A life lived with God
Isaiah 2:1 – 22
Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 28 Jan, 2006

ONE KEY difference between the faith of Jews and Christians and nearly every other belief system is that the Bible demands that we choose one path or another. There is no compromise.

In our passage, the choice is clearly shown: life and peace with God, shame and destruction without him. There are always only two ways to live.

Many other views say that it really doesn’t matter what gods and demons you believe in, as long as you keep within the defined social structures. You have a place in society, and you should know it; if you want to believe in the Great Juju and follow the practices of that belief system, that’s your own business.

Christianity demands that we stand outside our society and live God’s way regardless.

The Bible repeatedly tells us to come out from among the world that surrounds us. It repeatedly calls for our separation from the ways of our society wherever there is a contradiction between the Bible’s way and society’s way.

And that is what our passage is about.

It’s what Moses told the Israelites:

 ^{DEUT 30:15} See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. ¹⁶ For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

¹⁷ But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, ¹⁸ I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

Two ways: Life or death, prosperity or destruction; obedience and blessing or disobedience and destruction.

Joshua also challenged Israel. They had to choose: serve the Lord or serve foreign gods. He was determined to follow the Lord.

It’s all about choices.

The way of life

Isaiah begins with a call to go God’s way and enjoy the blessings of a life lived with God.

He writes,

^{ISAIAH 2:2} In the last days
the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established
as chief among the mountains;
it will be raised above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.

What a glorious image of God’s blessing!

There was an interview in last week‘s Sydney Morning Herald with a musician currently in Australia. The musician is not a believer, and repeats many of the complaints about Christianity which are all too common these days. He said that what he wanted, instead, was that sense of oneness that you can have in singing with a few other people, when everything is harmonious and everyone is together.

When the nations march to Zion, they will come with songs. Whey they head up the hill to the Lord’s temple, it will be with a sense of community far greater than any choir ever has.

I love singing with other people. When Cherry and Erika and I were singing Oh Happy Day at our camp in November, I had a momentary sense of being part of a unity greater than any of us individually. But on that day when

³ 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.

we will enjoy a sense of being God’s people together that we can’t even imagine.

Don’t get too literal about a Temple in Jerusalem. Don’t waste time working out how all nations can fit into that little city of Jerusalem. This is new heavens and new earth. This is a new temple coming down from heaven, coming down from God.

As John explains in the book of Revelation,

 ^{REV 21:22} I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. ²³ The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. ²⁴ The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. ²⁵ On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. ²⁶ The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it. ²⁷ Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Isaiah’s mention of the Temple is a metaphor. It’s a likeness of the coming reality when Jesus comes again and is forever with his people.

When Isaiah spoke, everyone thought of the Temple as the place where God is present with his people. But God is present with his people wherever Jesus is. When Jesus is present, God is present; when God is present, that’s when Jesus makes him present to us.

But one day the rebellion will end. One day the furious plotting of the nations will be overturned. One day the kings will cease their revolt against the Lord and his Messiah. One day God will laugh them to scorn and dash them in pieces like a piece of cheap pottery. Then the nations — those who have chosen to follow — will sing together, sing songs that say,

He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

Tony Campolo wrote a book with the title, The Kingdom of God is a Party. There’s truth in that. It’s all about celebration.

I find it so hard to understand why people are so afraid to celebrate God, so disturbed by the Bible’s depictions of the elders casting their crowns before God and shouting about the holiness of the Lord. There is nothing like a really good celebration! And the day will come when celebration goes on forever.

But it is not just a party. As Isaiah declares,

⁴ He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into ploughshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.

As the song says,

Gonna put on my long white robe
Down by the riverside.
Ain't gonna study war no more

The United Nations used to use that verse as a theme statement for their aim to end war, to find a way to negotiate instead of to kill.

There have been times when the UN has been horribly slow and ineffectual. But it has been the only Body in the world which carries some authority and some clout.

But that was smashed after 9/11, when the US bullied the UN and decided to enter an unjust war against Iraq. Don’t get me wrong. I am as glad as anyone that Saddam was overthrown. But I grieve that the UN was so comprehensively sidelined.

We Christians must be peacemakers, because peace is God’s ultimate plan. We must be peacemakers, because it is the peacemakers who are called sons of God. If we don’t want the best body for world peace that exists, then we have a responsibility to invent something vastly better to put in its place.

It’s not even really about establishing peace. God loves peace. He is the God of all peace.

But his real aim is to build a people who are men and women after his heart. His real aim is to develop a community of people who share his passion for justice, for righteousness, for love and for peace. He want us to seek an end to war, because God’s ultimate aim is to make all things new.

Isaiah puts it exactly right when he calls Israel,

⁵ Come, O house of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the LORD.

