Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: A Vision for the City

Sermon text for this evening is Isaiah 54, verses 11 through 14A. Isaiah 54:11-14. Please stand for the reading of the command word of our King. And the sermon topic is a vision for the city.

“Oh you afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not comforted. Behold, I will lay your stones with colorful gems and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of rubies, your gates of crystal, 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.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the wonderful promises in Isaiah. We thank you that this follows the coming in Isaiah of the suffering servant and is a picture to us of the times in which we live. And we pray Lord God that you would help us to understand this verse as it relates to Oregon City and the other cities we may come from. And I pray that you would give us Lord God encouragement and vision to know where we’re going and to that end so that we could order our steps right as your servants in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

For the last few years, probably maybe a dozen years, there’s been significant talk in the church of Jesus Christ, at least that I’ve been aware of, and I’m sure you’ve also been aware of this, about trying to understand where we’re at in history and what portions of the scriptures particularly apply to us. And there’s been a lot made about Jeremiah 29:7. You’re probably quite familiar with it, where we’re told to seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the Lord for it. For in its peace, you will have peace.

So seeking the peace of the city is now almost a mantra or code word for what churches are to do in our particular day and age when it seems like we are in a position of being somewhat carried away from the explicitly Christian nation that some of us at least think this country used to be. So as we move into a sort of interior or inner exile in this country, the Christian community can receive instruction appropriately from Jeremiah 29. And Jeremiah says to do the normal stuff of life when you get in Babylon. That’s the immediate application of this text—the Babylonian captivity. Get married, have kids, build a home, do your work, do your vocation, and then it culminates in this: to seek the peace of the city because what God wanted from Israel was to be a witness to the nations. And if they wouldn’t do it in freedom they would do it in captivity. And so God desires the same thing from us.

So we have this verse, but the verse is sort of like some of the statements of the New Testament. If you take away the Old Testament context, that seems to allow us to pour whatever meaning we want into the particular terms here. What does it mean peace? How do we seek this peace?

Now on a simplest level, the peace of the city is the right ordering of the city in relationship to the presence of God. You know, to the wicked there is no peace. It should not be our attempt to make people who are on abject rebellion against God to bring peace to them. The only way you can bring peace to them is to get them to repent of their sins as we have done and embrace God in love and accept his grace and mercy, but apart from that, peace won’t happen.

So I think that in Isaiah 54, we sort of have a little bit more of a vision—still admittedly small, but a little bit more of a vision of what the peace of a city should look like. After all, that’s how the phrase in Isaiah 54 sort of culminates: that there’ll be peace for the children of that city.

I might say also, without getting into any detail, that I think this verse Jeremiah 29:7 is actually picked up in Paul’s epistle, his first epistle to Timothy, where Timothy is to pray for all sorts of men, particularly leaders and governors, because God wants all men to be saved. I think that’s what’s happening here too, because in that kind of context he says you’ll have peace. He tells Timothy. So I think there’s a connection to the early church and how the church saw itself in the Babylonian captivity. And I want us to flesh it out a little bit tonight in a vision for the city from Isaiah 54—what the peace is we’re seeking in which we’ll have peace as well.

We did this a little bit at the prayer summit in February, as some of you know. There was a prayer summit for the church in Oregon City for Oregon City pastors and other ministry leaders. We had it for I think three days at the Canby Conference Center, and we did a lot of praying, did some singing. And one of the directed prayers that we had at that meeting was that the facilitator of the meeting had us read from Revelation 21, and maybe also 22, but 21. And then he had us pray about that picture of the city of God that’s described for us there, the bride, the city that comes down out of heaven. And the description of that in Revelation 21 and 22. And he had us then pray about Oregon City in reference to what that looks like. What does a holy city, the bride of Christ, look like? Very excellent exercise.

