EPILOGUE
The CONSUMMATION from the
THE CALAMITOUS TRIUMPH
IN THE PSALMS
PSALM 22
with Genesis 15:16, Psalm 14, 24, Isaiah 53, 62, 66
and passages in Deuteronomy, Genesis, Ezekiel and Micah
following Chapter 6 above
I
THE SETTING
The deep and penetrating meaning of the end of Psalm 22 is perfectly arresting.
Following the divine prodigy of Psalm 22:1-25,
where,
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coming from heaven as in Psalm 40, Micah 5:1-34, |
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mangled as a worm before the sickle, |
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marred as a beautiful pasture by a busy tarmac of cursing
motorists, |
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exposed as truth to a fickle society, intemperate with their own concerns, |
bought the way home for man, ready to be travelled by faith, there is a magnificent resultant section.
Glorious causes can have glorious results and this was no exception.
In this, He was bringing humanity to the face of deity,
for indeed the glory of God was thus revealed in the face
of Christ Jesus,
who though in the very form of the eternal God before all time (Isaiah 48:16,
Psalm 45, Colossians 1:15, Micah 5:1-3),
yet came into time in time to triumph over death on behalf of man (Titus 2-3),
in a vast act towards the entire human race (I John 2:1-2, John
3:15-18).
He came NOT to judge but to save the world. This is His testimony, and anyone who would alter it needs to have a mind above the mind of his God, Creator and the manufacturer of His life, impossible as that is, or else a bloc in his perception of God's testimony.
He did not save the world, any more than World War II saved it or for that matter, World War I, despite mighty acts of warring nations sometimes seeking to deliver from the mangling of man by mere power and political impudence. Ideals were strewn about by such as Woodrow Wilson, Chamberlain, the authors of the Atlantic Charter, and mighty plans were laid for a peace never to be fractured, a justice to be imposed and a life more worthy of its wonder than the current scene then allowed, or so it was felt or even believed by many.
That man might fail in such a domain and task, is not surprising. Ever tending to worship himself or his advocatees, appointees, idols or leaders, their thoughts or empires - and Rome was perfectly explicit about this requirement of worship! - he manufactures folly like wood chips from cut down trees. The sun he does not see, since even the clearing of the shade trees to expose the heavens is dimmed by the dust of invention and the diseases of radioactive minds.
Man cannot rest; for how could he rest, except where his prodigious strengths find meaning and his unerring power to err finds correction! OH that you had heeded, says Isaiah from the mind of the Lord, in Isaiah 48, then
"your peace would have been like a river
and your righteousness
like the waves of the sea."
But it was not so. Instead, blundering blindly not because of the disfigurement of the lens, but because the eyes are shut (cf. Matthew 15:13) to the spiritual light, and in this wicked before else like someone insisting he can see perfectly well while the sun virtually visually ignites the windscreen because of the glittering layer of dust, unwiped, left on it: man finds another end in multitudes, amid nations and peoples.
"But the wicked are like the troubled sea,
When it cannot rest,
Whose waters cast up mire and dirt,"
Isaiah 57:20.
II
THE STRUCTURE
Nor is this all. There is a limit to the manufactured, or better, created cast of man, who is now set in a sinful world which from the first he managed to stress by marvellously messing it where it matters most, in spirit (Genesis 3, Romans 5:1-12), yes in his own spirit. This had vast results (Romans 8:17ff.). God will NOT ALWAYS strive with a race not so diffident, and feebly daring with feckless enterprise to establish itself. instead of thankfully engaging in glorious, morally blessed enterprise and prized imagination within the bounds of truth, it fecklessly seeks to outwit God with folly (cf. Psalm 50:16-23), typified in the prince of this world (Ezekiel 28:11-17, John 14:30) and his inglorious enterprises of passion.
Thus in Isaiah 57:16, we read:
":For I will not contend forever,
Nor will I always be angry,
For the spirit would fail before Me,
And the souls which I have made."
There is a limit, for good or ill, and an end to trial and exhortation, whether in death and judgment, or in life and hope.
Before judgment in Isaiah 57, we see the appeal of the offer:
"For thus says the High and Lofty One,
'Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy,
I dwell in the high and holy place,
With him who has a contrite and humble spirit,
To revive the spirit of the humble,
And to revive the heart of the contrite ones."
