1. The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz perceived concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2. It shall come to pass in the latter days that
the mountain of the house of Jehovah
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,
3. and many peoples shall come, and say:
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
so He may teach us from His ways and
we may walk in His paths."
For out of Zion the law will go, and
the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.
4. He shall judge between the nations, and render decisions to many peoples; and
they shall beat their swords into tillers, and their spears into pruning-tools;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
5. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of Jehovah.
6. For you have rejected your people, the house of Jacob, because
they took their fill from
the East and
fortune-tellers like the Philistines, and
they fulfill the children of foreigners.
7. Their land is filled with silver and gold, and there is
no end to their treasures;
their land is filled with horses, and there is no end to their chariots.
8. Their land is filled with idols;
they bow themselves down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have
made.
9. So mankind is bowed down and each man becomes low -- do not lift them up.
10. Enter into the rock and keep hidden in the dust
from before the terror of Jehovah, and from the splendor of His majesty.
11. The high eyes of man shall be brought low, and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled,
and Jehovah alone will be exalted in that day.
12. For Jehovah of hosts has a day
against all that is proud and lofty,
against all that is lifted up--and it shall be brought low;
13. against all the cedars of Lebanon, lofty and lifted up; and
against all the oaks of Bashan;
14. against all the lofty mountains, and
against all the uplifted hills;
15. against every high tower, and
against every fortified wall;
16. against all the ships of Tarshish, and
against all the beautiful craft.
17. And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low,
and Jehovah alone will be exalted in that day.
18. And the idols shall utterly pass away.
19. And they shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground,
from before the terror of Jehovah, and
from the splendor of His majesty,
when He rises to terrify the earth.
20. In that day the man will cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold,
which they made for him to worship,
to the moles and to the bats,
21. to enter the crevasses of the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs,
from before the terror of Jehovah, and
from the splendor of His majesty,
when He rises to terrify the earth.
22. Stop yourselves from the man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?
Often in advertisements, they show you a BEFORE and an AFTER picture.
“Before you use our special cleaner, your clothes look like this; after, they are all white!”
In this passage, we have a BEFORE and an AFTER, But God shows the AFTER first, in verses 2-4.
It is a stunning vision of what God holds out to us in the afterlife – it is a vision of heaven.
Let me comment that the wording of verses 2&3 here, is exactly the same as Micah 4:1-3. It is my opinion that Isaiah heard these words or read them from Micah and copied them here in his book. Verse one allows for this, as it doesn’t say that the words were directly communicated to him by God.
This is a truly stunning vision:
2. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of Jehovah 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,
This concept of the high mountain that is up higher than all the other mountains is attached to a number of other visions of heaven in the future.
It says that all the nations are going to flow to this mountain. God’s purpose is to save some from every tongue, tribe, and nation, to bring His blessing to all the families and nations on the earth, and this is a fulfillment of God’s purpose. This is the fulfillment where people are streaming to the mountain of God in order to hear His word.
3. and many peoples shall come, and say: "Come, let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob, so He may teach us from His ways and we may walk in His paths." For out of Zion the law will go, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.
The reason for coming to this mountain – to God’s mountain – is to learn from Him, to learn from His ways and to walk in His paths. All the people on earth come because they recognize that it is from God that the law comes – it’s from Zion – His holy hill that law comes. And it’s from this Jerusalem – which I believe is the heavenly Jerusalem, or heaven – that the word of the Lord comes. We get our marching orders not from any place in this world, but from heaven. When we look to a source of law in order to understand what right is and what wrong is, it should not be to other people to see what they think right and wrong is – or what people vote should be a law or shouldn’t be a law. We should look to our source of understanding what right and wrong is, and that is God. It is from God that we should derive ethics, and from ethics, law.
Notice that this is Mt. Zion. In Hebrews 12, it talks about this mountain:
Hebrews 12:18-24 For you have not come unto a mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, 19 and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that no word more should be spoken unto them; 20 for they could not endure that which was enjoined, If even a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned; 21 and so fearful was the appearance, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake: 22 but you have come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels, 23 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24 and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than that of Abel. (ASV)
We’re not coming to Mt. Sinai, where God delivered the law through Moses; we come to Mt. Zion, where God’s mercy is delivered through Jesus. This is that great mountain.
And note that God is the Judge here. He’s going to judge between the nations. This is because God is in control. He’s the judge, and His laws are going to rule in the new heavens an new earth. There’s peace, there’s no more war, there’s no more need for army bases! No more need for training in the disciplines of carrying out a battle as an army. No more need for weapons anymore – they’ll turn their swords into tillers, and their spears into cutting instruments to lop your tree branches off with! We won’t need weapons any more because there won’t be any fighting anymore because there’s going to be perfect peace as God reigns over His people in the new Jerusalem – in heaven!
