Highway of Holiness

https://odb.org/2026/06/16/the-way-of-holiness

Isaiah 35:8–10 (NIV): 8 And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way. The unclean will not journey on it; wicked fools will not go about on it. 9 No lion will be there, nor any ravenous beast;
they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there, 10 and those the LORD has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

The prophet Isaiah shared God’s promises to His people, those exiled from their home. Away from the temple, where they would experience His presence, they must have felt bereft and forlorn. The promises, therefore, of the Way of Holiness, the path to God, would give them hope and strength. To think of entering “Zion with singing,” without fear or sorrow, would lead them to rejoice (v. 10).

Even as Jennifer holds on to these assurances from centuries ago, so too can we who believe in Jesus trust that as we journey with Him, we’ll know gladness and joy (v. 10). Whatever trials we face in this life—however taxing or life-altering—we know that God’s way leads us home to Him. (Amy Boucher Pye, Our Daily Bread 16th June 2026)

Isaiah prophesied that the Israelites would be disciplined and exiled to Babylon for their covenantal unfaithfulness (Isaiah 39:6-7; see Jeremiah 25:11). He also prophesied that once the seventy-year chastisement was completed, God would bring them back to the promised land and restore and prosper their land (29:10-11). Isaiah pictures them making their way back to Him on “the Highway of Holiness,” traversing “a great road . . . through that once deserted land . . . only for those who walk in God’s ways” (Isaiah 35:8 nlt). (K.T Sim, Insight, Our Daily Bread 16th June 2026)

In Isaiah 35:8, Isaiah prophesied that there will be a highway of holiness for the Israelites exiled to Babylon to return. They were disciplined for their disobedience to their covenantal obligations, in particular, their obstinance when it came to not bringing other idols into Israel (idolatry), for not keeping the Sabbath and for social injustice within their society. After their exile of 75 years, they were allowed by the Persian King Cyrus the Great to return (after Persia invaded and conquered the Babylonians).

But note that the path of return is the highway of holiness. It is a path of restoration and righteousness with a return to the way of godliness and forsaking of idolatry and ungodliness. The Israelites would have by then returned to God spiritually – in their hearts first before they were actually delivered and brought back to Israel (in the natural, the LORD supernaturally worked in the Persian King to engineer their return). Unlike the bunch enslaved to Egypt for 460 years which God raised Moses to deliver them from the Pharaoh, these Babylonian exiles were allowed to return by the Persian King himself. In their 75 years sojourn in Babylon, the remembered Israel and Jerusalem and missed their God, the LORD God, having repented from their sins.

In terms of application, two things are relevant for us to take note this morning. One is that wherever we are and no matter how far we have drifted away, there is always a path prepared by Jesus for us to return to Father God. It is not a path fraught with challenges but a path of righteousness and holiness. It is a path of joy and victory. Yet, secondly, it is path preceded by repentance and a genuine willingness to depart from our wayward ways. It is not a return to God if we still cling on tight to our old self, our old selfish nature. In Christ, we are a new a creation, the old has passed away. Then we will experience Isaiah 35:10 – “and those the LORD has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”