Isaiah 2, Day of Doom and Delight

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church

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Isaiah chapter 2, hear the word of the Lord. The word of the Lord, excuse me, the word that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem is shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the

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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 people shall come and say come let us go up to the mountain of the

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Lord to the house of the God of Jacob that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths for out of Zion shall go the law and the word of the

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Lord from Jerusalem he shall judge between the nations and shall decide disputes for many peoples and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war anymore

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Oh house of Jacob come let us walk in the light of the

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Lord for you have rejected your people the house of Jacob because they are full of things from the east and a fortune tellers like the

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Philistines and they strike hands with the children of foreigners 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 their land is filled with idols they bow down to the work of their hands to what their own fingers have made so man is humbled and each one is brought low do not forgive them enter into the rock and hide in the dust from the terror from before the terror of the

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Lord from the splendor of his majesty the haughty looks of man shall be brought low and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled and the

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Lord alone will be exalted in that day for the Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty against all that is lifted up and it shall be brought low against all the cedars of Lebanon lofty and lifted up and against all the oaks of bastion against all the lofty mountains and against all the uplifted hills and against every high tower and against every fortified wall against all the ships of Tarshish and against all the beautiful craft and the haughtiness of man shall be humbled and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low and the

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Lord alone will be exalted in that day and the idol shall utterly pass away and people shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground from before the terror of the

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Lord and from the splendor of his majesty when he rises to terrify the earth in that day mankind will cast away their idols of silver and their idols of gold which they made for themselves to worship to the moles and to the bats to enter the caverns of the rocks and the clefts of the of the cliffs from before the terror of the

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Lord and from the splendor of his majesty when he rises to terrify the earth.

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Stop regarding man in his nostrils, his breath. For what account is he?

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The Lord had his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, what's your favorite day?

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So your birthday. Maybe it's Christmas, especially if you're on either end of the age scale.

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If you're a child getting the gifts or maybe a grandparent old enough, you know, you can spoil the kids, but you don't have to be the one staying up late to put the stuff together.

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And Singapore, many people's favorite day would be Chinese New Year, I would assume. Maybe your favorite day is payday or your vacation days.

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Perhaps you look on certain special days in your life. That's just a rare few that come up, maybe just came up once high school graduation day, your wedding day or the day you had a baby.

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Those are days of delight when days when great things happened and everything you went through before that to get there, like the birth pains are forgotten.

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Of course, there are dreadful days, too. Usually they aren't neatly scheduled.

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The Puritans, you know, we have a way we don't want to have a bad we don't want to schedule a bad day. We only schedule good days.

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That's our culture, isn't it? The Puritans used to have both days of fasting and days of Thanksgiving for fasting days.

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They were supposed to abstain from any bodily pleasures, seek God in prayer and in church meetings, search their hearts, repent of their sins.

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When something tragic happened or perhaps they simply felt that God was convicting them, they would call for a day of fasting.

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The flip side of their fasting days were their Thanksgiving days. We kept one of their holidays and forgot about the other.

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It says a lot about us, doesn't it? We still, though, even though we try to avoid them, we think we can just not schedule them.

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Maybe they'll never come up. We still have dreadful days. Perhaps the day we got fired or the day we realize a marriage was doomed or the day a loved one died.

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I imagine that the soldiers in the spring of 1944 in England and the weeks before D -Day knew that a dreadful day of doom was soon coming.

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They didn't know when exactly, but they knew it would be soon and that many of them wouldn't make it.

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Most dreadful days, days of doom come as a total surprise. Think of the poor victims in Las Vegas last

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Sunday, enjoying what they thought was a was a delightful day, a nice day off for most of them in a concert, listening to music they loved when suddenly it turns into the most dreadful day of their lives.

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There are days of delight and there are days of doom. In this passage,

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Isaiah, chapter two, both days are described first in verses one or two to five is the day of delight, the one we love, the one we like to schedule and rehash over and over again.

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And the prophet pictures for us a time of peace and prosperity, great blessings, especially of the spirit.

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But then in verses six to twenty two, there is the day of doom, the day of delight.

