Doug McMasters: I encourage you to take your Bible and turn with me over to Isaiah chapter 2.
Doug McMasters: If you don't have a Bible, you can find one in the pew there in front of you.
Doug McMasters: And by turning to page 601, 601, we'll get to Isaiah chapter 2.
Doug McMasters: Have you ever desired to be part of something that's beyond and outside your normal experience?
Doug McMasters: Of course.
Doug McMasters: All of us do.
Doug McMasters: We find glimpses of things outside and beyond our normal day, and some of the things that are common to our experiences now.
Doug McMasters: Our team perhaps winning the Super Bowl, or the rush of a standing ovation at the end of a concert, or even the shared experience of a natural disaster brings us together with our neighbors like we never have had before.
Doug McMasters: All of this speaks about something about us that all of us long for transcendence.
Doug McMasters: We long for something that's above and beyond the ordinary.
Doug McMasters: That woven inside each of us is a desire for something more, a crave to be part of something bigger, something greater, something more profound than our regular every day.
Doug McMasters: We also strive for significance, a recognition that our lives, whether it's widely known or little known, actually carry a weight, that they our lives mean something, that we matter, that we count, that we're making a difference somewhere.
Doug McMasters: And we also long for community, to have a shared experience with others in a context of love and acceptance.
Doug McMasters: Friday night, sorry, Yankees fans, but Friday night the LA Dodger fans got to experience a little bit of that transcendence and significance and community.
Doug McMasters: And they did so when Freddie Freeman smacked a piece of wood against a leather ball traveling at him at 93 miles an hour.
Doug McMasters: With the crack of his bat, Freeman made a game-winning hit.
Doug McMasters: But it was more than that.
Doug McMasters: It was more than that.
Doug McMasters: Freddie Freeman's hit in the bottom of the 10th inning with two outs, the Dodgers down by a run, was Major League Baseball's first ever walk-off grand slim in World Series history.
Doug McMasters: Never in the previous 693 games of the 119 World Series matchups had that ever happened.
Doug McMasters: That's transcendence in sport.
Doug McMasters: The LA Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said that swing might be the greatest baseball moment I've ever witnessed.
Doug McMasters: And I've witnessed some great ones.
Doug McMasters: There's also significance in this moment.
Doug McMasters: Freddie Freeman in a live televised conference that I saw after the game said this.
Doug McMasters: He said, those are the kind of things when you're five years old with your two older brothers and you're playing wiffle ball in the backyard.
Doug McMasters: The scenario of scenarios you kind of dream about.
Doug McMasters: Bases loaded, two outs in a World Series game.
Doug McMasters: And for it to actually happen, to hit a home run and walk it off and give us a one-nothing lead.
Doug McMasters: That's as good as it gets right there.
Doug McMasters: The significance of that moment he shared with his father, who he said was always there with him, always playing with him.
Doug McMasters: And then there's the community.
Doug McMasters: In Dodgers Stadium Friday night, all those Los Angeles Dodgers fans were screaming, and there was a palpable sense of us and we in the shared excitement and celebration.
Doug McMasters: Even New Yorkers had to acknowledge it.
Doug McMasters: New York Times sports writer Jason Stark put it this way: history is an amazing thing to make, and it's a breathtaking thing to watch.
Doug McMasters: A stadium rattles until it awakens every Richter scale in Southern California.
Doug McMasters: A walk-off hero jumps on home plate and disappears into a sea of hugs and laughs and tears of joy.
Doug McMasters: A baseball game, transcendence, significance, community.
Doug McMasters: We were made for those things, literally made for those things.
Doug McMasters: When God made Adam and Eve, he made them as image bearers in the likeness of himself.
Doug McMasters: God formed Adam and had all the animals pass in front of him and tasked him with naming each of them.
Doug McMasters: And that moment Adam exercised his image of God dominion over the other created things.
Doug McMasters: But he also discovered something there.
Doug McMasters: He discovered he was more than just the pinnacle of the animal kingdom.
Doug McMasters: He was unique, he was different, he was above all of those things.
Doug McMasters: There was nothing in the animal kingdom that could match him or be a companion for him.
Doug McMasters: Adam was made in the image of God like nothing else.
