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The Widowed Bride By Stephen Bignall

Good morning everyone, it's good to see you and it's good to be with you as a family.
Is this on now the right way it should be? Yep, okay.
Catherine, I may need your medical services in a minute.
My week began with happy news. As I stepped out of the shower, my phone rang at 7 o'clock on Monday morning.
It was Amanda Thompson, who joyfully announced to me that she'd turned 50.
It also began with very sad news because I had a text message as well that my friend of 30 years, Peter Speight, had passed away very suddenly.
I didn't realise that by the end of the week I would be taking his funeral and Campbell and others also participated in that.
So as I bring the message this morning, both the joy of fellowship and the years that are granted to us as we have service and relationship in Christ are before me
and the sadness of our loss when a friend passes but his gain.
Now Catherine, your services may be required in a minute because Amanda, your present is here, out the front.
And if you could just come and receive it. I understand that your husband hasn't bought you one yet, he confessed that to me.
So my wife being who she is, happy birthday Amanda.
Thank you very much.
It's always risky to tell a preacher that he can relate a little bit of what's been happening where he lives.
Please continue to pray for us as you are. We're very, very grateful for your prayers.
They are so important to the Kingdom of God. There is a throne of grace and grace to help and mercy in time of need come in response to the people of God's pleading.
In the last month there's been quite a lot of tumult in our field.
The church building in Walgett has been broken into several times, every window was smashed, the outside was graffitied, the inside was damaged
and basically it fell to the elderly lady and her foster children who were there in Walgett, myself and Fiona and our daughter to try and clean that up two weeks ago
which we sought to do, it was then broken into again so we had to secure it even more.
In the same month the neighbourhood centre where the couple who serve in Moree meet with the small church and do a very, very important children's work
was burnt to the ground by three former members of their children's club who also burnt three houses to the ground before the police intercepted them.
This is the sort of field that we work in. John, that pro bono work that you're doing for the people in Moree, now's the time to get in contact with them.
Pro bono work's free because you're still meant to do it so they're looking to buy a building so they need that trust up and running.
In our own field, Henry Louie, whom you know and love, has had real trials.
About two weeks ago we got a call as we were in the cottage meeting in his home with Aboriginal children around us and other folks
to say that his son Michael had taken a drug overdose and was unconscious in hospital
and I just stood in silence by the bedside as he sat with his son and stroked his cheek and the boy's about 30 years old
and just full of self-reproach and anger and his father cannot reach him
and he is not the only young curry who has this sort of turbulent thing going on in his life.
As we left for Dubbo yesterday to go to, I was taking Jesse down to meet Fiona at the Aboriginal Ladies Convention,
I ran into Henry coming back from Dubbo. He was called into a hospital at one o'clock in the morning.
His two and a half year old nephew who has been battling a brain injury all of his life had just passed away an hour before in his parents' arms.
It's a very real need, the gospel. There are communities without any gospel witness out in the bush.
If Australia is a pie, there's this beautiful crust around the coast and you break through the crust and there's no filling.
I can name Walgett, Galarganbone, Canamble, Baradene, Tiroina, place after place where there isn't a single gospel minister.
Neither for the generality of Australians nor for the Aboriginal community.
The last minister left Walgett a month ago, the Anglican minister, an evangelical who had served in New Guinea.
He left so they could care for their aged parents in Weewool.
There's such a need and so it's so good this morning to be looking at a passage that calls us to this glorious optimistic expansion
to lengthen our stakes and strengthen our cords and to break out on every hand because God is going to populate his kingdom.
He's going to fill his household.
And I would just challenge you again to consider the missionary call, not to exotic places overseas, but to the interior of this country.
The communities are smaller, but if they cease doing what they're doing, not only won't there be food on the table, but so many injections into our economy will cease.
So they can't come into the cities to be evangelised because otherwise our country grinds to a halt.
We cease to be fed and money ceases to come into the bank from our resources.
They shouldn't be denied the gospel because they live in remote areas.
So I pray God will stir us all up and call out a generation to be missionaries in our very large backyard.
I'm going to ask Gordon, I gave him those before the service, if he could just pray for our field, for indigenous Australians and for Australia's missionary needs.
That's great. Father, it's almost overwhelming when we hear of the needs of our brothers and sisters in churches in the inland, Lord, who are going through tumultuous times.
