W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume  What is New

Chapter 2

THE RISE AND FALL OF VINEYARDS,

AND THE FOLLOW-UP

THE JUDGE SUMMING UP FOR JUDGMENT:
IT IS GOOD TO LISTEN,
LEAVING SHOVE FOR LOVE,
AND SHAN’T FOR WILL!

The Indolent Vineyard, Rapacity for Riches,
Dreamy Delinquents, Ignorant Savants,
Sin Breeders, God Mockers and Moral Transvestites

I THE INDOLENT VINEYARD

For some, it is perhaps difficult to remember the office of love, and in particular, the love of God. We hear so much about number 1, oneself, one’s State or one’s firm or nation, as if to be FIRST was better than to make a good fist of something, that it is almost forgotten that the love of God is far from love-ins, and is the very strength of the fibre and function of mankind. Without it, we would long ago simply have been deleted.

Thus in Isaiah 5 we find, even in the midst of incredible seeming hypocrisy and self-seeking injustice in Israel, the fact that God had “A Song of my Beloved, regarding His vineyard.” It is to His well beloved the vineyard is given, and it is He who now has it, and has it AS the well-beloved! Alas, as to His people, who ARE the vineyard (5:7), He declares this:

"Because they have rejected the law of he LORD of hosts,
and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel,
therefore the anger of the LORD is aroused against His people..."

We are reminded of Isaiah 30:8ff., indeed where the very essence of the nation has become one of rebellion!

To be sure, the Beloved whose vineyard it is,  is the Well-Beloved, the Son of God (Mark 12:1ff., Isaiah 42:1ff), the covenant to come (Isaiah 49:6), and the King of Israel, as even Pilate began to see. It is He  who as Jehovah had brought Israel to greatness, under David. But in that very love had He done it, to which the nation in so much and so many, had not responded.

It had been offered, pressed, presented, in appeals innumerable. Indeed, as you read in the day of Moses writing from the Lord in Deuteronomy 7: “You are .. a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people…”

But now!

"Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and note it on a scroll,
that it may be for time to come, forever and ever:
that this is a rebellious people,
lying children,
children who will not hear the law of the LORD,
who say to the seers, 'Do not see!'
and to the prophets, 'Do not prophesy to us right things;
speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits."

 

The grace of God found Abraham and in His truth He made promises (Genesis 12, 17). Moses presented the two sides even though Israel had already equivocated, as seen in Deuteronomy 27-29, where blessings and curses were read from two different mounts, to distinguish them categorically. But nothing ever breaks the promises of God (cf. Ezekiel 36:22).

In Isaiah 5, then, long after those earlier times, God traces the enormous labours and planning to make an excellent vineyard – and ISRAEL WAS that vineyard; and then declares this:

“It brought forth wild grapes” (Isaiah 5:2).

“What will I do with My vineyard ?” He rhetorically asks. The results for poor Israel are increasingly like, in kind at least, what that recidivist Gentile world is now finding as it makes endless endeavours to minimise its well-structured rebuke, as the wrath of God increases. Look at Darfur: is that not enough! Is there not "a cry!" Do they imagine that God is deaf, that do such things ? Do they ignore the humbling of Hitler, Hirohito, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein ? Does the grinding of the mill of God deceive them, that they think it has now grating!

Darfur ? It however is merely a token of Islamic persecution, of corruption and hearts which have something to teach granite for hardness! What of the rest of this writhing, striving, sin-sodden series of salacious, seized, diseased sites where tyranny rules, as in Zimbabwe, where folly raises its head like a Gorgon monster, as in some Western nations, which make morals a malady, and untruth a requirement, whether by law, or by false teaching times. Instead of asking, Why are we smitten ? this world needs to ask, When will we cease in indolent religious arrogance, ethical disasters and insensitivity as a virtual cult, while personal comfort is a quest, to ask for judgments of which the present series is merely a preliminary!

