Our scripture lesson tonight comes from Isaiah chapter 60. Isaiah chapter 60, hear now the word of our God. Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples. But the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you, and nations shall come to your abide, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around and see. They all gather together. They come to you. Your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. Then you shall see and be radiant. Your heart shall thrill and exult because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you. The wealth of the nations shall come to you. A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah. All those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord. All the flocks of Kadar shall be gathered to you. The rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you. They shall come up with acceptance on my altar and I will beautify my beautiful house. Who are these that fly like a cloud and like doves to their windows? For the coastlands shall hope for me, the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your children from afar, their silver and gold with them, for the name of the Lord your God and for the Holy One of Israel, because He has made you beautiful. Foreigners shall build up your walls and their king shall minister to you for in my wrath I struck you but in my favor I have had mercy on you your gate shall be open continually day and night they shall not be shut that people may bring to you the wealth of the nations with their kings led in procession. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish. Those nations shall be utterly laid waste. The glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the Cyprus, the plain and the pine to beautify the place of my sanctuary, and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons of those who afflicted you shall come bending low to you, and all who despised you shall bow down at your feet. They shall call you the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, with no one passing through, I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age. You shall suck the milk of nations, you shall nurse at the breast of kings, and you shall know that I, the Lord, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob. Instead of bronze, I will bring gold. And instead of iron, I will bring silver. Instead of wood, bronze. Instead of stones, iron. I will make your overseers peace and your taskmasters righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in your land. Devastation or destruction within your borders. You shall call your walls salvation and your gates praise. The sun shall no more be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light. But the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself. For the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. Your people shall all be righteous. They shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified. The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation. I am the Lord in its time. I will hasten it. This is the word of the Lord. Now, there are two different words that get translated glory in this passage. There's kavod, which appears several times in verses 1, 2, and 13. That's the word that's usually translated glory in the scriptures. Speaking of the glory of the Lord, His glory, the glory of Lebanon, I will make the place of my feet glorious. And kavod has to do with weight and importance. Now, the other word is pa'er, and this is actually used more often, verse 7, 9, 13, 19, and 21. It's often translated beautiful. I will beautify my house. He has made you beautiful to beautify the place of my sanctuary. But there's a couple of times where it also gets translated glory, as in your God will be your glory, or that I might be glorified. It's important to keep the distinction here, because kavod is, you might say, the glory that impresses, while pa'er is the glory that attracts. So glory and beauty would be a good way of speaking of this, because after all, glory and beauty are both important. What is beauty without substance? You can manufacture a facsimile of glory, but that's just a cheap imitation. What's glory without attraction? Well, you can have an immense display of wealth and splendor, but that's ugly. There's nothing to draw us in. Isaiah 53 had told us that there was no comeliness in the suffering servant. It's a different word, but Isaiah is making the point that there will be no outward pomp and show in the coming of the suffering servant. If you just go by what we expect from worldly standards of glory and beauty, you won't see that in Jesus. And yet the disciples say on the Emmaus Road, did not our hearts burn within us as he opened to us the scriptures? There is a glory and beauty in Jesus. There is a weightiness that impresses and a beauty that attracts, just not necessarily what the world would expect. Isaiah 60 contains two imperatives, both of which come at the beginning of our chapter. In verse one, arise, and then in verse four, lift up your eyes. So stand up and see what God is going to do. And these imperatives sort of open our chapter, followed by a series of contrasts at the end of our chapter. I accidentally left the points out of the bulletin, but the three points are arise, shine for the glory of the Lord has come in verses one through three, but then lift up your eyes and see the glory of the Gentiles beautifying the temple in verses four to 14. And then in verses 15 to 22, forsaken no more, Zion made beautiful. In chapter 59, we've just heard of God's promise to bring salvation to his people. A Redeemer will come to Zion. But as Isaiah has been suggesting throughout, the coming of the Redeemer to Zion also signals the spread of the kingdom of God. The Gentiles will be brought in to the people of God. And all that God has promised is now coming to pass. There's a way in which some people think that Isaiah couldn't have written these chapters because they speak of future events that Isaiah could not possibly have witnessed. But if that's the case, then Isaiah couldn't have been written until after the coming of