Peace and Plowshares for the Peoples

[0:00] We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christchurch. This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication, redistribution, or any other use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christchurch.

[0:15] Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at ChristChurchEastBay.org. Good morning, everyone. My name is Sitara, and I'm part of the CC Kids.

[0:31] A reading from the book of Isaiah. This is what Isaiah, son of Amos, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as the highest of the mountains.

[0:44] It will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob.

[0:56] He will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples.

[1:12] They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

[1:23] Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord. You, Lord, have abandoned your people, the descendants of Jacob. They are full of superstitions from the east.

[1:36] They practice divination like the Philistines and embrace pagan customs. Their land is full of silver and gold. There is no end to their treasures.

[1:47] Their land is full of horses. There is no end to their chariots. Their land is full of idols. They bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made.

[1:59] So people will be brought low and everyone humbled. Do not forgive them. Go into the rocks, hide in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty.

[2:12] The eyes of the arrogant will be humbled and human pride brought low. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day. The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted and they will be humbled, for all the cedars of Lebanon, tall and lofty, and all the oaks of Bashan, for all the towering mountains and all the high hills, for every lofty tower and every fortified wall, for every trading ship and every stately vessel.

[2:48] The arrogance of men will be brought low and human pride humbled. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day and the idols will totally disappear.

[2:59] People will flee to caves in the rocks and to the holes in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty when he rises to shake the earth.

[3:15] Stop trusting in mere humans who have but a breath in their nostrils.

[3:44] Why hold them in esteem? The grass withers and the flowers fade. The words for God is in his heart. Thank you for that reading, Sitara. Well, as you've heard already, it's the season of Advent, which is strange because everything around us is Christmas.

[4:04] But we're encouraging you to lean in to this season that's primarily focused on the second coming of Jesus. We say every week in communion, Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.

[4:19] And then we say in the creed that we believe Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end. And Advent says, let's give our attention to this.

[4:35] Maybe something we've been neglecting. This coming reality of Jesus' return and glory. And ask ourselves, am I ready for that?

[4:47] Am I prepared for the judge to come? And as Andrew said, there are two prophets in Advent. There's the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament, the prophet John the Baptist in the New Testament.

[4:58] So if you're not sure what to be reading right now, read there. And I want to invite you to turn in your pew Bible to page 554. Page 554.

[5:10] The reason that's important to look at is that we printed it for you here. It looks like prose, but it's actually poetry. And page 554, you can get a better feel for the flow of the poetry.

[5:24] And we're going to talk about three things. We're going to talk about the longing for peace, the necessity of justice, and the coming king of majesty. The longing for peace, the necessity of justice, and the coming king of majesty.

[5:39] When you look at verse 1, it says, this is what Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. And that's what a prophet is. A naviim is a seer.

[5:51] It's someone to whom God's given a vision. An inspired vision, an authoritative revelation of this new world that Isaiah can see.

[6:03] Of what the world will be like. Of what it will look like. What it will feel like. When God's Messiah comes to establish the kingdom of God on the earth as it is in heaven.

[6:15] In quote unquote, the last days. And so he says in verse 2, In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as the highest of the mountains. It will be exalted above the hills and all nations will stream to it.

[6:28] He says that a day is coming when Jerusalem will be made new. And when Mount Zion, the temple where the presence of Yahweh dwells, That place will be elevated as the highest of all the mountains in the world.

[6:47] It will be exalted among all the other mountains and hills. And why does that matter? Because mountains in the ancient Near East were high places where the presence of the deity was thought to dwell.

[7:01] And so people built temples on those high places. And they went to worship on those mountains. To worship the gods of Egypt and Canaan and Assyria.

[7:12] The gods of Persia and Babylon. The gods of China and India. The gods of Greece and Rome. The world was absolutely full of these mountains with their temples and with their gods.

[7:24] And Isaiah sees this vision that a day is coming when the dwelling of Yahweh, the presence of Yahweh himself will be lifted up. But when the Messiah comes, the place where people can gain access to the presence of the living God will be exalted.

[7:41] And implicit in that is that all the other mountains, all the other temples, all the other homes of the gods in that day will be downgraded. Will be humiliated. They'll be shown to be false deities and dumb idols.