At times, it is found, yes it proclaims itself boldly to be its own, and none shall master it. In what were once churches (just as Israel was, in ancient times, once a nation of glory in the Lord), at times in what had the semblance of righteous nations, there is a shuffling off of spirituality, a scuffing of autonomous feet. Holland once so religious, is now a leader in immorality, where even euthanasia is taking the wings so long foreseen. England is taking orders from a morally diseased Europe (cf. Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming  Ch. 3). In Canada, male marriages appear part of the fabric, while an Episcopal Church in the USA is finding it rather too much to abstain from blessing male unions, and to desist from making homosexual BISHOPS!

So with ancient Israel a prototype, the Gentile world avidly follows that corruption, seemingly indifferent to the plight which followed for Israel, when it reached its climax in their killing of their King; which, in spirit, is wrought by so many in so many lands now, as they drift with remorseless indifference, to a moral vacuum, filled now increasingly with legal violence to subdue all objection, and hearts that stone might envy.

Thus we see in the prototype situation, in Isaiah, some withering words, few here, but deeply incisive.

Indeed, the Lord says this: “He looked for justice, but behold, oppression; for righteousness, but behold, a cry” (Isaiah 5:7). And what a cry ascends to heaven as man destroys every bridge he can see, to reach it. The results, the Lord indicated in that day, were coming. They came… ! He is no respecter of persons. That is the prototype.

2   RAPACITY FOR RICHES AND DREAMY DELINQUENTS

Some make a sport of adding field to field, callowly increasing their net wealth, but their affliction comes.

This reminds us of recent statements about the possible time when seaside residences will become virtually worthless, because of salt and rising tides, storms and general disorder. What is to be found ? This: “The harp and the strings … wine in their flasks, but they do not regard the work of the Lord, nor the operation of His hands.” 

They see chances for pleasure and profit, but not the integral meaning of designs, in the artful and brilliant contrivances of which, in the flight of birds, their migration or our own intricate anatomy, there is need to consider: WHY did God make it ? WHAT am I supposed to do ? Find God and live in Him, that is what, and cease pretending. England loved to pretend that Hitler didn’t really ‘mean it’, until the bombs fell. He did. They found out. They did not consider the operation of his hands. Now as then, there are millions, billions, who do not consider what God has done, is doing and what is to come and WHY! Hitler ? He went; God remains (Zechariah 9:7, Psalm 90:1, 102:25-28).

3 IGNORANT SAVANTS, SIN BREEDERS

Already in Israel, by Isaiah’s day, there had been defeats and captivity. Indeed, Israel in the North had already gone into another land, beaten, broken, and not merely exiled from their land, but removed to outposts of an empire, not their own! So have peace and purity, righteousness and morality in this our land been far removed; and stress, tension, inward fatigue because of soiled intentions and aspirations, boldness of appetite, and disregard of God, in name or even more in commandments and design specifications: these have come like self-induced fog.

 Depression becomes a major disease, and confusion is like a cloud cover to cut out the light of the sun, that spiritual sun, Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace and Counsellor for man, who without Him, is as lively in wisdom as rampaging buffalo herd. How many nations seem keen to imitate the same rampaging heedlessness, in the ferment of vinous spirits, and seething ignorance of heart!

 What did God say about this, in Isaiah’s day ? It was this. “Therefore My people have gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge…” That is one reason why your pastor has put up on the Web his 135 volume work on the word and work of the Lord, on His truth and the assurance of its magnificence and necessity for man. Ignorance festers, like a wound not anointed with oil! While this lèse-majesté, this disregard of the sovereign strength and startling love of God in word, in the Bible, in deed, in Christ Jesus our Lord, proceeds like a racing pulse, there are results that begin not only to mimic the offence, but to mock it. Thus the Lord declares (Isaiah 5:14-16):

“Therefore hell has enlarged itself and opened its mouth beyond measure:
their glory and their multitude and their pomp, and he who is jubilant,
shall descend into it. People shall be brought down, each man shall be humbled,
and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled, but the Lord of hosts
shall be exalted in judgment, and God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness.”

