Everlasting Joy!
Advent 2025 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Welcome to our celebration of the third Sunday of Advent at Liberty Spring Christian Church.
This week’s celebration is special. Well, they’re all special, of course. But this one is different.
Two weeks ago, we celebrated with the theme of Hope. I said our hope is the confident assurance we who follow Jesus have in God’s promise that Jesus will return for all who’ve turned to Him in faith. THIS is at the heart of everything we celebrate during Advent.
Last week, we celebrated with the theme of Peace, and I told you there’s a longing for true peace within the hearts of all mankind. Whether we understand or acknowledge the emptiness inside of us, all of us try to find peace in some way or another.
Advent reminds us that peace within ourselves, peace with one another, and peace with God can only be found in Christ Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
We find peace with God when we confess that we’re sinners and trust that only Jesus provides a way for us to be reconciled to God.
He alone provides a way for we who’ve rebelled against God in our sins to be forgiven and become citizens of His kingdom, adopted sons and daughters in His family.
As we celebrate Advent, we’re reminded that God sent Jesus to us as a gift of peace to all us rebels.
But we’re also reminded that, even though we Jesus-followers now have peace with God, we still don’t have peace on earth. Nor even peace within ourselves, sometimes.
And so, we await the Second Advent of Jesus, much as God’s chosen people, Israel, awaited the Messiah’s First Advent.
And all that’s pretty special, right? But there IS something particularly special about this third Sunday of Advent. And it has been treated differently all the way back to the 4th or 5th century, A.D., when the Advent tradition began.
The dark purple candles on the Advent wreath denote a time of penitence. Back then, the season was marked with fasting.
But the third week is different. The third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday, which means Rejoicing Sunday. And back then, it was celebrated not with fasting, but with feasting.
And we represent the special nature and mood of this week’s celebration of joy with a pink candle.
So, feel free to feast today! If you’ve been fasting for two weeks, you’re probably pretty hungry.
This week’s Advent theme is joy. And, as was true with the previous weeks, there’s a sense of both looking backward and looking forward in this celebration.
We look backward 2,000 years to that night in Bethlehem, when the hope of mankind was fulfilled in the incarnation.
When God-Apart-From-Us became God WITH Us. When God wrapped His own unique and eternal Son in human flesh and gave Him to us as the first and greatest Christmas present.
In the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, God came to live among us as a man, yet without sin. Jesus came to show us the character of His Father. And He came to offer Himself, 33 years later, as the perfect atoning sacrifice.
On a cross at Calvary, the sinless Christ suffered and died, covered in our sin and shame. He took upon Himself our sins, and their just punishment, so that all who’d turn to Him in faith would be forgiven and saved.
And for those who DO place their faith in Jesus and His finished work at the cross, something remarkable happens: We receive God’s Holy Spirit, who begins to transform us into the image of Jesus. We’re being made to be LIKE Him
Jesus became like US so we who follow Him in faith can become like HIM.
And as we look backward in our celebration of Advent, all those things are in view.
But I’d like to suggest thatAdvent is just as much about looking forward, looking ahead, as it is about looking back.
And today, we’re going back to Isaiah, that Old Testament prophet of Judah, to see what he has to tell us about OUR future as followers of Jesus.
Now, remember that Isaiah prophesied in Judah during a period about 2,700 years ago. And much of what we’re going to read about today is still in OUR future. But God isn’t limited by time, and he knows the end from the beginning.
So, speaking through His prophet, He could talk with certainty about the joy His people would experience when their hope for true peace is finally fulfilled.
We’ll be looking at chapter 35 this morning. It’s the same passage Miss Lynn read earlier. Please turn there now.
As you do, it’s helpful to understand that chapter 34, which we don’t have time to read this morning, deals with the Tribulation, that coming seven-year period of God’s wrath over sin being poured out upon the earth.
In verse 2 of that chapter, God says, “The Lord’s indignation is against ALL the nations, and His wrath against all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them over to slaughter.”
And in the rest of Chapter 34, Isaiah describes a future earth that’s been absolutely devastated under the wrath of God.
“In chapter 34, God is seen as turning the world into a desert; here [in chapter 35], He transforms that desert into a garden.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Is 35:1]
As I said, chapter 34 describes that judgment during the Tribulation period. And there’ll be no joy on earth during that time. But the Tribulation will be only Stage 1.
Let’s see what God says about Stage 2, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 35.
1 The wilderness and the desert will be glad, And the Arabah will rejoice and blossom; Like the crocus
2 It will blossom profusely And rejoice with rejoicing and shout of joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, The majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord, The majesty of our God.
“The wilderness and the desert will be glad,” God says here. And the Arabah — the desert or wilderness — will rejoice and blossom.
The picture He’s showing us is of the devastated earth coming back to life in the days following Jesus’ return as the conquering King who reigns in true peace. The earth itself will rejoice in His Second Advent.
Now the word translated as “crocus” in the NASB means desert-saffron in Hebrew. It can also refer to a rose.
Whichever flower is in view here is a wildflower. And the idea is that life springs up in this barren place, transforming it, much as a meadow is transformed when the wildflowers bloom.
