This post was written back in 2013, but since the recent evening sermon series covered Isaiah 35, I thought it might be nice to post it.
One night when I was in the depths of depression, I was getting ready for bed. Out of force of habit, I sat down to read a psalm. But in my tiredness, I missed Psalms and ended up reading through all of Isaiah 35 before I noticed my “mistake.”
Here’s what I read:
The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, 2 it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God.
3 Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; 4 say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.”
5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 6 Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. 7 The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
8 And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way. The unclean will not journey on it; wicked fools will not go about on it. 9 No lion will be there, nor any ravenous beast; they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there, 10 and those the Lord has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Isaiah 35
I believe that God directed me to the “wrong” passage that day because this was exactly what my hurting soul needed. I needed to read this promise of renewal for the deserts – the empty, lonely, broken places of the world – because my heart felt like a desert. I needed to hear that no matter how hopeless I felt, I wasn’t really without hope because God had promised to make things right.
Verse 10 in particular stood out to me with its promise that “sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” I believe the complete fulfillment of these verses will come when Christ returns. But until then, God’s promise that better things are coming can give us hope and comfort.
But is that all our faith offers? Is it merely a piece of positive thinking or an “opiate of the masses”? Not according to Isaiah.
Verses 5 and 6 speak of healing for the blind, the deaf, the lame and the mute. Just as God gives us emotional comfort, He offers healing. We see that in the pages of the Bible, and I believe that God continues to heal today, through natural and occasionally supernatural means. Yet once again we will need to wait until Christ returns for all disease to completely disappear.
OK, so Christianity offers emotional and physical healing – for us. But is it just a personal thing that only touches its followers? Again, the answer is “no.”
The whole point of this passage is that the physical world will be healed. Verses 1, 2, 6 and 7 speak of desert being turned into lush, fertile land. In a sense, this is undoing the effects that sin had on all of nature. Part of God’s curse after the first sin was that the land would be unfruitful, producing thorns and thistles instead of good crops. But here we see the curse undone. Even the harshest, least hospitable lands are transformed into lush valleys. The whole earth becomes a fruitful, safe and holy place.
How does all this happen? The passage doesn’t explicitly say, but verse 8 points to the answer. It refers to the “Way of Holiness” in which the redeemed walk. Verse 10 indicates that it leads back to Jerusalem, the city of God. In the Bible, Jerusalem is seen as the place of God’s presence, and we know from the New Testament that the way back into God’s presence is Jesus. He is the One through whom our hearts, our bodies and all of creation will be healed.
When we believe and obey Him, we walk in the way of holiness.
We all face moments when we feel dry and empty. We sometimes fall and wander away from the way of holiness. But we must “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not!’” That means picking ourselves up when we fall, but it also means building others up when they are weak. We must remember, as it says in verse 4, that God will come and save us. We can be strong and work to restore the things that are broken in human lives and the outside world only when we place our hope in the One who has the power to accomplish this seemingly impossible mission.
“By what right … do you say that you know God better than they do, that your God is better than theirs, that you have an access that I can’t claim to have, to knowing not just that there is a God, but that you know his mind. You put it modestly, but it is a fantastically arrogant claim that you make — an incredibly immodest claim.”
Christopher Hitchens
Today I started the theology class I’m teaching with this quote from the great theologian Christopher Hitchens (who would hate that I just called him a theologian). He said it in 2008 in a debate with a rabbi. I wanted to use it to wake up my college freshmen (the class is at 8 am) as well as to make a point: Hitchens is right, sort of. It really is incredible to claim to know the mind of the creator of the universe, and even more so to claim to actually have a relationship with him. By what right do religious people (Jewish, Christian or otherwise) make this claim?
I hope that my students felt the suspense, because Hitchens really does have a good point. If we claim that we know God’s mind because we are smarter, wiser, or more moral than others, we deserve to be called “fantastically arrogant.”
But perhaps my students didn’t feel suspense because they had the answer staring them in the face on the syllabus. The title of today’s class was “Revelation.”
You see, the reason why it’s not arrogant to claim to know about God, and even to know God, is that God is not like the laws of science.
