Take your Bibles with me and turn to Isaiah chapter 2. We're gonna look at just nine verses tonight, but they are nine verses that speak to very real divides that people have when it comes to their understanding of prophecy and their political vision.

Let's go ahead and read the first nine verses.

[1] The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
[2] And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
[3] And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
[4] And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
[5] O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.
[6] Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.
[7] Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots:
[8] Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made:
[9] And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.
Isaiah 2:1-9 (KJV)

Remember, Isaiah is a prophet prophesying near the end of Judah's history. Not the very end — that would be Jeremiah — but about a hundred years before that.

God allowed Isaiah to see into the future and to see what was coming for his people.

Here's what that looked like. In the short term, there was judgment coming, and that judgment was going to come in a couple of different pieces. We know that Judah goes away to Babylon. And we know that it's never really a nation like it was before again.

But God allowed Isaiah to see past that, way into the future, to a period still in the future, where Judah would rule the world and it would be glorious.

And so these verses are kind of a balance between those two visions.

We're going to break this down into three sections tonight. But before we get into the first one, I want you to take a close look at verse number one.

[1] The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
Isaiah 2:1 (KJV)

This vision is for Judah and Jerusalem

Based on what that verse says, who is this vision about? Who is this vision for?

I ask you that because a lot of Christians and teachers want to take these verses and say this is for the church. They want to take and allegorize the church into this vision that God gave Isaiah. But God told Isaiah who it's for. It is for specifically Judah and Jerusalem.

It is for the Jewish people.

I am not a Scofield-style dispensationalist. You're never gonna see me pull out some giant chart of the dispensations and how this phase works into this phase. That's just not me. That's not where I'm at.

Where I'm at is this: God gave promises to the Jewish people, to the nation of Israel, that have not been fulfilled. And those promises will be fulfilled with the Jewish people and the nation of Israel, and not with the church.

So this vision is for Judah. We can learn from it, but it's for Judah, and it will be fulfilled by Judah. There are three parts to this address. The first part is...

1. Judah - God has an amazing plan for you.

That's what verses two to four talk about. Look at those with me again.

[2] And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
[3] And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
[4] And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Isaiah 2:2-4 (KJV)

Notice the specific thing that God is promising Judah here.

Jerusalem will be the capital of the world

First, God is promising Judah that they will rule the world from Jerusalem. That's the mountain of the Lord's house. That's talking about the temple mount. And it says all the nations will flow to it.

Now that's never happened. Certainly never in the time since Isaiah wrote this has it happened. Judah was about to stop being a nation, and after that they never really got to be a nation like they had been. They got to come back to the land.

They might have had a brief period under the Hasmoneans after the Maccabees, but they never got to be a real country again until 1948.

Here is what is certainly true — the people of the world have never looked to Jerusalem as the leader. Jerusalem has never been the world ruler. That is what Isaiah promised here.

The nations will come to be taught

The second specific promise is that all the people of the world are going to come to Jerusalem to hear the word of God, taught by God himself. Again, that's never happened.

The Lord will enforce peace

The third thing that's promised here is that God is going to judge all of the nations from Jerusalem and enforce worldwide peace. There's going to be such peace on the earth that people are not going to need swords anymore or spears anymore. That's never happened.

By the way, I got into a little bit of a political discussion with a coworker last week, and he was complaining about how much we spend on our military. And we do — we spend a ton of money on our military. Wouldn't it be wonderful to not have to spend money on aircraft carriers and jets and missiles for our defense, and instead spend that money on health care or helping the poor or some other thing.

That's kind of the future that is talked about here.

But here's the problem. Without God ruling the world, as long as you have a sin nature running wild, we need to be able to defend ourselves.

Anyway, that was my point. Rabbit trail over.

So the assumption here is that this is going to take place in some future kingdom where God sets up Israel and Israel reigns.

Micah saw the same thing

I think it's important to say this is not the only place that says this. God gave the prophet Micah almost the exact same vision.

Listen to Micah 4, 1 through 5.

[1] But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.
[2] And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
[3] And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
[4] But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.
[5] For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.
Micah 4:1-5 (KJV)

Micah gives us a little bit more detail, but it's very, very similar. There's coming a day when, out of Jerusalem, God is going to teach the people and bring about worldwide peace, and people are going to worship the Lord.

Now, church, that hasn't happened. And I think we do a disservice to the Word when we try to say that it has happened. Some Christians have taken this and said, well, this is talking about the church age. Okay? When during the church age have people from all over the world gone to Jerusalem to be taught the Word of God?

When during the church age has everybody in mankind beaten their swords into plowshares and stopped warring against each other? When during the church age has God taught from the city of Jerusalem? It hasn't happened. Because this isn't about the church age. This is about what comes after the church age.

But doesn't that sound glorious? Doesn't that sound amazing to live in a world that's ruled by the Lord? Where God rules from truth. He rules from the word.

Where there is peace to the point where nations stop fighting each other and get rid of all their weapons. Doesn't that sound amazing?

God allowed Isaiah to look forward way past our age and see that happening. And that brings us to the second thing that God had Isaiah tell Judah.

First, Judah, God has an amazing plan for you.

2. Judah, you don't have to wait.

Look at verse 5.

[5] O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Isaiah 2:5 (KJV)

The invitation is now

God is saying to Judah, come on, walk in the light of the Lord. You don't have to wait until the millennium for that. You can walk in the light of the Lord right now.