It’s changed from a scrub-filled, lifeless place into one that provides shelter and sustenance to all manner of life.
A quiet wasteland becomes a place where birds sing and bees buzz. A place of gray and brown becomes lush with the greenery of leaves and covered in flowers.
It’s a riot of color that God likens to shouts of joy. It’s as if the very blossoms of these flowers shout “Hallelujah,” because they’ve seen the glory of God in the coming of His Son as King.
Isaiah uses the phrase, “glory of Lebanon” again in chapter 60, and there God says that he’ll bring the glory of Lebanon in order to “make the place of my feet glorious.”
In other words, when the King of kings and Lord of lords comes to inhabit His kingdom here on earth, it’s only fitting that the very ground He walks upon reflect His glory.
So, right off the bat, God gives us a picture of the earth itself being prepared for the glory of Jesus. A picture of the earth itself celebrating the Second Advent of Jesus.
And now, He turns His attention to the PEOPLE who’ll inhabit the earth during Christ’s Millennial Reign. Look at verse 3.
3 Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
4 Say to those with anxious heart, “Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The recompense of God will come, But He will save you.”
He’s talking to Israel here, but He’s also talking to us. We’re exhausted from the toil — the pain and labour and hardship and sorrow that resulted from the curse Adam brought upon us in his sin.
We’re feeble — the Hebrew word there literally means we have “tottering knees.” Our knees totter from the weight of sin and its effects on the world and on us.
And Isaiah reminds us here to take heart, because God’s judgment will not come upon us. He will save those who’ve turned to Jesus in faith.
But there’s also a sense in which God is speaking through Isaiah to those who place their faith in Jesus during the Great Tribulation.
Those who are saved during this time, Isaiah says, must have courage. They should have hope, because God will save them, and they’ll enter this paradise, the Millennial Kingdom of chapter 35.
Jesus WILL bring judgment upon the unrighteousness of this world. God WILL pay mankind the wages due for its sins against Him.
But we who’ve placed our faith in Him through Christ Jesus have no reason to fear this judgment, because we’ve been saved from it through our faith in Him and His substitutionary sacrifice.
Now, look at verse 5.
5 Then the eyes of the blind will be opened And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
6 Then the lame will leap like a deer, And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness And streams in the Arabah.
7 The scorched land will become a pool And the thirsty ground springs of water; In the haunt of jackals, its resting place, Grass becomes reeds and rushes.
John the Baptist experienced a crisis of faith while in prison and sent word asking whether Jesus was really the Messiah, the Expected One. Listen to Jesus’ response in Matt 11:4-6.
4 Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and report to John what you hear and see:
5 the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.
6 “And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.”
Jesus was reminding John the Baptist that He’d healed the blind and the lame. He’d cleansed lepers. He’d made the deaf hear and raised the dead.
Therefore, He was the Expected One, the Messiah promised through the prophets. He was the one whose living waters would give eternal life. We’ll hear more about the waters in verse 7 from the Isaiah passage.
7 The scorched land will become a pool And the thirsty ground springs of water; In the haunt of jackals, its resting place, Grass becomes reeds and rushes.
In the context of this passage, God is saying the land that was laId waste and left dead during the Great Tribulation described in chapter 34 will now become watered under the Messiah’s reign.
In chapter 49, Isaiah describes the Messiah guiding His people to springs of water on highways that have been raised up for them.
This isn’t a great flood that brings more death to the world, but rather the appearance of life-giving water where previously there had been death and wasteland.
But it’s interesting to note that the word translated as “scorched land” can also refer to a mirage.
Now, a mirage promises something it can’t deliver. It’s a vision of water where none exists, a false hope of something to quench the thirst of those in the desert.
And in the end times, that’s just what people will experience. Much as they do now, but to an even greater degree, they’ll hope for deliverance by all kinds of things that have no power to deliver them from God’s judgment.
They’ll chase after mirages that falsely promise to quench their physical AND spiritual thirst.
But what Jesus promises us in salvation through faith in Him is no mirage. He promises TRUE and complete deliverance from sin and from God’s judgment because of it.
That’s what He was telling the Samaritan woman at the well in John, chapter 4, when He said He could give her living water. Listen to how He describes it.
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
Jesus was reminding the Samaritan woman of this and other Old Testament prophecies that pointed to the Messiah, whose living water would bring life.
Indeed, at the end of their exchange, He tells her outright that He IS the promised Messiah, and that in Him can be found the living water of eternal life.
And then, in Revelation, chapter 7, we see the culmination of Isaiah’s prophecy about springs of water.
The Apostle John sees a vision of the throne room in heaven, probably between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals of God’s judgment upon the earth.
This would be at the midpoint of the seven-year tribulation period, just before the beginning of the Great Tribulation, when God pours out His wrath upon the earth like never before.
John describes seeing the 144,000 Jewish tribulation believers from the 12 tribes of Israel sealed or marked on their foreheads as belonging to God.
And then, in verse 9, He describes “a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands.”
They’re joined by the angels of heaven and the elders and the four living creatures in worshiping Father and Son before the throne.
