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CHAPTER  11

 

THE SAME PLACE FOR GRACE

WHETHER FOR ISRAEL OR GENTILE PEOPLE,

FOR ALL INDIVIDUALS

THE ONE GOD THROUGH MANY METHODS

HAS SHOWN ONE GRACE, SUFFICIENT FOR ALL,

SHOWN IN MANNERS MULTITUDINOUS,

FAITHFUL IN GENERATION AND CONSUMMATION

 

THAT MOST BLESSED VERSE

There are some  delectable Bible verses. One of these is found, like a key to  a vast oaken door, in Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 29:11 has this:

"For I know the thoughts that I have towards you, says the LORD,
thoughts of peace and not of evil,  to give you a future and a hope."

In the Old Testament Commentaries of Keil and Delitzsch, it is expressed as  "(a) destiny and  hope."  Destiny with hope is the expression, and this can be called an EXPECTATION. It is not a meaningless muddle in puddles of blood and sweat and tears.  It is not an uncertain eventuation, to be  found on inspection.  Nothing could be more gullible and misled than imagining that, ignoring God in any operational sense, you can just wait and see. That is to inure yourself to the overwhelming reality of His works, ways and words*1, to insult His mercy and  abandon His grace, trusting in your own thoughts. Go, then, make a universe, predict your salvation, fulfil it in date*2 and in death and in  resurrection (Psalms 2, 16, 22, Isaiah 50-55), and govern the world according to your own stated word: why not ? You trust in yourself more than in Him who has already done all of this ?

To be spiritually malcontent in the presence of such prodigies as this, is to allow yourself to be gulled, beguiled, inundated with this world, your own psyche, the transient, when the eternal God of glory is in view. Choose the puddles and muddles if you must; but realise this first, you pay, at the end of the day, you pay. But in the love and mercy of God, there IS an expectation, a destiny,  and God DOES seek this for you, and has provided absolutely all needed (I John 2:1ff.), to makes this already done on behalf of all, to cover you, through its application. It is a giant reservoir of grace, suffiicient for all, adapted  to all,  and to be received by some, where the redemption as in Isaiah 53:1-5, actually comes (the "we" who are healed and whose sins He bears).

It is all there, like the plans for a new space-craft, with the first  carrier already with engines going, on the tarmac. Here is an expectation, a hope, and a destiny. You are free  to reject it. Love is like that. The love of God is quite like that! (cf. Luke 13:24-30).

Let us then return to these most gracious words in Jeremiah 29. In this context, the words were to Israel, appointed as in Jeremiah 25, for a seventy year discipline in Babylon. As expressed in Ezekiel  16, they had courted the alien, given place  to the godless,  admired the flagrant amid the nations, sought help from the mighty; but the Almighty they had shunned, scorned in practical affairs, wise in their own counsels, deep in the their two-faced bewitchment with folly, too entranced with the  fallen and cranky ways of  this world. Such was the  generality in the country (Isaiah 1, 29, Jeremiah 5).

Does it not remind you of the extreme measures which some have taken in torture or debriefing, with drugs and beatings, duress and horror. It is all very understandable, IF you forget  God, trust in power-broking, have entente with butchers in  sophisticated diplomatic enterprises, complex arrangements of nations to  protect yourself. In the case of the USA, in Vietnam, as in Iraq, or Pakistan,  what you build up, is astray, and that  with which you ally yourself, falls. Friends become enemies, and associates become treacherous. As it was, so it is.

But to those who look for Him, the  Lord is gracious, and for those who look back to their heritage in Christ, meaning and method alike, become clear. False counsellors look  as foolish as  they are, and goodwill ceases to be a choice, but rather to be embedded by faith. Then if fighting there must be, it is as a Christian nation, or group, firm,   or person; for there is no help in this world, ultimately treacherous, a subsidence in the land, a crevasse beside the path, the highway of righteousness, which changes neither for man nor nation, for  woman nor for child.