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And a day of doom. And they're the same day. He begins in verse two by telling us that he is seeing,

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Isaiah, he saw this prophecy, he says he is seeing something of the latter days.

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Now, the latter days is the time when the Messiah comes and he restores all things when he begins to undo the fall, reestablish the reign of God on earth, kind of like sucking the poison out when someone has been bitten, sucking it out when someone's been bitten by a rattlesnake.

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God will take the poison of sin out of the world. People in our day often think of the last days as being some sometime.

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Are we in it yet? They're wondering is sometime in the near future. Maybe it will come soon. Waiting, maybe for the tribulation, other end time events of these, the last days, they ask.

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But the Lord Jesus said in Luke, chapter 17, verses 20 and 21, that the kingdom of God is now in your midst.

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And so he said that the last days by saying that he was saying that the last days had already come and maybe not completely, but it was not all in the future anymore.

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Earlier in the Gospel of Luke and chapter four, verses 18 and 19, the Lord Jesus began his ministry by quoting another passage from Isaiah and saying that from that passage, that the year of the

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Lord's favor, that the time of his blessing had come.

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And they understood what that meant, that he was announcing that day, but often the

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Old Testament is called the day of the Lord had come and that he was the one anointed to make it dawn.

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The latter days are that day is the day that the time that the

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Lord Jesus came. That's what Jesus said. I brought that day is the era that he brought in.

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This is why it's right for us. We probably don't think about it most of the time, but today, everything from the time of Jesus, B .C.,

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before Christ, A .D., is Latin on your domino. I can't pronounce Latin, but in the year of our

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Lord, this is the year of this is the Lord's year. This is his time. This is the day of the

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Lord, his era. And Isaiah is here, obviously, in B .C., is looking forward to it.

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He sees it coming. And now we can learn from him what we're in. So as followers of the

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Lord Jesus, when we see a prophet tell us what will come to pass in the latter days, we know that he is seeing what the

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Lord Jesus did to us. Some of its past, what he is now doing and what he will do.

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In other words, Isaiah has a vision of that day, the era of when the kingdom of God comes on Earth, that day dawned with the first coming of Christ.

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And it will be completed when he comes again. Isaiah sees the last days, maybe like we could see a mountain range.

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You can see the first mountain, maybe some other peaks behind. Now, Isaiah is seeing it like that.

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But for us now, we live in between. The mountains in the middle of the last days between the first coming of the

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Lord and the final one at the end. There will be that day, that moment in which all his enemies are judged.

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But even now in this era, since this is the last days, we are in between the dawn of the day and the high noon of that day, since we're in the middle of it.

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When, you know, it's not fully come, but it is coming. There are judgments, not all judgment is just waiting for the end.

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There are days within the day in which God brings night to those who will not walk in his ways.

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And so here we are between the first crack of sunlight over the eastern horizon and the full noon of that of that bright day.

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It can either be a day of delight or a day of doom. God's judgment comes now.

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This is what's in that that song as an author looked out, saw the the soldiers, the

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United States soldiers marching, camping, says, mine eyes have seen. In the soldiers going down for war, my eyes have seen the how does it go?

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The glory of the coming of the Lord. In this army, he is trampling out the bit he is right now, trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.

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He's doing it now. How does it go? Trampling out the vintage with the grace of wrath restored.

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He's loosed. He has loosed the fateful lightning. He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword.

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Now his truth is now marching on.

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Glory, glory, hallelujah. That's the day in which we live now in this day.

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Isaiah sees in verse two that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains. Now, this mountain he's talking about, the mountain of the house of the

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Lord, in other words, where the temple is built, the house of the Lord's God's temple. It's that that mountain on which it is built.

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It says it will be the highest of the mountains. Now, physically, literally, that is Zion. And literally, it's just a typical hill.

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It's not particularly tall. You know, we wouldn't even probably call it a we wouldn't even call it a mountain.

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Let's call it a hill. It's nothing to distinguish it. But God says it will. And in this time, the time

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Isaiah is looking forward to, the time we live in now and this time, it will overshadow.

