King Jesus, Our Coming Hope
--Isaiah 2:1-5
Traditionally the first Advent candle and the theme for this Sunday is “Hope.” When we hope for something we have confidence that it will happen. Hope is the expectation that our dreams will become reality. The greatest English poet of the eighteenth century Alexander Pope penned these immortal words in his An Essay on Man:
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never IS, but always TO be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
[SOURCE: Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733]
It seems we never achieve but always desire, we always hope for “peace on earth among those whom God favors.” The prophecy of Isaiah in our text assures us that our hope will become reality when Jesus, our King, returns and reigns as the Promised Messiah of Israel over all His creation.
Hope is confidence that something we desire will happen. Hope looks to the future. In Scripture hope looks to the future with “confident expectation” and “solid assurance.” In the Bible our chief, supreme hope as Christians is the return of Jesus Christ in His Second Coming. Paul reminds us in Titus 2:13 that “we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”
Often the Old Testament prophecies of the Coming of Christ overlap their presentation of events that took place in His First Coming with those that will happen at His Return. During Advent most of our Scripture readings look forward to His Coming Again. Advent is thus a time of joyous, confident expectation that the King of Kings is going to return and reign in victory over all His creation.
Our passage in Isaiah looks forward to that Day of the Return of Jesus. It give us assurance that He will indeed right all wrongs and usher in the time we have all expectantly awaited, that time of “peace on earth among those whom God favors.”
Isaiah’s ministry took place some 700 years before the birth of Jesus, yet his prophecy today is as contemporary as the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Summit at Annapolis this week, for as Disciples of Jesus Christ we all know beyond any doubt that the time is coming when there will be lasting peace on earth to which Isaiah testified some 2700 years ago. As we celebrate Advent and Christmas in 2007, this is our “blessed hope.”
Isaiah begins his testimony of a glorious, peaceful future by telling us in verse two that “all the nations of the world shall stream to the LORD’S HOUSE.” All the nations of our world belong to our God and King. Today many of them may blindly follow Allah, Buddha, the many gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, or acknowledge no divine authority at all, but God Himself declares in Exodus 19:5, “Indeed, the whole earth is mine.”
Jesus Christ is the Only Saviour of all the nations, as He asserts in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” The whole earth is God’s, and Jesus is the Only Way to peace with God. When He returns, “all the nations of the world shall stream to the LORD’S HOUSE in Jerusalem.” The Day is coming, as Paul assures us in Philippians 2:10-11 when, “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” People of all nations will be motivated to surrender to Jesus and follow Him as Isaiah shows us in verse three of our text:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that He may teach us His ways
and that we may walk in His paths.”
That Day is coming when people around the world will hunger to walk in the paths of Jesus, and they will bow before Him confessing “that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
Our blessed hope is that Jesus is coming to “judge between the nations.” When He returns, Jesus will bring justice for all wrongs that have ever been committed even though originally many seemingly went unpunished. Multiple passages of Scripture affirm this fact. Isaiah 11:3-4 is one of the great Messianic promises which presents Jesus as the Judge who brings justice to all the earth: “He will never judge by appearance, false evidence, or hearsay. He will defend the poor and the exploited. He will rule against the wicked and destroy them with the breath of his mouth. He will be clothed with fairness and truth.”
When Jesus returns, the poor and exploited will receive justice, for He is the One whose judgment is always fair and true. It will be a joyful time when Jesus returns to judge the world as the Psalmist declares in Psalm 96:12-13
Let the fields and their crops burst forth with joy!
Let the trees of the forest rustle with praise before the LORD!
For the LORD is coming!
He is coming to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness
and all the nations with his truth.
Justice does not always prevail in our courts today. The poor and the exploited are often victims of our judicial system, but when Jesus comes, He will judge with “righteousness and truth.” This is our blessed hope. When Christ returns, justice will prevail throughout the world.
When Jesus returns, there will finally be a “lasting peace on earth.” “Man’s inhumanity to man will finally come to an end.” When Jesus judges all the nations:
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
The world’s armies will exchange instruments of war for instruments of peace, and
troupes will no longer train to go to war. Isaiah paints the beautify portrait of peace in chapter 11 by reminding us that under the rule of Jesus “the wolf will lie down with the lamb, the leopard with the kid, the calf with the lion.” The Lord Himself sums it up in Isaiah 11:9:
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
All these Scriptures picture a world where all the nations live in peace with each other under the reign of Jesus as their Messiah-King.
It is noble that our President and Secretary of State have desired to establish peace in the Middle East especially between Israel and her Arab neighbors in Palestine. However, no American President, Secretary of State, other world leader or power can accomplish that hope and dream. Such peace can only come through Jesus Christ reigning as King of Kings on the throne of David and as the Prince of Peace. We have the assurance that day indeed is coming.
The Kingdom of God is realized in two stages represented by the First and Second Comings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Because He came to sacrifice His life on the cross for our redemption, right now, as Paul reminds us in Philippians 4:7, “the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.” By His Death and Resurrection through the Holy Spirit at work in us, Jesus has given us inner peace, freedom from a troubled and worried heart, the peace He promises in John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
When He comes again, Jesus will establish that outward peace everyone has craved throughout history, peace among all the peoples and nations of the world. That is the peace for which we hope, the Day when under His reign “swords will be beaten in plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.” This is our blessed hope to which we look forward this Advent. We have absolute assurance He is coming again to establish that peace throughout our world.
When Jesus returns justice will prevail and the nations of the world will live together in peace under His reign. Difficult and perilous times no doubt will face us between now and that Great Day when He comes again; tomorrow morning’s news may be bleak, but the future is bright, because Jesus Christ is in charge and control of human events and history. He is coming again, He is our blessed hope; and He brings with Him lasting “peace on earth among those He favors.”
Therefore, let us wait with great expectation for His Coming. May we be ready in an instant to meet Him whenever that Day may come. He speaks to us this Advent as He did to John in Revelation 22:20, “Surely I am coming soon.” With open, hopeful, and receptive hearts may our daily prayer and response to Him be the same as that of the Apostle John: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”