Isn’t that a glorious vision? Is that something that you want? As I was driving here this morning, I was listening to a song by Rich Mullins which says, “Nobody tells you when you get born here how much you’ll come to love it and how much you’ll never belong here, so I’ll call you my country, but I’m longing for my home… and I wish that I could take you there with me.” It is awesome to know that we have a home that looks like that! That is our goal in life; that is going to be the end of God’s glorious purposes in our lives! And that’s why Isaiah says, “House of Jacob, let’s walk in the light of the Lord in this way!”
I John says, “If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins.” That is walking in the light.
In Micah’s parallel prophecy, he says, “Let’s walk in the NAME of Jehovah.” Walk in the Name of Jehovah, in the light of Jehovah, in the word of Jehovah, and (v.3) walk in His paths. This is what God is calling us to.
Now, we’ve see this glorious vision of the future, but we transition to the PRESENT day in verse 6.
What’s going on right now in Isaiah’s time? (And it sure look a lot like our time today!)
Isaiah begins with a prayer to God. He’s no longer quoting Micah; he’s now speaking to God about what he’s seeing around him in the present day.
6. For you have rejected your people, the house of Jacob, because they took their fill from the East and fortune-tellers like the Philistines…
At this point there is a debate over how to translate the last phrase, whether they:
· “strike/shake hands with the children of foreigners” or
· “have children with foreigners,” or
· are becoming “full of foreigners.”
· That particular verb is an obscure one, and it gets translated differently in different versions, but I go for “fulfill” because of the repetitive use of the word “fill” in this section. This is also supported by the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament).
Where are God’s people looking:
Are they looking to God – to the holy mountain?
No! They’re looking:
in order to find their identity and fulfillment.
This is evil. God hates it! That’s why Isaiah observes that God has rejected His people. He’s left them because they are looking to men – to the wrong source – in order to find out who they are and what they should be doing. They’re not looking to God and His word. They are not looking to walk in His ways, or for Him to teach them His ways. They are not considering that the law and the word of God comes out of heaven; they’re looking for this information from all the nations around them.
And as a result, their priorities get out-of-whack. They start filling their land with silver and gold and treasures and horses and chariots. Nowadays that would be cars. Like ancient Israel, modern-day America has done the same thing. We have turned from looking to God as the source of our identity – who we are, and as the source of our understanding of right and wrong – ethics, and the laws that flow out of that. Instead of looking to God we have looked to human opinions for these things. We have taken in all kinds of ideas from the East, with all the New Age religions and pluralism that has roots in Hinduism. Those religions say, “All ways are ways to God.” That’s not true. That’s something we’ve taken from the East. We’re seeking to be like the other nations. We’re making illicit religious relationships with those who are not believers in God.
V.8 tells us the result: the land is filled with idols.
The word here for “idols” is the word for “not” or “nothing.” Another way of translating it would be “vanities” or “good-for-nothings” – you’ve filled your land with good-for-nothings! Idols are good for nothing. They don’t actually exist. They’re not real. They’re just these pieces of wood and stone and metal that people are paying attention to and seeking their identity and their truth from and their law from, but they are nothingness! Yet their land is full of this vanity, and they are bowing down to the things that they have made with their own hands – with their own fingers!
The result in v.9 is that they become a “bowed-down” people. There’s a play on the verb here: in v.8 it says they will bow down to the work of their hands, and in v.9 it says they will become a bowed-down people. It’s the same verb, and he’s twisting it around to say, “Bowing down to idols makes you a bowed-down person, a low-down person, one who stoops to terrible things and is humiliated.”
We sink or rise to the level of what we worship.
If we worship money, then we will sink to the level of an inanimate object – paper and metal. If we worship money, we will throw Christian ethics out the window and do anything to get more money, just like what is happening in the accounting scandals like Enron today. When a person prioritizes money as the important thing in life – the thing that becomes his sense of identity, he says, “If I can make money, my life is worth living. If I can make money, then my time is well-spent. And whatever makes money is therefore right.” That will destroy a person and bring him low.
We sink or rise to the level of what we worship.
Many people worship media personalities – radio, television, and movie actors who may give very exciting and compelling performances, and yet among the Hollywood actors, we find some of the highest divorce rates of all the population. They don’t know how to be at peace – they seem to change religions every week, and change marriages almost that often! These people are not stable enough to build your life upon. They are experiencing tremendous problems in their lives. They are not examples to hold before our eyes. We will sink to their level if we do.