Doug McMasters: And only someone else, also bearing the likeness of God, could be his companion.
Doug McMasters: And so God crafted Eve and gave them to one another.
Doug McMasters: We were born for transcendence, but we were also born for significance.
Doug McMasters: These two were put into the garden not so they could just simply get along and survive or be satisfied with the things that they were there to enjoy.
Doug McMasters: They were given a responsibility, a vision, and a commission that would take them beyond the borders of their own lives and beyond the borders of their own needs and concerns.
Doug McMasters: They were given wonderful capacities to do things that no other creature could do.
Doug McMasters: I say this to my dogs all the time.
Doug McMasters: I've got a thumb, you don't.
Doug McMasters: I've got abilities, you don't.
Doug McMasters: My dog just says, Would you just shut up and feed me?
Doug McMasters: But also community, community.
Doug McMasters: All of that existence as image bearers and all the responsibilities of increasing the garden around the world that was made was all to be done within the context of love and acceptance, in a harmonious relationship with God and humanity, of man and wife, of person to person as it increased, of all of us with the created things, transcendence, significance, community.
Doug McMasters: These are all central to our original design as humanity.
Doug McMasters: But in Isaiah chapter two, we see something very, very different.
Doug McMasters: It seems for Israel in Isaiah's day, all those things are gone and perhaps gone forever.
Doug McMasters: Oh, they could never be forgotten.
Doug McMasters: Those elements reside within all of our souls.
Doug McMasters: But this profound sense of perfect uniqueness and purpose and togetherness before a holy God, that was gone.
Doug McMasters: And in its place, people tried to fill the void with poor substitutes.
Doug McMasters: The very things that, if perpetuated, would not only leave them empty and ruinous and rob them of the grandeur of godliness, but would also lead to their eternal destruction.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at some of these verses.
Doug McMasters: They sought to find significance in money in Isaiah 2, 7a.
Doug McMasters: There's no limit to their treasures.
Doug McMasters: They sought to find meaning in being powerful.
Doug McMasters: 7b, their land is full of horses, and there's no limit to their chariots.
Doug McMasters: They were looking for things outside their normal experience.
Doug McMasters: Verse 6, they're full of divination from the East and fortune tellers like the Philistines.
Doug McMasters: They wanted to be in touch with the other world.
Doug McMasters: And they welcomed community by forming alliances with other nations.
Doug McMasters: In verse 6, they're in league with foreigners.
Doug McMasters: And as an example of just how far down they've gone, Isaiah portrays Judah in this deep state of blind humiliation, forming gods by the craft of their own hands, and bowing down to them as if the stone and the wood that they had carved carried more significance than they did.
Doug McMasters: Verse 8 and 9, their lands full of worthless idols.
Doug McMasters: They worship the work of their hands, what their fingers have made.
Doug McMasters: So humanity is brought low, and each person is humbled.
Doug McMasters: What is God going to do with this massive humanity?
Doug McMasters: That not only has lost the grandeur of godliness, lost all of our transcendence and our significance, lost our union and communion with the holy God, but have now chased after things that are nothing but empty, worthless, and even rebellious.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah tells us.
Doug McMasters: He tells us that there's coming a day when God will rip down this poorly constructed facade of significance and power that humanity has struck constructed in their prideful rebellion against the Creator.
Doug McMasters: Verse 11.
Doug McMasters: The pride of mankind will be humbled, and human loftiness will be brought low.
Doug McMasters: The Lord alone will be exalted on that day.
Doug McMasters: A day belonging to the Lord of armies is coming against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up.
Doug McMasters: It will be humbled.
Doug McMasters: Verse 17.
Doug McMasters: The pride of mankind will be brought low, and human loftiness will be humbled.
Doug McMasters: The Lord alone will be exalted on that day.
Doug McMasters: Verse 20.
Doug McMasters: On that day people will throw their worthless idols of silver and gold, which they made to worship to the moles and to the bats.
Doug McMasters: What a disturbing day that is.
Doug McMasters: A disturbing day of the destruction of disobedient rebels.
Doug McMasters: And so worthy are they of this rejection that Isaiah interjects with a demanding request of God in verse nine, which, when you read it, should shake us to the core.
Doug McMasters: Humanity is brought low, and each person is humbled, and he interjects, do not forgive them.
