Isaiah 65:17-25
November 16, 2025
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church.
One of my most favorite passages in the Bible is Isaiah 65. Words of rejoice, joy, delight, and gladness are welcomed by us any time and at every season especially when we see the opposites of these sentiments in our daily living. As a senior citizen, I would love to live until I am 100!
Third Isaiah
Isaiah’s prophecy or oracle has God speaking. Following last Sunday’s message from Haggai, the people have returned from exile. The temple has yet to be rebuilt. While Haggai was attempting to rally the people to work together on the temple rather than only being concerned about rebuilding their own homes, Isaiah was addressing the mood of the people.
There are moods of being downtrodden, some bloodshed, injustices, pagan worship, profaning the sabbath, leaders were blind, greedy, and drunk. On top of this, there was a lacking of penitence and confession. In the face of this rather awful mood of the people, Isaiah offers a vision of glory for the people. There will be peace, righteousness, good tidings for the poor and brokenhearted, and nations will come to see the nation’s renewal. This is all summed up with the spirited words, A new heaven and a new earth!
Today, our prophecy or oracle is a “new heaven and a new Lakeshore!” And I am not at all suggesting that Lakeshore Avenue is in need of penitence, but rather we are in a time of transition and perhaps a bit of disarray!
From the prophet, God says, “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” This means that the vision does not depend on the memory of things known. It only means that the past won’t prevent us from envisioning a new thing.
I mentioned before that I grew up at First Baptist, Boston that was founded in 1665 so when I was in high school, it was already 300 years old! It is now 360 years old! Last month, First Chinese Baptist, San Francisco founded in 1880, celebrated its 145th anniversary. And Lakeshore Avenue, founded in 1860 is now 165 years old! While we may be older than we wish to admit, God is constantly creating new heavens and a new earth whether we like it or not.
Utopia
Is this utopic? Is this vision of utopia only a fantasy with no way that it can be achieved? This hope of new heavens and a new earth does not imply utter destruction of the present world and creation of a whole new one. It’s not a science-fiction apocalypse that is beyond our imagination. Rather, it is about building upon the original creation that God called good. It is about transforming that creation into something new.
For us to understand this, we look to our Christian belief in the incarnation of God. Everything about Jesus’ life provides us with a framework to understand Isaiah’s prophecy. Jesus included everyone he met. He claimed power from nonviolence. His presence reveals comfort and peace to people in their everyday lives. And finally, Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection give us the confidence that the world is becoming new again and that this is not someday in the far distance future but being realized now and here! Because of Christ, the vision of a new heaven and a new earth is possible!
Every day and every Sunday when we open up the doors of Lakeshore Avenue, we are proclaiming to the world that God is creating a new heaven and a new earth in our midst right now. Come and see, people of Oakland! Come and see, people of the world!
Rearranging the World Order
From Isaiah, God is rearranging the world order as we see it today. When the creation that God brought into being is out of order, God is saying that God will restore back that order again. We see this when the sound of weeping or the cry of distress won’t be heard; children will live; old people like me will see great grandchildren; after our house renovations, we get to live in it; we get to eat from our community gardens; enjoy the fruits of our labor; and have descendants who will be blessed.
Sadly, not everyone can have this. Regrettably, not everyone here believe that they are fortunate or have that kind of good luck to enjoy such good fortune.
While this is hard to believe, we have the promise and reassurance in Christ’s life that this is true! If death is conquered, we can believe this! We can trust in God’s promises that this will happen.
Today, we hear people talk about “agency.” At first, I did not know what they were talking about; a travel agency? An audition agency? Eventually, I understood that agency means the ability or power to make things happen.
God has the agency or the capacity to rearrange the present world order to a restored, new heavens and a new earth. God has the capacity to create. Isaiah reminds us that God creates on an unimaginable scale—new heavens and a new earth. In other words, there is nothing in all of creation, or in all that we imagine beyond creation, that is beyond the capacity or agency of God to change.
For the people in Isaiah’s time, for us today, nothing is final or finished. Everything is being transformed and restored in the mystery of the creative capacity of God.
Step by Step
The reason why Isaiah 65 is one of my favorite passages is because of verse 25. “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.”
