Come, go with US

”The vision that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: 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, 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. 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. House of Jacob, come and let us walk in the Lord’s light. For You have abandoned Your people, the house of Jacob, because they are full of divination from the East and of fortune-tellers like the Philistines. They are in league with foreigners. Their land is full of silver and gold, and there is no limit to their treasures; their land is full of horses, and there is no limit to their chariots. Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made. So humanity is brought low, and man is humbled. Do not forgive them! Go into the rocks and hide in the dust from the terror of the Lord and from His majestic splendor. Human pride will be humbled, and the loftiness of men will be brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted on that day. For a day belonging to the Lord of Hosts is coming against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up — it will be humbled — against all the cedars of Lebanon, lofty and lifted up, against all the oaks of Bashan, against all the high mountains, against all the lofty hills, against every high tower, against every fortified wall, against every ship of Tarshish, and against every splendid sea vessel. So human pride will be brought low, and the loftiness of men will be humbled; the Lord alone will be exalted on that day. The idols will vanish completely. People will go into caves in the rocks and holes in the ground, away from the terror of the Lord and from His majestic splendor, when He rises to terrify the earth. On that day people will throw their silver and gold idols, which they made to worship, to the moles and the bats. They will go into the caves of the rocks and the crevices in the cliffs, away from the terror of the Lord and from His majestic splendor, when He rises to terrify the earth. Put no more trust in man, who has only the breath in his nostrils. What is he really worth?“ (Isaiah 2:1-22 HCSB)

Brief Outline:

1. Glorifying the right Temple Mount – Jesus – the only hope of life
2. Shameful dependence on our things, not God
3. Pride brings us down but humility will lift us up
4. Stop trusting in yourselves and COME to the Lord

Key verse: Put no more trust in man, who has only the breath in his nostrils. What is he really worth? (V. 22)

Summary: Our attempts at making ourselves more holy and righteous in man’s eyes simply serve to make us more unholy and self-righteous in God’s eyes. Our attempts at making ourselves more powerful, significant and important only reveals how helpless and insignificant we are in comparison to God. So, don’t put your trust in human endeavors, physical achievement or even shared accomplishments but instead put your trust in the living God!

Five distinct contrasts:

1. Nations will stream to the new Zion (v. 2) / God’s people reject Him and choose worldly comfort and help (v. 6)
2. The newly restored world seeks God’s spiritual guidance and leadership (v. 3) / old Zion seeks material wealth (v. 7)
3. The result of coming to God is world peace (v. 4) / old Zion is full of military armaments and might (v. 7b)
4. The newly restored world seeks the one true God and obeys Him (v. 3) / God’s people are busy creating their own gods (v. 8)
5. The nations are accepted before God’s throne and not judged (v. 4) / God’s people are judged, abandoned and denied forgiveness (v. 6, 9)

Well, for several weeks I’ve been using a trip that my wife and I took as a means of illustrating the lessons God is seeking to teach Judah (and us) through Isaiah’s prophecies. While I will try to restrain myself from direct and even indirect references to our trip, Isaiah continues to use the idea in his warnings to Judah and Jerusalem. This week, we are looking at the “last days” or the days just prior to God’s judgment upon mankind and, more specifically, upon Judah and His rebellious people.

The idea of the last days always carries with it the sense of impending doom and a period of apocalyptic destruction. There’s a reason for that, it always does in scripture. But one other idea that also exists in these declarations of judgment and apocalyptic doom is the hope of repentance, forgiveness and redemption. Isaiah begins with a recounting what God revealed to him concerning the future judgment of Judah and Jerusalem and then contrasts that with what he sees in Judah and Jerusalem in his present day. Let’s start with his declaration of hope…

In the last days, Isaiah sees the mountain of the Lord’s house (or temple) and it will be “at the top of the mountains and will be raised above the hills.” Now many folks take this quite literally and thus believe that before the second coming of Jesus, the Temple of Jerusalem must be rebuilt on the Temple Mount. However, let me suggest to you that I believe the true temple of God that is being referenced by Isaiah is not a building made by the hands of men, but is the resurrected and triumphant Lord of Glory, Jesus Christ. Jesus himself proclaimed, “destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days (Jn. 2:19).” In other words, what Isaiah saw in those last days was not a restored physical temple rebuilt by man’s hands but was, in fact, the resurrected and glorified Son of God.