[7:56] And many peoples, it says, of all the nations will forsake their gods. And they'll come streaming to Mount Zion. And this supernatural triumph of the Lord over all the other gods will result in a great movement of the nations.

[8:14] Kids, have you ever seen a stream or a river that's flowing upward to the summit of the mountain? No, you've never seen that.

[8:27] But Isaiah is seeing that. That the nations from the Middle East and from Africa and Asia and Europe and the Americas. Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, secular people.

[8:43] It's like they're a stream. They're a river that is seeing the supernatural exaltation of the dwelling place and the presence of Yahweh.

[8:54] And it's as if the world's strongest magnet is pulling all of us up and all of us in. And Isaiah sees this international universal upflow of the peoples that are streaming up this mountain.

[9:08] And why are they doing that? Why are they seeking the presence of the Lord? Verse 3 says that many peoples will come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.

[9:22] He will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Isaiah can not only see this vision, he can hear the peoples talking.

[9:35] And they're not saying to one another, let's go on vacation. Let's go on a sightseeing trip. They're saying to one another, let's go on a spiritual pilgrimage.

[9:47] Let's go on this purposeful journey to this holy place, to the house of the God of Jacob. And what they're saying among themselves is, you know, there must be more to life than what we currently have.

[10:00] There must be something here at the center of the world, something here at the house of the God of Israel, that our mountains and our temples and our gods do not have.

[10:12] The nations in this moment are being converted. They're being converted to the one true God, who created the massive universe that we live in, who created the marvelous bodies that we inhabit.

[10:27] The one true God who made all the physical and mathematical and scientific laws that hold everything together. The God who made all the spiritual and relational and moral laws that make life meaningful.

[10:43] And what do the people say? They say, when we get to the new Jerusalem, when we get to Mount Zion, we will receive from the Lord himself the teaching of his Torah, his law.

[10:58] We will receive the teaching from the Lord himself from his prophetic word. He will give us his own self-revelation of the truth. The truest truth of the universe.

[11:11] Truth with a capital T. And when we receive that truth, we'll get a new kind of life. And so we will trust in his ways, and we will walk in his paths.

[11:25] See, Isaiah is giving us a vision of the conversion of many peoples from all the nations. And these are people who had been inveterate enemies of the kingdom of God.

[11:36] These are people who had been bitterly antagonistic and diametrically opposed to Yahweh. And their conversion means that these pagan idol worshipers are renouncing their gods, and they're beginning to worship the Lord.

[11:55] They've been reconciled to him. They've been brought into harmony with him. They're acknowledging his sovereignty and his authority and his power in their lives and in the world.

[12:06] And what they're saying is that we want to be part of God's covenant people. We want to enjoy the new Jerusalem. We want to learn and live according to God's word.

[12:19] We want to conduct ourselves according to the Lord's character. We want to walk in his specific spiritual and moral paths for his people.

[12:31] And notice that there's no hint of reluctance or resistance. None of them are half-hearted or indifferent. But all of them are encouraging one another and exhorting each other in their astonishment at who Yahweh is and what Yahweh has done.

[12:53] And they've said, come, let's go to the Lord and let's go get his teaching. The conversion of the nations is this great reversal of history that's beyond any kind of human engineering or human manipulation.

[13:12] And what do we see is the fruit that's flowing out of their conversions. How do we know that their hearts have been converted and transformed? Well, Isaiah says they have a new longing for peace.

[13:27] They have a new longing for shalom. They have a new longing for wholeness and well-being and human flourishing. And they not only have a longing for peace, but they begin to practice peace.

[13:40] They begin to live as peacemakers. Verse 4 says, He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

[13:52] Nation will not take up sword against nation nor will they train for war anymore. Notice that this peace does not come about through the United Nations.

[14:04] It doesn't come about through diplomatic unilateral disarmament. It doesn't come about, this peace doesn't happen because the nations realize their mutually assured destruction so that out of pure political self-interest they sign a treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

[14:28] No. Peace happens because they now know the Lord. Peace happens because they're now in a right relationship with the living God.

[14:42] Peace happens because they've been converted and their hearts are transformed. Peace happens because having been reconciled to the Lord they want to be reconciled with each other.

[14:58] Peace is happening here friends because as a first fruits of their conversion they're people of peace and they want to be peacemakers.

