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CHAPTER TEN

THE GENERATION, THE COMING,

THE COMPASSION, THE ENTRY

Relevant to this survey concerning Christ in Psalm 22, 40, 102, 98, 118, 22, Zechariah 9, it is necessary to note that much has been done already in this Messianic sphere concerning the majesty and multiple functions predicted of Christ. In this Chapter, it is simply a focus on a select aspect. For the background in more detail, if found needed, see the  following.

1) The Word and the Wisdom of God...   Ch.     6,

2) Joyful Jottings  25,  

3) Possess Your Possessions Vol.  12, Ch.   2,

4) The Bountiful, the Accountable, the Surmountable Ch.    6,

5) On Bible Translations 7,  note 8

 

THE GENERATION IN  pSALM  22

AND THE SEED IN ISAIAH 53

To avoid needless repetition, matters presented in detail  there may be omitted here, enabling a simpler concentration on  the issues in focus.

Today, our  topic is both  special and specific.  It concerns the 'generation' mentioned in Psalm 22:30, already covered in one way or another, in the above, amid their  special concerns.

Thus in Psalm 22,  following the anguish and travail of Christ's atoning death, His announcement of victory over death to the great congregation, and the revelation that all the families of the nations will  worship before the Lord, since the Kingdom is His (even to life and death, in the earth which He made), we find a missionary summary. As the  AV correctly puts it without addition, "A seed shall serve Him; it shall be accounted  to the  Lord for a generation." That is, it does not make the error of the NKJV, noted amid the references above. However, literally, it is "accounted to the Lord for the generation." That is  simply a fact which can be  confirmed from the relevant dictionary or grammar or both.

You see, it is not just a generation, fascinating and crucial  as that is - a sort of royal priesthood dedicated to their (free and ready) work for the Lord,  as Messiah-people, or Christians as we now term it. It is THE generation, the very one of whom Isaiah was used in Ch.  53, to ask: WHO shall declare HIS generation ? THIS it is which is THE generation, the one in mind and in view, when He will  see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied (Isaiah 53:8 and 53:11). When you make of His soul an offering for sin (Isaiah 53:10),  "then He shall see  His seed, He shall prolong His days." The point is quite explicit, that His people who come by faith in Him who has atoned for their sins will BECOME His spiritual generation,  children not of flesh but of  spirit. See on this area, On Bible Translations 3, Note 20.

It is when they make of His soul or  life  an  offering for their sin, by faith, appropriating the offer, utilising the gift, accepting the provision,  that they become, one  by one and each one, what He has longed to see and now sees: HIS GENERATION, HIS  SEED, the ones which His great love  had sought from the first, for whom He came so  that  whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. It is at  THIS point, when YOU offer  His life for your sins, that HE gains HIS seed, and this is the historical setting focussing on His death for a reason, and  the sinner's acceptance of it as offered: that is the transaction which leads to the new  member of His family, the  addition to His  'seed' or following generation, the One which is HIS, that is, THE generation as Psalm 22:30 undoubtedly declares it. His  soul does not make the offering; it is the life or soul which IS the offering. When this is taken (whosoever), then His seed  prospers: one more is added.

Instead therefore of an oddity and contradiction of the normal usage, we have a fulfilment of every aspect in the most concrete fashion. It is always the priest for the sinner, or the sinner who offers the life of the victim, and here  Christ  vicariously offers Himself as priest and as victim both, on behalf of sinners. Death is in vast anguish, desolation as He commits His stricken life to His Father. In this, He  does not see His seed but His need. It is when you offer His life, as the sacrificial norm in sacrifice then for over a millenium,  and  take it as offered and for the purpose offered, that the mission has its consummation, through faith, as  always, that of the sinner.

This is THE generation, the one  now declared, the royal priesthood and the  family of Christ.

This is almost taken direct by I Peter 2, speaking of a special people, a royal priesthood, those who having come to Christ have direct access without other mediator, to God. These are "His own special people that  they may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of  darkness into His marvellous light, who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy."  Called out of darkness into marvellous light,  so they are  His generation, who have  come and received that offering as all effectual dealings with God are done, by faith. They would do more!

Indeed, we  learn in 22:31, something more of this generation - especially interesting since Isaiah 53 predicts that the Lord who died  for sin would have no  descendants, physically, of His own. It is what they would be doing. Remember, "Who shall declare  His generation ?"  from  Isaiah! HERE it IS  declared. God is He who declares it, just as Christ was the  One who was able to take the scroll containing the account of what was to come on the earth,  as seen in Revelation 5:1-9.