Jesus because there's all sorts of events that are referring to what Jesus will do. And yet plainly we have Hebrew manuscripts from way before the time of Christ. Isaiah has seen that The exile is not going to bring about any fundamental change in Israel. The restoration from exile is not going to alter the character of the people of God. I mean, honestly, you didn't need to be a prophet to figure that one out. From the days of Moses until the days of Isaiah, for more than 600 years, Israel hasn't changed. The only way that salvation will come to Israel is if God Himself acts. And that's the message that we've been seeing in Isaiah 56-59. We heard the first seven words from the Lord in chapters 56-58 with that sort of the seven statements focusing on the Sabbath, pointing that the Sabbath points beyond itself to another day. and the eighth word in chapter 59 promised that God himself would arise, put on his holy armor and bring justice to the earth. A new day will dawn when the Redeemer will come to Zion to those in Jacob who turned from transgression. He will bring righteousness, he will bring truth. His words and his spirit will be put into the mouth of his Redeemer and in the mouth of his Redeemer's offspring. That's why Hebrews will say of Jesus, put into Jesus' words, here am I and the children you have given me. Now, but as we mentioned last week, Isaiah turns from the second person singular masculine, he was saying, speaking to you, the Redeemer, my words that I have put in your mouth, to the second person singular feminine and says, arise, shine, for your light has come. The you at the end of chapter 59 is a different you than beginning of chapter 60. At the end of chapter 59, the you is, put it simply, Jesus. It's the Redeemer who comes to Zion. But now, God turns and speaks to Zion. And that's where you have to make a mental shift here because in English, we just have you and that's the only word we got for it. But it's And I think the reason why, and this gets us in trouble a lot, because, think about it, if we had a eufeminine, and particularly, how would you guys read a eufeminine? If there's a eufeminine singular being talked to, you probably would be thinking, oh, this is talking to somebody else. Now, if it's a eumasculine, you're like, oh, okay, that could be me. But if it's a euphemism, that's to somebody else. And yet, we have a tendency to read chapter 6, Oh, rise, shine, for your light has come. Well, but who's being spoken to? Whose light has come? Zion, the city of God. If you read chapter 60 and you simply think of this as being just sort of you, generic Christian person, a believer in God, you're going to miss who's actually being addressed here. Who is being spoken to? It's Zion. It's the holy city. And actually, as we think about in the New Testament, the apostles will follow up on Isaiah's discussion of Zion and build on that. The heavenly city is our mother, as Paul will say in Galatians. So the Redeemer has come to Zion. And now Zion, the bride, is called to arise and shine. This is part of the reason why the early fathers and throughout much of church history, there was a strong emphasis on understanding that there's a corporate aspect of this. This is being spoken to the church. If, quite frankly, if you take all of these promises individualistically, you're going to have all sorts of great expectations for how your life's going to go, and you're going to get really, really It's sad because your life falls far short of this. My life does too. But, has God been faithful to his church? Has he been doing this ever since... in beginning form ever since he said it through Isaiah, but then especially ever since he poured out his Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And as we go through Isaiah 60, hear this as God's promise to his church. Hear this as God's promise to his people corporately and his promise to Zion, his heavenly city, the heavenly Jerusalem that has continued to go forth and the beauty of the Lord has been made known. Because now the glory of the Lord has arisen upon you. Therefore arise, shine. Just a few verses ago, Isaiah was lamenting. We hope for light and behold darkness and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. Justice is turned back and righteousness stands afar off. Truth has stumbled in the public squares and uprightness cannot enter. But now the righteous Redeemer has come. The glory of the Lord has dawned in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And as He is seated in glory at the right hand of the Father, so also we have been united to Him. We have been joined to Him and seated with Him in the heavenlies. And so, arise, shine, the light of the glory of God shines in the face of Jesus Christ. For the God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4. And we beheld his glory, as John says, the glory of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. And so, Isaiah says, that behold, darkness shall cover the earth, thick darkness the peoples, but the Lord will arise upon you. Now, this is not the word arise used at the beginning of the chapter. This is the word used at the end of verse one, when it says the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. The nations will remain in darkness, but the light will dawn upon you. That glory will be seen upon you. Think back to Egypt. One of the plagues was the plague of darkness. Only the Israelites had light. The plague of darkness remained upon Egypt. Well, that's the picture here. The plague of darkness descends upon the whole earth and the light of the Lord will be seen upon you. His glory will be seen upon you. The nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising because as the thick darkness covers the nations, The only place where they will find light is with you, is with Zion. Because the glory of the Lord will be seen upon you. The nations will see that there is light in Zion. And so the nations will flock to that light. Kings will come to the brightness of your rising. If you think back to the Old Testament, There were a few kings who converted to the Lord. There was the pharaoh who knew Joseph and received