Where we discuss the new things in Isaiah 65; joy and gladness; modern revival; the sufferings of Job; the absence of the curse; things physical and spiritual.

February 9, 2025

Tim: We have been looking in Hebrews 12 on the concept of the New Jerusalem. For better understanding we went back to Isaiah 65. Let me read verses 17 and 18:

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former things will not be remembered or come to mind.
¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create;
For behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing
And her people for gladness.

It is notable that Jerusalem in verse 18 is a place of rejoicing and gladness. Following the Gospel is intended to bring joy and gladness. It is not something we can have only after death. I am arguing that Isaiah 65 as well as Revelation 21 and 22 are descriptions of the Christian community. It should be a place where joy and gladness are experienced and cultivated.

Roger: That quote from Isaiah must be talking about the New Jerusalem, the one above and not the one below.

Tim: These New Heavens and Earth is something that God created. It is similar language to Genesis. I believe Roger is correct that the Christian community is called the New Jerusalem under the New Covenant. Is the same as Paul says in Galatians 4:26, the “Jerusalem above.”

Hal: Verse 19 says,

And there will no longer be heard in her
The voice of weeping and the sound of crying.

Tim: We’ll get to that pretty soon. Right now, let’s focus on the Gospel truth that life in Christ is repeatedly characterized in the New Testament as a reason for rejoicing. Institutional religion seems to miss this. I think it’s because there are things that have crept into the modern church that quenches joy. Tolerating things like judgmentalism and the mixing of the Old Covenant with the New promote fear, whereas the Gospel proclaims that the perfect love of God casts out fear. This fear involves judgment and we know that the judgment is passed having happened in the first century. That judgment eradicated the Old Covenant and did away with the laws that brought hostility.

Hal: Baptist revivals are certainly not a picture of rejoicing.

Tim: No, they’re not. I grew up in the evangelical culture in the 70s and 80s. There was a seeking for revival, for God to come and bring his people back to life. 2 Chronicles 7:14 was the guiding verse:

“(If) My people who are called by My name humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

That approach is appropriate under the Old Covenant, but Christian’s walk under the New Covenant in Christ. This New Covenant was ratified unilaterally by God who did not wait for his people to humble themselves, pray, and seek his face. Remembering our earlier study in Hebrews which said that because God could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself to establish his covenant in Christ. God sent a revival in Christ which was not based on our ability to do anything to be in agreement with God.

Hal: Some conservative politicians I heard a few days ago were mentioning this. They don’t understand the times in which they’re living so they look forward to a time of revival.

Tim: Yes. Even if you do lean to the right politically, their statement is based on faulty eschatology.

Valori: The practice is to wait around for God to do something instead of us taking care of things by the Gospel.

Tim: Exactly! Instead of looking back on the victorious accomplishment of Christ and rejoicing in that, it’s preached that we must beg God to show up again. It is thought by spending more time in prayer and begging God to revive us, we will have a restoration of joy and gladness. The fallacy of this is that the joy and gladness are built into the Gospel which was established 2000 years ago.

Valori: It seems like they question their Gospel if they’re lacking joy and gladness.

Tim: Yes, the flaw in that thinking is that we have to ask God and pray for it. I would often ask myself why God was so reluctant to send revival. The better viewpoint was not to ask for something that is missing, but to reflect on what has already been established in Christ.

Hal: I remember when I worked at Life Academy, the charismatics would say that they have joy in their meetings but the Baptists are boring. I felt like it was a false sense of joy they had in their meetings because it lasted only until the final “amen.” After everyone left, they went back into the world and things returned to normal.

Tim: I would disagree with the idea of Baptist meetings being boring.

Hal: I heard that so many times.

Tim: To add a little historical commentary, the charismatic movement descended from the methods of Charles Finney and the revivals he led in the 1800s. Some historians have noted that these revivals came in waves and that the excitement soon abated. Those areas were soon known as the “burned-over districts.” An evangelist would show up and whip the crowds into an emotional frenzy like charismatics and Pentecostals tend to do. When the emotions calmed down and life went back to normal, people were less enthused about revival preachers.

