The mountain of the Lord

I wonder how excited you are to come to church or join church on a Sunday morning. I wonder what you talk about on the journey if you come with other people in a car or walk along the street as you approach the church. If you come on your own, what do you think about as you get nearer to the time of worship. Do you come thinking, it’s too hot, we hope it’s short. Or do you come excited and expectant, that God might do something, because it’s absolutely fabulous to be in the presence of God this morning alongside God’s people. 

In the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms, there are some Psalms called Psalms of Ascent.  And we think people used to sing them together as they climbed the hill to the temple in Jerusalem, to Mount Zion. 

And I wonder whether we have a good sing as we came to church. People were glad to be in the presence of God.

 

Isaiah reminds us in chapter two, that God’s holy place  is "the mountain of the house of the Lord.” The Temple, remember, was visible from a long way off and it was visible not only to God’s faithful people, but also to other nations and it was a tremendous success in its heyday. It had power to draw and attract the people of the world. And God says that Temple, Mount Zion, "will be established as the chief of the mountains," it will be an imposing attraction to the people of the world, it "will be raised above the hills."

 

How visible are we as a church? Do people care that we are here? And do we attract people in? Isaiah sees all nations streaming to Mount  Zion, the house of God attracts the people of the world. Isaiah sees them streaming or flowing to Jerusalem the "city of peace." Jerusalem. People are streaming like a flowing river.  When God is enthroned in Zion, many people will be attracted to Him because they accept His sovereignty.

 

So you can hear the people in the streets climbing up to the Temple Mount, excitedly encouraging one another in Isaiah’s vision. "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, To the house of the God of Jacob; That He may teach us concerning His ways, and that we may walk in His paths" Jeremiah also has this sort of thought in chapter three of his prophecy: “at that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord and all the nations will be gathered to it.” There’s a new direction, they will leave behind the stubbornness of their evil hearts! 

 

 Isaiah remember was around 740 BCE. It was a time when Assyria was threatening to overrun Syria and Palestine. The Northern Kingdom of Israel had formed a coalition with neighbouring nations in order to repel Assyria. They had asked the Southern Kingdom of Judah to join them. 

Isaiah has spoken out clearly against such military coalitions, and instead calls on the people to trust God. He calls the people to look to Mount Zion and the temple as a symbol of salvation. He paints a vivid picture of God's realm which will come if we learn to walk in God's way. 

 

This is called centripetal mission (in-drawing, rather than out-sending) There are sermons which will tell you to go out into all the world. This one is about encouraging us to draw people in, because what we’ve got is so attractive they cannot help but join us. What have we got that’s so attractive here that your friends and neighbours will not be able to resist coming with you, singing that song with you as you come to our equivalent of Mount Zion. When’s the last time you asked somebody to come to church with you I wonder? 

 

Jesus says don’t hide your light under a bushel basket. He talks about a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. He says let your light shine before people that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. How do we draw people in?

 

I was listening to a discussion on the radio and there was a lady called Sara Davies, who is part of Dragons Den if you know that programme and she’s a great crafter, and she was explaining to the presenter that preparations for Christmas start in July. You’ll have seen adverts starting to appear on pub notice boards as you drive around – Christmas dinner, book now. People in the North East tell me the biggest excitement that tells them Christmas is near is a trip to Fenwick’s window in Newcastle. Fenwick’s window is a sign that Christmas is coming and every year it’s different, every year it draws people in to a story, more and more people want to come and see it. I think that’s what Isaiah is getting at here. We need to be so exciting that people cannot resist noticing us and reacting to us. Remember Jesus talked so often about the covenant of God, that should be so visible that people from outside are attracted to it. 