In all of this offer and rebuff, entreaty and rejection, provision for peace and the roar of war, has come the Messiah. Like an injection of hydro-cortisone in a sore place, but in this case, into the heart and life and spirit of man, nay a regeneration altogether is the result. He comes where the shoulder is exposed, where the flesh is subject and the soul is found. He never errs or fails. Known before time, action and spiritual differentiation, or the sin of man became actual in history (Ephesians 1:4), the souls that are His are secured from the first, never to be lost; and it is in the domain of spirit that it is so found. The conditions - I WOULD and YOU WOULD NOT (as in Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42ff., John 3:19, and repetitively in Ezekiel 20, Isaiah 48, Jeremiah 48, 51:9, Hosea 7:13-16) are sprinkled like a beauty carpet of Autumn leaves in the shade of the forest floor.
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Evidenced in history (Luke 9:23-26,
Acts 13:48), |
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attested in heart (II Corinthians
5:17ff.), |
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effectual to all so found from
eternity, |
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product of love undiscriminating but
not indiscriminate, |
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thrust out to all, |
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rejected by many, |
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beyond their deluded wills (John 1:12), but yet divinely interpreted in reality, |
so is the saving power of God.
In incorruptible and yet effectual love, God who made this world, acted in it, as in John 3:15-19. He declares that He DID NOT come to judge; that had nothing to do with the payment and the positioning of the Messiah on the Cross, crying for forgiveness EVEN for those setting about ruining Him as far as they might, and that they did with guile and cunning! He came to save.
Thus there is the underlying clause. He came, certainly, to save the world, but there was a quality limit. It was in LOVE He came so where LOVE is not to be found or sited or placed or tolerated or received, the salvation reaches its limit; and though the desire remains, yet the purity is not to be dimmed in mere detachment. It is the heart which is required. Thus even if He did NOT save the world, HE DID filter from it all who might be saved, foreknown in eternity, in realisation of love without limit of prejudice, seeking all, finding some. So GREAT is the desire to find some and miss none, who might be saved within the bounds of truth and reality, love and mercy, that it is as if into the highways and byways He goes seeking for ANY, when those who might have been saved were not (as in the parable of Matthew 22:1-14).
Many were too guileful or wilful or wise in their own ways, for whom no glasses could provide help, the eyes being closed to truth past all time, in a reality never to be breached.
Alas for such, for the wrath of God broods over them (John 3:36). Such is the biblical position stated and re-stated almost times without number.
Thus God did indeed realise His mission to the full in the purity of His love, and quest of His desire; but never let it be imagined that this was a cold, hard decision, like a store sacking some staff because of a bad market situation. In embrace at the outset (cf. Deuteronomy 7), in desire (Mark 10:21-22), in persistent entreaty (Jeremiah 9-17), in insistent invitation, in sorrow (Luke 19:42ff.), did God come before leaving the lost in their domain of desire. He did not purge personality into the progammable, but sin; He overthrew the uncontrollable in man but did not make man a mechanised midget before His own greatness. Had He done so, it would be to redeem what then would be but a shadow, a mismatch.
On the contrary, and quite to the contrary, I WOULD but YOU WOULD NOT, is the refrain in circumstances extraordinarily diversified in the Bible.
Thus though God did NOT save the world (that is, all its people - not by a long shot - Matthew 7:15ff.), He DID save where salvation has a place, known to Himself before the world was, and of these lost none (cf. John 13:1). Moreover, God the changeless was in foreknowledge as in human life, in Christ, the same who would save, would weep and would give all to gain the lost; so that nowhere is there anything but encouragement to sinners to repent, for no headwind of divine discretion moves in hateful exclusiveness to wither their hope. To the utmost possible, and beyond all that could be considered feasible, He went, making of eternal life a gift, of sin-remittance a grant, to faith and not to works! (cf. Romans 5:15, 3:23ff. Titus 3), and the same in the spirit of grace, so that even the giving of the gift is by grace (it is a gift by grace!).
He was grieved for man, as love does grieve, but would deceive no one, for truth is like that.
