Summary 

Life naturally flows between mountaintop experiences and valley seasons, yet we often waste our valleys by trying to escape them rather than discovering what God wants to reveal there. Isaiah 22 presents Jerusalem as the Valley of Vision, where despite being geographically elevated, the city was surrounded by higher mountains, creating a valley-like perspective. This imagery reveals a profound spiritual truth: our deepest, most difficult places can become locations of extraordinary divine encounter and vision.

When facing judgment and difficulty, people typically respond in two futile ways. First, through frantic self-salvation - making every possible preparation and effort while ignoring God's sovereignty over the situation. Second, through mindless escapism - choosing distraction and denial instead of the repentance and mourning God desires. Both responses miss the opportunity for genuine spiritual breakthrough that valleys can provide.

In the Valley of Vision, we encounter God in His fullness as both warrior and shepherd. As warrior, He fights against our enemies, our sin, and whatever enslaves us, waging war for our freedom. As shepherd, His presence becomes intensely personal in our darkest moments, just as David experienced in Psalm 23. The Holy Spirit works uniquely in these seasons, applying Christ's benefits personally and transforming our valleys into launching points for spiritual growth and ministry, much like Jerusalem became the birthplace of the early church at Pentecost.

Transcript

I love the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos. Isn't it a wonderful book to read? I hope you enjoy reading that. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated upon his throne. Isn't that wonderful?
So glorious. Then that's chapter six. Chapter seven. The virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. And then chapter eight, Assyria is going to invade.
Chapter nine. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. We have a pattern here. We had a pattern of judgment and salvation. And judgment and salvation.
And it goes back and forth. Our text today is Isaiah, chapter 22. 1:14 is from group of four oracles of coming judgment. Chapter 21 tells of the judgment of the wilderness of the sea, Babylon. The judgment on Edom, which is called Duma, the deep or utter silence.
One Hebrew scholar translates. Duma, the silence of death. Then the judgment on Arabia, and now the oracle concerning Jerusalem, the valley of vision. I'm going to read just a couple verses from this. I'm not going to read the whole section again, but I hope that you have your Bibles and can follow along.
Isaiah, chapter 22. I'm going to read from 1 and 2. And then verse 5 from the English Standard Version. The oracle concerning the valley of vision. What do you mean?
That you have gone up, all of you, to the housetops who are full of shoutings. Tumultuous city, exultant town. Verse 5. For the Lord of hosts has a day of tumult, of trampling and confusion in the valley of vision. A battering down of walls and a shouting to the mountains.
Let's pray. Blessed Father, thank you for your Word. Thank you for your prophets. We think of Isaiah and Ezekiel and the words we've heard from them this morning. And the way you have pointed to Christ through them and the way you are revealing him to us today, even through their words.
We pray now, Holy Spirit, that you will come and be present here in this place among us in the preaching of your word. That you will work through my feeble words and work good things in our hearts pertaining to life and salvation. In Jesus name, Amen.
So I became a member of Susquehanna Valley Presbytery in February. They had the meeting Feb. 21 at proclamation down in Mountjoy. And when I came into membership of Susquehanna Valley Presbytery, I also was added to the session of Valley Presbyterian Church, which is a church plant of our presbytery up the river in Cellins Grove. And it's a very young church plant. And they have a borrowed session at this point, and they needed another teaching elder on their session.
And so I was, I'm able to serve in that role. Shelly and I have only been able to attend services up there a couple times. We're hoping to get up there, continue to go up as we're able. But last Sunday I was able to preach at, up at Valley. And I was thinking about preaching up there.
I thought of their name and I asked Tom Hartman, who has been here worshiping with us, he's one of the founding elders, has anybody preached about the name Valley? And he said, no. Nobody says so it's like, okay, great. And it's like, all right. So we got the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel.
We've got the Valley of the shadow of Death in Psalm 23. They're pretty much famous Val texts. But I, I wanted to bless them with something uplifting about their name. And so I thought, oh, the Valley of Vision. So that was the text I used for, for them at that sermon.
And then Peter, while I was just about finishing up that sermon, Peter said, can you preach on the 24th at Second City? And I said, only if I can preach the same sermon. Because it takes me a long. Believe it or not, it takes me a long time to prepare a sermon. And he said, well, it is Pentecost.
And I thought, well, this will be an unusual Pentecost text, but I think it might tie in. Let's see if it ties in by the time we're done here. Why does the Lord call Jerusalem the Valley of Vision? It's like Babylon's the desert of the sea, and Jerusalem's the Valley of Vision. Well, why is it called a valley?
