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

 

 

 

CHAPTER 8

 

FUNCTIONS AND FAVOURS

FROM THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH

Part II

 

ASPECTS OF THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

 

THE WATER MARK

 

Several times the Holy Spirit is figured in the imagery of water, both in the Old and in the New Testament.

 

THE WATER MARK IN EZEKIEL
 

In Ezekiel 47, you find the water issuing from the vicinity of the altar, and moving down to become an increasing torrent, so that at first Ezekiel has only his feet covered (as if to  cover the question of direction), then it comes to his waist, as if to cover the constraint and impulsion that such a surge would impart, putting this into spiritual terms as the impact of God on the believer, inducing full surrender to His will and thrusting into service in His kingdom. Next, he finds it too deep except to swim in, and too broad to cross, as if to indicate, like air to the body, an  entire milieu, more than an ambience, a  containing  oversight and presence, limitless like God, yet able to be moved in and discovered, as a son may learn more of his father and of his power and grace, and from him, more perspectives about life.

It comes from the vicinity of the altar, from the temple, indicating that the Holy Spirit proceeds from God, from the God of salvation,  mercy and sacrifice, and that it is terms of Him, of His saving work, His covenantal  pity and sacrificial redemption, that His action  comes and His boundless bounty moves in a medium which both refreshes and brings life.

This it does also to the trees on the river's banks, which as in Psalm 1, stand for those who meditate continually in the word of God, and hence are ready for leading by His Spirit, just as those who have their house built, now that it has stability and foundation, are ready for the wires and electricity to be put in,  since now it has foundations (I Corinthians 3:10-11). Precisely as in Psalm 1, the leaves of these trees (indicative of the spiritual health of the godly people whom the trees represent) do not wither,  for those who wait upon the Lord, in another figure (Isaiah 40),  will renew their strength, and mount up with wings as eagles (Isaiah 40:28ff.), and their fruit does not fail (because the Lord helps them, as signified by the river by which they are placed).

By the side of the river, there are fishermen, and these as in Mark's Gospel for example (1:17), represent those who seek in the power of the Spirit (in the water - cf. John 16:8ff.), to bring people home to the land of liberty in Christ Jesus the Lord. Hence Christ called the fishermen to fish for men!

The waters proceed to the sea where they bring healing (to the peoples of this world, where their input provides a vast disturbance (cf. Acts 17:6), in which many may be found for eternal life. Contrarily, there are some marshy places on the way, and here there is no cleansing and no bringing of life: and this represents such conditions as are specified in Hebrews 6 and 10,  where people play with the things of God, play not pray, where the taste and do not swallow, where as in the superficial and unrooted case of Matthew 13:20-21, they rejoice for a season, but their hardened hearts, like underground missile silos, are not broken in repentance. This  remains murky and unclean, as with Judas.

 

THE WATER'S POWER AS IN JOHN 4 AND 7
 

As in Revelation 22:1-2,17, so the river in Ezekiel represents the Holy Spirit, as indeed in John 7:37-38, where it is identified specifically. There Jesus calls out to the festival driven crowd, declaring that there is a remedy for the thirsty (precisely as in Isaiah 55:1, where they are  told to buy this water without price and without money). This purity contrasts with the pollution of  seeking to control or gain it by grasping means, as in Acts 8:15-20, where Simon sought to buy the power of the Holy Spirit,  and brought down extreme wrath on his head, for his bitterness and deceit. It is to Lord Himself that they are to come, to Jesus the Christ, that the Spirit might thus pour out into them and through them and so beyond them, as you see in this passage of John. The work of the Spirit is always based in the Word of God, which is definitive, declarative, and shows the way.

Emphatically, it is not just as a spring welling up into eternal life, the major thrust in John 4. It goes further, and in John 7, this feature is added.

