Isaiah 65

Today’s Passage: Isaiah 65

In the closing chapters of the book the LORD answers the long prayer of His people, and His answer opens wider than anyone had dared to hope. He begins by telling how He let Himself be found by a nation that never came looking for Him, while His own people wore Him out with their idols and their pride. Yet even against that stubbornness He will not sweep everyone away, for the sake of a faithful remnant He tenderly calls “My servants.” Then, from the ruin of the old, He lifts our eyes to the promise that crowns the whole book: new heavens and a new earth, a Jerusalem made for joy, a world where weeping is no longer heard and even the wolf and the lamb lie down together. Judgment and glory stand side by side here, and the glory has the last word.

As you read, hold this: God is graciously found even by those who never sought Him, and He is making new heavens and a new earth of everlasting joy, where He delights in His people and weeping is heard no more.

Isaiah 65:1–2 (BSB)

¹ “I revealed Myself to those who did not ask for Me; I was found by those who did not seek Me. To a nation that did not call My name, I said, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’

² All day long I have held out My hands to an obstinate people who walk in the wrong path, who follow their own imaginations,

Praise God for the wonder packed into that first sentence. He does not wait behind a locked door for the worthy to come knocking; He reveals Himself to those who never asked, He lets Himself be found by those who were not even looking, and to a nation that never spoke His name He calls out, “Here I am! Here I am!” This is grace that runs ahead of us, love that seeks before it is sought. And notice the ache in verse 2, the picture of God standing “all day long” with His hands held out, the posture of a father waiting on a road, the posture the apostle Paul will quote to explain how the gospel reached the nations. The gate was never the problem. The obstinacy of the human heart was, and even so, God keeps His arms open.

Isaiah 65:3–5 (BSB)

³ to a people who continually provoke Me to My face, sacrificing in the gardens and burning incense on altars of brick,

⁴ sitting among the graves, spending nights in secret places, eating the meat of pigs and polluted broth from their bowls.

⁵ They say, ‘Keep to yourself; do not come near me, for I am holier than you!’ Such people are smoke in My nostrils, a fire that burns all day long.

Here the tragedy is spelled out plainly and soberly. The very people to whom God stretched out His hands were provoking Him “to My face,” running after cults among the gardens and the graves, courting the dead and the unclean, and then, most bitterly of all, wrapping it in a false holiness that sneered at everyone else, “I am holier than you.” It is a haunting reversal: real defilement parading as purity. God calls their pretense “smoke in My nostrils,” a stinging, constant irritation, because self-righteousness is a stench where humility would have been sweet. The lesson lands quietly on every heart that reads it: God is not impressed by the costume of religion. He looks for the ones who know they need mercy, not the ones who imagine they have outgrown it.

Isaiah 65:6–7 (BSB)

⁶ Behold, it is written before Me: I will not keep silent, but I will repay; I will pay it back into their laps,

⁷ both for your iniquities and for those of your fathers,” says the LORD. “Because they burned incense on the mountains and scorned Me on the hills, I will measure into their laps full payment for their former deeds.”

God will not pretend that persistent, defiant sin costs nothing. He says His answer is already “written before Me,” settled and certain, and He will “measure into their laps full payment” for a rebellion handed down across generations. We should sit soberly with this and not rush past it, for it tells the honest truth that a holy God cannot simply wink at evil, or He would not be good. Yet even the language is measured, “full payment for their former deeds,” justice weighed and fair, never cruelty. This is the same holiness that made the seraphim cover their faces in chapter 6, the holiness that gives the whole book its title, the Holy One of Israel. And it is precisely because He is this holy that His grace in the next verses shines so bright.

Isaiah 65:8–10 (BSB)

⁸ This is what the LORD says: “As the new wine is found in a cluster of grapes, and men say, ‘Do not destroy it, for it contains a blessing,’ so I will act on behalf of My servants; I will not destroy them all.

⁹ And I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, and heirs from Judah; My elect will possess My mountains, and My servants will dwell there.

¹⁰ Sharon will become a pasture for flocks, and the Valley of Achor a resting place for herds, for My people who seek Me.

And here the mercy breaks through, and how tenderly God frames it. He is like a vintner who finds a few good grapes still on the vine and says, “Do not destroy it, for it contains a blessing.” For the sake of the faithful few, He spares. He will not “destroy them all,” but will raise up heirs from Jacob and Judah, a remnant He calls “My servants” and “My elect,” and give them His mountains to dwell in. Bless the LORD for how He redeems even ruined names: Achor, whose very name means trouble, the valley where Israel once buried its sin in shame, becomes “a resting place for herds.” The place of trouble is turned into a place of rest. That is what God delights to do, and it is a preview of everything the chapter is about to promise, the old sorrows made into new pasture.

Isaiah 65:11–12 (BSB)

¹¹ But you who forsake the LORD, who forget My holy mountain, who set a table for Fortune and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny,

¹² I will destine you for the sword, and you will all kneel down to be slaughtered, because I called and you did not answer, I spoke and you did not listen; you did evil in My sight and chose that in which I did not delight.”

