Audio Worship, 3/15/2026, "A Promised Future" Isaiah 35.1-10

Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1722

March 15, 2026

Isaiah 35.1-10            Click here for audio worship.

Dr. Ed Pettus

(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)

 

“The Promised Future”

 

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” 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. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

 

  • The Promised Future

 

In the passages we have been exploring through Isaiah thus far, one repeating theme is that of promise. We have seen the promise of forgiveness, promise of a child born, promise of restored kingdom, promise of renewed creation and today a promised future and redemption. Of course, we know already the fulfillment of some of these promises in the person of Jesus Christ, for He has given His life as a sacrifice for our sins In Him we have the assurance of forgiveness when we repent and confess our sins. We have seen glimpses of His kingdom in the salvation that has come to us. We have seen the work of God in creation that will be renewed again this Spring! All the dooms day talk of global climate catastrophe will not end God’s reign over His creation. Yes, we need to care for all things over which God has given us dominion, but we won’t ever destroy it all either. God is still in charge and God’s promises will be kept. There is a promised future that only God can bring to fruition and He will do it! The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do it!

The promised future is seen in the most dramatic way in Isaiah 35. If I counted right the word shall is used 22 times and shall is implied six more times: “Shall be glad – shall rejoice – shall blossom – shall blossom abundantly – shall walk – shall return – shall come – shall obtain,” just to call out a few. Two times the word will: “God will come, God will come and save.” Everything in this chapter is future tense, a future promised. I feel like I have repeated the same theme over and over since we started in Isaiah, but I also believe that this repetition is intentional with the prophet. It is intentional because Israel had sinned and rebelled and suffered the consequence of that sin and rebellion and therefore needed a word of promise. They needed a word of hope. They needed the assurance that God had not abandoned them and that there was a future for them, a promised future.

I think that holds true today as well. We live in a world that is constantly telling us that the future is in jeopardy. Whether it is climate change, social constructs, economic forecasts, or wars and rumors of wars, we need the assurance of God’s reign and sovereignty over all things. We need the peace of a promised future. We need the Lord and His Word that gives hope and joy and peace. There is hope in the Bible, constant, persistent hope. No matter what the world presents us, there is always hope in the Bible, hope in God. No matter what life circumstances come our way, there is hope. There is the promise of hope and there is the certainly of hope. It is a sure hope, but it is still hope in that it is not yet fully here. The promise is good, the promise is sure, the promise is that everything will pan out as promised in Isaiah 35 and with all the other promises in Scripture.

This is what we have: promise and hope, and it is enough. It is more than enough because the promise and hope is from the God who keeps His promises. It is more than enough because this is the living God; this is the God who brings water in the desert, sight to the blind, life to the dead, salvation to the lost. We have a promised future in the renewal of creation, the redemption of God’s chosen, and, in all of it, the revelation of God’s glory and majesty. It shall all come to pass!

 

  • Nature Sings

 

One of the specific promises given in Isaiah 35 is that of creation restored. Isaiah 35 opens with barrenness: wilderness, dry land, and desert. It is an arid land and a lifeless setting that is emphasized by using three different words for the same land – wilderness, dry land, and desert. But this land is under a promise. There is a future for this wilderness. Think about the ways the Bible has emphasized the land. Abraham is promised land for descendants. John the Baptist is one who cries out in the wilderness. Israel journeyed forty years in the wilderness. There is this interesting passage in Hosea 4:1-3 that demonstrates how the land suffers when God’s people rebel, “Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.”

Sin destroys, not only human life, but creation as well. Sin turns the land into a wilderness, arid and dry. But, in Isaiah 35 there is the promise that not all things shall remain dry and lifeless. The land shall be glad and the desert shall rejoice. Look at all the upbeat words in just the first two verses: glad, rejoice, blossom, rejoice (again), joy, and singing. Creation itself shall rejoice and even receive the glory and majesty of God and His land. It is the hope of promise. The lifeless shall have life. The barren will blossom. Someday, in God’s time, it shall happen.

 

  • Glory and Majesty Revealed

 

All the promises, all the restoration, all the blessings, all the events and timing and life and death and rebirth and, that is, all things are to God’s glory and majesty. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.

The promises bring forth a word of encouragement to the people, “Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.’” This section, 35.3-6 is filled with what happens when God comes on the scene. When God comes there is salvation – “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. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert...”