He acted for man (Titus 2-3), in kindness towards the race as Paul there declares; but He did not merely react, but realised the truth in the race, seeking and finding not the most select, as if it were some kind of raffle of criteria unknown. On the contrary, the criteria for de-selection are stated: LIGHT has come and PREFERENCE is for darkness. In His LOVING THE WORLD, this is the way to be selectively lost: do not believe Him (John 3:36).
It is not that He lies about His love, but that many people distort it, as if in the ultimate, before the affairs of man so much as came into being, He did not select on His stated grounds, leaving on one condition: I WOULD, YOU WOULD NOT. If at times in history, there is such a build-up, that the evil has its final head, then it may be dealt with as befits the lust for evil and the lesson for man. This in no way even affects the statements of God about the extent of His love and desire, even for salvation in reconciliation, whether for those in heaven or on this earth (Colossians 1:19ff.). Judgment is the orphan by outage, not thrust out by a irreconcilable God, but by irreconcilable man. To distort this, is to distort the suffering face of Christ on the Cross, crying, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing! It is to dismiss His direct statement and to 'create' about the Creator, however unintentionally it may be.
God does not dither because of desire: leave that to man. There are results as in Pharaoh, and he is type of very many, foreknown, appointed to illustrate, they being what they are known to be; but God tempts no man to evil, though He works all things after the counsel of His own will, and knows how to deploy what is dissident, and make object lessons out of what is wilfully lost. Indeed, He has known it before history was, for the end from the beginning, this is known to His wisdom (Isaiah 46:10). Known ? we see here in Isaiah that He goes further: He even DECLARES IT.
III
THE REVIEW
The End of Psalm 22
These things being so, according to His word, we are now the better prepared to see something more of the magnificence of the triumph of God in terms of the crucifixion-resurrection of Jesus Christ. For this, we continue to look in Psalm 22 and co-ordinate biblical passages. First we remind ourselves of the part of the Psalm concerned with the end of the matter, the results of the crucifixion of the Messiah, as in Chapter 6 above, taking sections of the verses at a time, at times with slight changes.
26-30 Prediction of Outcome
The world in its entirety will remember, whether by the very dating system so many use, founded with His birth as the target, or the Christmas which celebrates His birth, valued even where it is not understood, and not dissociated yet broadly, even where Satan rules, from His name. From every nation, His worshippers come. Rich and poor alike find in His memorial, the symbol of His satisfaction of death's claim and guilt's goad (Isaiah 53, I Peter 2). None has the answer but He, for life and death, as in His ministry and in His Person, are in His hands (cf. John 2).
Posterity ? does He have a posterity ? Yes He does, it is a generation, not of a few, but of millions down the ages, wrought in many, seen as one: THEY will be accounted to Him as a generation, the regenerate, begotten by the Spirit through the word (I Peter 1:23-2:8).
THIS generation, spread over centuries, will come and declare what God has done; and in missions and milling cities alike, in jungle and entangling weeds, over rushing rivers and in the deserts as with missionaries, Mildred Cable and Francesca French, they go.
There is the witness, that He has done this.
There is to be a poor in spirit family who will be given abundant provision. Constituted of serious seekers, this will be a praise team indeed, for as it was to be, so it is. Eternal life is now as natural as terrestrial life was, in test times. This is a Psalm of divine provision, and we are not being exhorted to live forever, as if competent for such a result, but TOLD that this is the case, as in Ephesians 1:11, I Peter 1:5ff., John 5:24, 6:50ff., I John 5:11-12. "Those who seek Him will praise the Lord. Your heart will live forever." Again the Authorised Version has it right.
A vast crusade, Spirit-led and applied, will sweep the earth, and the memory of all this being now refreshingly set before the eyes, many will turn to the Lord. Indeed, all nations will be so occupied, for the Kingdom IS the Lord's and what was immanent is now permanently perceived. Such is the prediction. Such is the prediction of the rule of His return as in Psalm 73, Isaiah 11, 59:20. The sheer incompetence of going to dreamy hopes (cf. Jeremiah 23), while yet standing up for one's imaginary rights, when wrong, is now dismissed objectively, and worship will become earth-wide, the norm.
