Let's hear God's word from the book of Isaiah chapter 2 beginning with verse 1. The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord to the house of the God of Jacob He will teach us his ways and we shall walk in his paths, for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations and rebuke many people. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. O house of Jacob, come and let us walk. in the light of the Lord. Amen. We'll end our reading there in verse 5 of Isaiah 2. Let's ask God's help in prayer together. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we thank you for this precious promise from your word. We pray that you would help us to receive it as it is intended for our good and our encouragement. We ask that you would help us to hear the calling of this text. May it have its proper work in our hearts, O Lord, as the Spirit accompanies the Word, as He helps us to lay aside everything that would prevent its appropriate reception, as He overcomes the deficiencies and inadequacies of the preacher. in order that your congregation, your sheep, may hear your voice and may respond with faith and hope and love. In Jesus' name, amen. These words from Isaiah are fairly familiar, and one reason that they are familiar is that they also appear in the book of Micah, chapter 4. They are a little bit different, but substantially, they are very similar. And so, of course, as commentators tend to do, there's discussion back and forth over whether Isaiah borrowed from Micah, or Micah borrowed from Isaiah, or if they both borrowed from somebody else who's otherwise unknown, or if they preserved an otherwise unknown prophecy from the prophet Joel. I don't think that these words are original to Isaiah, but that's just my opinion, and if you have a different opinion, that's okay. I think that Isaiah probably borrowed them, but he placed them at this point in his prophecy because they are relevant and because he wanted to establish something on the basis of them. just as inspired if Isaiah got them from somewhere else as if he's the origin of them. Ultimately, the origin is God himself. But think about what Isaiah has already done. Isaiah has already revealed that the judgment that came upon Judah and Jerusalem was only slightly less than the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. He's revealed that their wickedness is comparable to the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah. And now, all of a sudden, He has a prediction about what will happen afterwards, what will happen in the latter days, and things will be very different. But then... In verse 6 of chapter 2, he returns to an indictment of the land. They're filled with Eastern ways. They're soothsayers like the Philistines. They're pleased with the children of foreigners and et cetera. He goes on to condemn the idolatry that is ongoing, that is present in his time. And so chapters 1 and 2, when you take them that way, there's an expose, there's a revelation of the deep sin of the nation, of the people of God. And in between, there's these words, which I think are borrowed from elsewhere, about what will be true at some other time, what will be true afterwards. Why does Isaiah put that there? Well, Isaiah's as much of a human being as you and I are, It's discouraging to see sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, a little bit more. If that's all you think about, if that's all you have in mind, it's hard to be cheerful and encouraged. So Isaiah puts in here a contrast. Is sin a bitter and a hard and a widespread reality? Yes, it absolutely is. And Isaiah would certainly not have us hide our eyes from that truth. Is sin the only reality? No. No, it is not. There is more to the story than that. And part of that more is what God will do in the future. in the latter days. Now, we should understand that from Isaiah's perspective. From Isaiah's perspective, some things were future that, from our perspective, are already past. The exile, the deportation of people into Babylon, that was future from Isaiah's perspective. From our perspective, it's already happened. From Isaiah's perspective, obviously, the return from exile was future, whereas from our perspective, it's already happened. From Isaiah's perspective, the first coming of Christ was future, whereas from our perspective, Christ has come, Christ has lived and died. He's been buried. He's risen again. He's ascended into heaven. He sent the Holy Spirit. All of that was future for Isaiah. All of that is past for us. Now, some things, though, are still future for us. We are still living in the time when the gospel is going out, when we expect the gospel to be preached to all the nations. We are still living in a time of expectation. We are looking forward for the Lord Jesus to come back again in glory. We are looking forward to the general resurrection and what is sometimes called the final state. We are looking forward to a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells. So we're going to have to distinguish a little bit. Not everything that was future for Isaiah is still future for us. And if you notice the expression that is used there in verse 2, it shall come to pass in the latter days. Well, you think about 1 John. John says to us little children, it is the last time. To some degree, the latter days have been inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Christ. We are living in the period that Isaiah was expecting. Now that doesn't