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APPENDIX  I


APPENDIX NEWS:
THE REST THAT
HAS A WAY OF ITS OWN ...


This is drawn from NEWS 33
on the web page
for World Wide Web Witness
with modifications for this purpose.
 
 

There follows an event
reported in Israel

 

...  which has the dual advantage here

of both portraying the contemporary significance of our topic on the broader scale, indeed even in the fast-moving political arena,

and drawing the mind to see how vital are the considerations in view as we consider just what the covenants are,

just what rest is

and just where the Christian needs to be,

who is able to walk on his knees,

a wise posture, as there is no distance to fall (Isaiah 66:2).

The main relevance for our present purpose lies in the NOTE at the end, but in turn its full impact is gained the better when we begin at the beginning.
 

New Life, Melbourne, April 9, 1998

"Israeli Christians 'compromise' on bill" ...

we read.

What however IS this compromise ?

Only this: that the groups says,

Further, they precede this by the statement,

Again, relative to their aid to the poor and the immigrant in the land, they add -

By contrast, Jesus the Christ, speaking of these SAME Jewish traditions, declared (to Jews, His people by race), citing Isaiah:

" 'In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.' For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men ... All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition" -

from Mark 7:7-9.

We have here a statement by the founder of Christianity and by various missionary officials, and their similarity is that existing between black and white.

He DENOUNCES the Jewish community's traditions as, if and where outside, beyond or contrary to the word of God, in the whole life pattern of divinely directed order.

They ANNOUNCE their desire NOT to alienate from this denounced thing. Of course the Old Covenant or Testament has not been revoked, any more than High School is revoked for a University student. But it is still wholly improper for the University student to attend High School for learning instead of University.

Similarly, Hebrews tells us the Old Covenant is "obsolete" (8:13) and "ready to vanish away"; but these groups appear to indicate that it is not, that it is still operative in its integrity, does not need exposure as a misplaced primary focus

Certainly it is not revoked, but it is surpassed, key areas fulfilled to the uttermost.

Nevertheless, the matter is allowed to appear as if what is involved were just a matter of observance of just Old Covenant Jewishness.

Yet how can the Old Covenant be ready to fade away, while being affirmed as operative ? How can it be in essence fulfilled, while embraced as per se current and contemporary ? Certainly what is unfulfilled will remain until it is; but the

How would you be happy for Jewish people to embrace it, then, as if the Messiah had not come (cf. The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, pp. 755ff., 455ff.,886ff., 810-836, 779ff.): so that it becomes for them an emblem of the ground of His rejection, like a revolver pointing at the wrong person! Good the Old Covenant undoubtedly is (Romans 7:13, 8:1-4), but it is intended to point for salvation to ONE to whom this eternal honour is due. (Cf. Ezekiel 21:26-27, Psalm 2, 45, 72, Zechariah 11:13, 12:10, 13:6.)

As He said,

"You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life: and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life!" - (John 5:39-40).

How can Jesus Christ be its embracing focus and completion of the Old Covenant in its vital essence, while for Judaism it yet has no embracing focus and completion ? How can you respect a religion which does not respect Jesus Christ ? in this: that His claims are rejected, His mission is bypassed and His challenge is set aside ? Do you thus honour and respect God ? Is it enlightened for a doctor so to love his patient that he even respects his disease, and will leave without seeking to alienate his patient from that disease ? What if his disease is to eat and act as he did when young, when now he is not ? Is that respectable ? Alas it is discordant with the true position for the patient, whose life becomes a living (and alas dying) anachonism of deadly import to his well-being.

Certainly to this the actions of Jesus Christ, Lord, were diametrically opposed, He indeed declaring,

"Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered" - Luke 11:53. He was thereafter crucified, for the moment His adversaries engaging in this:

"they began to assail Him vehemently, and to cross-examine Him about many things, lying in wait for Him, and seeking to catch Him in something He might say, that they might accuse Him" - Luke 11:53-54.

