In Isaiah, chapter sixty-one, verses four through nine, beginning at verse four, “And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.” After the second coming of Christ at the end of the age, the nation of God will be rebuilt and other nations will work among them and worship the Lord with them, as in verses five, “And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. Israelites will function as priests and ministers teaching and mediating God’s Word to others, as in verse six, “But ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD: men shall call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves.”
Promises are here made to the people of God returned out of captivity, which extend to all those who, through grace, are delivered out of spiritual captivity. An unholy soul is like a city that is broken down, and has no walls, like a house in ruins; but by the power of Christ’s gospel and grace, it is fitted to be a habitation of God, through the Spirit. When, by the grace of God, we attain to holy indifference as to the affairs of this world; when, though our hands are employed about them, our hearts are not entangled with them, but preserved entire for God and his service, then the sons of the alien are our ploughmen and vine-dressers. Those whom He sets at liberty, He sets to work. His service is perfect freedom; it is the greatest honour. All believers are made, to our God, kings and priests; and always ought to conduct themselves as such. Those who have the Lord for their portion, have reason to say, that they have worthy portion, and to rejoice in it. In the fulness of heaven’s joys we shall receive more than double for all our services and sufferings. God desires truth, and therefore hates all injustice.