4 GOD MOCKERS and MORAL TRANSVESTITES

People rarely contain themselves when on lust, passion bent, whether it be physical, mental or spiritual. How can they MOCK God ? Isaiah mimics them. First he discloses the quality of their fallen lives: 

“Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as if with a cart rope…”

Then he shows their wantonry:

“… that say, ‘Let Him make speed and hasten His work, that we may see it, and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come, that we may know it.”

They summon God in their spiritual intoxication, in order to mock Him, as did the soldiers manufacture diabolical means to bring torment to the captured Christ! They did not realise that He had allowed them to seize Him, though He had said just that (Matthew 26:52-56); and they did not think that they would answer for their additions of contempt to injustice, mockery to madness. But for every statement, act of man, there is an answer from Him who is divine. 

Nor is this all. They begin to say it is GOOD to do EVIL, to call DARKNESS some kind of LIGHT, BITTERNESS a SWEET thing (Isaiah 5:20). Woe to them, says the Lord, and to those who “are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!”

 If some want to change their clothes to look like those of the gender they do not have, what is to be said of those who want to change their very humanity, to look like some abortion, instead of the creation of God, some self-made thing, nothing its mentor and no-wisdom its manufacturer, where they lay down the morals! This is all, and to themselves they commit themselves: they do not lay down their lives for the brethren, as I John 3:16 advises for the love which drives the people of God, but they lay down the law, their own, the opposite of goodness and mercy, for themselves.

 Thus does even a government become a party to the little legalism of moral transvestism. They change the clothes of morality, dress it up differently, calling good evil, and evil good, confusing such things as gender, while even affronting truth or making its declaration illegal, as if a moral system founded on desire, could take over judgment from one founded in God and His word over the millennia, applied as He has spoken: and it will be applied. It is like drug-taking, where no amount of reason will be heard; for the lust is on… How terrible are those who speak of health and danger, is the immoral mouthing of many This, they say: It deserves fines, or even imprisonment. Such is life in the day of death! In Israel, it was nothing less as you see in Isaiah 6:10-13.

 They declare it for others, their own rebellious immorality: they make it legal to be illegal, and illegal to be lawful. They torment truth and make sexual relationships a pleasure item, or cruise, an experiment, and family life a trifle to be torn apart for the sake of hedonistic satisfaction. Such is the direction of our own country, and this, our own State very nearly went in this very direction a month or so ago; and while resistance came from many, and an Upper House majority was able for the time to stop it, yet while the will was there, we must not assume it will not once more try to surface. In this, it is like an alien submarine in the peaceful waters of the State, or like a tanker, about to rip asunder, and deposit its gigantic bad oil slick, with careless stupor, upon our coasts.

Consider then this word of God found in Isaiah 6: 

“Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes;

Lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears,

And understand with their heart,

And return and be healed.”

That, blindness, like that of those who stare at the sun, was the first instalment for their wilful closing of the eyes! Then there came the result of it all, seen as we complete Isaiah 6:10-13: 

“Then I said, ‘Lord, how long?’
And He answered:

‘Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant,

The houses are without a man,

The land is utterly desolate,

The Lord has removed men far away,

And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

But yet a tenth will be in it,

And will return and be for consuming,

As a terebinth tree or as an oak,  

Whose stump remains when it is cut down.

So the holy seed shall be its stump.”

Consider the extent of this judgment. A beautiful tree – like many now in Adelaide, some of which already suffer, but through the mercy of the Lord, are not yet spoiled – is cut down. That stands for the fall of the land. It is not removed entirely ? No, for though, as with an oak, its tendrils of Spring lace, and its leaves of tender green and beautiful craft no longer appear, though the acorns no more cry out concerning the wisdom implanted in them, and as small, no more signal for the grand things to come from so little by the wisdom of the God who made all: there is some residue! Though the tree is cut down:  yet its stump is there. God did not use a stump remover on it. Not at that time …

 Now for the beautiful part … In Isaiah 7, there is the prophecy of the Virgin, in an event beyond all mere human conception, comparable with any miracle, staggering; for she is to bear a Son in whom we will have this: GOD WITH US, Immanuel. Then in Isaiah 8:21-9:7, we find that in the very midst of torment and anguish (and Isaiah 6 has shown enough of it, with Isaiah 5 the cause of it!), there is to come light, with peace and gladness, and the dominion of the mighty God, in the very person, amazing as it is, of His own Son, one also to be called the Mighty God. Here is the Messiah, the one sent from heaven to earth, bringing the holiness of heaven with Him, and its pardon. For ever is His time, without end is His kingdom (Isaiah 9:7).

