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Good morning, everyone. My name is Sitara, and I'm part of the CC Kids.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Stop trusting in mere humans who have but a breath in their nostrils.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe something we've been neglecting.
This coming reality of Jesus' return and glory.
And ask ourselves, am I ready for that?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's someone to whom God's given a vision.
An inspired vision, an authoritative revelation of this new world that Isaiah can see.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No.
Peace happens
because they now
know the Lord.
Peace happens
because they're now
in a right relationship
with the living God.
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.
Peace is happening
here friends
because
as a first fruits
of their conversion
they're people
of peace
and they want
to be
peacemakers.
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.
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.
death.
And so
by his
authoritative
and prophetic
word
the Lord
diplomatically
intervenes.
The Lord
begins to mediate.
He begins to
arbitrate
among the peoples
to judge
and settle
their disputes.
To practice
restorative
justice
by putting
wrongs right.
By repairing
all the
relational harm.
And by
restoring
broken
relationships
and the
fruit
of
the
conversion
of
the
nations
is
they
gladly
participate.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The necessity of
justice.
Isaiah says when this
new Jerusalem comes it
will be the center of
global peace and
worldwide shalom.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And this is not a standard of
human justice that comes from
inside of our world and
emerges organically from the
bottom up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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?
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.
Isaiah says,
stop pridefully relying
on human beings
and start humbly relying
on the Lord.
All right,
I've got one last thing.
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.
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.
And what
Charles Wesley expects us to do
is to place ourselves
within this hymn
and to understand
what Advent is all about.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Who are these mourning people?
Well, we recognize ourselves,
hopefully.
These people are you and me.
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.
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.
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.
It says,
The narrative force
of this hymn
brings us through tears
of self-recognition
to a blazing
and ecstatic joy.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Amen.
Thank you.