Isaiah 61:11 – “and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.”
This scripture talks about the year of the Lord’s favour. The Lord will make every great goodness spring up in front of every nation and therefore praise will spring up in front of every nation. This will resemble the fertile soil that causes young plants to come up, like a garden that causes seeds to grow.
God’s covenant brings salvation and righteousness so Believers joy isn’t in the blessing itself, but in the Lord. The granting of salvation and righteousness to God’s people is represented by the picture of clothing them. These are glorious garments. The blessing of God grows; it isn’t manufactured but grows! This is likened to the earth that brings forth its buds so that the Lord can cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all nations. We can never ‘make’ something grow; the blessing of life and growth is miraculous within the seed. But we can provide the right environment for the seed to bud, grow, and be fruitful. That’s also how we receive and flourish in God’s blessings. We can’t “make” or “manufacture” them. But we can put our hearts and minds in the right environments of faith, fellowship, and obedience, to see blessings grow and flourish.
By this metaphor, the church shows, not the revival and restoration of her blessings after they had been dead and lost in the winter of affliction, but the great plenty and abundance of them that should spring forth and flourish. What was a wilderness should be as a paradise, which refers to the effects of God’s grace and bounty. So the Lord will cause righteousness i.e. His great work of Salvation; and praise is the natural product and fruit of it that springs forth These things will be done in the sight of all the world. Those that are covered with the robe of Christ’s righteousness now shall be clothed with the garments of salvation from now on, and by the sanctification of the Spirit have God’s image renewed upon them. These blessings shall spring forth for ages to come, as the fruits of the earth. So duly, so constantly, and with such advantage to mankind, will the Lord God cause righteousness and praise to spring forth. They shall spread far; the great salvation shall be published and proclaimed, to the ends of the earth. Let us be earnest in prayer, that the Lord God may cause that righteousness to spring forth among us.
The Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations; i.e., the righteousness and salvation of His people through Christ, by which they shall be justified and saved; and on account of which they shall praise the Lord, and shall be to honour and praise themselves, being interested in those blessings in the sight of all the Christian nations around them. It respects the conversion of the Jews, and their justification and salvation, and the suddenness of it, and the large numbers of them converted, who should rise up at once like the buds of grass out of the earth; and denotes the flourishing condition in which they shall be, like a garden abounding with all manner of flowers and fruit; and suggests how full of joy, thankfulness, and praise to God they should be, and how honourable in the sight of men; and all this will be the Lord’s doing, and owing to His bountiful grace. “so the Lord God will reveal the righteousness and praise of Jerusalem before all the people.”