Church leaders look around at the cultural condition where people are in moral and spiritual decline and think, “A revival is needed here.” Perhaps we should instead question whether the spiritual decline is caused by what the church is already preaching. If the church has been preaching a hybrid Gospel modeled after the Old Covenant instead of preaching the grace of Christ, it could explain the decline. Maybe they preach more of Mount Sinai than they do Mount Zion.

Hal: The Baptists would plan annual revival meetings. Churches would hire ministers to come in and bring the congregation “back to life.”

Tim: Yeah, it seems to be a conflict when revival is supposed to be preceded by mourning and grieving over our sins, while the Gospel is all about joy and gladness. I believe the proclamation of the Gospel is that we are judged only by the righteousness of Christ and that eliminates condemnation. It is a joyful and powerful truth that there is no accusation against us that can stand. It is joyful that every insult and criticism falls off of us because we measure ourselves by Christ and not by what others say based upon Mosaic law.

Ty: When you said that revival is bringing something dead back to life, my first thought was about Lazarus and the other people that Jesus raised from the dead. They were eventually going to die again. This is the difference between physical resurrection and Christ’s resurrection. He was raised never to die again.

My thoughts also went to Matthew 23 where Jesus talks to the Pharisees about dead bones. He was saying their lives were like whitewashed tombs but on the inside they were dead. It seems like modern Christianity tries to resurrect a dead religion when they try to resurrect the Old Covenant. It’s a dead religion because it had no power to bring life. Its only power was to bring death and judgment. The New Covenant and only the New Covenant can bring life and it does so in Christ.

This is the problem when churches try to mix the old and the new. The old dead religion does nothing to improve the new life in Christ. Even if you mention the name of Christ, you’re still preaching a dead religion if it is bringing up the Old Covenant.

Tim: Very good! Let’s go down to verse 19.

I will also rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people;
And there will no longer be heard in her
The voice of weeping and the sound of crying.

We briefly addressed this when we looked at Revelation 21:4.

“…and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

Before we can understand this, we must recall what Isaiah said in vs. 16-17 regarding “the former things.”

Because the one who is blessed on the earth
Will be blessed by the God of truth;
And the one who swears an oath on the earth
Will swear by the God of truth;
Because the former troubles are forgotten,
And because they are hidden from My sight!

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former things will not be remembered or come to mind.

Isaiah is lamenting how the people have become corrupted under the Old Covenant and their established religion has a confession of faith that expresses itself in self-righteousness, as in verse 5.

“Who say, ‘Keep to yourself, do not come near me,
For I am holier than you!’
These are smoke in My nostrils,
A fire that burns all the day.”

God has completely rejected that Old Covenant self-righteousness and the judgmentalism that comes as a result. God declares that there must be a recreation of the heavens and earth, a completely new creation. In this new creation, the things that instigated God’s anger is what will be remembered no more. This is confirmed in the context of Revelation 21:1, which says,

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away…”

That is the basis for understanding why there will be no more mourning, crying, or pain.

Roger: In Matthew 9:14-17, Jesus discussed this with his disciples:

^14” Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?’ ¹⁵ And Jesus said to them, ‘The attendants of the groom cannot mourn as long as the groom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the groom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. ¹⁶ But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. ¹⁷ Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.’”

This is interesting in that mourning is associated with the absence of the bridegroom. Since the Old Covenant was taken away and we live under the New, Christ is forever with us and mourning would be inappropriate.

Tim: Exactly!

Let’s follow this up by going back to the book of Job. The book of Job is a 40-chapter epic poem about the perceived judgment and absence of God in the midst of Job’s suffering. We are familiar with the story. Job is a good man who has a good life. He has wealth and family in abundance. An adversary (Satan) comes along and says to God that anyone would worship God if they were treated like Job, but if Job experienced a little suffering, he would curse God.

