Isaiah 55:12-13 “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the LORD, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”
Fellow travelers,
Today may bring thorns and briers, but as we travel toward eternity, consider the marvelous picture of nature glorified in a new heaven and earth in this Psalm.
First, the mountains and trees we experience in this world may not be the same as trees in heaven. They will rejoice when the perfect creation is made manifest because they are not fully what they should be now. Tolkien may have been thinking of this when creating the Ents of Middle Earth. If the trees are described as clapping in heaven, what will people do?
Bring some of that joy to this earth.
Second, the Psalm describes a direct reversal of the curse on Adam in Gen 3:17-18, where the ground would be cursed and “thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.” Instead, the cypress and myrtle will come up. The new creation will not fight against us, but instead sprout glory after glory.
Here is another “Quint of Quotes” from my collection, five quotes on the theme of popular opinion when it goes wrong:
“Those who call for Nonsense will find that it comes.” – C.S. Lewis
“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.” – Charles Mackay
“The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.” – Ludwig von Mises
“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas of which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the high-brow periodicals.” – George Orwell
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” – Isaiah 5:20
Isaiah 27:1 declares: “In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.“
We must acknowledge the enemy as a powerful dragon to know the difficulty of our struggle, and also that it is the LORD who ultimately must, and will, destroy him “In that day” (rather than now or when we want Him to)
“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations” – J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Hobbit
As a child of deaf parents, some details of stories from the life of Jesus especially catch my attention. This miracle recorded in Mark 7:32-37 is one example:
“And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.’”
In the second sentence, we see Jesus’ “bedside manner.” His compassion for this individual led to specific actions, as noted by Warren Wiersbe: “Since the man was deaf, he could not hear our Lord’s words, but he could feel Jesus’ fingers in his ear and the touch on his tongue, and this would encourage the man’s faith.”[1] Not only did Jesus heal Him, but He did it in a way that would be meaningful to this one man.
Another detail Mark records is that Jesus spoke, but why, if this man couldn’t hear him? Jesus touched the man as a testimony to him, but these words were a testimony to anyone nearby that the power of Jesus healed this man, not the man’s response to the words, since he couldn’t hear them. There was to be no question as to the source of the healing.
Third, the word “immediately” appears many times in Mark’s gospel, including at least 5 references to healing miracles (1:42, 2:12, 5:29, 5:42, and 10:52). A big part of this miracle is that deaf people do not immediately “speak plainly” if they recover their hearing or begin using hearing aids. It can take years of training. By saying “he spoke plainly,” Mark makes clear that Jesus did not just put this man on the path to recovery; He gave Him a full recovery “immediately”!
Lastly, when the people said, “He has done all things well,” they were testifying that Jesus was fulfilling a Messianic expectation from Isaiah 35:5-6, which says:
“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man 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”
In this miracle and others, Jesus showed that He was the fulfillment of all the hopes of the Old Testament, and of all mankind. His kingdom could overcome any problem, and His kingdom is superior to any other kingdom. No problem He encountered was beyond His power and He offers a way to a world where all problems are solved for those who believe in Him.
Praise Him!
[1] Wiersbe, Warren. Be Diligent (Mark) (1987). P. 95.
Here in the United States, the year 1776 is celebrated as the political beginning of the nation, because the Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4 of that year. Also in 1776, The Wealth of Nations by economist and philosopher Adam Smith was published and is foundational to our nation’s economy. Its full title of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations shows its purpose was to explore what makes some nations more well-off than others, with Smith concluding that capitalism, especially the elements of free trade and competition, was the best system. I won’t argue here for capitalism or about where wealth comes from, but about where wealth is destined to end up.
Interestingly, the phrase “wealth of the nations” appears in the Bible 3 times, all in Isaiah 60 and 61, and the phrase “wealth of all the surrounding nations” appears once, in Zechariah 14.[1] All of these references describe the future reign of the Messiah when all nations and peoples will acknowledge Him as Lord and dedicate their wealth in tribute to Him.
Isaiah 60:4-5 is the first mention of the phrase, and it says:
“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.”
The next few verses read like an inventory of goods (camels, gold, flocks, ships, lumber) and places (Midian, Sheba, Kedar, Tarshish, Lebanon), showing that no thing and no place is excluded from the tribute to God. Wealth from every source belongs to Him.
In the same chapter, verse 11 declares about the eternal city of God:
“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.”
When we inquire into future of wealth, rather than its past and its sources, we find that the wealth of the nations is all His. We own nothing. We are only stewards and caretakers, regardless of what economic system we live in or believe in.
“The earth is the LORD’S and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” – Psalm 24:1
Soli Deo Gloria
[1] It may be where Smith got his title idea, or it may just be coincidence.
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 