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Everest, it's going to be the highest. Now, he's not predicting some enormous geological eruption, you know, the tectonic plate shifting.

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And suddenly Zion grows taller than the Himalayas. And people have to wear oxygen up there because it's so high. It's not that Zion will be higher in altitude, but that it will be higher in attitude, in the esteem with which people hold it, in what

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God has chosen to do there. It'll be the most important mountain. And it hasn't just already been fulfilled.

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Hasn't God already distinguished Zion? You know, in Isaiah's day, they were just a small kingdom with a small temple on a small hill.

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Who cared about that? Nothing compared to Assyria or any of the other empires. But he's predicting this will become the most esteemed in the world.

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And hasn't this been fulfilled? Hasn't God already distinguished Zion? You know, God didn't choose

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Mount Everest to have his temple on or for the Lord Jesus to visit or any of those other great empires in their capitals.

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During his ministry, Jesus went repeatedly to the temple, to Mount Zion, up that hill to participate in the worship there.

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He taught there and there he proclaimed it was there. He said, I am the light of the world.

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It's there, he said, before Abraham was. I am. He came in. He cleansed it of the money changers.

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He said it would be a house of prayer. He taught there for several days, battling with the Pharisees and others.

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And finally, there he declared that not one stone would be left on another as he departed. So certainly out of Zion, literally

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God's law, his instructions, his word went out just as the prophet said it would at the end of verse three.

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So it was in it was in Jerusalem, not Mount Sinai, you know, where Moses went up to get the commandments.

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It's Jerusalem where the Lord held up a cup. And said, this is the new covenant in my blood, the word of the

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Lord from the mouth of Jesus came from Jerusalem, from Zion.

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So surely no mountain has seen such incredible events happen on it. It was just as Isaiah said it would be raised in stature higher than any peak.

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And that's not all. In Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 22, we are told that we we have come speaking to the church, the believers.

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We have past tense completed. We have already come to.

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Mount Zion. When we come into the church, he says, when we are saved, when we are brought into the gathering of God's people, we come, the

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Bible says, to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 22, that is,

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Zion, the hill on which the temple was and the city around it, Jerusalem, the city which

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God chose for his anointed king to live. That's a picture of the church because the church now, what does

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Paul call it? The temple of God, it's the church now is where the king. From the line of David, Christ himself, that's now where he chooses to live.

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So, in other words, the promises to Zion, Jerusalem, according to Hebrews, 12, are fulfilled in God's assembly called the church.

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The people who are born again and are following him. So quite simply put it bluntly,

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Zion is the church where God dwells on earth. Now, not in a building, not this building are not in a building in the

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Middle East, but in the midst of his people. So this promise here in Isaiah, chapter two, that Zion would be the loftiest mountain in the world was fulfilled first, literally, and that it was the mountain chosen and blessed to be the site where the

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Lord himself would walk where a lot of his teachings come out directly from there and then spiritually and that the

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Zion is a foreshadowing, a picture of a heavenly, heavenly reality called the church,

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God's gathering. So here we are. Welcome to Zion.

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We are the loftiest mountain. Because God dwells in the midst of us, that makes us the highest, right?

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The church is his house, which is where he lives on earth. That means that the church is the most important social institution there is, as the

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Puritan pastor Cotton Mather put it, the church where in the service of God is performed is much more precious than the world, which is indeed created for the sake and use of the church, in other words, to that old respected

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Puritan. The church was not just another social institution kind of among many. You know, you've got to have your you've got the rural club, you've got the schools and the sports and the family or whatever, and you've got the church and they're all just kind of juggling there and you've got to take maybe one from another to have time for each.

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Now that the Puritans to the Puritans, the church, the fulfillment of Zion was the highest of the mountains.

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It was preeminent and the rest of the world existed for the church.

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And yet, despite it being the highest, overshadowing everything else, Isaiah sees that the nations.

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And here's an interesting picture. The nations means the Gentiles, the peoples of all ethnic groups says they shall flow to it like streams flow.

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Now, what's strange about that? Streams flow down mountains.

