Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Isaiah 54:11-17
## Pastor Tuuri

Sermon text today is Isaiah 54:11-17. There are handouts. They got put out a little late, but Isaiah 54:11-17. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

“Oh afflicted one, storm tossed and not comforted. Behold, I will set your stones in antimony. Lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of agate, your gates of carbuncles, and all your walls of precious stones. All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.

In righteousness you shall be established. You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near you. If anyone stirs up strife, it’s not from me. Whoever stirs up strife with you shall fall because of you. Behold, I have created the smith who blows the fire of coals and produces a weapon for its purpose. I have also created the ravager to destroy. No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall confute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.

This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this mighty word to us. We thank you for the tremendous gospel promises found herein and help us, Father, to take great hope today, great confidence about our future individually, corporately and as a people. Help us, Father, to delight in these texts. May your Spirit write them upon our hearts, transform us by them that we would be a people of confidence, courage, and focus in Jesus’ name we ask it.

Amen. Please be seated.

The coloring sheet for today is actually a picture that I photoshopped—I don’t know what I did. Some kind of clip art deal, probably 15 years ago, of a church and a capitol building. The church is steeple, one of those high places, towers, places that reflect the sun from our text. It has that cross on it. It’s actually on the cover.

We have a little tape set in the library where I gave four talks on the Christian and political action, I don’t know, 10 or 15 years ago. I think down at the OPC church in Grants Pass. Actually, now that I bring it up, I want to do an early election day sermon. That was one of the traditions of the Puritan pastors in America and other colonial pastors—to preach election day sermons as they’re about to enter into a civil election. And so I’ve done this more often than not over the years. This can suffice for that. And I’m doing it a little early today.

If you happen to attend the parish group meetings, one of the things we’ve encouraged the groups to do is to discuss the seven statewide ballot measures here in Oregon. That is, to begin a discussion of those. October 17th in Oregon, the ballots were actually mailed. So we’re two months out from people voting on this thing.

There’s a little bit of selfishness in my request for you to discuss these things. And then next Sunday, I’d like to have a discussion with those here at church, after the service, after the dinner, with those who would want to bring some insight as well. I have to finish a draft for a voter’s guide by September 1st. So that’s what I’m doing. And I thought, well, let’s get people thinking about the election. This seems to be a particularly important one in the context of our lives.

This text—we talked about last week on towers, walls, gates. They’re related to this election, of course, on October 17th. Gates, particularly, are places of judgment and rule. We elect rulers. We change or don’t change our statutes and our constitution based on these seven ballot measures directly, etc.

Now, it’s interesting to me. We’re in this controversy, and I know that the Lord’s day is a day of rest. I’d like to be at peace today, and we don’t want to hear all those nasty things going on in the country. But there they are. And the good news in Isaiah 54 is set in the context of trouble and affliction and being tempest tossed.

And so we’ve had a series of things going on here in our state and nation over the last few weeks that of course heighten the intensity of the political season this particular year. We’re at a different time than at least in my lifetime we’ve ever been at. I’ll talk more about that toward the end of the sermon. But I did want to prepare you just with a little bit of help as you discuss with your neighbors and friends and co-workers if you do this same-sex marriage situation with the judge.

One of the things that’s going to activate a lot of people to get involved in the election in November, even though there’s no direct result from that to this. You know, I think I mentioned this last week, but it’s interesting watching the dialogue about this. I read the Oregon Oregonian editorial, the one from the Christian political activist friend of mine last week in the Sunday Oregonian that was referenced in the Q&A after the sermon, and I found it disappointing—no reference to faith systems at all.

Now, the three major religions of this country are Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. They all oppose homosexual same-sex marriages. I don’t know why we think we can’t use the G word. You know, we feel more free to use some other four-letter words than we are the three-letter word of God in these conversations, which is passing strange. We’ve moved into this kind of secularized version of public dialogue that is very harmful and destructive.

You know, the fact is this country has had a de facto, if not dare, at least, you know, practical Christian theocracy in place for 200 years. Now, the last 50, 100 years it’s been whittled away, but that’s what it was. A theocracy is different than an ecclesiocracy. An ecclesiocracy is where a church runs the government. We don’t believe in that. A theocracy just means that the laws of the civil state and the way we conduct ourselves in the city are informed by God’s word and are attempting to be glorifying to God in what we do.

And American jurisprudence has been based upon English common law, which was based upon the Ten Commandments and the Old Testament and the case laws, etc. You know, it’s just a fact that we are a Christian theocratic republic. We were for most of our history as a nation a Christian theocratic republic. Now, I’m sorry if that offends you. Theocracy these days is even worse than the G word in public circles.

And as we leave theocracy, as the culture moves away from theocracy, I think Joshua 24:14 and 15 are appropriate:

“Now therefore, Joshua said, ‘Fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. And if it’s evil in your eye to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers, the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me, in my house, I will serve the Lord.’”

