CHAPTER SIX
THE FORESEEN SPIRITUAL SAGA
FROM SOME 2700 YEARS AGO
Applied to the Heart of Today
PART III
This follows from Ch. 4 above, with the intervention of the meditation on Jeremiah 16, Ezekiel 16, like a filling for a sandwich, in between.For Part II, use this link, and for Part I, this one.
MORE ON THE MOTHER ISAIAH 66
IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE CLEAR. Hence we first revisit Ch. 4 above, and add to one component, namely the normative character of the use of ZION or JERUSALEM as a reference to Israel personified, or the city of Jerusalem in a similar way. Sometimes as mother, at others as daughter as in daughter of Jerusalem, or the daughter of Zion, The latter phrase is found for example in II Kings 19:21-22
"This is the word that the LORD hath spoken concerning him;
The virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee,
and laughed thee to scorn;
the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee."
Further textual reference is provided from SMR Appendix B, from which the following is an extract. In this way, a failure to realise standard imagery can be avoided. An idea of children and parents in Jerusalem had been raised, concerning Jerusalem and reference to "your children". The site was Matthew 23:37. HOW OFTEN, O Jerusalem, was the lament, would I have gathered your children together... This is simply a generation, as if mothered by what preceded, into contemporary existence. It is not a lament for failed child evangelism! It is the city as such which is the focus and which bears the result (23:38-39), and the very adult necessity to respond to the challenge of its Lord.
We are not here however examining juvenile versus adult responsibility, but a usual phrasing. Indeed, if it were some alternative device, and children were in view as such, distinctively,the words of Matthew 23:37 would conflict with the confrontational biblical principle that children are not to have sourness because of the sour grapes eaten by the parents: each soul answers for itself (Jeremiah 31:29ff.). It is not refractory children but refraction in a city which is in view, as a designated entity. BECAUSE this generation of Jerusalem (cf. Matthew 23:25-26) was not willing to come to receive the Messiah, THEREFORE its house, its city was to be left to it, desolate. If they desolated the prince of peace, is it then surprising that their negative choice should exterminate the city where such was made; for peace has an opposite in war, and war an outcome all too familiar.
Without any such violation, therefore, we see the point in Matthew 23:37, and it is as clear as in Luke 19:42ff., where the concept is this: IF ONLY THEY HAD REALISED THEIR OPPORTUNITY IN THIS THEIR DAY ... BUT NOW THEY ARE LOST. No, on that then current generation much had accumulated as they continued their way from of old, and at this climax, it was mercy to which they laid waste, and this wasted them. Let us follow then the excerpt concerning this.
That is the proposition. How does it fare ? First, let us note that the term "daughter" of Jerusalem is used as a synonym for Jerusalem. This is usage; we can understand it- there are generations always coming on, and the old city is the host to them as they pass in, on and through. But the main point is simply that this IS usage. The term does not differentiate re 'Jerusalem' but specifies the inhabitants. We find it in Isaiah 37:22:
This is the word which the Lord hath spoken concerning him: The virgin, the daughter of Zion, has despised you, and laughed you to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head at you.
This personification is not difficult to comprehend. There is no possible question that the next generation are in view; for here is a strong, majestic woman tossing her dignified head in scorn at the rapacious invader, summing up the city's courage and assurance, in so doing. The emotions are very definitely adult in their setting and scope, and the base is undoubtedly not sectional, but representative of Jerusalem in its strongest response. As to that "daughter" of Jerusalem, personifying the city, her maturity is seen in the assurance, poise and emotion of her behaviour; and the literary device is one which in context displays what all Jerusalem is to muster in response to the tyrant threatening the existence of all. We are not, I say, in any doubt about this.
The designation" children ... of" is of course extremely common, and applies not only in the case of Jerusalem, or indeed of Israel, but with great scope. In Jeremiah, this designation occurs dozens of times - for example, in 2:16, 2:30, 3:14, 3:22, 6:1, 17:19 - but the case would be too monotonous to exhibit further. Moreover, these cases invite some thought.
Take 17:19 - "Thus saith the Lord unto me, Go and stand in the gate of the children of the people, by which the kings of Judah come..." There is here designation in terms of children; yet it is a most sober and undifferentiated message as to age level; unless indeed it is so maximally adult as to have almost no consideration for literal children as such, at all! These rather are that current generation who is 'spawned', as it were, in the old city. The term was almost ubiquitous in Exodus, where the "children of Israel" is a phrase signifying the nation as a whole, not once but dozens and dozens of times. In Numbers 7:72, we even see it referring to Asher as follows: "On the eleventh day Pagiel, the son of Ochran, prince of the children of Asher".