THE NEW SET AND THE GOSPEL 30-31
30 Generation and RegenerationLet us take it more personally for Christ. There is as the Authorised Version without addition to the words of the text, correctly translates, to be a posterity which will serve Him. It will be accounted by the Lord for a generation, indeed the spiritual generation to come. Here are His children throughout the age. No children of His own leave this gap to be filled; but here is the regenerated crew of the Vessel of Christ, who are born not of the seed of the flesh, as with man, but of the seed of the word of God (I Peter 2), to make of them a spiritual generation, an enlarged family. It is the entire family of Christ, redeemed, to live forever, a generation OVER time, from every Age.
This is HIS generation, born by regeneration, the family of the Lord of which He and He only is the head, whether in heaven or on the earth (cf. Matthew 23:8-18, Ephesians1:22-23, Romans 12). He would have all but He DOES have all of these, a vast troupe! Now He sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied (Isaiah 53:10-11), yes for each by faith making of His soul, the substitutionary sacrifice: even that of Him who, 'heard', is bodily risen (Romans 10:9)!
31 Proclamation to the future world
This family will in every Age, declare what He has done to each successive generation who comes to the earth, a massive mission force, before as time comes for each, being transferred in spirit to heaven (cf. Col. 1:13, Eph. 2:6), in His presence to await the resurrection of the body.
IV
THE GENERATION:
THE FAMILY OF GOD
Let us now specialise a little on the generation of Psalm 22:30. It is HIS POSTERITY, we read. It will serve Him. How much better is His than those often witless and woeful residues of a great family, who fail to live up to its morals, its passions for work, its contribution to mankind, and instead dissipate to their dissolution. THIS POSTERITY will serve Him! Success now is turning into a broader triumph!
He DID have a posterity, but this one is special, indeed, a special people, a royal priesthood, who directly themselves deal with deity in the name of this Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Psalm 110). We move to further data on it in the Bible.
Thus, in Isaiah 53 we are asked this: "Who shall declare His generation ?" Many are those whether from Abraham or Adam from Noah or from David who might have their generations declared as so often found in the Bible. But of this One ? Who will declare it ? Who COULD, since "He was cut off from the land of the living," Isaiah 53:8.
How will you declare a generation that is not there!
Where is it ? Surely on this earth ,the greatest of all (cf. Psalm 45) will have some representation resulting from works of such a prodigious character as His ? But His generation, WHERE IS IT!
Fear not, there IS a generation indeed. It is THE generation (Psalm 22:30), the one missing, the lordly link that is NOT missing, since it is put there by God, as each kind was in the beginning. This one, this generation, it has a character of its own. It is designated and designed. It is not a roll-in. It is a roll-out. If you are a Christian, you are in it! Thus with each reception of Christ as sacrifice, Saviour, He sees His seed, His children bought by death but produced by life, His (John 14:19), even as each by faith makes of HIS soul a sacrifice for sin. . As one has said, The soul of His suffering was the suffering of His soul.
Its method of creation is shown clearly in Isaiah 53:10. It is interesting to note that in the surrounding Chapters of Isaiah here, from 52-55, there are over 50 references to 'you' and 'your' or 'yourself', referring to sinners, to Israel, or their concerns, and there is only one referrable to God. Even this, however, is as a sudden variant from 'His', as found in Isaiah 52:14, where even the one sentence was not finished with the second person, without reverting twice to the third; and indeed, at that, it is to the Son the "you" refers!
"Just
as many were astonished at You,
so was His visage marred more than any man,
and His form more than the sons of men:
"SO shall He sprinkle many nations...." (So capitalised for clarity).
In this way*1, the extravagant offering of Himself in Person, astounding as it is, becomes the spring-board for an astonishing splash as He hits the waters. Drops are everywhere, as if it were blood, sprinkling many nations gathered about. Indeed, missionaries TOOK the news of it where it had not reached and many were they who responded to the splendour of His dive, from the heights to the depths, to rescue many.
