Micah McCormick: Turn to Isaiah this morning.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah chapter 65.
Micah McCormick: It's page 661 if you're using the Pew Bible this morning.
Micah McCormick: As we journey through this book, we're gonna take the last portion of Isaiah 65.
Micah McCormick: The passage today covers verse 17 down through verse 25.
Micah McCormick: This is what God's word says.
Micah McCormick: For I will create new heavens and a new earth.
Micah McCormick: The past events will not be remembered or come to mind.
Micah McCormick: Then be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating.
Micah McCormick: For I will create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight.
Micah McCormick: I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people.
Micah McCormick: The sound of weeping and crying will no longer be heard in her.
Micah McCormick: In her, a nursing infant will no longer live only a few days, or an old man not live out his days.
Micah McCormick: Indeed, the one who dies a hundred years old will be mourned as a young man.
Micah McCormick: And the one who misses a hundred years will be considered cursed.
Micah McCormick: People will build houses and live in them.
Micah McCormick: They will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
Micah McCormick: They will not build and others live in them.
Micah McCormick: They will not plant and others eat.
Micah McCormick: For my people's lives will be like the lifetime of a tree.
Micah McCormick: My chosen ones will fully enjoy the work of their hands.
Micah McCormick: They will not labor without success or bear children destined for disaster, for they will be a people blessed by the Lord along with their descendants.
Micah McCormick: Even before they call, I will answer.
Micah McCormick: While they are still speaking, I will hear.
Micah McCormick: The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like cattle, but the serpent's food will be dust.
Micah McCormick: They will not do what is evil or destroy on my entire holy mountain, says the Lord.
Micah McCormick: We need you always, but particularly we need you through your word.
Micah McCormick: So help us, please, help me and help all of us to listen to it.
Micah McCormick: In Jesus' name.
Micah McCormick: Amen.
Micah McCormick: If you visit Battery Park in Manhattan, you'll find there Castle Clinton, the remnants of an old fort.
Micah McCormick: And one of the exhibits inside is a rendered display of New York City through the centuries.
Micah McCormick: So you can see a rendering of Manhattan when there's farmland and a few little settlements.
Micah McCormick: You can see it with some small businesses and the Brooklyn Bridge and no skyscrapers.
Micah McCormick: And then you can see it like it is today, a skyline of granite and marble and lights.
Micah McCormick: What would they say?
Micah McCormick: It's not all good, but it is a new city.
Micah McCormick: Now, what if you asked them not just to predict what it would be like, but what they wanted it to be like?
Micah McCormick: What would their hopes and aspirations be for the future?
Micah McCormick: What about you?
Micah McCormick: If I asked you about the future, or when you think about the future, what's the dominant emotion of your heart?
Micah McCormick: Excitement?
Micah McCormick: Anxiety?
Micah McCormick: Fear?
Micah McCormick: Hope?
Micah McCormick: I don't mean about Manhattan specifically.
Micah McCormick: I know some of you like to travel there once in a while, some of you never, and that's fine.
Micah McCormick: But I just mean your own future, your village, your home, your life.
Micah McCormick: What would you want it to be?
Micah McCormick: In our passage this morning, Isaiah paints this picture of an incredible city to come.
Micah McCormick: But it's not just a city, it's a whole new creation.
Micah McCormick: Verse 18 and verse 19, if you look there, those verses speak about a Jerusalem to come that God's creating.
Micah McCormick: But if you go back to verse 17, that's the heading for this whole section.
Micah McCormick: A new heaven and a new earth.
Micah McCormick: It's the same exact progression we find in the book of Revelation, chapter 21.
Micah McCormick: There's a new heaven, a new earth that John sees, and then a new Jerusalem.
Micah McCormick: Our passage has a lot of glory.
Micah McCormick: We'll come to that.
Micah McCormick: But there's one command in the passage.
Micah McCormick: You find that in verse 18.
Micah McCormick: Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating.
Micah McCormick: That's our big takeaway for today.
Micah McCormick: God wants us to rejoice in his new creation.
Micah McCormick: He doesn't want us to simply acknowledge his future plans.
Micah McCormick: He wants us to rejoice in his new creation.
Micah McCormick: We're all tempted to think about the future with anxious anticipation instead of joyful expectation.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes that's because we're maybe looking more on the inside than on the upside.
Micah McCormick: And I don't mean just wishing something to be, but looking instead of in, looking up to the God who's spoken, to the God who can't break his word, to the God who can be trusted.
