Isaiah 2:1-5
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 9 viewsNotes
Transcript
1 The vision that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: 2 In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s house will be established at the top of the mountains and will be raised above the hills. All nations will stream to it, 3 and many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us about His ways so that we may walk in His paths.” For instruction will go out of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4 He will settle disputes among the nations and provide arbitration for many peoples. They will turn their swords into plows and their spears into pruning knives. Nations will not take up the sword against other nations, and they will never again train for war. 5 House of Jacob, come and let us walk in the Lord’s light.
As we enter into Advent, we begin our time by asking “What are we waiting for?”
What is the purpose of acting out this waiting for the Messiah year after year?
For one, the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is the single most important event in human history.
If there is someone here who doesn’t know that God became man to rescue us from sin, death, and the devil then you need to know!
God did this for you.
He redeemed us from the pit, purchasing us with His holy blood, and raising us to life with Him in His resurrection.
And yet there’s more.
As the apostle John says, He is the propitiation of our sins and also for the sins of the whole world.
The first Advent of Jesus Christ resulted in a sacrifice that is sufficient to not only cover, but to permanently take away every sin that has ever been committed.
And the promise is that through faith in Jesus, we have on offer the greatest gift that could ever be given,
the redeeming and cleansing blood of God,
and the secure promise of New Life in Him.
In Romans 8, we read that the whole creation, the whole cosmos is groaning in anticipation of God’s sons being revealed. The new creation.
That the creation itself will be set free from the bondage of corruption into the glorious freedom of God’s children.
This is a picture of what the gospel will do in our world.
Andrew Knowles called it the Magnet of Zion.
The church as the center of the universe where the nations come for blessing from the Lord who rules over it all.
The effect of this righteous rule of God will mean peace.
It is happening right now.
Imagine someone could walk into our midst,
and see us gathered here, worshipping a Palestinian Jew, holding up bread and wine saying this is His body, this is His blood, declaring that He rose from the dead, and that because He lives he has offered us new life now.’
They see our singing, our feasting, our love for one another, our respect for authority, our willingness to engage with suffering,
and they ask,
“Where am I?”
22 Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God (the heavenly Jerusalem), to myriads of angels in festive gathering, 23 to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to God who is the Judge of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, 24 to Jesus (mediator of a new covenant ), and to the sprinkled blood, which says better things than the blood of Abel.
We are living in the times described in Isaiah 2.
We are living in the church age,
an age marked by Jesus ruling over the world as the resurrected Lord,
an age marked by the Spirit of God, living and active in the hearts of His people.
An age where the temple of God is with man,
and the cities of man are being brought to reflect the city of God.
What do I mean by that?
Part of our goal in this age should be to see nations being fashioned after the pattern we see in heaven.
This is what we are praying for when we pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
And this is possible because Jesus has authorized us to do this by His authority.
“All authority in heaven and on earth….
The “mountain of the Lord’s house” that we see in our text is the church.
And what is described here has been taking place over the last 2000 years.
Entire nations have submitted themselves to God’s rule.
Armenia was the first, in 301 AD becoming the first state to adopt Christianity as it’s official religion.
Next you see the Roman Empire submit itself to Christ later in that century.
As the centuries unfold, particularly in the West, we see many nations and countless billions of people drawing near to the mountain of the Lord’s house.
But this work is not over is it?
Two warnings:
Against Triumphalism
What do I mean by triumphalism?
I mean a sort of attitude towards the world as if the work is all done. Or even an attitude that wants to pretend like nothing bad ever happens. An attitude that doesn’t really wrestle with the fact that the world is still deeply broken by sin.
“since most postmillennialists, myself included, believe that the millennium began with the ascension of Christ, how will it be during the “latter day glory of the Church,” when all nations will come to Zion to receive Christ’s yoke? How should we think of personal piety during those “golden years”? Will believers no longer need to wrestle with sin?
Not at all. In fact, my vision of the latter day glory is quite the reverse. I believe that the closer men draw to God, the more aware they become of their own weakness before His strength, of their own sinfulness before His holiness, of their own wretchedness before His majesty, and of their own poverty before His largesse. If the latter day glory is a time when men live nearer to God than ever before, it will be a time when men wrestle with personal sin more than ever before. It will be a time when men appreciate the privilege of serving Christ as never before, because they will feel more inadequate than ever before.