What will God raise above every thing else? A man-made temple? No! Listen… ”This is the declaration of the Lord to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool.” The Lord will extend Your mighty scepter from Zion. Rule over Your surrounding enemies.“ (Psalms 110:1-2 HCSB)

Isaiah goes on to say, “All nations will stream to it, 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 make walk in His paths.” For instruction will go out of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” The glorious display of God’s power and authority won’t be found in a temple of stone but in the beaten body, shed blood and righteous obedience of His Only Son, Jesus. God would not be honored and His ways would not be glorified with the empty and vain sacrifices offered upon the temple altar by a people who have rejected His Son.

Consider these verses: ”You do not want a sacrifice, or I would give it; You are not pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God, You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.“ (Psalms 51:16-17 HCSB)

And these: ”But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here! If you had known what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”“ (Matthew 12:6-8 HCSB)

If something greater than the temple had come, why would God restore it to service? I don’t believe He would. I think Isaiah saw the restoration of the Temple in Zion or the heavenly city and it was the “temple” of Jesus’ resurrected body put on glorious display to show the righteousness, power, mercy and forgiveness of God for those who repent, trust Him by faith and return to Him in obedience. Notice what Isaiah tells us:

“”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. He will settle disputes among the nations and provide arbitration for many peoples. They will turn their sword 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.”

But, we’re not there yet… are we? That’s a vision of what Isaiah saw as the culmination of God’s word and work in the lives of His people. Come on, be honest. Even on our best days, we’re not there yet, are we? We desire the kingdom of God one moment and then our pride steps into the mix and we begin chasing after our own glory, not His. So, this passage starts with a vision of what God desires, what He wills and what Isaiah saw as the culmination of His purpose and plan. But how do we get there?

Now, Isaiah begins showing us why we aren’t there, just yet. He says, “House of Jacob, come and let us walk in the Lord’s light. For You [God] have abandoned Your people, the house of Jacob…” But why has the LORD abandoned them? Why must Isaiah call them to come back and walk in the path of the Lord’s light? “Because they are full of divination from the East and of fortune-tellers like the Philistines. They are in league with foreigners. Their land is full of silver and gold, and there is no limit to their treasures; their land is full of horses, and there is no limit to their chariots. Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made.”

In other words, they were depending upon their own political alliances, natural resources, military abilities, knowledge and understanding. They had become so dependent upon these things; these things had become idols to them. When man builds an idol and bows down to it, he’s not really worshiping some unseen god, he’s worshiping himself. His pride has replaced worship of the One True God with the things that he has built up for himself. Unfortunately, we don’t often recognize this in ourselves or in our culture, but it is deeply embedded in us.

Notice what happens next, “So humanity is brought low, and man is humbled. Do not forgive them! Go into the rocks and hide in the dust from the terror of the LORD and from His majestic splendor. Human pride will be humbled, and the loftiness of men will be brought low; the LORD alone will be exalted on that day. For a day belonging to the LORD of Hosts is coming against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up – it will be humbled.” Isaiah then launches into listing out all of the things that Judah was holding in high regard and depending upon to defend, protect and rescue them from the Assyrian aggression.

Wait, did you catch that little phrase in the passage? “Do not forgive them!” Isaiah says that God’s people, who have abandoned the LORD and are pursuing help from anyone and everyone except Him, will not be forgiven. But I thought the LORD was the God of mercy and forgiveness? He is! But forgiveness flows out of mercy and mercy flows towards humility and humility flows out of an acknowledgment of sin and repentance of it. God won’t forgive what our pride refuses to acknowledge and turn away from – our deeply held sin of human pride, independence and rebellion towards Him.

We have a tendency to think that all we need to receive forgiveness from God is to ask. But just asking for forgiveness is not enough. Our request must be accompanied by humility and a painful and humbling awareness of our sin and a desire to turn from it towards God. Later, I think we need to reach an understanding of just how much we love our sin and how much God hates it. Why? Because it destroys us and breaks our fellowship with Him.

While God desires for us to walk with Him we tend to veer off the path and chase after things that distract us, destroy us and replace our love relationship with Him. That’s what an idol is. It doesn’t have to be a small human, human-like or animal figure that represents some other pagan god. An idol is anything that receives our ultimate love and devotion which is worship.