A verse that’s frequently misunderstood. “Choose this day.” You’re going to serve God, you’re going to serve idols. That’s not what he says. He says, “Serve God. Be a theocrat. And if you’re not going to be a theocrat, well, then pick which idol you’re going to serve in the public arena.”

You know, are you going to be a Republican guy, a Democrat guy, a liberal, a conservative? You know, which kind of statism, anarchy, European socialism, Marxism, capitalism with no governmental restraint on it? I mean, choose the idol if you want to. And that’s what people are doing.

We’re trying to talk about same-sex marriage without reference to the faith of the scriptures. Now, one practical thing to help you a little bit. So it’s about civil rights, and Judge Walker’s decision had two bases for it. The biggest one is found in the 14th Amendment. And so homosexuals and lesbians say we don’t have civil rights to get married.

Well, they do. Every person, you know, of age has a right to marry in every state in this country. Now, that right is bounded by three characteristics. You can’t marry a near kinsperson in any of the states. You can’t marry somebody else who’s already married, and you can’t marry somebody of the same sex. There are restrictions on every person in the country in terms of what we can do in terms of marriage. There’s no disequality of rights. This is not a rights issue. The right to marry is not a right that has no bounds to it.

Again, a homosexual, a lesbian can marry within those three bounds anybody they want to. Now they want to get rid of one of those three bounds. And we have all kinds of interesting, you know, pluralistic, secularist, natural law arguments as to why we shouldn’t. And I say we shouldn’t because the Bible says we shouldn’t.

And I say that if you give up one of those three qualifications, you’re probably moving toward giving up all three of them because all three of them were based on the Christian theocratic foundation of this country. That’s where they come from. Listen, you know, pagan cultures have married their sisters and brothers and first cousins and mothers, whatever, for generations, centuries. There’s nothing in nature that tells us that’s a bad thing. Okay, all kinds of, you know, cultures and people have had multiple wives. There’s nothing in nature that says any different. We can look at all kinds of examples in the animal world.

The reason these three prohibitions are there is because they are based in Christian theocracy. Now, they happen to be supported in the other major faith systems, and that’s a good thing to point out. But don’t let somebody buffalo you that somebody’s not got their civil rights going on. Every adult of age has the ability to marry, and they’re not denied that ability. They all have the same bounds that are found in a theocratic republic.

But if we don’t want to do that anymore, if we don’t want to have our laws framed, well, then choose which law system you’re going to have, which idolatrous law system you’re going to use as we approach the election.

You see, whether it’s that issue, which we won’t vote on, but all kinds of other issues, and all kinds of candidates—that should be kind of at our foundational level. The text tells us that God wants gates and walls, political security and justice in the courts coming from a people who are taught by him.

“Your children shall all be taught by me.”

In the first sense, that “children” means the children of the city. It doesn’t mean little kids. It means everybody—all the people of that city. The city Jerusalem is seen as a mother. And so all your children will be taught of the Lord. So the scriptures in this great promise that it gives us ties together—the guarding function of the civil magistrate (walls) and justice function (gates)—to the idea of being taught of the Lord on the basis of his word.

Now, all you got to do is subscribe to the paper. I’m subscribing to the paper to begin Pac is for me to the political season. See, you know, kind of comment on the news. And every day I open it up, there’s something else that shows how far we’ve drifted.

And I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, but just the last couple of days I opened the paper and one thing was Tri-Met wants $150 million bond floated or whatever it is to finance new buses. And I guess that what they’re really doing is they’re trying to pay about that much money for light rail to Milwaukee, but that would be turned down. You know, tax receipts are fungible—these kind of money that are fungible, they kind of move around whatever.

Is it really the job of the civil magistrate to buy buses for the Woodstock generation? Now, yeah, I know we enjoy them. Is it their job? No. The scriptures say the civil magistrate has quite a limited function.

Next thing I saw the next day, the paper opened up in 4. Right, they got the county fairs going on, and the kids don’t have to pay much money now to show off their sheep and their cows because a tax measure was passed by the voters, and now your taxes go to support, you know, Johnny or Jill coming in from the farm to show their animals.

Now, I, you know, I like farms and I like farmers and I like little kids getting involved in animal husbandry and all that stuff, but is that really the function of civil government to take money away from one citizen at the point of, you know, compulsion? They’re going to throw you in jail if you don’t pay your taxes to pay for another citizen’s kids to go into 4. Two little examples.

But a Christian theocratic republic had a very limited role for civil government, and what we have now is a tremendous excess of involvement in civil government in all kinds of areas.

One last introductory comment here. Another thing I’m starting to hear from Christians is, well, why have the civil government involved in marriage at all? You know, why are they? You know, it’s just the libertarians. Well, the problem, you know, is not homosexuals. The problem is we got the state involved in marriage. Do you know why it is? Because America is a theocratic republic, a theocratic republic based upon European Reformation that was ongoing in Europe.