HE did not noticeably engage in a compromise to respect their traditions and community per se, to live harmoniously with that status quo. Quite the opposite! He exposed it as a victim ordained, protesting their error, exhorting them to repent and to come to Him, Jehovah in the flesh (John 8:58, 5:19-23). Then, dying, He rose again - but not for this, that His servants should engage in a peace program diametrically opposed to all He said and did in this area. (Cf. Ch.3, Deliver Us from Dispensationalism. supra pp.27ff..)

Respect them ? yes: seeking their good and showing respect to them as fellow human beings whose has been the enormous privilege of delivering up to us the sacred scriptures of righteousness which attested the coming of Jesus Christ with such fidelity, respect their conscientious transmission and studious scholarship in so much for so long ? Yes, and long for them to find the due consummation their own scriptures depict as well (Romans 10:1-9).

Love the Jews ? Of course, did He not die for them as for any, in His extensive offer (I John 2:2) which yet impinges healthfully only on those who receive Him (John 1:12, Romans 8:32), who, and who alone are those of whom it is also written, "By His stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5, cf. John 8:24, 10:11,26). Those so healed are the "we" of whom it is also written, "On Him was laid the iniquity of us all".

Do not Christians who follow the Bible love them also ? Does not my doctor look like loving me when he orders this and that in the interests of health, and does he not rather hate me when he indulges me in errors for my body, in his compromising advices ? Love is neither listless nor harmonious by verbal phrases which contradict the true interest. There is nothing subtle about contradiction.

How then could the Jewish challenge be met better than this ? Doubtless it could be met in many things, but in this thing not least, to answer with the same boldness as was so becomingly seen in Peter and John when assailed by the Jewish authorities for their divergence and for their reaching out to Jews in Christ's name. Those authorities, to be sure, were "greatly disturbed" (Acts 4:1), that they "taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them, and put them in custody..." Sounds like the possible results of some anti-missionary law if, instead of compromise, it were to be enacted... The authorities further asked the apostles not to so trespass on their traditions as to "speak at all" or "teach in the name of Jesus". But ..

"But Peter and John answered and told them, 'Whether it be right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.' "

This we read in Acts 4:19. We do not however read it in the news coverage of the current compromise in Jerusalem. It is not only times which have changed.

The unchanging God has given the way. It is never right to use force in the name of Christ to impose views, trickiness or folly; it is always right to love even your enemies; but it is never right to compromise for Christ, so that His words and His example are bypassed, and those in need are satisfied by the meeting of the clamour of their mouths despite the (Christ-declared) need of their souls. THIS should always be kept unsurpassed as a goal, just as a life-saver will not be deterred in his mission to handle the main thing, and save the life of the drowning soul.

It is very good that some Christians on the scene in Israel, have protested that the compromise would limit their proper testimony. For the love of Christ and of the Jews, one can but join them in this!
 

Note

It may be that some will want to explore some of the interstices of Jewish and Gentile inter-relations, the divine covenants to them and their force, in the light of the Biblical perspectives. For anyone like that, what follows is provided.

As Hebrews so clearly teaches, the splendour of sacrifice, the emblems of regality and the eminence of priesthood reside alike in Jesus, Saviour, Messiah, Lord and Christ. These aspects in the Old Covenant find their resting place and consummation in Him (cf. Isaiah 22:20-25; Isaiah 53, 9:1-7). It is He, Jehovah in the flesh, the express image cast in human form, format, of the Almighty with whom we here have to do.
 
 

GOD-
and ISRAEL, TIMES PAST, TIMES PRESENT
Where is the Solution to the Claims and Clamour of the Middle East?

 

1. This however is far from meaning that because the King (albeit crucified, with a veritable precision of method in the mockery) has come, that therefore God (who according to pre-stated plan, resurrected His Son - Psalm 2,22,16, Isaiah 26:19, Zechariah 12:10) has forsaken His rule of life.

God has not ceased to be moral because Israel has ceased to be theocratic.

Rather (Matthew 5-7), all the more intensely are His morals binding because the King has come, bidding us all to be watchful for His return (Matthew 5:17-20, 24:45-51,21:43-46, John 5:19-23).

