Behold I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. Isaiah 65: 17-19, NIV.
Dear God, as we think about the new heavens and the new earth that You are preparing for us; we want to be faithful to You. Please be with us as we study Your Word, and speak to our hearts. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior we pray. Amen and Amen.
This Scripture speaks to two periods of time. The first period includes God’s direct intervention in the life of ancient Israel. Even though, on several occasions Israel had apostatized and was taken into captivity, God had not given up His plans to restore Israel to her privileged position as His people. I do not believe that in choosing Israel, God was playing favorites. I do not believe that He considered them better than the other nations. To the contrary, I believe that God wanted to use His people as witnesses to the other nations, and thereby lead others to a saving knowledge of the true God. Therefore, Jerusalem, the dwelling place of the people of God, occupied a very strategic position, where she could be accessed by all people.
They were to go in and conquer Canaan. One way of conquering our enemies is by turning them into our friends. I honestly believe that that was God’s preferred method of conquering the Canaanites. If Israel would go and live among these nations and teach them, by precept and example, about the true God, and show them the benefits of serving Him, without succumbing to the influence of their idolatrous ways, what a conquest for good that would have been! What a blessing they would have been to the Canaanites! What a lot of lives would have been saved! Instead, Israel was conquered by the Canaanites. They adopted many of their evil practices, and Israel was led away from the worship of the true God.
Had they resisted the evil one, how different sacred history would read. We would have seen the fulfillment of this Scripture in their lives, ” . . . The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. All the suffering and the pain experienced during their captivity would have been forgotten! Theirs would have been a delightful experience! God would have had reason to rejoice over His people, and His people would have been a joy to the world!
In His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (John 17), Jesus prayed for His disciples, and for us, “who would believe on Him, because of their testimony” (20). Isn’t it wonderful that Jesus prayed for you and me? His prayer was not for us to be taken out of the world, but for us to be kept from the evil one (15). Just what He had hoped for Israel of old. Today, God is depending on us, to do our part in helping others to come to know Him and be saved. E. G. White has said, that, “all of God’s biddings are enablings.” If we believe this; and we have no reason to doubt it, we can accept this challenge, and in the power provided by Christ’s prayer for us, we can go into the world, and conquer it for Jesus! For this to become a reality, we must love people; not only those of the household of faith, but those, who are “in the world.”
We are living very close to the second period of time, to which our Scripture refers. God will soon create “new heavens and a new earth,” and the new order of things will be ushered in, while “the old order of, death and mourning, sorrow, and crying, will pass away. If we are faithful, by God’s grace, we will be a part of the new. Aren’t you longing for that day? I am!