Who shall declare HIS generation, those from Him, HIS LINE, as in a genealogy, this time a spiritual genealogy ? WE shall declare it, and praise God for His preparing it and procuring it, paying for it, for it is a generation by adoption (Ephesians 1), and we will exalt His name who has intruded into a failing earth with unfailing love to make for Himself a people who not only are the very children of God in this world. When their day is past, they will rise again, as He did. This is because of Him who has gone to prepare a place, and has prepared that holy temple for each of His children, a new body incorruptible (II Corinthians 5:1ff.), that at His coming we with Him, one family of His favour, may live for ever. Psalm 16 specialises on the resurrection power underlying this. What He has used to arise, He grants in grace.
For Him, who came from heaven, it is natural so to prevail; but in dying He has paved the way for entry of those who as in Isaiah 26:19, He will raise His body, each one with a place, an individuality and a life undying. Death then has no more dominion, and then man sees defined in the world, that God's dominion is not harsh or oppressive or delusive like the endless seeming Empires of Man (Matthew 20:25-27), but He is gentle and meek, lowly in heart (Psalm 22:16, 72:6,13,17 Zechariah 9:9), and gives rest for the restless, and peace in the soul, joy in the heart and knowledge of our very own Father, One made so by adoption, for ever. In this, let us rest who know Him, and to this, let those who have not yet found Him, enter by faith in His triumphant sacrifice and resurrection, faith in HIM who lives, and imparts life (John 14:19, Revelation 1:18).
It is each one who having made of His soul an offering for sin, allows Him to SEE His seed, His spiritual children in ready action! When YOU make His soul your offering, HE sees His seed.
Thus in accord with what was noted earlier, nowhere else in these 4 Chapters of Isaiah, 52-55 does 'you' or the second person refer without qualification, to God. Even in Isaiah 52:14, there is a momentary flash of the 'you' of concerned intimacy, before the resumption twice in the same sentence of the third person, "His" as if to set this apart from variation despite the flash of sudden inwardness. Moreover, even here, it is to the SON, not to the Father, that the term 'You' is here used, and where the emphasis lies. Indeed, over 50 times the second person, reflexive, personal or adjectival in form, is used and used of man or his affairs in these four closely linked chapters on salvation and its effects. There is no doubt at all in clarity of the disposition of the perspective
In 53:10, there, we are not treated to a confusion, but a precision. When YOU, the sinner concerned as in Leviticus 4 for example, make of His soul a sacrifice for sin (for this is unlike all other sacrifices and involves more than meat and its attendant life, but the personality is profound and a procurement element), THEN, at that very moment, and in this very way, He will see His seed. He will at once have someone to be listed as part of His generation, those who following Him, succeed Him in His line, in this case, then, the redeemed!
That is, when YOU, a singular person, so receive Him in His power and purity, His sacrifice and in His yielding of Himself personally for your sin by faith, THEN the missing generation will be found in you. HOW will it so be found ? It is in this, when thus you act, that His being a redeemed people, reconstituted from sin, regenerated from alienation, in concourse with Himself, blessed with His communion, YOU in so receiving Him, then become and are ONE of them. Having been without covenant and without hope in the world, you are in one step, a person sacrificially delivered.
Through the breeding power of His resurrection, you have been made into a close relative, yes a child of faith in His own domain. He has now... children indeed! It is cause and effect, it is coming TO Him and becoming His by regeneration, a specific and specialised mode or generation. Thus He has now a generation which can be cited after Him, and you in spreading the word (Psalm 22:31), are involved in addition to it, in any generation till the relevant Age itself is over!
It is not when God makes of His soul a sacrifice for sin that He sees His generation, for this is the outgoing of life, not its income, and wholly contrary to the grammatical usage of the passage as noted. Indeed, the tense is present, for the offering: it declares not When you have made, but When you make His soul an offering. Thus, it is when this is USED for salvation that the income comes, the breeding proceeds and the new generation has a new member, as in I Peter 2:4-10. It is this to which Isaiah 53:10 refers, and it is here that the stated result occurs.
This, Peter indicates of those being saved, is a matter of definition (colour added):
"You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises
of Him who called you out of darkness into the 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."
It is to Him as having borne sins, that they come, that through personal
faith, having died to sin they might live to righteousness (I Peter 2:24 cf.
Titus 3:4-7),
and it is then in the natural flow of the Chapter, that
"He shall see of the labour of His soul and be satisfied,"
(Isaiah 53:10-11).