 We have just experienced one more blessed Easter, and praise God, in our State, they even stopped trading on Easter Monday, one of the most encouraging signals for a long time! Perhaps we will get a little more rain now! Already God has been merciful. That is the season in which the climax of this Son, this Prince of Peace’s coming was commemorated, His death and resurrection proclaimed. His return is the next vast index of judgment, when the ills foretold before it, will recede: for in these evils, there is hope; but when that comes, for those who have rejected Him, there is none.

 What is worst in all life ? It is this: the INABILITY to be saved, the FINALITY of judgment and the REMOVAL from the light! This is what is most horrible, awesome, but what ? If in this time, in this clime, the light of Christ is rejected, though His words control the earth and invent history before its time, and will judge (John 12:48-50, Acts 17:31), is there no result ? Far  from it.

 “God,” says Paul, “has appointed a day on which He will judge the world
in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained: He has given assurance
of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

Recently, we were talking to someone who spoke of having some belief, some faith, but when it came to hell – indeed there was another even more emphatic – this held less appeal. But why should a god be invented, to replace the living God, so that heaven is permissible from His mouth and power, but not hell, the crucifixion of Christ, but not of one’s own life in obedience to His will; resurrection, but not realisation of the way that does not live in, with and by, yes and for Christ, in its end ? Will a man begin and not end, aim and not fire, call evil good and good evil, say - Let God hasten His work that we may see it! and not find where mockery belongs, and live there! Is bounty to be received, and judgment omitted ? Is truth to be loved, but its impact negated!

 Is a man to invent his own god ? Why then talk of Christ; but if Christ be followed, let hell not be lost in the middle of some muddle of vain words, as if cancer were a myth, and reality a dream.

Enough of dreams. Let us live for Christ!

CONTINUED

Part II

THE RISE AND FALL OF VINEYARDS,

AND THE FOLLOW-UP

THE JUDGE SUMMING UP FOR JUDGMENT:
IT IS GOOD TO LISTEN,
LEAVING SHOVE FOR LOVE,
AND SHAN’T FOR WILL!

The Indolent Vineyard, Rapacity for Riches,
Dreamy Delinquents, Ignorant Savants,
Sin Breeders, God Mockers and Moral Transvestites

REVIEW

The Vineyard

Let us review a little, before reaching the grand finale of this theme. First, we need to see yet more deeply, in using Israel as a spiritual example in the heart, for all, the extent to which God deplored their sin. They are an illustration, for they not merely excused sins in inequity, but abused righteousness and tampered with truth, while not at all being sorry for their folly, but rather exalting in it. Thus in Jeremiah 2:35, we have this not for the Jew only, but for any and all mankind that lives.

"Behold, I will plead My case with you ...". Why ? It is

"because you say 'I have not sinned.' "

The well need no doctor, and the self-auditing firm, has no debts!

Nothing is altered by self-confidence; and self-belief as a basis is merely a lie in psychological dress. A confidence-booster is no more value when judgment sits, than a dream when exam results are published.

Thus in Isaiah 5 we find, even in the midst of incredible seeming hypocrisy and self-seeking injustice in Israel, the fact that God had “A Song of my Beloved, regarding His vineyard.” It is to His well beloved the vineyard is given, and it is He who now has it, and has it AS the well-beloved! It is He who is the King of Israel, as even Pilate began to see. It is He  who, as Jehovah, the everlasting "I AM" (Exodus 3:14) had brought Israel to greatness, under David.