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Streams don't flow up mountains. In fact, to flow uphill against gravity, there would have to be something pushing or pulling the water up that is more powerful than the gravity that pulls it down.

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And yet here for this mountain, there is a flow. Up hill.

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That's because there's something really someone. Who is drawing these people up, people from all kinds of nations, they stream, they are drawn to go to the mountain, to Zion, the church of the living

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God, to see and to hear God in it. Many come.

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Many have come throughout church history, people of different cultures and races have come to the

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Lord. It's not it's not a white man's religion. It's not an American thing. It's it's for all the nations and they just flow.

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To it, it's a supernatural flowing, isn't it? How else does it go uphill? What do you think if you were going you thought you were on a mountain and you saw water flowing uphill?

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That's that's supernatural here, they flow uphill. Those who have been born again, they come into the church and design.

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And when they come, it is for them a day of delight. And as they are coming, they're flowing up this hill.

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They tell others in verse three, come, let's go up the mountain of the

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Lord to the house of the God of Jacob. Come with me. They are so delighted by what they find in the gospel and Mount Zion, the gathering of God's people that they don't they don't have to they don't browbeat others.

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They don't have to be browbeaten themselves to say to invite others to come. You know, we need to manipulate you.

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We need to make you feel guilty if you're not inviting others. They just do it naturally. They have an ardent desire to spread the delightfulness of what they found.

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If you find something you just love to do, often you want to get other people to do it to come join me in this and here's what they're doing.

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They they're they're flowing uphill. And as they as they're doing that to the other people, they say, come with me.

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This is great. You'll love it, too. They are flowing uphill because they are being tugged by the love they have for who is at the peak.

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You see where there is love. There's an irresistible draw. It doesn't take any cajoling or arm twisting to get you to go see the one you love.

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You'll climb the highest mountain to be with the one you love. But the flip side of that. Is that if you don't feel the draw.

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You know, there's no attraction. If there's nothing in you that tugs you to to overcome gravity itself, to come to hear the word of the

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Lord. Then there's a problem. The problem isn't, you know, that you aren't coming.

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The problem. Is that you don't want to come enough to overcome kind of the nature that always trying to drag you down.

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It's not something supernatural in you that's drawing you up is stronger than the natural things that are drawing you down.

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That the draw on you isn't strong enough to pull you uphill, to get you out of bed or away from TV, so you need to search your heart, seek

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God. The greatest commandment is still to love the Lord your God with all your being. If you really love him.

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You'll be drawn. Supernaturally. Uphill. And they're not coming just to socialize, you know, in the middle of verse three, but so that God may may teach us his ways.

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That's what they're coming for. And not only to teach in a Bible college, learn some facts, memorize some verses, but also to walk in his paths, to be trained to live like he he does.

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So wholesome teaching should lead to wholehearted walking. You must translate to your life. There's nothing more important that a church can do is at the end of verse three.

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For for we as the heavenly Jerusalem to spread God's ways, his law, his instructions, that from us, the word of God, the gospel would go out.

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And we would walk out. Like we've been changed by it. Requirement of evangelism, evangelism is having a church that is is worth joining.

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One in which people can say, if you go there, God will teach you.

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It won't just be a man's opinion. It won't be just social time. God lives among them.

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His instructions come out of there. The word of the Lord is proclaimed. And they walk according to it.

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That's the kind of church in which people will say, come, let's go there. And when this day of the

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Lord is complete, when the old age has completely gone away, replaced by the kingdom of God, when the poison of sin has been drawn out, then he says there'll be perfect peace.

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Obviously, we're not there yet, are we? The Lord himself will arbitrate between nations. He will settle disputes.

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You know, which of those islands in the South China Sea belongs to China or to the Philippines or somebody else?

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Well, the Lord will decide that. He will apply his reason to us so that we will never again have to resort to force.

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Christ's people particularly will be meek, seeking his word. There will be no more need of weapons.

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You won't have to wonder about whether you should have a concealed carry permit. You won't need it. You won't care for it.

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They can all be turned into gardening tools. We won't even have to train for conflict anymore.

