2 The word which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 Now it will come about that
In the last days
The mountain of the house of the Lord
Will be established [a]as the chief of the mountains,
And will be raised above the hills;
And all the nations will stream to it.
3 And many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
That He may teach us [b]concerning His ways
And that we may walk in His paths.”
For the [c]law will go forth from Zion
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 And He will judge between the nations,
And will [d]render decisions for many peoples;
And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not lift up sword against nation,
And never again will they learn war.5 Come, house of Jacob, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.
6 For You have abandoned Your people, the house of Jacob,
Because they are filled with influences from the east,
And they are soothsayers like the Philistines,
And they strike bargains with the children of foreigners.
7 Their land has also been filled with silver and gold
And there is no end to their treasures;
Their land has also been filled with horses
And there is no end to their chariots.
8 Their land has also been filled with idols;
They worship the work of their hands,
That which their fingers have made.
9 So the common man has been humbled
And the man of importance has been abased,
But do not forgive them.
10 Enter the rock and hide in the dust
From the terror of the Lord and from the splendor of His majesty.
11 The [e]proud look of man will be abased
And the loftiness of man will be humbled,
And the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.
We see first a picture of the last days, which are still to come. I think perhaps the Jews of Jesus’ time thought the Messiah would bring that to pass, but it is still in the future for us yet today. It shows an interesting picture though, which is in contrast to the following verses. In short, people from all over will say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord… that we may walk in His paths.”
By contrast, Isaiah then describes the state of Judah in vv. 5-8. They were filled with influences from the east, and were soothsayers. There was no end to their treasures, the land was filled with horses, and you couldn’t even begin to count the chariots. Yet the root of it all was that they worshipped idols, the very work of their own hands. What a foolish thing to do, right?
But read it again, and see if it does not describe our culture today. Oh sure, we don’t build statues to worship, we’re too sophisticated for that! Instead, we devote our adoration to all sorts of other things: cars, houses, our jobs, games, clothing, etc. In the same exact way, we fall prey to the same foolish notion, worshipping the work of our own hands.
All the while, we neglect what is important. Jesus boiled it all down very nicely when he said the most important command was to love God, and the second much like it, to love our neighbor. What do we do instead? We try to play God, and climb on the back of our neighbor to climb an imaginary ladder to nowhere.
Isaiah told us plainly, “the loftiness of man will be humbled, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.” What are we waiting for, when we can exalt Him willingly today? We need to put aside our striving after vain ambition, recognize “the splendor of His majesty”, and seek God first, above all else. It’s what we were wired to do, and we try so many cheap substitutes. Don’t settle for anything less than the best, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, whose kingdom knows no end.