The usage and its connotations are exceptionally widespread biblically. Thus the use of the child concept for the city or people is further amplified in Jeremiah, where it appears in the 'daughter' feature, itself suggestive of the 'derivative' nature of any generation likewise. We find this in such verses as 4:11,31, 6:2,22, 8:21, 31:22, and the use of it for Egypt in 46:24... merely to select some items of this multitudinous usage.
Turn back, O virgin of Israel, turn back to these your cities...
Be sure, in all this God is not addressing merely adolescent delinquents, but His comments turn sharply to the pith of the race. Indeed, He proceeds to tell this 'gadding about' daughter the famous prediction, "A woman shall encompass a man" (Jeremiah 31:23). In 4:11, it is of judgment to "this people and to Jerusalem", the Lord speaks, specifying later in the immediate context the affliction for "the daughter of my people". In 4:31 we see the "daughter of Jerusalem' crying: "Woe is me now, for my soul is weary because of murderers". God proceeds to tell "Jerusalem" to "wash thine heart from wickedness that you may be saved" - Jeremiah 4:14.
"This is your wickedness," He says, "because it is bitter, because it reaches to your heart" - Jeremiah 4:18.
Again, "How shall I pardon you for this ?Your children have forsaken me, and sworn by those who are not gods. When I had fed them to the full, then they committed adultery and assembled themselves by harlots' houses. They were like well-fed lusty stallions; every one neighed after his neighbour's wife"- Jeremiah 5:7. In all this there is a certain... adult quality! There is no even conceivable question to raise about the fact that the Jerusalem which is here being rebuked is the enduring place of many generations, like a mother (cf. Isaiah 66:8-9,12), a figure explicit in Isaiah, and that her current generation is deemed 'children', so becoming the recipients of the curse that comes.
To imagine a divergent figure when this is strong, frequent and normative, logically apt and definitively precise is as ludicrous an invasion of the word of God as is the effort to imagine some novel meaning for the 'children' of Matthew 23:37. Far then from being a case of comparing the word of God with the word of God precisely - it becomes even an abuse of the principle that the children shall not (literally) be held accountable for the sins of their parents (as defined in Ezekiel 18:20ff.), at some length. It is to this that the avoidance of the expression of the Lord is forced! and that, it is in double abuse of the privilege of interpretation. It is better to find what it means (Repent or Perish Ch.1), than dispense with what it says.
But now let us consider our next comparable item, contextual element in review.
"Return, you backsliding children," says the Lord in 3:22, "and I will heal your backslidings." What preceded ? "A voice was heard on the desolate heights, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel, for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the Lord their God." The usage is precisely as it had always been, relative to the "children of Israel" under the full sweep of divine rebuke and entreaty, with the focus now heavily on the city about to be destroyed, on it in particular.
"My people", says the Lord in 4:22, "are foolish. They have not known me. They are silly children..." So the Lord defines the matter from His divine perspective, quite incisively. Thus, after specifying, again, "everyone" as being "given to covetousness", and that "everyone deals falsely", God says, giving the reason: "FOR they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly..." (8:10-11). Is it on the head of sinning youth that God is putting the whole blame for the nation's ills ? Is the soul that sins not responsible, but only is it the young, for all this ? To ask, is to answer.
In Ezekiel 18:3, as foreshadowed above, we find quite directly: "As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel." The proverb ? the one specifying sour grapes eaten by fathers setting the teeth of children on edge. No! "The soul that sins, it shall die!"
Now we must note this: "Ye shall not have occasion to use it any more." The case is Israel; hence if the view is, contrary to usage, that the children were in Israel being so treated because of their parents, it would be forbidden and that in God's name (cf. Ezekiel 18:2-5).
Some imagining that preference is not relative to humans, cannot stand, it seems, this clear attribution, similar to the case of Joshua 24:15. It is manifest that our wills are bound in sin (John 1:12), so that it is not of will or blood that the coming to Christ proceeds (cf. John 6:62), as if man retained sovereign majesty in his own personality. Nor is it the case that the will is irrelevant to God, since He cites it not only as relevant, but crucial in John 3:19, the very reason, in terms of preference, for the demise of those who did not prefer the work and the person of Christ to their current estate. Much confusion frequently results; but when the model, the sublime and divine presentation is actually heeded, it is clear that the choice of the Lord's own was made by the Trinity before time or creation was (Ephesians 1:4), that God is immutable (Psalm 102, Malachi 3:6, James 1:17), and hence that Christ's explicit yearning to the heart after what was to be lost, was present in foreknowledge equally. Being humble does not create confusion when God is concerned, for He IS humble, and hence Christ was doing what He did in the same way, as He declared (John 5:19ff.).