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West Point in Annapolis will be turned into turn may turn them into Bible colleges so people can learn

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God's ways there. So he tells us in verse five, with some promises, some promises fulfilled and some obviously still waiting, oh, house of Jacob, the new

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Israel. That's us, his church. Come. He's still inviting us. Come patiently waiting for us.

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Let us walk in the light of the Lord. Even right now. His light is shining.

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Let's live in it. And then suddenly in verse six, the day of delight is over.

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The day of doom is dawning and there's a new house of Jacob.

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In verse five, he just invited the different or what? There's one house of Jacob to come and walk.

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Come, let's walk house of Jacob. But then in the very next verse, the prophet Isaiah shouts, you have rejected talking to the

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Lord. Lord, you have rejected the house of Jacob. This is strange. How is this possible?

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How is the house of Jacob invited in one moment and then rejected in the next?

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It's like what Paul says in Romans chapter nine, verse six. Not all who are of Israel.

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Are of Israel. There is an Israel house of Jacob that isn't really

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Israel, the true house of Jacob, the Israel Isaac prayed in Genesis that God would gather from all the nations.

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Maybe you'll be a company of nations, he said, just looking at these two verses five and then six back to back.

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We can see that what? Put it one way, is there two different groups of people both called the house of Jacob, because why would

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God invite one in verse five and then in verse six declare that they are rejected? Later in Isaiah, we learn that there is a remnant.

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He said that term remnant. In other words, some are left over, some have been destroyed, some left over the true believers in the midst of Israel who will be preserved by God.

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The rest are not real believers and they are cast away. In the New Testament, we are told that the church is the new

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Israel and Galatians chapter six, verse 16, the Israel of God. He says we are the believers, the people from many nations who flowed uphill into Zion.

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And God will preserve us in that day, that day of doom. For us, it will be a day of delight.

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But those who trust in their ancestry, because I'm from this nation, their race, their heritage, their tradition and anything man made, what they can hold for them.

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It's a day of doom. They are rejected. Because their hearts were not drawn by a love so strong and made them flow uphill, they were attracted to other things.

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Where was the heart drawn to what he says, they were attracted to the world around them in the middle of our six. They were full of things.

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From the east. Meaning that's where most of their neighbors were to the east, that's where Babylon was to the east, these idols, these images, these styles of worship and all they love, their fortune tellers there as they dealt in their business with foreigners, as the

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Israelites did. They shake hands to greet each other, seal their deals. They became like those people said of changing the world around them.

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And they were changed by them. Instead of drawing other people, you know, come, let's go up to the house of our

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God and learn his ways. They were drawn to learn worldly ways. They were being drawn away.

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In verses seven and eight, he mentions what they were like. Their their business had made them prosperous.

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They were filled with silver and gold. They're wealthy. They had horses and chariots to defend themselves and no need to humble themselves before a

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God who demands trust. Instead of obeying the second commandment against images, they think that they can worship any way they like.

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It says in verse eight that their their land is filled with idols, with images, in other words.

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Now, I think it's important here that there's no mention of of other gods, of Baal and Asherah, just of images, which seems to me to imply that they were worshiping the

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Lord sort of probably in name. But that they thought they were free to make images of him to help them in their worship, and there are all kinds of excuses people make up for doing this.

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Sometimes sophisticated sounding theologians make excuses for this practice, for making images in worship. We need this.

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This is not really worshiping images. This is venerating icons. Oh, that's entirely different. Well, it looks exactly the same.

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But God still derides it. Notice in verse eight that there is disgust that they that they bow down to the work of their hands.

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How foolish it is to make something with one's own hands or maybe with one's own mind or maybe now with a computer and put it on a screen and and yet then think it has some kind of supernatural spiritual power.

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And then just so we so we get the point, he repeats it to what their own fingers have made.

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They use that in worship and God is very serious that we not fashion something with our with our minds or with our hands.

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And then we use that in worship. That's what we have. That's why we have a bare altar.

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You know, it's been stripped of images, we've stripped it of all the statues and the candles and all of that.