Scientific laws are impersonal. They’re patterns that physical objects conform to that are out there waiting to be discovered. Gravity didn’t send a message to Isaac Newton explaining how it worked because gravity isn’t a person. God is. And that makes all the difference because a person can communicate. A person can make an effort to reach out and get to know someone. And if Christians are right, that’s exactly what God did.
God reached down to us, revealing himself to us. That is how we can know God, and it has nothing to do with our abilities or morality. It has everything to do with God’s choice. When a Christian claims to know God, it says more about God than it does about the Christian.
We’re going to spend most of the class talking about the content of God’s revelation. We’ll go through the Bible, starting in Genesis 1, and discuss what claims the text makes, and what those claims say about God. But I wanted my students to pause and reflect on what the mere fact of revelation says about God.
The first point is one we’ve already covered: God is a person, not a force. He can choose to speak. The fact that he did so choose says something else: God loves his creation and wants to be in relationship with it. And that relationship requires incredible humility on God’s part.
We don’t often think of God as being humble. Good, yes. Loving, yes. But not humble. Christians would (or at least should) affirm that humility is good, and we would also say that God is the source and the complete exemplar of all that is good. So it stands to reason that God would be humble. But it’s hard to think of him that way, perhaps because God is so great.
Think of it this way: consider something you know a lot about and care about deeply, whether it be your work, a hobby, or just a subject that interests you. Imagine trying to explain that thing to a three-year-old. Unless you’re a preschool teacher (or maybe unless the subject is trucks or dinosaurs), you’re going to have a hard time. The three-year-old is likely to be confused, and you’ll have to oversimplify a lot. The child may even going away thinking the subject is boring. You’re likely to end up frustrated and disappointed.
Explaining something you care about in terms the child can understand is an act of humility as you make your interest seem less than it really is in order to connect with someone. That’s what God does every time he reveals himself. God’s actual being is far beyond us, even more so than quantum physics is beyond a three-year-old. Our conceptions of him, grand as they may be, inevitably fall short of reality because we are finite and cannot grasp infinity. So God simplifies himself, presents himself to us in ways we can kind of understand, makes himself seem less than he is, just so he can be in relationship with us.
For Christians, the ultimate revelation is the person of Jesus, who is also the ultimate example of divine humility, of God appearing less than he is for the sake of humanity.
But this humility is also shown in God’s revealing himself to us in the text of the Bible. This humility comes to us when we do not at all deserve it. It is an act of grace.
The name of the class I’m teaching is Foundations of Theology. The phrase comes from Dei Verbum, one of the documents that came out of Vatican II, which calls Scripture and tradition the foundations of theology. But you could also say (and I think the writers of the document would agree) that the foundation of theology is God’s humble revelation of himself to finite humans. The foundation of theology is grace.
Elizabeth Sunshine is a Ph.D. student at the University of Notre Dame, where she is studying Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity. She grew up in Connecticut but now lives right on the border between Michigan and Indiana. After college, she worked in Taipei, Taiwan as an editor for Studio Classroom, an English-teaching magazine, where she also wrote scripts for TV shows, led summer camps, and taught an English Bible study. In her free time, she enjoys walking outside, reading fantasy novels, and knitting. She also blogs at Logos and Love.
“Bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.” Colossians 1:10
That’s our goal as Christians, yes? We want the truth of the gospel that God has put into our hearts to grow up into something beautiful. We want to know Him more so we can look more and more like Jesus. We want His Word and His Spirit to change our hearts, so we can be more and more beautiful.
We want the beauty of our lives to point each other to the beauty of Jesus! But how?
Here are three ways we can point each other to Jesus:
1. In our suffering, we can comfort.
I’ve lost track of how many funerals I’ve been to. Between the ages of nine and eighteen, I went to the funerals of five of my grandparents and a great aunt. It was a difficult season for my family, to say the least.
In each situation, the pain was acute. I watched my parents weeping. I helped as I could by sorting through possessions and watching younger siblings during hospital visits. I grieved at holidays when we remembered that the person who held up a tradition was no longer with us. Each person who died, even the ones with whom we had rocky relationships, left an unfillable hole.
You have grief, too. We all do. But God can use that grief.