My kids like watching the Animal Planet TV shows when we travel and stay in a hotel room. But animals are elevated to an idolatrous priority on these shows. It’s as though animals are all there is to life – how we take care of them and how we rescue them, and how cute they are. I remember stopping and observing the humans in the background scenes of Animal Planet and realizing there are no healthy families on this TV show. People who elevate animals can sink to the level of animal behavior themselves and not understand how to have a fulfilling relationship as a husband or wife.
We sink or rise to the level of what we worship.
But the civilizations that have worshipped God and have sought to be based on His word have been civilizations that have risen. When they turn away from His word, they fall. There is a very clear correlation between the influence of God’s word on a culture and the elevation of that culture. So man is humbled when he worships – looks for his source of identity, his source of truth, his source of right and wrong – the world around him rather than God on Mt. Zion.
So, how do we get from here to there? How do we get from where we are now in a nation that is full of idols, confused with teaching from the East and non-Christian ideologies, where people are sinking down to the level of these things that are being worshipped – how do we get from there to the glorious vision with which Isaiah opened the chapter?
There are three road signs which Isaiah gives us to show us how to get from here to there.
1. I’m going to skip to the last verse in the chapter to give you the first road sign. It is STOP! To get from here to glory we’ve got to stop something.
a. V.22 is a difficult one to translate. In the ESV it says, “Stop regarding man.” The word “regarding” in this case is not a participle meaning “to look at” but a preposition meaning “in relation to.” It could be very literally translated, “Cease to you from the man.”
b. This word for “man” is used in the Hebrew text at:
i. v.9 to describe the one who worships idols and is bowed down
ii. v. 11 talking about man’s “haughty looks” that will be brought low, and
iii. v.17 the haughty/high man.
c. Stop paying attention to men who aren’t paying attention to God. Stop following these men who are idolatrous and haughty and proud. Stop following man’s foreign ideas. We are not followers of man; we are followers of God! Stop following man, he will not get you to the heavenly city.
d. This command is analogous to Jesus’ command to “Repent.” We need to stop and turn away from finding our identity and our information and our ethics in the world. We need to stop and turn and look to God.
2. The second road sign for how to get from here to there is: ENTER
a. When you see an “enter” sign, you know that’s the doorway into the building.
b. Verse
10, the next imperative, “Enter.”
Enter into the rock and keep hidden in the dust from before the terror of
Jehovah, and from the splendor of His majesty.
c. What does it mean to “enter into the rock?” When we study and interpret scripture, we need to be careful that we don’t go outside the bounds of what it means. Here is a case where literally this is probably tied into the end of the chapter where it talks of people who are terrified at the Lord’s judgment and are trying to crawl into caves in order to hide from Him.
d. However, I don’t think it is outside the teaching of this whole passage to interpret the “rock” figuratively.
i. In 1 Cor. Paul talks about the “rock” being “Christ.”
ii.
In Moses’ time (Ex. 33:17), there’s an interesting passage about hiding
in the rock:
And Jehovah said unto Moses, “I will do this thing also that you asked; for you
have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name… I will make all my
goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of Jehovah before you; and
I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I
will show mercy… You cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live… but
look, there is a place by me, and you shall stand upon the rock: 22 and it
shall come to pass, while my glory passes by, that I will put you in a cleft of
the rock, and will cover you with my hand until I have passed by: 23 and I will
take away my hand, and you will see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
Moses wanted to see God in His glory, but no man can see God and live, so God
said, “There’s a place by me I can put you into the Rock and cover you with my
hand so that you are not destroyed by the glory of my splendor.
iii. I believe that is a picture of what God has done for us in Jesus. “There is a Rock near me” – that’s Jesus. I’ll put you into that Rock – into Jesus, and when I bring my justice to bear in the burning heat of my holiness that will destroy all sin, you will not be burned up because I have you hidden. You are covered safely. This is what God does to us in Jesus. When we enter into the rock which is Christ, it is with the realization that we deserve to get burned up and destroyed by the wrath of God because we have done wrong things which have offended God. We are afraid of getting burned up and destroyed, and that’s a healthy fear. When we come like that to hide in Jesus, God covers us with Jesus so that when He looks at us, Jesus is standing between God and us and when God looks at us, He sees the righteousness of Christ and not our sinfulness. As a result, God accepts us into His presence because we are in Christ.
iv. Ephesians 1 talks about being “in Christ.” It says the phrase over and over and over throughout the chapter; when we trust in Christ to save us, we are “in Christ.” Christians are people who are “in Christ,” who have entered into the Rock.
v. There are many other passages of scripture where this same figure is employed, where someone enters into the rock in order to hide. David mentions this many times in his Psalms. He calls God his “Rock” and his Refuge, that he goes to in order to be saved. This is all pointing to Jesus who is our rock, our protection from the wrath of God, our savior.