But it was in that very love had He done it, to which the nation in so much and so many, had not responded.

It is He who as in Isaiah 42:1ff., 49:6 IS the covenant, and it is He for whom covering the chosen in Israel is not enough: He has no less a work of redemption to apply to the Gentiles, that He might BE in this highly personal setting, the salvation of God (cf. Luke 2:30-32). It covers NOTHING for those who do not believe, for as Isaiah 53:3-6 shows, those whose sin is actually borne, are those whose hearts are HEALED! There is no operation of pardon without regeneration. Yet the love of God does not in anything alter: those who come to faith, it is these who receive, and all are invited. Does the angry fighter plane which ignores the tanker, extract any fuel ? I think not. Is the tanker reduced at all by this by-pass ? Obviously not!

Never doubt the intensity and immensity of the love of God, or seek some scape-goat, not for your sin - for that is provided already in the Messiah, Jesus Christ, but for your rejecting the Lord!

That, it is YOUR responsibility as before God who would have ALL. Love ? It does not force, and wisdom, it KNOWS who are its own (Romans 8:29ff.); and these, they have ONLY one righteousness, that of Christ, to render them acceptable to God (Psalm 71:15, Romans 3:23ff., Ephesians 2, Romans 10). Try to add your own works to that, and you are like someone attempting to BE a tyre, so that his car might run better. It is ... unfitting, and illusory. At that level, the purity of God, you are not satisfactory at all. You are tiresome and no tyre at all. Retire from this, and do not attempt to make of yourself a spare tyre; as well use a bike tyre on a tractor.

Who then is satisfactory in the canons of perfection, and powerful in the functions that fail ? This is that Lord, God the sent, as seen in Isaiah 48:16, who as God does the work of God, in the format of man! His is the vineyard and He is heir to it (as in Mark 12); but what of the vineyard itself ?

It was then in Israel, as it is now in the Gentile world. Not repentance but rebellion, not faith but fidgets were occupying it.

THE SIN

Alas, as to His people, they ARE the vineyard (Isaiah 5:7), and of them He declares this:  

"Because they have rejected the law of he LORD of hosts,
and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel,
therefore the anger of the LORD is aroused against His people..."
 

How far they had fallen from the original mercy provided for the nation.

What then does the Lord say of Israel at the spiritual level ? It had been offered peace, pardon and power in the truth, pressed, presented with opportunity and hope, in appeals innumerable (cf. Hosea 12:10).

What an insalubrious change, what an unhealthy non-holiness!

Then, indeed, as you read in the day of Moses writing from the Lord in Deuteronomy 7:

“You are .. a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.
The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were
more in number than any other people…”

But now!  

"Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and note it on a scroll,
that it may be for time to come, forever and ever:
that this is a rebellious people,
lying children,
children who will not hear the law of the LORD,
who say to the seers, 'Do not see!'
and to the prophets, 'Do not prophesy to us right things;
speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits."

That is what God says of them in Isaiah 30.

THE GRACE

The grace of God found Abraham, and in His truth He made promises (Genesis 12, 17). This included both the land of Israel, and exile from it if they successively sundered from the Lord; indeed mockery among the nations if they did so.

Moses presented the two sides even though Israel had already equivocated, as seen in Deuteronomy 27-29, where blessings and curses were read from two different mounts, to distinguish them categorically. But nothing ever breaks the promises of God (cf. Ezekiel 36:22).
To be sure, as Ezekiel shows, the promise remains (as in Genesis 17:7-8 and foretold in Deuteronomy 30, 32, Micah 7), and in His own honour, God will honour it (as He already has been active in doing, for Israel is now restored to its land but not to its Lord).

These amazing facts appear less so, but more ‘normal’ for God, who is ALWAYS reliable, and never fails (Zechariah 3:5) or changes (Psalm 102:26-28). These last two millennia have verified the word of God vastly, both in its positive and negative promises, and this last half-century has shown a prodigious fulfilment of ancient prophecies in magnified detail, for Israel (cf. SMR Ch. 9).

