Let Us Go Up!

Daily Reading: Isaiah 2

Scripture Focus: 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.” (Isaiah 2.3)

Devotional Thought: My good friends and a former youth pastor at Bethel Nazarene – Kent and Andrea – moved to Colorado several years ago.  They went past his home state of Illinois and her home state of Indiana to do it.  I thought at the time, “They won’t like it out there…”  Boy, was I wrong!  I was with them about a year after they had moved, and was amazed at how much they had fallen in love with Colorado – its rugged beauty, its wide open spaces, and its distant mountains.  When they got to the mountains, the mountains got into them! 

There's just something about mountains that beckon us.  Moses climbed Mount Sinai to commune with God and receive the Ten Commandments.  Three disciples ascended the Mount of Transfiguration and experienced a vision of Moses and Elijah with Jesus.  Jesus told the church in Ephesus to remember "the height" of their spiritual experience (Revelation 2.5).  The heights of spiritual experience beckon us to “Come up here…”  Here in Isaiah, we see that the mountains had gotten into the national psyche of Israel, and they longed to return to the days of high spiritual fervor and obedience.

What is on top of the mountain of the Lord?  "The house of the God of Jacob."  Going to the house of God was part of the DNA of Israel.  Their greatest king, David, often cried out in the Psalms to go to the house of God.  He could have gone anywhere to commune with God, but he longed to go to the temple. 

Many of the people of God have spurned the house of God, which is the Church.  Yet, it is in the Church that he will meet us!  Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord!

Prayer: "My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise!" Amen. (Psalm 84.2-4)

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 39.7-13

7 "And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.

8 Deliver me from all my transgressions. Do not make me the scorn of the fool!

9 I am mute; I do not open my mouth, for it is you who have done it.

10 Remove your stroke from me; I am spent by the hostility of your hand.

11 When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume like a moth what is dear to him; surely all mankind is a mere breath! Selah

12 "Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears! For I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers.

13 Look away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more!"