Ah! to have an expectation, the lot of those who have saving faith in Jesus the Christ, fulfilment of the  millenia of history, agent of the reformation, executive of salvation, centre of it indeed, and payor for its benefits, for the  expectation and the hope which is even greater for each and  all who are His, than Israel the land could  ever  achieve. Delighted as were the Jews who with Ezra and Nehemiah returned to it after the 70 year exile, yet the Lord Himself is brighter, better, more excellent, the Rock of salvation and the barrister of bliss (I John 2:1-2)!

For those of Israel, languishing as captives in a foreign land,  till the 70 years were up, this return  was a prodigy of mercy, a grandeur of grace (cf. Nehemiah 9).It was a heart's desire,  a restoration, a rebuilding,  a return to do everything in the name of the Lord, really, and not in mere form and ceremony, to be vitalised into a life of faith, so that enemies tried and were trying, but did not prevail. Here was the restoration of a theocratic wonder.
 

THAT MOST BLESSED MESSIAH

But now, in our day, post-crucifixion of Christ,  there is no limit. Israel has indeed returned to the nation, to its land, to its headquarters as the summit. Again, as in the 5th century BC, it has come back, though in the first return, it was that was so that God  could be worshipped in liberty and  reality, and great was that mercifully equipped event. This, now available to Jew and Gentile alike, has no bounds,  though the bounds attest it. It is response to the outreach of the infinite God, the Lord of life, God of all mercy, word of power, glow of the Gospel. It surpasses utterly any space in the starry heavens in their comparative barrenness. It is remedy realising in one step, relationship with God Himself. THAT is what God now is calling to Jew and Gentile alike, to receive.

It is greater even than the matter of Israel returning to its land as forecast, not only for the end of the exile, but for the restoration of the rule of the Messiah as in Jeremiah 23, Ezekiel 34-37 (cf. SMR Appendix A); for that is only as yet partly fulfilled, the  land being  received,  but the spiritual blessing yet  to come in Christ.  In Christ, however,  for each individual,  ALL is fulfilled at the spiritual level, entry to the kingdom of heaven, to the care of the Saviour, to the Lordship of Christ, who both died and rose again that He might be Lord. One does not need to wait, for this, for 70 years. Rather now the 70 is the ordinary life span of man during which he might seek and find the Lord by the available way and enter His kingdom of grace.

Jeremiah (16, 23), Isaiah (2, 7, 11, 55, 62 for example) and the Psalms (such as 72 and 45, in particular), and Zechariah 6, 11-13, yes and Ezekiel 36ff.,  forecast these days when that time would come, though it was as Jeremiah 23:5,16,20, a matter of a time far off, at that period. Then, it was to be in "the latter days," as also found in Micah 4:1ff, and Isaiah 2:2ff.. Now, the centre of it all, Christ has come.

THIS is the Gospel day of grace; next is the rule on earth (Revelation 20, Isaiah 2, 11, 65, Psalm 72, Micah 7). The earth has come and will go (Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 23:35), but this message remains. The earth and  all  that is in it is a prelude to God who made it, in His spiritual kingdom which will fill the earth, before this planet's demise as merely temporal, and the words of Him who spoke it into existence (just as an executive could 'speak' a factory into existence), become as fresh as  ever in the Gospel, on earth's departure. A new heaven and earth is to come, filled  with the fragrance of God, emptied of  the burden of sin, free for the faithful, the habitat for faith.

That is to  come. Meanwhile we are pausing at the passing period of Israel's physical return to the land (cf. It Bubbles .. Ch. 10),In the restoration in the "latter days", when  false prophets would have their heyday (Jeremiah 23:20). In this would a returned Israel, fresh back  from  a far greater discipline in  a  far more extensive virtual exile (Leviticus 32-45) than before in Babylon, be one part of the territory of history (Luke 21:24). As Christ declared as seen in this verse, WHEN the Gentiles CEASED to tread down Jerusalem, THEN their period is over, and then the surging realities preceding Christ's return arise like an army (cf. Luke 21:25ff., Matthew 24:1ff.).The mark is given: after some1900 years of exile, Israel is back. The rest confirms it (cf. SMR Ch. 8).

