Isaiah 2:1-5
1 This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:
2 In the last days
the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.3 Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.5 Come, descendants of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Climb the Mountain of the Lord
I get to talk about one of my favourite things today – mountains. If I asked you to name a mountain, what is one of the first that would come to mind?
Maybe you think of Everest or K2 in the Himalayas. Maybe you think of more exotic mountains, like Fuji or Kilimanjaro. Maybe for you it’s more local; we have world-class mountains in our backyard, like Robson and Rundle.
Have you ever heard of Mt. Moriah? Mt. Moriah is the mountain that Isaiah talks about in chapter 2. It has been a minute since we read those words. Allow me to read them to you again:
This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.[1]
That is high praise for the mountain of the Lord’s temple. But here’s the thing: compared to all those other mountains we mentioned, Mt. Moriah is kind of unimpressive. Let me put it into context for you:
Mount Everest is, of course, the tallest mountain in the world. It stands at an elevation just north of 29,000ft above sea level. Mt. Moriah has an elevation of only about 2,100ft. Mount Everest is more than 10x the size of Mt. Moriah!
You’ve probably never been to Mount Everest, though. How many of you have been to Banff? Mount Rundle – the big mountain, right outside the townsite – has an elevation of 9,600ft. That’s still more than 4x the size of Mt. Moriah!
Tunnel Mountain – the small hill next to the townsite of Banff – has an elevation of 5,500ft. That’s still more than 2x the size of Mt. Moriah.
Mt. Moriah, in Judah, in Israel, has no business being mentioned in the same breath as any of these other mountains! It would take some serious tectonic shifts to drastically alter the face of the planet for Mt. Moriah to be the highest of the mountains on earth. And yet, Mt. Moriah really is the “chief of the mountains” not because of its elevation, but because of all the things that happened there.
The first time we hear about Moriah is all the way back in Genesis 22, about 2,000 years before Christ:
Then God said [to Abraham], “Take your son, your only son, whom you love – Isaac – and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”[2]
Mt. Moriah is the place where God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, whom he loved, and amazingly Abraham was willing to do it! He obeyed God’s command. He traveled for three days to get to that mountain. He built an altar. He bound his son, and he got so far as to lift the knife to take his son’s life, before God intervened and supplied a substitute sacrifice – a ram to be offered in Isaac’s place.
Not only did Abraham demonstrate his complete commitment to and faith in God, God demonstrated his grace and compassion and love to Abraham and Isaac. Isaac was as good as dead, but God intervened to save his life and to foreshadow a similar future sacrifice.
Fast forward 1,000 years. King David had disobeyed God and aroused his anger, so much so that God sent the angel of death to plague the Israelites with a deadly disease for 3 days. In just 3 days, seventy thousand people died until the angel of death reached Mt. Moriah. There – in the same place where God spared Isaac – God showed mercy again. He relented from his anger and withdrew the angel of death and directed David to build an altar in the same place that Abraham did. And from that day on, David set his sight on that site as the location for the future temple of the Lord.
David didn’t end up building that temple. His son Solomon did. But when that temple was dedicated, the physical presence of God in the form of a pillar of fire and cloud came to rest in that temple on that mountain and it became the permanent residence of the physical presence of God on earth. The temple was the place where sacrifices were made for the sins of the people every day, where God announced his grace to generations of sinners, where people made pilgrimages for 1,000 years.
On Mt. Moriah – the mountain of the Lord – Abraham built an altar. David built an altar. Solomon built a temple. On Mt. Moriah – the mountain of the Lord – God saved Isaac, God spared Israel, God accepted the sacrifices of millions. All three of those historical events would be enough to raise Mt. Moriah’s profile above so many other taller mountains where not nearly as many important events took place.