There is no need, to say no more, to dictate to God. HE states that the crucial point, in the face of His love and despatch of His Son is man's negative preference, as far as hell is concerned (John 3:36), and the fact that it is HE who as sovereign of spirits, but not dictator to souls, knows and appoints His own. He would like all, love does not force, so He takes according to His own essential and intrinsic knowledge of preference. That is but ONE reason why people should be very tender-hearted when the Lord is near, for we are not robust directors in the company of heaven, by nature, but a fallen people who should leap for the sacrificial and gracious love of God, who went so far as to die, that spiritual ruinis, being found, might be resurrected, and life as their design provides and grace only enables, for ever! (cf. Genesis 3:22).
The testing place is one thing; the way to grace is another. From Eden to the cross of Christ is the transit is way, not that of Venus but of vicarious and effectual sacrifice. While words and phrases can be used diversely, yet when imagery is to be changed, or new meaning given, or we are to forsake the actual context, then good writing indicates the fact, as does Paul when he refers to the Jerusalem which is above.
We are in no doubt about his intention, because he states the point expressly. To make a Zion the mother of a nation, and not mean that that body is its source would be worse than cryptic, it would be categorically contradictory. To make some non-sinful Zion in an historical context, of close pursuit, the mother, would be worse, mere eisegesis. But to make a Zion, spiritual licence revoked (Isaiah 65:13-15) into a 'mother' for a Church, this would be a profound tilt at the exclusively divine origin of the Church, of each soul in it as in John 3. Each is born from God, not Zion. All whether individually or in terms of the authentic believers, are so born. Let God be God.
What fails is not the mother of what cannot fail, but of rejection.
These preliminaries reviewed then, we revert to what we found in Ch. 4 above (expanded), and proceed on then from there.
It is
ZION
which is the MOTHER, the child the nation in restoration.
It is not its own child (Isaiah 66:8), in mere continuity,
nor does the Church beget the Church (Isaiah 65:13-15),
nor is it the mother of itself, for the Church is
begotten by GOD Himself through His Spirit by His word,
through supernatural and not natural agency (John 3, Titus 2-3).
It is neither mother to itself nor is it mothered by any human
agency,
but it is indeed begotten by God who ALSO as a mother comforts the believer
whether that one be from this or that nation
(Isaiah 66:13, 40:1, 49:13, 52:9, 61:2, John 16:7).
To be sure, we may lend comfort to each other,
and learn this from the comfort of the Lord (II Cor. 1),
but these are derivative things;
the comfort that acquires power, having a just and everlasting base and basis
and the dynamic that saves and brings to birth,
and to sanctity is the comfort of God.
Without that, man is indeed "afflicted, tossed with
tempest, and not comforted,"
|Isaiah 54:11, nor has he any basis at all (Ephesians 2:12).
Neither is Zion the author or mother of the Church,
nor its own basis, but both nation and Church at the outset
were brought into being through the ransom of His own blood
(Acts 20:28, Exodus 12, whether shown typically or physically).
There is one Gospel; there is one redemption;
there is one Redeemer, there is one God, and all is of Him.
Accordingly when ZION has birth pangs for a body which is to leap
into life,
a restored nation, staggeringly brought from nascency as in the womb,
to actuality in one day only, and that without even any prolonged labour (Isaiah
66:8),
the child born as soon as labour started, the matter is clear; it is not
abstruse.
It is one thing only which is in view.
It is the parallel to what is so often called
"the daughter of Jerusalem,"
which means the current generation in the long line
of Jewish inhabitants of the place (SMR
Appendix B).
It is the ZION which mourns as in Micah 7, who speaks, as in Isaiah 49:14, its
heart.
"But Zion said, 'The LORD has forsaken me,
And my Lord has forgotten me.
To this mourning, the Lord replies, "Can a woman forget her nursing child,
And not have compassion on the son of her womb ?
"Surely they may forget,
Yet I will not forget you."
He then speaks of the depth of His commitment and provision,
"See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands,
Your walls are continually before Me ..."
The only one who could be in view when Zion acts as mother to a body which proceeds from her 'womb' is a new generation of Israel, one staggeringly inhabiting Jerusalem after so long an absence, as to constitute a marvel in institution in one day, almost without effort, though the Lord defends it. Neither in idiom nor in theology is it other.
