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And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. O house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the Lord. You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus. Amen. Isaiah’s gospel, Isaiah the prophet’s book, Luke is sometimes called the fifth gospel, and the reason for this is because Isaiah, perhaps more than any of the Old Testament prophets, tells us over and over on every page about the birth and the life and the death and even the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I would suggest that when you think about the gospel of Isaiah, or the… well, yeah, yeah, that’s right, the gospel of Isaiah, that most of the promises that you associate with Jesus in the Old Testament are there in the book of Isaiah, that He would be born of a virgin, that the light would rise, that He would be the wonderful Counselor, the Prince of Peace, that before Him would go the one calling out in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, and that He would be afflicted, smitten, stricken by God, that the Lord would place upon Him the iniquities of us all.
In fact, if you strung together the promises of Jesus from the prophet Isaiah, you would probably have a pretty clear picture of the birth of Jesus, the life and miracles of Jesus, the suffering and death of Jesus, and even His resurrection. In fact, I’d suggest that when we turn to a passage like Isaiah 53, we probably learn more there about what the suffering of Jesus meant than we do even when reading the gospel accounts of it.
One of my most favorite pictures of Isaiah shows him writing with a scroll, and he sees in a cloud in front of him all of the pictures; it shows the nativity of Jesus, it shows the baptism of Jesus, it shows the fasting of Jesus, the miracles of Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus, the burial of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus, and Isaiah saw them all.
Now Isaiah in this ministry, in fact, had one of the longest standing prophetic offices in all of the Old Testament. He prophesied from the year 739 to the year 686 BC, that’s either 53 or 54 years, depending on how you count the start and the end.
Now that is a long ministry, but this text that’s before us in Isaiah chapter 2 comes from very early on in his ministry, probably around the year 735 BC, and let me set the table for you. This is during a time in what the Old Testament scholars call the Assyrian ascendancy. Assyria was rising in power in that area of the world, and they were starting to threaten all of the countries around them. In fact, it’s only 12 years from the time that Isaiah gives this prophecy; it’s 12 years until the Assyrian army would come and utterly destroy the northern country, Samaria and all those countries in the north, and that those Assyrian armies would also come down and surround Jerusalem, besieging it and scaring everyone in it.
That’s the same incident, if you remember from Sunday school, when the Lord sent out one angel and he killed a hundred thousand of the soldiers of the Assyrians and wiped out the entire army in a night, and Jerusalem escaped specifically because the Lord intervened.
In other words, this is a time of wars and rumors of wars. It’s a time when Jerusalem is showing itself to be vulnerable to the nations around them. It’s a time when the people had all of these things to worry about, all of these things to trouble them, that they saw these signs coming, and yet in the midst of this, Isaiah preaches peace.
Isaiah says, the day is coming when you’ll take your sword and you’ll take it to the blacksmith and he’ll turn it into a plowshare for you to farm. The days are coming when you’ll take your spear and you’ll take it to the blacksmith and he’ll turn it into a pruning hook so you can get produce and olives and grapes and all that you need.
In other words, Isaiah, right on the cusp of war and violence, preaches peace. And with this, and this is what I want us to see, Isaiah is going to, in his preaching, he’s going to lift the people’s eyes. He’s going to lift up their vision to see beyond the troubles that were facing them, to see beyond the troubles that were on the horizon, to see beyond all of the bad things that were around them.
He lifts up their eyes beyond that to see the peace that is to come. He says, “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains and lifted up above the hills, and the nations shall flow to it, and many people shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us His ways, and we may walk in His paths.’ For out of Zion shall go the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations and shall decide disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more.”
However, on the edge – this is the point – on the edge of violence, Isaiah preaches peace, and that is because Isaiah preaches Christ; Isaiah preaches Jesus.
Whenever we hear in the preaching of Isaiah or any of the prophets, or in fact whenever you’re reading the Psalms, whenever you read about the house of the Lord, or the hill of the Lord, or Mount Zion, or the holy hill, or even the city of Jerusalem, whenever you hear about any of those things, I want you to think of the church, the place where the gospel is preached.
And Isaiah says that in the church where Jesus is proclaimed, in the church where His death and resurrection are preached, in His kingdom where He rules according to His kindness and His Word, there is peace.
Whenever we hear the preaching of the Word, whenever we hear the Lord’s name, He’s doing the same thing. He’s preaching peace. Now this, I think, is the application for us, because it might not be Assyrians that are on the border that are about ready to take us down, you know, that’s probably not the thing that we have to worry about, but I imagine that every one of us has things that we can worry about.
Every one of us has trouble. Every one of us has some sort of affliction. Every one of us has temptation. Every one of us has sin and guilt. And we hear of wars and rumors of wars. And we have all sorts of stuff that wants to fill our eyes and fill our hearts and fill our consciences with trouble.
But look at what Isaiah does also for us. He wants us to lift up our eyes, to lift up our eyes beyond the trouble that is in front of us, to lift up our eyes beyond the afflictions, to lift up our eyes beyond the suffering, to lift up our eyes beyond our sin, and to fix them on Jesus.
In fact, if you want a picture of it, you can picture it like this. Just imagine that you’re sitting there, and you’re looking down at whatever there is troubling you, and you look down, and Jesus just, He just reaches over, and He does this very gently. He just puts His finger on your chin, and He just, He lifts up your face, and He says, look at, look at Me. It’s going to be okay.
We say, but Jesus, look at all the sin that’s there. Look at all the things that I’ve done wrong. He just, He lifts up our face. He just gently lifts it up, and He says, I’ve taken care of it. And we say, but Jesus, look at all these troublesome things. Look at all these bad things that are just about to happen, and look at all this stuff there is to… And He just, He lifts up our face.
He says, look, look at Me. I’ve died for you. I’ve bled for you. I’ve covered your sin, and I’m coming again for you very, very soon.
Isaiah and the gospel is always lifting up our eyes to see beyond the trouble to the joy that is to come. And dear saints, it’s really quite literal tonight, and we just have to lift up our eyes just a little bit, and there’s Jesus, the One who died for you, the One who suffered for you, the One who loves you, given for you to eat and drink.
May God grant it, that in the midst of all of the trouble of this life, that He would lift up our eyes to behold with hope the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Please stand.
Now, may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
