The Great Reversal :: Isaiah 2:1-5
The Lord is shifting everything into reverse.
Jesus is taking things the way they are and making them the way they should be. He is making all things new, especially you. He is turning the corrupt into the incorruptible. The Lord is shifting everything into reverse. Jesus, the second Adam who made all things, has come to make you like the first Adam, only better. He will transform the earthly Jerusalem into a heavenly one. It will be like the Garden of Eden, only better. God in the flesh became the sacrifice to end all sacrifices ... like the Passover lamb, only better. Jesus ascended the mountain and now is preparing to come down for us once again. He is shifting everything into reverse.
This is what Isaiah is preaching from his prophetic pulpit today.
Isaiah is telling us about a mountain that has been raised so high it makes Everest look like one of our rolling hills. Every other mountain and hill must salute its elevation. Like rivers, the nations will soon flow upward to this heavenly peak. No gravitational pull can put the brakes on this motion. The rivers will flow upward to water paradise. Things are being reversed.
There, swords-crafted-into-plowshares open the earth for seed, food, life. Warriors are turned into farmers. Spears, pruning hooks. Everything is being changed from bad into better. Jesus is giving the world a new Genesis. The Creator is making all things new ... all things new for you. God is shifting everything in reverse.
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So it is in Advent: Jesus comes. The world to which he comes is in dire need of this advent. We will kill ourselves apart from it.
Oh, sure, we’ve tried to perfume our world. Most hours of most days, we live in a delusional world of make-believe. We try to mask the sickness and decay ... but such vanity is truly in vain. The face of our world is pockmarked with graves and the stench of sin and death. We cover that with flowers. We speak of it in euphemistic terms.
When you were born, you took your first step toward the edge of your tomb. We began judging things for ourselves, by our own standards, and pretending they aren’t so bad. We exaggerate our innocence, and impute false motives to others. We pretend to have pure motives ... but our purity is purely self-serving or ... at best ... a motley mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. We pretend to confess our sins, but we ignore so many more of them. Noone knows what I am doing in the privacy of my own room, we tell ourselves. Then we begin to believe our lies. Our ears grin at the gossip we share. Our adulterous hearts are rated XXX.
Do you even recognize how degenerate you’ve become?
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Repent! Lift up your eyes and you will see God is reversing all things.
Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord (v. 5).
This is why Jesus lived for you, suffered for you, and died for you ... so that you can see your sin ... dead and hanging on his cross.
It is why he was buried for you, and rose from the grave for you, so that you can see the result of your redemption and have faith in him ... and hope in his promise to you that everlasting life is yours now. God in the flesh has come to reverse all things. This is why he was baptized to fulfill all righteousness. It is why he gave us his Supper, to nourish and nurture our faith. God is reversing all things.
Advent is his present to you, wrapped in the living colors of his skin, flesh, bones, and blood. Behold, your king is coming. He comes running to those who can’t even begin to crawl to him. He turns around everything: your guilt into forgiveness, your lies into his truth, your death and shame into life in his name. Jesus has reversed everything. He’s calling you back to a place you’ve never been before ... the place of perfection and innocence ... to Mount Eden.
Isaiah prophesied about this. It will come to pass in the end of days that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the highest of the mountains (v 2). This is God’s turf, the place where he is found. It is the peak of peaks. It is the mountain called Zion, the city of the living God. It is the place heaven and earth meet. It is the mountain named the Church. For when the Creator is lifted up to hang bleeding and dying between heaven and earth, there he lifted up this one, holy, Christian, and apostolic mountain. It is a new and better Zion, formed from the raw materials of his flesh and blood. By his living, bleeding, rising, and ascending, he crafted the place where sin and death are no more. Here, he brought you to the living waters of the font. Here, he nourishes you with his living body and blood for the forgiveness of sins.
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You are now a citizen of Zion. He is lifting you from this valley of sorrows into paradise. Adam and Eve were booted out of this paradise ... the Garden we call Eden. You are pulled back in by the new Adam ... our Lord Jesus Christ. He is bringing you back to Eden that is one with Zion. Here, we are all one in Christ Jesus. Near Zion of old was the temple where God dwelt amidst his people. But on this new Zion, there is no temple of wood and stone ... It is a temple of skin, blood, bones, hands, feet. For the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. Our temple is not a building, but the babe of Bethlehem who was born to die and then to give birth to new life. All the nations flow up to this mountain, says Isaiah, for they are carried there on the river of salvation. Through the door of the font you flowed into his flesh. And in the body of the Son of God you are cleansed. Here, all the hideousness of your sin vanishes. Here, you are lovely in the eyes of the Lord, righteous in his sight.
Until the last trumpet sounds, men with blood in their eyes will haunt this world. But God has brought us peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding because it stands under the banner of the crucifix.
CHRIST JESUS HAS SHIFTED EVERYTHING INTO REVERSE
Welcome to the mountain called Zion, the Church of the Firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. This is why Jesus came and is coming.