Revelation Brings Repentance
From Isaiah 2 – 3 Many people shall come and say, "Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and neither shall they learn war anymore.
David Wilkerson in The Cross and the Switchblade advises on more than dogs when he suggests how to get a bone away from one. Give him a pork chop.
Isaiah has pointed to this kind of glad exchange already on an individual and national scale. In the first chapter of the prophecy, God revealed to him, both the worshiper by habit and the self-gratifying prince begin to change as they grasp the glory of God. What each has been satisfied with heretofore is paltry indeed, a shadow of the substance which is a living relationship with the living God. From this grateful exchange called repentance, the whole culture is renewed, albeit temporarily.
And yet, the beat goes on. So bound up in the character of God is this refrain of redemption that He widens this work even as evidence of human backsliding is readily available. You will your confessional closets, oh men, and in the streets of the nation founded on My Law, says God knowingly, and yet, the show goes on, and the audience grows. From the call to individuals, from the tribal distinctiveness of Israel, God is putting on the show of His glory before the nations by the beginning of Isaiah 2. The top-down imposition of His glory as manifested in His Temple lowered from Heaven relies on no human-built consensus or progress.
Man responds to rather than supporting or sustaining the glory of God. Do we ever! The Temple from Heaven, the fresh evidence of God desiring and fulfilling His dwelling with men animates our invitation to one another. Breathlessness nearly accompanies the actual words of Isaiah 2:3. Come on! Let's go! The party, the pep rally, the character reformation all at once that started with one man Jacob and his 70 descendants, the beat goes on. There's room for us, Samoans and Zimbabweans, New Zealanders and Norwegians. The tent pegs have been pulled up, and the assembly expanded. We have seen God's character in what he did for this particular people in one time and place, and what He is still doing to sovereignly reveal His glory. Come on! We don't want to miss the next act. This is David Wilkerson's pork chop.
The likelihood that the opening of Isaiah 2 is the final act, the bringing down of the New Jerusalem never to be challenged, doesn't negate His fondness to cue His refrain of redemption throughout His entire drama whenever evidence of His glory seeps like sunlight into the darkest scene. The response of the elect hearts in which He is working is also thematic through the ages, even if this particular instance is reserved for God's tour de force in Revelation.
As men are drawn and invite one another to know more of His character based on their badly obstructed view, there is a hunger to know more of Him and His Word. Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. In every age, babes birthed in new life are hungry and cry out to be fed. These in the opening of Isaiah 2 may be able to articulate their hunger better than an infant cries for milk, but God's Parental heart to show them where the good way is, how His character is displayed in the details of everyday life remains beautifully, zealously unsophisticated.
As His elect from every tribe and tongue are fed His Word, even the Law which is at times bizarrely specific, we realize from babes to the young in their strength, to the old in their weariness that we have offended Him specifically. For the remnant trusting in Christ alone, this conviction is conjoined with the grateful, ever new understanding that the righteousness of Christ covers and adorns us specifically. Every jot and tittle of that proclaimed Word, then, gives us a fresh view of that righteousness which would, but for Christ's intervention, move further and further out of our reach.
This may not be the age to establish a Jerusalem without walls or to give up training for war, as Paul says the sort of authority is given to governments with good reason. Still, the wafting of the refrain to precede Christ our eternal King shows that defensiveness dividing "us" and "them" is a temporary business of nations which can often be dispensed with within the safety of His Church as a countercultural example to the nations weary of but clinging to a wartime mindset. By the time the government rests in fact as well as in Word on Christ's shoulders, His people will be well practiced in referring even the need for vindication to Him. We will be so well fed on the bounty, the pork chop, of His Glory that we will have long since dispensed with our grip on lesser consolations.
4 He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and neither shall they learn war anymore.
David Wilkerson in The Cross and the Switchblade advises on more than dogs when he suggests how to get a bone away from one. Give him a pork chop.
Isaiah has pointed to this kind of glad exchange already on an individual and national scale. In the first chapter of the prophecy, God revealed to him, both the worshiper by habit and the self-gratifying prince begin to change as they grasp the glory of God. What each has been satisfied with heretofore is paltry indeed, a shadow of the substance which is a living relationship with the living God. From this grateful exchange called repentance, the whole culture is renewed, albeit temporarily.
And yet, the beat goes on. So bound up in the character of God is this refrain of redemption that He widens this work even as evidence of human backsliding is readily available. You will your confessional closets, oh men, and in the streets of the nation founded on My Law, says God knowingly, and yet, the show goes on, and the audience grows. From the call to individuals, from the tribal distinctiveness of Israel, God is putting on the show of His glory before the nations by the beginning of Isaiah 2. The top-down imposition of His glory as manifested in His Temple lowered from Heaven relies on no human-built consensus or progress.
Man responds to rather than supporting or sustaining the glory of God. Do we ever! The Temple from Heaven, the fresh evidence of God desiring and fulfilling His dwelling with men animates our invitation to one another. Breathlessness nearly accompanies the actual words of Isaiah 2:3. Come on! Let's go! The party, the pep rally, the character reformation all at once that started with one man Jacob and his 70 descendants, the beat goes on. There's room for us, Samoans and Zimbabweans, New Zealanders and Norwegians. The tent pegs have been pulled up, and the assembly expanded. We have seen God's character in what he did for this particular people in one time and place, and what He is still doing to sovereignly reveal His glory. Come on! We don't want to miss the next act. This is David Wilkerson's pork chop.
The likelihood that the opening of Isaiah 2 is the final act, the bringing down of the New Jerusalem never to be challenged, doesn't negate His fondness to cue His refrain of redemption throughout His entire drama whenever evidence of His glory seeps like sunlight into the darkest scene. The response of the elect hearts in which He is working is also thematic through the ages, even if this particular instance is reserved for God's tour de force in Revelation.
As men are drawn and invite one another to know more of His character based on their badly obstructed view, there is a hunger to know more of Him and His Word. Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. In every age, babes birthed in new life are hungry and cry out to be fed. These in the opening of Isaiah 2 may be able to articulate their hunger better than an infant cries for milk, but God's Parental heart to show them where the good way is, how His character is displayed in the details of everyday life remains beautifully, zealously unsophisticated.
As His elect from every tribe and tongue are fed His Word, even the Law which is at times bizarrely specific, we realize from babes to the young in their strength, to the old in their weariness that we have offended Him specifically. For the remnant trusting in Christ alone, this conviction is conjoined with the grateful, ever new understanding that the righteousness of Christ covers and adorns us specifically. Every jot and tittle of that proclaimed Word, then, gives us a fresh view of that righteousness which would, but for Christ's intervention, move further and further out of our reach.
This may not be the age to establish a Jerusalem without walls or to give up training for war, as Paul says the sort of authority is given to governments with good reason. Still, the wafting of the refrain to precede Christ our eternal King shows that defensiveness dividing "us" and "them" is a temporary business of nations which can often be dispensed with within the safety of His Church as a countercultural example to the nations weary of but clinging to a wartime mindset. By the time the government rests in fact as well as in Word on Christ's shoulders, His people will be well practiced in referring even the need for vindication to Him. We will be so well fed on the bounty, the pork chop, of His Glory that we will have long since dispensed with our grip on lesser consolations.
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