This special generation will "come  and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has done this." Thus, His sacrificial atonement, for which He came as in Psalm 40, from  which He would arise unrotted in body,  as in Psalm 16, delivered as to meaning in Isaiah 49-55, will become central to the work of a whole generation or mass or spiritual 'dynasty' if you can  abstract from that any sense of individual greatness, and attach the sense of royal privilege to those who so serve the Lord. They will expound it  all to people far into the future,  following this atoning death of the Messiah. They have been doing so now for about 2000  years.

THE COMING, THE COMPASSION AND THE ENTRY

We meet the parallel  concept in  Psalm 118. Here we deal with the famous stone which the builders rejected which has become the headstone of the corner, to use the architectural concepts in the Bible, where Christ becomes the active  and effectual temple (cf. Matthew 21:42).  In this  Psalm, He is seen in vast and appalling confrontation with evil, which He will destroy, but in the meantime, He is savagely smitten (118:13). Indeed, death is in view, but He is not to be GIVEN OVER to it (Psalm 118:18).  As in the preceding verse, He declares this,  "I will not die but live."

Striding through without embarrassment, the Messiah asks,  "Open to Me the gates of righteousness," for after  all, He has gone beyond the veil, and this is the way. He comes  ALL RIGHTEOUS, not in need of any sacrifice for Himself, who knew no sin (I Peter 2), and in perfect and mercifully atoning righteousness He goes to make up the gap left by man, a perfect life and sacrifice to meet  to the uttermost, the celestial dimensions of heaven, into which, should sin have entered, there would have poured such a pollution, there as on earth,  as to render it far from  celestial. This was  avoided. Righteousness and  mercy kissed in this.

But what now ? Now in Psalm 118:20, we find precisely the same sort of opportunity as shown above in Isaiah 53:10, and  applied so vigorously in Isaiah 55, "Ho,  everyone who thirsts," and "Seek the Lord while He may be found," and again, "Let the wicked forsake his way... Let him return to the LORD." Indeed, so great is His compassion, that having done  all, He  will then "abundantly pardon,"  Isaiah 55:7.

Accordingly, we find that this rejected stone, having for all that,  entered like a prince to his castle, through the uplifted gates of righteousness, is identified in His function, His salvation. THIS is now transformed, this reject who had immediate access to heaven, into "THE GATE OF THE LORD, THROUGH WHICH THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL ENTER," Psalm 118:20.

It is as in John 10:9, where Christ declares this:

"I  am the door: if anyone enters by Me,

he will be saved  and  will go in and our  and find pasture."

NOT ONLY is this so. ANY other type of entry is forged, false,  even criminal, as that of a thief. It is HE who is the good Shepherd (John 10:11), and there is no other way to the Father (John 14:6). As in II Peter 2, man may climb even  falsely into the church,  to pretend that God did NOT send His ONLY begotten Son  that He might suffer ONCE  for the many making ONE sacrifice, HIMSELF. That too is predicted. The whole case is covered gloriously and minutely.

Further, God Himself AS the Good Shepherd was specifically predicted in Ezekiel 34, as a coming event, in which He would do what false under-shepherds had been far from doing, and in Hosea 13:14, again we find that in His own personal  action, He  is plighted to come to  deal with death permanently and to deliver those who find in Him their God. These COMING PREDICTIONS for the Lord, the only Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-12), are  numerous  and dramatic, as indicated in Isaiah 9 and  Micah 5. In the former, it is  as the Prince of Peace, that Christ  will have unending majesty upon man, and this is only part of a group of phrases issuing in this one, including "the mighty God" as part of His naming, His nature.

Having come, He acted. Indeed this was always apparent, and most apparent in Psalm 102, for  example.

Into this Gate, one  enters, and thus and then becomes a sheep of the shepherd, who so sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied, sees  His seed. On  faith, it comes; by life He rendered the door open. Thus HE enters heaven after the sacrifice of His life, which He offered, the everlasting doors open to the place of grace where He stands and lives, open with no impediment but rather as to majesty, and then the sinner enters by HIM, now the gate made practically available by this lifting of all sanctions which He has accomplished for those who believe in Him, and so accept His free pass to heaven, entering as His family with Him. It is however through HIM as the  gate now, and far from being in any way like His own entry, that of the everlasting Word of God going home; we the  spiritual orphans adopted,  sealed and admitted in His name (Ephesians 1).

