Eternal Joy

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. “ (Isa. 65.17)

Ever come across a verse or passage of Scripture that just stuns you?  If you don’t you should.  Maybe you should read your Bible more.  Well, I came across Isa 65:17 this week, and it startled me to say the least.

I’ve always believed when we get to heaven, we’ll be at least as smart as we are now, probably much smarter.  God may erase our lost relatives and friends from our minds, but we would still remember the good times, the good Christian brothers and sisters and our saved family members.  Then I saw Isa. 65:17, and that was all blown away.  “. . . the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind?”

There seemed to be no getting around this.  The context around the verse didn’t seem to help in my search for loopholes to get out of this verse.  Could my family and friends really not come to mind?  I needed to dig into Scripture.

As always happens, the more I dig into God’s Word, the more blessed I become. This was no exception.  From my study it doesn’t look like God will rob us of any memories.  Isa. 65:17 doesn’t say that.  It says we won’t remember our wonderful memories and events of our present lives or the earthly lives we have ahead of us.  We won’t remember the trips with family, the day I met my wife, the day we were married, the days we had each of our children.  We won’t remember them. 

Why?  The verse says those memories simply won’t come to mind.  How can they not come to mind?  These are things I’ll want to remember, surely.  These are times I love to recall now, and they won’t come to mind?  You can see my concern by now.

Part of my process when I see one of these verses that “pokes the bear” is to pray first then search the Scriptures:  Look at the cross references – this verse had no apparently relevant cross references in my Bible.  Next I start to read the contest over a few times – no help.  Then I start looking at key words in the original languages – I’m not an ancient languages scholar, there are helpful tools, though.  Nothing!

My next step is to see what others say about this verse.  I usually bury myself in commentaries, but for some reason, this time I went to YouTube and searched for teachings on this verse.

Jon Courson’s message on this just struck me like a hammer.  It’s not so much that we won’t remember, it’s that those memories just won’t come to mind as the verse says.  Well, that got me digging again to see if what Jon was saying was true. The context was telling me something.   Look at this:

Verse 18 says this: But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. The Hebrew word for “glad”(siys) means a jubilant celebration.  The word for “rejoice” (giyl) is the sort of joy a child has when opening their presents on Christmas morning, an overpowering joy.  It is the joy we feel when we rejoice in His salvation.  Finally, the word for “joy” (masos) is an inner happiness, a constant condition of joy.  I think God made His point here. We were created for this. The verse says we should have this joy forever!

Why is this important?

Let’s look back for a moment at the joy we had as children opening presents on Christmas morning.  You may have been in trouble the day before for roller skating in the house, picking all the green fruit off the trees to have a war with neighbor kids.  You may have been grounded for a week.  Maybe you weren’t in trouble.  Maybe you got your first kiss the night before.  No matter.  It was Christmas morning.  All that stuff was pushed out of your mind at the joy of the moment.

That is what it will be for us in the new heaven and the new earth, constant joy infinitely greater than a child’s Christmas morning.  It won’t be perhaps that the events of our earthly lives aren’t still in our minds and hearts. We will experience so overwhelming a joy to finally be with Him, with Jesus, that as Isaiah said, the things of the past won’t even come to mind.  Try and imagine what that might be like.