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The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and bloom like the crocus.
You may be seated. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Dear saints, it’s amazing to consider that the Bible begins with God building a garden
garden, and putting in the midst of it our Father and our Mother, Adam and Eve, giving
them the whole of creation and joy in it.
But we know that soon that joy, that peace, that comfort was lost as Adam and Eve ate
from the fruit which the Lord had forbidden, and they were driven out, and this is the
point we want to get here, they were driven out of the garden.
But some of the most stunning images from ancient art are pictures of that very scene,
Adam and Eve being driven out with their animal skin clothes, with their heads in their hands
in shame, with the sword of the angel being driven out of the garden and into the wilderness.
And that’s the biblical contrast, the picture that’s painted before us, and Isaiah is going
to grab a hold of that image that there was a garden, but we are no longer in it.
We are now living life in the wilderness.
And that life is described by Isaiah in his preaching in this text as follows.
We have weak hands, we have feeble knees, we have anxious hearts.
We have blind eyes.
We have deaf ears.
We are lame and mute, weak and dying.
In fact, when we just think of the wilderness, we should probably think of the forty years
that the Lord’s people wandered in the wilderness between their rescue from Egypt and being brought
into the Promised Land.
And remember, it wasn’t like it was a forty-year walk to get from Egypt to the Promised Land.
It’s not that far away, actually, it’s about a thirteen-hour bus drive.
It’s a short trip, but they were prevented from going into the Promised Land because
of their lack of faith, and they were sentenced to wander for forty years in the wilderness
while all of the people who were of military age who came out of Egypt until all of them
died.
died, over a million, something like 1.13 million people would have probably died in
those 40 years wandering in the wilderness, and we realize what it was.
It was a 40-year funeral procession, 11, I think I did the math one time, I should have
done it again, 11, 12 funerals every day for 40 years.
You can imagine the wilderness was just a trail of headstones, of graves in the sand.
And you get that sense not only from the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, but
just from reading the Bible in general.
When you go and you start reading from the beginning in Genesis, and you read along and
all of a sudden you get to these genealogies, and this is how it goes.
They were born, and they lived, and they had some children, and then they died, and their
lived and were married and had children and then they died and they died and
they died one after another and so it goes with us so it is with life in the
wilderness and I think we realize it even more at this time of year now I’ve
been asking I don’t know if this is a good idea or not but I’ve been asking
the shut-ins as I’ve been visiting the last couple of weeks what was Christmas
like when you were a kid? Oh boy, their faces light up as they remember going to
their grandparents house for Christmas services, as they remember coming into
church, as they remember singing Silent Night in German. Do you know this is the
pastor, do you know how to sing it in German? No, I have to hang my head in shame.
They remember all the things lost, how things are different now, how they might not even
get to see their children, how many people were there and how many of them are gone,
grandparents gone, parents gone, husband or wife gone, children gone.
It is life in the wilderness.
It’s life in a graveyard.
That’s where we are.
And for a specific purpose too, we want to remember that there’s graves all around us
and that people all around us are dying and that we ourselves are dying for one very specific
reason.
It’s because we’re sinners.
Death is not natural.
Death is the punishment for sin.
If you eat of it, you will surely die.
The Lord warned Adam and Eve, the wages of sin is death, says St. Paul.
But to weary pilgrims walking through the wilderness of life, Isaiah stands up
and preaches this sermon. The wilderness, he says, you can see it in your bulletin,
the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and bloom,
blossom like a crocus. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and
and singing, the glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon,
and they shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.”
Do you see that what Isaiah is preaching is that the kingdom of the Messiah, the kingdom
of the coming Son of God will be the restoration of the garden that was lost.
He will bring us back in.
He will strengthen the weak hands.
He will make firm the feeble knees.
He will say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, do not fear, behold your God comes.
With vengeance, with recompense, He will come and save you.
Then He says, the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped
and the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy.
For waters,” do you see the picture, waters break forth in the wilderness, streams in
the desert, the burning sand becomes a pool, the thirsty ground springs with waters, and
the haunt of jackals where they lie down, that grass will become reeds and rushes like
a swamp. The garden is coming back. The garden is being restored, and it’s being
restored in your Jesus Christ. Isaiah in verse 8 shifts slightly with the picture,
but not too much, but the idea is that this garden is so expansive that there’s
a city in the middle of it, and there’s a highway to get to it, and this is one of
favorite parts of the whole text.
He says, a highway will be there, a road that will get you to the garden, and it shall be
called the way of holiness.
The unclean will not pass over it, it will belong to those who walk on the way, that
is to the Christian.
And then look at what it says, even if they are fools, they will not go astray.
Now that’s my favorite part, because it’s saying, do you see?
it’s saying that it’s not going to be hard you could be you could you could go
out to drive and get lost going to the grocery store you could not know which
way is up or down you could not know how to navigate or read a map it doesn’t
matter how foolish you are this way will get you there you do not have to be
smart enough wise enough good enough you do not have to be sharp enough or keen
enough or righteous enough to get to this garden, you simply need to belong to Jesus,
and He will carry you.
The ransomed, it says, of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, and everlasting
joy shall be upon their heads.
says, they shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing.
The tears that were born in original sin and the groaning that marks life in this wilderness,
look at what it says, these shall flee away.
Dear saints, this is for us.
I mean, as we walk through this weary land, as we are on this funeral procession, as we
are fighting under the weight of sin and death and sorrow and loneliness and
anguish of heart as we are being afflicted by the world and the flesh and
the devil, your Lord Jesus comes to you and He says, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,
and I’m carrying you through this life to the place of everlasting joy, that is
joy that will never end. We, if you can imagine it, we are all headed back to the
garden, to the resurrection of the body, and to the life everlasting with Jesus
Christ our Lord. May God grant it for all of us, and may we, with the meal that the
Lord Jesus sets before us tonight, may we taste a little foretaste of this eternal
life.”
Amen.
And the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus
Christ our Lord.
Amen.