Indeed, at that time of His return visibly to this world (Acts 1:7-11), after so long an exposure to the glowing beauty of the holy and divine love by which the Father would embrace us in Christ, the race will, one by one, sinner by sinner, devious denier by delinquent wanderer, find that judgment which deals not merely with the sins of the flesh committed in this or that way. It will deal also with that superb effrontery and ultimate denial which rejects, even perhaps scornfully, the cover which He has provided, the mercy which He at such price, offers.

It is as if gas-masks so desired by the Israelis, and soon perhaps by others, were despised in the face of coming attack, by mere whim or caprice, laziness or indifference. Then not the germ but the rebellion is the essence. So here when the judgments of God come to those who are recalcitrant, who even in the face of mercy, do not regard the kindness of the Lord, whatever their race or climate, power or pretension: divine justice then comes with a parallel disregard to the clamour of pretension (John 3:17-20, II Thessalonians 1:5-10, Revelation 19, Jude 15).

God does not change, His principles He does not subvert (Malachi 3:6, Matthew 5:17-19), in whatever way He may fulfil them. The day of rest for example, loses its shadowy embellishments (Hebrews 8-10; 8:4-5,7-13, 9:8-10), but not its rock-solid base in the method of creation, which God Himself decreed to be binding for that reason (Exodus 20:9-11 - see Biblical Blessings, Ch.10, That Exuberant Day of Rest).
 

True, it moves along one,

in the week time slot,

for New Testament purposes:

as is provided for (Deuteronomy 18:15ff.)

in that Old Covenant.
 
 

In fact,

it progresses to the first day of the week,

for it was then that the Lord God finished His mightiest "work",

consummation of all the others,

in manifesting the basis of the new creation (Ephesians 4:24, II Corinthians 5:17),

in the resurrection of the King (Roman 1:1-4, and op.cit.).
 
 

THERE is a memorial to leave even Auschwitz

(I do not speak lightly)

by comparison,

as relatively immemorable,

though it is by itself

of the utmost and of

appalling significance.
 
 

Here, at Calvary, was not the anguish of sinners

wrongly arraigned by a tyrant,

but that of the Son of God

in invincible holiness

experienced a prophesied lostness for a moment

("Why hast thou forsaken Me?")

BECAUSE of our sins, who believe

who have believed

who will believe

in Him:

expansively enough for all,

intensively enough for any.
 
 

Resurrection from THAT

deserves ANY commemoration,

and resurrection so that He might

JUSTIFY (Romans 4:24-25)

those who come to Him in faith,

and demonstrate the vanquishing of death itself:
 

this is enough to set all chronological clocks anew,

to remove the sanctity even of creation

in the incandescent holiness of

salvation, physical, real, for ever,

for mankind

who thenceforth

may rest, if they come,
 

in a rest to end all rest,

to begin all rests,

the rest of redemption demonstrated

and delivered.
 

This however merely ratifies the principle that God does not move at all in His immutable principles, but He DOES bring to fruition many things, and has worked from the Old Covenant to the New in the work of eternal redemption which is now justly and fittingly commemorated by Jehovah Himself in His actions on the resurrection (op.cit., Hebrews 9:12), on its own day.

One could as well deny God as deny that such a day, always in step with His works, is to be kept BECAUSE thus He created us. When in glory, many things that are past do not come to mind, then it will be different as He directs. For this creation, however, it is the same pulse, with the consummated timing apt for His greatest work, the Sunday rising from the dead, which is now recorded in the lives of His saints and directed for their memorial rest, embracing both creation and new creation, principle and practice, delight and duty (Galatians 6:14)... It MUST be this because

a) of the way in which He created us, requiring us to rest one day in seven, and
b) because of the way He redeems, bringing a new creation through vicarious desecration, yet only in penalty, not in quality, as He died for sinners.