Why were they away so long ? It  was a result of recalcitrant continuity in rejecting the Messiah (Micah 5:1-3, Isaiah 49:7), but that is to end, for the nation.  Once back, victorious against attempts to eradicate them, there comes for them, the giant conversion dynamic, to change the nation as in Zech. 12-13.

 

NOW IT IS THE WORLD

WHICH IS THE BROADER RECALCITRANT

Now the world has a new target. It is seemingly not enough that Hitler scoured out about 6 million of them, their land must be international consensus and consent, be broken up further, and some more given back to the Arabs, who have occupied  it in the area  since  Christ and the discipline of the Jewish people, without Christ. But this world and the Lord are now at loggerheads. Kill more, demolish further, yield more of your tiny foothold of territory,  this world chants, offended at  God doing once more, precisely what He said. A heavy burden is Jerusalem to become (Zech. 12), to all such, but this is just a beginning. The confrontation is to  come (Micah 7, Deut. 32, Isaiah 66).

Once more will the Lord act once for them (as in Deuteronomy 32:28-43), as He has acted (Exodus 12ff.). Indeed, in these terminal events (as in Zechariah 12:1 - 13:1), the Lord would  not only act  for a purpose, to protect ; but with a parallel, that in the  Exodus in the confrontation with Pharaoh (Micah 7:15ff. expressly draws this parallel).

Though the strength of a returned Israel begin to fall away, yet this would be The Lord's  own very spectacular opportunity to act as in Deuteronomy and Micah, and Isaiah 59, 66, and establish His people WHERE He gave to them unconditional national election, according to His word (Genesis 13, 17:7-8). Every jot and tittle is to be fulfilled, and it is not fulfilled in having someone else come to faith, but in having the unique nation fulfilled, one with a whole history of coming and going. Out in the cold, it was taken in; then  treacherous,  it lost its place  a while, then rebuilt, then in greater treachery yet, to their very Redeemer, they lost their place again. There is no such nation on earth, but they. Their definition defies duplication.

Taken out once and twice, they are in due time taken in forever in a vast multitude at least, as God vindicates His own word in the face of those who put Him into myth. His actions are no myth, acting daily.  It is the reactions which are mythical, trying to have what is not there create what is, and then having what is still not there, give command and institute man! It is  all very easy when you blow bubbles and admire the iridescence. Actual works require correlative effort, whether in mathematics or engineering or architecture;  but in will most specially!

Why ultimately should a good destiny for many in  Israel, an imminent event,  be fulfilled ? As in Deuteronomy 7,  He took this people to Himself in a divine and sovereign selection for His saving  purpose; and in as Romans 11, it was to point out the nature of His salvation, first with much in the way of symbolic aid, to attest His faithfulness, reliability and the certainty of His word. It was also to shock the terrible, to reveal the weakness of the awesome among mankind, to illustrate the weakness which joined to wickedness, is a mark on the ear of this world, and to bring a deep counsel to pass, as in Romans 11, where the outage of the Jew became the input for the Gentile, and then the outage of a declining Gentile world become the time for re-entry of Israel, till all see the outstanding point beyond symbol, in substance as in Hebrews 7-10. Then one in Christ (Galatians 3), there is rejoicing at the wisdom and wit of the Lord, His saving plan and His revealing both of good and evil, so that none can make even a case of straw, and truth surges indomitable.

That step is the summit.

