter 34, get on the right page here. For my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens. Behold, it descends for judgment upon Edom, upon the people that I have devoted to destruction. The Lord has a sword. It is sated with blood. It is gorged with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of kidneys of rams. For the Lord has a sacrifice in Basra, which is the capital city of Edom. a great slaughter in the land of Edom. Now you might have a bunch of questions after that, but one of your questions would be, what's the deal with Edom? Like why is God picking on this tiny, sparsely populated country of nomads to the south of the Dead Sea? That's a great question. When Israel was trekking from slavery in Egypt up to the promised land of Canaan, They wanted to pass through the nation of Edom. They told the king of Edom at that time, look, we'll just stay on your highway here, and any water that we use, we're gonna pay you for it. We got cash, we got it from the Egyptians. We'll give you the money if we take any of your resources. But, They realized also that this wasn't an unreasonable ask because the Edomites are descended from Esau. Esau is the brother of Jacob. Jacob's name was changed to... Israel, the descendants are called the Israelites. These are brother nations. They are in the same family. They're related. So Edom, when they say no towards Israel, their enmity is particularly odious, their inhospitality. But it wasn't just this once that they opposed Israel and Israel's God. The prophet Amos In chapter 1 verse 11 pronounces God's judgment on Edom because their anger tore perpetually and Edom kept his wrath forever. Edom opposed their Israelite brothers and they opposed Yahweh perpetually in bitterness and anger. Edom then, in chapter 34, comes to represent all the nations who are perpetually enemies of God and are continually enemies of God's people. Those who live in opposition to God's will and in opposition to God's ways will face the same judgment that Edom faces here, which in verses nine and 10 is described in language that's almost identical to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the burning pitch and the sulfur and the smoke. These peoples that are in rebellion against Yahweh are going to be destroyed just like Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed with fire, pitch, sulfur. Then from the end of verse 10 through verse 17, Isaiah uses a description of this wilderness of Edom to describe how the entire cosmos will be de-created, the cosmos de-created. I use de-created on purpose because there are two specific and strong connections to the creation account in Genesis chapter 1. First, I want you to notice, look at verse 11. Are you there? Verse 11, Isaiah 34. Look at all the animals in these verses. Hawks, porcupines, owls, ravens. Drop your eyes down to verse 13. More animals. Jackals. And ostriches, these aren't cute zoo animals. One of my favorite wordsmiths, a young man by the name of Greg Morse, wrote an entire article about ostriches. And he says this, in scripture, the presence of ostriches signifies desolation. More specifically, the ostrich becomes an emblem for a desert land that's leveled by judgment. Where the ostrich dwells, people don't. And that's what the presence of all these particular animals points to. Where they live, where the jackals live, very few people do. And that's a reversal of the blessing that God pronounced over Adam and Eve. Do you remember? Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. But here in these portions, the earth is empty. But also, the fact that these animals live here is a reversal of what's called the creation mandate that was given to humans, that God gave to our human parents, to have dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth. But here, the porcupines and the jackals are in charge, not humans. In judgment, then, the cosmos is being de-created. It's being reversed from what God had intended. The other connection to Genesis are the words in verse 11, set your eyes there, the words confusion and emptiness. So this verse in my mind seems to function as a summary statement that just kind of hangs over this whole chapter. He shall stretch the line of confusion over this wilderness and the plumb line of emptiness. And in the Hebrew language that Isaiah wrote in, you can tell that Isaiah is working his prophetic gift here because the Hebrew words for confusion and emptiness are tohu and bohu. Can you say that? Tohu and bohu. You hear it? They rhyme, right? Now listen to this from the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis chapter one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was tohu and Bohu. The earth was formless and void. So the whole earth that Isaiah 34 is, he says in Isaiah 34, is returning to Tohu and Bohu, to chaos and desolation, to confusion and to emptiness. So chapter 34, brothers and sisters, is a warning for us because as I've been trying to explain, this is more than just a local desert in the Middle East that's being subject to this decreation judgment. In verse four, for instance, all the host of heaven That is, all the stars and the planets shall rot away. All the universe is de-created. It's the same cataclysmic event that Peter prophesied