This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) Welcome back for day two of our look through the book of Isaiah,
week four. We're going to look at Isaiah chapter 35 today. It is a chapter about
joy.

As we've been talking about the changes that God wants to work in your life,
we've come across joy several times. That's because you are strengthened, you
are motivated for the changes that God wants to work in your life through joy.
In the end, you're always going to be drawn to the place where you find joy in your
life.

Now, we've been talking about how to have joy a couple of times through these
chapters. This chapter, chapter 35, describes what it is. If you had to define
joy, how would you define it?

Happiness, we all know it's a lot more than happiness. Confidence, security, but
it's more emotional, it's more exuberant than that. Excitement, enthusiasm, we
know it's deeper than that.

Joy, it's difficult to define, it's easier to picture, and that's what Isaiah 35
does. This chapter is more than a page of definitions in a dusty dictionary.
It's a picture of the delightful wonder for real life.

It's a picture of the kind of change that God wants to work in your life through
the joy that he wants to give you. So what are the pictures he gives us here?
What is joy?

Joy is, it's refreshment for that which is dry. Joy is refreshment. It's
refreshment for a dry desert.

It's refreshment for a dry heart. Has your heart ever felt dry? Not hot or cold,
just dry.

Not rested or restless, just emotionless. No enthusiasm, no excitement, no
anticipation, like a desert. A desert is just the same over and over and over
again.

If you've seen one sand dune, you've seen them all. God's promised joy adds up
to a kind of refreshment during these dry times in our lives. So he gives this
picture of a desert that's going to blossom, Isaiah 35, one and two.

The desert and the parched land will be glad. The wilderness will rejoice and
blossom. Like the crocus, 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.

It's this picture of that which looks dead springing to life. Fruitfulness for
frustration, that's joy. Now the ultimate picture of this kind of joy is Easter,
Easter morning, resurrection taking the place of death.

In the desert, that which looks dead is brought to life. In the resurrection,
that which was dead by everybody's reckoning is brought to life. When you feel
dead and useless inside, God desires to bring new joy, new life.

That's what joy looks like. It also has this picture when we talk about this
refreshment of water in the wilderness. Verses six and seven of chapter 35.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning
sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. That gnawing
feeling that something is absent in your life, that something significant is
missing.

Our need when we have that feeling is for this kind of great joy, for water in
that wilderness, for streams in that desert, streams in the desert, the name of
a very famous devotional taken from these verses. That which looks entirely
empty becomes a lake, a river of life, abundance for absence. That's the kind of
joy that God wants to bring into your life.

He continues this picture of what he wants to do in our lives through joy. It's
also this picture of the grass and the reed that will grow. Chapter 35, verse
seven.

In the haunts where the jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
So in this place that had been meaningless and empty, now there's growth. That
which looked impossible occurs.

Growth in the desert. It's a picture of miracles for mirages. In the desert, if
you see something that looks like it's growing, it's a mirage.

When you get there, there's nothing there. But God instead wants to work the
miracle of growth in your life and the places that even once looked dead.
Impossible, you think nothing could grow there.

There's some places on this earth where you look and you think it's impossible
for anything to ever grow. And there's some places in your life where you look
and you think it's impossible that anything could ever grow there. Dead and dark
corners of hatred or bitterness or lust or failure.

Those are the places where God can not only shine, but he can work the
miraculous joy of growth even in those places. So when you think about what it
is to have joy, it's this picture of refreshment for that which looks dry. But
there's more here.

There's more in this chapter 35. It's also a picture of strength for that which
is weak. Joy is strength for that which is weak.

It's when God adds new strength to the weak points in your life. When the tired
mount up with wings like eagles. There are tremendous pictures here for God's
ability to give new strength to the weak moments, the weak places in your life.

Chapter 35, verses three to six. Strengthen the feeble hands. Steady the knees
that give way.

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.

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy. Strength
for that which is weak and he gives picture after picture after picture.

He talks about feeble hands that are strengthened to work. A new strength, a new
ability comes into your life with God's joy. Included in this new ability is a
new strength, a new motivation to set yourself to the task that God has given to
you.