Micah McCormick: The title of the message this morning is Rejoicing in God's New Creation.
Micah McCormick: Rejoicing in God's New Creation.
Micah McCormick: As we look at this passage, we're going to consider four reasons to rejoice in God's new creation.
Micah McCormick: Here's the first reason.
Micah McCormick: Rejoice in God's new creation because of what it doesn't have.
Micah McCormick: That's a strange way to begin, but there's a lot of no longers and willnots in the passage.
Micah McCormick: We'll consider a few of these.
Micah McCormick: There's no more tears.
Micah McCormick: Verse number 19, look there.
Micah McCormick: I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad of my people.
Micah McCormick: The sound of weeping and crying will no longer be heard in her.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly.
Micah McCormick: You remember Hannah in the temple praying and weeping?
Micah McCormick: Eli thinks that she's drunk.
Micah McCormick: That's how moved she is.
Micah McCormick: Even our Lord experienced this.
Micah McCormick: When he comes to Lazarus' tomb, and he sees the family and the neighbors, and he takes in the whole scene, and John 11, 35 tells us simply and poignantly, Jesus wept.
Micah McCormick: So it's not wrong to weep in this life.
Micah McCormick: In fact, God commands us at times to weep with those who weep.
Micah McCormick: But we can take up the words of Paul, sorrowful yet always rejoicing.
Micah McCormick: Because there's coming a day when there's no more tears.
Micah McCormick: No more unfulfilled lives.
Micah McCormick: Look at verse 20.
Micah McCormick: In her, a nursing infant will no longer live only a few days, or an old man not live out his days.
Micah McCormick: Death is never welcome in this world, but sometimes death seems to intrude itself the most difficult times.
Micah McCormick: Miscarriages, stillborn birth.
Micah McCormick: Some of you all have experienced that.
Micah McCormick: That's one of the most harrowing things parents can go through.
Micah McCormick: All of this expectation, and it seems like it's just snuffed out in a moment.
Micah McCormick: In many societies throughout history, infant death has been even more common than it is today.
Micah McCormick: In the 1600s, about one-third of children never lived to see their fifth birthday.
Micah McCormick: John Owen is a Puritan known for his precise theology.
Micah McCormick: What's not as well known about him is that he and his wife had 11 children.
Micah McCormick: Ten of them died in infancy.
Micah McCormick: And the daughter that survived grew up, was married, and shortly after her marriage, she died of tuberculosis.
Micah McCormick: No parent wants to bury their children.
Micah McCormick: But it happens in this life.
Micah McCormick: No more unfulfilled lives in the new creation.
Micah McCormick: It's not only at the beginning, sometimes in the middle of life, things seem to be cut short.
Micah McCormick: Some of you might remember Gary and Cheryl Glover, wonderful couple who was part of our church some years ago.
Micah McCormick: I remember getting the call that Gary was at the hospital and had a heart attack.
Micah McCormick: Remember sitting there with Doug and Royal and Cheryl, his wife, and the doctor comes in and says, We did all we could.
Micah McCormick: He passed away.
Micah McCormick: Gary was in his late 50s.
Micah McCormick: Not a young child, but from a human vantage point, you think he had more decades to give and to love his family and his church.
Micah McCormick: And that wasn't God's plan.
Micah McCormick: Wonderfully, Cheryl, his wife, who lives upstate, had such a response of faith and trust when the doctors went on to say he didn't suffer.
Micah McCormick: She said, Well, he's not suffering now, I can tell you that.
Micah McCormick: No more tears, no more unfulfilled lives, no more frustrating work.
Micah McCormick: Look at the beginning of verse 22.
Micah McCormick: They will not build and others live in them, they will not plant and others eat.
Micah McCormick: Now look down at the beginning of verse 23.
Micah McCormick: They will not labor without success or bear children destined for disaster.
Micah McCormick: Labor, others eat.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah's not extolling the virtues of selfishness here.
Micah McCormick: He's echoing the words of Ecclesiastes 2.
Micah McCormick: I hated all my work that I labored at under the sun because I must leave it to the one who comes after me.
Micah McCormick: And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool.
Micah McCormick: Yet he will take over all my work that I labored at skillfully under the sun.
Micah McCormick: This too is futile.
Micah McCormick: So I began to give myself over to despair concerning all my work that I labored at under the sun.
