A Time in the Future

Isaiah 60:4-22

The future; it is forthcoming, something many of us plan for and many do not, but that does not change the fact, it is going to come if one lives to see it.  Have you ever known people who fear the future and spend much of their time talking and living in the past?  Many people my age and younger look back to the fifties and sixties and long for those days to return again, never giving thought to many things we enjoy today that were not invented until much later.

Isaiah is telling of a time in the future, the son and daughters of Israel will come back from many lands where they were dispersed.  In my lifetime, we have seen many Jewish people from all over return to Israel, but Isaiah may be seeing the return from Babylon, but it seems to me that this is a time in what is referred to as the future.  It seems each time the people of God were under His wrath and returned to Him, they came out of the nations God used for judgment, with gold and sliver, livestock, and all kinds of good stuff as in the case of Egypt, and we also have the wealth of the queen of Sheba flowing into Israel because of her admiration of king Solomon’s wisdom.   

We do understand in the past foreign kings had exploited Israel, but verse 10 tells of kings building walls and serving the people of Israel, much like the story of Nehemiah and the Persian king Artaxerxes who sent material and money to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  Still it seems like a later time when the gate to the city will be open to all with no fear of armies or foreign nations, and all of this is so the wealth of the nations can flow into Israel.  Isaiah is telling of a future time when the nation who had oppressed Israel will come and bow down to them, that is not happening at this time in history.  We do see Israel as one of the most hated nations on earth at this time with enemies all around, but a day will come when it will be called the City of the Lord, Zion of the Holy One of Israel.  It will go from being hated, to a place of the only God and their Savior and Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

It will not be Israel doing any of this, but God who will provide gold, silver, bronze, and iron, all the materials they need, and it will be God who appoints peace as their guard and righteousness as their ruler.  It is God who will keep violence from them and there will be no devastation or destruction.  The people will call the gates, praise and the walls, salvation, the sun will no longer be their light by day, but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and there will be no sorrow.  And this is the promise found in verse 22, “I am Yahweh; I will accomplish it quickly in its time.”  What time, a time in the future, but this I know it’s going to happen, for God has declared it to be.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice