We have entered into the Christmas season, where our thoughts center around the reality that the eternal Son of God took on the nature of man and was born of a woman in accord with what the prophets of God wrote long before.
The season also reminds us of the reality that we are headed to a world where everything is eternal: eternal wrath and death, or eternal blessedness and life. Isaiah 35 looks ahead to the coming of Christ and the work he would do in redeeming people in order that man may delight in the glory of God and have hearts conformed to God’s holy ways.
Isaiah 35 is a great contrast to the scene of judgement in Isaiah 34, where the land became a burning pitch, a symbol of emptiness and desolation. The judgment was in accord with the emptiness of the people in the land who did nothing that was pleasing to the Lord God. Such is the sad case of sinful man.
There is a dramatic shift from the desolation of that scene to the one in chapter 35 that begins with the desert being transformed into a garden rich with blossoms and a spirit of rejoicing and singing. There is now beauty and vitality, flourishing life that can be attributed to no one else but the Lord, who made the heavens and earth.
This place isn’t about flowers and trees; it is about men: “They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God” (Isaiah 35:2). “They” are the redeemed and the ransomed of the Lord who were as spiritually barren as a desert, with no eyes or heart to see and delight in the glory of God (verses 9-10).
Their dramatic transformation into souls that now blossom in their admiration of God could only come from the work of the Lord himself. Sinful man does not rejoice in the majesty of God, but the redeemed of God are made capable of the best things: to rejoice in God’s glory and esteem him as the most excellent Being there could be.
This work of God in man is of course connected to the coming of Christ and the work he did as the Redeemer of sinful man. He is our Immanuel, God with us, or God in us, in a personal union. Abraham looked to his day and rejoiced in it. The same Spirit that was at work in Abraham’s heart is in every heart that knows the glory of Christ.
Thomas Watson wrote: “We may prize other things above their value. That is our sin . . . But we cannot raise our esteem of Christ high enough; he is beyond all value . . . Christ is more precious than the soul, than the angels, than heaven.”
Verses 5 and 6 point to Jesus revealing himself as the promised Savior of men: “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.” The miracles of the Lord Jesus point to the ultimate redemption of the body, but they also have an important spiritual significance; the Holy Spirit transforms sinners to see their need of Christ, to hear the truth of Christ, to have a heart to walk with Christ and a tongue that praises Christ. It took a supernatural work for you to know Christ.
God’s purpose in our salvation is his own glory, and his desire is to produce for himself a holy people (verses 8-9). The Lord Jesus makes us holy people by redeeming us, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. Christ then sets us on a path to honor him by living holy lives in a fallen world. An abundance of water in the desert (verse 7) is the promise of help from the Spirit of God.
The way will not be easy (verses 3-4), but the remembrance of the Lord’s grace and salvation puts a song in the Christian on the way to the place of everlasting joy with Christ that is devoid of any sorrow and sighing (verse 10). It is our privilege to live by faith in the Lord who has shown us so much compassion and grace.
