The Good News of Isaiah 61:11 = Praise on Display
The Good News of Isaiah 61:11 = Praise on Display.
(This article is in process of being written. Please don’t read yet).
“For just as the soil will surely burst forth with sprouts of new life and a flourishing garden will surely cause its seeds to spring up with blossoms, the Sovereign Lord will in the same way bring forth righteousness everywhere and cause exuberant praise to spring up before all the nations.” (Isaiah 61:11).
Isaiah concludes his good-news-before-the-gospel passage in his typically imaginative way with a picturesque analogy that everyone can grasp. Isaiah is prophesying the Lord’s intention to fully restore His people after their seemingly hopeless exile. The Lord will keep His Covenant as He promised, Isaiah is shouting from the rooftops. The faithful God will bring forth new life from those unseen roots below the ground. His righteous character will spring up everywhere in your lives and in Israel, and He will put His glory and praise of full display in full view of all the nations! Look at the natural cycle of new plants springing up from the soil, or a garden producing all those beautiful flowers, says Isaiah. It will be just like that! And like most prophecies, this word from the Lord doesn’t stop there… God will restore the whole world just like that, too, through the promised Messiah.
Everything is a Symbol. I’m wondering if the natural world is designed to teach us supernatural truths. Might it be that Creator God designed the tangible universe in such a way that it will show us intangible realities? It seems that nature just might be God’s stupendous visual aid to help us learn more about Him; that countless aspects of physical life are symbols of spiritual truths; that the time-bound universe and all that it contains are pictures of God’s timeless qualities; that everything physical is a living demonstration of something spiritual if we have eyes to see and minds to understand; God’s handiwork is intended to point us back directly to Him; that if we look hard enough, physical reality around us reveals a spiritual life that also surrounds us. If the natural world is God’s classroom full of object lessons, then as long as we live in this world, our life can be one prolonged learning experience, one extended teachable moment. In the simple we can discover the profound. Just as we see here with Isaiah, we can understand better God’s plans by simply considering the natural growth cycle of the earth. Or as William Blake put it, “To see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, and Eternity in an hour.” (Auguries of Innocence).
Isaiah Teaching with Nature Again. Earlier in Isaiah’s prophecy we find him once again using nature as a visual aid for something true about God and His ways… “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out of my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Is. 55:9-11).
Righteousness Sprouts Out of the Ground. The Hebrew word here is rooted in the word for righteousness and saving justice… a person who is upright, just, godly, in right standing with God; who lives according to God’s standards; who embraces a life that is in conformity to God’s moral order. This word, “tzeddek,” is actually a title in Judaism that is given to people who are especially outstanding in piety, holiness and righteousness, and the “tzaddik” has been described as someone who oozes goodness, who takes joy in justice, who loves to blamelessly puts things right. A righteous person is one who lives a life pleasing to God. A tzaddik is a believer who recognizes that a righteous God has created a moral universe and expects His followers to live righteously and justly to reflect His purposes for mankind.
Righteousness and Justice are Kissing Cousins. It seems righteousness and justice are each used to accompany the other in Scripture, and both are often said in the same breath. A righteous person reveals his/her righteousness by practicing justice. A just person is certainly that way because s/he is filled with righteousness. And both qualities together form a central characteristic of God’s character. To be just and righteous is to live in a way that is consistent with the moral demands of God. To do what is right and just is to be in synch with the very Spirit of God. For the only possible Source of justice and righteousness, the only perfect example we have of those qualities, is the Lord Himself. Taken together, justice and righteousness are demonstrating “the perfect rightness of God,” the holiness of the Lord, and is deserving of highest honors and acclaim. As the prophet Isaiah exclaimed earlier in his book, “Yahweh Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts, is exalted through His justice (mishpat); God the Holy One proves His holiness through His righteousness and justice (tzaddeq).” (Isaiah 5:16).
Praise. Isaiah used the word “tehillah,” which means exuberant singing of a new song, a spontaneous melody of praise and thanksgiving. The root word for this term is “hallel” (halal), which translates as exuberant praise; praise that raves about God; exclaiming wonderful words about God with raised arms; to celebrate wildly; to sing out with loud jubilation; to express praise almost to the point of looking foolish; an invitation to a more uninhibited style of worship, such as dancing, jumping and twirling. The root word for “hallelujah” is hallel, and it means “Praise the Lord!” Hallelujah tends to be a more spontaneous outburst of praise and exultation.
Praise Described. Scripture doesn’t define the word “praise,” but it offers plenty of descriptions and numerous praise-words. Praise can be described as an outward expression of gratitude for all that God has done for oneself, for the community, for the world. Praise is a recounting of the many blessings that God has provided in His grace and mercy. Praise is a grateful appreciation of God’s mighty works. Praise is an expression of thanksgiving to the Lord, an acknowledgement of God’s righteous deeds. To praise God is to thank God and celebrate His presence in the world. Praise is what we were created to do, it is the chief of our ultimate satisfactions, and we won’t find personal fulfillment unless we develop the habit of forgetting ourselves and praising God. Most of us Christian believers are not following in the footsteps of our Jewish brethren and praising God with an inspired creativity.
“The beginning of prayer is praise. The power of worship is song. First we sing, then we understand. First we praise, then we believe. To praise is to call forth the promise and presence of the Divine. There is no knowledge without love, no truth without praise. The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song.” (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel).
With the Hebrews, Praise was an Art Form. There are about sixteen different Hebrew words for praise in the Old Testament, and each word offers a distinctive aspect of how they praised the Lord: exuberant with raised arms; exultation accompanied by holy dance; spontaneous songs sung during worship; combining a petition with a praise in the same breath; making a joyful noise with a loud shout of celebration; praise with hands lifted up high in the air and arms extended; bowing low in adoration; lifting up one’s whole being to God in praise, including heart, hands, voice, eyes, soul; spin around in joy and praise; jump for joy; to declare praise very loudly like a roaring lion; bless God on bended knee, praising Him humbly while kneeling; to allow silence itself to praise God, blessing Him in reverence without exclamations but with soft murmuring; magnify and glorify God in praise by raving about His greatness and spiritual weight; to invite all of nature to join you in praise and worship; praise with music, celebrating in song with voice and/or stringed instruments; to enjoy a circle dance with other worshipers, as well as the more spontaneous whirling and twirling in the spirit.
Isaiah said quite a mouthful when he declared that the praise of God will sprout out everywhere before the whole world. Isn’t it exciting to think of how all those praises will be expressed, how all those nations will sing a new song with exuberant praise?