I mean, you think Jerusalem's up on a mountain, right? It's up on a hill. Well, the Mount of Olives is 300ft higher to the east of Jerusalem, and Mount Zion is to the south. It's higher than the city of Jerusalem proper. So Jerusalem can appear to be a valley.
And Isaiah's own home is said. It said, Josephus says that Isaiah's home was in the valley between the two main hills of Jerusalem. So the prophet's home was in the valley. So it's like, well, this is the Valley of Vision. Because the prophet sees the vision in Jerusalem in his home in the valley.
But I don't think the Lord is mostly talking about geography when he names Israel the Valley of Vision. A valley is a deep shut in place, a solitary place, and the depths of the depths of our valleys. The Lord shows us the heights of his glory. In the valley we find a paradox. The way down is the way up.
The repentant soul has the victory. I think we tend to undervalue our valleys, even to waste our valleys, to miss what the Lord is doing in our lives. In this world. In the Valley of Vision, we see first the judgment of God. Not in the order of verses, but I think in the thrust of the passage.
As Jason read it, it's like, this is a passage about judgment. It's like, yeah, it kind of is a passage about judgment. God removed the defense of his people and he brought their enemies to them. Elam and Kur are coming, Verse six. These are just two of the many nations that composed the Assyrian army.
Jeremiah 49 tells us that the warriors of Elam were greatly dreaded as bowmen. You know, these are scary enemies coming against Israel. People of God in Jerusalem attempted to escape, but destruction was coming and was assured. They attempted to escape. How did they attempt to escape?
What did we see in our passage? They attempted to escape by frantic self salvation. They were making every preparation. Verse 18. It says that in that day you look to the weapons of the House of the Forest.
What's the House of the Forest? We've heard of that before. Many of us have read about that. The House of the Forest. Solomon built the House of the Forest.
It was an armory of Jerusalem. He used cedars from Lebanon, and he made four rows of cedar columns so that when you walked in, it looked like you're walking into a forest. It gave the image of a forest. You saw the breaches of the City of David were many. And you counted the houses in Jerusalem.
Which of these houses can we spare? How many can we spare? And you broke down the houses to fortify the walls. You collected the waters of the lower pool. You made a reservoir between the walls for the water of the old pool.
You did all that you could to prepare. That isn't bad in and of itself. That's a good thing. They also attempted escape by mindless escapism, by partying. It's kind of like singing and dancing while the ship was sinking.
The Lord asks, why have you gone up on the housetops? And I thought, gone on the housetops? Well, why did they go on the housetops? You think, well, maybe so they can see if the Assyrians are here yet. But I think that would be on the wall.
You go to the wall and you see better. As I was reading different commentaries, it's like, well, they went up on the houses to celebrate that's where they had parties on their housetops. The Lord of hosts of the armies of heaven called for weeping over sin. He called for mourning, and they responded with killing oxen and slaughtering sheep. Steak and lamb chops for everybody.
Let's eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Eventually they tried to escape by fleeing. Verse 3. All your leaders have fled together without the bow. They were captured.
All of you who were found were captured, though they had fled far away. Isaiah saw this vision, and he said in verse four, therefore look away from me that I may beat, weep bitter tears, do not labor to comfort me concerning the destruction of the daughter of my people. Such a terrible thing to see the destruction coming. Because the destruction was assured. The fate of Jerusalem was fashioned long ago.
Verse 14. The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears. Surely this iniquity will not be atoned for until you die, says the Lord of hosts. Brothers and sisters, we live among a people who do not believe in the coming judgment of God. In general, people are not worried about that, and they're not thinking about that.
I have a friend in Wilmington that I go to eat out to eat with once in a while or every once a month or so. He's Jewish by ethnicity, which he comments upon almost every time we're. Every time we're together, but not by religion. And I've been preparing this sermon for a long time. And as I was thinking about it and talking with him, I said, you don't believe in judgment coming, do you?
And he said, I don't believe in God. You know why? You know, he said, but I'm still a moral person. It doesn't mean I'm immoral. It's like, okay, and they want morality, but they don't believe that there's anyone ever going to judge whether this morality was adequate or not or anything like that.
Which to me is so sad. Because if you don't have a view of God's judgment, how do you have a view of Christ's salvation? Because the salvation comes. Judgment is the first word in the story of salvation, the Lord. Well, there's an elephant in the room here for you biblical scholars.
