Peace In the Lord
As we move
into Isaiah 2, I am struck by two images.
The first is one of my favorite sayings in the Bible. “They shall beat their swords into
plowshares.” I love the lesser famous
“you shall beat your plowshares into swords” of Joel 3:10 as well. This – combined with the sentences that
follow it about nations no longer rising up against one another and about not
learning about war – speak of the “latter days” as a time of great peace in the
Lord. It sounds like such an ideal
condition. Imagine living in a world
where people don’t argue with one another.
Imagine living in a world where we don’t look to take advantage of one
another’s weaknesses. Imagine living in
a world where we genuinely care about the wellbeing of everyone, not just those
that we love. What an idyllic vision
with which we begin this chapter!
To find
the root cause of this idealism, we have to turn to the other image with which
I was struck in these opening few verses.
The people are described as actually coming to the Lord. They are actually looking to be taught in the
ways of the Lord. They actually desire
to abide by His commandments. The next
time you hear someone talking about “world peace” in a pageant – or anywhere
else in this world – you can know that without people turning to God and
humbling themselves to His ways there will be no world peace. It is not our greatness that will ever bring
about world peace. It’s not even our
desire for world peace that can bring it about.
Peace only comes when God is great and human beings are humble.
Back to Reality
As if you
need any further proof of this concept, contrast this section with the opening
words of the next section. The people
are said to have rejected their God.
There are idols in the land.
There are fortune-tellers in the land.
There are people that are practicing all kinds of divination. Is it any wonder that the land of Israel was
headed for judgment and God was bringing forth the Babylonians to humble
them? In order for us to know peace, we
must know God and seek to practice His ways.
When we choose something else – anything else – it should not surprise
us that we end up in strife. It should
not surprise us if we are brought to a position of being humbled by God when we
do not choose to be humble ourselves.
To this
end I love verse 17. “All the
haughtiness of mankind shall be humbled.
The lofty pride of mankind shall be brought low. The Lord alone will be exalted on that
day.” So often we as a culture forget
that life isn’t about “me.” In fact –
and I know this won’t be popular with many people on the first read – life
isn’t even about “us.” Life in its
purest form is about God. We are
complete only when we are in Him. How
can life be about us at all?
In fact,
as we close this chapter we have a wonder string of images. How is it that mankind will be humbled before
God? We will flee before the terror of
God. We will literally hide from His
presence. When God’s glory comes to the
earth we will realize all too fully how the things that we chase after in this
life simply just don’t measure up. They
don’t measure up at all. It will be like
comparing a full-color Dolby Digital surround sound movie theater experience with
one of those old elementary school filmstrips with the beep telling you to
advance the slide. When God’s glory
comes, even those of us who are trying to be obedient will know the shame of
those things that we pursue instead of Him from time to time.
So what
can we learn from passages like this?
True and genuine obedience often comes best at the heels of chastisement
and even shame. Sometimes we can only
know the depth and breadth of our sinfulness when God takes the time to fully
expose who we are as people. Sometimes
we have the ability to see the course of our choices and know that they aren’t
good for us. But other times it takes
God revealing Himself in fullness for us to truly see the depth and breadth of
our sin.
This is
why I love the prophet Isaiah. It’s
takes guts to talk about these kinds of things with other people. It’s not a happy and touchy-feely kind of
message. But it is absolutely a message
that we all need to recognize from time to time. Here in Isaiah we find the depth and breadth
of humanity – especially human sinfulness.
Honestly, take a look around at the ethic and values that our culture
teaches. Then ask yourself a simple
question. How does that which our culture
teaches us about what is important in life compare to how Isaiah concludes this
chapter? Isaiah says: “Stop regarding
man in whose nostrils is breath. For of
what account is he?”
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