And that’s kind of what I’m hoping we can do from Isaiah 54 as well—is to look at what really is a pretty brief description of what the peace of a city looks like. And it’s quite simple. There is beauty described throughout it. But if we look at the specifics in verse 12, he says, “Make your pinnacles of rubies.” So a city has pinnacles—towers, high places. Okay. “Your gates of crystal.” A city, the way God described it, had defenses. A gate around the city—or not a gate, I’m sorry—your gates are the place of rule. And then there’s walls as well.

So there are three architectural images in Isaiah 54 about what the holy city of God is to look like and by way of application what a Christian city should look like as well. So it assumes that a city has these things and then it tells us that these things are going to be beautified by God. And then it proceeds also to talk about the children of people in such a state.

So let’s move through these very quickly. First, there are turrets, high places, pinnacles. And now what does that mean? Well, a high place is a place of contact with God. We can think of it that way. You know, in the Greek culture, there was an acropolis—acro on top, polis the city—the high point of the city. And then down from that was the agora, the marketplace. So the marketplace flows out of—by way of imagery—the high place. What you’re worshiping, that’s what the acropolis was. That’s where the gods and goddesses would be, and that’s where worship would occur. And that worship produces downstream culture.

Every city has people that are seeking spirituality in one form or another because we’re made in the Imago Dei and that’s who we are. We seek spirituality. And so a city is supposed to be involved with the speaking of spirituality. And by making it the high point, the pinnacle in the text, what that tells us is that the culture, the defenses of the city, the gates or administration of the city, and then the education of the city with the children, all those things are downstream. Because it starts with those pinnacles.

Now, the foundation actually comes first, and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ. But we’re considering the city that’s built upon the foundation that’s Christ. And the city has to have a high place. And that high place will be determinative of what sort of culture develops in the context of the city. When cities have high places of Christian or godly spirituality, then the culture reflects that. And when cities move away from Jesus and their high places become places where commerce, for instance, becomes the primary motivating goal, or some other form—where an Islamic turret becomes the high place, whatever it is—that will change then the culture.

So if you want to change culture, you really have to work with people on the high places of the city.

Now here in Oregon City, and this is a church in Oregon City event, here in Oregon City I think that whether we agree with the exegesis of this text or not, the pastors in Oregon City agree with this. They agree that what we do in the context of this city, what the churches of Oregon City or the church in Oregon City are doing is significant and important for how this city develops. And so we’re trying to perform being pinnacles in this city in a more self-conscious, a humble, godly way than perhaps churches have been in the past.

And one of the specific ways we’re trying to do that is to manifest the spirituality by the unity of the church in Oregon City. Now, the Bible says that there are local churches, right? So this is a local church, and there are other some churches—there are other churches represented here at Oregon City Evangelical Church, whatever it is—there’s local churches. And then the Bible says that there’s the church that is the universal church comprised of all believers actually across time and space. But there’s a third way the Bible uses the term church, and that is to a particular group of churches, local churches in a particular city or geographic region.

When Jesus sends messages to the seven churches in the book of Revelation, for instance, he sends one to the angel or messenger of the church in Ephesus. So there’s one church in Ephesus, even though by this time there were many gathering places—many what we would call local churches—that were actually going on. But God has this way of identifying the church as the church in a particular city or geographic region. And that’s what the church in Oregon City is—a designation of those trinitarian churches in Oregon City who understand that and want to manifest the unity of the church in Oregon City as a high point, right, as a pinnacle, that it reflects spirituality and a quest for spirituality in right relationship to God through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

One specific prayer request for the church in Oregon City right now: we’re in the process over the next couple of months of reviewing our statement of faith, which identifies what this high point is, what this pinnacle is. And if you could pray about that. It will not be easy work, but it is very important work. However, the reason we’re doing it is because we have this quest for spiritual seeking that is explicitly Christian and biblical. We have this pinnacle that we’re seeking to manifest here in the city. After all, if you go to a city, the towers are the most visible things, right?