Doug McMasters: There appears to be no hope.
Doug McMasters: There appears to be no hope for Judah.
Doug McMasters: That is, unless, unless God has plans and a future beyond this terrible current situation.
Doug McMasters: Hear this just like you've never heard it before, is what Isaiah is saying here.
Doug McMasters: And in profound contrast to the portrayal of Jerusalem in chapter one, here we see what the Lord wants to do with Judah and Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: And to our shock and to our surprise, God has intentions of mercy and grace to these people who have chased after wealth, who've chased after power, who've chased after divination, who've chased after foreign alliances, and who have bound themselves down to idols made from their own hands.
Doug McMasters: His intention is to treat these people and all nations with honor and privilege.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verses two to five.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: All nations will stream to it, and many peoples will come and say, Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.
Doug McMasters: He will teach us about his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.
Doug McMasters: For instruction will go out of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: He will settle disputes among the nations and provide arbitration for many peoples.
Doug McMasters: They will beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning knives.
Doug McMasters: Nation will not take up sword against nation, and they will never again train for war.
Doug McMasters: This morning I want us to examine this remarkable passage and see its importance, its importance for us today, and how it speaks of God's intentions to restore humanity to our original design and to bring us into the experiences that we lost in our sinful rebellion, to bring us back to transcendence, to bring us back to significance, and to bring us into a community that we've all longed to be a part of.
Doug McMasters: Before we go deeper into this passage, there are a couple things that I need to note here for our understanding.
Doug McMasters: The first of all is this introductory phrase that we find in verse 2.
Doug McMasters: In the last days.
Doug McMasters: This expression is not projecting us necessarily to what's going to happen at the very end of human history as we know it.
Doug McMasters: This is an expression that is often simply pointing to a future time.
Doug McMasters: And its built-in imprecision is purposeful to tell us about a time when things will not be as they presently are.
Doug McMasters: And it can refer simply to things that are just going to happen later.
Doug McMasters: For example, in Genesis 49 and verse 1, Jacob uses this phrase in his pronouncements about his sons and their lineage in the future.
Doug McMasters: And some of that future moves to the time of the judges, some of it moves to the time of David, some of it moves to the time of Christ himself.
Doug McMasters: In the last days could be any one of those seasons.
Doug McMasters: Deuteronomy 31 and 20, verse 29, Moses uses that phrase to speak of the apostasy that would come after his death.
Doug McMasters: And in the New Testament, in the last days is a phrase that has reference to the time in which we live now between the resurrection and the return of Christ.
Doug McMasters: The last days.
Doug McMasters: And that God himself will arbitrate all of the issues of humankind.
Doug McMasters: And that in this transformation, people will take their weaponry of war and turn it into implements of agricultural harvesting.
Doug McMasters: And that war itself will be brought to an end.
Doug McMasters: And people will no longer go to basic military training.
Doug McMasters: They will no longer train for war.
Doug McMasters: When we come into prophetic literature, like the book of Isaiah, we come into a place where poetry reigns, where poetry reigns.
Doug McMasters: And poetry gives us, as we know, images that provoke strong emotions and describe things beyond the range of our typical normal language.
Doug McMasters: If I said to someone, I care a lot about you, I would be saying a true statement.
Doug McMasters: If I said to them, you're one in a million, I would be using figurative language.
Doug McMasters: But if I said among the endless grains of sand, you're the gem that glitters, the one the tide could not sweep away, you think, well, he's obviously not just asking for directions.
Doug McMasters: But then what if I said, you're not just part of the world's vastness, you're the sparkle that turns it into magic.
Doug McMasters: That's only something Royal gets to hear.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: It's poetry, right?
Doug McMasters: It's poetry.
Doug McMasters: It speaks emotionally, and it goes into us deeper.
Doug McMasters: We find that kind of imagery all over scripture.
Doug McMasters: Some of it we understand, some of it we don't.
Doug McMasters: I mean, none of us really understand why Solomon would tell a woman, you've got hair like a flock of goats, you know.
Doug McMasters: Or that your teeth are like sheep that have just been shorn.
Doug McMasters: Well, unless you're a New Zealander, maybe that would be okay.
Doug McMasters: Or that your neck is like the Tower of David.