To the believer in Jesus Christ (not in formality merely, but in functionality by faith), the Spirit comes in a super-abundance which moves outward and beyond,  alive with blessing and giving life, as did the waters found in the vision of Ezekiel. "Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water" - John 7:38,

It is always both delightful and fascinating to see the integral intimacy in the Old and New Testaments, of the message. The Trinity is deeply involved, for as Christ declared (John 15:26, 16:7), the Spirit proceeds from the Father and He as the Word, sends the Spirit which moves in them. Thus there is continued,  in this application, the power of God both for the testimony of the salvation, the Gospel and the Person of Christ the Saviour and Redeemer, Creator and Lord, which He showed direct when present.  The Spirit so sent, brings counsel and capacity for both the knowledge and the service of Christ. 

As in John 16:8ff., this movement is preceded by the conviction of sin (one's own for not believing sooner), of righteousness (Christ's, who though rejected, is victor over death and in triumph eternal - Revelation 5), and of judgment (since the prince of this world, the leadership which it both has and shows, is already under judgment and has never been in accord with God, no, not since the initial fall of man, as shown in Romans 5, Genesis 3, to this day).

In John 4, the point of the permanence of the life of the  Spirit of God in the believer's heart is strenuously stressed. There was the Samaritan woman, laboriously coming to gain water from  a fairly distant well (she had to send for her husband as a distinctive act), and she gave  water to Christ from this well. However, said He, if she asked of Him, she could gain water such that NEVER AGAIN would toil be needed to obtain it; indeed to eternity it would not merely be resident within herself, but would have such a depth and force, that it would carry her on without cease or fail.

Once a child of God, always, for to BECOME one, you need to be foreknow and predestinated (Romans 8:30), and for that you partake of a cycle, one part of which is justification. If this comes, so does glorification (cf. Romans 8:17). Not only so, for this is more than form and is fact both vital and spiritually enlivening to the uttermost part:  the title deeds to the many dwelling places (as in John 14) are of Him who is The Life, for Him and for those who, being regenerated, are kept by the power of God (I Peter 1-2), their internal volume of water, spring of the Holy Spirit, not only present, but so by seal (Ephesians 1:5).

 This demarcates the purchased possession, which has already gained an inheritance (Ephesians 1:11), one that does not pass away, reserved in heaven (I Peter 1). Thus path, power, life, instruction:  all is provided, based on Christ, intimated and applied through the Holy Spirit.'

 

THE WATER'S ENDURANCE and ETERNITY in Revelation 22

In Revelation 22, we according see the pure river of water, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in this infinite intimacy of the Trinity (a in Isaiah 48:16, II Corinthians 13:14,  Matthew 28:19, John 15:26). Here again, in the vision accorded to John, are the trees, and the leaves, the 12 trees giving the Old Testament bud for the bloom of the New Testament, and preserving the essential unity of both Covenants, as in Romans 11, where this is done through the image of the olive tree, first for Israel, then as a graft, in the SAME olive tree, for the Gentiles, and then, again in the SAME olive tree, for those to be found in the last great sweep of conversion, in Israel (cf. The Biblical Workman Ch. 3, End-Note ! 1A,  Ch. 8, as marked).

Now in Revelation 22,  the leaves of this arboretum are for the healing of the nations, at last aware of one kingdom, that of heaven, where the same approach to God, always to hand through faith by grace through sacrifice, whether foreshadowed, foreseen, felt for, detailed, or DONE at last (Hebrews 1, 9-10) and by faith received in redemption, No more curse is to come and the perpetual lively serenity is there seen, flowing in their midst.

 

WATER AS SYMBOL

In these diverse representations of the Spirit of God through the imagery of water, we do  well to  consider the  choice. What is  water elementally suggestive of, say in river or lake or sea  ? For the moment, the chief  referent is the river.

Water refreshes, meets dangerously immediate need, covers the case speedily,in its best state is simple, direct and pure. In this, we gain context  from Jeremiah 18:14: 

"Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon which cometh from the rock of the field?
or shall the cold flowing waters
that come from another place be forsaken?"

Such is the wisdom of God and foolishness of man, that although this is the way of beauty, one of the magnificent features of some rivers and lakes, still, joyful,  fresh, lively, in repose, sparkling in action, and by such waters there is joy, yet God charges Israel with supreme neglect. Not only did they forsake these pure waters, freely available; they even put sweat and labour into building cisterns, wells, underneath the blessed surface of the earth, in repositories needlessly fashioned by their hands.