And during Calvin’s time at Geneva, they passed a marriage ordinance. And to protect women primarily—that was the biggest reason for it. They said that a marriage isn’t a legitimate or lawful marriage unless it’s witnessed by the church and registered with the state. The state has to be involved because of inheritance—in terms of prohibiting some guy from marrying the girl over in this county, marrying the next girl over here in some private ceremony and having sex with five or six gals down the line.

You see, and Geneva they said, “No, the state has a legitimate role in the function of marriage.” Now, we may or may not agree with that, but let’s not cavalierly give up that one more element of our Christian theocratic republic because we don’t like the way it’s being used today by the people on the wrong side of this debate.

So we are about a Christian theocratic republic. And this church believes that in Deuteronomy, when God told the Israelites that he would give them civil laws that would be so wonderful other nations want to emulate them, we believe that’s true. And we believe that as we take the law of God and make application correctly and wisely in our particular social setting, then we think that’s going to be beautiful. It’ll be a beautiful thing to have happen in the context of our culture and other people will like it, and we’ll have a lot of people wanting to immigrate to such a country.

So you know, that’s what I want to kind of introduce this with. And I want to kind of put now the verses that we began to talk about last week—that cities are manifestations of culture, all the beauty going on, justice, safety—that we’re trying to put this now in a context of what these things are tied to in the very next verse of the text.

So in Isaiah 54, we read those things. But before I get into it, one last thing here, by way of before we get into it. Look at verse 11b and 12. Open your Bibles.

This came to me in sleeplessness in the middle of the night as my air conditioner cycled on and off, waking me up. And I thought about these verses, and I thought, “This is really, you know, there’s when God does this, when he strings together a set of descriptors, it’s interesting.”

And I think God wants us to meditate upon these things. There’s a beauty to what he does. And I notice something here, right? So he says, “I’m going to lay—I’ll set your stones in antimony.”

So stones are set in a black mortar like the kind they used for mascara back then. So stones—black mortar—are part of this. By the way, we’ll talk next week. I’m going to do a topical sermon on what beauty is as we find it in the scriptures. But right away, the first thing he tells us is these stones are going to be more beautiful because he set them in contrast with black. So that’s interesting. Contrast is an element of beauty.

But in any event, you got stones. You’ve got them set in black mortar, and then you’ve got sapphires that the foundations are laid with. Then you’ve got agate for the towers and the gates of carbuncles. Okay, and then there’s precious, desirable—that’s that last word—and then stones again.

And remember, we said the description begins and ends with building blocks—stones. God’s building a beautiful city. And going in from the stones, we got seven elements here, which I hadn’t noticed before. Really, seven of them, beginning and ending with stone. And the second and sixth one are related. They’re set in this beautiful black mortar. And the last description is they’re desirable. They kindle desire. They make you feel warm toward it. You want to be around that beautiful thing.

And so this contrast is linked in this sevenfold structure to desirability. So desirability is enhanced by that kind of thing. And right at the middle, then, is you got the three gemstones. Okay, so stones, building blocks, their setting and desirability, and then three gemstones in the middle. That’s interesting to me.

And it’s interesting to me that the contrast of stones in black settings in the second slot can be thought of in terms of the firmament, and the division of waters above and waters below. And there’s a lot more, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things you could think about and meditate on with the sevenfold element.

But there’s an example. It’s not a text that immediately just gives you very simply seven things—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But if you take the descriptors of the elements away from the architectural points they’re doing with foundations, towers, walls, and gates, you end up with this beautiful seven that has a symmetry to it.

God’s word is beautiful, okay? And God is a beautifier. God has, from the beginning of creation, been a beautifier. He’s making things more and more beautiful. Right, this is the pattern in the creation week. He does something light, beautiful, and he takes it down, goes into death, sleep, or darkness—whatever you want to call it. Darkness happens. Next day he does something else, and it’s more beautiful. Third day, plants start to grow up—more beautiful land away from sea—more beautiful. Fourth day, sun, moon, and stars—beautiful. He increases beauty throughout the creation week. Right, this is kind of obvious, but it’s what he’s doing.

And the promise here—the great promise of this text—remember, this is a text that follows Isaiah 53, the work of the Savior. He is producing beauty. And he’s going to build beautiful cities, and that beauty is seen in their justice, in their security, and in their culture.

And when a city leaves a theocratic understanding, now we have cities that are places of danger instead of safety. And now we have cities where injustice reigns. In Portland, for instance. And now we have cities where the art starts to become twisted and abstracted away from God and becomes intensely personal as a result. We’ll talk more about that next week.

But God is a beautifier. And this beauty that he describes, building this city, very importantly, is tied then to people.

So in verse 13, it says, “All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.”

So again, children—all of them—taught by the Lord, beauty—or peace, rather—in children. But what isn’t put in the translation is a tiny little Hebrew mark that is a conjunctive. It’s an “and.” It’s placed to tie this back to what was just said. This isn’t a new verse or a new section starting. It’s a new verse, but it’s not a new idea. This is tied to what was just said.