Micah McCormick: When there is a person whose work was done with wisdom and knowledge and skill, and he must give a portion to a person who has not worked for it.
Micah McCormick: This is futile and a great wrong.
Micah McCormick: For what does a person get with all his work and all his efforts that he labors at under the sun?
Micah McCormick: All his days are filled with grief and his occupation is sorrowful.
Micah McCormick: Even at night, his mind doesn't rest.
Micah McCormick: This too is futile.
Micah McCormick: Not the whole of Ecclesiastes, that's a portion of it.
Micah McCormick: God designed us as humans for satisfying labor.
Micah McCormick: You can come back to our image of God series, shameless plug for Sunday nights.
Micah McCormick: Not tonight, but in the future.
Micah McCormick: We'll talk more about that.
Micah McCormick: But we don't really know to what extent our work's gonna last.
Micah McCormick: We don't know who's gonna carry on our legacy.
Micah McCormick: We don't even know if our children or our children's children will take the wise road or the foolish road.
Micah McCormick: That's a burden.
Micah McCormick: And it's a burden that's entirely lifted in God's new creation.
Micah McCormick: So there's so much hope here of what God's new creation doesn't have, no more tears, no more unfulfilled lives, no more frustrating work.
Micah McCormick: The people of Isaiah's day, how could they grab hold of this?
Micah McCormick: Lost soon to be in Babylon, in exile.
Micah McCormick: There had to be one coming, a servant who could actually make this possible.
Micah McCormick: And a servant was coming.
Micah McCormick: Rejoice in God's new creation.
Micah McCormick: Here's the second reason because of what it does have.
Micah McCormick: Not only because of what it doesn't have, because of what it does have.
Micah McCormick: It has permanent flourishing.
Micah McCormick: Look at verse 22 in the middle of verse 22.
Micah McCormick: My people's lives will be like the lifetime of a tree.
Micah McCormick: My chosen ones will fully enjoy the work of their hands.
Micah McCormick: Trees always seem to last.
Micah McCormick: Sure, a storm could uproot it, but normal conditions, trees keep coming back year after year.
Micah McCormick: They get thicker and thicker.
Micah McCormick: The oldest tree in the world, they think, is in California, actually.
Micah McCormick: 4,800 years old is what they date it as.
Micah McCormick: It's called Methuselah.
Micah McCormick: Let the reader understand, right?
Micah McCormick: God is saying that his people will be able to experience this kind of flourishing in longevity.
Micah McCormick: No more volatility, no more withering, just flourishing.
Micah McCormick: It's like Psalm 1.
Micah McCormick: How happy is the one who doesn't walk in the advice of the wicked.
Micah McCormick: His delight is in the Lord's instruction.
Micah McCormick: He meditates on it day and night.
Micah McCormick: He's like a tree planted by rivers of water that brings forth fruit.
Micah McCormick: There's flourishing coming.
Micah McCormick: There's a blessed man who abides in the Lord's presence and brings it to pass.
Micah McCormick: The new creation also has complete harmony.
Micah McCormick: Look at the end of verse 23.
Micah McCormick: They will be a people blessed by the Lord along with their descendants.
Micah McCormick: There's inner personal conflict in this world, even among families.
Micah McCormick: Children can rebel against parents.
Micah McCormick: Imagine a place where you only ever always got along perfectly with all of your coworkers.
Micah McCormick: Can you imagine that?
Micah McCormick: I saw a few eyes rolled in this life.
Micah McCormick: Perfect harmony.
Micah McCormick: Some of you say, wow, I love coming here on Sunday.
Micah McCormick: It's like a haven of rest.
Micah McCormick: And I go out in the world, it's just turmoil.
Micah McCormick: The new creation is not one day of rest and six days of turmoil.
Micah McCormick: The new creation is rest and joy and harmony.
Micah McCormick: 24-7.
Micah McCormick: Not just for the redeemed humanity, it's the whole created order.
Micah McCormick: Look at verse 25.
Micah McCormick: The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like a cattle.
Micah McCormick: The safari plains will become a petting zoo.
Micah McCormick: Think about that.
Micah McCormick: The safari plains will be a petting zoo.
Micah McCormick: You'll never have to walk out into your backyard and see a baby rabbit shredded by a hawk.
Micah McCormick: There won't be tsunamis wrecking lives and beautiful geography.
Micah McCormick: It's all of creation, the whole of it singing with a complete wholeness.
Micah McCormick: It's composed by God.