And Father, those of us that have even just had a brief visit in places like Walgett know how scary they are just to view, let alone to live in.
And so Father, we pray to you, the God of all creation, and we think of the incredible power of the gospel to change lives as you've done in our lives,
and Lord, in the lives of indigenous believers, Lord, in this country.
And we pray, Father, for the work of your Spirit, both to raise up workers for the harvest field,
and also to encourage your church and your people to really be convinced of the reality of the new life that they have in Christ,
and to live out that reality in their daily lives.
We pray, Lord, for so many communities that have no witness of the gospel in them, in terms of preaching or churches.
And Father, we pray for Christians there, that you might encourage them to meet together and to pray, that you will raise up workers for the harvest field there.
Father, would you challenge some of us to go and participate in the life of these communities and help sharing the gospel and encouraging your people,
and reaching out to those who as yet do not know you.
Father, our country, as it wanders further and further from the gospel, has no hope.
Lord, economics is no real hope. Lord, they see many, many problems in the world and see no answers.
And yet, Father, we know that the true answer lies in your Son and all that you've done in the gospel.
Father, we thank you for that and we pray that you will make us willing to participate in the kingdom work that you've called us to.
Help us, Father, to offer ourselves to you every day, to serve you in your kingdom, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Again, thank you everyone. We really do love you and are grateful for your prayers and your constant support.
Let's turn to Isaiah 51, whether on your phone or with your open Bible.
Isaiah 54 and through to 55. It's a bit like having a smorgasbord and you've got approximately 20 minutes.
You know you can't eat it all and there was a time when I would have tried.
And I just want to reassure you I'm not going to try and do a verse by verse exposition.
I'm looking at the portion David, I think, has for next week and it's even greater.
So these are glorious things.
700 years before Christ came, we read of that suffering servant.
This is the Word of God. It's living and powerful.
It is like no other book. It foretells the future and it brings the future to pass.
And we should be gripped by the enormity of what God has done in that it has granted us this living testimony.
Here we have a most extraordinary picture. It's a widowed bride.
Now it's very topical today to talk about brides. There are shows on television.
I was asking my daughter and wife, what's that show about the geeks?
And she said, beauty and the geek, trying to match up, very mismatched pairs.
Farmer wants a wife. I don't watch it on principle.
But I have watched the runaway bride and I love the princess bride.
All these stories about relationships. We're romantics as a race.
And that didn't originate with us.
It's part of the image of God. God is love. Hollywood didn't invent romance, it just corrupted it.
God is the God who loves. God is the God who created man and said it's not good for him to be alone.
And here is a woman alone. She's the object of shame.
She's the widowed bride. And what the servant of God has done.
And you saw the great cost of redemption last week.
David brought that message on the servant's suffering and how he shall see his seed and prolong his days.
The pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
What the servant has done is now joyfully announced as absolutely effective.
This is what's going to take place because of what the servant has done.
He's triumphed. And now he's going to gather his bride.
You see his bride is corporate. That's how we differ from God.
We're meant to have a husband who has one wife.
God has one wife made up of many people.
And that's where the marriage of the lamb is spoken of in Revelation 19 and 21.
The bride of Christ is so very different from our earthly brides.
We think of our brides and John looked into Catherine's eyes in Lambton Park there as a fruitful woman.
And he was right.
God looks into the eyes of his bride and she's a barren woman.
There's nothing natively fruitful. There's no way that she can fill a household.
There's no way that their house will be filled with children unless he provides the fertility and the power.
And by this glorious spirit of adoption brings in a multitude.
Israel's in exile here. This is the context of it.
At the time the prophet... Israel's going into exile.
It's about 700 BC. Israel is going into exile and going to come out after over a century.
Well, just under a century actually, about 70 years.
And so it's partially going to be fulfilled when they come back.
They go into Babylon and tens of thousands.
Jerusalem's gates will be burnt with fire. The walls will be broken down.
The very poorest of the people will be left. A mixed multitude will be ravaging the place and taking advantage.
But the people who went into exile don't perish.
They come back in their hundreds of thousands.
And the nation comes out of exile and fills the land.
But it's even more fulfilled in what happens when Messiah comes into the world.
And the church is born, Jew and Gentile, grafted into one.
And the Apostle Paul glories in this in Galatians chapter 4 where he quotes from this chapter in Galatians chapter 4, 27.
And he says, the Jerusalem that then was, that city, is in bondage with all her children.