When I first traveled in Poland, I was struck by even the little villages. There’d be a church with a spire, a spire or a cross at the top of it or whatever, and you could see it there, and then there’d be the little village there as well. It’s the high point. And so you see that town or that village and you’d see the high point as identification of what this particular city or village believes. So it should be manifest as the point visible. You should be able to see a pinnacle, okay? A tower. That’s part of the imagery here—is that it’s manifest and visible.

And what we’re seeking to do with our churches is to bring them out of the shadows individually, into our neighborhoods, embracing the neighborhoods in which we live, serving the people of this city in a very self-conscious way, becoming visible and manifest in the culture. And what the church in Oregon City is doing is the same thing on a corporate level, on a more collective or organic level, as churches working together to become manifest with that unity of that is founded in our statement of faith and what we believe about God and how he has reflected himself.

So a city has pinnacles, and depending on how that acropolis looks, what it looks like and what’s worshiped there, whether it’s manifest or not, whether it’s Christian or not, the culture flows out of that.

So a vision for Oregon City is to see the exaltation of the churches and the church in Oregon City as an important place in the church that people look to as a source of culture, as a source of what the city is all about, flowing out of the high place that’s correctly related to God.

And so that’s how this begins.

Secondly, he says, “I’ll make your pinnacles of rubies. Secondly, I’ll make your gates of crystal.” So gates are governing places. This is where the judges would sit and produce judgments. This is where civil contracts, business contracts would be entered into. This is a place of law. The gates are a place of law. Now it’s a place of justice. Law in the scriptures is declared to be justice. And in Psalm 72, we saw it over and over again about the manifestation of justice. Jesus Christ came, it says in the gospels, to bring justice to victory.

Well, you know, righteousness is a synonym for justice. And while we can talk about righteousness in terms of our state before God with the imputed righteousness of Jesus, righteousness frequently means something a little different than that. It means justice being right related to God and to man, to our environment as well as to ourselves. So justice is these right relationships that occur, and justice is enforced and prospered, as it were, by godly gates.

And when a city’s high place disappears, justice becomes less and less accessible—biblical justice—in that kind of a city. And in the cities today, you see people crying out for justice, and they don’t seem to be able to get it. Still, we’re in kind of a post-Christian culture. There’s a lot of justice still in the city gates, but increasingly it’s disappearing.

Rome got so bad in its lack of justice. Rome got so bad that at a certain point the non-Christians in Rome would resort to church courts. So we could envision, for instance, that the church in Oregon City might have some lawyers, some judges, or just some really trained good people that can adjudicate disputes. And so the churches in Rome would set up courts to hear matters to dispense justice. And it got to the place as Rome broke down that was where the pagans were turning to were the courts that were administered by the churches because they knew justice was there.

And so justice is part of the vision for a godly city. Justice is enforced by the officials that one elects and the laws that are passed. For the last I don’t know four or five or six years, the church in Oregon City has been asked to do a candidate forum, and in a different time an issue forum, for people prior to the election, so that we would host an event where people could ask questions—Christians and non-Christians—of candidates for election. And so this is what we’ve been asked to do, actually by groups. We’ve done it several times now. I’m sure we’ll do it again this November. Why? Because the church is seeking justice in the city.

Now there’s other ways to do it. I think long-term it would be a great thing to have some kind of organization of people coming together from the various churches in Oregon City to do justice, to see, to work with the city leaders, the police, et cetera, for sources of injustice in the city and then try to find ways to accomplish justice in the city. This is part of the gospel. The good news is that Jesus has come to bring justice to victory.

So a vision for the city would include the church in Oregon City and the local churches in Oregon City having a thirst for justice.