Micah McCormick: Hallelujah.
Micah McCormick: There's perfect intimacy in the new creation.
Micah McCormick: Verse 24.
Micah McCormick: Even before they call, I will answer.
Micah McCormick: While they are still speaking, I will hear.
Micah McCormick: What if there was someone who always anticipated exactly what was in your heart and responded perfectly and immediately before you could ever even ask them?
Micah McCormick: That just doesn't happen in this life.
Micah McCormick: Even among some of our best relationships.
Micah McCormick: Another pastor posted this recently.
Micah McCormick: Maybe some of you who are couples can relate to this post.
Micah McCormick: He said, Over coffee this morning, my wife said, Did you hear anything I just said?
Micah McCormick: I thought to myself, well, that's an odd way to start a conversation.
Micah McCormick: Think about that.
Micah McCormick: It'll come to you, alright?
Micah McCormick: Think about it.
Micah McCormick: I don't recommend Facebook, I really don't, but sometimes a gem like that comes along and think it's it's worthwhile after all.
Micah McCormick: God's a God of perfect knowledge.
Micah McCormick: God already knows immediately and intimately all of our thoughts and heart and prayers.
Micah McCormick: God's never sleeping, he's never grouchy.
Micah McCormick: God is not going to be some kind of new and improved version of Himself in the new creation.
Micah McCormick: But we will be.
Micah McCormick: And the sin that clouds and constricts our relationship with God will be gone.
Micah McCormick: The problem is not that God doesn't listen.
Micah McCormick: Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
Micah McCormick: And in the new creation, God will undo the sin from the beginning and remove every barrier so that we can only have unrestrained, perfect communion with Him forever.
Micah McCormick: That's the intimacy that awaits us in the new creation.
Micah McCormick: And that brings us to the third reason we should rejoice in God's new creation.
Micah McCormick: Because of what it doesn't have, because of what it does have.
Micah McCormick: We should also rejoice in God's new creation because of what it shows us.
Micah McCormick: What Isaiah is doing in our passage today is not just giving us a Norman Rockwell painting of a great scene that's going to be nice.
Micah McCormick: He's helping us see how God's story from creation to redemption all the way into eternity fits and progresses perfectly together.
Micah McCormick: There's a movie called Lion.
Micah McCormick: I think it's based on a true story.
Micah McCormick: And in this movie, there's an Indian boy who gets on a train with his brother when he's very young, less than five years old, and he gets lost and stuck on this train and ends up after several days in Calcutta in an orphanage.
Micah McCormick: He gets adopted by an Australian couple, goes to Australia.
Micah McCormick: And the movie fast forwards to when he's away for school in Melbourne.
Micah McCormick: And one night he's at a party with some friends.
Micah McCormick: And they're talking about where they're from.
Micah McCormick: He doesn't really like to talk about that.
Micah McCormick: Just says, I'm from Calcutta, I was adopted.
Micah McCormick: And then he smells something.
Micah McCormick: And he goes, he leaves the living area and he goes into the kitchen and he sees gelabies frying up on the stove.
Micah McCormick: That's some of you are smiling.
Micah McCormick: That's like an Indian funnel cake.
Micah McCormick: Although I'm sure it's much more glorious than our Staten Island funnel cakes.
Micah McCormick: So like a fried dough treat.
Micah McCormick: He sees it in the frying pan and it calls to his mind a memory of when he was a little boy back in his original home before he got on the train, before with his mother frying those treats.
Micah McCormick: And he's kind of shaken.
Micah McCormick: And his friends come in and they see him disturbed.
Micah McCormick: And it's very moving.
Micah McCormick: They ask him what's going on.
Micah McCormick: And he finally says, I'm not from Calcutta.
Micah McCormick: I'm lost.
Micah McCormick: That's what Isaiah is doing here.
Micah McCormick: He's invoking the very beginning of God's story to show what was lost and how God restores and fits it all together.
Micah McCormick: The Bible begins, we began our service this way this morning.
Micah McCormick: In the beginning, God created heavens and earth.
Micah McCormick: Here in verse 17, God speaks again and says he will create new heavens, new earth.
Micah McCormick: In the middle of the garden, there's this tree of life.
Micah McCormick: Here in verse 22, Isaiah compares the people to a tree that will endure.
Micah McCormick: After the fall, in God's mercy, Adam and Eve can still bear children, but their son Cain kills Abel.
Micah McCormick: Here in verse 23, God says his people will not bear children destined for disaster.