Doug McMasters: And she's looking up, going, I've always been a little, well, a little embarrassed by my neck, but you've just really made it a problem.
Doug McMasters: When we read these things, we understand they evoke emotion, that they're poetic.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah's prophecies do that.
Doug McMasters: In Isaiah 52, we don't expect a literal fulfillment of this.
Doug McMasters: He says, You will indeed go out with joy and be peacefully guided.
Doug McMasters: The mountains and the hills will break into singing before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
Doug McMasters: We're not going to be walking down a pathway accompanied by the forest.
Doug McMasters: But there's something there that's rich and that's deep.
Doug McMasters: And so the Old Testament prophets describe a glorious future, and Isaiah here describes a glorious future that's both familiar and yet unknown to the people in Judah and Jerusalem of his day.
Doug McMasters: Something they could understand, but yet beyond their comprehension.
Doug McMasters: Something veiled that they couldn't quite grasp.
Doug McMasters: So God speaks to them within this framework, this world of language, poetry, to build their faith and to raise their expectations.
Doug McMasters: He takes these familiar institutions and he idealizes them in this imagery and speaks of the reality beyond their present day that's going to be more glorious than they can imagine.
Doug McMasters: I want us to break down this section in verses two to five in two little clusters.
Doug McMasters: The first cluster will look at the aspects of the imagery of the place, and then the second cluster will be the imagery of the people.
Doug McMasters: And in this first cluster, speaking about the place, we find the focus is in Jerusalem, and particularly the Temple Mount and the Temple itself.
Doug McMasters: And the first thing that we notice in verse 2 is the elevation of the Temple Mount.
Doug McMasters: That the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established at the top of the mountains and will be raised above the hills.
Doug McMasters: The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is not the highest place around.
Doug McMasters: It's tall, it reaches a peak of about 2,400 and some change feet above sea level, but it isn't the highest peak.
Doug McMasters: The Mount of Olives, right next to it, is about 250 feet higher than it, and Mount Scopus, which lies to the north, is nearly 300 feet higher than it in elevation.
Doug McMasters: And even the Mount of Corruption to the south is higher.
Doug McMasters: So in its immediate vicinity, the Temple Mount is not higher than all the hills around.
Doug McMasters: It just isn't.
Doug McMasters: And when we read Isaiah chapter 2, we're not reading here some sort of tectonic upheaval in which the Temple Mount is physically lifted up above the rest of the hills around it.
Doug McMasters: No, this is poetry.
Doug McMasters: This is poetry.
Doug McMasters: We're discovering something far more significant than the fact that we just have to change the figures on our on our maps.
Doug McMasters: When we read the Old Testament, we discover that the high places were places of worship.
Doug McMasters: Israel had one place where they were to worship centrally, a place that was chosen by God.
Doug McMasters: But despite all of that, Israel tended to worship in a lot of other places, a lot of other high places, inconsistent with what God told them to do, but also leading them to the temptation of joining into the worship of other gods on the high places where other people worshiped.
Doug McMasters: And here in this passage of scripture, God is promising to raise his mountain above all the other mountains.
Doug McMasters: In other words, to make it such that his worship is the supreme worship above all for all people.
Doug McMasters: In that image.
Doug McMasters: And then there is the exaltation of the temple.
Doug McMasters: 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.
Doug McMasters: There is this exaltation of the temple itself.
Doug McMasters: Now the temple is for us the meeting place between God and humanity.
Doug McMasters: And here we see the exaltation of the temple being figuring the presence of God Himself, where people will meet with Him.
Doug McMasters: And this temple in Jerusalem is an earthly representation of God's house, the place where he dwells, where he is enthroned as the real king of the universe.
Doug McMasters: And then another aspect of this first cluster that talks about the place begins to move us toward the people that we'll look at in the second cluster.
Doug McMasters: Many peoples will come and say, Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.
Doug McMasters: There is this focus on this area, not only by the people of Israel, the people of Judah and Jerusalem, but the nations and the peoples themselves.
Doug McMasters: That this transformation of Jerusalem is not just an end of itself and not just for the people of that city or of that area, but a place in which will be flowing all of the nations.
Doug McMasters: The centrality of this place is in view, and it is the eye of every people.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah speaks of this.