The irony continues, and note this. Even at that, after all this subterranean industry,  these wells were cracked, so that even if they gained some small quantity of water, it would seep away (Jeremiah 2:13). Quite simply, the Lord charges, "they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters and hewn  out for themselves  cisterns - broken cisterns that can hold no water."

Water however can show further relevant features, even than these, here focussed through their neglect.

Water is widely available, must come from the right  source (cf. John 15:26), may be widely dispersed from small fountains of origin (John 7:37-38), and meets needs directly from above, from which it comes as for rivers, when it rains, or when springs operate through water from above, coming down with gravity (and grace)  to meet need. 

 

THE  SPIRIT AS STANDARD BEARER

A very different function of the Holy Spirit, as specified in the Bible, is found in Isaiah  59. Here is the most undelectable list of delinquencies one  could well imagine, attributed by the Lord to the nation. It is not that the hand, the power of the Lord is shortened, as if that of a dwarf, that they so lack deliverances; it is not that He cannot hear.  Not at all is it what He can do, that is the question, but what they will not,

That is the problem. "Your iniquities have separated you from your God!" He  declares. Is His face hidden from them  as they seek the personal, the profound, the merciful
God ? It is their sins that provide the obfuscation. Lies and perversities are in their speech,  act of  violence are the works of their power. Their feet run, yes, but to do evil. Faced with the straight paths of divine righteousness, truth and peace, they have done road works to make crooked avenues.

They grope ? they growl like bears ? they moan and find salvation like dim views in the distance ? They have like a record,  a testimony that speaks as  they weep; they lie from  the very heart, and so truth lies like a soldier,  fallen in the street. As to equity, it cannot gain a pass for entry. In fact,  let someone leave the evil of their ways, and he becomes prey to those who do not!

Such is the tenor of the truth, in the first 15 verses of this Chapter.

Divine action follows. No intercessor could be found, no one would turn the things around, so the Lord's own action was decisive. Like a soldier advancing on an  enemy country, but with better intentions, He "put on righteousness as a breast plate" having on His head a helmet of salvation, to repay tribes that made of their ways a diatribe of evil. If Israel is fallen to evil, is it alone  ? The Lord will intervene, with "fury to His adversaries" till He has impacted the whole earth with judgment (as in  Micah 7,  Isaiah 2, Revelation 19). 

The fear of God, subsumed in the slithery pits of sin, will find new place; and He will be feared throughout the earth. This is a fear, a reverential respect, both clean and and adapted to cleansing. It prepares.

Indeed,

v  "when the enemy comes in like a flood, The Spirit of the LORD will lift up a standard against him."

Back into Zion comes the Lord, Zion the assailed (as in Zechariah 12), yet Zion no longer under Gentile rule (as in  Luke 21:24, this liberation being a signal of the near return of the Lord, here seen in action, and now seen in fact).

At the stage of events noted in Isaiah 59:15-20, to Zion He comes as Redeemer, He who was  slain there arriving now with power and majesty. Indeed, even before this, there is a massive repentance sweeping through the land (as in Zechariah 12:10-13:1, before 14:5),  so that those who "turn from  transgression" find in Him salvation and deliverance most plentiful (as in  Deuteronomy 32).

It is the work of the  Spirit of the LORD who will "lift up a  standard against" the enemy, that is our present focus.

But Who is that standard ?

The  Spirit is NOT the  standard; but He LIFTS IT UP. The standard as ever, is the Lord Himself, here the Redeemer, the  Word of God who became flesh (John 1:1*1), being not only with God, but God Himself as in Isaiah 48:16, Psalm 45, and as Saviour,  again, and as Creator likewise,  very God of very God (Isaiah 43:10-11, Colossians 1:15, Proverbs 8, Isaiah 45:17-18). There is as God declares often, NO OTHER Saviour or Creator, but Himself; and it is Christ who does both these things, paying for salvation in the most personal and involved way possible both in and through Himself, who is justly called the Saviour. Indeed there is no other name given among men, by which they MUST be saved (Acts 4:11-12).

