IN A RIGHTEOUS KINGDOM
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When God would intervene to protect and ultimately restore the people of Judah—as Isaiah prophesied—a new kind of kingdom would be established.
This would be a kingdom of righteousness, a kingdom in which evil and injustice would be reversed and set right. It would also be a kingdom of personal and courageous transformation. “The fearful heart will know and understand, and the stammering tongue will be fluent and clear” (Isaiah 32:4). Like later descriptions in the Bible of a restored and re-created world, the details were often more about what would not be in this new kingdom.
However, justice and righteousness were the active ingredients that God would restore to creation (see Isaiah 32:16), and they would result in peace, confidence, and rest. Describing the fruit of God’s righteous intervention in this way, it is clear that God’s kingdom has both personal and social implications. Living together as the transformed and fearless people of God, trusting God’s power and presence with them, meant not only protection against would-be enemies but was also a recipe for peace and rest between people within the nation itself.
Restoring their relationship with God would restore their relationships with each other. While we tend to read descriptions like this as looking forward to God’s coming kingdom, Jewish readers would have recognized this as a description of the Messianic age. In a sense, this was fulfilled in the life of Jesus. Even the angels who announced His birth to the shepherds outside Bethlehem sang about glorifying God but also proclaimed “on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). In Jesus, the righteous kingdom has come.
In Jesus, the righteous kingdom will come.
This is why the angels could introduce themselves to the shepherds that night with, “Do not be afraid” (Luke 2:10).
