Port, turn with me and your Bible through Isaiah chapter two, as this week we continue our study that we began last week studying the kingdom of God and all that it means for us. Frog went to a fortune teller. Have you ever heard a sermon start off with a frog going to a fortune teller? A frog went to a fortune teller and the fortune teller looked into her crystal ball and said, I see in your future a beautiful young woman. She is fascinated with you. In fact, she wants to get to know everything there is to know about you. He said, wow, am I at a singles club? She said no biology class. I know it's late and you're tired and it's a bad joke. Now everybody wants to know the future as long as it's good. But if the future is bad, I don't care much to hear about it. We want to hear great things about the future. We want to hear all that God has for us. Well, as we study the kingdom of God, as we said last week, what are we studying? As we're looking at God's vision for the world and we see how God is at work in the present and what God is doing in the future. We understand a little bit of what God is doing now and is vision for the not yet. And as we think about the future, one hope that everyone has for the future, one desire is everyone would like to see a world at peace. I mean, who doesn't want world peace? That's something everyone wants. Yet, world peace has often proven to be elusive. For example, here's a little chart of some people who did some study on the subject. It shows you what has happened to bring about world peace. According to one study, since the year 3,600 BC, the world has known only 292 years of peace. Now, 292 years may seem like a lot, but over a 5,500 year period, that's not very much. Particularly when you consider that early, that there weren't that many different cultures in the world to be warring with one another. Probably for the last thousand years, I doubt there's been an entire year completely of peace. Well, of that, during this period, there have been 14,351 wars, large and small. And in that time, 3.64 billion people have been killed in wars. And then there's an economic cost award. It said the value of the property destroyed would pay for a golden belt around the world that would be 97.2 miles wide and 33 feet thick. That's how much war has caused. Now, there are two questions that we think about world peace. The first question is, is world peace possible and the second one is, how do we achieve it? How do we get it? Is world peace possible and how do we achieve it? When President Woodrow Wilson led us into World War I. He said, we're entering a war and this is the war to end all wars. And so after World War I, they set up the League of Nations, which led to World War II. And we enter World War II and so then they formed the United Nations. And here at the United Nations, everyone's going to be able to sit down and talk out their troubles and we won't need war anymore. Well, that hasn't worked to effectively either because today, as we sit here, there's a war going on on every continent on the globe except for North America. There's war in South America. There's wars and conflicts going on in Central America, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Rim. Africa, there's conflict going on all around the world. And so as you hear that, you begin to think, is world peace even possible? And if it is possible, then certainly we're going about it the wrong way because whatever we're doing, just in working, it isn't getting the job done. Well, this morning, as we read in Isaiah, one day, we can read that the world will be at peace because it's God's vision for the world. Turn to me, Isaiah chapter 2. As we see how God is going to bring about peace to the world. Isaiah 2, beginning with verse 1. This is what Isaiah, son of Amaz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as chief among the mountains. It will be raised above the hills and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his past. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle the speeds for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshears and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation nor will they train for war anymore. This is God's word, God's vision for the world. As we look at this, the first thing we see is God's heart for the nation. God has a heart for the nation. Isaiah starts off and he says in the last days, so his vision is going to take place in the last days. Well, when are the last days? As you look up the phrase, the last days throughout scripture, particularly in the New Testament, we find that scripture refers to the last days not only. Sometimes we refer to this as the moments before the world comes to an end as we now know it. But it also uses the term the last days to refer to that which happens between the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ. The apostle Paul speaks of his day as being in the last days. And so if the apostle Paul was in the last days, then certainly we are in the last days. We are living in the last days. Well, Isaiah's vision is in the last days the mountain of God will tower above every other mountain. And the picture is this. We have Jerusalem which is sitting on a mountain and a temple which is on a mountain. And it looks something like there's an image here of this. It's kind of dark and here's hard to see. But this is a model of what it looks like, the temple being on the mountain. And it's up high. But in Isaiah's vision, this mountain grows to such height that it towers above every other mountain on the earth. And so the temple is above everything else. Now what's Isaiah talking about? Is he saying there's going to be this geological shift? And when this geological shift happens all