 In Isaiah 5, then, long after those earlier times, God traces the enormous labours and planning that had been wrought to make an excellent vineyard – and ISRAEL WAS that vineyard; and then declares this:

“It brought forth wild grapes” (Isaiah 5:2).

A CHOICE vine, carefully planted and surrounded, protected and cared for; and now the fruit: wildness and littleness: wild grapes.

This then brings in more detail to us the Messianic mission in high contrast to the national failure. This it is for Jew and Gentile, man and nation, as many as come to Him (as in Israel, to come, seen in Zechariah 12:10-13:1, Romans 11:25ff.).

As Isaiah 41 passes into 42, and 51 into 52, you see it. THEY had NO ONE to fill the gap, take the weight, achieve deliverance. THEREFORE GOD did it. In Isaiah 42 and 49 you see the total contrast between Israel's total and complete failure, and the due and true Servant of God, the Lord Himself, who secured what they spoiled, and recast what they had blasted. It is He, and not in mere man, in whom they must put their trust (Psalm 2 proclaims this). It is He, in perfect purity, who alone can redeem; for debts do not cancel debts, and negatives, added to positives, do not make things better, but rather worse!

Their blindness has been long, Paul shows, but it is have a follow-up in faith which will come to many in Israel as Spring to Winter snow: suddenly, and in massive spread! Thus the composite congregation, Jew and Gentile, assembles at last (Romans 11:30-32), one 'tree' their base, one Lord their gardener, one Gospel their call, one power their provision.

How is this done ?

THE MIGHT OF THE MAJESTIC MESSIAH,
OVER ALL NATIONAL AND PERSONAL BARRIERS

Towards the end of Part I above, we were noting the wonder of the answer of God to sin, judgment apart. This is not something provided for this world, which sins into judgment at increasing speed, but not for those elected to salvation from within it; for Christ having transferred the choice payment of redemption to those to whom it belonged, they are covered.

Their overdraft is annulled, their debt is cancelled, their deficiencies are met by the gift of righteousness, and their peace is beyond all understanding (Romans 5, 8, Philippians 4).

Thus we had something like this.

Now for the beautiful part … In Isaiah 7, there is the prophecy of the Virgin, in an event beyond all mere human conception, comparable with any miracle, staggering; for she is to bear a Son in whom we will have this: GOD WITH US, Immanuel. Then in  Isaiah 8:21-9:7, we find that in the very midst of torment and anguish (and Isaiah 6 has shown enough of it, with Isaiah 5 the cause of it!), there is to come light, with peace and gladness, and the dominion of the mighty God, in the very person, amazing as it is, of His own Son, one also to be called the Mighty God. Here is the Messiah, the one sent from heaven to earth, bringing the holiness of heaven with Him, and its pardon. For ever is His time, without end is His kingdom (Isaiah 9:7).

Here then appears the Messiah, and in Him is neither guile nor deceit (Isaiah 53:9, I Peter 2:22ff.), nor did sin achieve even calling card approval. How vast the gulf between Him and the practice in the nation, of calling evil good and good evil, this being just one of the divine accusations against Israel which we noted in Section I above. How wonderful apt and accurate, ample and majestic is the remedy for such confusion!

It is precisely because the horrid disjointing crushing and crumpling of the Cross of Christ is so anti-design in its depressive dynamic, that it is so apt. Here is the very picture of sin and its due judgment, in the very milieu of the Master, bearing it without deformation of character, declination of commitment or deviation from duty; and with that, there is the love which surges into forgiveness to the last, saving souls as He dies to save souls, summoning one of His companions in crucifixion, to the kingdom the man was seeking.

Behold the Messiah, the One sent from heaven to earth, bringing the holiness of heaven with Him, and its pardon. For ever is His time, without end is His kingdom (Isaiah 9:7).

We see now the Lord, in princely and priceless peace, poured into human form to achieve divine transformation and redemption for man; and in terms of calling evil good and good evil, consider the remedy for such confusion.