Job was afflicted with poverty and illness. Job’s theology of a loving God was rocked to its foundation! He insisted on his innocence and thus was confused as to why he is the object of God’s displeasure. His buddies came along to comfort him and try to convince him that he did do something wrong, that he was guilty. This is the only explanation they could offer for his suffering.

Job continued to plead his righteousness, but he couldn’t help but wonder why he was in that condition. We could choose a lot of passages in this poem to make our point but let’s just pick one in Job 30:24-31.

²⁴ “Yet does one in a heap of ruins not reach out with his hand,
Or in his disaster does he not cry out for help?
²⁵ Have I not wept for the one whose life is hard?
Was my soul not grieved for the needy?
²⁶ When I expected good, evil came;
When I waited for light, darkness came.
²⁷ I am seething within and cannot rest;
Days of misery confront me.
²⁸ I go about mourning without comfort;
I stand up in the assembly and cry out for help.
²⁹ I have become a brother to jackals,
And a companion of ostriches.
³⁰ My skin turns black on me,
And my bones burn with fever.
³¹ Therefore my harp is turned to mourning,
And my flute to the sound of those who weep.

Job defends his integrity but is in a deep depression feeling like God has treated him unjustly and abandoned him. Oswald Chambers pointed out that, even after Job’s fortunes were restored, God never told him about the conversation with the adversary and why this came about.

Remember that in Hebrews, we are told that God spoke through the prophets to the fathers in many ways. There were also times during the Old Covenant that God said nothing at all. The coming of Jesus was a radical change in that situation! Hebrews also says that “..in these last days God has spoken to us in a son” (1:1-2).

After Job suffered under the poor counsel of his friends (God himself said their words were not trustworthy, Job 42:7) God finally speaks to Job and gives him perspective. Job’s response was to say, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You” (Job 42:5). In other words, Job professes to have heard about God from the mouths of others, but his appearance has given him a totally new perspective. Was weeping and crying over his suffering because he had no true understanding of God’s character. His suffering was compounded by the bad theology of his friends. I would argue that weeping over circumstances comes from being in the dark about God’s purposes within that circumstance. These sufferings would be bearable if we only knew what God was up to.

Weeping and mourning in the Old Testament was generally the result of the people being told of God’s anger over there failure and rebellion. The nation grieved because God turned his back on them in his anger. Evangelicals and Catholics both use the concepts of wrath and judgment to bring tears intended to force decisions or compliance. When you’re suffering under the belief that God is punishing you, there’s no lack of ministers who will affirm your failure and God’s disappointment. Joe’s friends have many descendants!

Roger: They are accusing you of having done something wrong.

Tim: For Job’s friends, it was a time to pitch the revival tent and start preaching. Their words were intended to get Job down the aisle to make a decision for Christ. Job was obstinate about his innocence before God and his friends were equally obstinate about his guilt. When God finally does show up, it’s Job’s friends who need to come to Jesus! God restores the fortunes of Job. We could say that Job is the picture then of those who have “…..every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

The reason that mourning and tears disappear in the New Jerusalem is that, since God has spoken in his son, there is absolutely no question as to our relationship to him in Christ! In Jesus, the silence of God is forever broken. In Christ, there is no reason to weep like Job or feel abandoned by God. The bridegroom has returned so it’s a time for joy! Job was depressed and wept because the voice of his friends spoke louder than the voice of God. That was the way under the Old Covenant. The Gospel has changed all of that! Christ has established a Kingdom where his people abide in his vast love forever and there is no question that his love is sure.

Roger: Job’s friends were telling him that his suffering was because he had offended God. In the end, sufferings had nothing to do with whether God was pleased with him or not. His friends were preaching the Old Covenant to him and he had to argue against that to regain his joy. When God revealed himself to Job, he shut his mouth and said he should have been quiet all along.

Tim: We could also say that what stops the weeping and mourning would be the very presence of God himself. Let’s read on in Isaiah, verse 20.

No longer will there be in it an infant who lives only a few days,
Or an old person who does not live out his days;
For the youth will die at the age of a hundred,
And the one who does not reach the age of a hundred
Will be thought accursed.