of a sudden the temple mountain is going to spring up and it's going to be taller than Mount Everest. And so that no matter where you are on the earth, you see the temple of God. Is that what he's talking about? Is he saying that there's going to be this geological shift happen? And then all of a sudden all the nations on the earth are going to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to see the temple way up on this mountain. Well, no, he's talking about something much more profound than something in geology. What he's saying is the worship of God is going to be elevated above everything else, above everything else. In Isaiah's day, mountains had spiritual significance. You would worship your gods or your idols at a high place or a mountain top. And what he's saying is God's high place is going to be higher than everybody else's high place. That the people are going to abandon their idols and they're going to come to worship the true and the living God, the God of Israel. Now, this is a remarkable vision because in Isaiah's day every single country had its own set of deities. Israel alone was monotheistic. And all the other countries worshiped a whole assortment of gods and part of your loyalty, your patriotism to your country, was to worship those particular deities. But Isaiah's saying there's going to be a time when all the nations abandon their gods to come and worship the God of Israel. There's going to be an instance revival. Well, what's the significance of that? What we see here is that God has a heart for the nations. And when we say the word nations, by the way, the word nations is translated into the Greek ethnic, which we get a word ethnic from. God has a heart for all the different people groups, all the different ethnic groups of the world. It is part of God's vision. Not that he's just going to save a select few or people from one nation or one class or one culture. But God is busy saving people from every nation on the earth that all of the nations are going to come to worship God. God has a heart for the nations. In the Old Testament, God called out the Jews to be his people. He called them. He said, I will be a God you Abraham and your children after you. And so we have the chosen people of God as being the nation of Israel. But God doesn't just care about Israel. When he called Abraham, he said, I will be a God you and your children after you. He said to Abraham, he said, and through you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. When God called Israel to be his people, he wasn't just concerned about the salvation of Israel. God was concerned about the salvation of people from every nation, from every tribe, from every tongue. And this promise where God said, through Abraham, all the nations will be blessed. He says that in Genesis 12, repeats in Genesis 18, Genesis 22, Genesis 26, Psalm 72. God repeats this over and over again that his heart is not just for one people, but for the nations. And so we see with God all the way through Scripture, his concern is to bring salvation to all the different people, all the different groups, all the different cultures. But what does this mean practically? That leads us to point two. It brings a halt to racism, a halt to racism. The kingdom of God is the end of racism in that, in that we see God calling all peoples to himself regardless of what ethnic group they're from, regardless of what race they are, regardless of what cultural background. We see the temple of God being and consulted. And all the nations streaming to God, they're people from Africa, people from Asia, people from the West, people from the Middle East, all uniting hands, to come and to worship the one true living God. There's no difference among them. And Paul later on repeats this in the New Testament. He says there's neither June or Greek, Gentile or Jew. There's no slave nor free. We all come together to worship God as one. And so we see the God's vision is for a diverse group, a racially and ethnically diverse group of people coming together to worship God. Tomorrow is a national holiday. The day that our country is chosen to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And as we think back over the great events of the past century in our own country, there are many things that we could cite as being great events and great speeches even. But I think as you think back to Dr. King's speech that he gave in 1963 has to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest speech of the past century. It's one where he begins to paint a vision for what our world ought to be like. Here's what he said on August 28, 1963. I have a dream. The one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the Red Hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. Where did Dr. King get the dream? Did he make it up? Was it invented by the NAACP, the left wing, the group of northerners who want to impose their values on southerners? Where does this dream come from? The dream is a biblical dream. It's God's dream. It's God's vision for the world. God's vision has always been that he's not going to save just people of one skin color or one culture group or one racial background but God is calling all people everywhere to himself. What we see in the kingdom of God, what we see beginning with the coming of Christ but not completed until he returns again, is this vision being fulfilled that people who once were enemies, who once were opposed to each other, who once were not attracted to each other at all, being united in brotherhood because they are united in the worship of Jesus Christ. Because of that, because this is God's vision for the world, to see the nations coming together to worship Him, then we as Christians of all people, ought to be those