By now, you know that I am a vegetarian. This passage along with a few others have convicted me to become a vegetarian so that I would not “hurt or destroy” on this earth. Being a vegetarian is not for everyone and certainly, members of my family are not. But for me, having read this passage, I decided to live as closely as I possibly can to participate in God’s rearranging of today’s world order to become restored and renewed again.
The challenge for us is what might we do to work toward this messianic vision of a new heavens and a new earth where we are today. Are we able to give one cold drink of water at a time? Are we able to bring comfort to the poor, one act of mercy at a time? Are we able to offer friendship to one person at a time? Are we able to bring one can of beans for our food pantry? Are we able to offer refuge to an undocumented person in our sanctuary? Are we able to hear one confession and offer grace and mercy? Are we able to speak up when someone is being dehumanized? Are we able to speak up against evil and a wrong in our neighborhood? Are we able to listen to someone before we start speaking?
The famous American psychiatrist, Karl Menninger was asked by someone in the audience, “What would you advise a person to do if that person felt a nervous breakdown coming on?”
Most people expected him to reply, “Consult a psychiatrist.” To the audience’s astonishment, he replied, “Lock up your house, go across the railway tracks, find someone in need and do something to help that person.”
At Lakeshore, we do this through the Hunger Task Force; the Cease Fire Initiative, the food pantry grocery bags, Pastor Allison’s public witness on our behalf in the West Bank, meeting our neighbors’ children in our Vacation Bible School and the Children’s Center, Seafarers’ Mission at the Oakland docks, and many others projects that we do in the seasons of our church.
Might we close the church doors behind us, walk down Lakeshore Avenue and many other streets of Oakland and find people in need and do something to help them?
These and many “one step at a time ways” are the ways God is calling each of us to help in making evident that God is creating new heavens and a new earth.
Our church is not to be cloistered itself in proclaiming the resurrection for ourselves but to make the proclamation of the resurrection to the entire world. When we participate in “these one-step at a time,” bit by bit, in Christ’s name, we are restoring our right relationship with God. In God’s grace, we not only understand Isaiah’s vision, but we are actively engaged in God’s reordering of creation. With God, we step out with hope in the God who creates, reconciles, and sustains us.
Holy Amnesia
My wife, Joy has a much better memory than I do! I tried to tell her that just like I had selected hearing, I have selected memory. But she wouldn’t buy that!
I realized that I really do need you to remind me of your name when I see you! And I assure you that I may not remember a name, but I do remember you!
In retrospect, I have called my selected memory as “holy amnesia.” There are times when there was a grievous incident that has happened. I have forgotten the heartrending struggles but remembering only the positive solution. A colleague suggested to me that perhaps some forgetfulness is a gift from God. Perhaps there is such a thing as “holy amnesia.”
God says that when new heavens and a new earth comes forth, the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. Whatever, we may have done, whatever we might have said, whatever we have missed doing that we should have done, all of these things, God will not hold these things against you. As long as we participate in this new world order that is coming, God will forgive and perhaps forget.
No more the sound of weeping or the cry of distress will come from us.
New Oakland
Isaiah 65 becomes a prototype for the New Testament found in the Book of Revelations. John writes,
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (21:1-2)
Today we are not talking about a new Garden of Eden or a new Jerusalem in the Middle East. Nothing tells us here that former things or the old creation itself is destroyed. The prophet is speaking about a transformation of the world as he knows it.
We might dare to say that the new Jerusalem in our midst is a new Oakland. In our world today, God is transforming us from a world of wickedness, injustice, false worship, and troubles, into a glorious new creation.
In this new relationship that is restored with God because of Christ’s reconciliation, we are glad and rejoicing; we are joyful and delighted; because God promised us new heavens and a new earth here at Lakeshore Avenue, in Oakland, in California, and in this world that we live.
Let us pray.
Thank you, Lord for giving us a new vision of new heavens and a new earth that we can participate in where we find ourselves today. Enable us and empower us to do the things that we can, some little, some bigger that would proclaim mercy and forgiveness that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ has done. Bless us and keep us, O God. Amen.