the blessing of Jacob at the end of the book of Genesis. Hiram, the king of Tyre, served David and Solomon. There's the king of Nineveh who repented. That's a good sign. But how many of these nations remained faithful to the Lord for any significant period of time? None. Isaiah foresees a day when nations will come to the light of Jerusalem, the light of Zion, a day when kings will be attracted to the glory of God revealed in His people. Verses 1 and 2 speak of the glory of Yahweh, His kavod, which is connected to this idea of weight or importance. And here, this weightiness is connected with an idea of visible splendor. And this is where the glory that impresses and the glory that attracts begin to come together and Isaiah 60 will continue to weave them around each other because glory and beauty go together. The glory of God upon his people will be so magnificent and impressive that all the glory of the Gentiles will be used to beautify God's holy city. And that's where we turn in verses four to 14 Lift up your eyes and see the glory of the Gentiles beautifying the holy city. The imperative of verse four, lift up your eyes and see, drives the whole section. What are you supposed to see? As we go through this, we'll see that there's three things that we're supposed to see. First, you see your sons and daughters returning from exile. inhabited once more. And Isaiah has been using this theme of restoration from exile. That God promises that when Israel is finally restored from its spiritual exile, Zion will be inhabited. And the nations will take good care of God's children. Zion will rejoice because her children are restored. We've heard a lot in Isaiah about Zion's children. At one point we heard of Zion's sons passed out in the streets. Well, now your son shall come from afar. You shall see and be radiant. You see your children restored. And then second, you also see the wealth of the nations pouring into Zion. Zion enriched. The sea, which had once brought destruction, will now bring bounty. And here's another image Isaiah has been using all throughout his prophecy. In the early chapters of Isaiah, the sea was a picture of the Assyrians as the Assyrian army swept through the land, and Jerusalem is this little tiny beacon of light that's all that's left as everything else is lying under the wave of the Assyrian sea. Zion becomes the economic center of the universe. Camels come from Midian and Ifa. Midian is in the far south of Arabia. Midian especially was hated and dreaded for its camel raids. But now they will worship the Lord. Ifa was to the east of the Persian Gulf. Sheba is in Africa. Kedar and Nebaioth to the east in the northern part of the Arabian desert. Tarshish in verse 9 is in the far west, possibly as far as Spain. In other words, The four corners of the earth will join together at Zion and they will come in order to beautify my beautiful house. The glory of the Lord has arisen upon Zion, the glory that belongs to Yahweh alone. But God desires for his house to be revealed in the full splendor and beauty of his creation. And so you see Isaiah using the creation language, the glory of Lebanon is in its trees, the cypress, the plain, and the pine. The glory of Kadar in its flocks. But whether it be camels or gold or lumber or ships, the glory of the nations will be brought to Zion to be used in the beautification of God's house. if you think back to the days of Solomon when Tyre and Sidon came to aid in the construction of the first temple, so the nations will come again as God's temple is restored in greater glory and beauty than before. Indeed, the coming of the nations will be so vast and thorough that the gates of Zion will be opened continually. Day and night they shall not be shut, verse 11, that people may bring to you the wealth of the nations with their kings led in procession. That's usually a picture of kings being brought in captivity, the processions where you bring all the captive kings in your procession to the capital city. The kings of the nations have been brought to subjection under the Lord. because they see that they must either submit or perish. Verse 12, For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish. Those nations shall be utterly laid waste. The glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the cypress, the plain, and the pine, to beautify the place of my sanctuary, and I will make the place of my feet glorious. So the nations are now discovering what Israel has known for some time. To enter God's house is to be blessed. To stand far off is to perish. And the reason is because Zion alone is the place where divine wrath has become divine compassion. If you would live, flee to Zion and humble yourself. And so the kings of the nations are told, become the vassal of the Lord or die. And so finally, there's a third thing that you'll lift up your eyes and see, And this is the most curious one, because you see the sacrifices of the nations being offered in Jerusalem. Now, that's not supposed to happen. Gentiles aren't supposed to be able to bring sacrifices. What's he talking about? Zion is the city of God, the place where his name dwells. This is not a reference to some sort of secular triumph of Jerusalem. This is referring to the spiritual conquest of the nations. Isaiah is speaking of the church of our Lord Jesus Christ as the nations will bring their sacrifices to God's altar. Think of verse 7, Gentile sacrifices will come up with acceptance on my altar. Moses did not allow Gentiles anywhere near the altar. And yet Isaiah says, nations will bring their sacrifices, God will welcome them into his covenant people. And in that, this is because this is where God's purpose is to bring the nations to himself, not actually in the earthly Jerusalem, but in his heavenly city, in Zion, in his church. because this is what happened in the history ever since the day of Pentecost, as the Gentiles have come and yielded to the Lord. And verse 14 concludes this second imperative, the lift up your eyes, saying, the sons of those who afflicted you shall come bending low to you. All who despised you shall bow down at your feet. They shall call you