The sequence is this: Who will declare His generation (v.8) ? He bore sin, made His grave with the wicked BECAUSE He did not use violence or lie. It pleased the Father to bruise Him, this the plan of salvation for the lost. All is negative for His possible descendants. YET there is a change. WHEN you make His sacrifice yours, then His children arrive, and then will He "see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied," prolonging His days by these means (53:10-11). We have already heard of His sin-bearing in 53:6 in the mounting tragedy; this is not new. It is when YOU make of this, His soul an atonement for sin that things change, His descendants, precisely then, appear and His satisfaction replaces grief!*2
As in Psalm 22:26, these will praise the Lord. They are not only 'a generation' but 'the generation' and you see, in this passage of I Peter, the passing from the former to the latter. They pass through the regeneration of faith into the generation of the Lord! They were NOT A PEOPLE, but now are THE PEOPLE OF GOD. What a generation is this!
This is that posterity, which Peter in part here is expounding and in part moved to develop in concept with further parallels, all interpreting what was first put, in essence in Psalm 22. Indeed, in part, it is almost an exposition of that passage in that Psalm, so great is its intimacy in thought and concept with it.
The same Hebrew term is used in say, Genesis 15:16 in reference to the fourth generation, in Isaiah 53:8, Who shall declare His generation ? and Psalm 22, It will be accounted of the Lord for the generation.
The term is also metaphorically used in Psalm 14 and 24, to speak of "the generation that seek Your face," and "the generation of the righteous," as qualitative designations.
Here then is the
MISSING generation, the
EVANGELICAL generation (for they will "declare His righteousness to people who will be born, that He has done this" - Psalm 22:31), the
SPIRITUAL generation for they are born in spirit (cf. Jeremiah 31:31), a
RACIAL generation since they form a people or a race of an evangelical kind.
They are also the GENERATION
OF THE GAP, for WHO could declare it: it was missing, but now it is found!
Moreover, it is the
DECLARATIVE generation since it will DECLARE to a people to be born that He has done this! namely, that Christ, the Messiah has come into flesh, has been crucified for sin and is bodily risen as shown in the sudden change in the Psalm (in 22:21-23) and in the thrust of Psalm 16, where that very body which was so slain is not going to be permitted to rot!
What more then ? It is the
SERVICE generation (Psalm 22:30), for they will serve Him (as in Matthew 20:26-28, Romans 12:1-2), as living sacrifices.
It is the
APPOSITE generation, in this, that it is HIS, after all, and the
OPPOSITE generation to what had been that in Israel, which slew Him; for this gives unlimited praise (cf. Matthew 23:34-36); and it is opposite indeed. Christ wept for that rebellious generation, one which as a spiritual type has been a standard bearer to many more (for the term there used can mean breed or race), whether of Jew or Gentile (cf. Romans 11:18-23): for the same principles have the same application in spirit.
Again, it is the
NEW NAMED generation, since in Isaiah 62:1-3, we find that the people of
the Lord are going to be named with a new name (MESSIAH-ans, or Christians in
terms of the be all and end all whose they are, the eternal WORD of God made
incarnate in association with the Trinity as always). Alas for Israel in the
flesh, the nation! for Isaiah 65:13-15 not only distinguishes between the new
name of the servants of the Lord, and Israel of old, but contrasts them.The
one is marked with blessing, the other with cursing, and this through their own
prophet, Isaiah,
who however was faithful with his ministration.
Indeed, then, THIS generation is
THE
generation, the essential, the final, that co-ordinate with
Christ as body matching Head: it is the finale, and the thrust of the Messianic
must, the children of God.
A word of clarification is needed here. The loss of the spiritual standard-bearer role for Israel, detailed as above in Isaiah 65, is not the loss of the authenticity of the word of God, of its reliability or of His promises, which are premisses of His own mind, by no means to be defiled by dither, indifference or mutancy. God is not like that. Thus in Ezekiel 36:22 we find that despite all that Israel in the flesh, as a nation that is, has done, God is NOT, repeat not going to profane HIS name even though THEY have profaned it among the nations. Indeed, He states that He is going to have PITY on His name (Ezekiel 36:21). He will respect it.