And ultimately, I think what he’s saying is the beauty. Yeah, I mean, gemstones are beautiful and mortar is cool and all that stuff, but ultimately, more beautiful—this is really a description of the people of God living in the city together. That’s what it is. The beauty are the children. And now remember, first and foremost, that’s adults—those who are taught by God, living together, having justice and loving mercy as we’ve talked about, loving safety for people (the walls), doing things together and harmoniously. This is the true beauty of the city. It’s the people that is reflected in architecture, but it’s not the architecture—it’s the people.

And God is beautifying us. You know, there’s a rainbow on my tie, and so I feel really bad about it now because we talked in Sunday school class about rank symbolism. I’m afraid I might have engaged in it. But rainbows are beautiful things, and I wish I had a real one to show you, but I don’t.

So, but a rainbow is a demonstration of the multicolored beauty of God’s throne room, right? And what I’m going to try to show you here is that’s us. These stones—some have referred to them as little chunks of the rainbow, right? These beautiful blue stones, the lapis lazuli, the agates, the red stones, the sapphires, the carbuncle, fire stones that have this heavenly fire and these beautiful colors them. They’re like little chunks we could think of out of the rainbow.

And in the text here, those stones are related to people. Now, this is not the only place—this is not even the primary place—but throughout the scriptures, this imagery between stones, precious stones, and beauty and the people of God is made.

So the wonderful promises contained in this text—these are things God will do it. He says, “I’ll set these things in order. I will accomplish this.” This is promise. This is gospel. This is good news.

And the good news is that he’s making you and us corporately and the world into beautiful people. Christians are the beautiful people, people of the world. Other people have beauty too, but there’s a particular beauty.

So God is beautifying people. He tells them, “All your children shall be taught by the Lord.” So this beauty is linked to instruction by God.

Jesus quotes this verse in John 6, and he says, “Everyone will be taught by the Lord.” And he says this right after saying that no one can come to me unless the Father draws him. So this is the sovereign work of God. And Jesus says the teacher of God will happen in his word indiscriminately to everyone. Those that are elected, that God is drawing to himself, will hear it and respond. And those people will become the beautiful stones that comprise the city of God in time and in history.

And so that’s us—the beautiful people that God has given to us.

Now let’s turn to Ezekiel 28. I referenced this last week, but I wanted to do this in a little more detail to kind of give you an image of what’s happening here in this text.

Now, there are several places in the scriptures where a bunch of jewels are mentioned together, okay? And in Exodus 28 and in Exodus 39, there’s a description of the breastplate of the high priest. The breastplate has 12 gemstones on his breastplate that he wears. And he’s got two onyx stones as well on his shoulders. Okay, he is a beautiful person. He is beautified by God. He puts on the glory of God. He puts on little pieces of the rainbow.

And he’s a representation of the throne of God made manifest among men. That’s what the high priest is. He’s beautiful, okay?

And so in Exodus 28, Exodus 39, and interestingly enough, the way the Bible works out, Ezekiel 28 and then Ezekiel 39 are also two sets of texts that talk about these descriptions.

Now, Ezekiel 28, it has two things going on. And in my Bible, the header beginning verse one says “the prophecy against the prince of Tyre.”

So now this is the prince of Tyre. He’s going to talk about the king of Tyre in a little bit. The prince of Tyre. And Tyre is the one who engages in all kinds of trade. In verse four, “You’ve made wealth for yourself. You’ve gathered gold and silver into your treasuries. In your great wisdom, in your trade, you’ve increased your wealth.”

But he says, “Now you’ve done things wrong and sinfully, and foreigners will come upon you—the most ruthless of the nations—and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom.”

Now, you know, I, we don’t know God’s eternal purposes for 9/11. But what we’ve seen is the swords of the most ruthless of nations—radical Islamic peoples—drawn against this nation, a trading nation, the prince of Tyre, we could say, great wealth. But our pride got us built up, and God humbles us as that happens.

But in any event, that’s the prince of Tyre. But then down in verse 11, look at verse 11:

“Wherever the word of the Lord came to me, son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre. That’s interesting. He’s just talked about the prince or ruler of Tyre, and now he’s talking about the king of Tyre. Say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, you are the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.’ So beauty is identified.”

Now, if we were to take the time, we would see that the robes and we’ll talk about this next week—the robes, this breastplate and this other stuff made for the high priest and his sons. The specific designation repeated several times is that their garments for glory and beauty. Beauty was personified by the dress, the wear—what he was wearing—of the high priest and the priestly group. Okay, so this king of Tyre is somebody who is emblematic, who is perfect in beauty.

“You’re in Eden, the garden of God.”

Now, the king of Tyre, the ruler of Tyre, wasn’t in Eden, in the garden of God. And who is this talking about? And as I mentioned last week, it seems like the best person that fits this image is that high priest.