And one of the elders identifies this multitude for John, telling him in verse 14 that they’re “the ones who come out of the great tribulation.”
Now, there’s disagreement about what that means, and much depends on your interpretation of the preposition translated there as “out of.”
But I think the best interpretation here is that this multitude consists of those who’ve turned to Jesus in faith and then died during the first three and a half years of the Tribulation period.
They will have been saved from the outpouring of God’s wrath that’s about to take place in the Great Tribulation.
And they’ll give God thanksgiving and blessing because of their salvation and because they’ve been spared from the horrors still to come on earth.
And what I want you to see here is how this interlude ends. Look at verse 16.
16 “They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat;
17 for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”
Most observant Jews believe that Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 35 was a metaphorical description of what it was like when the remnant of Israel returned to their land after their exile to Babylon.
But Jesus fulfilled those prophecies literally. He opened the eyes of the blind and unstopped the ears of the deaf. He made the lame walk and the mute shout for joy.
And if He fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy literally, then we can conclude that He’ll fulfill John’s prophecy literally.
There WILL be a Tribulation, a period of God’s wrath poured out upon the earth. And there WILL be multitudes who come to faith in Jesus during that time.
By God’s grace, a great throng of people will turn to HIS living water instead of chasing after the mirages that promise what they can’t deliver.
And when the Great Tribulation is over, Jesus will return to earth with His Church. And He will defeat the armies of unrighteousness arrayed against Him with a word from His mouth. And Satan will be thrown into the abyss for 1,000 years.
This begins the Millennial Reign of Christ. It’s not our final state with Him. That will come at the end of this thousand-year period, when Jesus vanquishes Satan and casts him into hell.
At that time, Jesus will sit in judgment upon his Great White Throne. And all those from all of history who’ve rejected Him will be cast into hell in resurrected bodies for eternal torment and separation from God.
But that thousand-year reign between the Tribulation and final judgment will be a special time during which even non-believers will be able to see the glory of God on earth.
Along with we who’ve trusted in Jesus, they’ll see, experience, and even participate in the revival of shalom, of perfect peace on earth.
And they’ll either place their faith in HIM, or they’ll reject Him, despite all they’ve witnessed in His reign of righteousness and peace.
Jesus WILL reign in absolute righteousness and peace from his throne in Jerusalem. And as Isaiah says in the last part of chapter 35, the redeemed of the Lord will come to Him there in everlasting joy.
Look at verse 8.
8 A highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for him who walks that way, And fools will not wander on it.
9 No lion will be there, Nor will any vicious beast go up on it; These will not be found there. But the redeemed will walk there,
10 And the ransomed of the Lord will return And come with joyful shouting to Zion, With everlasting joy upon their heads. They will find gladness and joy, And sorrow and sighing will flee away.
This highway will be for Christ’s followers, for all the ransomed of the Lord, for those He bought from our slavery to sin with the blood He shed on Calvary’s cross.
For a long time, I’ve said I want to visit Israel, because I know I’ll be going to Jerusalem in the end times, and I want to know my way around. This is one of the passages I base that on.
And as I imagine that future visit, I can almost hear the joyful shouting of the redeemed walking along that highway with me.
I can hear us singing psalms to Jesus. I can see us carrying palm fronds to lay at His feet. I can see us raising our hands, celebrating the fact that we’re going to see the KING!
There’ll be no reason for fear. Jesus will have healed the broken nature of even the fiercest predators. And His righteous rule during this time will allow no rebellion, no persecution, no unrighteous behavior.
Even though there still will be some unbelievers during this period, there’ll be no persecution of His followers for fear of Jesus’ swift and righteous judgment.
Walking along that Highway of Holiness in our glorified bodies, I imagine we’ll have some joyful reunions with other believers we’ve held dear during our former lives.
And I imagine we’ll meet some others we’ve always wanted to know. Maybe the Apostle Paul. Or John. Maybe even Isaiah!
Imagine how THAT meeting might go. “Hey, Isaiah! It’s exactly how you wrote that it would be!” “Well of COURSE it is, you big dummy. I just wrote what the Lord told me to write!”
And then, as we enter the gates of Jerusalem — just when we thought things couldn’t get any better — we’ll see the temple of God. But there won’t be a Holy of Holies, separating us from the presence of God with a great curtain.
No, the curtain has been torn down, and in that place, we’ll see our King Himself in all His glory, sitting upon His throne.
And in His presence, which will fill the whole earth during this time, there will be no room for sorrow, no more tears, no need for sighing.
All the toil — the pain and labor and hardship and sorrow of this broken world we know now — all of it will be gone.
No longer will our knees totter. In fact, I imagine we’ll dance into His presence, much as King David danced when the Ark of the Covenant was returned to Jerusalem.
I think it’s wonderful that God has given us such detail about what life will be like during Christ’s Millennial Reign. We don’t have to wonder what it’ll be like.
He hasn’t answered ALL our questions. But He’s made one thing abundantly clear: Our lives will be filled with everlasting JOY.
And during Advent, as at all times, THAT, my friends, is something worth looking forward to.