Doug McMasters: And I will bring all of your brothers from all the nations as a gift to the Lord on horses and chariots and litters and on mules and camels to my holy mountain, Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: This cluster of the place poetically shows us something is going on that's going to bring an exaltation of the Temple Mount.
Doug McMasters: It's going to show us an exaltation of the temple itself where God dwells.
Doug McMasters: It's going to show us all the people focused on that one place.
Doug McMasters: What is this high place?
Doug McMasters: What is this God's presence in the temple?
Doug McMasters: What is this place of worship, this focus of the people?
Doug McMasters: Well, the New Testament tells us exactly what it is.
Doug McMasters: Because the New Testament takes up this imagery that Isaiah speaks about here and in so many other places, and so many of the other prophets talk about and brings it into focus on Christ and the gospel and God's people who have come to Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: The writer of Hebrews in chapter 12 says to them, You have come to Mount Zion, to the city.
Doug McMasters: Of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, a festive gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to a judge who is the God of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better things than the blood of Abel.
Doug McMasters: Where have the New Testament believers come to?
Doug McMasters: They've come to the highest of high places, to the heavenly Jerusalem, not just sitting on top of earthly hills, but sitting above all things on earth, to the very abode of God, to the place where the blood of Christ will free you of all guilt.
Doug McMasters: Galatians 4, to the Gentiles of Galatia.
Doug McMasters: Paul the apostle writes to them, and he says, Jerusalem above is free and is our mother.
Doug McMasters: That very exalted place where God dwells, which is above us all, is the very center of our existence.
Doug McMasters: Revelation chapter three and verse twelve.
Doug McMasters: God's people wrapped up in the imagery of Jerusalem and a high place and a temple where they will bring themselves gladly and remain happily forever.
Doug McMasters: Revelation twenty-one, two.
Doug McMasters: I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, the high place, the high city, the high temple, the high presence of God.
Doug McMasters: These ideas of temple and mountain are all wrapped around the idea of Jesus Christ and the gospel and the people of God being a part of it.
Doug McMasters: When we looked at chapter one, we said that all of chapter one was yearning for a future day when the Messiah would come, yearning for that day when our sins, which are as scarlet, would become proclaimed as white as wool.
Doug McMasters: And we said that we find that fulfillment in Jesus' death.
Doug McMasters: This forgiveness that Isaiah is grasping to understand and longing to see, materialized and realized, is found in these pictures of crimson and scarlet being turned into wool and snow.
Doug McMasters: We know this is Christ who has come to free us.
Doug McMasters: And because Christ has come to free us, there's no more Sabbaths, there's no more sacrifices, there's no more priesthood, there's none of those things needed any longer, for the one perfect sacrifice has come and he's come to deliver.
Doug McMasters: And so now here in Isaiah chapter 2, this vision of a glorious Zion that sits in the center of the world with all eyes on it speaks about again our Savior, the light of Jesus, who is very God of gods, who is the express image of God, who said on this earth, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again, who says to his people, you are living stones built on the cornerstone, who is Jesus Christ, and you are formed together as a habitation for God to sing out the praises and the excellencies of him who saved us.
Doug McMasters: And so while Isaiah talks about a future of an elevated mountain, the gospels tell us very clearly about the need for the elevation of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: The book of Acts gives us a picture of the nations being assembled in Jerusalem and hearing a message about one Jesus who sits at the right hand of God, who is issuing forth an edict from there of deliverance.
Doug McMasters: The vision of Isaiah 2 is becoming a reality in human existence.
Doug McMasters: This picture of gloriousness, of welcome, this picture of this place is found right in Jesus Christ Himself.
Doug McMasters: That leads us to cluster two.
Doug McMasters: The first cluster talks about the place.
Doug McMasters: The second cluster focuses more on the people.
Doug McMasters: All nations will stream to it, and many peoples will come and say, Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.
Doug McMasters: He will teach us about his way so that we may walk in his paths.
Doug McMasters: For instruction will go out of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah sees here that Jew and Gentile alike will stream toward God's holy mountain.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: What's compelling them to go there?
Doug McMasters: They go there because they want to know something about God.
Doug McMasters: God will teach them, He will show them how to walk in His path.