And what we’re going to see here is a series of gemstones listed, just like there are gemstones in Exodus 28 and Exodus 39. Here we’ll see the same thing. And this person is in Eden. The garden of God is a representation of the church in the midst of the culture, okay? One little spot. The whole world is what man is to exercise dominion over, but this is the throne room, in the garden of Eden.

The high priest and the temple. Before that, the tabernacle is a representation of Eden. It’s the throne room. You know, it’s eventually in Solomon’s temple—it’s where the water flows out to water the whole world, etc., etc.

So the high priest was in Eden, the garden of God:

“We could say every precious stone was your covering. Your covering was all these precious stones in beauty.”

And then he lists it right here—a list as I said repeated in Exodus 28 and also chapter 39. Now, not all the same stones, but a lot of them overlap. But there’s this series of stones that is the covering of the high priest, and they’re crafted in gold in their settings, okay.

Verse 14:

“You are an anointed guardian cherub.”

That’s what priests do. They guard entrance to the sacrament of God. Not just anybody can take the Lord’s Supper, right? We have to guard the table, so to speak, and read a simple guarding statement—who’s supposed to come? And we don’t get up and wrestle anybody to the floor, but there may be times for that at some point in time. There have been in the history of the church.

And the high priest, the Levites—they guarded the tabernacle and temple as to who could get entrance. So the high priest is the top of this order. He’s an anointed, the priests were anointed, guardian cherubs. The same way the cherub guarded the garden, the high priest is guarding access to the holy of God, to the temple place itself.

“I placed you. You are on the mountain of God in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.”

So the generalized terms is in the midst of these stones of fire that are representations of the fiery glory of God. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you.

“In the abundance of your trade—now this is also engaged in trade. You are filled with violence in your midst, and you sin.”

Now, in Revelation, trade is talked about in terms of worship. In the book of Revelation, worship is trade. The high priest trades. The king of Tyre, the high priest, trades with the prince of Tyre. We trade with God. He comes here and trades with all of us. He receives things from us, and in worship, he gives us wonderful gifts. That’s the idea of the trade going on here—a transaction, so to speak.

“You are filled with violence, however, in your midst, and you sin. So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God. I destroyed you. He kicks him out of the temple. The high priest is destroyed and judged.”

“O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire, he’s expelled.”

But worse than that, it says:

“Your heart was proud because of your beauty. Corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground. I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you by the multitude of your iniquities. In the unrighteousness of your trade, you profaned your sanctuaries. I brought fire out from your midst. It consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you.”

So the high priest had stones of fire. He had the beauty, a representation of the fire of God’s presence. But when the high priest sinned and sinned grievously—and at different times in Israel’s history, they would—God would judge them, right? He would destroy them.

Presence to God is wonderful when you’re in good standing with him. Presence to God is not so wonderful when you’re sinful and in rebellion and filled with iniquity. Then the fire consumes you. And that’s what happened here.

“All who among the peoples are appalled at you. You have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever.”

So the high priest has these beautiful stones of fire, these gemstones, some of which are mentioned in Isaiah. But he has these things upon him. He’s a representation of that glory.

Now, in Revelation 21, the same thing is true of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. This is the other place where these lists of jewels are found.

So the list of jewels are found in, you know, the high priest and his garments in Exodus. Or Ezekiel rather, referring to the high priests in terms of his being sinful. And here they’re found in the very city of Jerusalem. And in Revelation 21, the new Jerusalem comes out of heaven, and he says:

“You have a radiance like a jewel most rare, like a jasper clear as crystal.”

And he says:

“You have gates—the sons of Israel are inscribed on the gates.”

And then in verse 18:

“The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel, just like the description in Isaiah 54, okay. First was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate.”

And the list goes on.

So in Revelation 21, the same thing that was true of the high priest is true of the whole city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven.

Ultimately, the high priest is a representation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the high priest, right? He’s the one clothed in beauty. He’s the one that in John 1:14 we read:

“The Word became flesh, dwelt among us. We have seen his glory—glory as of the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

He was beautiful.

But it’s interesting because Isaiah 53:2 says:

“He grew up before him like a young plant, like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.”

You know, we saw an illustration of the tabernacle this week. You’re going to have a life-sized replica of it here sometime in the next few months, I think in Gresham or someplace. The tabernacle had no exterior appearance of beauty. All the beauty was hidden within.

By the time we get to the temple, there’s much more of a manifestation of beauty. Jesus comes and tabernacles amongst us, and he has no exterior appearance of beauty that he should be desired. But his work is beautiful, and that work becomes manifest as we look at his character, we look at who he is, his righteousness before God. We behold his glory—the glory as of the only begotten.

And by the time we get to Revelation and Christ is ascended and appearing to the church in Revelation 1, Jesus has all that brilliant glory. He’s got that rainbow. His head is covered with a rainbow. He’s got beautiful, brilliant metal—descriptive of his body. Fire is part of his legs flowing down into the earth. Jesus has external glory, okay.

Jesus was the one who was beautified by God—incarnate, second person of the Trinity. Jesus is beautified by God.