And then he talks about fearful hearts that are strengthened to hope. One of the
greatest weaknesses we all face is fear. The center of the kind of hope that God
wants to give, he tells us in these verses, is this phrase, did you pick up on
it?

Your God will come. Fearful hearts are strengthened by that phrase, your God
will come. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil for you are with me.

Your God will come. Fearful hearts strengthened to hope. And then the picture of
frail knees strengthened to endure.

Frail knees give way so easily when they're asked to stand. But there's a new
endurance in joy from making the stands that God wants you to make in life. He
talks about blind eyes here, seeing the truth.

Joy enables us to view life from a truthful perspective. It's like a new pair of
eyeglasses that clarifies everything you're looking at in life. That's where joy
comes from.

He talks in these verses about deaf ears, ears that can now hear God's voice,
that are open to hear. That's where joy comes from. And he talks about lame
legs, walking, running, leaping, climbing towards God's will.

Joy is more than just a smile. It's more than just a spring in your step. It's
more than just an emotion.

It is strength for living. The joy of the Lord is my strength. But it's God's
strength even in our weaknesses.

That's the kind of joy that he wants to give into your life. Now, we're still
not through. There's a third picture he gives in this chapter 35.

What's joy? What does it look like? It's a picture of direction for that which
is confused.

Joy is God showing you the way when you're not sure of the way. He says in these
verses that a highway will be there. Instead of having direction in your life
that's confused and muddled, it's going to be clear direction from God.

That's what joy is like. This sense of confident direction for living. So verses
eight to 10 in chapter 35.

And a highway will be there and it will be called the way of holiness. The
unclean will not journey on it. It will be for those who walk in that way.

Wicked fools will not go about on it. No lion will be there, nor will any
ferocious beast get up on it. They will not be found there.

But only the redeemed will walk there and the ransomed of the Lord 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. Look
at the pictures. This way of holiness.

The way of holiness. Life can get confused by my sins. It can get confused by
your sins.

We need a way of holiness. This is a highway for those living the way. And it's
prepared obviously by Jesus Christ.

Walking in his holiness. He takes the confusion out of life. He gives us the
direction we need and the joy we need in life.

It's also a way of safety. He talks about no lion being there. No ferocious
beast that's there.

Life can get confused by our fears. This is a way for the redeemed to walk in
because we know that in the end our life is not going to be determined. Your
life will not be determined by your fears in the end.

It will be determined by your faith in Jesus Christ. That's the end of the story
of your life. And that's the direction that you're walking.

And he says, because of all this, it's a way of victory. Life can get confused
by our sorrows, by our losses. Those setbacks, those sudden defeats.

He says the end of the story is victory. Gladness and joy that defeats the
sorrow and the sighing that's in our lives. This victory, he says here, we're
going to walk into a place called Zion.

And that's the picture of Jerusalem for them. The place of victory, the city of
victory. That's a picture of heaven.

This ultimate victory that we're walking towards in our lives. Our daily
challenge as Christians is to live in the joy of the Lord. And here is the
picture in Isaiah 35 of what this joy looks like.

I want to encourage you right now to make a new commitment to walk in this joy.
To depend on his joy to refresh your heart. To call on his joy as the strength
of your life.

To bring your sins, your fears, your sorrows to him. And to allow Jesus Christ
to give direction to your life. Even in the midst of those struggles of life
through his joy.

Let's talk to him about that. Jesus, we want to live in the joy that you
promised us. We don't live in a perfect world.

But even in this world, you can give us joy. And so we depend on your joy right
now to refresh our hearts. Not on anything else.

We ask right now that your joy would strengthen us for the task that you have in
front of us today. Forgive us for trying to strengthen ourselves by our own
emotions. Instead, strengthen us by your joy.

And Lord, right now we give to you our sins, our fears, our sorrows. And we ask
that instead of allowing those things to direct our lives or confuse our
direction, that we look to you. We look to the joy you give us in our salvation.

And we allow that to be the direction of our lives. Thank you for this picture
of joy. And thank you for giving us joy by giving yourself for us on the cross.

In Jesus' name, we thank you. Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to begin to learn from
King Hezekiah how to defeat the enemies of what God wants to do in our lives.