But there's a Jerusalem that is above that comes down from God, you see, which is the mother of us all.
For it is written, Rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear. Break forth and shout, you who are not in labor.
For the desolate has many more children than she who has a husband.
Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.
So he sees it fulfilled in us and in the church as it was then and as it's grown over 20 centuries.
But the final fulfillment still awaits us.
When that bride of Christ is replete and complete and in all a glory arrayed and comes down out of heaven from God.
The Church of Jesus Christ complete, out of every tribe and tongue and family and nation, perfected.
We don't know what that'll mean, John says, but it means we'll be liking.
And so we look forward expectantly.
And, you know, this tent that's expanded, this household that, you know, she's lengthening her cord, she's strengthening her stakes.
It's that Bedouin idea, that nomadic idea.
She doesn't have a large four bedroom, you know, brick building.
She has a tent.
Reminds us, you know, that the Church of Christ is always on a journey, has no continuing city.
She's a nomad in a hostile world, but in a world which God provides.
And the New Jerusalem in eternity, and you can read of it 19 through 21 in the Book of Revelation.
Here we are this morning considering it.
And, you know, the first thing is that she and we are called to be shameless.
Christians are meant to be shameless.
Now, of course, shows like Farmer Has a Wife are shameless in the wrong way.
Blatantly mercenary.
But she's called to be shameless in this sense.
She leaves behind all reproachful things.
Every voice that rises against her in judgment is silenced.
The things that brought her shame and sorrow, the situation in which she's in is at an end.
The broken relationship, her separation, what led to her barrenness is gone forever.
Now, you'll be familiar with the idea of a near kinsman, a kinsman redeemer from the Book of Ruth.
That Moabite woman who had a husband who died and she was childless and she came into Israel.
And God had made provision for a near relative, a redeemer, to raise up children to the dead
and to make her a fruitful vine.
And the one who was closest refused lest he spoil his inheritance.
He had no compassion.
He could only think about racial purity.
He could only think about what his friends would think.
He could only think about how it appeared to others
and he wouldn't take a foreign woman and raise up children to her.
But you see, God's not like that.
His love is extravagant and unconditional and powerful and committed to all for whom the servant died.
And so he comes and he provides himself as a near kinsman.
This is what it means when Christ came into the world.
We must never read the Old Testament as if we're first century Jews or seventh century BC Jews.
We should always read it in context but it's always propelling us forward to the Messiah.
God himself will become a near kinsman.
God himself will clothe himself in humanity.
And he himself will come for his bride because there is no one else.
And this is what's foretold here.
And so it starts with song.
Sorrows turned into joy and she is to sing.
I'd delight to come down here.
You know we're only a little group up in Gilganda and we struggle a little bit with singing
and my indigenous friends tend to look back rather than look forward
and they like to sing their old camp revival songs.
When I come down here I see the fertility of a new generation.
I hear the praise that's framed in our own words and experiences drawn from the living presence of God
and it enriches me and I'm trying to take some of the songs back.
A Christian generation that cannot sing with joy because of what their husband, their redeemer has done
is a Christian generation that is starting to die and atrophy
and is ceasing to be that fruitful woman and is becoming barren again.
So she's called to be shameless by joyfully expanding.
What does that woman think she's doing? Isn't her house big enough?
You know she's knocked out another wall.
She's got an extra room, they've got two garages now and she's put this pool house out the back.
Is the story familiar? It's a bit shameless, isn't it?
What, she's flaunting all that wealth?
Well here is this woman who hasn't got any children
and this husband has just redeemed her after that broken widowhood that she had
and she's already building a bigger tent.
Joyful expansion, shameless you see.
We can be shameless, we can expand, we can prepare for the house to be filled.
There is no shame in that.
It's the promise of God.
Sing O barren, you who have not borne, break forth into singing
and cry aloud you who have not laboured with child
for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman says the Lord
enlarge the place of your tent, let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings
do not spare, lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes
for you shall expand to the right and to the left
and your descendants will inherit the nations and make the desolate cities be inhabited
and here we are, 27 centuries later
and the Church of Jesus Christ encompasses the globe.
This is the power of the Word of God, this is the reality of what God has done
and we continue to be a part of it, it's a wonderful thing to be a believer.
It's not a lifestyle, it's a life
and it's a life that's lived in a world that is dying.