And Revelation tells us that at the beginning, we see the glorified Jesus. And by the end of Revelation in 21, what do we see? We see the bride of Jesus coming down as a bride adorned for her husband. That’s you and me. We see the church, the new Jerusalem. We see Isaiah 54, the city that God has built. We see children taught of the Lord.

And what are they like? They have the same brilliance as the high priest, the same brilliance as the city of God, the same brilliance as Jesus Christ.

God is in the process of beautifying us, of taking us and making us more and more beautiful in history and in time. And this is exactly what First Peter says—that we’re these living stones. In 1 Peter 2:

“Put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. And then verse three or verse four, ‘You have come to him—a living stone—rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious.’”

No exterior appearance. Chosen and precious. The living stone that is Jesus Christ. He is the gemstone. He’s the beauty.

“You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house.”

That’s what we are. We’re being manifested into this beautiful spiritual house, the dwelling place of God. And how do we do it? By putting off malice and slander and bad speech.

The reformation and the beautification of the city described in Isaiah 54 takes place as a result of God’s people growing in sanctification, in justice, in mercy, and in humility before God. We’re the stones that are described there.

So the reformation, the restoration, the wonderful gospel promise of Isaiah 54 is that you and I are these little emblems of the rainbow walking around, that beautiful rainbow that’s around the throne of God. The stones of fire are representations of that glory. They come to earth in terms of representing the high priest Jesus, and then those who are with the high priest through covenant—us. We’re these little pictures.

God placed his bow in the sky as a memorial that he wouldn’t judge the earth. We’re that bow now. As long as you walk around the earth, beautiful living stones, God sees the world. I hope this isn’t going too far. But there’s a sense in which God sees the world through you. You’re that beautiful city come down from heaven, reflecting the glory of God.

Of course, it’s not anything inherent to us. And he doesn’t judge the world.

And as we walk around the world, if we’re beautiful, then we’re drawing the world to God, and we’re reminding the world that God hasn’t cursed the world because of the glory of Christ reflected in his church.

I think that’s our job. I think you know this—you know, this rainbow of mine, I’m going to let it shine.

When we get involved in these discussions of civil politics and we do not bring God into the equation, we take a blanket and we just cover ourselves up, and the words that come out—blah, blah, blah—”kids, good raising kids, yeah.” It means nothing to anybody because they’re just part of all the other streams of argumentation that good men make, and whatever.

God’s our beauty. That is beauty. Well, you know, it’s not beautiful to go spit in somebody’s face. Nobody would do that literally. But in terms of our conversation, we have grace and respect for other people. You know, we’re not jerks. We’re beautiful people. But the beauty lies in the teaching of God. That’s what the beauty is in Isaiah 54—that we’re all taught of God.

And to the extent that we understand God’s word and communicate it, we shine as bright lights, as little pieces of the rainbow here in the context of our world.

We are, as Peter says, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. And it’s our job to walk in the midst of the world where God has placed us, to shine forth, and as a result of that bring men to the beauty that is—ultimately—not the beauty of us, but the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is this wonderful promise of beautiful people. The gospel—the good news—is that because of what Jesus did, he now has created a beautiful humanity in the context of the world whose job it is to create beautiful cities, living in harmony, grace, mercy, doing justice, but loving mercy, walking humbly before God and one another. That’s the gospel—that God has brought that to pass in a great fuller sense than before the coming of Christ.

This side of the manifestation of Christ’s glory, this side of that, God is bringing to pass a beautiful people. That’s the gospel.

Now, live the gospel this week. Shine. Be a rainbow for Jesus. Think of yourself like that high priest with all those beautiful jewels. God’s polishing you. Some of you, you know, you’re walking around and you’re like those, you know, agates that haven’t been polished and cut yet, or you can’t see a darn thing. You look like a horrible, ugly rock. And, I or, there’s beauty there. But our job with each other is to pray for each other, encourage each other, and to recognize that God is bringing to pass beautiful gemstones in the context of our lives. That’s who we are in association with Christ. We are these little chunks of the rainbow.

We have beauty, and God is in the process of polishing that beauty and building a culture where we live together with the beauty of those who are taught by God.

Well, there’s the second wonderful promise: peace.

Verse 14—and righteousness. Or verse 13b, rather:

“Great shall be the peace of that people.”

Peace is the blessings of God. You want peace? You want blessing? You want Miller Time? You want to have a good time? You want a party? But that comes about as a result of God’s doing this work in our lives, right? But it’s a blessing and it’s a promise from God. He will teach us his word. He will establish this city, and great shall be our peace. That’s a promise from God.

Now, we have to work at it. There’s a response to this promise. But don’t miss the promise. God says, “Great will be your peace.”

In verse 14, he says:

“In righteousness, you shall be established.”

There’s no “may” to that. The church of Jesus Christ—you know, don’t be anxious during all this political stuff. Don’t be anxious. Be anxious for nothing. You shall be established. You shall be far from oppression. You shall not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near. Your peace will be ours. That’s the second great promise.