 

This is our hope – that God will come and save. The promise of salvation has been fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ. God has come and God has saved all who believe. But there are more to be saved, more to come to repentance and salvation. This is the hope of God’s people. It has always been the prayer of God’s people and of many people seeking to come to God. But the saving that we talk about in the salvation of Christ, is also salvation in the sense of restoration and reconciliation of all things that have not yet been “saved”. Creation still groans. Nations still rage. Sin still has dominion over people who do not know Christ. For some time people have been beseeching God to come and heal our land. This is the sense of Isaiah 35, that God will come and save, save as in heal our land. This is the hope. This is the promise, the prophetic promise of God. This is one of the places in Scripture where we see that promise. There is hope in the Bible, constant, persistent hope. No matter what the world presents us, there is always hope.

As the glory and majesty of God is revealed, there is reason to be strong and fear not. “Fear not” is one of the most repeated phrases in the Bible. It can be expressed in different ways: do not be afraid, do not be dismayed, take courage, do not be anxious...and so forth, but the expression is given to assure us that we need not fear. A few examples:

 

Genesis 15.1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

Exodus 14.13 And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again.

Isaiah 41.10, fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Luke 2.10-11, And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

Matthew 10.26-31, “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

 

The assurances are: the protection from God, salvation, good news proclaimed, and our value to God. The same can be said about our topic today, promise and hope. We need not fear because we live in the promises of God and the hope we have in God. My contention is that the admonition to fear not is said so often because fear is a major motivator in our lives. Think about why we do or don’t do something. It will often come back to fear. We are afraid to step out in faith, afraid to risk something, afraid to ask, afraid to invest time, afraid to speak, afraid to decide. So God is constantly telling us, fear not. I’ve got you! Fear not, I promise you this. Fear not, I am with you. We need not fear because this is God’s way: to bring life from death, blossoms from barrenness, the lost are found, and therefore, there is always a hope. Always hope! And hope drives away fear.

 

  • The Ransomed Rejoice

 

Isaiah 35.10 concludes this chapter, And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. This is a solid reason to fear not! The redeemed, the ransomed, the saved shall return home. There will be joy, gladness, no more sorrow or sighing. Have you sighed recently? No more!
The God we behold in Isaiah 35 is the One who ransomed us through Jesus Christ. He puts a song in our heart and brings joy and gladness to us. How can we not see it? How can the world not see it? In Matthew 11.4-6, John the Baptist’s disciples come to Jesus asking if He is the One they had hoped for. Jesus tells them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

It is nearly a direct quote from Isaiah 35.5-6, 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.

Jesus is a fulfillment to the prophecy of Isaiah and of all the Old Testament. Jesus is the hope and the promise that all the promises of the Bible reveal.

 

Let’s take it a step further! Hebrews 6.17-20, “For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Two points from this passage: 1) We are heirs of the promise (vs 17), 2) We have a “strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us” and “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain” (vss 18, 19). Point 1 – promise, point 2 – hope!

In a world that is constantly changing and moving away from God’s way, we have an anchor. The anchor is a hope set firmly in Jesus. Our anchor is in the promised future that we have because of Jesus. Proverbs 23:18, “Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.”

The hope has been around for a long long time. Even before Jesus walked the earth. But in Jesus we have the fulfillment and the complete confirmation of the hope given us by God. We have the promise fulfilled for a Savior. We might mourn the decline of Christian influence in our country and we might be anxious about how things are progressing in the world, and we might struggle with personal set backs, but in the midst of everything, in the midst of the turmoil, we have hope. We are the only ones who really have hope. So many people are living in despair and don’t even know why. So many people are living in darkness and don’t even realize it. So many are worried about the future or if there is even going to be a future.

Our message to all of those people is, “Behold, your God.” Behold, Jesus is the only one who can deliver you from despair. Jesus is the light in the darkness. Jesus is the only hope for a broken world and a broken people. That is our message and our hope. But that message will never be heard if we, as the church, are not the ones telling it. Jesus told the disciples of John to go tell him what you have heard and seen. We are called to do the same, tell everyone what we have heard and seen in Jesus Christ. Tell of the promises and the hope in Christ, for He is God’s promise and our hope. Amen.

 

Benediction:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope (Romans 15:13).