Week 9: From Ruin to Restoration

Isaiah 1:26 English Standard Version (ESV)

26 And I will restore your judges as at the first,
and your counselors as at the beginning.
Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness,
the faithful city.”




And now we come to what all of the judgment towards the unfaithful city of Jerusalem is leading to. After God has done his work of purification through harsh scrubbing and the high heat of the smelting process, He will bring the seemingly ruined city to its intended purpose. After this the city shall be called righteousness and faithful. These attributes will shine out from it in a way that it will not be only God and his angelic host that see and speak these words, but the nations of the world will notice and see it to be true.

There will be a restoration that shows in the hearts of those who hand out the judgment and wisdom to the peoples, showing the wisdom of God and making decisions based on the all the revealed attributes of God and not just those that seem to point to swift and strict justice. This will be a restoration that can only be brought about through the workings of Christ Himself, who has given Himself so that through a relationship with Him, there can be access to this wisdom, and these attributes will then be present in their lives.



Looking at the history of the city there seems to be no evidence that this has come to pass, nor is it revealing the character of God in the present. No, this seems to me what the city might look like during the thousand years spoken of in Revelation 20, giving a picture of what Jerusalem was intended to be and look like before He finally removes everything to be replaced with the new heaven, the new earth, and for our purposes here, the new Jerusalem.

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