about in his second epistle. In the day of the Lord, the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, 2 Peter 3.10. And then he goes on and gives us a warning. What sort of people, in light of that, ought we to be in holiness and godliness if this is going to happen? Isaiah goes on, and back in verse four. Not only will all the host of heaven rot away, but the skies will roll up like a scroll. Some of you hymn-loving Baptists, you recognize this line? The skies rolled up like a scroll? Yeah. From the well-loved hymn, it is well with my soul. What is that line? doing in this awful chapter on judgment. Did you realize that this lyric had such an apocalyptic meaning? It's about the skies being rolled up in judgment as the planets and the stars are de-created. That presents us with a fascinating conundrum, doesn't it? Such massive destruction right in the very hymn that speaks such massive peace to our troubled souls. Words of violence right next to words of tranquility. So there's the bad news in the hymn of the skies be rolled back as a scroll, but then that's followed by the best news ever. The Trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend. Verse one of that hymn, same odd juxtaposition, when peace like a river attendeth my way. Yes, peace, that's nice. When sorrows like sea billows roll, like the kind of sea that destroys homes on the Florida seaboard, right next to each other. Or when Satan should buffet, in verse 3 of that hymn, like the enemy of our souls is beaten up on me. But right after that, the assurance that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and has shed his own blood for my soul. Well, what Philip Bliss did with It Is Well With My Soul is what Isaiah does here in chapters 34 and 35. And as we've seen throughout the book of Isaiah, it's what God Almighty does all the time, namely mercy through judgment. The instrument of judgment becomes the very means of salvation. Remember Noah. called and commissioned to build an ark of salvation for his family so that they'd be saved, how? Through the waters of judgment. For decades, Noah worked as a shipbuilder and a carpenter. Every pounding of his hammer. Day after day, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, pronouncing judgment on the people. Repent! Destruction is coming! And every pounding of His hammer, also the very means of rescue for those whom God had chosen to be saved. And the pounding continued when they skewered my Jesus onto a cross. nails beaten into his hands and his feet, and every ring of the hammer pronouncing judgment against the sin that was placed on him, and every ring of the hammer declaring salvation for those who would trust in him. Mercy through judgment, the instrument of destruction is at the same time the instrument of deliverance. Glory to God. This same juxtaposition of judgment and mercy is on display briefly in chapter 34, verse 8. For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense. Why? For the cause of Zion. It's for a cause. for the cause of Zion. The decreation of the nations and the decreation of the cosmos results in the salvation of God's people and the salvation of Zion, as we heard last week. That's who that represents. And while that saving reality is just a trickle, here in verse 8, only five words in this whole chapter of judgment, for the cause of Zion, that saving reality, that good news becomes a flood of eternal hope in chapter 34. Because while we're warned by the graphic description of decreation in chapter 34, the Lord also desires that we be strengthened, brothers and sisters, by the reality of a glorious re-creation in Isaiah chapter 35. And I'm gonna read this entire chapter into your hearing and ask you, halfway through the sermon here, don't hold me to that though, to stand in honor of God's word, and some of you are falling asleep, so this will get your blood going as well. Isaiah 35. See if you can listen for all the parallels and the contrast and the reversal from 34 to 35. The wilderness and the dry land, there's one already, shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it. The majesty of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. So strengthen the weak hands. and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you. The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame men leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. In the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes, and a highway shall be there. and it shall be called the way of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way. Even if they are fools, they shall not go astray." That gives me hope. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it. They shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord, would you read this with me? And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You can be seated. In his commentary on the book of Isaiah, Alec Motier says that the whole chapter, chapter 35, is a truly delightful poem. And while one of the helpful things that Bible commentators do is give outlines for chapters and talk about and write about how a passage is structured, he hated to subject this artful poem to a diagram or to an outline. It'd be like throwing measurements on the Mona Lisa, like you could somehow duplicate it if you figured out how big her nose was in relation to her eyes or something like that, or reducing a magnificent Monet to one of those paint-by-numbers thingy. That's just not a thing. It's not helpful. But still, who treat Isaiah 35 like a symphony with five movements, it may help us to see more of the glory here. So in the first movement, recreation is on display in the earth, regenerated. The portrait Isaiah paints in verses 1 and 2 is a picture of burgeoning life. He makes a point to tell us that it's precisely the dry land, it's precisely the wilderness that's going to blossom. And this desert becomes so alive, it's given human qualities, like the desert rejoices and it sings. More than just pretty blossoms though, this transformation, this regenerated planet becomes a palette for the glory and the majesty of God. So in the middle of verse 2, Isaiah associates glory and majesty with a couple specific places. Carmel, this fertile mountain. And Sharon, this lush valley. God's majesty seen there and His glory seen there. But when the people see the beauty of these places, They're actually seeing the glory of Yahweh and the majesty of our great creator, meaning that, folks, God isn't repulsed by this planet. He's not repulsed by the limits of physical creation. His glory is manifested precisely in it. The heavens declare the glory of God. And His voice goes out through all the earth, all the way through it. You can hear it. You can see His glory and majesty. Psalm 19, 1 and 3. Yahweh shares Himself with this new world that's being recreated. and that world becomes a vehicle for his glory and majesty. That's the first movement. The earth regenerated. Here's the second one. The weak revived. That's the emphasis of verses three and four. You remember what the Lord told Joshua as he was standing on the edge of the promised land. Remember this? Be strong. and very courageous, right? Well, the Lord God has the same message for us who stand on the edge of this new promised land, looking towards Zion where God will dwell with his people. Strengthen your hands, he says, that is, pursue God-honoring actions. Do stuff with your hands. Make firm your knees." In other words, don't let your knees knock in fear and quiet your anxious hearts. List all of those things. Hands and knees and hearts inside us. He says, be strong and fear not. And how are we supposed to do that? Read on. Behold your God. That's how. Look at Him. See Him. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. See our great and sovereign God accomplishing His purposes in everything. And just like in verse 8 of the chapter before, it juxtaposed judgment and salvation, so here at the end of verse 4, only it's even more clear here. Yes, God will come in vengeance. Yes, He will come in recompense. It's the same two words, actually, that we saw in chapter 34, verse 8. But as He comes, He will come and save you. And you already know the answer to the question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. When did God Himself come to save the Word? Who is God? And who was with God in the beginning? The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. It's Christmas in November. The Word became flesh. God came to save us. God came to earth in the person of the eternal Word, His Son, Jesus Christ. And we see His glory most clearly and most beautifully as He comes to save sinners from eternal hell. Because at the announcement of His coming, the angel tells Joseph, call His name Jesus, for He will save. His people from their sins. He comes to save us. Yes, God has come to save us, but here's the deal, in the weakness and instability and anxiety of our lives and of these days and of this world, we can be strengthened and stabilized and calmed by the reality that this same Jesus will come again to save us. I find it fascinating here 800 years before Jesus was born, that the old, old story of Jesus is right here. Right after God announces that he will come to save, which he did in the person of Jesus Christ, Isaiah, what's the next word says? Then, as in, then. When God comes to save, then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, then the ears of the deaf unstopped. The happy news in verse 5 introduces this third movement in this grand recreation. That is, the sick restored. So you think about this, a prophet of no less stature than John the Baptist wondered if God really had come to save in the person of Jesus. John the Baptist questions this because things weren't working out like he thought they would, like he had drawn it up in his mind. He was in prison, for goodness sakes. The hypocritical Pharisees were still in charge of religious life in Israel. The axe had not been laid to the root of the trees like John the Baptist prophesied. John thought God was gonna come in fire and judgment, and here was Jesus preaching mercy and grace. And so John from prison sends some of his disciples to Jesus and said, wait a second, are you the one? Because this isn't how I drew it up in my mind. Are you the prophet? Are you the Messiah that's come to save us? Or should we look for someone else? John the Baptist has weak hands and shaky knees and an anxious heart. But when Jesus answers John's questions, he points back to Isaiah 