“Great shall be the peace of your children.”

As we said last week, earlier in this text, God has made the covenant of peace with us. And as a result, we have peace through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The third wonderful promise: ongoing vindication.

You’re going to have peace. You’ll be settled. If anyone stirs up strife, it’s not from me. What’ll happen? Whoever stirs up strife with you shall fall because of you.

We don’t have to worry about conflict. Yeah, it’s going to happen. But ongoing in history, enemies may be brought up, strife may be kindled, but our hope, our establishment of our peace and security is sure in the Lord Jesus Christ. And in time, God will bring that to pass.

Verse 17—or he says in verse 16:

“I have created the ravager to destroy.”

God has sovereignly created the ravager to destroy, but:

“No weapon that is formed against you shall succeed. You shall confute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.”

There’s a lot of tongues in this nation rising up against the church of Jesus Christ in judgment. We don’t have to worry about that. In fact, it would be sinful to be anxious about that. God says we’ll confute every tongue.

“This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. Their vindication from me, declares the Lord.”

God says that there’ll be ongoing vindication for the people of God in history. This is gospel. This is good news. People who were troubled and upset are now at peace and settled.

What’s the correct response to this wonderful news?

So the wonderful news is you’re the beautiful people. He’s granted you peace, and it will be more and more established, and it’ll be established through the vindication of the church against all enemies of the church of Jesus Christ. What’s our job?

We should protect.

Okay, back to homosexual marriage. I got some verses listed here, and you’re probably pretty familiar with them. But one of them is frequently misused, and I want to put it in context.

A lot of you, you know, have heard this from me before. But in Proverbs 24:10-12, we read:

“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Behold, we didn’t know this.’ Does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it? Will he not repay man according to his work?”

He says, “We’ve got a job, and our job is to rescue those stumbling to the slaughter.”

Now, the anti-abortion movement has seized on this verse—the rescue of children. Well, that may be a good application, but I think that in the context of Proverbs, who are the ones who have been described as going to the place of slaughter? People involved in sexual sin. The young man is led astray by the harlot. He goes down to her way. He thinks it’s all great, but it’s actually the way of death. He’s stumbling off into sexual sin and death.

Now, you know, I’m not some kind of prude here, but I am saying that sexual sin can have an overwhelming influence on somebody’s life, and it can lead to his death—spiritually from our perspective. Now, you know, electing non-elect? Sure. But from our perspective, there are certain sins you can get involved with that cause you to turn your back on God more and more, to turn away from him, to fail to hear the warnings, and you go off in your sin, and God just says, “Bam, you’re done. You’re going to hell. I give up.” Not “I give up.” I’ve consigned you because of your rebellion against me.

So there are certain sins that are like that. And sexual sins are some of them. A lot of sins can be like that, but sexual sins are one of them.

We have an obligation to rescue people stumbling off to death. And let me take it two ways here.

First, we have an obligation for the grandchildren of this church to fight same-sex marriage. This culture says increasingly, and with louder and louder tones, “Homosexuality and lesbianism are simply life choices and maybe even made that way by God.”

And what’s going on in our culture is a temptation to have the little baby that was just born—you know, a week ago—to somebody here in this church or some friend you might know. That little child, and this is now happening in cultures that are not very Christian, for that little child to hear some, “Oh, that person’s going to grow up to be a lesbian. That person’s going to grow up to be gay. Clearly, he’s got that thing to him.”

And even if you don’t got that going on, you’ve got the inducements to look at homosexual or same-sex marriage as a legitimate, state-sponsored, state-blessed, and commended way of being, and it is a stumbling block to our kids.

Now, so is adultery. So is sexual sin. In our congregation, to be a member, you have to abhor, you know, abortion and adultery and homosexuality. They’re all the same. So, but the point is, look, don’t be lazy about this thing. Because if you don’t take charge or try to do what you can do to bring your beauty to the culture we’re in and exercise some restraint on the wickedness that’s going on, that wickedness will come into your house.

Don’t think you can keep it out. I know the children of this church, and I know how much the teenagers of this church are affected by the culture in which we live. Whether we like it or not, they are. They’re tempted. And right now, they’re tempted into heterosexual sexual sin. But now in addition to this, there are temptations of homosexual sin.

And I’m telling you, once you go down that lifestyle, it’s very difficult to come to repentance for that and to turn around. And it’s really a matter of spiritual death at the other end of that.

Secondly, forget our children. How about the children of people in our culture? How about the man or the woman, the teenager who goes to high school in Oregon City High and hears that the gay lesbian ball—with kids, I don’t know what it was, 16 to 25—is going to be going on, and the church high school wants you to know about it. So these teenagers go off and start into sexual experimentation that’s disastrous for them.

We have an obligation to resist these kind of things, to talk about sexual sin and its implications.