Church, we are not Israel, we are not Judah, but we have this open invitation right now to walk in the light of the Lord. As John said.

[7] But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
1 John 1:7 (KJV)

Judah had an open invitation to walk in God's light, and we have an open invitation to walk in God's light. We don't need to wait on some prophetic event to live in the grace of God and experience the goodness of God and the mercy of God. We can have the Lord teach us from his Word right now.

Our lives, our families' lives, our work lives, our church lives — all of it can be directed by the Lord now. We get to walk in the light. It doesn't serve us at all to wait on some future day.

Build houses, plant gardens

You know who wrote after Isaiah? It was Jeremiah. And Jeremiah obviously knew what Isaiah said. He knew that there was coming a day when Judah would rule again. But during his lifetime, Judah was taken captive and taken away to Babylon.

What was his word to the captives from Judah? We talked about this a couple weeks ago on Wednesday night. It wasn't, hang on, the millennium is coming. No, his word was: build houses, plant gardens, marry off your kids, seek the peace of the city where you are.

There is coming an amazing millennial kingdom where Jesus is going to rule. There's going to be widespread peace. People are going to follow God's Word. It's going to be great.

But God doesn't want us to spend all our time looking ahead at that millennial kingdom and not taking advantage of the blessings we have here. Walk in the light. We might not be able to make the world a Christian world, but we can make our home a Christian home.

We might not be able to make this nation a Christian nation, but we can make our church a Christ-like church. Walk in the light that you have now.

So the first two beats here: Isaiah says, Judah, God has something amazing coming for you — this millennial kingdom. Second, Judah, you don't have to wait. You can walk in the light right now. But look at the third part of Isaiah's message...

3. Judah, you aren't walking in the light, and here is why.

Look at verses 6-9 again:

[6] Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.
[7] Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots:
[8] Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made:
[9] And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.
Isaiah 2:6-9 (KJV)

The start and the end of this section is pretty dark. It starts by saying that God has forsaken the house of Jacob. And it ends by saying, do not forgive them.

Why would God have this attitude towards his people, towards Judah? Well, Isaiah gives them some reasons.

They went to the nations instead of the nations coming to them

The first reason is they have been filled with eastern ways and soothsayers like the Philistines. Judah had let the false gods of the Babylonians and the Assyrians and the false gods of the Philistines take over their minds.

And they weren't just taking over their minds. They were taking over their families. That's what "please themselves in the children of strangers" means. They were marrying pagan men and women and not keeping their line pure like God wanted them to.

It's important to say this is not God being against immigrants. God is against the religious and moral degradation of his people. God had no problem when Ruth married Boaz, because Ruth had become a part of God's people already. Ruth had accepted the God of the Jewish people.

What the Jewish people were doing was marrying and adopting the customs of other countries.

Stop here because I want you to see the contrast. What's coming in the future, this beautiful millennial kingdom, is all the other nations are going to come to Judah to hear the word of the Lord. And what was happening in Judah was that Judah was going to all the other nations to hear the word of their false gods.

And can I make an application to our church? Again, we're not Judah. We're not Israel. We're not the primary audience of this passage. But I think God is angered when his people go to the world, to the gods of the world, to the wisdom of the world, for answers, instead of looking to the Lord.

Do we have the truth or not? Do we have the light or not? If we have the truth and we have the light, then why do we need the wisdom of the world?

If the answers are found in the Word of God, why do we need the gossip magazines? Why do we need Oprah? Why do we need eastern meditation? Why do we need secular psychology to tell us how our mind and our heart works when that is clearly the domain of God's Word?

What does it say to the world when we who are supposed to have the truth and supposed to have the answers are running here or there because the truth isn't good enough for us?

I think it angers the Lord. And this passage shows us that.

So the first thing they did was they chased the world.

They trusted their stuff

The second thing they did was they were self-sufficient. They had no end of treasures and gold and chariots. They didn't need God because they had stuff. They had let the false gods of wealth and materialism capture their attention.

And again, we're not Judah, but don't we fall into the same trap? We rest in our material possessions instead of trusting in the Lord. We have everything we need, so we don't need the Lord.

Nothing's new, folks.

They bowed down — just not to the Lord

The third thing they did was they worshiped idols. I mean, this kind of sums up the first two, doesn't it? They worshiped the idols from foreign lands and they worshiped the idols of their own materialism.

The people were bowing down. They just weren't bowing down to God. The people were humbling themselves. They just weren't humbling themselves before the Lord. And so God was disgusted.

And what we're going to see in the rest of chapter 2 and chapter 3 and chapter 4 is a description of the day of the Lord. It's a description of a time when God is going to come and thoroughly judge his people. I think it is partially fulfilled, but also yet to be fulfilled completely.

And we'll talk about that next week.

Close

Church, remember who this was about. This vision is for Judah and Jerusalem. God has not forgotten Israel. There is a day coming when the nations will come to that mountain, and the Lord will teach, and they will not learn war anymore. That day is not this age.

But you don't have to wait for that day to walk in the light you already have. Judah had the Word and the prophet and still ran east, still trusted the gold, still bowed — just not to the Lord. We're not Judah. We're not Israel. We can still make the same mistake.

So tonight I'm not asking you to pretend the church is Zion. I'm asking you what verse 5 asked them: will you walk in the light of the Lord now? In your house. In this church. In the wisdom you actually trust. The day of the Lord is coming — we'll see that next week. The invitation is already here. Come. Walk in the light.