The Assyrians did not end up destroying Jerusalem, did they? It's like Isaiah talks all about, you know, this and Assyria was coming, but they didn't end up destroying them. I believe the prophetic view captures the. The destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon centuries later as well. In fact, I think it goes on to even include the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans after the time of Christ Jesus foretells this in Matthew 23.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. See, your house is left to you desolate. Not one stone of the temple was going to be left upon another. In our text we see a real irony.
Great attention given to military readiness, but a complete disregard to the sovereign God who controls the situation begs the question, is there such a thing as taking prudent measures without looking to God? Is that even a thing?
Valleys can be very difficult places in our lives, and I know that there are many valleys. I was just talking with a sister on the way in about some of the struggles going on just this week. I've been in a fairly dark valley in my work situation since February, which to me is a long time. I applied for a different position at work. It would have been a promotion.
They gave the job to my co worker, who was my partner. We were both managers in one program. He got that job and I was left doing both of our jobs, which was more than challenging for me. And then as he entered into his new position, his second day on the job, they brought in security. They walked him out the door.
He was fired. They changed the locks. He could not come back in. It's like, oh, my goodness. It's like, what in the world?
So it's been a difficult time, which I am finally recovering from. I felt a level of comfort, I guess it was about two weeks ago that I hadn't had for a long time. And I was sitting there thinking back, and I thought, you know, it was kind of like being dropped off for the first day of kindergarten. And I don't know if you remember being dropped off for the first day of kindergarten. I don't think I do, but I have a feeling from that.
I think I still remember the feeling. It's like, this is terrible. This is never going to work. But, yeah, it ends up being okay. I've been working in Wilmington since my heart condition came to light a little over three years ago.
Three years ago this month, Shelly and I were walking through my small apartment in Wilmington in one of the oldest apartment buildings in Wilmington. And Shelley said this was going to be a good place for me. And I thought, no, this is not going to be good. But it has been. It has turned out it is a good place.
It's a good place for me. We tend to hate our valleys, don't we, we tend to hate the valleys. Brothers and sisters, let's not waste the valleys in our life that the Lord is leading through. In the valley of Vision, we see the judgment of God, and we see the Lord himself. The Lord is a warrior.
The Lord has taken away the covering of Judah. For the Lord God of hosts, has a day of tumult and trampling and confusion in the valley of vision, a battering down of walls instead of the tumultuous shouts of partying in verse two, there's going to be the tumult of war coming. Exodus 15. The song of Moses. Moses says it very clearly.
The Lord is a warrior. The Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host have been cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. As a warrior, the Lord is fighting against his people. Is he fighting against.
Is that what we're seeing in Isaiah 22 as we think of the parable of the Minas or the talents going through? At the end of that parable, he says, as for my enemy who didn't want me to rule over him, bring him here and slaughter him. The Lord is fighting against his enemies and against our enemies. In John 8, Jesus was talking to the Jews who had believed in him, and they said, we are offspring of Abraham. We have never been enslaved to anyone.
How is it that you say, you will become free? We're free now. But Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The Son remains forever.
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. The Lord is fighting against the sin in our lives. He's fighting against his enemies and our enemies. We see the Lord himself, the warrior and the shepherd. Shelley and I were blessed to attend the Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology last November in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.
And it's a wonderful conference every year. Maybe we can get a. Maybe we'll put a flyer up this year and some more of you can come. But Philip Reagan was there, and he was talking about his trip to Africa. One of his former students was a Maasai warrior.
It's like, well, how cool is that you have a student. I was just talking with Jed about his students at the end of the year and dealing with students like, what if your student is a Maasai warrior? So he went to Africa with him with this young man, and he was staying in a tent, and it was dark and there were lions about. He could hear the lions and he could not See the lions. Because it was dark and there was a certain.
Now I'm doing this all from memory. So details might not be exactly right if you can find it written somewhere. But I couldn't find it written anywhere. In any event, he was in the tent and he had to get to the main tent at night. And he thought, I do not want to leave my tent.
And he ended up of a necessity leaving his tent. When he got to the opening of his tent, a Maasai warrior met him and escorted him the whole way to the main tent. That's what we need. We need a warrior shepherd. A shepherd who is strong, who is a warrior.
The Lord shepherd his people not to destruction. He shepherd them to deliverance. At that time, with the Assyrian invasion, they didn't come. The Lord raised, led good King Hezekiah to repent. He tore his clothes, he went to the house of the Lord.
He humbled himself and he prayed. And the Lord fought the battle for his people. The Lord spoke through Isaiah in chapter 37. She despises you. She scorns you.