You know, the Bible says if you’re going to go into hell because of your right eye or your right hand, cut it out from you. Better to go into heaven without a hand than to go to hell.

What’s the idea there? The idea is that and it’s specifically in the context of lust. Sexual sin is described for us in Matthew as a cause for somebody going to hell. It just is. And the same language about cutting things off is talked about in terms of children in Matthew 18.

Yeah, children are going to stumble, but woe to those who let them stumble or make them stumble.

You know it. You have culpability according to Proverbs to do something about it now—to engage in the conversation, to let your rainbow shine in the light of men, to bring some rationality to some of these conversations about rights, etc.

We have an obligation to be involved in the context.

Our response to this, there should be a response, is to protect—to protect our kids, to protect the culture, to protect those who are being encouraged to engage themselves in sexual activity. Our obligation is to look at the ballot measures. There are attempts to protect people in there, right?

There’s an attempt to say, well, if somebody rapes somebody violently twice, they’re going to spend 30 years in jail. I don’t like jails, but I like walls. I like protection for the women of this church from people that are going to be serial rapists and not end up with much prison time. That’s one of the ballot measures.

Another ballot measure: if a guy is caught for the third time driving under the influence of intoxicants, he’s got to spend 90 days in jail. I don’t like jail, but it’s an attempt to put a wall around the population.

So we’ve got an obligation to protect. Read the ballot measures this year. Think about the candidates. Are they there? Are they going to help have the proper walls and the proper justice to enforce those walls?

Secondly, teach love and mercy. Teach kids—teach your own children, teach other people in the context of our discussions. That’s an obligation we have. I think part of our shining forth beautifully is our obligation to instruct. That’s what the text in Isaiah 54 is all about. That’s how you get beautiful gemstones—is through the instruction of people in righteousness by the word of God.

And we have an obligation. We have an obligation to be an encouragement to each other in the instruction of our children in the word of the Lord.

Third, act. Discuss. There are three referrals, four initiatives. Discuss them today. If you’re part of the group, think them through. Vote. Your vote counts.

There was a guy running for state superintendent of public instruction in the primary here in Oregon, and he was more anti-teachers’ union, and the incumbent is pro-teachers’ union. He was more probably of our mindset in terms of education—much closer to it. She was against it. He lost by just a couple of thousand votes. But she avoided running off, having a runoff election against him in November, by 127 votes in this entire state.

If 127 more people, you know, would have not voted for her, then she would have had to run off against this fellow this fall. I’ll bet you that this congregation alone, if we had worked at that race, could have made a difference in that race for state superintendent of instruction.

We’re seeing it over and over and over. Every vote counts.

I know it’s summer in Oregon. I know you got lots of things to do. I know the river is beautiful. I know that we live in Ecotopia here. I know we’re, you know, having a good time, and we should. But I also know that 1 Chronicles 12 describes the people Issachar—who were men who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do.

I know just as well that this summer, like last summer, is an important one. This election is important. Three years ago, people mocked people that would talk about socialism in the context of the present administration. Now a lot of people see that’s what’s going on—as a European style of socialism. Freedoms are being increasingly eroded. The Christian theocratic republic is being dismantled and replaced by a Euro-socialistic enterprise that will reduce freedoms tremendously, create long-term economic difficulties, and give our kids real grief—not just in terms of the moral issues, but also in terms of the economic issues.

It’s time to act.

Young people, teenagers, you’re not working. Your parents are. You got two months left to influence this election in the state of Oregon—to shine little pieces of the rainbow, speaking forth the truth as you know it. Volunteer for some candidate. Volunteer for some campaign. Try to get involved in one of these initiatives that speaks to your heart and seems like it’s really important to you. Do something this summer.

If recovery happens as a result of the November election, you can say you were part of that. And if it doesn’t happen, you can say you gave it your college—your best college—effort, right?

There was an old typing exercise when I was a kid. It said, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”

Period. Seventy characters. Exact line of one typewritten line. So I typed that over and over and over again as a kid.

Well, it’s true. Now, now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. And we’ve got two months left. I strongly encourage you to take interest in this election.

God wants us to see that he’s teaching us so that we can shine forth with justice and mercy, creating walls of defense through civil statutes and electing candidates who will do justice in the gate and bring humility before God back to our city, our state, and our nation.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this summer. We do pray that you would help us, Lord God, to be actively involved, shining forth for you. We thank you for the great news in this text that you’re creating a beautiful community of people. And we thank you for this community, Lord God, and each and every individual little gemstone that’s here.

Cause us each to shine each other up, to encourage each other to shine forth brightly in our lives, in our homes, in our workplace, yes, in the public arena as well. We thank you for that. We thank you that you’ve promised us peace and establishment and vindication for all enemies. We’re not fearful, but we’re energized.

Help us, Lord God, to speak forth your word in a way that’s winsome and yet true, that we wouldn’t throw a blanket over the brilliant light of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ as it applies to public policy issues for the next two months in Jesus’ name we ask it.

Amen.