Isaiah 32:15-20 NLT
“15 until at last the Spirit is poured out
on us from heaven.
Then the wilderness will become a fertile field,
and the fertile field will yield bountiful crops.
16 Justice will rule in the wilderness
and righteousness in the fertile field.
17 And this righteousness will bring peace.
Yes, it will bring quietness and confidence forever.
18 My people will live in safety, quietly at home.
They will be at rest.
19 Even if the forest should be destroyed
and the city torn down,
20 the Lord will greatly bless his people.
Wherever they plant seed, bountiful crops will spring up.
Their cattle and donkeys will graze freely.”
What a wonderful picture, bringing a change to Israel’s circumstances. Just a little earlier, we read that the “fruit crops will fail, and the harvest will never take place” and “your land will be overgrown with thorns and briers. Your joyful homes and happy towns will be gone. The palace and the city will be deserted, and busy towns will be empty”. Desolation to restoration, but more than that, because the new will be miraculous in the light of the Lord’s blessings. The wilderness will be transformed into fertile fields, a miracle in itself, but then bountiful crops appear. More than sufficient grazing for the herds will be found. But then we find that justice and righteousness will be found in the land, bringing peace, “quietness and confidence forever”. The Lord said that His people “will live in safety, quietly at home. They will be at rest”. What a wonderful picture of what was to come.
Even more remarkable is that all this will happen after the Eden experience, when Adam and Eve were driven out from the Garden. God told Adam, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:17-19). The norm for farmers in the 8th Century BC was just that, “scratch[ing] a living”, with the very survival of the people depending on hard work and dependable weather. Today, with modern farming methods, the large-scale growing of food is easier, but, as the recent droughts have exposed, fears remain for the food supply and the ability to feed an ever-growing world population.
When will Isaiah’s picture of plenty come to pass? Of course, it will be “in that day”, when the Righteous King will come. There is an “at last” embedded in verse 15, “until at last the Spirit is poured out on us from heaven“. The people and the land were, and still are, exhausted, but we know that at just the right time, the Lord will return. But for us pilgrims, the “at last” introduces us to the Holy Spirit. Imagine the scenario where He is poured out into this world, without limit, producing bountiful fruit everywhere. Imagine this world becoming a fruitful and fertile spiritual “field” where the fruits of the Spirit are visible without limit. What are these fruits? We find them in Galatians 5:22-23, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” “In that day”, we will find the Kingdom of God finally with us, blessed by the rule and reign of the Righteous King. Just as Isaiah wrote, we will find a new normal in His Kingdom, as we read in Psalm 89:14, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. Unfailing love and truth walk before you as attendants“. Early in His ministry, Jesus read two verses from Isaiah 61, and we can read them in Luke 4:18-19: “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the LORD’s favour has come”. Just a little earlier in Isaiah 32 we read, “Then everyone who has eyes will be able to see the truth, and everyone who has ears will be able to hear it“. Jesus knew His mission implicitly and Isaiah had a glimpse of what that was to be, as he looked down the centuries, seeing the coming of the “In that day“.
Isaiah’s chapter 32 oracle seemed to imply that the Lord’s blessings will fall upon the present earth, and of course it may well do so. But the New Earth that John saw in his revelation will be very different, because it will contain the New Jerusalem “… coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband“. And it gets better, because “God’s home is now among His people”. And He said, “Look, I am making everything new”.
But Isaiah 32:15 reads, “at last the Spirit is poured out on us from heaven“. That immediately must remind us of a certain occasion: “On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place” (Acts 2:1). We know what happened next because there was a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit “And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability” (Acts 2:4). Suitably empowered, Peter stepped forward and preached a sermon that saw 3,000 people “added to the church that day”. For me, the key verse in his sermon was ” … Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit fell on individuals when God decreed, resourcing them to do His work. But today the Holy Spirit lives within all believers, and His power is limitless. Ephesians 3:20 “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us”. The rest of Isaiah 32:15 reads, “Then the wilderness will become a fertile field, and the fertile field will yield bountiful crops“. We know that in the 400 years that preceded the first coming of Jesus, the spiritual fields were indeed a wilderness. Amos wrote about such a time coming: “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘when I will send a famine through the land – not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD” (Amos 8:11). But the “wilderness became a fertile field” on that first Day of Pentecost.
We pilgrims are living in a season of the Holy Spirit’s blessings. For us, the season started when we were saved, and it will never end. The Lord has come to live with His people through His Spirit. How does that make us feel? Empowered or indifferent? For me, I want to shout out the message of God’s love and grace to this dying generation, who fail to see the judgment coming.
Dear God. We pray that You would open up the hearts of the people around us so that they can hear Your voice clearly amongst all the noise in this evil world. Only You have the words of eternal life for the salvation of mankind. And You have commissioned us to take these words to those You have chosen in these times. Amen.