Here shines like the sun arising on a misty morning, the magnificence of the Messiah. Now are we moving to the domain of the Messiah of Isaiah 7, 9 as indeed of 11, 22, 32, 40, 42, 49-55, 60-61 and so on.

All is expounded, expressed with a sympathy (to those loved), an antipathy (to what defiles them) and an empathy (in bearing sin where it is discarded onto Him freely), which processes impurity, and restores a healed heart at peace with the purity of God through this same Lord Jesus Christ.

It is a double transformation: of Him to sin bearer and slain Messiah, and of those who seek Him, His body arisen and His word fulfilled, to purged premises and people with promises, even children of God, equipped with the very spiritual genes of His generation, which is for ever (I John 3:9).

I The OPPOSITE, the Blessed Righteousness of God

As sin estranged man, by its spread, so God's righteousness spreads like a saving net, to bring back fallen man. As the one brought devastation, loss, negation, a spendthrift spirit, so this beings reconstruction, through a vast endeavour, a rebuilding as of Europe with Marshall Aid after World War II.

That, a temporal boon, was courtesy of the United States in no small measure. This is an eternal blessing, courtesy not of some part of creation, but of the Creator, here turned Himself, into the Redeemer. What He had been in love, now He has wrought  in practice.

As one destroyed, the other restores; as one lent on the wall to break it, the other constructed the wall, to make it serve. As the one defiled beauty, the other was defiled, to remove the ruin in Himself, and provide the beauty of holiness to the now redeemed, covered in the Cross of Christ by the blood of the New Covenant (Matthew 26).

This is the blessed "child" which is "born", the counsellor, the mighty God, the chief among all and the master not of mere ceremonies, but of salvation (Isaiah 9, 53). Here purity from heaven, brings the celestial to the terrestrial, and the cultural proclivities and declivities of man are surpassed, as the moon by the sun. Here is righteousness that has "healing in His wings" (Malachi 4:2).

How wise it is, and is He who speaks! (cf. Isaiah 9:6-7).
 

It is here as in Romans 5:15:

 “But the free gift is not like the offense.
For if by the one man’s offense many died,
much more the grace of God and
the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.”

Here the action of Christ and Adam is seen, the latter to confound, the former to restore, and the restoration (like Europe with NEW equipment when rebuilt after World War II) is even more prodigious than the loss.

2 The APPOSITE, the Gathering in of the Elect

Again, as sin brought extension, like a plague, the spiritual sedition and sedation moving by birth and environment, moral, social, intellectual and physical, to many others, so salvation brought intensity, EACH one being revived to life on an individual basis, by the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, like so many polluted streams, each renewed at its source, and then all allowed to flow into one huge river of life.

Romans 5:20 gives the keynote to this: “Moreover, the law entered that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more…” Here the contrast is in the atmosphere, the kindness, the grace that floods the drought stricken deserts of sin. The whole area is green not with wilted hope to conserve species, but with a regenerated life that abounds, and binds.

This is fitting, for as Christ is one, so is His body; and hence we who receive the Biblical Gospel should seek fellowship, not with falsely named rebels, pretending, but with those of like precious faith (Ephesians 2:14-22, Jude). Such is the power of achievement in the Messiah; and those who seek Him, find, and those who desire Him, are free to come; and His call is categorical (Matthew 11:28ff.), and heartfelt (Matthew 23:27), and seeks for all that they might avoid judgment (John 3:17, Luke 19:42ff.).

There is nothing merely verbal in it, as if a politician make loose statement. God would have all come to a knowledge of the truth, and in this One mediator, He seeks all to be reconciled to Himself (Colossians 1, I Timothy 2). He does not carry on in lachrymose lassitude: He DESIRES, and all the power of God is available. Desire Him ? Trust Him, for the wind and window of opportunity alike are present. The way ? it is there. The entry ? it is there (John 10:9).

Enter then. If not, why protest!