ZION has a new generation delivered strikingly suddenly. In fact, this occurred when history caught up with prophecy (Isaiah 46:10), and came by announcement from Ben Gurion, for all the world as if the nation were there before he spoke, while yet absent, so that it came to be with effectiveness, though seemingly impossible. Jerusalem back, the nation-state Israel resuming ? Where in history has such a gap been covered in such a restitution, where such a mother bears such a child, long forgotten as a power, but rather remembered as a victim and target for the ruthless!
HUNTERS, FISHERS AND THE RESOLUTION AT LAST
We are thus here back to the front-line in vision, just as in Jeremiah 16. It is terminal for the Age, the flagrant fury of the Lord cutting down at last the flagrant rampagings of the insatiable enemies of His disciplined people (as in Isaiah 51:21-23). Life is indeed real and earnest, the cynics meeting only their deserts, when self-anaesthetised (cf. SMR Ch. 3). You can holler for blood and smash bones to your heart's content, if you will, but for all these things, as you cling to your sweet self, individual or nation, you will find you pay, and that your come-uppance has its season, as devastating as may be.
Mercy intervenes only for faith in the objective paths God has provided (cf. Isaiah 55, Titus 2-3, John 3); and where these also a re abandoned, then a refugee camp is precisely what is lacking. HE only is the refuge (cf. Hebrews 6:19, Isaiah 4:6, 25:4, 28:15, Jeremiah 16:19). For refuge, it is Lord or lies; for without the Truth, who lives and made all, there are only preposterous lies, lazing in lassitude, or indifference to necessity.
Justice does at length look at the bare bones, when the flesh forsakes its taunting and superior vaunting, to face the things that are and remain, past all connivance and distortion. Truth will out since it is God who sends its very Spirit, according to His word, and judges in truth (cf. Jeremiah 14:10: "Thus have they loved to wander ... He will remember.").
At times, God moves to declare the restoration of Israel following Babylon (Jeremiah 12:14-17). This is not only a valid historical rebuke, gauged for its time (70 years exile as in Jeremiah 25), but also a foretaste, so that in Jeremiah 23:5, as in 16:17ff., you see at last it comes to the resident Messiah Himself, or His universal covenant with all races (Jeremiah 31:31, cf. Jeremiah 16:19-20), based on the exclusion of repetitive sacrifice (Isaiah 66:3, 53:1-10), because of the unique and profoundly proficient sacrifice of the Lamb Himself. It is to this spiritual and geographical destination that Christ crucified and risen, now vindicated in victory apparent, returns (Isaiah 59:20); and here the history comes as in Isaiah 11, 32 and 65, and 59, the last suddenly at the end; the Redeemer to Jerusalem. Its place for blessing is this world, its profundity cosmic, its glory unharassed. Its scope is to all, whether on earth or in heaven (Colossians 1:19ff.).
The alarms of Isaiah 2, Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, Joel 3, Habakkuk 3 and so on and their warnings, now past, present is Christ as King. And how profound is that rebuke, giving to aspirant Gentiles the treatment to which the Jews had become liable at their insatiable hands; and indeed, from the spiritual blessings neither is Jew excluded, nor is the Gentile, who having trusted in the Lord, is no part of the rebuking action.
Indeed, as in Matthew 24, there is a removal van, in a dynamic of divinity, to call back as at first He called into being, back home, before the arrival in power and the beauty of holiness, one and all of His saved people (I Thess. 3:13, Zech. 14:5, Matthew 24:36 - 25).
So it is with hunters and fishers that the Lord seeks out His people, leading on to the era of the Gentiles as in Jeremiah 16:14ff., and the amplified covenant as in Jer. 31:31, and the King of it and in it as in Psalm 72 and Isaiah 65, 32, 11. It is all sewn together like a Gospel garment. There is the spreading season (Isaiah 66:18-21) and the finale (Isaiah 66:14-17, 59:20, Micah 4, 7), both its advent and its results: the one processive, the other impactive like lightning. Like cookies, the oven toasts, but the crispness comes suddenly. What is not to be burnt, is taken out of the oven before that time (Matthew 24:31).
Many before that day are warned (a thing Lot's wife failed to heed in time), to come out of the pandemonium of unbelief in a festering world (Revelation 18:4), the false citadels of Rome in particular, and Rome in terms of Babylon, is not only Romanism, but the whole composite of presumptive passions in other heresies and errors, of which Mystery Babylon is the name in Revelation 17, that of the same spirit as that of Babylon, both a source of evil to the Lord's people and of religious relativity in its scope for its sovereignty!