So the Standard Bearer lifts up the Standard,  focusses the Christ (as in John 16:13-16), and He, being lifted up, draws all  men towards Himself (John 12:32). As ever, the Spirit does not speak on His own authority, but as He hears, so He speaks; He does not lift up some new standard, but the Lord ALONE who in His own righteousness comes to confront the earth, and bring to salvation those who receive Him. The Son shows the Father, and the Father shows the Son (Matthew 11:27), and the Spirit lifts Him up.

The power of God has for long been working in His disciples, the Christians who know and follow Him on the earth (and there is no other kind of Christian disciple, only other kinds of things - Luke 14:27ff.). His power has been shown not only in enabling the preaching of the Gospel, its dissemination, and the teaching of His word, but in answering challenges, even when death threatens. That you see in Luke 21:14-19 with Matthew 10:19-20; and  it is the  Spirit of the Lord who inspires them  (in Matthew it is "the Spirit of the Father" but one recalls from John 15:26 that Christ sends the Spirit FROM the Father to His people).

The standard itself, the word of God (I Thessalonians 2:13,  Matthew 7:24ff., Proverbs 30:6, Revelation 22),  and not some usage of names to allow innovation into the changeless Gospel (Galatians 1,  I Peter 1:22-23), of grace of the immutable Lord (Psalm 102, Hebrews 1, 13:8), is lifted up, given sight for survey, as when an airship floats by with banners. It helps by strengthening with might in the inner person (Ephesians 3:16), and He sheds various influences (cf. Daniel 2:27-30,4:8), to overcome fraud by which Satan and his ministers, would impede the faithful (cf. Luke 11:52), or regale lies, to penetrate the very purity of the mouth of God.

Amidst all this belligerent bunk, through the Spirit, Christ is lifted up (John 12:31-33, 16:13-15), and He being the Spirit of Truth, He acts in His own domain, so that Christ is duly and justly made to appear to  man  what He is: the victorious, crusading, delivering, righteousness-loving, man-engendering (not once, in creation only, but twice in regeneration)  Redeemer. He moves to enlighten, even if through resistance, and  for those who believing, are thus adopted as children of God - Ephesians 1, I John 3, He prevails in truth, the Spirit of counsel and of knowledge of the Lord.

How gracious and beautiful is the action of the Trinity!

In this blessed interchange of love, among men, the Son  ONLY able to know the Father, and only the Father able to know the Son, the Spirit revealing the Son  as Standard as He moves from the Father,  from  the Son: there is a simplicity of profundity and a salvation in intimacy. As in the Gospel for millenia, it has been the thrust that the SON did not come to judge the world, but to save it; for His love is such that it pleases the Father that all should be reconciled to  Himself, yes those in heaven and those on earth, through the blood of His Son (Colossians 1:19).

The profundity and universality of the sincere and impassioned offer is seen with withering realism for prevaricators and equivocators, in Matthew 22:1-14, where false excuses are given, and fraud is exposed. The immensity of the divine intensity for mercy is seen especially in 22:9, where many having carelessly refused the call to the wedding of the Son, the seekers are sent to find as many as they may, even in highways and byways, the practical counterpart of Colossians 1:19ff..

And what do we learn of them from Colossians 1?

Whether they be passed on, or not; whether they heard the Gospel or died without it: at the time of Paul in the crusade of the incarnation, prospectively and retrospectively, it is the will of God that ALL should be reconciled, and thus NOTHING that is to the point is to be omitted. Small wonder the Lord Jesus Christ descended into hell, as the Apostles' Creed has it, and there preached! (I Peter 3:19-20), to the spirits thus imprisoned (as in Jude 6 where angels are eternally blighted who have fallen). The Bible is not Platonic in philosophy, and to be spirits in prison is by no means a phrasing used of man: in  sin, deserving hell without salvation, captives of sin. Sinners,  the battalions of man on this earth, are  not biblically designable or designated as spirits in prison. Whatever the pockets of judgment, actual, impending, final, Christ preached to these spirits.