We are the only continually fruitful thing that is happening in this world
and when Christians are born again it is the only miracle that is left.
Everything else is just natural and decaying.
And the world grows worse and worse
but God is building a new world and a new creation
and the Church of Jesus Christ never ceases to expand.
Our Redeemer's at hand you see, we needn't fear, I'm full of fear so often.
I was up at Walgood by myself last weekend
just tidying up, you know we fixed up the building, we bolted the doors
I had to go up because I'd locked this big tree that was shielding the door
from most of the Aboriginal community looking at that back door of the church
where they always kick it in, I thought right, branches have got to come down.
So I dropped them, ran out of time, went back to New Gandera, came back
and they turned them into humpies and there were just bottles strewn everywhere
and empty condom wrappers and clothes and you just...
So I've got to chop this up and clean it up, it's starting to get late in the day
and the place is starting to erupt with the cursing and the fighting
and the dusk is starting to come and I'm thinking, yeah, okay.
But kept going, loaded the truck up, went back to the house
and there's a drop bar on the door, I've never used it before.
I was tired, had a long day, things are pretty stirred up
so for the first time I slid the drop bar through the two steel eyelets and went to bed.
I woke up feeling just a little bit ashamed, my redeemer was at hand.
You can lay down in the wilderness and, you know, the Lord has created the ways to destroy
but he promises here at the end of our passage that it will not come near us.
I used to sit and listen to stories of our brothers and sisters in New Guinea
and how they slept in peace and safety.
Sometimes it's time to get out and there God provides, he always does
but always he's at hand.
Do not fear you will not be ashamed, neither will you be disgraced,
you'll not be put to shame, you'll forget the shame of your youth.
You will not remember the reproach of your widowhood or why, how is this possible?
For your maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name
and your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, he's called the God of the whole earth.
And God goes on to show why she should have confidence in every place that she goes
and why she can expand to the left hand and to the right.
And then he goes on to make an endless promise to her.
The promises that I make to my wife are endless, the ones I fulfil,
she could probably not run out of fingers and toes.
But God makes a powerful endless promise to her
and he puts it on a scale that should take our breath away.
What do you think the waters of the Noah were like?
Well, if the scientists are right we may well find out.
Global warming, what are they fearing?
They're fearing the whole world encompassed with the flood.
Well God's already done that.
And you know as Christians we can have confidence.
Christians are meant to be the most environmentally conscious people on the planet.
It was our mandate from God as a human race
and only those who are in relationship with him can really effectively fulfil it.
But everyone should be environmentally conscious.
And God is environmentally conscious.
Every time there's a rainbow he remembers something.
You know, I was reminded recently by a friend,
you know I look up at a rainbow
and we're supposed to remember that God's not going to flood the earth aren't we?
No.
He says when you see the bow and the cloud I will remember.
Every time there's a rainbow God is consciously remembering
that he made a promise on a global scale
that he will not eradicate humanity by flood
and he will preserve the earth until redemption is accomplished.
And he takes that promise and he compares it.
He says my love, my pledge, my promise, my covenant to you my bride
is as powerful to me as this.
For as I swore that the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth,
so I've sworn to you.
Now that's an enormous thing isn't it?
You know that's the only reason I could be there to bear witness
at Peter Speight's funeral and actually talk about him being a Christian.
That's the only reason I could have confidence
because of what God had promised him.
Because Peter was anything but a good Christian.
He was a man who clung to mercy and grace
and he was turbulent and yet he was triumphant.
He was tremendously gifted and yet like me he was deeply flawed,
like all of us.
Every one of us, none of us have attained,
we've all got feet of clay and hearts that are deceitful.
Our natural gifts are not what distinguish us.
But God's grace and the supernatural gifts that he's given us
and only the church possesses those.
And the promise that he's made is that he will not ever deal with us
in that old shameful relationship again.
It was our shameful relationship, we're separated from him by sin.
The lust of the flesh, the pride of life,
the rebellion that's there within each one of us.
He says I'm not going to deal with you in wrath.
I'm not going to deal with you judicially anymore.
I am going to satisfy and I have satisfied my justice.
Go back and see what the servant did.
By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many.
That's a legal forensic thing.
Probably only John knows what I'm talking about, even I don't.
It's something that's declared, it's written,
it satisfies all principles of jurisprudence.
No one can lawfully get up and say you can't do that
and she can't have that
and they cannot be perpetually in this situation.