Doug McMasters: His instructions will come from that place.
Doug McMasters: The word of the Lord will be sourced there.
Doug McMasters: This is where they find the truth.
Doug McMasters: And these people, both Jew and Gentile, need instruction and they desire direction in junctures of life, both mundane and crucial.
Doug McMasters: And these people are tired of the false instructions and the faulty directions that they've been given from the culture around them.
Doug McMasters: They want the truth.
Doug McMasters: They want God's truth.
Doug McMasters: And so they set their gaze on the temple of Yahweh.
Doug McMasters: They look to the highest mountain around.
Doug McMasters: And together, as Jew and Gentile, they become a pilgrim people, moving toward the presence of God Himself.
Doug McMasters: And they want to hear, not just with their ears, but also with their hearts.
Doug McMasters: And they want God to speak as He is the all-welcoming God who will do things for them that they need.
Doug McMasters: And they recognize that God's law is not just the exclusive claim of the people of Israel, but it is for all peoples.
Doug McMasters: This idea of the people being gathered for instruction is something the New Testament centers on Christ.
Doug McMasters: And Jeremiah speaking about the new covenant.
Doug McMasters: One of the promises of the new covenant is this they will not say one to their neighbor, Know the Lord, for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.
Doug McMasters: In the new covenant, there's a knowledge of God that comes.
Doug McMasters: Jesus in John 6 said, It is written in the prophets, they will all be taught by God.
Doug McMasters: Everyone who's listened to and learned from the Father comes to me, Jesus said.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because he's the source of the truth.
Doug McMasters: John chapter 3, John the Baptist said, The one who speaks of the heavenly things is the one who's come from the heavenly place.
Doug McMasters: He reveals him.
Doug McMasters: 1 Corinthians 2, Paul said, We speak these things, not words taught by human wisdom, but those things taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people.
Doug McMasters: To the Thessalonians, Paul wrote about brotherly love, you don't need for me to write to you, because you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.
Doug McMasters: In Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 20, now that you've come to know Christ, assuming that you've heard about him, and were taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, Isaiah in action, in Jesus Christ, in informing his people about the ways of God, about understanding what love really means, about what taking off the former way of life really means, about finding Christ, the revelation of the invisible God.
Doug McMasters: But he goes on in this second cluster, not only to talk about our education of God, but also the establishment of peace, will come there to this very place where he will settle disputes among the nations and provide arbitration for many peoples.
Doug McMasters: They will beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning hooks.
Doug McMasters: Nation will not take up the sword against nation, and they will never again train for war.
Doug McMasters: Now these war, these words have significance for us who live in New York.
Doug McMasters: They're right outside the United Nations building where a blacksmith is beating swords into plowshares, right?
Doug McMasters: But the path to peace that the United Nations is talking about is not this.
Doug McMasters: Rather than disarmament bringing peace, this passage says peace brings disarmament.
Doug McMasters: The peace comes first.
Doug McMasters: And God is portrayed here as the direct agent of that peace, bringing judgment, settling disputes at the beginning of verse four, talking about the cessation of war within the hearts of his people, the power of the gospel to break down barriers and to establish peace.
Doug McMasters: Where there is strife, there is now the source for peace.
Doug McMasters: Where there was once avarance, now there's the place for forgiveness.
Doug McMasters: Where there was once prejudice, now there's the place for acceptance in Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: The people who are taught by God are the people who are taught by God to bring about a realm of peace like this world has never been able to do, and without Christ, we'll never be able to do.
Doug McMasters: Just take a look at us.
Doug McMasters: Look at all of us.
Doug McMasters: We're about as different as we can get.
Doug McMasters: We're as mixed in every possible demographic that we could even list out.
Doug McMasters: But here we are gathered together because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: The world longs for this and they can't achieve it.
Doug McMasters: To receive divine instruction is to share in this vision of a coming realm of peace.
Doug McMasters: And it's already inaugurated now.
Doug McMasters: Having been justified by faith, you have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: And may the peace of God settle your hearts and fix your minds.
Doug McMasters: And so, brothers and sisters, have peace with one another.
Doug McMasters: It is because our hearts are already made at peace with the Holy God that we can begin to have peace with sinful people.
Doug McMasters: It's wondrous.