3. The third command is: WALK (v.5)
a. Once
we have STOPPED/repented of our sin (stopped looking at man for our life), and
ENTERED into the Rock – “Believe into the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you
will be saved” then the rest of our life is a process of WALKING in the light
of the Lord.
v.5. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of Jehovah.
What happens if we refuse to obey these road signs? What if we don’t stop, enter in, and walk in the light of the Lord? v.11 describes our fate – the judgment day that’s going to come. Notice in vs. 11-19, the repeated use of words that have to do with being high/exalted/haughty:
11. The high eyes of man shall be brought low, and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled, and Jehovah alone will be exalted in that day. 12. For Jehovah of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up--and it shall be brought low; 13. against all the cedars of Lebanon, lofty and lifted up; and against all the oaks of Bashan; 14. against all the lofty mountains, and against all the uplifted hills; 15. against every high tower, and against every fortified wall; 16. against all the ships of Tarshish, and against all the beautiful craft. 17. And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low, and Jehovah alone will be exalted in that day.
It mentions the fortified walls and the ships of Tarshish. These are things that humans raise up, saying, “This is my great work! This is something that is worth me living for!”
During the time of Isaiah, Uzziah was building fortifications around the city of Jerusalem. Isaiah is warning that if you’re looking to build your defense – trying to build a bigger army in order to protect yourself, and if that’s all you’re trusting in, then God is going to bring that low. Those towers and walls that Uzziah built were pulled down to the ground by the Chaldeans some 100 years later.
The ships of Tarshish were the big ships that sailed from the Persian Gulf, picking up goods from Persia, around the coast of Africa, to Tarshish, Spain, to trade with Europe. Then they would sail across the Mediterranean Sea and trade there. These were big intercontinental trade ships. They had fascinating import items. We might compare these great and grand things to our Internet or the big Trans-atlantic airplanes. But these great things we have to connect us to other people are not where it’s at.
God will bring these things down. He has a day when he’s going to judge these things. He is going to make sure that He is exalted above all those other things that people worship. If our life is wrapped around one of these things that’s going to be brought low, then we’re going to be in trouble. Verses 19-21 talk about the trouble these people are going to be in. These people who have wrapped their lives around idols/vanity/good-for-nothings. They’re going to be looking for a place to hide.
19. And they shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground, from before the terror of Jehovah, and from the splendor of His majesty, when He rises to terrify the earth.
There’s going to be a day when God rises up and strikes terror in the hearts of everyone on the earth.
20. In that day the man will cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold,
They’re going to throw them away! Do you want to spend your life gathering things that in the end you’re just going to throw away? That’s not the way you want to live life! We need to spend our life gathering the things that we can take with us to heaven – the souls of men and the knowledge of God! Those are the things that we want to wrap our lives around! We don’t want to be throwing things away when Jesus comes.
The figure of the moles and the bats corresponds to verse 22 – the caverns and the rocks, which is where moles and bats live. They’re going to be throwing their idols away, and they’re going to be trying to hide in holes and in rocks to protect themselves from the wrath of God, but that’s not going to save them.
Revelation 6:16 talks about this very thing:
And the kings of the earth, and the princes, and the chief captains, and the rich, and the strong, and every bondman and freeman, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains; 16 and they say to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: 17 for the great day of their wrath is come; and who is able to stand?
This is a picture of the judgment day when everyone realizes whether they wrapped their lives around – and spent all their time on – things that they’re going to have to throw away, things that they’re going to be judged for in hell, or they’re going to realize, Hey, the things I’ve wrapped my life around are finally coming true! My home in heaven for which I’ve been looking all my life – there it is!, and my Jesus in whom I’ve been hiding all my life – there He is! My dream-come-true! When Jesus comes back, in which camp are you going to be? I look forward to when Jesus comes back, because that’s going to be the fulfillment of my dreams when I’ll finally get to my home in heaven.
In First John, it speaks of Jesus’ coming and of having confidence when Jesus appears so that we will not shrink away from Him in fear but have a good conversation with Him. That is the kind of experience we can look forward to if we have repented and stopped looking to man, if we have entered into the Rock and sought to find in Jesus our identity and sought for Him to hide us by His righteousness and His death on the cross, and are walking in His light, looking to the heavenly Jerusalem, to God to give us our identity. We are Christians, part of the body of Christ. God tells us what is true and what is false when we read the Bible, and from this we understand what is right and what is wrong. If we’re like that, then we can have confidence before God.
This is the way to get from where we are in our country today to the heavenly Jerusalem: Stop regarding man, Enter into the Rock, and walk in the light of the Lord.
Nate Wilson’s website – Isaiah Sermon Expositions
Christ the Redeemer Church website - Sermons