who advocate equality, who ought to be those who fight for justice, who want to see those wrongs that have been done to be reconciled, see things rectified, and we as Christians of all people ought to be ones who stand up for racial equality. Now in the kingdom of God, there is no back of the bus. You can't do separate but equal. Those things that we have in our history don't work. They're not right. They're not true. Because of the kingdom of God, all people come together to worship Him as one, regardless of background and of culture. And that leads to start third point. It is the hope for world peace. The hope for world peace. Do a survey. Ask your friends. What's the greatest threat to peace in the world? Who? Now there might be some who say the Communists but I think most of them are gone. Some might say Russia again because their tensions are heating up. Some might say China. But I imagine if you ask the majority of people who are the greatest threats to world peace, they will say religious extremists. Religious extremists. Ever since the Iatola community took a bunch of Americans as hostage on Iran, we have been lived in fear of Islamic extremists. And there's been reason. There have been violence. There have been terrorist acts. And because of that, people have learned to look at suspicion with anyone who's religious extremists. Even back in New Year's Eve, the State Department was issuing warnings that people are traveling saying be careful because they're religious extremists out there who will seize the opportunity for violence. And so people look at anyone who's religious extremists with great suspicion and with great fear. And so they would look at not just Islamic extremists but Christian extremists in the same view. And so there's reason for their fear too. We can't say that's not fair to be classified that way because we look at our history and we see the violence that has been done in the name of Christ. We see the Crusades. We see the Inquisitions. We see what happened during the Protestant Reformation to many of the Protestants. We see what's happened discrimination against the Jews. We see even how we as a church discriminated against blacks oftentimes trying to use the Bible to do that sort of thing. And so people see the problem is religion. And if we're going to have peace in the world and what we need to do is everyone needs to be more tolerant. And by being more tolerant, they say what you need to do is you can believe what you want to believe. But it's not fair for you to try and pose your religious beliefs on others. You need to live and let live. You need to respect the beliefs of others. And so religious extremists then is anyone who believes that their way to God is the way to God. And so if you were to say you're a Christian and that the only way to God is through Jesus Christ, then you're classified as an extremist. And if you say that if you're a Christian and the only people who go to heaven are people who are Christians who believe like you do and everyone else goes to hell, then you're a bigot and you're an extremist. The Southern Baptist recently ran into trouble with this. On the Jewish day of Atonement, they had called everyone to pray for Jews to be converted to Jesus Christ. And there is a public outrage about this. They're saying that's not right for them to try and impose their beliefs on Jews. To make matters worse when Ramadan came for the Muslims, the Southern Baptist did the same thing all over again for only proving their insensitive bigots is how the newspaper reported it. And so we stand back, we say, I'm glad I'm Presbyterian. And what should we think about this sort of thing? How do we respond? I think there's a couple of things how we need to respond. Number one, we as Christians of all people ought to be advocates of tolerance. If anybody has a reason to stand up for religious tolerance, we have the reason. Look at the history of the church. I mean, the church was born with Christians being fed as lion food and being used as torches for Nero just because of what they believe. As Presbyterians, our forefathers were many of them were murdered, burned at the stake because of their beliefs. If you're Protestant at all, you have John Wickliffe as a hero of many. John Wickliffe was one of the early reformers in England. They condemned him after he was buried so they took up his body, dug it up, burned it, and scattered his ashes later just to show how much hatred was toward him. And so we as Christians had to say, that's not right. You should not persecute someone because of what they believe. You should not discriminate and get someone because of what they believe. And so we have all people ought to be the ones leading the charge for tolerance, for people based on what they believe. But tolerance does not mean as it's being defined today. Today tolerance is being defined as saying, you believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and both positions are equally true. That's not tolerance. That's logically impossible. For example, let's say I believe the earth is flat. You believe the earth is round. I have a right to my opinion. But only one of our opinions is true. The earth cannot be both flat and round at the same time. It can't be. And so while I have the right to believe what I believe, I'm still wrong if I believe the earth is flat. There's a way to find out. Religious truth falls into the same category. And so because of that there is something called truth and there is something called falsehood when it comes to religion. And so we as Christians ought to say, yes, I believe what the Bible teaches. I respect your right to believe differently. That doesn't mean what you say what you believe differently is true. Now there's