It is Christ in you, the hope of  glory. It is not only as with King David, a sovereignty for display (Isaiah 43:21). That helps; and righteousness does indeed exalt a nation (Proverbs 14:34). It is however in the consummation in the knowledge of God in and through the Messiah, Jesus Christ,  that man is to g lory. Those who do not realise this are yet in the woods, battling amid blight, whether brought back to their land or not. Thus in Zechariah 12, just before the enlightenment spiritually which is to grip many in Israel (as also in Romans 11:25ff.), there are battles to be won as has recently been the case (cf. SMR Ch. 9), and there are nations who interfere, only to be humiliated (as has been the case).

But then, there is the difference from these stage managements.  THEN, as at 12:10, there is to be a realisation that the Messiah was the pierced one, was and is God, and amid repentance that is both deep and personal, the life in Christ is to be revealed to very many. Then the two strands in Christ, will join as one (Galatians 3:28), just as Christians now unite in Him. What a series it has been (as in Romans 11). First, there is the original branch, then its lapse, then its excision, next the Gentile ingrafting, with the warning to this same graft of the slender character of its association if they also should rebel, followed by the restoration of the original branch Israel, in terms basic and eternal, so that both segments are made one tree. In what way ? it is in what has always present in principle, been in view, to the common salvation in Christ, first new breaking in  Eden as in Genesis 3:15.

These wonders call  all to find the pleasantness of the Lord, a destiny to come, their place amid the wonderful pities, glories and grace of the living God, the only Saviour (Isaiah 44-46, Acts 4:11-12).

There is however the background music.

Thus when you have an operation for the removal of a gallstone,  while the anaesthetic is not the purpose, it is a presence; and while the monitoring of the heart-beat is not the objective, it does relate. In the case of Israel, this world has a target, something to hit at, while seeking or at  all events acting to dishonour and even confront the God whose word rules. It is always a mistake to do this, but then this present world is full of mistakes and its form is passing away (I Corinthians 7:31).

THE PLANNING PROCEDURE OF DEITY IS 

DEEP, KIND AND INEVITABLE
 

Thus the thing is being arranged in advance. Many have set their maledictions, assaulting words, or intimidatory intents on Israel.

We can move

bullet from some seemingly persecutory Presbyterians in the USA,
 
bullet to some non-verdant Green practitioners in Australia,
 
bullet from Iran to Russia before its USSR fell, 
and not a little to this present day in reported Russian threats to Israel
concerning the curses of Iran, in the event of possible pre-emptive reply by Israel,
 
bullet to the work of the Madrid Quartet
 
bullet from the blights of Arab-Islamic efforts to obliterate once more the land
still continuing to house an Israel not yet brought back to the faith they once had,
a thing now consummated in the predicted Messiah,
 
bullet to rockets from  land granted in peace by Israel to Palestinians, fired into Israel:

 and what do  we have ?

There is antagonism or war, threat or thunder. 

There is agitation, confrontation and talk of obliteration,  depending on the particular animosity concerned.

However, there is God,  the LORD,  eternal, historically manifest  from  Eden, from Babel, from the Flood, from  David to Solomon, and on the other side, from  Sodom's fate to that of Assyria and Babylon, Tyre and Edom, from Calvary to the resurrection, from the forecasts concerning Israel, back as promised amid mighty acts of divine power as foretold,  amid international efforts  to interfere as envisaged; and there is more.

There are the Gentile nations, many abrim with hatred, odium,  with fighting mania and self-management,  even in much of their religion (cf. II Timothy 3-4, Romans 1), filled with modern myths as well as taunting themselves with immorality which prefers to delete the very idea (Communism), or the name of morality (some modern democracies, crazed with anodynes and exasperation, dying amid drugs to the mind and to the body,  to the spirit and to reality).

These in some measure, are like a blaring band; and amid these, are those who call culture king, and make this culture to be what  people do  and think. Next, this is made into something sacred, and in this virtual worship, the core is nothing so much as themselves. All this is as it was to be, men  filled  with fear of what is  to come (Luke 21), war and terror, wandering and error, subterfuge and deceit, spiritual swashbuckling instead of the clean fear of the Lord, and myths of turning the universe's presumed development on its head, in order to take it in hand,  and teach it other and better ways, while their own get but worse and worse. 