The virgin daughter of Zion, whom have you mocked and reviled. Against whom have you raised your voice? Against the Holy One of Israel. The Lord is shepherding his people through the valley of the shadow of death. David wrote in Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd.
He meets, he makes me lie down. He leads me, he restores my soul. He guides me in righteousness. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For who's with me?
Is it he is with me? No, it doesn't say he. It's he does this, he does that. It doesn't say, he is with me. It says, you are with me.
It turns to the personal, the second person pronoun, not the third person, not someone out there is with me. You are with me. You are with me, my good shepherd. You prepare a table for me. You anoint my head with oil.
In the valley of Vision, we see the Lord. Whatever we do in this world, brothers and sisters, we have to do it with an eye to the Lord. In the valley of Vision, we see judgment, we see the Lord, and we see a glimpse of the future. And this is not the same thing that I preached up in Valley Presbyterian. Because we see a glimpse of Pentecost.
It's like I was thinking after Peter talked to me. It's like, well, you know, what's the Valley of Vision all about? The Valley of Vision is the Lord spoke to his prophets in the valley of vision, which he he, he called Jerusalem. And what happened at Pentecost? The first Christians were told, remain in the Valley of Vision until you receive power from the Holy Spirit.
So they were gathered. They had remained in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came. Brothers and sisters, the new covenant is better in every way than the old covenant. The new covenant in Christ's blood is better. You know the wages of sin is death.
We know this. People all over the world know this. There's sacrifices in all kinds of religions because they know that sin must be atoned for. Judgment is coming, and you need to be separated from your sins somehow. The good news starts with this.
In the Old Testament, there were bloody sacrifices made all the time. Bloody sacraments were observed. Circumcision, and it's been replaced as a sign of seal in the church. The bloody sacrament of circumcision replaced with baptism. And the bloody sacrament of the Passover has been replaced with the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
Think of the sacrifices throughout history. You think of the thousands and thousands of sheep and bulls and rams that were sacrificed. Tens of thousands, millions. And the New covenant has said, no more. We don't need any more of shedding of the blood because, praise God, the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood of the sheep and the rams never satisfied the wrath of God.
It was just pointing forward, just tutoring us, helping us to see we need a covering for our sin. We need a substitute for our sin. And praise God. In the new Covenant, Jesus Christ has come as the real sacrifice, the one who takes away the sins of the world, of everyone who had faith in the Lord from the beginning of time, from Adam and Eve on in the Old Testament. Just a couple other ways the New Covenant is better than the old.
In the old Covenant, it talked about the meek inheriting the land. In the New Covenant, it says the meek will inherit the whole earth. Jerusalem was the center of the earth, and people came to Jerusalem to see the laws and to see the worship and come to understand God. But now the Valley of Vision is taken out everywhere because the Holy Spirit is poured out on all of the people of God. In the Valley of Vision, it was out into the whole world.
So I was thinking about Sears and Roebuck this week. Sears and Roebuck really changed America. The Sears and Roebuck catalog. You could be sitting in your house in Nebraska and see something in that catalog, and you could order it and pay for it, and it would be delivered to. They'd put it on the train and bring it to your post office.
What an amazing thing. Don't even get me started on Amazon. I talk about that too much. But God the Father loves the story of Jesus Christ. God loves the character and the story of Jesus Christ.
He loves that Jesus humbled himself. He left the throne. Isaiah saw him there on the throne. He saw the Lord surrounded by the burning ones. The seraphim crying, holy, holy, holy.
He loves the character of Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus left that and he came and he was born of a poor virgin girl. He grew up in the valley of this world. God the Father made a plan for salvation to save the world through Jesus Christ. God the Son.
God the Son produced the salvation by his perfect obedience, his perfect character and his sacrificial death on our behalf. But we can believe this. How does this get applied to you and me? We're still sitting in our house in Nebraska. We saw the thing in the catalog.
We ordered the thing. How does it get to me, to us? It gets to us by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the delivery. It's the train bringing it to the post office, bringing it to.
It's the Amazon driver coming to your front porch. That's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to bring us to life, to apply Jesus Christ and all of his benefits to you and me. I love the quote from Calvin in the bulletin about the fact that they aren't private gifts for Jesus. They're gifts that God gave Jesus for us.
And they're applied to us by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit who is the giver and is himself the gift we receive the Holy Spirit himself, the Spirit of Jesus. Friday morning, I was busily trying to get everything done so that I could go home. And one of our schedulers came in and sat down in my office. And I think he was trying to figure out if I'm really a Christian or not, because he is a believer.