Micah McCormick: In the beginning, God comes and calls out, Where are you?
Micah McCormick: They're hiding, their separation and distance.
Micah McCormick: But here in Isaiah verse 24, God's people call and there's an immediate answer.
Micah McCormick: There's really only one thing in the Entire passage that we have for today that sounds like it could be even negative at all.
Micah McCormick: In verse 25, the lion is happily munching on straw by the cattle and the and the lambs.
Micah McCormick: And then verse 25 says, but the serpent's food will be dust.
Micah McCormick: Eating dirt doesn't sound too great to me.
Micah McCormick: The serpent's food, but the serpent's food will be dust.
Micah McCormick: So it's contrasting the serpent's lot from these other animals.
Micah McCormick: It's almost as though the snake is still under a curse.
Micah McCormick: Ah.
Micah McCormick: Genesis 3.14.
Micah McCormick: God says the serpent's going to eat dust all the days of his life.
Micah McCormick: The judgment in the beginning carries on to the end.
Micah McCormick: That's the appropriate end to the story, that there's actually judgment for those that oppose God, including even the great serpent and snake himself.
Micah McCormick: That's the right end to the story.
Micah McCormick: I don't mean to make light of it, but at the end of Jaws, if the shark is like a performer at SeaWorld, that's not the right end to Jaws.
Micah McCormick: You know, it's it's it's a serious thing when people defy God.
Micah McCormick: And here's the Lord saying, All will be made right, even the appropriate judgment will come.
Micah McCormick: There's also, and this is a little harder to see, but just think with me for a moment here.
Micah McCormick: In the Garden of Eden, it said that a river flowed out from the Garden of Eden.
Micah McCormick: Rivers don't flow up, they flow down.
Micah McCormick: Ezekiel 28 speaks of the Garden of Eden on the mountain of God.
Micah McCormick: So the original garden was on this elevated mountain-like place in some basic way.
Micah McCormick: And look how Isaiah says in verse 25 the conclusion, they will not do what is evil or destroy on my entire holy mountain.
Micah McCormick: The garden mountain that brought sin is once again going to become this garden mountain of perfect worship.
Micah McCormick: And when we come to Revelation, we see a new heavens and a new earth.
Micah McCormick: We see a new Jerusalem.
Micah McCormick: We see no more tears.
Micah McCormick: We see the presence of God perfectly illuminating everything, seeing God and being known by Him.
Micah McCormick: It's all part of the masterful plan of God who was at work in Eden, who is at work in Isaiah's day with this prophecy, who is at work into the very future of eternity to make all things new.
Micah McCormick: It's this glorious symphony.
Micah McCormick: Isn't that amazing?
Micah McCormick: Look at verse 22.
Micah McCormick: My chosen ones will fully enjoy the work of their hands.
Micah McCormick: God's chosen us to be part of this.
Micah McCormick: If God is for us, who can be against us?
Micah McCormick: He who didn't spare his own son, but freely gave him up for us all, how will he not with him freely give us all things?
Micah McCormick: Who can lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
Micah McCormick: It's God who justifies.
Micah McCormick: It's no wonder Paul can say in Romans, oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.
Micah McCormick: How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out who has known the mind of the Lord?
Micah McCormick: Who's been his counselor?
Micah McCormick: Of him and through him and to him are all things.
Micah McCormick: To him be glory forever and ever.
Micah McCormick: That's what he shows us.
Micah McCormick: Rejoice.
Micah McCormick: Last reason for us to rejoice in God's new creation.
Micah McCormick: Because of who it points us to.
Micah McCormick: Now, this has been implied as we've been going along here, but I've been giving you a lot of what from the passage.
Micah McCormick: What it doesn't have, what it does have, what it shows us.
Micah McCormick: But the deepest glory of the new creation is not a what, it's a who.
Micah McCormick: The fuel of our joy is not an environment or an object, first and foremost, it's a person.
Micah McCormick: It's the very person of God.
Micah McCormick: Verse 18, look at this carefully.
Micah McCormick: Then be glad and rejoice forever in what I'm creating.
Micah McCormick: There's our command, there's our takeaway.
Micah McCormick: For, here's the immediate reason.
Micah McCormick: For I will create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight.
Micah McCormick: If you happen to be reading the English Standard Version or the King James this morning, they add a helpful word for this Hebrew phrase.
Micah McCormick: They add in the word behold.