necessarily mean we're at the end of that period, but it means that we're living in the time that the Bible calls the latter days. So what was Isaiah looking forward to? What words did he draw on for his own encouragement and for the encouragement of his readers as he put the words of his prophecy together? Well, it starts off with an image. It's based on the reality that Jerusalem is built on a mountain. There's deep valleys on three sides of Jerusalem. That's why people always attack from the north. That's the best access to get to that particular city. And within that hill, of course, that it's built on, there's ups and downs, and the temple is built on a particularly high point of that. So the mountain of the Lord's house, the mountain that is beneath the temple, says Isaiah, shall be established on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills. The image there is of this mountain growing, increasing, getting higher and higher and higher. Of course, all the kids already know what the highest mountain in the world is. I'm pretty sure, I see some nods out there, I'm pretty sure you know that it is Mount Everest. All right, they already understood that one. What Isaiah is saying here is that Mount Zion, which is not that high compared to other mountains, it's not even high compared to the mountains we have here. Mount Whitney is a lot higher than Mount Zion. But what Isaiah is saying is that in the latter days in the future, that mountain is gonna get taller until it's the tallest mountain of all. Now, I think the kids also probably know that water flows downhill. But Isaiah uses another image. He says that all nations will flow to the highest mountain of all. They will flow to Mount Zion. It's like gravity has been reversed. And instead of being drawn downwards, we're being drawn upwards. We're being drawn to the top of this mountain. Why? Because that's where God is. Now that is an image. Hopefully we are not really expecting earthquakes or volcanic activity or something like that to push this particular mountain higher and higher and higher, geographically speaking. This is an image that the Lord's house, the Lord's mountain, will become the most important mountain. This will become the mountain that people line up to get to, so to speak. because there's something more precious there than you can find anywhere else. So that's the image that Isaiah gives us, and then he explains it a little bit in the following verse. Many people shall come and say, come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. Why do they want to come to this one particular mountain? Because he, the Lord, will teach us his ways. and we shall walk in his paths." This enthusiasm to go to Mount Zion isn't an enthusiasm for mountain climbing. It's an enthusiasm to learn the Lord's ways, to walk in the way that the Lord indicates. There's a desire to know God, to follow God, to draw near to God. That is what is going on in these verses. And then Isaiah explains even further the words of the people, for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. What draws everybody to come is that the word has gone out. The word goes out from Zion and people come in. And what is the content, what is the message of this word? He shall judge between the nations and rebuke many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. How could we summarize or how could we restate that message? Well, you could say that the Lord is going to take charge of everything. The Lord is going to announce that he is king over all the earth. That's why he's judging not just the people of one nation, but he's judging between one nation and another. Who can do that? Only the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He'll rebuke many people because they're wrong, but he has the authority to set them straight. And the effect of his reign is peace. They don't need the sword anymore, they don't need the weapons, so instead they take the sword and they turn it into an instrument of agriculture. What is needed is the ability to cultivate the ground not the ability to defend yourself or to attack others. So their spears are beaten into pruning hooks. Nation no longer goes to war against nation. They don't even study it anymore. Now, when we think about that verse and then we look at the world around us, it seems clear that this has not yet been fulfilled, doesn't it? Nation is still lifting up sword or missiles or drones or whatever the weapons are these days against nation. There are still war colleges. There's still a great deal of study of military strategy and tactics. And to some extent, there needs to be because there's still hostile action. One country invades another. One country oppresses another through other means. But that's the image. That's the basic thing that Isaiah is driving at. Now before we move on, I want to stop a second here and just address an area where sometimes even inside of a Reformed church there will be people with different outlooks, different perspectives. And we have that in this passage. We understand that we're living in the latter days, and yet we also understand that there's still war. So what's going on? Everybody in the Reformed churches believes in some kind of what's called inaugurated eschatology. And I'm sorry, I apologize for the technical language. I'm not quite sure how else to say it. In other words, we believe that with the death and resurrection of Christ, something absolutely pivotal, something