In such depth is truth; in such truth is peace for the zealous and for the restful, for the peaceable and for the holy. It will not be found in anyone else, but in the Lord, nor in any other way but according to His word. If it will take much learning from many who must grow with repentance and faith into the New Covenant among Jews, it proves no less of a challenge to Gentiles, who are accustomed, like some secular Jews, to find their own lives. Neither with enlarged books of rules nor with degraded indifference will men find the solution, be they Jew or Gentile, but in apt and spiritual understanding of the ways of the Lord, and the fulfilment of His will.

This is but one example of the peace that is in Him, for one and for all. It does however serve to illustrate the components facing a bewildered humanity, and a warring one.
 
 

2. Nor does Christ's fulfilment mean that God has forgotten to be honourable

to the unconditional agreement with Abraham, the Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 15,17). Indeed Ezekiel 36-37 (see The Shadow of a Mighty Rock - SMR, Appendix A, and pp. 805-836, 760ff.) shows a 2-step restoration for Israel, its covenant being divinely declared to have been broken (Zechariah 11:4-12) by those who weighed out 30 pieces of silver for His worth.

"Not for your sake do I this," He declares (Ezekiel 36:21-22,32), as He restores the people, with great determination and method, to its promised land: it is for His own name's sake, a name which does not blight or sidestep issues or principles, but is one of the ultimate in faithfulness to which indeed it gives name. He IS faithful ("faithful and true" - Revelation 19:11), and magnifies His word above all His name (Psalm 138:2, Philippians 2:9-11).

The first step is the simple physical restoration to the land - simple? Yet a prodigious work of deliverance carried out to the letter as seen in SMR Ch.9. The dry bones of Ezekiel 37 (see SMR Appendix A, as above) are by one specific divine command assembled in the land, articulated but dead, just as they were dry bones scattered amongst the nations in the first tableau of devastation as shown by Ezekiel. Then by another command in the parable, they are given life, breath (Ezekiel 37:9), becoming before the divine view a living corpus, a lively people, a restored nation, a people for whom their King will be King indeed! This has yet to be but is given highly specific indications in Zechariah 12:10ff. as to its manner of commencement.

In this action, they find many things new, these who never again are to turn from the Lord and who come to a King their ruler (Ezekiel 37:23-24-26). God's spirit it is which is put upon them (37:14) at the outset of this action in step 2, and this brings in the unbroken reign of Christ. We await this (cf. Romans 11:25-32). Oh the wonder of the depths of the divine wisdom! as Paul declares,

Then will be fulfilled the wholeness of Isaiah 49:6ff., and 66:3,18-21, Psalm 72:8,17, 65:10-13, Jeremiah 3:16 all in one:

The eminence of the temple will reside in the Lord Himself, the Head of the Body (Isaiah 18-20, 4:6, 32:1-4), just as the trappings will be swallowed up in victory, the earlier ingredients interpreted in their King (Isaiah 22:20-25, 4:6, 32:1-4, 9:1-7).

And HE WILL RULE (Isaiah 2, 9:6-7, Micah 4:6-8 with 5:1-4, Psalms 72, 45, 2,102:13-22, Zephaniah 3:14-18, Ezekiel 37:25-28). Over whom ?

the Christians bought by His sacrifice (Isaiah 53:6ff., 49:6, 66:3,18-19, Zechariah 13:1ff. - cf. SMR Ch.9).
 

3. The COMPREHENSIVE COVENANT - COMELY AND EMBRACIVE

Christ's fulfilment DOES MEAN THAT GOD HAS NOT FORGOTTEN TO BE GRACIOUS and overflows with grace to all His people.

Indeed, the very name of the Jew will be transformed into this new union (Ezekiel 37:21-22), in which the union of Judah and Israel of old (Ezekiel 37:19) will be magnified into a far vaster, internationally glorious union of all the Messiah's people from whatever land, state or condition; for He is God of all (Isaiah 65:10-13, Deuteronomy 32:43, Psalm 117:1, Isaiah 49:6)... and with what exceeding force the Lord makes this point clear in Isaiah 65:10-13!