Micah McCormick: Rejoice and be glad.
Micah McCormick: Why?
Micah McCormick: Behold.
Micah McCormick: Take a look at this.
Micah McCormick: God is creating it.
Micah McCormick: He's the architect and builder.
Micah McCormick: That's the reason to rejoice first and foremost.
Micah McCormick: And he even says here, he's going to create his people to be a delight.
Micah McCormick: Doesn't that give us hope for those that struggle to rejoice?
Micah McCormick: We know that we should rejoice evermore.
Micah McCormick: It's there, but it's hard for us to do that.
Micah McCormick: For some people, it's especially hard.
Micah McCormick: God in the future is going to apply to his own who have trusted in the Savior all of his unstoppable creative force to make you perfectly delighted in him forever.
Micah McCormick: He's going to do it.
Micah McCormick: Before this passage ever gets to the they wills and the they will nots, there's this series of I will, I will, I will.
Micah McCormick: It's God's work.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes you hear people say, we're helping bring in the new Jerusalem.
Micah McCormick: Yes, we're ambassadors.
Micah McCormick: Uh yes, we're we're servants.
Micah McCormick: We bear witness to Christ.
Micah McCormick: Yes, we have work to do for God.
Micah McCormick: But here in this passage, God's the one creating it.
Micah McCormick: We're not like with him with the hammers.
Micah McCormick: And in Revelation, the new Jerusalem comes down from heaven.
Micah McCormick: We don't pull it down with a rope and you know set it up.
Micah McCormick: It's God's doing.
Micah McCormick: It's all his and he gets the glory.
Micah McCormick: So if God is going to do it, and he says rejoice, and it's all his work, it's sure to happen, why is it hard for us to rejoice?
Micah McCormick: Let me ask you a question.
Micah McCormick: Don't answer it too quickly, but think about this question.
Micah McCormick: But do you believe that God wants you to be joyful?
Micah McCormick: Not just that he has commanded you to rejoice, do you believe that he deeply delights in your rejoicing?
Micah McCormick: When the family's at Disney World and there's a teenage son who's complaining, they're like, I'm too old for this.
Micah McCormick: Dad, can we can we go somewhere else?
Micah McCormick: Finally, Dad snaps.
Micah McCormick: I paid a lot of money for this vacation, and you're gonna have a good time.
Micah McCormick: He's like, Alright, okay, I'm gonna have a good time.
Micah McCormick: Yeah, it's this is great.
Micah McCormick: Is that how you view God?
Micah McCormick: Like he's just always waiting to snap, and he wants you to be joyful, and then the son and the spirit come along and try to calm him down.
Micah McCormick: That's not accurate.
Micah McCormick: Father, son, and spirit are all perfectly united in one essence and one superabounding joy.
Micah McCormick: And maybe you don't think God really deeply delights in you being joyful because you don't think of God as a joyful God.
Micah McCormick: Friends, God is more joyful than any of us could ever be or imagine.
Micah McCormick: Look carefully at the beginning of verse 19.
Micah McCormick: I will rejoice in Jerusalem.
Micah McCormick: This isn't Isaiah speaking, this is God speaking.
Micah McCormick: I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people.
Micah McCormick: God is leading the rejoicing charge.
Micah McCormick: God is a God of vengeance and wrath, yes.
Micah McCormick: But if we think of him only as a dark thundercloud waiting to strike, we aren't thinking of him rightly.
Micah McCormick: Nehemiah 8.10, the joy of the Lord is your strength.
Micah McCormick: Matthew 25, 21, enter into the joy of your Lord.
Micah McCormick: Psalm 16, 11, in your presence is abundant joy.
Micah McCormick: Some of you might not have thought a lot about this theme of a delighting and joyful God.
Micah McCormick: I'll give you here's two resources you might look at later that'll help you think about this theme in scripture.
Micah McCormick: One is a little longer book by John Piper called The Pleasures of God.
Micah McCormick: And then the second is a little shorter book by Michael Reeves called Delighting in the Trinity.
Micah McCormick: I'll give you one quote from each book.
Micah McCormick: This is what Piper writes.
Micah McCormick: God is not constrained by any inner deficiency or unhappiness.
Micah McCormick: This is what distinguishes us from God.
Micah McCormick: We have an immense void that craves satisfaction from powers and persons and pleasures outside ourselves.
Micah McCormick: But God is not like that.
Micah McCormick: He has been complete and overflowing with satisfaction from all eternity.
