They shall not learn war anymore
This week’s material, Dec. 10-16, is all taken from the book of Isaiah.
Isaiah 2:1-4
2 The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.
3 Many peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
The passage imagines the kingdom of God that the Messiah is bringing. The fully revealed presence of the kingdom (“the mountain of the Lord’s house”) will draw people from every nation to the reign of God (vs. 2). The people of the nations, the people of the world, realize that they will need to learn new ways of living, of being, as they come to the mountain of the Lord, to be present in the house of the God of Jacob. The old ways and patterns will need to go, and be replaced by patterns that we have learned from God – so that we might walk in God’s ways. The coming of the reign of God will change things.
The ways disputes between people, between nations, are settled will change. God will judge between the adversaries, he will arbitrate, and so there will no longer be war. There will be no need to resort to violence to settle disputes, for God will lead us all into a place where the use of violence is unknown. Where the weapons of war will be turned into instruments of peace. Where the weapons of war will be remade into the tools needed to feed people. So the day is coming when the war budgets of the nations of the world will be turned towards the feeding of those who do not have enough. For in this world, the amount that is spent on munitions each year is more than it would cost to feed all the hungry in this world. We live in a world that values war over feeding the poor. The day is coming, in God’s kingdom, when feeding the hungry will be more important than buying more guns.
Not only will the weapons of the world be transformed, the people of the world will no longer learn the ways of war. War and violence are not on the list of things that God will teach the nations as they come to his mountain, to his house. (We should not miss the connection between the teaching of God ways in vs. 3, and the not learning war in vs. 4.)
PRAYER:
O Lord, we look forward to the day when the ways of war will no longer be taught or learned in the world, the day when the ways of peace are made possible because you will be the judge and arbiter between the nations and the peoples of the world. Shape us in this hope and in this promise that we might be agents of that coming kingdom. In Jesus’ name. Amen.