First, this refutes any argument that the New Heavens and the New Earth, the New Jerusalem or Revelation 21 and 22 is a future, heavenly state. This can’t be the future heavenly state because physical death is present and people aren’t living forever. I would argue that this is hyperbolic language that underscores the intensity of blessings possessed in New Jerusalem.

There is certainly an argument concerning the people in genesis who were said to live for centuries. Literalists will defend that these are the actual ages of these patriarchs, but it could also be argued that these are exaggerated numbers signifying the covenantal blessing. But, as Forrest Gump would say, “That’s all I have to say about that.” Let’s continue:

²¹ They will build houses and inhabit them;
They will also plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
²² They will not build and another inhabit,
They will not plant and another eat;
For as the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My people,
And My chosen ones will fully enjoy the work of their hands.
²³ They will not labor in vain,
Or give birth to children for disaster;
For they are the descendants of those blessed by the Lord,
And their descendants with them.

This reflects back to Deuteronomy 28, the contrast between the blessings and the curses. The prophet is referring back to Deuteronomy and saying the curses listed because of God’s anger are not going to happen to the people in the New Heavens and the New Earth. This is not the life that the citizens of New Jerusalem will be experiencing. Let’s consider a few verses from Deuteronomy 28.

³² Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people, while your eyes look on and long for them constantly; but there will be nothing you can do. ³³ A people whom you do not know will eat the produce of your ground and every product of your labor, and you will never be anything but oppressed and mistreated continually. ³⁴ You will also be driven insane by the sight of what you see. 

Wouldn’t the situation described in Deuteronomy be occasion for weeping and mourning? In fact, this goes beyond weeping and mourning saying they will be driven to insanity by what they see! This is the beauty of New Jerusalem, that the curses are eradicated and blessings prevailed. Evangelicals would take this passage in Deuteronomy and wag their finger at the congregation warning that this will happen to America if we continue to tolerate this or that sin. Why should we preach the Old Covenant when we should be preaching the New Heavens and the New Earth? Why not bring joy to God’s people by preaching the New Jerusalem?

Ty: But are we talking about something physical or spiritual? I’ve been reading the Gospel of John repeatedly where we are told that Christ is the light of man. Does that word light mean the everlasting life in Christ? The covenant established through Moses, was it meant to be spiritual or physical? The Old Covenant spoke of blessings in of the material sense of things and should be considered temporary. The covenant in Christ is everlasting and spiritual. That is the point of my question.

Tim: It’s a good question. All the language of the Old Covenant seems to point to a material aspect about the curses and blessings; land, crops, livestock, political peace. However, when we look at the joy of the apostles after Pentecost, they went around preaching the Gospel and were delighted even when they encountered suffering. Their joy was certainly not based upon material wealth and comfort.

Ty: They didn’t seem to have any worries when they experienced suffering.

Tim: Yes, when they preached about the blessings in Christ, they didn’t tell people to go check their crops because if they were blessed their crops should be growing better. They didn’t point to those who had houses or wealth as being more blessed than those without. The apostles were preaching the Old Testament from a Christ-centered interpretation. The blessings were found in Christ, not their wealth.

Suffering as a sign of God’s displeasure was a non-issue in the preaching of the Gospel. If we were to measure the ministry of Paul by his experiences, we would consider him as one cursed by God. He had been arrested, beaten, persecuted, and even shipwrecked. Did they pray for God’s safety before they set sail? It would sure seem they missed God since they hit a bad storm and their boat sank. They didn’t crawl up on the shore and start weeping, asking God, “What did we do wrong?” They carried the riches of his blessing inside them and suffering was just a part of the job description.

Ty: How about when Paul needed to appeal to Caesar? He was about to be executed by religious leaders, so he appealed to the secular state. Being a Pharisee, he should have appealed to the temple rites, but instead he appealed to Roman law. Perhaps he felt like the Romans would be more just than the religious leaders. It was a spiritual matter for him.

Tim: It’s interesting to consider that Paul thought he would get more justice from Roman law than from Mosaic law.