Look at what they're doing.
Now that's not a license to be profligate
and inattentive and comfortable.
And I tell you what, it is a license.
It's a mandate, it's a wonderful privilege, it's a motivation.
Those who seek to serve Christ need to be conscious of two things.
The glory of their redeemer and the grace in which they always stand.
I do not know what I would do if God had not promised
that he will not be angry with me ever again.
This is like the waters of Noah to me,
that as I swore the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth,
so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you or rebuke you.
Your pastors are probably the most self-reproaching people in the world.
Do you know that?
We reproach them often enough, don't we?
Does it ever occur to you that they reproach themselves more than you could ever, ever do?
That they criticize themselves more than you ever, ever could
because they live inside their skin and God lives there with them
and they're conscious of their failures.
Do you as a Christian consciously know how much you fail God
and yet how much fruitfulness comes because he doesn't fail you?
Dwell in his love, rejoice in his strength, be shameless.
He's kept and he will keep his promise to you.
He's never angry with you.
He never deals with you.
If he corrects you and chastises you, it's always in love.
It's never to punish you for sin.
It's to wean you off it and to bring you into righteousness and safety and peace.
My covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, verse 10.
Well, that's a good thing because look what happens next.
Oh, you peaceful, well-adjusted person who's actually got stability now and got it all together.
No, oh, you afflicted one, tossed, not comforted.
There she is, all the stability and beauty and, you know,
if you want to see the outworking of those colourful gems,
those translucent, those things that reflect light,
that's why we love precious stones.
They reflect light and generally they're fairly incorruptible
compared to the rest of our decaying world.
Well, the New Jerusalem is described in those beautiful apocalyptic pictures
as all translucent, incorruptible gems encrust every part of her,
reflecting the light and the glory.
I don't know what crystal gold looks like.
Streets of gold clear as crystal.
And I'm pretty sure that it's not going to literally look like that
because it's an apocalyptic and descriptive passage.
But there is a sense in which the light
and the reflected glory will be something like that.
That's the only way that John could be inspired to describe
the lamb, the bride's wife, all full of reflected glory.
Varied and wonderful.
You see, the gems are not all diamond or sapphire.
So much diversity.
There's so much diversity here.
It's what really I rejoice in about this congregation.
Diversity and yet unity.
What wonder there is when you shine in your community
and when in all the things that should toss and turn
and cause instability and does for those without Christ in our community
and rock us.
I've been to Newcastle a lot lately.
Peter's funeral.
My aunt's terminal illness.
My father's depressed and disabled condition.
My mother-in-law's aged years and growing needs.
We've come back and forth.
There are things that people wrestle with in darkness,
without power, without light, without hope.
And we have Christ.
What a wonderful thing to stand on the rock.
What a wonderful thing to have the everlasting arms.
What a wonderful thing to know that the children
that fill the house of God will have peace.
These are the children that God is calling in.
All your children shall be taught by the Lord.
I think it's right for Christian parents to seek the fulfilment
of that promise in our offspring,
but it's wrong for us to see that as the only fulfilment.
We're all the children of the Lord and we've all been adopted
and there are other children that he's yet to beget again
through a new and living hope and they will come into the family
and be established in righteousness and be far from oppression.
Permanent climate change.
That's the point.
That's the wonderful thing.
You know, climate change is the big fearful thing.
Not enough money can be invested.
Well, God's invested in a permanent climate change
and heaven and earth will pass away, says Jesus,
but my words will never pass away.
It's on a cosmic scale.
Permanent climate change.
You can read there and I hope you do read through,
you know, all the things that God says,
you know, that he has created the avenger to destroy.
He does allow weapons to be formed,
but the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
their vindication is that they stand blameless before him
and he has an endless covenant that seals them in that way
and therefore, finally, it's time.
It's time to receive what is priceless.
It's time to respond
because there are almost certainly people sitting here this morning
who have heard this audibly again and again
and do not know its reality and power.
Ho, everyone that thirsts, come.
That's the great call.
That's the invitation today.
That's the extravagant offer that God has made to you all.
That's what brought us, we who know him, into the kingdom.
That's the voice that we echo when we send out the gospel
in our lives and in our words and in our ministries,
in our employments in this world.
Come.
There are people today who spend their wages
for what is not bread and for what does not satisfy.
It's called the Western lifestyle.
It's why Ecclesiastes has become the new book for the church.