certain issues of tolerance where sometimes we need to put aside our difference for the sake of peace. And on certain issues you have to do that. And certain issues, it's the right thing to do. If there's a disagreement and you two people disagree, sometimes you just agree to disagree. And you drop the issue. For example, Scott Puckett went to Auburn. One of my many schools was University of Alabama. Now if you don't know anything about college football that may not mean anything to you, but Alabama Auburn having such an intense rivalry and makes Florida Florida state seem like a preschool shuffle. And it's very, very intense. And in Alabama football is everything. And so here's this intense rivalry. Well, Scott likes Auburn. I like Alabama. We're both big football fans. But you know what? We can work together. And we can have our offices next door. We rarely go to blows. I mean, you know, it's okay. We can say, you know, he has this right to be wrong. And we can just move on from there. And so there's peace because why make a big deal about something like that? After all, it is just a game. Now to some of you, that sacrilegious football is just a game. You know, it's the world's fate. It's not decided on the football field. Now there are other issues though where you say you can't do that because what's it say just way too large? For example, let's say a man was dying here. And two doctors were to come up. And one doctor would propose one treatment. And the other doctor said, if you do that, you're going to kill him. Well, now it's a life or death issue. You wouldn't see the two doctors go, oh, well, it doesn't matter what we do. Let's just get along. Let's just have peace. No fighting. Everybody just agreed to be calm. You can't do that because it's life and death. And when it's life and death, you can't just, you can tolerate the persons of belief. And you can't just say, it's okay. Whatever you say about this is right. That doesn't work. It won't work in a real life situation. And if religion is an issue of life and death, then we can't just say, well, it doesn't matter. You believe what you want to believe? I believe what I want to believe. But some people are going to live. Some people are going to die based on what happens. And because of that, tolerance means being respectful. But it also means believing what is true. And so believing what the scriptures teach. And so we as Christians should be those who are tolerant. But we should not strive for peace and sacrifice truth on the altar of peace because you lose peace in the end anyway. You know, I think one of the ways people look at this is I think people oftentimes look at Christianity as being so exclusive. People here as we talk about Christianity, they'll say particularly with the Southern Baptist that came out in the newspaper, they'll say, see, unless you believe like you believe, everybody's going to hell. That's so exclusive. And the way people oftentimes word it, they say, well, you know, I believe in Christ, but I don't see what the difference is between being a devout Muslim or a devout Jew or anything else. I think even a devout Buddhist will certainly find God or slightly different version might be. They'll say, I don't think God would send a person who lives a good life to hell just because they believe the wrong thing. Now as you hear that, that sounds like they're very inclusive and that you as a Christian are very exclusive, but let's look at it a little bit closer. The typical view is good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. That's the universal religion. You ask anybody on the earth, where will Hitler be? And I imagine 99.9% of the people say, Hitler is going to hell. Why? Because he is such an evil person. And so he's saying, okay, bad people go to hell, good people go to heaven. But Christianity says, it's completely different. The world says, the world religion is, you do good and you present your good record to God and you give your goodness to God and then God owes you. Christianity is, God earns a good record and offers it to you in order to give you life. The world says, if you're good, you get in, if you're bad, you're excluded. But what about those of us who are moral failures? What about those of us who are sinners? What if you've come to see that you fall woefully short of any standard of goodness and of sin? What hope is there for you? Only the gospel offers hope there. Only Christianity offers hope. Because Christianity says, it doesn't matter who you are, where you've been, what your background is, all that matters is you come to God and say, Lord, I need your help. Lord, I need your help. It's more inclusive. Yes, it's exclusive. You have to receive as for God's help. But it's more inclusive because anybody can come regardless of who they are. And God says that the way the world is going to come to peace is not by everybody saying, let's just all get along. The way the world is going to come to peace because it's going to come to truth. It's going to come to him. And the nations are going to stream to God not because they put aside their differences and said, well, it doesn't matter if you worship bail or if you sacrifice your children to the ashram, that doesn't matter. So you can say, no, the reason we're coming together is because we're all united in the worship of the one true and living God. And as you think, God's vision then is a world that has peace and harmony. If you think about a world that has no peace, when you think about our world, what place on the globe symbolizes more than any other place over the over the centuries, a place of conflict and a place of war? Where? The Middle East. The Middle East. It comes to mind because you think, is peace in the Middle East possible? Is what we need another camp David accord? Will that get it done? How many of you believe that if we get the right treaty worked out for the West Bank and everything else that the Palestinians and the Egyptians and the Lebanese and the Israelis will all sit down and Jordanese will all sit down and just be one big happy family. How many of you believe a treaty will be able to work that out? No one here is that naive. And so we look as peace possible. It is possible, but we're going about the wrong way. How is peace happen? Here's what God says in Isaiah chapter 19. Isaiah 19, verse 23, in that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. Assyria would be modern day Iran and Iraq. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. And that day Israel will be the third along with Egypt and Assyria a blessing on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them saying, blessed be Egypt my people. Assyria my handy work and Israel my inheritance. You see what he's saying? God's saying I've got three children, Egypt, Assyria, and Israel. Israel's been my chosen people, but I have three now. All of these people who have been warring against each other are now coming together to worship me. God's vision is there's peace in the Middle East, but it comes because all have come to him, come to know him. And so God is working out his plan, his vision through revival. How do we bring peace to the earth? We bring peace to the earth by preaching the gospel. As people get reconciled the God, they're reconciled to one another. And we see the power of the gospel in many ways in this. We have to skip on. Fourth point, as flows right out of that, is a heart for missions. A heart for missions. If you really believe that world peace is a true objective, there's something that we ought to care for. You see the bumper stickers, think peace, world peace, and the things of this sort. And if this is more than a bumper sticker to you, if it's more than just something that would be nice. Then what do we do to bring about real peace? Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. As those who make peace, how do we bring peace to the world? It's not through more treaties or alliances or organizations, it's through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if that's the case, if the gospel is what brings peace, if it's Jesus Christ being on his throne and ruling over all that brings peace, then we as Christians as peacemakers should be the ones... who seek to take the gospel of peace, but good news of peace to the world. We ought to have a heart and a passion to see the world come to know Jesus Christ through works and missions. One of the things that we can do then, as Christians, is we need to pray. We need to pray for peace. How do we do that? Well, one of the ways we prayed for peace is praying to prayer that the Lord Jesus taught us to pray. When it's disciples, the Lord teaches how to pray, Jesus said, here's how you should pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What is the will of God? I mean, wouldn't you like to know God's will for your life? What does God want for you? Well, we know God's will for the world. He's told us in Isaiah chapter 2. His will for the world is that the nations stream to Him, and so we as Christians should be praying for the nations to come to God. Well, how do we do that even more specifically? Well, on the back of your bulletin is a list of some of the missionaries that we support as a church. Most of you have never met any of these people. Some of you have met a few. I doubt that anyone here has met all. You can begin praying for these people. And you can begin and you say, well, I don't know them. Most of the people who prayed for the Apostle Paul while he was traveling around the world and never met the Apostle Paul. And so you can be praying for them just as the early Christians prayed for Paul. And you say, Lord, I know what they're about. I know they're taking the gospel to Japan, to Turkey, and to different places. And so you can begin to pray for them and pray that God would bless them as they take the gospel to the nations. See, God's vision is that the nations would come to Him. And we're in the last days. And right now, we're seeing that vision of God taking place. We're starting to see the nations stream to God's holy mountain because right here in our church, we have people who worship God on every continent of the globe. We have people here today who worship God in the Pacific Rim. We have people here today who worship God in China and Japan. We have people who worship God in South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, communist Russia. We've got people here who worship God all over. What are we seeing? We're seeing Isaiah's vision is coming true. The nations are coming to God. But what we see is a trickle and God promises that one day will be a stream. And so we as Christians, though, should be busy praying that God's kingdom would come that we would see Isaiah's vision fulfilled. Secondly, we need to be active in seeing the vision fulfilled. God says that we as Christians are to be a part of seeing his vision fulfilled. One of the ways we can do that is by financially supporting the work of missions. Part of your giving to this church goes to support missionaries around the world. A portion goes to support church planters in the central Florida area. A portion goes to support those who support missions all through North America. Another portion goes to support those who help support international ministries. And about $15,000 a year goes to support directly to international ministries. And so as you give to the church what you're helping to fund is that taking the gospel to the nations just as Isaiah foretold.