And I'm glad he came in and we were talking and he told me his story a little bit, I believe. He said it was 30 years that he was an alcoholic and a drug addict. And he came to a crisis point in his life and he said, I'm done with this. And he said, I gotta go to church somewhere. And he ended up in an apostolic church.
An apostolic church. And he said, I want to be baptized in Jesus name. And they said, we'll do it. And they baptized him in Jesus name. And he ended up.
I didn't understand all the details. He ended up in the backseat of car of people that he had just met taking him to Baltimore from Wilmington. And they wanted him to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. So they took him to Baltimore, and the matriarch there determined that he was ready to receive the Holy Spirit. And so he was baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues.
And he continues that way today. And I thought, you know, I don't really want to go there. But the Holy Spirit orchestrates all of our lives, believe it or not. And it's like, this is the first time anyone has walked into my office and told me that they were baptized into the Holy Spirit in the Holy Spirit and are speaking in tongues. The first time anyone has told me that.
And it's like the two days before I'm preaching on Pentecost, how the Holy Spirit wants me to tell you that.
And I'm not saying that you should go to Baltimore or anything like that. I am going to say the Holy Spirit moves as he will, and we do not control the Holy Spirit. We, by the grace of God, Lord willing, are controlled by the Holy Spirit. And the more we're controlled by the Holy Spirit, the happier we are and the better our lives are.
The. The Holy Spirit works as he will. And praise God. Miracles still happen, especially when you go into third world countries and you see where they are believing in demon activity and demons are cast out regularly and things like that. But the Holy Spirit does what he will.
As we. I was reading through Jeremiah Burroughs sermon. It's like, how do you get a Jeremiah? Well, we get the.
What's that called? Shelley. That booklet that we get Free Grace, The Free Grace broadcast booklet. And it has a lot of puritan things in it. Jeremiah Burroughs died in 1647.
And I don't read a whole lot of puritans, but I do read summaries of what they said. And this is from the saints. That happiness, the soul of man is capable of an immediate joining with God. You will say, God is infinite and I am finite. His human soul was finite.
Jesus, human soul was a finite created thing. I'm messing up my reading here. Yet the infinite and finite may be joined together. Who was the God Man? His human soul was finite, a created thing.
Now, don't confuse finite with mortal. We have immortal souls. We have our souls that are immortal, but they're not infinite. And Jesus in his humanity had an immortal soul that was finite, a created thing. And yet what a conjunction Christ's soul had with his divine nature.
The fitness of the soul, the finiteness of the soul of man does not hinder the immediate touch of the infinite God himself. We can be touched by the infinite God himself. Our souls can be changed by our union with God himself through the power of the Holy Spirit. It's capable of more immediate revelation of God, one that we will fully experience when we are with him in heaven. In the present, we see it already.
We see a union with Christ because of the Holy Spirit. We have union with Christ. We can say, jesus is in my heart. We can call out to the Father, abba, Father, just like Jesus called out Abba, Father. But we have hope for so much more.
When we are in his presence and see him as he is, we will change to be as he is. And we will know a union with him that we can't even imagine right now. Praise God. What a thing to hope for. What a thing to look forward to.
So judgment is coming on the world for the believer in Christ. It has already been borne by Jesus Christ. The valley of vision is the church. It is the Holy Spirit. People.
We're in the valley of vision, as it were, because of the Holy Spirit in us. In this life we're living, we see Jesus made a little lower than the angels, but now crowned with glory, we see him coming again so that we might be where he is.
One thing I thought, I know there are souls. I'm going to end with this. There are souls that struggle and say, I'm not sure, do I have the Holy Spirit myself? And I have three sisters. And one of my sisters was of that.
Of that had that struggle herself when she was younger. And it's like, how do I know if the Holy Spirit's in me? Well, brothers and sisters, do you love the character and story of Jesus Christ? If you love the character and story of Jesus Christ, that's a gift of the Holy Spirit, because the world does not. They do not love the character of Jesus Christ.
They do not love the the story of Jesus Christ. Take heart, brothers and sisters. Embrace the Holy Spirit and his work. Do the things he leads you to do. Do the work that he brings you to do.
Let's pray. Blessed Lord, thank you for these texts. Isaiah, second chapter of Acts, Psalm 23. So many texts that all tie together and that your whole word fits together and points us to Jesus Christ, our good shepherd, our warrior, that we need to fight our sins and our enemies and your enemies. Thank you for bringing us together under your word.
Today we pray that we will take it home with us and that we will be people who do love the story of Jesus Christ, love the character of Jesus Christ, and are being changed by your Holy Spirit more and more. Into the character of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Previous Page