For many Americans, our idol is our fierce independence and dogged self-reliance. For others, it is their ego, identity preference, sexual orientation or personal pride. Essentially, all idolatry really comes down to pride. We love ourselves more than we love God. The first and greatest commandment is to love the LORD God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to fail to do so means that we love someone else more. That person is most often us, whether we realize it or not.

Human pride is ugly in all its forms, but it is ugliest when it dons religious garb. Religion and religious expression can often be an attempt to refashion God to our will and our desires rather than bending our will to His and refashioning our ways to His. But humility towards God, recognizing we are unworthy of supreme love and that our desires are broken and corrupt, but He is worthy of it and His desires are holy and pure, places us in a position of confession and repentance and causes God’s mercy to flow and forgiveness to be.

In Isaiah’s description of what the restored Zion would be (vs. 1-4), he describes how God’s obedient people would beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning knives. This is a vivid depiction of abandoning our sinful and destructive ways and returning to God’s ways. Instead of waging war against each other, we return to the garden of God, Eden, and we obediently transform our weapons into agricultural tools to fulfill His purpose and call upon our lives. In this setting, we experience both sabbath and shalom – we live at rest and enjoy perfect peace, life as it is meant to be.

But how do we reach that place where we can live life as it is meant to be?

Listen to verse 17, “So human pride will be brought low, and the loftiness of men will be humbled; the LORD alone will be exalted on that day.” Then Isaiah goes on to say that those who truly humble themselves will throw their idols to the moles and bats. Why moles and bats? They are both unclean animals according to Jewish law but to throw the idols to them would be to put them where they belong – not on the lofty mountains where God belongs but in the deepest holes and darkest caves.

Then it says the people will go into the caves of the rocks and the crevices in the cliffs to hide from the terror of the LORD and His majestic splendor, when He rises up and causes the earth to tremble in His presence. This is “that great day of the LORD” when He will come to judge mankind and bring righteousness, truth, and justice to the earth. This is when He will set things right. This is when those who take pride in themselves, their power, their position, their achievements and their riches will be humbled and will cower before the LORD. This is that day we both fear and long for. We fear it because God’s righteous wrath will be unleashed against all unrighteousness. But we long for it because God’s righteous wrath will also bring perfect justice and will set things right, once again.

Isaiah ends this passage with an emphatic statement and a difficult question: “Put no more trust in man, who has only the breath in his nostrils. What is he really worth?” It is a statement that is staggering and a question that is sobering. The statement is intended to cause us to draw a stark comparison between the self-existent LORD and ourselves. We are merely mortal men who have only the breath that is currently in our lungs. We have no ability to give ourselves life nor to prevent our death. We simply exist in the moment that God has given to us – the current breath in our nostrils. Are we living our lives in such a way that God is glorified with each breath He gives us?

For just a moment, let things get quiet around you. If there’s noise, turn it off. Now, breathe in… slowly. Now, breathe out… slowly. Those in and out breaths mimic the sound of God’s name: breathe in: YAH; breathe out: WEH. Each breath we take is an expression of who He is and what He gives. He is the ONE in whom life exists and the ONE who gives it to each of us. Put no more trust in man, for he has only the breath in his nostrils. Put your trust in the LORD, who is life and who gives it to us with each breath we take.

Now that sobering question: What is man? What is he really worth? If we must depend on God for each breath we take, then why do we tend to place so much value in what we do, the power we obtain, the things we accumulate, the treasures we gather and the positions we attain. What are we really worth? Nothing in comparison to Him who is life, who gives life and who chooses to live life with us. God deserves worship and we OUGHT to worship Him with every breath. But He also chooses to fellowship with us, walk with us and live life with us.

So, Isaiah calls us to come and walk with him in the LORD’s light (v. 5) and that’s my invitation to you, today. Come, walk with us in the LORD’s light. Abandon those things that distract you from Him and His purpose. Recognize them as the idols they’ve become in your life. They pull you away from Him and they are unworthy of your attention, time and efforts. Instead, focus on HIM and desire to walk with Him. I can promise you this, NO ONE who has ever truly sought HIM has ever walked away without Him by their side. ”For everyone who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.“ (Matthew 7:8 HCSB)

Come, walk with us in the LORD’s light…