The way of death

But there is also a wrong way to turn, and a true prophet must declare the whole counsel of God.

So Isaiah continues,

^{ISAIAH 2:6} You have abandoned your people,
the house of Jacob.
They are full of superstitions from the East;
they practice divination like the Philistines
and clasp hands with pagans.

When God’s people fall into superstition, God can no longer work with them. He will ultimately abandon those who don’t turn back.

I am amazed how many Christians have toyed with palm reading, with Tarot and Ouija, and the stars. When Isaiah comdemns superstitions from the East and divinations, he is talking about exactly these kinds of things.

I knew a Christian woman who had a very mixed impact on people around her. Someone told me that this woman had her palm read nearly every time she went on holidays. She had allowed herself to become demonised through this means.

People recognised this, and that was why they didn’t know how to take her. Her words said one thing, but her attitudes said something else. Christians shake hands with pagans: they can’t say no, so the next thing they are reading the astrology column and saying, “This week has been just like Athena predicted...” and they get sucked in. It is like an addiction, only much less easy to detect.

But it is not only such paganisms. We trust in our wealth to protect us and our treasures to sustain us. We trust in the energy resources available to us, and in military might. These are idolatries, too.

When the Great Depression was at its deepest in the mid 1930s, my grandfather Green was the only man in his street who had a fairly regular job. Even his neighbour who had his own very specialised business was sitting at home with no orders,

My grandfather was partly supporting most of his neighbours. These were relatively well–to–do people who had found that it didn’t matter what you had stored for a rainy day, it gets washed away in the tsunami of an economic depression. And who can predict when something like that will come? Who predicted that the arctic ice sheets would begin disintegrating? They thought it would be gradual melts over the next century. Events like that can devastate an economy.

Isaiah sums it up by saying,

⁷ Their land is full of silver and gold;
there is no end to their treasures.
Their land is full of horses;
there is no end to their chariots.

But ultimately, it is all idolatry. Some make their golden idols, some trust in chariots, some look to the stars. But, in the end, anything that usurps the place of God is an idol.

 ⁸ Their land is full of idols;
they bow down to the work of their hands,
to what their fingers have made.

Nebuchadnezzar put Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego to the test, but he couldn't fool them with his golden idol, and they would not bow down.

But those who trust in their idols will be made to bow down before the Lord, and still they will not believe.

⁹ So man will be brought low
and mankind humbled —
do not forgive them.

— writes Isaiah.

We can find God.

You will seek me,
And you will find me, when you seek me with all your heart,

says God. But, instead, the common choice of humans is to run from the God who pursues us in love:

¹⁰ Go into the rocks,
hide in the ground
from dread of the LORD
and the splendor of his majesty!

But God will eventually trioumph. He stays his hand until everyone has a chance to hear and respond, but, eventually,

¹¹ The eyes of the arrogant man will be humbled
and the pride of men brought low;
the LORD alone will be exalted in that day.
¹² The LORD Almighty has a day in store
for all the proud and lofty,
for all that is exalted
(and they will be humbled),

It’s wonderful to pride ourselves in what we have, but God’s way is the way of the cross. If we want life, we must surrender the life we have. Otherwise all the glitter, all the trappings of success, mean nothing.

¹³ for all the cedars of Lebanon, tall and lofty,
and all the oaks of Bashan,
¹⁴ for all the towering mountains
and all the high hills,
¹⁵ for every lofty tower
and every fortified wall,
¹⁶ for every trading ship
and every stately vessel.

¹⁷ The arrogance of man will be brought low
and the pride of men humbled;the LORD alone will be exalted in that day,
¹⁸ and the idols will totally disappear.

Conclusion

We all have to make decisions. We can choose to continue our resistance until God shakes the entire creation, until the sun turns red like blood and the end–time plagues fill the earth. We can run to the mountains and the rocks and the sea and the caves, but what will it gain us?

¹⁹ Men will flee to caves in the rocks
and to holes in the ground
from dread of the LORD
and the splendour of his majesty,
when he rises to shake the earth.
²⁰ In that day men will throw away
to the rodents and bats
their idols of silver and idols of gold,
which they made to worship.

The gold, the craftsmanship: it will be abandoned to rats and bats. Can’t buy me love — specially God’s love!

²¹ They will flee to caverns in the rocks
and to the overhanging crags
from dread of the LORD
and the splendor of his majesty,
when he rises to shake the earth.

It is a dead–end road; all who take it will be lost. Isaiah challenges us to change our thinking, to look to God and find the truth of his way.

²² Stop trusting in man,
who has but a breath in his nostrils.
Of what account is he?

There are two ways to live.

There is a way which seems right to a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.

Or there is Jesus: The way, the truth and the live. Which do you choose?

© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)