In high school, after many of the funerals, two of my best friends lost grandparents very suddenly. I happened to be reading 2 Corinthians at the time and ran across these verses:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
2 Corinthians 1:3–4
I learned that all the losses had a purpose—so I could be there to comfort my friends. God has helped me as a young adult to continue doing that. He has given me comfort to give others. That’s His goodness! Suffering you experience is an opportunity to run to the Father and be comforted. And others’ suffering is an opportunity to share God’s comfort. Your suffering is a commission. Because you’ve suffered, you’re a messenger of hope and comfort to a world without hope and full of false comforts.
God comforts you; you comfort others.
Look around—there may be someone in our church or your neighborhood that would benefit from the comfort you experienced in your own suffering. Your suffering is not the end of the story. God is in the business of exchanging our sorrows for joy and making our suffering into a beautiful garden of His grace.
2. When we sin, we can confess.
One of my best purchases ever was a weighted blanket.
I bought it to help with my anxiety, and I keep it on my bed, where it does what it’s designed to do: provide a sense of safety and security in the evening hours.
Now imagine if I got so attached to that blanket that I carried it around everywhere. I’d probably lose a few pounds with the effort (it’s heavy!), but it would keep me from moving freely. Every step would be a burden. I’d stop doing some of my favorite things. Playing the piano is pretty impossible if you can’t raise your arms. Hugging my loved ones, cooking, and even getting a book off the shelf would become a burden.
Likely, I’d stop being as social, out of love for the blanket. People in my life would get pushed away because I’d be embarrassed by being continually wrapped up like a child and because I wouldn’t want to get worn out by the weight on me. And there are the consequences of having people close to me. Maybe someone would call me out about it. Maybe I’d have to give it up. Maybe I’d be made fun of. Nope. I’ll just stay in bed with this cozy blanket. It’s much safer.
Ridiculous, yes, but sometimes we are like this with our sin.
Here’s a hard truth: sin often makes us feel cozy.
We can believe that we’re safer holding onto it or hiding out with it than confessing to someone and admitting we need help!
Sin isn’t a weight that we’re meant to carry. We’re supposed to leave it at the cross. But sometimes, we need help to get to Him.
That’s why James told us to “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16).
My blanket, as great as it is, isn’t a substitute for flesh and blood people. Sometimes a hug or a shoulder to cry on is better—especially if they point me to Jesus! A blanket can’t do that! In the same way, the false refuge of hiding in our sin keeps us from the joy of being really known and cared for and prayed for.
We wrap ourselves in shame and fear; the weight of our sin keeps us from others; we keep ourselves from the healing that comes from confession. We need each other when we’re struggling with sin, which is all the time.
Sometimes that means we have to be vulnerable and put down our blankets. We have to let God wrap us in His forgiveness and the prayers of others instead. That’s the way to help each other grow.
3. Through our service, we can teach.
We all have different roles in the Body. Some of us are greeters; some serve by cleaning the church or making meals. Some of us play the piano, and some of us simply talk and listen to people. But no matter your gifting, you’re a teacher. Pastor Peter and the elders and the Sunday school teachers aren’t the only ones who teach!
Rubbing shoulders with and doing life with other believers is a great way to teach. Think about it. Who have you learned the most from? Our pastor? Your grandma who taught you recipes and simply trusting Jesus? A mentor at work? A friend who simply showed you a new way to do something?
Teaching can be knowing Hebrew and Greek, but it’s also helping a young person navigate dating. It’s putting a hand on someone’s shoulder when they’re suffering. It’s showing up with a meal and a smile to a new mom. It’s whatever we do to help others know the word of Christ—and do it!
It’s like taking a bath. You can wash yourself with a sponge and get sort of clean, or you can jump in the tub and get completely wet. Ephesians 5:26 tells us that Christ cleans and sanctifies us “by the washing of water with the word.”
There are lots of ways to get wet with the Word, but we need more than just a “sponge bath” on Sunday—though preaching is important! We need to get soaked. This means taking personal time in the Word, but it also means spending time with other believers, watching how they love their neighbors, live with wisdom, and teach their families This is a crucial way to get drenched in the Word.
As Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
Whether older or younger, you have a role in teaching and learning. By simply living by faith, you are helping others become more and more like Jesus.
So how do we help each other become more beautiful in Jesus? We comfort in suffering, we confess our sins, and we teach as we serve.
A closing promise for you from Philippians 4:9: “Practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”
This devotional was given at our 2020 ladies’ spring gathering. The content was adapted from Hayley Mullins and Erin Davis, Living Out the One Anothers of Scripture: A 30-Day Devotional (Niles, MI: Revive Our Hearts, 2020).
When I was a child, I always enjoyed the third Sunday in Advent. This was the week when our church talked about Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, the biblical character who shares my name. As I grew older, I began to think it was silly to identify with this woman we don’t know much about, just on the basis of the fact that we have the same name. (I wasn’t even named after her directly; my parents named me after my great-grandmother.)
But as I’ve grown older still, I’ve found a deeper connection to Elizabeth. We find her story in the first chapter of Luke, where we are told that she is the wife of a priest named Zechariah. We are told that “they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord” (Luke 1:6). This doesn’t mean they were perfect, but it does mean they strived to obey God and live lives that were free of obvious sin.
Obedient but Barren
But Elizabeth was barren. In those days, barrenness was often seen as God’s curse upon the disobedient. It would have been a great source of shame for Elizabeth. In the world’s eyes, she had failed as a woman.
Nowadays, childlessness doesn’t have the same stigma attached to it as it did then. But it’s still a source of grief. Children are a blessing from God, but many are deprived of that blessing, not by their own will but as a consequence of the Fall. Part of God’s punishment for Eve’s sin was that she would bear children in pain. This is more than just labor pain; it includes everything that can go wrong in the reproductive process. Human sin broke the world in ways that affect every area of life, and Elizabeth was one of many who suffered because of it.
We’re told that both Elizabeth and her husband grew old waiting for a child. This is where I can’t relate to Elizabeth—at least not yet. I’m still young. It’s very possible that I’ll meet a man, get married, and bear children. But my season of singleness has lasted longer than I ever expected, and there’s still no husband in sight.
I’ll admit, I’m disappointed. More and more I’m longing not just for a husband but for children. It’s hard, if not impossible, to compare one person’s pain to another’s, but longing for children you don’t have because you’re single isn’t completely different from longing for children you don’t have because you’re infertile. And the pain of dashed hopes of one kind or another is something we can all share.
Fulfillment of What Was Spoken
However, God doesn’t leave Elizabeth in the place of disappointment. Like so many biblical women before her, Elizabeth goes from barrenness to pregnancy. But not just any pregnancy. This pregnancy is announced by an angel to her husband, Zechariah, while he’s serving in the temple. Zechariah reacts with unbelief and is struck dumb because of it.
About six months later, the same angel appears to Elizabeth’s younger relative Mary, promising the birth of another child. Mary responds with faith and submission to God’s plan. She then travels to visit Elizabeth. When Mary approaches and calls out a greeting, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy. This prefigures the relationship of these cousins when they grow up, for Elizabeth’s son, John, will be the last Old Covenant prophet, announcing the coming of Mary’s son, Jesus. The as-yet-unborn John is thus the first person to recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
If John is the first, Elizabeth is the second. Filled with the Holy Spirit, she blesses Mary and tells her what happened. She calls Jesus “my Lord,” and adds, “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (Luke 1:45).
Elizabeth receives the fulfillment of her desire for a child. But what about those who don’t? What if I remain single for the rest of my life? What about the millions of infertile women who die childless? What about those suffering in other ways, with no relief in sight?
The Answer to Our Disappointment
We can find an answer in Elizabeth’s story, because her story isn’t just about her. It’s about Jesus. Elizabeth’s pregnancy is significant precisely because her son grows into the man who points to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Zechariah, for all his doubting, understands this. When his ability to speak is restored, the first words out of his mouth are, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David” (Luke 1:68–69).
In the biblical world, horns represented strength. So a horn in the house of David means a king to rule over Israel—in other words, the Messiah. He is the One who comes to restore the world to the way it was meant to be. To quote “Joy to the World,” “He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.” That is our hope: There will be a day when all the wrong things that make us suffer are done away with. Jesus has made this possible, and He will complete it.