Doug McMasters: Yes, when we come to know Jesus, peace follows.
Doug McMasters: And it could be in the smallest of ways, in seemingly uncertain days, the most feeble of efforts.
Doug McMasters: But there is within all of God's people, those who redeemed through Jesus Christ, a blossoming of love, a growing of forgiveness that turns squabbles and factions into harmonious communities, in families and in churches, and even as we become peacemakers in this world.
Doug McMasters: This is why Jesus described his children: Blessed are the peacemakers.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah's vision leaves room for hope.
Doug McMasters: These days have begun, but they're not finished yet.
Doug McMasters: And there'll be more and more of our putting away of hypocrisy and putting away of injustice, when our peace will be more than just patchy and small, that he will continue to work until the day comes when war will be no more and peace will flow like a river.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah holds that vision up as true.
Doug McMasters: He takes us to a mountain.
Doug McMasters: He shows us there what our hearts are really longing for.
Doug McMasters: He shows us that God is there.
Doug McMasters: He shows us that God's initiative is there.
Doug McMasters: And he shows us that God intends to bring his people into an experience that they've yet to ever know.
Doug McMasters: An experience of equity and of community and of justice and of love and of peace.
Doug McMasters: In that place that he has established that is higher than all the other places around.
Doug McMasters: And that place is Christ who broke into the third heaven and sits at the right hand of the majesty on high.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah speaks of that time when we'll once again know transcendence and significance and community.
Doug McMasters: That we'll quit in that day getting by with the scraps and remembrances of special experiences.
Doug McMasters: That day when God's presence will be perfectly manifest, when his house will be eternally established, when we will always have the instruction of God, and peace will reign.
Doug McMasters: Revelation chapter 21.
Doug McMasters: I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
Doug McMasters: And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.
Doug McMasters: That's where we look, that's where we stream, and that's where we find our transcendence and our significance and our community.
Doug McMasters: This picture of unity, this picture of justice, this picture of openness and oneness in the divine way of peace.
Doug McMasters: It speaks to our deepest hopes and all of our longings.
Doug McMasters: Hear the exhortation in verse five.
Doug McMasters: House of Jacob, come.
Doug McMasters: Let's walk in the Lord's light.
Doug McMasters: This chapter is filled with two seemingly irreconcilable futures.
Doug McMasters: On that day will be a day when human pride is crushed, and in the last days will come an elevated place of acceptance.
Doug McMasters: And where your destiny lies is brought to bear in this exhortation.
Doug McMasters: Come.
Doug McMasters: And then look at the last verse of the chapter.
Doug McMasters: Put no more trust in a mere human who only has only the breath in his nostrils.
Doug McMasters: What is he really worth?
Doug McMasters: To begin to walk in the ways of the light of the Lord that verse 5 talks about means quit, first of all, quit trusting yourself.
Doug McMasters: Because you are just a mere mortal.
Doug McMasters: That's what we are.
Doug McMasters: And whatever constructs of transcendence and significance and community that we think we can obtain by way of our prideful, arrogant rebellion against God, to invest it in money, to invest it in spiritual activity, to invest it in weaponry of power, to invest it in alliances with others.
Doug McMasters: We're really doing nothing more but constructing wood and stone idols, things that we've made with our own hands and saying they're what gives us significance.
Doug McMasters: Turn away from those things and turn to the living God who can bring you into a realm like you've never known before, where words fail us to even begin to describe.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Do not forgive them.
Doug McMasters: You've got bigger plans than that.
Doug McMasters: You've got plans that cause all of us to stop our voices and to stand in awe, in wonder and puzzlement, that you, the holy God, who have been offended by our actions, would be so kind and so gracious and so full of love that you would open up a place into your presence to the very people that have dishonored you.
Doug McMasters: Lord, we need to hear that message.
Doug McMasters: And I pray for each and every one of us in this room that we would not pass it by without acknowledging our need of it and without ensuring our participation in it.
Doug McMasters: That we would come to that place, Jesus Christ, who is high and exalted above all, and find in him everything that we need.
Doug McMasters: And Lord, I pray that we might continue to be those who help others stream to that holy mountain.
Doug McMasters: Come, come with us.
Doug McMasters: Let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.