It is so with  delusion (II Thessalonians 2:4-10). The more the fixed idea transfixes your intellect, the worse the delusion of the psyche,  the fixation becoming more integral to the thought and to the personality, till reality as with other drugs becomes something of an excrescence, and truth a luxury. In practice, it is merely to be assumed, while in principle it is denied, the  truth that there is no truth, being popular, although as in so much else,  simply a self-contradiction.  What is affirmed concerns whatever the culture wants, however ludicrous the concepts or with whatever vigour they clash with reality (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!).

Amid all this predicted folly, as the Gentiles vie with ancient Israel, to see who can do it worse with respect  to the Lord,  the one having suffered  already, the other seeking its own donation of rebuke and ruin, not of Jerusalem this time, but of this world's whole civilisation. It already is seething under  divine rebuke, with more to come. Before the crescendo, there is the cadenza, where the sheer force and folly of the thing awakens; and for one as for  all, there remains what the Lord has had  from the first. There are "thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and hope."

To be sure, that was for Israel, but it is from the same God, who so loved the WORLD that He gave His only begotten SON that whoever believes in Him should not PERISH, but have eternal life. It is outgoing; it is original; it is from the Eternal God, the Creator, as Redeemer. It will never change, this world come or go. As in  Isaiah 51:6, this world will grow old as a garment, but the righteousness and the salvation of God is for ever. Read Ephesians 3 and consider; John 3 and think; Matthew 24:37, Luke 19 and ponder; but act.  To loiter is to linger amid the lost.

Israel of old, in the day of Babylon,  had a set time.

In the case of Israel, in the Lord's written preview of the later world dilemmas, the  answer came in  a special way.  In Jeremiah 29:8-13, it  appears. It is a lead, so  let us follow it,  and this text thus  appears below, as in the NKJV.

For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:

Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you, nor listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed.
For they prophesy falsely to you in My name;
I have not sent them, says the Lord.

For thus says the Lord:

After seventy years are completed at Babylon,
I will visit you and perform My good word toward you,
and cause you to return to this place. 
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord,
thoughts of peace and not of evil,
to give you a future and a hope. 

Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
I will be found by you, says the Lord,
and I will bring you back from your captivity;
I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places
where I have driven you, says the Lord,
and I will bring you to the place
from which I cause you to be carried away captive.

 

So of course, in the time as appointed, the Lord did, just as He would do again in a permanent way,  after the Messiah had come (Isaiah 50-55), and been rejected (Isaiah 49:7), by the nation, who went  into  exile more profoundly than ever (Micah 5), only to be returned with power (Micah 7, Isaiah 66 and Isaiah 42, 49 as shown in With Heart and Soul ... Ch. 7, SMR Appendix A,  SMR Ch. 9). 
 

SPECIAL EFFECTS, MOUNTAINS TO MOVE,

MINDS TO WIN, HEARTS  TO FIND

Isaiah refers to there situation  in the day of the Messiah, which has now stretched these two millenia, before judgment.

In Isaiah 42:9ff., amid the prophecies of the Messiah,  our eyes are brought to light on the  Messiah in the early verses, the One who, unlike Israel,  was a topic of delight in the Lord (Isaiah 41:28-42:4). We are moved then to consider Israel.Alas there is no photogenic alteration. How are they characterised in this Messianic setting ? They are blind as a distinctive, unlike the Christians, who have the light of the world and hence are kept from stumbling because of darkness.

Not only are they characterised as blind, not  walking in the light of life as children of light. Alas, they are scheduled for observation as what ? It is as those incomparably blind, so that the Lord seeks any more so from anywhere. WHO is BLIND as My servant! does He cry ? (42:19). But no! the case is more definitive yet: "Who is blind but  My servant!" (4219). He addresses them first as blind, and then accentuates the point in this way. Having received so much for  so long, experienced such historic and  famed miracles over so many schedules of events,  from the Exodus and before, to the rescues innumerable,  they have a blindness which is opaque to the strongest light. That is the point being made at this level. Its basis is tender, its charge is indefeasible, its thrust is for good. But it hits!

