CHRIST CHURCH
Sunday, January
15, 2006
Isaiah 60:9-22
Last week we
looked at the opening verses of Isaiah chapter 60,
Arise
shine, for your light has come. We thought of the
light having been switched on, and when the light is on, there can be
no darkness. God's lory in Jesus has pushed the darkness back.
Then, All
assemble and come to you. The glory of God in Jesus means that Gentiles
are drawn. That's us: we are Gentiles, not Jew- if we have no human
parentage.
Tonight we look
to the second part of Isaiah 60. As I was preaching on Isaiah 62 to the
10 o'clock congregation some weeks ago, I looked at how these last
chapters of Isaiah in general look to the final establishment of God's
Kingdom at the end of this age. That is what we pray for everytime we
say that prayer which Jesus taught us. 'Your Kingdom come'. That is
what we look forward to at every Holy Communion service, for at every
such service we do 'until the Lord come'- or as we declare in the
Eucharistic Prayer- 'Christ will come again'
In passing, the
Kingdom will come in its finality not by our effort, nothing we can do
can achieve that, and do no more than hasten its day. The Kingdom will
come in that way when God acts decisively and finally.
As we move on
from verse 8 of Isaiah 60, the tense changes. Those opening verses were
written in the past tense; verse 9 is in the present, and from verse 10
on the tense is future. Isaiah now looks to that day when God's Kingdom
is finally establidhed, and as Fred mentioned last week, this portion
and especially from verse 18 onward has a strong resonance with the
final chapters of the book of Revelation, those chapters 21 and 22
where God begins by saying (verse 5):
I am making everything new; that which had
already been anounced in the first verse: Then
I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old earth had passed away. and then in verse
3: Now
is the dwelling of God with man. This is the vision
Isaiah gives us in this evening's reading.
Let's note one
or two points from the Isaiah text.
1. In verse 17
we read No longer will violence be heard in your land, nor ruin or
destruction within your borders. In God's Kingdom where will be no room
for such things. It's a stark reminder to those who believe that
everyone will 'be there'. Who will and who won't is of course for God
to decide and choose, and no doubt there'll be a few surprises. Ruin
and destruction will be out, and one of the biblical names of Satan is
'the Destroyer'. Peter in his epistle warns us to be wary of Satan who
is like
a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour- and that devouring
has much of the sense of destruction in it. The inhabitants of God's
Kingdom will be those who 'build up'- in the best sense of that word.
2. Verse 17 also
says You
will call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise.
These are the
two big markers on which God's people of his Kingdom will come in.
Salvation is the name of the wall. Salvation surrounds, it is the sina
qua non for those who will be in God's Kingdom. It emphasises that, not
only our efforts will not usher in God's Kingdom, but reminds us that
our efforts can never make us worhty of that Kingdom.
And Praise. The
gates will be called Praise- the entry-point. Let us remember that in
the Bible we read that 'the Lord inhabits the praises of his people'.
Praise should be a marker of God's people, and praise lifts our hearts
to God; without praise our hearts turn away from him!
3. The
succeeding verses all point up the fact that God will dwell with be the
light of his people. Jesus of course said I am the light of the world.
How much more the light of the heavenly Kingdom. If the early verses of
Isaiah 60 said the light had come- well, yes, darkness has been pushed
back, for where light shines there can be no darkness- by definition.
Light and dark can never mix. But, verse 20: The
Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end.
It's surprising,
really, how much the Bible says about what we call 'heaven', the new
heaven where God's Kingdom will be in all its fulness. It's not some
vague spirit realm of angels strumming on their harps. It's a place
full of all sorts of wunderful thinds: light, peace, praise, so much
more and above all God's presence with us.
But to close,
let's turn out thoughts to those points from Revelation:
1. God says he
will make everything new. This old sin-worn, sin-corrupted world will
be donw away with; all sin, all sorrow, all tears, all death.
The fact of
being a Christian is actually not a matter of making what we are
better. 2 Corinthians 5:17 reminds us: If anyone is in Christ he is a
new creation. The old has gone and the new has come. Sometimes we may
feel that the old hasn't gone very far! Well,one thing we can be
sure: in God's Kingdom it will have gone- destroyed, done away with
completely.
2. The old earth
will be gone- new heaven and earth. That's a point to ponder. A new
earth. It further 'de-spiritualises heaven.There will be an earth- not
this old one but something new, pristine and which can never be subject
to any decay. We will have new bodies too to inhabit that new earth.
3. God's
dwelling will be with man. Jesus came and dwelt with real men and women
for 30-odd years. Well. Christ will come again. And this time for
keeps. We shall behold his face, and we shall see God's glory. When
Moses asked to see God's glory, God hid him in a cleft of the rock lest
he see God's face and die. But in his KIngdom we shall see him, see his
glory.
May the glory be
his. Amen. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus, come quickly.