PREPARATIONS, PRESENTATIONS AND CONFIRMATIONS

Indeed, as in Psalm 40, a body was prepared for Him  for this exclusive and mandated  mission from heaven, and in this He came from the heaven which was His from everlasting (John 17:1-3,  Micah 5:1-3, John 8:58). He  was sent. He accomplished His mission. He entered beyond the veil into the 'holy of holies' which symbolised the direct dwelling of God, there to provide an anchor for His own till the time should come when He brings them home, when judgment sits and the world becomes the kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ (Revelation 11:15). "Lo," He says in Psalm 40,  "I come. In the volume of the book it is written of Me." Now it is for man and woman and indeed child on this earth to come, to Him, and then through His grace, to eternity where life eternal being the gift, they stay for ever and ever (Revelation 21-22).

Again, in Psalm 102, as in Ezekiel 34 and Hosea 13:14, we see the Lord determined to come to earth to pay ransom, dismiss the guilt of sin, achieve justice with mercy in free salvation,  and as in  Psalm 40, HE COMES. First, there is as in Daniel 9:24-27^*1, a date set for His death. When the Creator comes as a living sacrifice voluntarily to  die for straying sinners, that some might find Him, as  an effectual Saviour and be  redeemed and restored, this is not at all surprising! In Psalm 102, then (as in Galatians 4:4),  there is  a  set time. Indeed, we  find this in the prophecy of this Psalm, that the Lord is going to have mercy, arise  and have it because the set  time has  come.

"For the LORD shall build up  Zion,

He shall appear in  His glory.

He shall regard the prayer of  the destitute,

And shall not  despise their prayer.

This shall be written  for the generation to  come,

That a people yet  to be created may praise the  LORD.

For He looked down from the height of His sanctuary,

From heaven the LORD viewed the earth,

To hear the groaning of the prisoner,

To release those  appointed  to death,

To  declare the name of the LORD in Zion,

And His praise in Jerusalem."
 

As in  Psalm 40 and indeed Psalm 98 (where we learn of His determined desire to come for judging the
earth, and the peoples with equity as in Psalm 72), and again in Zechariah 9:9, where  He  comes  seated on  an ass's colt, having  salvation: He comes with purpose. In  Psalm 102, it is 

	to heed the prayer of the destitute, who have nothing to offer but all to receive,
	to hear the groans of prisoners (of which sin is the chief captor - cf. John 8:34-36, and  since ALL have sinned - Romans 6:23,  this is a large field!),
	to liberate those who  were all set to  face  condign death, which is the inheritance of sin and the challenge of the many falsely accused by men,
	and to  declare the name of the  Lord in the midst, that which is the way not to one answer, but  to a  life of answers as one abides in that Name!

 In  His  glory, He  will come and great will be the  compassionate action.

In  Psalm 24, we find another strand of this cord, if you think of it as an aggregation of  closely fitting elements.

Told at first (24:3-5) of the way of  life to be followed, just as  Christ  told in John 14:21-23, that is as a mode of being godly (not becoming it, which is covered above), we see results. In John, the abiding Christian (who became one as in John 3:16), who abides by Christ's words and keeps them  (including the fact that as a sinner, he needs to maintain due contrition and humility), out of love, finds a manifest work of God in His heart, the Father loving him, and Father and Son make abode in such a person. This then is the beauty of godliness adorned by God Himself, once it is under way.

THIS, we learn, is "the generation of those who seek Him, who seek Your face," Psalm 24:6. Here is our generation, to which are pointed again and again, that is HIS generation, His seed. Here are the travellers,  as all Christians by nature become, strangers and pilgrims in this world, on the highway of holiness as in Isaiah 35. As this sight comes to the eyes, we see as Psalm 24 progresses, that the "everlasting doors" are to be lifted up. The gate of righteousness is thrust open. For whom ? It is for this purpose: "the King of glory shall come in!"

This is precisely as in Psalm 118. The question arises,  "Who is this King of glory ?" That becomes the overwhelmingly important question. It is the "LORD strong and mighty. It is the God of the Exodus (Psalm 24:8) of wondrous fame and name. In other words, as in I Corinthians 10, it is the Messiah, as in Isaiah 45:22 with Philippians 2, Him  to whom  every knee will bow.

The Psalm then  re-affirms that it is indeed so. The answer to the question of total glory, before which everlasting doors fling open, it is the Lord who became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him, the Lord whose excursion to earth intensified and consummated His many acts of grand mercy and intervention before and of confirmation  after it. What then for the sinner  ? Now it is time to enter through this very gate, which the Lord becomes, and be saved. He for  whom all opens, it is HE who is now the opening! Indeed, in Revelation 3:20,  He offers spiritual  relief, refreshing and restoration  to all who open to Him, as the  Church is confronted with the need for direct simplicity and trust in no uncertain  manner, in Himself.