Futility of futility, all this futility, meaningless.
What profit is there from all our labour?
Isn't this a message for the day?
Why keep spending your money on what is not bread?
Why keep working for what does not satisfy?
That's the gospel's great challenge.
Why do you spend money for what is not bread?
Receive what is priceless.
That's the third and final thing here in this passage.
Receive what is priceless.
Nothing else will satisfy you.
Nothing.
I would say to you, if you've not read the book of Ecclesiastes
and it's got a funny name,
but it just means the preacher and that can put you off,
you know, all right.
The people outside, it means some schmaltzy American con artist
trying to get your money by getting you to either laugh yourself silly
or shed enough tears to feel guilty
and promising you a better lifestyle, your best life now.
Joel Osteen's mother said when the man interviewed him,
we interviewed her,
why is your son so successful?
Well, that's, you know, that's very simple.
He never tells people that they're sinners.
We have the message from God.
It does humble us.
It does tell us that we're sinners.
But it doesn't leave us there in hopelessness.
There is a saviour, a servant who's carried our griefs,
borne our sorrows,
who will bring us to God forever
and bring God's extravagant gifts of love to us,
satisfy us.
I'm satisfied with Christ.
I've never been satisfied with anything else.
I'm such a wretch.
I'm dissatisfied with His providence more often
than I would ever confess openly to anyone except maybe my wife.
But Jesus Christ is who He says He is.
He keeps His promises.
The glories that are unseen,
the things that are reserved for us in heaven,
the little earnest that we get of them
are innumerable and valuable and wonderful.
The love, the joy, the peace, the patience
that comes as the fruit of His Spirit satisfies.
He satisfies us and we have satisfaction guaranteed
for those who will receive what we are offering them
without money, without price.
It's been paid for.
There's no such thing is there as a free lunch.
It can't really be free.
No, it is.
The servant has paid the price.
God has been extravagant.
He's met the price at such cost.
The thing is to seek the Lord while He may be found.
There are all these artists there on Friday.
You know, artists and castaways,
people who know that they're passing through a world
that really isn't very beautiful
and who struggle to bring beauty out of it.
And we think of them as profane and godless
and I don't want to go near them.
And, you know, a couple of them that brought their tributes,
they knew that they were Christians
as well as, you know, there's a funny meeting place on Friday.
Over 400 people, they were spilled out into Hunter Street.
The art community with all their extravagance
and profligacy and genius and the Christian community.
And we sat there, didn't we, John,
and we weren't uncomfortable with one another.
We met around an object of grace to say goodbye to a friend.
Let's not ghetto.
Let's go out into the world
and offer the one thing that satisfies
the only true and lasting beauty,
the art of God, the art of God, His new creation.
It takes your breath away.
Seek the Lord while He may be found.
Call upon Him while He is near.
We have to forsake the way that leads to death, our wicked way.
That's what repentance is.
It's to turn again.
It's to turn again.
And the reason is this, that our thoughts are really not like God's.
He says, my thoughts are not your thoughts.
My ways are not your ways.
If we ever think we've got God figured out,
we need to reposition ourselves.
The heavens are higher than the earth and His ways are higher than ours
and His thoughts are higher than ours.
This is what you need.
Don't you thirst?
This is what will satisfy living waters, living bread,
light, love, immortality through Jesus Christ.
He meets what justice demands
and He gives what mercy requires.
Mercy is undeserved.
And this is what the Gospel brings.
This is evangelism.
Here you see, the rain comes down and the snow from heaven,
they do not return there, they water the earth,
they make it bring forth and bud,
they give seed to the sower, bread to the eater.
What does He say in verse 11 of chapter 55?
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth.
It shall not return to me empty.
It will accomplish what I please and it will prosper.
That's evangelism, that's mission, that's witness,
that's the life of God lived out through His people
in a world that's without life and without God.
And that's a reason to sing.
We began with singing in joy and that's where we're brought again.
You shall go out with joy, you shall be led out with peace,
the mountains and the hills will have a chorus behind us.
They'll break forth into singing
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
All the old infertility, all the weeds and fruitless trees
are going to disappear.
Myrtle trees will spring up.
Fruit bearing, reason for praise and satisfying.
And I believe that that's the garden that the bride looks out over.
There's a tent filling up, sustenance for a new generation.
That's what the Gospel brings and that's all we need.
It's all we've ever needed.