For  all this, there is to be, as in the next major Messianic exposure in Isaiah 49, such a mercy as beggars all comparison.

They are to be returned, their spiritual location amid the Messiah, and in Him they will find light (as in Isaiah 8-9), whether at first in the Church, born in Jerusalem for the New Covenant, or at last as in Romans 11:25ff., as the whole scene comes to its cataclysmic end in the deep counsel of God. It is then that the Church founded by Christ, takes back its two wings as on one bird, one eagle, whom the Lord upholds both in one. Thus,  in Isaiah 49, amid all the rejoicings in the Messiah Himself and His wonders and works, the Lord reminds Israel when it complains.

It feels  forsaken: "The LORD has forsaken  me," 49:14.At once the Lord shows that this is as far as night from day, for He has

"inscribed you on th palms of My hands,
your walls are continually before Me...
For your waste and desolate places, and the land of your destruction
will even now be too small for the inhabitants...
The children you will have after you have lost the others,"

will find the place too compressing.

Finished in  all these woes ? not  at all. It merely begins  with tragedy to end in triumph. Israel will be astounded, having thought herself ruined (49:21). Taking the prey from the captors, the Lord will make the aggressive expansionists who want to ruin Israel, themselves to be smitten.

Indeed, He  declares,  "I will  feed those who oppress you with their own flesh," Isaiah 49:26.

Thus is the course of action, divinely planned for the nation of complex history:

bullet called,
 
bullet betraying, smitten,
 
bullet exiled from the land  given for a season,
 
bullet given the Messiah,
 
bullet rejecting Him and exiled many days, 
 
bullet called to return (Ezekiel 36ff.),
 
bullet and moving towards the return of the Messiah (Ezekiel 37:21-24),
 
bullet as now.

It is He who will crown these events and characterise the consummation  so  nearly reached, and soon to come (Answers to Questions Ch.  5). THIS return is to the Lord and although it does not start this way (as in Zechariah 12:1-9), this finale comes swiftly as there (12:10ff.).As in Jeremiah 23:5, its Messiah comes to the place of the twice exiled people. Furnished from the first, they are as a people, slow to the last in one thing: returning to the Lord once and for all, as He returns to them! But they come.

What then can we learn of their first exile and their return then,  that impact on people now, in general ?

All are faced with what they had to do as in Jeremiah 29, seeking Him with all their hearts in the day of their restoration, their  coming back  to Jerusalem. That also is the spirit of what they have to do, as in Zechariah 12, WHEN back in Jerusalem FOLLOWING the crucifixion of the Messiah - which has to have happened before in that time, since it is REPENTANCE from it, as those who did it as a people, which is the point.

It is also the spirit of what ALL have to do when coming  back from virtual exile from  God, they seek to find in Him, their refuge and Rock, their triumph and praise, the glory back of creation  and the meaning of their own souls, their lives, their very existence. There is only One: no other is He. He is willing, even  calling (Matthew 22). The pleasant words about destiny then take on a  deeper meaning, for that with Him is a destiny WORTHY OF THE NAME! It lasts forever (Revelation 22:5).

The thought of the Lord, the grace which this indicates, the faithfulness which this particular dealings portray: it is from the Lord Himself that it flows, and in His nature that it should so flow (as in Micah 7:19ff., Ezekiel 33:11, I Timothy 2, Colossians 1:19ff.). It is to be found as in Isaiah 55. It never changes, the creative power, the redeeming work, the active  love, the shedding of mercy like Autumn leaves, costly mercy and the sunshine of His presence (Malachi 3:16 -4:2).