[15:14] And two things are happening here in verse 4. First of all it says he will judge the Lord will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. You see what's been happening is that this nation has been coveting and exploiting that nation.

[15:30] And this people has historical resentments because of that people's historical injustices. And this oppressor has been taking advantage and victimizing this victim over here by its strength.

[15:48] death. And so by his authoritative and prophetic word the Lord diplomatically intervenes. The Lord begins to mediate.

[16:00] He begins to arbitrate among the peoples to judge and settle their disputes. To practice restorative justice by putting wrongs right.

[16:12] By repairing all the relational harm. And by restoring broken relationships and the fruit of the conversion of the nations is they gladly participate.

[16:26] They say yes Lord we want what you want. And the second thing that's happening here is it says they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

[16:37] Nation will not take up sword against nation nor will they train for war anymore. The result of their conversion is that disagreement is no longer settled through conflict.

[16:51] And war therefore has no more usefulness because the nations trust the Lord and they trust each other. And the Lord shows them how to take their swords and their spears and to turn them into plowshares and pruning hooks.

[17:12] The Lord shows them how to take their weapons of war and their military arsenals that bring death and to turn them instead into instruments of gardening that bring life.

[17:30] And Berkeley people should love this. The reason they love it or they should love it is manifold! But part of the reason they should love it is because this is a massive recycling project.

[17:45] They're not throwing their instruments of war away, they're recycling them into instruments of peace. A new world order is coming when nations will not only forsake the means and the practice of war but they'll renounce the mentality of war.

[18:05] They'll no longer train for war or learn war anymore. And what will they be doing instead? Well they'll be gardening. They'll be growing food and flowers.

[18:20] They'll be cultivating nourishment and beauty for one another. They'll no longer be violently at each other's throats in covetousness and conflict but now they'll be peacefully gardening together in a world of flourishing and fruitfulness.

[18:37] And why will they be gardening? Because God made us for the Garden of Eden and his plan is to get us back there to make us right with him, to make us reconciled with each other, to remove that curse, that ancient curse, to end the serpent's oppressive dominion over us and to put us back into an ideal environment for our wholeness and our well-being and our shalom.

[19:06] friends, the vision of Isaiah is that when the kingdom of God finally comes on the earth as it is in heaven, sin and death and war will end and peace and security and prosperity will reign and who doesn't long for that?

[19:25] And how does this apply to our lives this advent? Well, first of all, in the first advent, the first coming, when God came in the flesh as the baby of Bethlehem, and that prince of peace grew up and Jesus marched into Jerusalem, he said, destroy this temple and I will raise it up again in three days.

[19:48] And he was speaking of himself, he was speaking of his body. He said, I will be, in that last day, I will be raised up, I will be exalted, I will be put in the highest possible place.

[20:02] And elsewhere in the gospel, Jesus says, when I'm lifted up, I will draw all people, Jew plus Gentile, all the nations to myself, and all the peoples will have access to the presence of the living God through me.

[20:19] And I will begin to teach them my ways so that they can walk in my paths. And friends, if you're here today and you want to be part of the fulfillment of this prophecy, then you need to go to Jesus.

[20:35] You need to go to that resurrected and exalted Prince of Peace and ask him to teach you his way of grace so that you can walk in his path of peace.

[20:49] The second application is this, that the way we are to live between the first advent and the second advent, the first coming of Jesus and the second coming of Jesus is found in verse 5.

[21:02] Come, descendants of Jacob, come, people of God, let us walk in the light of the Lord. The nations might be in confusion, the nations might be in conflict, but the church says we're going to live according to this vision of peace.

[21:22] We're going to let this vision of peace steal our nerves and comfort our sorrows. We are going to pledge ourselves to walk in the light of God's peace.

[21:32] We're going to be people of peace. We're going to agree with Jesus. Blessed are the peacemakers. We're going to say amen to the Apostle Paul that we're going to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace because we want to be signposts that God's reign and God's universal peace has come in Jesus.

[21:55] And indeed that peace is coming finally and fully when he returns in glory. So that's the longing for peace. But I also want to talk not just about the longing for peace but also about the necessity of justice.

[22:12] The necessity of justice. Isaiah says when this new Jerusalem comes it will be the center of global peace and worldwide shalom.