Now what is justice? Well, that’s a whole another issue that would take a lot of time to talk about, but it’s important that I say at this point that when the Bible says that Jesus came to bring justice to victory, it doesn’t mean he came to bring to victory your notion of justice or my notion of justice. It means he came to bring to victory justice as defined by his word, what he says it is. Okay? And so the goal of justice has to be biblically defined. What is it? Well, it’s a hard, long topic, but that’s what it’s got to be—is biblically defined justice. And the means to accomplish justice through those gates, through the commerce that’s involved, the means to accomplish justice also are means that the scriptures give us. Okay?

And so both the means have to be biblical, the goals have to be biblical. But make no mistake about it, a vision for the city has to include an administration of justice and justice both in commerce and in civil and criminal matters reflected in the gates of the city.

Now the third thing that he talks about here are walls, right? A city is supposed to be a place of safety. Now that we hear that and we think—well, it seems like today the safe places to go live on a farm. Well, in most periods of history, the safe place was to live within a walled city where you were defended. Again, when spirituality becomes twisted and perverted, justice starts to fall apart, and safety falls apart, and the cities become places of danger such as many of our major cities are.

And so, but in a vision for our city, walls—the defense of the population so that you can live in peace and security—is an important part of that. The church in Oregon City has begun, oh, four or five years ago, developing relationships with the local police department and getting to know them, supporting them, because they’re important for a godly vision of the city. A police force that wants to enforce safety in the context of the culture, who are frequently set upon by people and not liked. The churches in Oregon City have told the police, “We appreciate what you’re doing. We support you.” And we’re blessed in this city to have a number of significant elements of the police department, including one of the lieutenants, a very explicit Christian man.

So a vision for our city is defense. Part of this also in the Bible, we’re particularly supposed to defend or plead the cause of the defenseless—widows, fatherless, poor, immigrants. And again, this is a significant part of being a walled city: is taking care of the defenseless.

Here in Oregon City, one of the first things that we began to do as a group of churches before we identified as the church in Oregon City was to come together—six churches—and form a branch of Love Inc., that ministers benevolence to people in the name of Jesus Christ. Inc. doesn’t mean incorporated. It means in the name of Christ. It’s an extension really of the walled city protection for people that have reached a point of vulnerability. And then we try to help them and minister to them through bringing help and helping them get out of their particular state but also ministering to them in their particular needs as well.

We’ve worked at the local police department—the church in Oregon City—to do toy drives for kids in some of the poorer neighborhoods when they go on different routes and stuff. Also, as was mentioned earlier, Compassion Connect. This will be our third year at which we’re trying to minister to the defense, what can be seen as the defenseless—widows, people whose husbands have abandoned them, children have been abandoned by one parent or the other, et cetera. Through Compassion Connect, we make available free medical and dental services.

These are little sprouts in springtime in each of these areas where a vision for the city is producing direction for what we’re doing. And we’re seeing the shoots, the fresh shoots of the planting of God’s word in these particular areas in those particular directions.

Notice by the way that one other aspect of this: “I’ll make your pinnacles rubies. Your gates of crystal. All your walls of precious stones. I’ll lay your foundations with beautiful sapphires.” All of this is accomplished in a context of beauty. A vision for a city has to have beauty to it. And you see even pagan cities, without being Christian, putting money in the budget for beauty and art. Well, there’s beauty to be found in how we go about doing these things. And God calls us to that as Christians—the beauty of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. But we also want to embrace beauty in how we go about building a godly city.

One specific way here at Reformation Covenant—and this last spring we actually invited other churches from Oregon City and some participated—we’ve been having for a number of years a Trinity Arts Festival in the springtime. And this is a place where artists from various churches can come display their art and be encouraged by each other. And some of that art may eventually find its way into the context of the building and development of our city.

So a city builds culture. As its spirituality is corrected, as its spirituality is twisted, it produces downstream art forms that really aren’t that beautiful and can be sacrilegious. But a godly relationship, godly spirituality, produces safety in the context of the city, a defense of the defenseless particularly, it produces justice, and it produces a culture of beauty that’s developed.

This is God’s vision for the city.