Isaiah 59:20-21 is worthy of separate investigation. Here the utter foulness of unbelief in the preceding verses, so like our present era, but there specialising on Israel's past, is suddenly met with the Lord's arrival on earth to rule (cf. Zechariah 14:5). All this, says v. 21, is part of the indelible, ineradicable intent of the Lord, to be wrought in its time, a message for all generations. It is THEN, immediately afterwards, that Isaiah 60 shows the glorious splendour of the Lord's kingdom, and its utter restoration of His own appointed land of Israel in particular; but it is to an internally restored, regenerated Israel, in large part, that He comes, so that this is a type of the whole millenium, here Israel's sector in major focus.
What is it like ? It is like a Google map of a street, where all houses have the same status as a region, but it is to one that the observer seeks for information, because of a special interest. The other houses do not cease to be there, however, because of our special interest; it is just that at that point, they are not in focus. One and all, there is a a light to the Gentiles and for the Jews, which shines like the noonday.
THE SUMMIT OF GLORY
Now at last (Isaiah 60:16),
" you shall know that I, the LORD, am your Saviour,
and your Redeemer, the Might One of Jacob."
The case of ... mistaken identity then will be past, and the Ruler is no more to be staked out on a cross, with the scathing rebuke from the Lord (as found in Zechariah 11:10-16), but set on a throne, of truth, mercy and grace.
Isaiah 60:19-22 shows the incandescent spiritual beauty in this godly rule, not of man or his passions, but of his Maker and His compassions, law, truth and realism. The changeable changes clothes for the time of stability, with the revelation no more avoidable, but present on all sides in historical practicality.
Now at last, in the millenium the curse of Isaiah 65:13-15 on non-Messianic Judaism (there is only one Messiah, as dated by Daniel), becomes irrelevant for that with Gentile odd-goddishness compulsive obsessions, is now passé. The actual basis is now not only unveiled but blatantly apparent, as it should have been realised from the first. Now inexorably the period of vacuous theories gives way to that of certain rational necessities and, indeed, brilliant revelatory actualities. Like the body of Christ (Luke 24), it is real, to be touched, probed; and it eats ... parades the obvious before eyes that need to open at times, even to avoid running into things!
Now all have seen His glory (as in Isaiah 66:18, and implied in Isaiah 60). It is manifest as now are the stars, the moon and the sun (Psalm 72), and it will never set (Daniel 7:1426-27). The Son of Man, that glorious incarnation of the Eternal Word of God (Philippians 2, Micah 5, Isaiah 48:15ff.), knows the people, was one of them, and governs by His grace till the final thrust of evil surges to its own eternal ruin (Rev. 20:7-10), and the finale of judgment proceeds, the former earth and heaven gone like battle-scarred garments (Revelation 20:11ff.).
That day is like a Summer holiday, full of delight, rest and fascination; but there is work to be done first (just as there was yet, in the day of suffering, further suffering for Israel before her restoration at the end of the Age - Jeremiah 16:21). The reason for that is reinforced in Jeremiah 17, but the eventual solace in the Saviour is seen in Jeremiah 23.
When it is seen in the faces of those restored, when the spiritual phase of the gathered people has been fulfilled as in Zechariah 12-13, Ezekiel 37, Zephaniah 3; in the land, in the earth, in its government, amidst the vastest washing that ever was, and the whole period of blessedness is finished; when heaven itself is opened to its inhabitants, the return to THAT residency (John 14:1-3), the greatest restoration of all, and available for one as for all: then that will be as the song has it, "glory for me".
HOW will this be ? It will be firstly because the payment is not only made, to cover sin, but the consequence of redemption is seen in the body also (as in II Cor. 5:1-5), and what faith held, now eyes behold, and they behold His very face, not clouded in contempt or strong in anger, but filling the atmosphere like a Spring breeze, passing through a hedge of wistaria. It will be ... to be with Him to whom all is due, in personal companionship, where ardour has its site, and radiance its basis clear.
God, He is like that, when sin is reproved, removed, and unclouded purity inhabits unimperilled peace.
Praise God for the tests, then, the trials, some all but inconceivable in their force and imaginative inventiveness, the need for valour, virtue, vigour, grace, to forgive, to forge on, to be valiant for the truth, for the spiritual joy under persecution (I Peter 4:16-17). He does all things well, in Christ has exposed it categorically, and He does it all with vast depth (Isaiah 55:6-11).