35, five and six. Would you look at those words while I read from Matthew chapter 11, see if you can hear the similarities. Jesus tells John's disciples, go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight and the lame walk. Lepers are cleansed and the deaf here, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them." Jesus, when he was fulfilling this prophecy, was doing a re-thing when he restored the sick to health. It was a return back to the original, back to the virus-free, back to the no birth defects, back to the cancer-free original creation. But at the same time, the connection to Isaiah 35 tells us that as Jesus opened the eyes of the blind, he was telegraphing what it would be like in the re-creation, in the new heaven and the new earth, where he will wipe every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. There's a fourth movement as we keep going in this grand symphony. It starts in the last half of verse 6. We're going to see the desert re-edenized. I made up that word. The desert is re-edenized. Romans chapter 8 speaks of the whole creation, this earth, this solar system, this galaxy, the entire universe groaning. As in the pains of childbirth, with words like futility and bondage and corruption, the Apostle Paul in Romans 8 gives theological meaning to Isaiah's words of physical description of parched and dry and empty wastelands. But this fourth movement announces a great reversal. Sand, that water normally just runs right through, now, miraculously, that same sand holds the water in pools. arid, parched lands now gush forth in springs of living water. The prophet Ezekiel describes the same physical and spiritual reversal in terms of a return to the original garden, a return to Eden. Chapter 36 of Ezekiel, he says this, this land that was desolate, dry, arid, barren, parched, this land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden. In other words, waters break forth in the wilderness, as it says in verse 6. So the groaning, the futile desert of the earth will be re-edenized, restored to its original beauty and its original verdancy. But the crown, friends, the apex, the zenith of the recreation that Isaiah is describing here is in the fifth movement from verses eight through 10, because the point is not the desert or the rivers or the blossoms. The point is the people. And here at the end of the chapter, the fifth movement, the redeemed, return, rejoicing. I couldn't help myself. Redeemed, return, rejoicing. Did you notice this when we read verse eight? The road that leads to this land is called the way of holiness. the way of holiness which automatically disqualifies me and you. But mercifully, that's not the end of the story. Because at the end of verse nine, Isaiah tells us who the travelers are on this highway. And it's not the consistently holy. It's not the perfect. It's not the super spiritual. It's not the morally superior. It's not the religious right. It's not the self-righteous left. It's not to try harder. It's not to do more. None of those categories of people are on this highway. What does it say? The redeemed shall walk there. The redeemed. Isaiah uses this word redeemed 24 times in his book. But this right here in verse nine, this is the first time in the whole book. redeemed happens for the first time right here. What's interesting in the Hebrew language, the emphasis of this word lands less on the redeemed people and more on the redeemer. The structure of the word and the way that it's used here shines the spotlight on the redeemer who's willing to pay the necessary price to obtain the right to the inheritance. And in the arc of the grand story of the Bible, friends, we know that the Redeemer is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. In Him, we have redemption. Through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us. So it's not that those who walk on this highway are trying really hard to be really good Christians It's not the fact that they're perfect, it's the fact that they're forgiven, that they're redeemed, that Jesus by his own blood has bought them back, which compels me as we close today. Are you among the choir of the redeemed? Have you taken advantage of the blood of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ, by placing your faith in Him. Because just doing more and trying harder doesn't get you a ticket onto the way of holiness. It's the redeemed, those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ and are relying on Him to ransom them and redeemed. Have you done that? Have you placed your faith in Him? Today, trust in Jesus and join the choir of the redeemed who will have everlasting joy on their heads, they shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. And so, Lord, would you embolden us and strengthen us and encourage us with this grand vision of recreation that you are moving in history and in redemption to gather around your throne, blood-bought peoples from every tribe and tongue and nation, even as we've sung today. And as we think about the skies being rolled up as a scroll, would you embolden us and strengthen us with the reality that the trump will resound, the Lord will descend even well, so it is well with my soul. I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.