Ephesians puts the perspective like this:

“For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one,
and has broken down the middle wall of separation,
having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace,
and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross,
thereby putting to death the enmity.

“And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near.
For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.

“Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners,
but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,
having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone,
in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord,
in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

3. The REQUISITE, the spread of the Gospel
in Hospitable Soil
with Godly Seed

Just as sin spread by its evil news, so the Gospel is spread by lively 'epistles' as Paul says of one church (II Corinthians 3:2ff.), those whose lives and words attest the truth of which they speak. Instead of infecting others, the Christian is called not to inspect them - God's affair - but to bring anti-biotic to their infection. Thus the Gospel of God's grace is death to sin and life to those afflicted, as surely as small pox was virtually wiped out years ago, through the vaccination program. Although life in Christ does not mean NO sin can enter; it DOES mean that no sin can stay (cf. Romans 8:8ff., 12-16).

Sin shall not have dominion over you (Romans 6), so that by the Spirit of God you put to death the deeds of the erratic freedom of fancy (Romans 8:11-13), that makes body, mind and spirit a plaything for sin, and a course for carrier disease (Romans 8:13). There is no room for two sovereigns in the Christian life, and though many try it, none surmount it. With the deity, there can be no duplicity: He knows your heart and spirit better than you do. It is Christ who reigns (Romans 5:17ff.).

Thus as we began to see last time, in the most amazing fashion, as if to search for height to heaven (as Isaiah offered Ahaz in Isaiah 7), and to hell for depth, and then apply the solution to the nation's troubles, we find a virgin is to be the encompassing one (as in Jeremiah 31:22-31), providing the human form for the irruption of God into humanity, which brings in the New Covenant. How ? Why she is to bear one who is to be “the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace,” and in His coming what do we have ? It is this: "God with us” (Isaiah 7, 9 Jeremiah 31).

From her is to be born into mankind, the ONLY ONE who can heal it, save it, bring it peace in man or nations, women or wisdom, heal its sores and govern it in goodness.

Thus does God taking flesh, deliver all in it, who seek Him, and seeking find. In Isaiah 42:6, 49:6, we find that the Gentiles have NO LESS NEED than the Jew, that all need the same salvation and the same gift, with the same overdraft to be annulled, each in its own form (Isaiah 53:6), but all with the same eventual result.

It is when, and only when many have found this irresistible, as will come at the return of Christ, all drawn and Christ in command of this world as it flies to judgment, that the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 11). It is then that Christ has world-wide, conquering impact, before the world itself is removed from the scene and scenario (Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 23:35).

Even now the Gospel calls; then it leads to the day of divine JUDGMENT, when its neglect finally condemns. What IS the condemnation ? It is this as John 3 tells us. The true LIGHT has come into the world (John 1:9-10), but "this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

Christ did not come to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved (John 3:17). He SAYS so. He came that anyone believing might be saved. That is the positive and negative of it. The divine motivation is stated here as in Colossians 1. It is the human motivation which is subject to sentence.

This is the reason: reject salvation, and there is no other; ignore the appeal, and truth executes judgment. Keep your sin under wraps, and on the show day, its sentence is sure, just and certain.

The Prince of Peace is the ONLY way to avoid war, both personal, national and international.  It is the only way to find God. It is the only way the vineyard, yours or that of Israel, being replanted with regenerated stock, can grow in grace.

It is as in Jeremiah 31:28-29:

“Behold, the days come, says the LORD, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast.

"And it shall come to pass, that as I have watched over them, to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them, to build, and to plant, says the LORD.”

Otherwise mildew is mandatory. There is no sun, the Sun of Righteousness, and disease is rampant; and there is no heart to fight for the right. Morals become topsy-turvy, and men act as their own auditors. But audit rather the world of the living God:

"Of the increase of His government and peace, there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice."

As Romans 6 declares, “…if we have been planted together with Christ, in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.”

Eternal life has no end; the eternal Lord neither had beginning nor does He have end. Therefore find Him, do business with Him, and follow Him.  His is the love and He is lovely.