the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. So here we, in case you had any question, ah, who's the you we're talking to? You are the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. So watch, lift up your eyes and see. Now the third section, verses 15 to 22, forsaken no more, Zion made beautiful, is full of contrasts. Verses 15 to 16 open with this whereas, and then verse 17 actually consists of four whereases or insteads, it's the same word. Verses 18, 19, and 20 say no more, contrasting with what once was. So Isaiah uses contrasts in this final section to set up what It's the same thing that Paul will tell us over and over again in the New Testament. You're no longer who you once were. When the glory of the Lord arises upon his people, when the glory of the nations comes flooding into Zion, then, and only then, will the hearts of the people of God be fundamentally changed. Whereas you have been forsaken and hated with no one passing through, I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age." This is what Zion will be. Zion has been desolate. Zion has been barren. Zion has been abandoned, forsaken, hated. But the Lord says, I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age. And instead of your former desolation, you shall suck the milk of nations. They have the Gentiles as nurses. You shall nurse at the breast of kings. That's a great image. And you shall know that I, the Lord, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob. And think about it. What's happened since Jesus came? The nations have flooded into the church. Kings and rulers have become nursing fathers. Actually, this is where that phrase comes from, if you've ever heard it. It's a phrase used in the Westminster Confession, that kings should be nursing fathers, because you'll nurse at the breast of kings. But kings and rulers have become nursing fathers to the Church, providing for the people of God. And no, not every king, but compared to Isaiah's day, in the Old Testament, It really didn't happen very often. And even those rulers today who seek to destroy the church will eventually find their curses coming back on their own heads. And then verse 17 has these four insteds or whereases. Instead of bronze, I'll bring gold. Instead of iron, silver. Instead of wood, bronze. Instead of stones, iron. God will upgrade the building material of Zion so that his house might indeed be gloriously constructed. And in the building task, as his people labor to build this glorious temple, I will make your overseers peace and your taskmasters righteousness. Now the Septuagint translates this as episkopos, for which we get our word bishops. The overseers of Christ's house are given for peace and righteousness. Actually, it's this passage among others that lead the Apostle Peter to say that the task of the elder is not to be sort of, not to lord it over those under their charge because the overseers of the building of God's house are supposed to be peace and righteousness. And that's why the elders of the church are supposed to be, that's what Isaiah is referring to. And the result is the three no mores of verses 18 to 20. Violence shall no more be heard in your land. Devastation or destruction shall no more be heard within your borders. You shall call your walls salvation and your gates peace. The old order was characterized by devastation and destruction, but the new order is characterized by peace and salvation. The gates of hell will never prevail against Christ's church. The walls of salvation, the gates of praise will endure forever. We need to see that, okay, my own life, with all its ups and downs and backs and forths and ins and outs, it's just one little bit in the big picture of what God is doing. Because this is what God is doing in you and through you. Now, I realize that whenever you look, I was commenting to somebody this morning, that You know, as I've gotten to know some folks in city government, there are times I'm sort of like, how is it that anything ever gets done? I mean, although you don't have to use city government as your example. I mean, probably my guess is most of you in your work is you're looking at it going, how is it that anything ever actually gets done around here? I mean, just it's... And yet, somehow things happen. And you sort of marvel at, in spite of the fact that we are really, really bad at actually getting the things done that we would like to get done, yet things wind up happening. And that's where what you see in the Church of Jesus Christ, what you see in God's purposes in history, is that, right. Very often, we may have grand ideas for what we're going to do. Watch what God's doing. And in order to watch what God's doing, you have to kind of step back and say, okay, I just have this little small role, and I'm not even sure what that is, because I'm just sort of here. But when you watch what God does in the midst of all that, you start saying, And that's the second no more in verse 19. The sun shall no more be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light, but the Lord will be your everlasting light and your God will be your glory. Now, John will pick up on this in Revelation 21 and 22 in talking about the new creation. But it's worth noting that Isaiah is talking about this in terms of this is what is true in the new creation from, you might say, the moment Jesus rises from the dead. The Lord will be your everlasting light. Your God will be your glory. Your God will be, actually this is the word paer, your God will be your beauty. The glory of the Lord is not merely the glory that impresses. It is also the beauty of God that attracts. And then the third no more. Your sun shall no more go down nor your moon withdraw itself. For the Lord will be your everlasting light and your days of mourning shall be ended. This explains the problem with the sun and moon. Because the problem with the sun and the moon is they always leave. Sun and moon are as regular as clockwork. And even so is Israel. Israel keeps failing, just as commonly as the sun comes up and the sun goes down. We're no better than anybody else. And yet, Isaiah says, verse 21, your