So does the Bible  cover  all the aspects that developed when Christ came and acted as prescribed and predicted,  and so does THE GENERATION CONTINUE ON ITS  APPOINTED ACTS AS IN PSALM 22. For that matter, so does He in  His ministration  for those whom  He has bought back, to  apply what He has  done, in salvation, to  refresh and  restore  as in  Acts 3:19-21, where we find that not only does He save once and for all, as in John 10:9,27-28, but sends seasons of refreshing, which is like the rain which waters the earth.

So is  all history, the butt of His word, entry into His life being by appointment of the One sent, who acted and finished His work. It is WHEN you make of HIS life,  an offering for sin, that HE  SEES of the travail of His  soul and is satisfied. God is personal. He makes plans. He performs deeds. He is reliable and faithful,  as all His children find.

He is not double-minded. His mind is clear, sustained, unaltering over the millenia in His word. The mind which needs to alter is that of the sinner who not yet come (Isaiah 55:8-12), needs to enter through the gate of the One who ALONE has admittance by right, who confers the authority to become children of God on those who believe Him (John 1:12). This is  not as a base for making some other christ, but AS HE IS. HE IS the gate. The other ways by which people try to find the ultimate, the cause, the basis,  the God on whom all depends and  from whom  all has come (cf. Romans 11:36), are defined in spiritually criminal terms, in a thief's terms. God did not act as an actor, but as an agent for salvation.

Man may choose to act  as  an actor, for pleasure or pride or power; God has acted in truth.  Making up other gods and christs is a pastime; but biblically, and in terms of Jesus Christ, it is time worse then wasted. Make up mathematics without numbers,  engineering without equipment by all  means; but never try to make up your gods or christs without authority. Why not in such a case as that, make up your own physical and chemical laws. It  will in fact make no difference if you do. They need creation at the foundational level, just as man has  needed it, and got it.

Without Him, it is then all but a dream. Agitated by hopes and frustrations or failures, inflated by dreams, invaded by vacuity, man is found cogitating on this and that, but the aspiration fails, or is diverted, and the linkage to his source remains broken. It is necessary to return and find the foundation instead of just looking for a tenuous link, as if all that was missing was a little thing, like a finger nail. There are no additions, diminutions or paths for compromise: God has both spoken and acted, and has no mind to change (Galatians 1:6-9). What is missing in man is spiritual  life, what is found is sinful preoccupations, whether with the self or circumstances, dreams or desires; and what is needed is not food chiefly (Matthew 4:4), but the knowledge of God.

It is available. It is forsaken; in many it is forgotten; but still they come, in their thousands,  those who come to trust in, rely on and  receive Him  and  the magnificence of truth. Then He sees more and more of the travail of His soul, which HE offered, and is satisfied. It was worth it for such deliverance to many, worthy every particle of humiliation and scandalous shame so ruthlessly visited on him by the lowest of men! He took it and made through this and more the pathway of liberty, on which a person is installed free of charge, with guarantee in HIS salvation, to the end (Hebrews 13:5, Ephesians 1:11, John 5:24, Romans 9:29ff.).

Change is greatly needed but in the heart of man by the power commissioned in the Gospel for the purpose of return, restitution to the great  ground plan for man, coming from the one God who has made salvation just like creation,  a highly specific thing, as in DNA, with its commands and its way. One command is this, and it is to ALL mankind,  to  repent;  without which perishing is the predicate. It is a mercy that we do not have to WRITE a code for salvation. It is however entirely necessary to READ  it where God has placed it, and to act. Remember the Titanic. They had to go down. On this earth, at this time, no one HAS to do so. On this see Isaiah 55.

This world may gnash at that; it wants the top  spot in terms of the evil one in whom it lies (I John  5:19). It is restless  there, since there is no rest in him. So it has made itself vain, born by creation, susceptible to judgment, inflated in personalities, who die in a second. That is why you should not love it (James  4:4, I John 3:1, 2:15, John 15:19).God is forever; and wise is the one who builds on Him as foundation, and His word which is verified and validated^*2 beyond all and any: this as the marching orders, and door to eternity.

NOTES
 

*1 On the  prediction of the date of Christ's  death from the 6th century B.C., see the following.

 Mini-Messages with Maxi-Point  Ch.  ...10 (short treatment of death-date prophecy concerning Christ),

Christ the Citadel ... Ch. 2 and

The Christian Prescription  Ch. 2. .

For this, see also SMR pp. 886ff., and Highway of Holiness Ch.    4  

*2

See  SMR, TMR, Deity and Design ... and Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ,

for  example.