This year during Advent, I wrote a poem expressing what I’d like to say to the biblical Elizabeth. One text that I drew on in writing it is Proverbs 13:12: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” May it encourage you and help you to believe that there will be a fulfillment of what was spoken to you from the Lord.
To Another Elizabeth
The wrinkles on your face and hands spoke of years.
Long years of waiting.
Waiting and longing for a child.
Longing for a child and the Child
who would grow to be the King.
Your eyes had shed rivers of tears.
Your ears had heard the whispers of the gossips.
Your heart had held the pain of disappointment, sickened by a hope deferred.
But the proverb says that desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
Your desire was the Tree of Life that our foremother lost.
And bearing her curse in your body you longed to be made whole.
I, too, am longing.
I, too, bear your name, and I have tasted of the pain of rejection, of my own kind of barrenness.
But then one day—a miracle!
A desire fulfilled!
A child for the elderly, barren woman and her silent husband.
You waited, holding joy within, praying for a safe delivery.
And then she came.
Your younger relative, bearing a baby more miraculous than yours.
She called out—your child leaped for joy.
And you knew that not only had your child come, but the Child had also come.
You were the second to know Him,
Second after the baby yet unborn.
You shouted a blessing, weeping tears of joy,
As strong as those you had shed in sorrow.
And your desire shrank into a shrub next to the true Tree of Life.
I, too, am waiting.
I pray for faith like yours to recognize the Child.
I pray for love like yours to rejoice over salvation more than all earthly joys,
For those joys must decrease, and He must increase.
So as I wait, I hold out hope,
Not for my miracle, but for the Miracle,
The curse-crushing seed of the woman.
I do not see him now, but closing my eyes
I take a leap of faith,
And leap with joy.
About the Author
Elizabeth Sunshine
Elizabeth Sunshine is a Ph.D. student at the University of Notre Dame, where she is studying Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity. She grew up in Connecticut but now lives right on the border between Michigan and Indiana. After college, she worked in Taipei, Taiwan as an editor for Studio Classroom, an English-teaching magazine, where she also wrote scripts for TV shows, led summer camps, and taught an English Bible study. In her free time, she enjoys walking outside, reading fantasy novels, and knitting. She also blogs at Logos and Love.
Our sermon this past Sunday focused on the baptism of Jesus. Our pastor pointed out that in Mark, at Christ’s baptism the heavens are said to be “torn,” not just opened, and that Mark uses this word only twice: here and when the Temple curtain is torn at Jesus’ death. Indeed, there are many similarities between Christ’s baptism and his death, which is why Paul can say that “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3). This poem is my attempt to highlight the parallels.
Son of God
“Behold the Lamb of God,” the Baptist cries
The Christ repents of evil not his own
He steps down to the chilling stream that once
Gave way before another Joshua,
That those he led might reach the promised land
Now he descends into the surging deep
The waters rush above his head, and then
He rises, breathing deeply once again
The cloudy curtain of the heavens tears
A dove descends, like that which Noah saw
And marks completion of the judgment’s flood
A Voice proclaims him God’s beloved Son
The Lamb up to the slaughterhouse is led
To bear the weight of evil not his own
Guilt pulls him down toward death as mockers shout
At him to save himself, but he will not
That those he leads might reach the promised land
Thus He descends into the damp, dark grave and waits
To rise. But now He yields His dying breath
The sacred curtain of the temple tears
As rough wood carries sinners like an ark
Above the flood of judgment God has sent
A man declares, “This was the Son of God.”
Q. 48. What are we specially taught by these words before me in the first commandment?
A. These words before me in the first commandment teach us that God, who sees all things, takes notice of, and is much displeased with, the sin of having any other god.
I learned that all the losses had a purpose—so I could be there to comfort my friends. God has helped me as a young adult to continue doing that. He has given me comfort to give others. That’s His goodness! Suffering you experience is an opportunity to run to the Father and be comforted. And others’ suffering is an opportunity to share God’s comfort. Your suffering is a commission. Because you’ve suffered, you’re a messenger of hope and comfort to a world without hope and full of false comforts.