The line between the two roads is drawn here without flinching. Those who “forsake the LORD” have traded the living God for idols of luck and fate, setting tables for Fortune and Destiny, worshiping chance itself. There is a solemn wordplay in the Hebrew that the English can only hint at: they chose Destiny, so God will “destine” them for judgment. We tell this plainly, and we grieve it, for the reason given is heartbreaking in its simplicity: “I called and you did not answer, I spoke and you did not listen.” The tragedy of the lost is never that God stayed silent. It is that His call went unanswered, His voice unheeded. The chapter is honest that a life which chooses “that in which I did not delight” ends in a harvest of its own choosing. Read against verse 1, where God cried “Here I am!” the sorrow is complete: the door was open the whole time.

Isaiah 65:13–16 (BSB)

¹³ Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: “My servants will eat, but you will go hungry; My servants will drink, but you will go thirsty; My servants will rejoice, but you will be put to shame.

¹⁴ My servants will shout for joy with a glad heart, but you will cry out with a heavy heart and wail with a broken spirit.

¹⁵ You will leave behind your name as a curse for My chosen ones, and the Lord GOD will slay you; but to His servants He will give another name.

¹⁶ Whoever invokes a blessing in the land will do so by the God of truth, and whoever takes an oath in the land will swear by the God of truth. For the former troubles will be forgotten and hidden from My sight.

Six times in these verses God says “My servants,” and each time the phrase rings like a bell of belonging. He sets before us two utterly different endings: hunger against feasting, shame against a glad heart, wailing against a shout of joy. The rebellious leave behind a name that becomes a byword, but to His servants He promises “another name,” a new identity, a fresh start He Himself bestows. Twice He names Himself “the God of truth,” literally the God of the Amen, the faithful and dependable One, so different from the fickle idols of Fortune the people had chased. And then the turn that carries us into the glory: “the former troubles will be forgotten and hidden from My sight.” The God of the Amen keeps every promise, and His last promise is that the old griefs will not even be remembered. That is where the chapter now soars.

Isaiah 65:17–19 (BSB)

¹⁷ For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.

¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; for I will create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight.

¹⁹ I will rejoice in Jerusalem and take delight in My people. The sounds of weeping and crying will no longer be heard in her.

Lift up your heart, for here is the summit of the whole book. “Behold, I will create (בָּרָא) bara, pronounced bah-RAH. Strong's H1254, to create, to bring into being out of nothing (used of God alone). This is the great verb that opens the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and in all of Scripture it takes only God as its subject, for it names a making that no creature can do, the bringing forth of what was not. When God takes that very word and speaks it over the future, “I will create new heavens and a new earth,” He is telling us that the world’s renewal is a work as fresh and as sovereign as its first making, not a patch on the old but a new act of creation. The remaking of all things is not our achievement or our striving; it is His to speak into being. And that is cause for deep joy, because a promise resting on the Creator’s own power is a promise that cannot fail. new heavens and a new earth.” The verb is the towering word of Genesis 1, the word for what only God can do, and here it stands not at the beginning of the world but at its renewal, God making all things new from top to bottom, heavens and earth alike. And the old sorrows? “The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.” Every grief that ever weighed on His people will be so swallowed up in joy that it will not even surface in memory. Notice, too, the astonishing thing God says about Himself: “I will rejoice in Jerusalem and take delight in My people.” Our God is not a distant sovereign tolerating the redeemed; He gladly delights in them, He rejoices over the city He is making. And the promise that has dried a thousand tears at a thousand gravesides: “The sounds of weeping and crying will no longer be heard.” Praise the LORD who is bringing that day.

Isaiah 65:20–23 (BSB)

²⁰ No longer will a nursing infant live but a few days, or an old man fail to live out his years. For the youth will die at a hundred years, and he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.

²¹ They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

²² No longer will they build houses for others to inhabit, nor plant for others to eat. For as is the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My people, and My chosen ones will fully enjoy the work of their hands.

²³ They will not labor in vain or bear children doomed to disaster; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD—they and their descendants with them.

Now the vision fills in with homely, tender detail, the sort of picture a weary and grieving people could hold in their hands. In the world God is making there will be no more little coffins and no more lives cut cruelly short; the whole span will be full, unhurried, blessed. People will build houses and actually get to live in them, plant vineyards and actually eat the fruit, for the ancient curse of laboring so that others reap, of building for enemies to plunder, will be gone. “They will not labor in vain,” the LORD promises, and every ache of futile work and dashed hope finds its answer here. This is not merely a longer earthly life; it is a picture straining toward the deathless world to come, the first light of a morning without evening, when the people God calls His own, “and their descendants with them,” will finally and fully enjoy the good work of their hands.

Isaiah 65:24–25 (BSB)

²⁴ Even before they call, I will answer, and while they are still speaking, I will hear.

²⁵ The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but the food of the serpent will be dust. They will neither harm nor destroy on all My holy mountain,” says the LORD.

The chapter closes with two promises almost too good to take in. First, the God who once complained “I called and you did not answer” now pledges the perfect reverse for His people: “Even before they call, I will answer, and while they are still speaking, I will hear.” No more silence, no more distance, only a Father so attentive that the answer runs out to meet the prayer before the prayer is even finished. And then the last picture, echoing chapter 11, of a creation at peace with itself: “The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.” Ancient enmities dissolve, the predator lies down beside the prey, and on “all My holy mountain” there is nothing left that can harm or destroy. Only the serpent, the old accuser, is left in the dust of defeat. This is the world God is building, and the whole book has been leaning toward it. Rejoice, for the Holy One of Israel keeps His word.