Micah McCormick: And then Michael Reeves writes, In the Triune God is the love behind all love, the life behind all life, the music behind all music, and the joy behind all joy.
Micah McCormick: When we think about the new creation, the first and greatest topic we should think about is God Himself.
Micah McCormick: He's the ground and goal of our rejoicing.
Micah McCormick: If when you think about God's new creation, you first and only think new body, that's gonna be nice.
Micah McCormick: Pleasant environment, that's gonna be really nice.
Micah McCormick: And you you don't think at all about delighting in God and experiencing a relationship with Him?
Micah McCormick: If that's not in your heart at all, you might not be saved.
Micah McCormick: I say that, and I do say that to scare you, because many deceive themselves, Scripture says.
Micah McCormick: We don't want anyone to be deceived.
Micah McCormick: But I say that because is there some opening in your heart to a depth of delight in the all-joyful God that you haven't experienced yet, that you you could experience?
Micah McCormick: Come to Christ.
Micah McCormick: He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, acquainted with sorrows for us, for our sins, that we might delight and rejoice in God forever.
Micah McCormick: And for all of us, God is going to increase our capacity for joy.
Micah McCormick: We haven't begun to experience the limitations and boundaries of the kind of joy we will have in God, because he himself is the infinite fountain of joy and delight.
Micah McCormick: Revelation 22 says, His servants will worship him and they will see his face.
Micah McCormick: What joy that will bring.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah speaks here to a people long ago, and he says they can rejoice in the present because of what God's gonna do in the future.
Micah McCormick: Same thing is true for us.
Micah McCormick: It's a call for us.
Micah McCormick: We can rejoice even now in the present because of what God's going to do in the future.
Micah McCormick: Here's a question.
Micah McCormick: Are we rejoicing now only because of what God's gonna do in the future?
Micah McCormick: We're just holding on now.
Micah McCormick: No.
Micah McCormick: And yes, yes, there's still much that is future.
Micah McCormick: Revelation 21 and 22 is still future.
Micah McCormick: We know lions and lambs aren't lying down together.
Micah McCormick: If you have chickens at your house and you think, I'm gonna bring in the new creation, I'll get a fox and they'll get along great.
Micah McCormick: Go outside, they'll be cozied up for a nap together, not a good idea.
Micah McCormick: So we know it's a fallen world, and there's still much that is future.
Micah McCormick: But it's not all future.
Micah McCormick: The new creation has dawned with the coming of Christ into the world.
Micah McCormick: When he came down from heaven and went up on that mountain to offer perfect worship to God, when he came out of the tomb, he was the firstborn, the beginning of God's creation.
Micah McCormick: That's why Paul can say, as we heard in the scripture reading today, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
Micah McCormick: Hebrews 12.
Micah McCormick: Hebrews 12 tells us that when we gather as the people in Christ, we've come to Mount Zion, the heavenly assembly, the Jerusalem above, to the spirits of just men made perfect.
Micah McCormick: There's a real beginning now.
Micah McCormick: So if you want not perfect, but good foretastes of a new creation, come and gather with his people.
Micah McCormick: Come for worship, come to his churches.
Micah McCormick: We enter into joy week after week, Lord's day after Lord's day, we come to rejoice before the throne, knowing that there's an even greater day coming when our Savior says, Enter into the joy of your Lord.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray.
Micah McCormick: Oh Lord, this is the longing of our hearts.
Micah McCormick: We're so impatient in some good ways to say, Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Micah McCormick: And yet we don't disparage what you've left behind for us.
Micah McCormick: We don't disparage the very work of Christ that has begun this new thing.
Micah McCormick: And we see in the transformed lives of those around us an amazing new creation, amazing, if not perfect, harmony, still good and glorious and growing harmony.
Micah McCormick: Lord, thank you for this promise of intimacy with you.
Micah McCormick: Lord, please speak to us through your spirit.
Micah McCormick: We don't want to be orphans.
Micah McCormick: We want to know and enjoy the love of our Father.
Micah McCormick: So as we sing together, may we rejoice together that Jesus paid it all, all to Him we owe.
Micah McCormick: Sin left a crimson stain, but you washed it white as snow.
Micah McCormick: And we can give our thanks and praise to you today.
Micah McCormick: And we ask you humbly, fill our hearts with joy, joy in you.
Micah McCormick: In Jesus' name.
Micah McCormick: Amen.
Micah McCormick: Let's stand.