Good morning,
Praise the Lord for the Christ of Christmas and for all the prophesies regarding the Birth of Jesus. There are over 300 prophesies regarding Christ in the Old Testament. I get excited as I read the prophesies. This morning I was reading from Isaiah 2, as the passage talks about the mountain of the Lord. It is written, “It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come.” God’s mountain will be the highest and Yahweh will be seen as the one true God. All peoples will come to Yahweh. Salvation, peace, love, forgiveness, and life will only come from the true God.
Augustine, early church father, wrote about this chapter of Isaiah, this image of God’s mountain. Augustine said, “Approach the mountain, climb up the mountain, and you that climb it, do not go [back] down it. There you will be safe, there you will be protected; Christ is your mountain of refuge.” You have come to the mountain of Christ today; there is no need to ever go back down to check out the foothills, the other gods, the religions that do not offer you true hope. Augustine is urging us to remain on God’s mountain, to remain in the faith.
Isaiah described how the nations will flow to God’s mountain. What an incredible image—people flowing like a river towards God, except (this is incredibly miraculous) this river is flowing up the mountain. The people are being drawn up to God, drawn by God’s Holy Spirit.
God sent Isaiah as a prophet to His people. Isaiah was, in a way, like a party crasher. He was uninvited and his message was even unwelcome by God’s people, who were doing their own thing, checking out all of the other religions around them and what they had to offer. Isaiah got their attention with this image of Zion, God’s mountain. He reminded the people that God’s mountain is the highest of all of the mountains, that God is better than any gods, and that God is the true God. After Isaiah described this incredible vision, he said, “Come on, let’s go up God’s mountain, so that He can teach us His ways.”
Later in chapter 2, Isaiah went on to preach God’s judgment against the people, saying, “Their land is filled with idols, they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their own fingers have made." The people didn't want to give up their wanton ways. They did not desire to give up their idols. Rather than return to God’s mountain, they wanted to stay where they could worship on all of the mountains, worshipping many different gods. Therefore, Isaiah rejected their actions.
There are times when we, in America, are too pluralistic, not wanting to limit ourselves to Jesus. We want to do it "my way", trusting in ourselves about how to live, creating our own belief system about God. Many take a few thoughts from the Bible, some from the Dali Lama, some from Oprah or Dr. Phil, some from magazine articles about what celebrities believe, and some from Hallmark cards. Let us recall the words of Isaiah, and go up the mountain of God.” Augustine is here saying, “Climb up the mountain, and do not go back down it.”
What is on that mountain? There we find God’s ways and God’s vision for our lives, that goes so far beyond what we can imagine. Verse 3 says, “For out of Zion shall go the instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,” and then verse 4 gives us an example of God’s instruction, one way in which God’s ways completely change our way of viewing the world. “He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plow blades, and their spears into pruning knives; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” In these verses, God shows that His plan for the world is far beyond what we can accomplish on our own. When we reject him, building our own belief system apart from God, we can never get to a place where there’s peace among all people. In teaching us about nations no longer going to war, and tools of war becoming tools for farming, we see that His ways are not our ways. His vision for the world will completely transform our lives.
This brings us back to those first words of this prophecy, “It shall come to pass in the last days.” The vision of God bringing the world’s people together in peace is a vision for the end of the world. When Jesus returns, then God’s mountain will be raised up and everyone will realize that it is truly the highest mountain. In this Advent season leading up to Christmas, this prophecy from Isaiah points us to the Second Advent of Jesus, the Second Coming of Jesus, when He returns to bring an end to this world, to bring us to a new world, a new life, life forever with Him.
That’s what Advent is all about — urging each other to wait and watch for Jesus to return. You do this when you tell each other to return to Jesus, and to return to church. You encourage each other by sending Christmas cards that point to the true meaning of Christmas—Jesus was born to die for our sins-- from cradle to the cross-- from cross to the grave -- from grave to the sky.
O Come O Come Emmanuel.
In Him,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-XAjkKQup8
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