Thus, the Jews return according to glorious divine program, to their land, and then a large remnant to the Lord who performs wonders (Micah 7:14-16) on their behalf (cf. Zechariah 12:1-9, 14:1-3), the nations indeed learning to despise all their might in the presence of the Lord (Micah 7:16-17, cf. Ezekiel 36:36); and in their return He will be active in their deliverance and in their salvation (Zechariah 12:9-10, 14:1-3), in the midst of "all the saints" of whatever kind, kindred or description.

Then, preliminaries in earth and in heaven past (Revelation 19:7), the Lord will indeed be vindicated on earth as before in heaven: He who was crucified in Jerusalem with such exquisite seeming irony and mockery, will wear a crown that has lustre, the lustre of truth, and majesty, the regality of wonder.

Not - to change the figure - as some pocket battleship, then, will the Jews be seen, on the seas of the nations.

Indeed, shown in His glorious fulness, without ark, Himself the very substance of the tabernacle (Jeremiah 3:16-4:2, Isaiah 4:6, 32:1-4, 60:1ff.), He is King of the New and international Covenant (Isaiah 49:6, 66:3, 65;1-13), both vested in Him, and sealed with His blood (Isaiah 53:4-13), the Saviour of His flock from all nations ((Isaiah 65:1-3), each individual, having strayed at will, now repentant to repentance not to be repented of.

THIS repentance has REST also and equally for Jew and Gentile, in the "glorious" rest of the Messiah available to all who call upon Him (Isaiah 11:1-10, Galatians 3:28). In His Cross all will glory (Galatians 6:14, Isaiah 53), including that mass of Jews still to come to Him on the new basis (Zechariah 12:8-12, Romans 11:25-28, 10:1-6), which includes what was not distorted in the Old, that grand, divine, original deliverance of God Himself by His prophets to His people, fulfilled with the consummation faithful to all that was ever predicted. These? They will come in repentance as real as that of anyone else from all the nations who have sinned, each in its own way.

And this? It will be a transformed Jerusalem which will serve for the King (Zechariah 12:6; 14:1ff.), soon to be replaced by that heavenly Jerusalem itself (Galatians 4:26), the new heavens and the new earth, when those who will not learn righteousness, no not even in the presence of bliss (Isaiah 26:10, 66:22, 65:17, Habakkuk 3:6, II Peter 3:10-13, Isaiah 51:6, Revelation 21-22), are no more in the realm and the perfection of glory is unveiled forever.

It is here that is the place of peace, in the Gospel which now some do no want in Israel, except in a quietistic mode with it is not a challenge. Until this changes, the word of God makes it quite clear that just as the world will find no peace in its afflictions on Jerusalem, as if to send the Jews from it, or to compromise them in it, so the Jew will find not peace without the Gospel of the Jewish Messiah, who does not go away for one very good reason: it is this - that He is God manifest in the flesh, definitive, unsurpassable, declarative with a Gospel that knows no change and a Kingdom which shall not be destroyed, but shall be eternal.

{SEE FURTHER: RELIGION IN ISRAEL, in BARBS, ARROWS AND BALMS, Ch.20, which dwells on the Jew-Gentile reciprocity which seemed to bring such ecstatic delight to Paul.

More generally - cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Item 13. - esp. pp. 32, 36; and Items 17,
20, 29, Biblical Blessings Ch.3, Scoop of the Universe 33 , 34, 36, 39, 41 and SMR Ch.9, pp. 751ff., together with Joyful Jottings 17.}
 
 

END- NOTE - Isaiah 49:6 - cf. SMR Ch.9, pp. 751ff..

*1 Isaiah 49:6 is of extreme interest, for it indicates the LORD as the omni-racial Saviour. HE, the Servant, is the light. Now although it appears one might translate, " so that Thou shalt be my salvation to the end of the earth", as "so that my salvation should be to the end of the earth"(A), even this odd distortion does not avoid the issue. Since GOD ONLY (Isaiah 43:10), is the Saviour in the area of sin and sacrifice, ultimate ground and final hope, then if THIS ONE BY BEING A LIGHT TO THE GENTILES brings about this result, that THE SALVATION OF GOD IS TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, and the light is the light of salvation, to whom then is it given to BE it? It is He to whom it is so given, this "Servant"! Just as, by thus BEING a light He brings SALVATION, so also (cf. Isaiah 9:1,6-7), AS the light He IS salvation.