Instead, therefore, of any abandonment of Israel the nation, one that had been so intimate, so close (Deuteronomy 7) to Himself, despite their breach of the covenant (Zechariah 11), despite the extremities to which they went, including their assault on His own Person when able to do so because of the wonder of His compassionate incarnation, there is a result intractable, a truth undismissible.
He will HONOUR the relationship in terms of unqualified promises such as those in Genesis 17:7-8. He WILL bring them back to their land. Indeed He had often said as much (cf. Hosea 1-3, Micah 7, Isaiah 42, 49, 65-66), of the 'blind', a people misled to that point, that this would be so. Would He forfeit the implications of Deuteronomy 32, where on their return, when their own weakness left them exposed, and His act of power would deliver them, the Gentiles are going to join in praise for His act! The two remnants as in Romans 11, then unite as in one with one Head and one salvation and one Messiah, and no difference in their status as children of God. Would He ignore this ? cancel that strain ?
Hardly. The inalienable will be the eventual, although it will be in terms of the NEW name, that of the Messiah, that they will have their renewed spiritual place, along with the Gentile saved (as in Isaiah 66, Ezekiel 37, Romans 11, Gal. 3). As to the land, they will be brought back securely for David (Ezekiel 37:5) in his line at human level, will be their King, the promised Messiah; and the second stage, evangelisation, will occur after the return physically as noted so clearly and dramatically in Ezekiel 37:14. This is shown in the parable of the scattered bones, restored to their land.
It is there that we see the second command from God through the prophet, one giving to these regathered bones, now back in their land, the most precious gift. It is the gift of life! Indeed it is as naked skeletons they stand, waiting on return to the land, for the command for life (Ezekiel 37:7-9) to vitalise them. In the preceding Chapter, after return, they have the sprinkling of baptism (Ezekiel 36:25), there showing the consummation of their entire restoration, signifying a spiritual change correlative to reception of Christ in spirit! They were to come; they came. Now this awaits.
However, for all that, it is in the EVANGELICAL GENERATION which is the children of God; and as in Rev. 7, we find that the vast swathe of converts in Israel is to form a notable part of this total. Indeed, with Romans 11:25ff., there is to be a sudden, divinely timed act when their eyes, blinded by misleading passion, are at last opened and they are then back in spirit also. And so the Lord will rule in Zion as in Micah 4 and Isaiah 2. Indeed, as in Isaiah 11 and Ps. 72, the whole earth will He rule (Ps. 22:27-29, Ps. 86:9, 96:13, 98:9). Then what was internal becomes external (Isaiah 11:9, Hab. 2:14), and the Eternal God completes the passage from the prelude to the perfection.
All the families of the earth will worship before this God of pity, power and love as in Psalm 22:27-28. Bless the day!
NOTES
We have been pondering the end of Psalm 22, and in doing so, have looked at the appalling beauty and horrid wonder of In Isaiah 52:14-15, at the prediction concerning the Christ, and so at His marring beyond the form of man.
For the students of language, the construction here in Isaiah 52 is intriguing. It appears that we have first (verse 14) what in essence in an adverbial clause of degree followed by one of result (verse 15), both dependent on the one verb, named "were astonished." What does this mean ? In other words, we are first told how much His visage was marred, giving ground for the astonishment, and then the result of these things, both what happened and the degree of it, its extreme thrust of evil and suffering, being balanced by the extent and intensity of the application. That is, as the evil expanded, so much greater the good; as the suffering was intensive, so the result was explosive into the world.
Thus there is a "so" in each of the two dependent clauses, in accord with the "just as" introduction to "were surprised", and this is an added formal feature; but the force of it is that such was the degree of disfigurement that astonishment was acute if not proportionate, and such was the staggering character of the episode as such, that a proportionately staggering result will accrue. Intensity (in His suffering) is matched both by the intensity of the emotion of many surveying the scene, and the extensiveness in the scope of His effectual redemption by this means, extending over nations in the times to come.
As the scene unfolds in Isaiah 53, we find that indeed,
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just as |
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the supernatural focus is
transcendent, this being no ordinary murder, |
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so |
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the human realities in the God-man
in His astonishing work, are so profound as almost to be disruptive of thought!
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*2
For more on Isaiah 53:10 and its meaning, see Bible Translations 3, Number 20.