Roger: There was the time he was going to be beaten but appealed to his Roman citizenship. That put a stop to the threat. It seems the Jews beat him far more than the Romans did.

Tim: Going back to Ty’s original question, it is more important that we regard a New Heavens and New Earth as a spiritual worldview rather than a geographical and physical location. It is an understanding that the curses of the Old Covenant have been abolished in Christ. Paul seemed enamored by this condition where we do not live in fear of the curses of the Old Covenant. This is what he calls the “…righteousness apart from the law.” This law is not just “do’s” and “don’ts,” it is also a listing of the consequences of disobedience.

This was a big problem with the Old Covenant. The law could warn about the curse, but it could not remove the curse from the guilty parties.  Paul expounds on the solution in Galatians 3.

¹⁰ “For all who are of works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the Law, to do them.’ ¹¹ Now, that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, ‘the righteous one will live by faith.’ ¹² However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, ‘The person who performs them will live by them.’ ¹³Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us — for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’ — in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the spirit through faith.”

In the very next chapter, Paul compares the two covenants using Sarah and Hagar. He explains that Hagar is the Old Covenant and corresponds to the old Jerusalem where the temple stood at that time. He corresponds that with slavery. Sarah is the Jerusalem above and that is where freedom is. Considering what we just read in chapter 3, we would ask, “Freedom from what?”

Roger: Freedom from the curses.

Tim: Exactly! It astounds me that professed Christians still want to live in a world where the Old Covenant curses are still applicable.

Roger: All of the promises in Christ are “yes and amen.” In New Jerusalem, there are no curses. There is no Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in New Jerusalem. The New Heavens and New Earth in Revelation have only the Tree of Life. All we have in the New Covenant are blessings.

Tim: If we were to acknowledge any physical blessings in the New Covenant, I would argue the blessing would be the Gospel community.

Ty: Demonstrating love to one another as the physicality of it.

Tim: The Gospel community is supposed to be a place where there is no condemnation. Many churches enjoy preaching guilt and condemnation week after week. How come there is not more preaching on the New Heavens and the New Earth? Why isn’t there more preaching on New Jerusalem? In those places the law of Moses is not operative. There is no Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. These places extoll the victory of Christ’s work rather than our failure.

Valori: Plus, it’s a general preaching that doesn’t take the individual into account whether they have failed or not.

Tim: It is not difficult to preach or convince somebody they have failed in life. Remember Robert from our past Bible study? He went on and on about the Ten Commandments and how great they were. When I asked him how he was doing in keeping them, he hung his head and said, “Not too good.”

Ty: That’s because there is nothing we can do in this world which would be considered perfect.

Tim: That and ultimately, even without a preacher, we can put any person next to the Ten Commandments and convince them they’ve broken eleven. Again, this is not the nature of the New Heavens and the New Earth or New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is a place where the curses for breaking those laws have been eradicated and the gift of Christ’s righteousness operates in that city.

Valori: Their message is more that Christ will save you rather than that Christ has saved you. That is the weekly message.

Tim: There is an explanation that has been floating around churches for a while. It seeks to define the three concepts of salvation: justification, sanctification, and glorification. They say justification is where we have been saved from the penalty of sin, sanctification is where we are being saved from the power of sin, and glorification is where we will be saved from the presence of sin. It defines sanctification as progressive and glorification as still in the future. We believe that the work of Christ and his finished work makes all three of those a present possession.

Hal: Then there’s the call for Christians to be saved from the world.

Valori: It does away with the family of God. If you are not fully saved until you’re dead, then you don’t have a family here on Earth.

Tim: Exactly! The real joy comes from accepting the total abolition of the old and embracing the total establishment of the new. I’m sure there are great things after we pass from this world, but the Gospel is meant to give us exceeding joy while we’re here. If we hold a doctrine that the New Heavens and the New Earth are still future, we will always be living in that purgatory or demilitarized zone where we are not really at home in one but haven’t arrived in the other. That makes what we’re learning here spiritually revolutionary! Christians have been poorer because we haven’t realized that these things are an established, spiritual reality.