But there was one more event that would take place in that same place that would spring Mt. Moriah’s profile into the stratosphere, and we read about it – or at least the beginning of it – in our Gospel for today. Just like generations of believers before him, Jesus made his annual pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem. He did exactly what the people in Isaiah’s prophecy said:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob.”[3]
On Palm Sunday, Jesus climbed that mountain for the last time. He went there for the same reason that Isaac did 2,000 years earlier – to be sacrificed by his father – only in Jesus’ case there wouldn’t be any last second substitution. Jesus was the substitute for you and me. For sinners like us of every time and place who deserved to die for our disobedience, Jesus died instead. And when he died there, he didn’t just spare Jerusalem or Judea. His death gave life to the whole world. His sacrifice was complete. No more animals would ever have to be slain in Solomon’s temple for sins to be forgiven. Jesus’ sacrifice was all that was necessary, once for all. So that all could live in peace.
Isaiah prophesied about that peace. He said:
They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.[4]
Sounds pretty dreamy, doesn’t it? You know that war going on in Ukraine? What if all those tanks were decommissioned and buried in the ground and converted into root cellars? What if all those rifles were turned into rakes and all those guns into gardening tools? So many prayers would be answered! So many people would be safe! Even our lives half a world a way would be so much better financially and emotionally.
That kind of peace sounds pretty dreamy, doesn’t it? That’s the kind of peace that Jesus came to bring – only his peace would be even better. It would be the kind of peace that Paul says “transcends all understanding.”[5] It was the kind of peace that the angels announced at the first Christmas, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”[6]
Peace is what Jesus came to bring, but not a peace between nations. He didn’t come with armies of angels to assert his authority. He climbed the mountain of the Lord on a donkey. He didn’t come to impose sanctions until he bent the nations of this world to his will. He came to make a sacrifice to save sinners like you and me. The peace that we need most is not a peace between nations; it’s a peace between people – sinners – and God.
You know, sometimes in the season of Advent we like to pretend as if we are the people Isaiah was writing to. We try to scrub our brains of the memory of Jesus’ birth and relive the excitement again. There’s something to that. I think there’s value in understanding what Jesus’ birth meant in the moment. But that’s not what Advent is about for you and me.
Jesus is still coming. He came once and when he did he raised the profile of Mt. Moriah above all the other impressive mountains of this world by dying there and securing salvation for every believer everywhere who puts his trust in Jesus.
But for us, the season of Advent is a reminder that Jesus will come again. And Isaiah tells us what he’ll do:
He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many people.[7]
Then they’ll beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Then he will usher in an unprecedented peace.
The sad thing about this promise is that until Jesus comes again, war will continue, blood will still be shed. But the amazing thing about this promise is that in the meantime we can still climb the mountain of the Lord – even if we never book a trip to Israel – and we can still go up to the temple of the God of Jacob – even though it was torn down centuries ago and was never rebuilt. We can still learn his ways and walk in his paths, because the mountain of the Lord’s temple is wherever his Word is.
For an hour on a Sunday this is where we join in with those Palm Sunday worshipers and praise Jesus’ name as he climbs Mt. Moriah for the last time. While you’re eating cereal at the breakfast table, you can be reading about the sacrifice that Jesus made for you on the cross. On your drive to school or work you can be listening to the promises he makes of absolute justice and abiding peace that transcends all understanding. You are the living fulfillment of this prophecy; whenever you instruct your children to come to church or invite a friend to join you for worship, you are saying to them,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”[8]
Jesus already came once as our Saviour at Christmas to make peace between us and our God, to forgive our sin and to give us the certain hope of heaven. Jesus is coming again, this time as King to put an end to all evil and sin, and to usher you into the kingdom he has prepared for you. Until that day, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”[9] Amen.
[1] Isaiah 2:1,2
[2] Genesis 22:2
[3] Isaiah 2:3
[4] Isaiah 2:4
[5] Philippians 4:7
[6] Luke 2:14
[7] Isaiah 2:4
[8] Isaiah 2:3
[9] Isaiah 2:5