Now there’s one last thing that’s said here quite importantly, and this is kind of the culmination of it in verse 13: “All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.” So the climax of peace is accomplished by one other very important element of a vision for the city, and that is that all of the children of God’s people in a city taught by the Lord.

Now there’s a lot that could be said about this, but you know, just this morning here at Reformation Covenant I preached a sermon—I’m going through the book of James—on James chapter 4 where he says, “If you’re going to go make a business trip, you should say the Lord willing, I’ll do this and this.” And he says, “It’s quite wicked and sinful to leave God out of our plans, to not remember God or to leave him out. He’s irrelevant to our planning of our business trips or whatever else it is that we do.”

God was essentially left out of the public school system long ago by order of the Supreme Court of the United States. Now I know there are good Christian teachers involved. So God, God’s arm is not shortened. He’s not out in the sense of that. But I believe it’s problematic in the short term that the education of our children would send them to schooling for so many hours, so much time, great bulk of their lives—at least for ten, twelve years—where God is left out of the instruction from the morning till the evening that prepares a child for a secular mindset.

And a vision for the city has to be long-term. I understand we have problems, difficulties. I don’t know the perfect path to get there. I don’t know a path to get there. But what this text from Isaiah tells us is that when Jesus comes to build beautiful cities based upon the foundation that is the shed blood that he gives for sinners, he says that all your children shall be taught by the Lord. Their education will be explicitly Christian. And Paul tells us the same thing in Ephesians: “Bring your children up in the nurture and admonition.” That means in the culture of Jesus. That means in the culture of Jesus.

We’ve talked for the last two years at the church in Oregon City of having some kind of very low-cost Christian education program, schooling program, program for children who are members of Oregon City churches. That’s a vision of mine. It’s shared by some of the pastors, some of the thirty or so pastors, by no means yet a majority. But I think that the vision from Isaiah for what a city is has this other component to it. It has spirituality. It has defenses. It has justice in terms of the gates. But it also has children who are explicitly taught of the Lord. And the end result of that, my friends, is peace.

One thing the church in Oregon City is doing along these lines is we’re in the middle of planning right now, just this last week, an apologetics conference, probably to be held in October of 2015, so that when our children do go off to high school or colleges, they’ll be able to defend their faith against the onslaught that typically happens, particularly at the college level. And more than just defend the faith, it’ll also prepare us to speak our faith, to talk our walk in a more effective way. I think it’s going to be a major event, a Clackamas County event, but sponsored by the church in Oregon City October 2015. And part of that, at least from my perspective, is because we know that God’s vision for this city includes children being taught of the Lord.

The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ has come to establish a foundation for everything in our lives, and specifically that foundation is described in Isaiah 54 as a foundation for cities. A vision for any city that we talk about—Oregon City, Portland, whatever city you come from—I think has these four, five common elements: spirituality, defense, justice, instruction of children, bring children up in the word of God, and finally all of this stuff done in beauty.

And the promise of God is that a city that manifests those things, whose leaders and ultimately the church are the leaders of the city, whose leaders see this vision, move toward that vision—and then the Bible says that city, it will be a place of peace. That’s the peace that we seek for Oregon City, Portland, whatever city we come from. That’s how we’re seeking. We’re to serve the cities by seeking their peace, their right relationship to God, and then the downstream culture that flows out of it.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this vision from Isaiah 54. Thank you for the work that’s been going on here in Oregon City. Thank you for the many pastors and lay people throughout this city and those who attend the churches in this city who have participated in things like the Compassion Connect event the last few years and all these other things we’ve mentioned as well—Love Inc. and various other ministries.

We thank you, Lord God, that you’re doing a work here in Oregon City and in cities across this nation. That as your people repent for not having an explicit vision of the city, you give us, Lord God, that great vision from Isaiah 54 of what Jesus has come to accomplish. Bless us, Lord God, as we attempt to do those things that you’ve called us to do. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.