absolutely crucial happened. That's why Paul can say, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The new world started. with the resurrection of Christ. That's one reason that we no longer gather for worship on Saturdays. On the seventh day, we gather for worship instead on the first day. The Sabbath day in the Old Testament was on the seventh day. That was when God ended his work of creation and rested. and gave us a pattern to follow. But a new creation requires a new Sabbath day, and so we have the Christian Sabbath, or the Lord's Day, the first day of the week when we gather for worship, when we lay aside our ordinary concerns and instead devote the day to seeking the Lord. So all Reformed people, as far as I'm aware anyway, believe in some kind of inaugurated eschatology, The end times started when Jesus rose from the dead. Now, that doesn't mean that everything that is going to happen has happened, clearly. And that's where you can have a difference of opinion in Reformed churches by people who equally love the Bible, who are equally familiar with the Reformed confessions, as to how much of the fulfillment should we expect before Christ comes back, and how much of the fulfillment should we expect only when Christ comes back. Another way to describe those two positions is basically amillennialism and postmillennialism. And again, if you're not familiar with the language, it's not a big deal. We have both in our churches. We have both in this congregation, and that's okay. I think it would be good for all of us to have a certain amount of humility, to recognize, you know, from Isaiah's perspective, so much was future, he kind of saw it all together and didn't really space things out, because it was all future to him. From our perspective, some of what Isaiah thought of as future, we think of as past, so we're maybe able to be a little bit more clear and definite, but I expect the future will probably surprise all of us. I expect post-millennialists will be surprised, I expect amillennialists will be surprised. If there's anybody who doesn't fit into either of those two categories, I'm pretty sure they're gonna be surprised too. There will be surprises along the way. How much of this fulfillment should we expect before Christ returns? I'm not sure that that's the most important question to really be asking. Now, you can have your views on that, that's fine. But is that why Isaiah put it in here, is so that we would say, okay, well, before Jesus comes back, the nations will stop fighting? Or did Isaiah put it here so it would say, when Jesus comes back, the nations will stop fighting? Or did Isaiah put it here for a completely different reason, and us asking that question is trying to get information from Isaiah that Isaiah doesn't even give? Personally, I fall into that third camp most of all. I don't think Isaiah is trying to tell us how much of this will happen before Jesus comes back. So if that's not the goal of telling us these predictions, if that's not the goal of sharing with us what is going to happen in the latter days, why does Isaiah put it down here? Well, again, remember the contrast with the context. Isaiah puts it down here for our encouragement. When we look around and we see the state of the world, sometimes when we look around and see the state of the church, there's a heaviness, there's a weight to that. Many things are not good. And it's easy to get discouraged. It's easy to think nothing will ever get better. It's easy to despair. It's easy to give up. But here we have a promise we can hang our hats on. How that will be fulfilled is up to God. What it looks like when God fulfills it, I expect, will surprise us all. Just like when God fulfilled his promises about Christ coming, people were surprised. They were taken aback. They didn't know what to think when God fulfilled his promises by allowing Jesus to be crucified. That was a curveball. That was a complete plot twist as far as the disciples were concerned. Well, when God fulfills this particular promise, that may be just as big of a plot twist for us. We might not see it coming. But does that mean we should not believe it? Does that mean we should not be encouraged by it? On the contrary, we absolutely should be bold and brave to go forth and walk in the light of the Lord because this is the promise that we have. Will evil prevail? No, it will not. Will sin triumph? No, the devil is already defeated. Christ is victorious. You say, if Christ is victorious, why is so much still so messed up? I don't know the answer to that. It's in God's plan. Christ knows what he's doing. That's all I can really say about that. But I can say that the day is coming, whether that's tomorrow or whether that's in a thousand years, I don't know. Whether it's before or after Christ returns, I'm not going to be so foolish as to dogmatically affirm, but the day is coming when this will be fulfilled, and we can draw encouragement and strength from that. There's another word of application, though, from this. Notice the pattern. When the hill, when God's mountain is exalted, all nations flow to it. When the word goes out, People come in. And that should remind us of something the Lord Jesus said in John chapter three. He said that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. The context makes it clear, he's talking about his crucifixion. And he says if he's lifted up, he'll draw all men to himself. Now, reading Isaiah 2, we wouldn't have expected the exaltation to be Christ's exaltation between heaven and earth on a cross, but that was how people were drawn in. And of course, that remains true today in the ministry of the church, when by our preaching and by our lives, we exalt Christ, the nations come. People are drawn in. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But that is what we are called upon to do. We are called upon to exalt Christ. We're not called upon to get people to come to church with gimmicks, with tricks, with slick marketing. We are called upon to exalt Christ. If we do that, people will come. It may be fewer people come than people who would go for the marketing and the tricks. I understand that. But we're not here just to pack the pews, nice as that would be. I'm not arguing. If the Lord packs these pews, I will be happy. I'm not gonna complain. But boy, if it comes at the cost of exalting Christ, then I would complain. Hopefully I would already have been fired because I would have stood against any such notions very vehemently and I wouldn't be around to see the pews packed with gimmicks, with marketing, rather than with the exaltation of Christ. The work of the church is not to make people listen. The work of the church is to exalt Christ and let him be the attraction, let him be what draws people in. We need to preach Christ. We need to preach Christ publicly and audibly, and then we need to back that up with the way that we live as well, so that when people look at us, they can see an exalted Christ. And that means we can never basically change the message. Paul said we preach Christ crucified. Paul was very well aware that Christ crucified was a stumbling block for his Jewish fellows and that Christ crucified seemed like foolishness to the Greeks. Paul did it anyway. That's what we have to do. We have to continue to preach Christ crucified. No matter who that upsets, no matter who that alienates, no matter what response people have to that, whether it's ridicule, whether it's hostility, whether it's indifference, we preach Christ crucified. There's no other place for us to stand. But in reliance on God's promises, trusting in the work of the Holy Spirit, we can pray to be faithful and exalt in Christ and understand this pattern. The word goes out and people come in. We've been looking at this in Sunday school, the need that we have to actively as a church be involved in evangelism. How can we make the word go out? What can we do to share, to spread the word? Because when the word goes out, people come in. Let me challenge everybody to pray about that. Let me challenge everybody to support that in what we do as a church corporately. And let me challenge everybody as individuals, if you have the opportunity to share some word that exalts Christ, do it. The word goes out and people come in. But Isaiah has something else that he does with this wonderful passage that also appears in the book of Micah. He gives an exhortation. In verse 5, he says, and let us walk in the light of the Lord." Now, he's picking up on something that was said in the promise, wasn't he? At the end of verse 3, the Lord will teach us his ways and we shall walk in his paths. This is going to be the attitude of people in the latter days, in the future. And then Isaiah winds up this portion of this message by saying, let's do that now. Let's get started now. House of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord. What should we do in the light of our expectation that Christ will return? What should we do in the light of our expectation that the Lord will be victorious, that sin will not prevail? Today, we should walk in the light of the Lord. Now, in a sense, what I've already said relates to that, just specifies it a little bit. Walking in hope, walking with encouragement, that is walking in the light of the Lord instead of trudging along miserably in darkness. is part of our present. What we're hoping for is future, but the fact that we have that hope makes a difference today. So we walk in the light of the Lord when we walk in hope. We walk in the light of the Lord when we contribute, when we participate in the word of the Lord going out so that people will come in. But we can also take it, we walk in the light of the Lord when we walk. in obedience, when we follow His commands, when our lifestyle is such a contrast to the lifestyle of the people around us, picking up on themes in the context of Isaiah, when our religion is not just an empty ritual meant to satisfy our conscience so we can continue to behave unjustly during the whole rest of the week. When our religion makes us righteous and kind in our treatment of others, we're walking in the light of the Lord. When we renounce idolatry, when we turn away from illegitimate ways of knowing the future or guaranteeing success or securing blessings on ourselves and our families and our health and our efforts, when we renounce those things and trust in the Lord alone, we are walking in the light of the Lord. We're walking in the light of the Lord when we walk in communion with God, when our chief treasure is the smile of His favor, when our ambition, as Paul says, when our ambition is to please God, that's the number one thing we're thinking about. That's when we walk in the light of the Lord. God has done great things. God has promised great things. Some of what Isaiah is talking about has at least begun to be fulfilled. Oh, in the light of that people of God, let us walk in the light of the Lord. Amen.