Thus,  what is exemplified in this vast history of illustrative Israel, is what is offered in spirit to one and to all, with this experimental testimony over the ages. It is for one and for all to seek the Lord with all the heart, for He DOES have thoughts of peace and of a future, an expectation.

It is NOT one in ruins and ravagements such as are now so popular amid the nations, as almost to serve as a partial definition for them. There is the call to nations to return to righteousness, which exalts a nation. There is the call to individuals within all nations, to do the same.

In the latter case, however, it is not as with Israel, to regroup in the culmination of what they had at first (as in the days of David, with his profound and Messianic Psalms already dwelling in the spiritual land of the Messiah cf. Romans 4-5.).  For these, individuals who now come to Jesus Christ, though it is the same repentance from the same sin which led in the love of Christ to death, but now there is a paid-up cover, everlasting redemption (Hebrews 9:12). This is adequate, ample and  replete in its cover for those who come from any nation or place.

He calls in particular, to this same Gospel, for which they served in the prelude (Romans 9:1-5),those of Israel. In that nation, God has given an example of His fidelity to the uttermost point (cf. Ezekiel 36:22).He calls with the same Gospel, the Gentiles also. These receive the call to COME for the FIRST time to this faithfulness, to this Saviour, in this case, direct and without the preludes of Israel. In the end, it is as in the beginning, the Gospel to be unfurled in the Messiah,  the Messiah unfurledin this world, the Gospel He paid for applied to one, to the other.

in this same Messiah, Jesus Christ, the crisis in the sin of this world and the sin of each of its people, by direct access  into the kingdom of heaven, Christ the visa and the assurance, the referee and the redemption.

THERE IS A PROSPECT, there are thoughts of PEACE, which the Lord, having shown so much in so many ways for so long, both to Israel and to the particular nations (cf. The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4), has reserved for many and for any who in faith with repentance, receives the Lord's Christ, and not another, by faith, and not with works attendant to  swing the balance (Romans 3:23ff, Ephesians 2, Galatians 3-5).

Is that prospect yours ? It goes one better now in this,  that the occupation of your territory, the work of the Lord in creation, does not have historical waiting and working; it comes direct, in this "Christ in you, the hope of glory," Colossians 1:27). There is peace (Ephesians 2:13-21, Galatians 5, Philippians 4), which passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7). There is love "which passes knowledge," Ephesians :19. 

Here is the God of history, creation, judgment, truth, reality, and love, prepared to arraign Himself against all judgment of those who receive His salvation, the barrister of bliss, since He for them has already born the pangs of death and judgment. This He has done, that He freely with His characteristic grace, might receive His people, one by one, to Himself (Romans 8:31-39, 3:23ff., 5:1-12, II Timothy 1).

Offered  as was the sacrifice of the atonement to Israel, all of it, though not all received it nor took it,  He is yet received by some (not by manipulators as in Deuteronomy 29:18-20); and for these His ransom avails. It is indeed ETERNAL REDEMPTION, His sheep having conferred on them, eternal life (John 10:9,27-28, Hebrews 9:12). It is here that faith works so well. How ? Why, IF you trust Him,  then you KNOW you have this, SINCE He says it again and again (John 5:24, 4:14), and IF you do not, then it is time to seek Him with all the heart and to overcome fastidiousness or false fascinations, and to REST in Him (Hebrews 4, Matthew 11:27ff.).

The rest of the Lord, it is just as David describes it, in Psalm 23. It has not changed. It has been paid for in the case of sinners, of which the whole human race is composed (Romans 6:23), for all of whom, outside those who have already found Him in this same faith, there is need to repent and so to receive what it is that is paid for: sins that require death, through redemption by faith, entry to heaven which admits no sin, being perfect.

 

 

NOTES

 

*1

See for example:

Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ

 

*2

See Christ the Citadel Ch.  2,

Highway of Holiness... Chs.      4,   7, ,

Mini-Messages with Maxi-Point ... Ch.   10,

The Christian Prescription Ch.   2.