[22:24] the Lord of peace will reign over all the nations there and the passion for war that we all seem to have will be subdued by a greater passion, a passion for worship, a passion to discover the ways of the Lord, a passion to practice and walk on his paths of peace.

[22:46] That will be our passion. Don't you long for this world of peace? Where the SAF and the RSF in Sudan, where Israel and Hamas, where Russia and Ukraine, where China and Taiwan, where Republicans and Democrats live together and enjoy each other in peace?

[23:18] Wouldn't it be amazing if we woke up tomorrow and we read that headline that said in the newspaper, nations beat death-dealing military weapons into life-giving gardening tools?

[23:31] Wouldn't that be a great headline to read tomorrow? It'd be incredible. But friends, the supernatural peace that we're longing for is not going to come without divine justice and divine judgment.

[23:48] When you go out to modern protests, you hear people walking in the streets and they'll say this line, they'll say, no justice, no peace. Anybody heard that? No justice, no peace.

[24:00] No justice, no peace. And whether people realize it or not, they're quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King said, peace is not the absence of tension or conflict.

[24:10] Peace is the presence of justice. And where did Dr. King get that? He got that from the prophet Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah is saying that unless the injustices of human sin, unless the injustices of our self-centeredness are dealt with, we're going to have a false peace.

[24:30] We're going to have a hollow peace. We're going to have a shallow peace. No, the basis of a real peace, a durable peace, a worldwide lasting peace is Yahweh's divine justice.

[24:43] And this is not a standard of human justice that comes from inside of our world and emerges organically from the bottom up.

[24:53] No, it's a standard of divine justice that comes from outside of our world and that sits over us and above us authoritatively and comes into our lives from the top down.

[25:07] And this is what verse 4 is all about. Yahweh will judge between the nations. The one true creator God is the only one really qualified to be the judge of all that he's created.

[25:22] And Isaiah is saying that the only way we'll experience his peace is through his cosmic justice. And that's what verses 6 to 22 are all about. If you just turn there for a second, four times in this section, Isaiah says that in that day, in that day, in that day, in that day, he's talking about the day of the Lord when humans will be humbled and the Lord will be exalted.

[25:51] And what he's saying is that this day needs to happen because there are serious injustices that need to be dealt with and there are terrible wrongs that need to be put right.

[26:05] And it's not only injustices and wrongs that are out there, out there with all those bad people. No, it's the line between good and evil runs not just between us good humans in here and those bad humans over there.

[26:26] The line between good and evil runs right through the middle of every one of our hearts. And Isaiah 2 says the line between good and evil actually runs right through the house of Jacob, right through the people of God.

[26:40] If the house of Jacob is going to be this place where the nations can come and worship the Lord and learn His word and His ways and be in fellowship with the living God, then the house of Jacob, the people of God, have to come under His scrutiny.

[26:55] And so Isaiah says in verse 6, you've abandoned your people the house of Jacob. They're full of superstitions from the east. They practice divination like the Philistines and clasps their hands with pagans.

[27:09] Their land is full of silver and gold. There is no end of their treasures. Their land is full of horses. There is no end of their chariots. Their land is full of idols. They bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made.

[27:22] Isaiah is saying, look, instead of trusting and clinging to and relying upon the Lord for your life, the people of God are adopting the practices of the Babylonians in the east and the Philistines in the west, all the cultures around them.

[27:42] They're living like the people around them. He says, instead of trusting in all the spiritual riches you have from the Lord, the people of God are trusting in their material wealth, their silver and their gold for their security.

[27:59] The prophet says, instead of being peacemakers like God is a peacemaker, the people of God are piling up horses and they're piling up chariots and they're piling up all these weapons for war.

[28:11] They're being conformed to the world. He says, look, instead of bowing down to the one true creator God, they're bowing down to created things.

[28:25] And instead of worshiping their maker, they're worshiping the things that you can make with your hands. Don't we do that? Don't we look at finite temporal things like money or sex or power?

[28:43] Don't we look at our work or our retirement or our spouse or our kids or whatever and we look at these finite temporal things and we say to them, please fill me with infinity.

[28:58] Please fill me with eternity. Please give me that sense of transcendence that my heart cannot live without. And of course, they can't do it.

[29:12] None of these things can do it. You know, the first commandment that God gave his people is you shall have no other gods before me. You need to love me with all of your heart.