Their wrestling will seldom be with outward, gross sin, of course. The discipline of society will be such as to drive gross sin and crime into the closets, dark corners, and back alleys where it belongs. A cleansed society will not present the kinds of temptations and wicked opportunities we face today.
No, it is not outward, gross sin that men will wrestle with, but petty meannesses, lusts, and inward depravity. These things will not go away from the depths of the human heart until the resurrection of the whole man, for which all believers yearn.
I believe that Christians during the latter day glory will be less proud and vain than they are today. They will be less self-confident, and more God-dependent. They will be less sure of their motives, and more open to the corrections of the Spirit.”
-James Jordan
He goes on to highlight that as Christians, who share in the sufferings of Christ, we can’t turn a blind eye to the reality of suffering, pain, and death.
“Solomon says that in the end you get old and you can’t do anything much anymore.
Then you die.
Solomon is sure, though, that God will call all things into judgment. There is another world beyond this one, a world beyond pain, sacrifice, suffering, disappointment, and death; a world where true and righteous expectations are not frustrated.
This is not that world.
As an orthodox, Bible-believing Christian who has been a postmillennialist for nearly twenty years, I think about this when I look at the postmillennial resurgence in America today. Is it going to be a true, Biblical postmillennialism? Will it have room for Ecclesiastes? Will it have room for cross-bearing? Will it see that for us God really is incomprehensible, though not inapprehensible? Will it be clay in the Master’s hand?… Historic postmillennialism has always seen that God puts His people and His world through fiery trials in order to refine them and make the world a better place. Often the heart of such trials is that we are not told why they are taking place, then or later.
We are God’s images, and we have a certain created “infinite depth” about ourselves that reflects His infinity. Sin and depravity warp us all the way down. Our depravity runs so deep that we are not conscious of it, and God must do things that deal with those unconscious depths of depravity. When He does, we don’t understand what is going on, because we cannot. Only He can. We just have to trust Him.
If we are to have a true Christian renaissance in the United States, it will not be a superficial yuppiefied religion that brings it. True Christianity must have equal time for Ecclesiastes as for Proverbs in its One Year Bibles.”
Against apathy.
36 “Now concerning that day and hour no one knows—neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son —except the Father only. 37 As the days of Noah were, so the coming of the Son of Man will be. 38 For in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah boarded the ark. 39 They didn’t know until the flood came and swept them all away. So this is the way the coming of the Son of Man will be: 40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and one left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and one left. 42 Therefore be alert, since you don’t know what day your Lord is coming. 43 But know this: If the homeowner had known what time the thief was coming, he would have stayed alert and not let his house be broken into. 44 This is why you also must be ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
This was originally a warning for Jews living in the first century that the visitation of the Lord on apostate Jerusalem was going to be swift.
Julia story? short
Brothers and sisters, you do not know when your last day is.
You don’t know your last hour, your last minute.
You don’t know when your time will be up,
but you can know what time it is.
11 Besides this, knowing the time, it is already the hour for you to wake up from sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over, and the daylight is near, so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us walk with decency, as in the daylight: not in carousing and drunkenness; not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no plans to satisfy the fleshly desires.
One of the most important things you can do is bring others to this mountain of the Lord with you.
Those that are entering into covenant and communion with God themselves should bring as many as they can along with them; it becomes Christians to provoke one another to good works, and to further the communion of saints by inviting one another into it
“Dear heathen, The Lord Jesus Christ has promised that the time shall come when all the ends of the earth shall be his kingdom. And God is not a man that he should lie nor the son of man that he should repent.And if this was promised by a Being who cannot lie, why do you not help it to come sooner by reading the Bible, and attending to the words of your teachers, and loving God, and, renouncing your idols, and taking Christianity into your temples?And soon there will be not a Nation, no, not a space of ground a large as a footstep, that will want a missionary.My sister and myself, by small self-denials, procured two dollars which are enclosed in this letter to buy Bibles and tracts to teach you.—Archibald Alexander Hodge and Mary Elizabeth Hodge, Friends of the Heathen
This is a fulfillment
3 and many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us about His ways so that we may walk in His paths.” For instruction will go out of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
It is time for you to wake up!
Salvation is near to you, loved ones.
Walk in the day.
The son of man has dawned on your life.
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light,
on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.
