Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins; you will restore the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of the Breach, Restorer of the Streets of Dwelling.Those who will be of you will build the old waste places. You will raise up the foundations of many generations. You will be called Repairer of the Breach, Restorer of Paths with Dwellings.And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.
3 sermons cite this verse
is definitely high on the list. Two Sundays ago, an ice storm blew through my corner of northeast Georgia, taking down thousands of trees, snapping more than 100 utility poles, and dropping over 10 miles of live wire on the ground. The power at my house was off for two and a half days, giving me plenty of time to meditate on what Jesus said about light. in this morning's excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount, except I didn't want to be the light two weekends ago. I just wanted it to come back on. And last Sunday, we got six inches of snow. There was no power outage this time, but the county manager said everyone should stay off the roads because we were almost out of salt, and there were already a lot of cars in ditches. He explained the shortage wasn't due to poor planning. It was just that the county had used most of its salt the week before and was sharing what was left with neighboring counties in worse shape than we were. …
In place of my usual holy greeting, let me just say, go devils, go. And for any of you watching from somewhere else, that was an athletic reference and not a metaphysical one. There are big sermons being preached in small places all over the world today, but you're about to hear a small sermon in a big place. So small that it only cares about two verses in the gospel you just heard and only two words out of those. Salt and light. It's not like those tiny lockets of meaning have somehow suffered from too little attention over time. If anything, they've suffered from too much. They've lost their tang from overhandling. They've lost their shine from overbranding. so I'm here to shrink them down to size if I can. Here they are in Jesus' own syntax, at least in translation. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. It's the you that makes them interesting, especially the second one, since in another gospel, Jesus says, I am the light of the world, but not here. …
… Here's our key verse, verse 12. Those from among you shall build the old waste places. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets in which to dwell. Isaiah 61, for those of you that are not familiar with it, is the passage that Jesus quotes in Luke 4 when he says, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he has anointed me to bring recovery of sight to the blind, to heal the brokenhearted, etc. Right after that declaration, the Lord says, and they, being those that were broken that got healed, they will rebuild the ancient ruins, raise up former devastations. They will rebuild the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations. Here's what I'm after. I want to rebuild cities. That's what I want. I want to see cities that love God well, that learn the power and the beauty of divine community. I want to see cities that live in the atmosphere of divine favor and know the purpose of prosperity. …