[29:25] And the people of God are breaking that command all the time. In fact, Isaiah says, you know, murder's wrong, adultery's wrong, stealing's wrong, but you know the worst of all injustices, you know the most outrageous of all wrongs, is that in your arrogance and in your pride, you've abandoned God.

[29:53] Isaiah's vision of supernatural peace peace is not happening because of the injustice of human pride. Humanity's pride and God's peace are incompatible.

[30:06] The world cannot have God's peace until he decisively deals with our pride. Verse 9 says, So people will be brought low, and everyone humbled.

[30:21] Do not forgive them. Go into the rocks, hide in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty. The eyes of the arrogant will be humbled, the human pride will be brought low, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

[30:35] The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted, and they will be humbled. All of us who are proud.

[30:48] All of us who are exalted. All of us who think of ourselves more highly than we ought. The prophet says, We're outside the circle of the Lord's forgiveness.

[31:02] In verse 9, it says, Do not forgive them. They don't deserve to be forgiven. And remember, he's not speaking about unbelieving people here. He's talking about the house of Jacob. He says, If you do not repent of all the ways that you are pridefully ignoring the Lord and neglecting the Lord and abandoning the Lord and breaking his commandments and failing to pray and dishonoring him with your lives, then the coming presence of the Lord, the coming splendor of his majesty is not going to cause you to feel joy.

[31:35] It's going to cause you to be afraid. He says in verse 17, The arrogance of all people will be brought low and human pride humbled.

[31:47] The Lord alone will be exalted in that day and idols will disappear. People will flee to caves and the rocks and to holes in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty when he rises to shake the earth.

[32:02] Isaiah is saying that on this coming day of the Lord, this coming day of cosmic justice, Yahweh only has to rise ever so slightly from his heavenly throne and it will be enough to shake us to the core.

[32:20] That he will simply unveil himself as he's always been and he'll reveal to us the splendor of his royal majesty. We'll see his sovereign glory.

[32:32] We will have this vision of his kingly goodness and holiness and authority and he says that will be enough to shake every one of us and to convict us of the pride that makes peace impossible.

[32:49] And on that coming day, he says all human pride that's infected and devastated God's good creation will be exposed and it will be humbled. And all the thoughts that I've ever had and that you've ever had of thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought will be revealed.

[33:12] And all the times that we've dispensed with relying on the living God and we've exalted ourselves and lived as if we are God, that will be shown up for what it actually is.

[33:23] And all of our idols in that day, he says, will be seen as good for nothing and thrown away as utterly and completely useless. And two times here, he says, the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

[33:39] On that day, the Lord will be exalted over everyone who has exalted themselves. And that's necessary. That's a necessary justice because only when he's dealt with our pride can the world finally have peace.

[33:53] So how do we apply this to our lives this Advent? Well, this is a strange message, isn't it? Because this is supposed to be the half-happiest season of all.

[34:06] And Frank Sinatra sings to us, he says, have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light, and from now on our troubles will be out of sight. But I encourage you to immerse yourself in a different kind of song this Advent.

[34:23] The songs of the prophet, Isaiah. Because Isaiah has this uncomfortably, you know, sort of awkward, unavoidable song that seems less concerned about our hearts feeling light and pretending that there are no troubles in our world or in our lives.

[34:48] And he seems radically more concerned about God's judgment on all that's wrong and all that needs to be put right in his good creation starting right here with me and with you.

[35:03] Application number two, I want you to imagine the live, high-voltage power line that's coming into your house. Now, if you, can you have that in your mind?

[35:16] live, high-voltage power line coming into your house, if you respect that power line and if you have a right relationship with that power line, it's going to be good for you.

[35:29] It's going to bring light. It's going to bring heat. It's going to bring all the things that you need in your house to flourish and be comfortable and be at home.

[35:40] But, if you disrespect that live, high-voltage power line and you're not in a right relationship with it and you try to grab hold of it in some way where you're not ready, what's going to happen to you?

[36:00] It's going to be a bad day. And the prophet, one of the commentators on the prophet Isaiah, he says, the day of the Lord is designed to be a time of glory, light, blessing, deliverance, safety, and renewal and believers look forward to it like Christians anticipate the second coming of Christ.

[36:20] But resistance to Yahweh means it becomes a time of humbling, darkness, calamity, defeat, insecurity, and loss as Christ's coming will be for those who have resisted Christ.