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And now we use words, mostly the word of God to focus our hearts in worship, not ceremonies, statues or so -called icons.

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And the prophet Isaiah is looking at these proud people who trust in their trust in their goal, their money, their bank accounts, their horses.

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And it says in verse nine, look at them down there groveling on the ground, they're genuflecting there.

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They think they're being pious before these images they have made. They won't purposely humble themselves before the true

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God. They won't do that. But they will physically prostrate themselves down before their own creation.

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And he says, do not. Forgive them. It's not as long as they stay doing that.

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Those those will they will do anything except bow before the Lord, except lay their lives before the true

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God, the true God who raised up Zion by bringing his son there and who offers a day of perfect peace for them.

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There is no forgiveness. There will be no peace. For them, it will be a day of doom.

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So the inspired prophet tells them what to do in verse 10. He says that since you are drawn to these other things, to the world, the way it likes to do stuff, to your money.

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All of that, and you're not drawn uphill supernaturally by love for the

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Lord to come to Zion. So that's the case. Go to other mountains, you know, look for caves to hide in.

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You're going to need it. Search for rocks to use as a shelter, although it's not going to work. Hide in the dust.

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Hide, he says. And here's a term we don't use today, would we?

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Unless we're reading the Bible. The terror of the Lord. Hide from that.

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To those who are drawn uphill. He's delightful. Come, let's go. But to the haughty.

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He'll be a terror. They'll be shouting, come, let's go away from here. You see, the splendor of his majesty will be to some the most delightful thing they've ever seen.

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But to others. To those who have lived their lives for themselves, who've seen in the world the money and the pleasure and all the stuff they can have that that's what they live for.

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The sight of the splendor of his majesty will be the most terrifying thing imaginable.

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It will be it will be the end of everything they've lived for, everything they've worked for.

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They've been spending their days, their years working for stuff drawn to that. Everything they dream for will be over with the splendor of his majesty.

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Their haughty looks, their lofty pride, he says in verse 11, will be brought low for some as in Judah's day.

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When ours it was trusting in gold, gold in their day, a big bank account in ours or in power and chariots in their day,

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Abrams tanks, B1 bombers, aircraft carriers, you know, whatever guns you can buy for yourself or in religion, manmade images and rituals that have only really just changed in style a little bit over the past twenty seven centuries that will all be brought to dust by the simple unveiling of the

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Lord's majesty. And the Lord alone will be exalted.

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On that day. The Lord Jesus said that the hour, the day for him to be lifted up, to be exalted.

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Had come. He was exalted on the cross on the day of the Lord. And.

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And there on the cross, all the things we trust in are turned to dust or nothing are to be ashamed of.

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He was exalted on the cross and God's terrifying anger at sin. Was against him.

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So it wouldn't have to be against us. Jesus had a day of doom.

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So we could have a day of delight. For those who aren't here, there is still a day to come from verses 12 to 19.

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The inspired prophet describes that day for the Lord of hosts has a day. He has it marked and read on his calendar.

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No one knows the day or hour except for him. But he has it set aside. He knows when it will be.

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And here in Isaiah, too, he is painting a picture of the day of doom.

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It is it is it is against God's rivals. Notice how many times the word against appears in verses 12 to 16 against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up against all the cedars of Lebanon, against all the the oaks of patience, impressive natural things, against all the lofty mountains, against all the uplifted hills, against every high tower, against every fortified wall, against all the ships of Tarshish, against all the beautiful craft.

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You can replace your own things in there. What is he against for us? Ten times he says against.

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Sometimes people today say they don't like to hear negative messages, you know, where messages are about how God is against things.

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They just want to hear positive messages about what he's for things. But God gives us both.

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He is against rivals to his glory. He is against anything that that takes our heart away from him, is against those things that would pull us back downhill, away from his house on Zion.

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The result will be what is repeated at the end of verse 17 and echoed from verse 11.

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The Lord alone again, the Lord alone will be exalted on that day.