So vast is His spiritual enterprise, His love, that  to the flood mob, way back in Noah's day, now spirits in prison, the Lord completed His tour of the universe (as His love held it in sight - Colossians 1:19ff. I Timothy 2). The results of this visit we do not know; but we do know this, the passion of God for mankind, and His kindness towards it (cf. Titus 2-3), and that the men of Tyre would have repented had Christ there done the works shown to Israel in His day on this earth! (Matthew 11:21).

On earth at this crucial time of delayed recompense (as in II Peter 3:19), even though as Peter foresaw, it would be an age before He did it, the Lord in His day of recompense to the godless persecutors and tricksters, deceivers and manipulators, power-crazed dissemblers, then descends in judgment. As Revelation 19 shows, when He comes it is with His saints (Zechariah 14:5, Jude 14), already taken as in Matthew 24:36ff.,  I Thessalonians 4). It is then that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 11:9). Evil rebuked, will lie still, slain; while He who is the Lord, returned regally, He who was despised and rejected,  sin-bearer and apparently abandoned on the Cross, to which however as in Psalm 40, He in delight had come,  He will be a glory to behold. 

v  "The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, 
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD..."

Isaiah 11:2). 

 

THE  SPIRIT AS CONVEYOR TO THE ULTIMATE UNITY - Isaiah 44

In all things, this same Jesus is to have the pre-eminence, being so raised from almost universal rejection by the powers of this evil world (Galatians 1:4), though loved by many within it (Philippians 2). In the intimacies of the trinity, the lover, the loved One and the love itself, even as He governs (cf. Matthew 19:28, Luke 22:30), so will the blessing be (Psalm 72).

The ONE word, the Bible, with the ONE Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, from the ONE God who sent Him, and  this through the ONE Spirit who implements,  this continues unchanged as He rules. But as man  wanders, so the Spirit convicts, and the Lord being lifted up (on the Cross as John 12 explains), draws men; so that in Isaiah 44:1-5, we see different dimensions of the unity, even within this one word.

The milieu here is the blessing to be poured out, so that many will arise like "willows by the watercourses". In other words, the Lord will "pour water on the one who is thirsty" and "floods on the dry ground," yes, He will "pour My Spirit on your descendants" in this most blessed time. Now Isaiah is the book (John 12:38-40) which makes most painfully clear that firstly, Israel is God's people and inheritance, that it has fallen in sheer drop (Isaiah 30:8-18), receiving an enduring curse; but that it is He who for BOTH Jews and Gentile will provide atonement (Isaiah 42:6, 49:6).

Thus, although Israel is to suffer a repudiation  spiritually (Isaiah 65:13-15), in its prolonged disbelief as a nation, in the Messiah (Isaiah 49:7), yet from all nations there will  come those who are  to be His, in His new name (Isaiah 62:1-3,66:18-21), that of the Messiah, the Christ,  so that they may be called "Christ-people" or Christians. These are no more to seem to include an immune group with tediously horrendous sins than were the Jews, and many will be the frauds misusing truth among the Gentiles, as they did among the Jews in earlier times (II Peter 3:1-3, II Timothy 3:1-5, with 4:1-4, I Timothy 4:1-3).Now will the righteous receptors of divine righteousness, pardon and spiritual power from the Spirit of God shine forth as the sun (Matthew 13:43).

Put differently (Matthew 25), sheep and goats will not sound or seem the same, as to the undiscerning ear and eye, they were often proclaimed to be on this earth in its fraudulent nascency, during the Age of the Gospel. Now they will appear in their proper and recognised form as believers in the Lord's Christ (not some other manufactured one, whether through Muhammad or the Mormons or Israel's Judaism or various Gentile accommodationists who are as far off as were the false Jewish prophets of old  shown in Jeremiah 23:16-20).

A purged and purified people will indeed follow the Lord (cf. Zephaniah 3, Malachi 1:11, Jeremiah 16:19, Isaiah 65:1).

Now let us look  once more in Isaiah 44, to see elements of interesting diversity in the transformed unity. 