people, so now it's not just Zion. So if you've been wondering, so where am I in all this? You're in verse 21. Your people, Zion's people, shall all be righteous. They shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified, that I might be beautified. You make God more beautiful. Yeah. I think sometimes we have imagined the glory of God simply in terms of its splendor, its impressiveness, its majesty, But do you also see the beauty of God in his attractiveness? I think of the stories I've heard of young people attracted to the old cathedrals, seeing the weightiness of those magnificent buildings and saying, wow, those people must have believed in something. It's actually, I've been reading on this, but there's actually It's been happening both in this country and in England and throughout Europe, where young people will be just sort of looking at these massive old church buildings and saying, totally unchurched people with no Christian training whatsoever, and they're just sort of like, whoever built this must have actually believed something. And so they go in and they start trying to figure out what was it that they believed. One story was of a young person who, there were no active services in that building, so just would sort of sit there for an hour or so and just look up at the stained glass and sort of, but just kept going back every week and just kept sitting there and then finally was sort of, I need to learn what those pictures mean. reading the Bible and found a church. The glory that impresses is one thing, but there's also the glory that attracts. I've also seen the stories of the slums of Nairobi in Kenya, where the church meets in a little ramshackle hut. But the beauty of God is seen every bit as clearly in the midst of that righteous community where they're just trying to follow Jesus together as God is building them up. The way in which the beauty that impresses, the glory that attracts, it weaves its way together. And yes, I did that intentionally, because it's not just the glory that impresses and the beauty that attracts, it's also the beauty that impresses and the glory that attracts. Part of what Isaiah is doing is weaving those things together in our hearts and minds to say, this is what God is doing in Zion, and therefore in Zion's children. In this new creation, righteousness will prevail. The community that orders itself in the ways of the Lord will find peace. Because the old is gone, the new has come. The least one shall become a clan, the smallest one a mighty nation. I am the Lord. In its time, I will hasten it. But this is what's happened since Pentecost. The least and the smallest, the feeble and the few have become a mighty nation. If you just stick within the Presbyterian tradition, There are more Presbyterians in Africa than there are in the United States. The Presbyterian Church in Brazil has over 600,000 members. And in South Korea, in a population of about 50 million, close to 10 million of them are Presbyterians. They're in like a hundred different denominations. Korean missionaries often outnumber American missionaries in many parts of the world. So the idea that somehow, yeah, God, we sometimes get, oh, it's like America is like something important or special. Well, no, what God's doing throughout the world is impressive and beautiful. And he says, I am the Lord. In its time, I will hasten it. Indeed, God delights in the spread of his gospel to the ends of the earth. And as he has promised So he has done. What Isaiah describes here is what has happened throughout the history of the church, as the kings of the earth have very often repented and believed in the gospel and come. And even if they don't, you can find lots of examples of kings who were half-hearted in their commitment. Right. And who among us would say, and I've been wholehearted in mine, It's just the kings are far more obvious when they're half-hearted because everybody knows their story, whereas fortunately very few people know ours. So let us pray that God will continue to do what he has begun in us and in all the nations. Oh Lord, how we thank you and praise you for the glory that you have revealed and the beauty that you have made known in Zion, in your heavenly city. And we thank you that indeed our mother Zion remains remain secure and safe because there's no way that Zion will ever fall. There's no way that Zion will ever be trashed and thrown down because Zion is your heavenly city and we can have confidence that because Jesus sits at your right hand, therefore the gates of hell cannot prevail against your church. So Lord, grant us the confidence to walk humbly before you, knowing that In the midst of the craziness of this age, in the midst of the uncertainties and anxieties of the way this world turns everything upside down, yet your kingdom continues to come, your will will indeed be done. So Lord, may your kingdom come among us and may your will be done here that we might live as your people, that we might walk humbly as those who follow Jesus, that we might know the power of the resurrection of your son, that we might be conformed to the likeness of his sufferings, that we might also be conformed to his resurrection glory. Lord, have mercy on us. Help us because we are weak and we need your strength and your power. We need the wisdom and grace of your son, the power of your spirit to walk humbly before you as your children. Have mercy, oh Lord, upon all those who are weak and frail and grant them your strength. Be with those who are suffering and afflicted in the midst of their trials and raise them up. Lord, have mercy upon Ron and Deb and be gracious to them as they battle with COVID in the hospital. Lord, grant healing to their bodies and grant comfort to their hearts that they might know your power, your presence, your goodness in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Have mercy, oh Lord, upon all those who are facing difficulties and temptations and trials in the coming week and grant them strength and wisdom and grace to hold fast to Jesus and to draw near to you and to flee from Satan. Lord, have mercy upon us for the sake of your son. Amen.