[36:35] So the question in Advent is what is your attitude and what is your posture and what kind of relationship do you have to that live, high voltage, powerful person who's coming again named Jesus?

[36:55] the third application is it's obvious that Jesus read Isaiah extremely closely. He quotes from it more than any other prophet and he says multiple times, he says, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

[37:15] It's a beautiful summary of Isaiah 2. And we need to ask ourselves during the season of Advent, what are the ways in which I have exalted myself?

[37:28] Like in my relationships with the people I live with, with the people I work with, with the people in my neighborhood, how have I been exalting myself? Before my God, how have I been exalting myself?

[37:42] And the prophet Isaiah says in verse 22, stop trusting in human beings, including yourself, who have butter breath in their nostrils. Why hold them in esteem?

[37:56] Why do you have such trust and such esteem in yourself who's living on borrowed breath And in other people who are here today and gone tomorrow, when we have the eternal Lord, faithful sustainer, gracious redeemer, just judge, everlasting king.

[38:26] Isaiah says, stop pridefully relying on human beings and start humbly relying on the Lord. All right, I've got one last thing.

[38:39] The longing for peace, the necessity of justice. My last point is the coming of the king of majesty. And what I want you to do is turn to your liturgy to page three. And I'm just going to walk you through the final song we're going to sing in this service by Charles Wesley.

[38:57] It's one of the greatest hymns of Advent. I don't think we've ever sung it here, but we're going to learn it today. It's one of the best hymns about the second coming of Jesus at the end of history.

[39:07] And what Charles Wesley expects us to do is to place ourselves within this hymn and to understand what Advent is all about.

[39:22] He says, as we sing this first verse, we imagine ourselves actually seeing the coming of the Lord, the arrival of the king with his procession of attendance.

[39:32] And it says, lo, he comes with clouds descending, once for favored sinners slain. Thousand, thousand saints attending, hail the king who comes again. Hallelujah, hallelujah.

[39:43] God appears on earth to reign. And in the second verse, this glorious vision of the second coming does not bring instant joy. As viewers recognize the judge to be Jesus, a fear seizes many souls and everyone who participated in his death begins wailing and mourning and distress and terror.

[40:07] It says, every eye shall now behold him robed in awesome majesty. Those who mocked, despised and sold him, pierced and nailed him to the tree. Deeply mourning, deeply mourning, deeply mourning shall the true Messiah see.

[40:20] Who are these mourning people? Well, we recognize ourselves, hopefully. These people are you and me.

[40:30] All of us sinners who mocked, despised and sold him, we do it every day. We do it constantly. In our pride, we disregard him and neglect him and ignore him.

[40:44] We treat the Prince of Peace as if he's unimportant. And it's our sin that nailed him to the tree. And we simply cannot draw a line between the righteous and the unrighteous and see ourselves on the good side.

[40:59] But the third verse is the charm. Here it's revealed to us that we are redeemed in spite of ourselves. And looking more closely at the resurrected body of the Lord Jesus, we see that he still has the mark of the nails.

[41:13] It says, The narrative force of this hymn brings us through tears of self-recognition to a blazing and ecstatic joy.

[41:39] As we recognize the Savior who's redeemed us from sin and death. And the fear of judgment begins to melt away as we see this one who's come to be our advocate and our defender.

[41:52] This one who is on our side. This one who stands not against us but for us. This judge who's been judged in our place. And we're filled with wonder because we realize that we were unworthy but he counted us worthy.

[42:09] And we deserve judgment but he didn't give us that. He gave us mercy. And we were slaves to sin and death but he brought us over into righteousness and life.

[42:19] So how can we not love him? How can we not love with every fiber of our being this one who bears the scars of our ransom?

[42:32] And the fourth verse seeks to speed the day of his coming when we will be resurrected we'll pass into eternal life and we'll be crowned with transforming praise and adoration and so even now we sing this song.

[42:45] Yes, amen. Let all adore you high on your eternal throne. Savior, take the power and glory. Claim the kingdom for your own. Come, Lord Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus.

[42:56] Come, Lord Jesus. Everlasting God. Come down. do you think we can sing that together in a moment? All right. Let's sing it out with joy in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[43:11] Amen. Amen. Thank you.