The immediate focus is Israel, and the blessing to be poured on its offspring in due time. Of course, it is the same spiritual blessing as reserved for Gentile believers as we have seen, for NOTHING is left to Israel at the spiritual level, as noted in Isaiah 30, and NO ONE can enter the kingdom of God but those who come through the Redeemer. This is so,  whether their nation (as is common but never normal on this diseased and soon to be deceased earth) reject the Lord, ignore Him or cause caustic acids of vehemence to be poured out on Him. In these things, many Gentile peoples are becoming more and more like those described by Isaiah, in ancient Israel.

As Paul is moved to put it in Romans 11:32: "For God has committed them  all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all." His gifts and calling are irrevocable, and it is the one Lord and one salvation, one Gospel which alone is for any, whether in preludes pointed, or in consummation anointed.

This, however, is anything but the brotherhood of man, being no more like that, than do several married women constitute the sisterhood of the brothel. Let us face it most clearly: just as Israel ABHORRED the Messiah (Isaiah 49:7), and just as He was despised and rejected, mocked, and not by Jews only, but indeed by Gentiles also, whose co-operation was NECESSARY for Him, in order for Him to be crucified at all! so is the reverse applicable. Many abhor God (not the gods they make up); and God ABHORS evil as you see in Isaiah 59; but the difference is this, for it is not mere reciprocity.

HIS IS righteousness, equity, justice, truth and peace, glory and creation! It can be reviled, abused,  misused, and so can He; but nothing alters the facts, except in this, that revilers, who do not repent, achieve a fate for which they might not otherwise have qualified, although known to God are all His works from the foundation of the world (Acts 15:18, 46:8). Repent or perish! is the clear message of Christ in Luke 13:1-3, and with it, this further.  Do not contend with the Almighty, objecting that this or that happened, for this world is NOT made for happiness WITHOUT GOD, since we are IN HIS IMAGE.

You cannot demand that He front up and act the way you desire, while as it were, you insist on spiritual smoking, and driving at random in the spiritual world, as if the roadway did not matter, or direction, like someone purposely laughing at the whole idea of a map! (cf. Psalm 1:5-6).

In Isaiah 44, however, we see remedy in action. Starting with Israel, we find a spreading power which moves amid men, and acts with wonder; for it is too small a thing for Him to give salvation to the chosen ones of Israel alone (Isaiah 49:6).

Here in 44:5, three sorts of response come from those taken back by the Lord, the Redeemer,  those for whom the Redeemer specifically came, offered to all while securing many. One of these "will say, Í am the Lord's,' " while another will "call himself by the name of Jacob." A third will "write with his hand, "The Lord's," and this one will "name himself by the name of Israel" (cf. Galatians 6:16).

The first of the three appears to be in the group where all that matters is this, that I am no longer an alien from the kingdom of God, but now have citizenship in the kingdom of heaven, awaiting the time when this vile body is raised by the power of Him who is able to subdue all things even to Himself (Philippians 3). Here is the generic Christian, par excellence.

The second, however, is most aware of a Jewish background (just as many Australians are very aware of a British background, without ceasing to be Australian, or in any way reverting to being subject to British law, however good it was). These appear as Hebrew Christians, of which there are many in the world today, whether in congregations the name of which is of this kind, or individually.

As to the third,  may have a certain breadth of thought here. Just as the wide-ranging realities of God towards Jew and Gentile alike are found in Isaiah with heavy emphasis, so these may come with the perspective of those for whom the elect of Israel citation is too small for the Lord (49:6). True from, the first, the Gospel is seen in its sway to the last,  encompassing not only the current believers from whatever source, but the Jewish believers from Abraham one, for example (as in Romans 4:20-25).

As to these, the third group, or designation, they act in this way.

They write: it is perhaps to be in danger of death to do so (John 16:2), but they write it with their hand, they attest with forcible permanence. Perhaps, in this category there is the wider version of "Israel" which indeed some use confusedly, as if God's promises did not apply (cf. SMR Appendix A), but which for all that, at the crucial spiritual level  is quite correct as one usage.