 

Many years ago, when I was running a youth club, we used to do Christian Aid envelopes in May, delivering them door to door one night then calling to collect them full hopefully later in the week. It’s very interesting isn’t it what perception people get of a building or a door. We are either invited in, we are drawn in, like Fenwick’s window, or we are put off. There are some doors and some gates as you go about which shout ‘keep out'.  There are some gates on big houses which are wired up so that you can’t  get into the front garden.  There are some doors which have no letter boxes or the letter boxes are wired up, presumably on the grounds of - no letter box, no letters.  Some places have large signs - ‘enter at your own risk', ‘beware of the dog', often accompanied by a picture of a ferocious Alsatian bearing a huge array of teeth, and saying, ‘if you come in here, these teeth will sink into your leg!” There are in some places houses with 12 foot high walls and electronically operated gates with spikes on them; there’s closed circuit television cameras poised to observe anyone who dares to draw near;  a veritable fortress  to keep the outside world outside. 

 

Is that what the church does? In a supplement we had some years ago called Hymns and Songs, the supplement to the old 1933 Methodist Hymn Book, there was a hymn which says “when the Church of Jesus shuts its outer door, lest the noise of traffic drown the voice of prayer.” There are churches, and Isaiah knew it well about the spiritual life, that just shut you out, we don’t want you in here, we will do everything possible to make this unattractive. We will sit where we sit. If you come in and want to sit down, we will say that’s my seat you can’t sit there. Or we will have a service that’s so alien that will make you so uncomfortable, you will never come back. We will lock a door, lock you out, and we will make sure we are unattractive because we don’t want you here. 

 

Jesus says he’s a gate, a door. This is all about this in drawing, this invitational ministry. The response is ooh, can I join in.

 We have weird cats at home. Bella likes to join in if you are eating cheese and onion crisps and she misses nothing that might be exciting. Yesterday a friend rang me from Worthing. He lives just off the sea front as I had him on speakerphone Bella could hear seagulls and her ears pricked up. It was exciting or if not, it got a response.

Jesus is not a grudging, exclusive, discriminating, night-club bouncer but a Jesus of welcome, hospitality and inclusion. We are not into ‘keep out of here' mentality, a narrow, sectarian, head in the sand church, where only members of the club can enter.  

We are not a Church that is so fearful of what is out there that it only opens the door a little, or peers out through safety chains, or worries about the draught or whether it is letting the heat out.

We are not a Church that wires up its letter box because it doesn't wish to read words from the world. 

We are not a Church that claims to offer fullness of life but is in reality neurotic, miserable and sad.

 

What’s our call? 

“Come, let us go up 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.”

 

 And perhaps this as well in Isaiah’s chapter 49, these words:

The Lord says:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob

and to bring back the preserved of Israel;

I will make you as a light for the nations,

that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” 

 

A church had a Friday night fellowship which met in the tiny chapel in the back room. 

And the back room was cold and damp and it wasn’t a very pleasant experience. 

So the minister said to them “Why don’t we move this into someone’s house?” And one of my saints there, looked at him and said “we keep the light on, it’s a witness to our community.” To which the minister naughtily said, “but the light is in a back room and no one can see it. No one knows you are here.”

 

We are called to let our light shine. We are called to be so attractive that others want to join us. We’re called to live love, peace, and joy. We’re called to sing God’s song and to get excited about encountering God again in worship. We’re called to be a people so full of the Holy Spirit that others looking at us say “I want some of that.” A church that shouts welcome and speaks positively about the difference faith makes. 

 

Let me end like this. We were at the Great Yorkshire Show on Friday. You can spend a lot of money there. Why? Because of a hard sales pitch or seeing something irresistible cleverly placed in your eye line. A man said to us “you are the two people I’ve waited all afternoon to see” before giving us his patter. His product was to him irresistible! We couldn’t go home without buying it. He won. The dancing hares in another tent stayed there – I just couldn’t afford £22,000 for them! 

 

So, are we attractive to the world? Is our temple irresistible? 

 

What’s our call?

 

May the message of Isaiah today challenge us, and more than that, may it inspire us to be God’s people, keen to come and encounter him, more confident to draw more people in that we may build the church and make it come alive again, because it can.