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The day of doom will mean the end of anything that tries to compete with with God. If you trust it in your money or your family, your relationship or just your morality, whatever it will be gone on that day in verse 18, their idols, their manmade religion, which they were so proud of, their attempts to to shape

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God in their own image that will utterly pass away. The images themselves and it was people used to honor and they used to bow down before them.

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They put in prominent places their icons, their holy, whatever they would say, they will be desperately discarded as the people who made them flee from God as they are running into the caves to hide from God's judgment.

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They realize that their superstitious images are weighing them down. So they will fling them into the dirt, into the molehills and the bat slayers.

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They will be running to escape what he repeats in verses 19, verse 10 and 19 is the terror of the

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Lord. And from the splendor of his majesty, he repeats it twice so we don't just casually skip over it.

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So that gets our attention, the splendor of the Lord, the terror of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty.

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And then he repeats it a third time just in case we missed it. In verse 21, the terror of the

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Lord and from the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth.

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Think of that phrase, think about how different it is from how we like to think of God today, the terror of the

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Lord or in some translations, the face of the Lord's dread repeated three times for emphasis so we don't skip it, so we don't miss it.

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The picture is like that of a lion appearing almost asleep, just lying down in the grass, but suddenly pouncing on a weak animal passing in front of us when he rises to terrify the earth.

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People in Isaiah's time and in ours might believe in God, but they thought they could continue in sin and the judgment would never come.

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They've done the religious thing that, you know, that solves it. Right. They bought off God. They mistook the

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Lord's patience for indulgence, or perhaps they even thought that he was asleep. We're warned here before he suddenly pounces, stop trusting in ourselves or stop trusting in someone else, some other person, the

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Lord's waiting is a sign of his mercy as he gives time for people to repent.

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He is not asleep, though he may be patient. But he's not indulgent.

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He will arise and terrify the earth. About 150 years ago, a

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German philosopher by the name of Friedrich Nietzsche came along who claimed that God was dead.

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Of course, he didn't really believe in God at all. He he didn't believe there ever really had been one. He said God was dead and we have killed him because he believed that in our

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Western culture, real faith in God had passed away. There's still some superstition left, but it's just passing away.

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But so God is dead. You don't have to worry about him anymore. A political movement came along in Germany that just love

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Nietzsche is drawn to his philosophy because if God was dead, anything was possible. So that movement.

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Was the Nazis after all, if there's no absolute judge, there's no one to say something is right or wrong.

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I can say it and make you agree to it. If God was dead, then all I had to do was overpower my enemies and force everyone to accept my definition of right and wrong.

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If God was dead, we could kill anyone we didn't like in Auschwitz. After all, since there's no judge, there's no judgment.

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But judgment came anyway, the day of doom came for the Nazis and the swastika on top of the

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Reichstag was blown to dust. But it's not just for Nazis, for the

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Lord of Hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, most don't become

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Nazis, most want to be respected, kind of upstanding people, the kind we saw last week and were called the princes, the strong, often the religious people who love their forms, who love their religion.

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They're just not drawn uphill to Zion. They, too, will face a day. Of doom.

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But that same day. Will be a day of delight for others. I hope for you.

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You don't have to run and hide when that day comes, you can just kneel and adore.

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In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John sees a picture of heaven, of Mount Zion, when the perfect day of delight is come.

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And there there are 24 elders worshiping him who sits on the throne and they spontaneously fall down before him, it's not the servile kind of ceremonial bowing down that that Isaiah mocks in verse nine here is sincere to gesture of humility coming out of a heart that's full of reverence and awe.

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And when the Lord rises and the earth is terrified. They don't have idols to fling away.

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Instead, they fling themselves to the ground in real worship and they lay their crowns, these awards given to them from the

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Lord for their good works, they lay them before God's throne. And the gesture says that you alone, oh,

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Lord, are exalted in this day of delight. And that day then goes on forever.

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These went up to Mount Zion. They were irresistibly drawn uphill by the

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Lord who lives there. They learned God's ways and they walked in his light.

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So if you want a good day, you want a good day, a great day. One that goes on forever.

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Come. Let's go up to the mountain of the Lord. To the house of the