It is the OLD TREE from which Israel was taken, into which Christians come, that remains (Romans 11), and from the perspective of eventual and planned outcome, there is a genuine catholicity (not of course the opposite of this, to be found when 'Roman Catholicism' mistakenly uses the term of its geographic and limited central site).  It is the Galatians 6 Israel, which appears to be Paul's usage of the term as an implicit rejoinder to the circumcisionists who wanted to bring back symbolic laws (cf. Galatians 2:4ff., Romans 2:29).

Here then, in this third group of Isaiah 44,  it may well be that we find those who stress, rightly, the unity of the two covenants, the non-dispensationalists*2, who have no truck with the divergence theory (as shown false in Romans 4), any more than with the displacement theory (which ignores certain features, historically specific to Israel*3).

Not therefore, in such ways, but taking all things in order,  it seems that these may be seeing various aspects.

One is this:  that what is designed for Israel, while it has specific geographic features, which have tutelary value for this world (which will find it cannot divest the returned people from their land, since God has a very different scenario in mind - as in Micah 7), yet has NO specific spiritual features. There is ONE Lord and ONE Gospel, neither able to be indentured nor given new teeth, but one for ever, to which Jew and Gentile will come or have nothing; for as seen in Isaiah 30, there is NO spiritual future for Israel outside the Messiah, and IN the Messiah we are all one, male or female, Jew or Gentile (Galatians 3:28-29).  As seen in Hebrews 8, with the New Covenant, the Old is obsolete. The bud was fine; the rose is the final point, and from this there is no retraction, nor any movement whatsoever (Galatians 1), the pre-eminence of the now complete saving work of the Messiah, suffering no indent.

IN the Messiah indeed, there is but one future for Israel, in eternal  life, whatever are the land uses  to  show the Gentiles the severely simple certainties of God's word (as in Ezekiel  39:23, 27ff.), His faithfulness, and the significance for the crucifixion of the Lord of glory, of its  central city.

It is statedly the Spirit of God who shows to Israel,  as many as will listen  and they WILL be many (Zechariah 12:10-13:1), who is the Messiah and how they messed their mercies in murder. It is He who shows Jew and Gentile alike, whether their sin be this or that, specialising in this theme or that (as in Isaiah 53:6), where lies their common salvation (as shown in the olive tree of Romans 11).

Indeed, after the olive-tree excursion, Paul there glories in the mercy and wisdom of God.

Why ? It is because of this beautiful balance:

"For as you were once disobedient to God,
yet have no obtained mercy through their disobedience,
even so these also have now been disobedient,
that through the mercy shown you, they also may obtain mercy.
For God ahs committed them  all to disobedience,
that He might have mercy on all.

"Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out,"


Romans 11:29-33.

And who are this they and you, the two active participants ? Why, they are Israel, the lopped branch from their own tree (Romans 11:17), and the Gentiles (believers among whom are the grafted branch into  that self-same tree from which Israel, hewing down the Lord, was hewn down, taken out).

There are diversities of background, there is unity of foreground; there are differences of geographic outcomes in the plan to instruct the world as there have been since the days of Genesis 17:7-8, but there is one outcome for all, when the players answer to the team call, one Lord, one immutable and beautiful Gospel, one glorious Spirit lifting up and focussing Jesus Christ, the Standard, one God and Father of all, there is one Trinity in mutual and infinite intimacy, there is one result, one destiny for all, whether Jew or Gentile (Revelation 7), and there is no room for amendment, differentiation in the Gospel, retrogression from it, or any other absurdity.

Alas,  as so often, you have two extremes, vying, one which makes prophecy unaccountably stop short for Israel, prescribing to God, and one making Judaism continue, contradicting God; but there is one truth as it is written; and as Christ showed the devil, it is to this one turns in terms of truth, and to nothing else, more or less, other or contrary.

Praise God for that (Proverbs 8:P8-9), and it is to His glory to note the perfect harmony of His word with itself in all things!


 

 

 

NOTES

*1

See The Bright Light and the Uncomprehending Darkness Ch. 10

*2

See Deliver us from  Dispensationalism (Biblical Blessings  Ch. 3 ).

 

*3

 See The Open Door, the Closed Mind and the Call of Christ Ch. 8.