Sunday, May 23, 2010

God saves… to be full of God (Isaiah 2)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon

image What’s wrong with this picture? The picture shows a boy reaching for an apple and a mother who looks like she adores her son with pure joy.

This picture is not in touch with the reality. As parents, I don’t think we ever seen our girls reaching for that healthy, delicious granny smith and have that pure joy displayed on our face with huge smiles. No, let me break it to you. Here is the reality. Parenting 101, when you take your toddlers to grocery, you avoid the aisle loaded with snacks. Those cute little hands and those little legs, those little hearts are helpless in the sight of candies, you will never get out of the aisle. So, avoid the snack aisle at all cost.image

But, then there is the inevitability of having to face the biggest challenge of doing grocery with the little toddlers. Check out line. Here is a typical picture of a checkout line. This is the most dangerous part of doing grocery. You are distracted from having to load the grocery onto the convey belt, having to wait for the clerk to scan them, having to pull out your credit card and sign it, load the grocery to your cart. And, when you are most distracted those little wondering hands can reach for that candy bar and put it in their mouth with the wrapper still on. And, just like that you lost the battle. I lost two battles so far at the grocery lines.

image Why do we battle like this as parents? Why don’t we just let them have all the candies they want to eat? Why don’t we just let them have their full? We will have happy children who would love us to death. The simplest answer is because we love them. We know once our children become full from consuming bars of chocolate, they will have no desire to eat the real food at the table, the real food that grows them.

image That is the battle we see in Isaiah 2. Jesus said in Revelation 3:20, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” Jesus said, “I am the bread of life” in John 6:35. But, what if you are not drawn to Jesus and don’t want to open the door for Jesus to come in and dine with you because you are already full of stuff from the world?

The vision of the future: full of God.

Isaiah pictures another vision of the future. You know it is the picture of the future because it is “in the last days” (Isaiah 2:2). In his vision, Isaiah saw the mountain of the house of the LORD being established as the highest of the mountains, lifted above all the hills.

image There was a story this past week about a 13 year old boy named Jordan Romero. He took out a satellite phone and called his mother and said, “Mom, I’m calling you from the top of the world.” He is the youngest ever to climb the peak of the world’s highest mountain, the Mount Everest at 29,035 feet[1]

The temple ground of Jerusalem is elevated from the surrounding area, but it is no way the tallest mountain. Mount Everest would dwarf it. But, what Isaiah saw of the future was this picture of the nations streaming to God’s house situated on the highest mountain. Many peoples from all the nations of all different backgrounds, skin colors, cultures, languages will be streaming to the summit where God’s house dwell (Isaiah 2:2-3). We see the peoples motivating each other, calling each other out. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD” (2:3), “Come… let us walk in the light of the LORD” (2:5). Not only they yearn for God’s presence, we see them embracing God’s law, we see their intense desire to be taught in God’s ways, to walk in his paths (3:3). In this future scene where God is elevate above all things in the world, where God is the center and supreme, where God is the judge, we see this picture of incredible peace where the nations turning their weapons into the instruments of peace.

The present reality: full of stuff and full of yourself

Having presented us with the future vision full of God from 2:1-5, now the rest of the chapter 2 deals with the present reality where people are full of stuff and themselves.

In Isaiah 2:6-9, we see what the Israelites were full of. They were full of superstitions, divination and dependence on pagans. Superstitions are instead of believing in the evidence of what God is doing in our lives, believing in something like “luck” or “chance.” Divination was various practices like inquiring dead spirits, studying shapes of kidneys from dead animals in order to learn about future. In our time, practicing divination takes a much more sophisticated shape like trying to figure out the next up and coming companies, or the next hot stock items that’s going to give you greatest returns for your investment. In our time, clasping hands with pagans that is alliance with pagans is equivalent to us trying to seek happiness through other people.

They were also full of idols. He calls them “the works of their hands… what their fingers have made” in 2:8. I don’t know about you, but for me whenever I put my time and energy, and even creativity into making something, it is really hard to let go. When the ancient people either made for themselves or pay dear money for others to make idols for them, the idols required great deal of money, energy and creativity and initiation. We may not pay someone to make us piece of statue that looks like weird disproportional looking cow with big horns, but for us, our idols can take shapes of building career, reputation, keeping up with the hottest fashion, the latest and the greatest thing to have and behold, the next bigger house, the bigger wedding… the list can go. Idols can be anything that we invest our energy, our resources, and our time and takes over the center stage with the promise to make us happy and fulfill. We create idols that they may serve us.

image Consider the ugly transformation of Smeagol in the Lord of the Rings. When Semagol saw the ring that his cousin found from a lake, he claimed the ring as his birthday present. He took it by strangling his cousin to death. Over time, he became this ugly creature known as Gollum.image

What’s behind the tight grip over idols, the practices of believing in lucks and chances, incessant obsession over controlling their own future? It’s called pride. We see the portrait of pride in more detail in Isaiah 2:10-21. The tall and lofty cedars and oaks, the towering mountains and high hills, the lofty tower and fortified walls of defensive system, the trading ships of economic prosperity were the prize possession of the ancient Israelites. Instead of seeing God’s blessings in their lives, they saw themselves as people who could engineer their own happiness with their own hands and little bit of luck. This is what pride does to a person.

The solution: throw away the idols

The solution for Gollums of today is to throw away stuffs engineered in our pride and to make the room to be full of God. That is what we see in Isaiah 2:20, “In that day men will throw away to the rodents and bats their idols of silver and idols of gold, which they made to worship.” Why would any of us throw away that which we consider precious because we made it with our own hand, precious because it has cost us money, energy, and creativity?

Isaiah gives us two reasons. Two reasons are repeated captured in these phrases, “the dread of the LORD” and “the splendor of his majesty.” He does it in verse 10, 19, and 21.

  • “The dread of the LORD” answers, “Who is in charge?” Isaiah says in verse 12, “The LORD Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted (and they will be humbled),” verse 17, “the arrogance of the man will be brought low, the pride of men humbled.” When you filter through yourself and what the stuff represent through this question, you can identify if you are holding on to idols.
  • “The splendor of his majesty” answers, “Who is it for?” Another helpful way to identify idols is to ask this question. If it is sorely for our own pleasure while does nothing to bring glory to God, you know you have something that needs to go.

May God allow us to be courageous people who deal with the idols in life and the areas of pride with decisive action to rid of them!


[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/sports/23sportsbriefs-jordan.html

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