It is not as a light ON SOMETHING ELSE, but by His BEING ONE that this statedly occurs. He therefore is God in human form. Just as in 9:1-7, the glory of the light is intrinsic, not instrumental. Focus of eternal peace (9:7), it is He who is Peace's Prince, named in the heraldic announcement (9:6) in accordance with His characteristics: indeed He the "mighty God"!Accordingly, His name, dramatically declared, merges into the profundities of His performance. What He IS, He does! Prince of endless peace!

Indeed, as the triumphant announcement of His birth is intense and prolonged, so, appropriately is the name showing His worth.

Thirdly, this translation (A), though possible grammatically, is ludicrous contextually. If one even looks at the preceding verse which is more than mere context, but actually gives the general statement of which verse 6 is the particular application: what does one find? Isaiah 49:5 tells us what HAS BEEN, and with an "indeed" verse 6 follows this theme. WHAT however WAS the role? This: ISRAEL to be gathered to the Lord. What then IS it now to be? The Gentiles also will be so gathered, BY the Servant being a light. What is the implication in verse 5, concerning this His work with the Jews?
"I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord" ... , or more fully,

"Israel shall be gathered to Him
(For I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord..."

If then He is to be so used that He shall be glorious IN THE EYES OF THE LORD, who, incidentally, does not give His glory to another (42:8 - where he says so concerning His servant in whom He delights, focussed in 42:1), it is clear that His servant is not the mere transmission agent for some abstract quality or feature. It is HE who is right here stated so to act that by so acting  He Himself will be glorious, as HIMSELF A LIGHT.

Now to be glorious in the sight of men is one thing; but when it is GOD who so accords this quality, it is to God that the quality is accorded. Otherwise, He WOULD INDEED give His glory to another, for THIS servant - we find in 42:6 - is to BE FOR A COVENANT. In times past, words would be for a covenant; but here the Servant who is a light, shall be for the covenant, and in so being will be GLORIOUS even in the EYES of the LORD. It is - we find in Ch.42 - in HIM that a tenderness of the most splendid character is to be found, a perseverance which nothing alters, a crystallisation of covenant, a criterion of justice, a paragon of conduct, a comforter of the bruised, a developer of the smouldering, and He as a light shall be such as to open blind eyes, deliver prisoners, bring light to those sitting in darkness. It is THEN that the Lord announces that HE WILL NOT GIVE HIS GLORY TO ANOTHER. Indeed in 48:11 He goes further on this theme.

There He indicates that HE HIMSELF WILL VINDICATE HIS OWN NAME, "for how should My name be profaned? For I will not give My glory to another". The sense is clear: no OTHER feature, focus, person real or imaginary is to have any say, any way or any provision which is consistent with equality with God, or even a sharing of His personal prerogatives, unique features, eternal power: of His glory.

Here in 49:6 however we see precisely the pivot of history, the deliverer of a nation to come, the conqueror of difficulties, the absolute integrity and triumph both for Jew and Gentile through this one Servant, achieving this AS A LIGHT IN HIS OWN PERSON.. Princes will worship because of HIM (49:7), because HE IS CHOSEN. He is to be given AS A COVENANT to the people. A MAN as a COVENANT? A sinner as the contract? Absurdity unless of course it be the Lord, as indeed He states is to be the case in Psalm 45, in Zechariah 12:10, 3:8, Micah 3:1-5, Isaiah 48:16, where the servant is God-the-Sent. The present context however is worthy of being studied for its own sake, despite this perfect match, and there being but One God, with the necessity that when He evidences the internal nature which He has, Sender and Sent, Speaker and Spoken, Father and Son, we do not feel free either to add (as if he had many) or to subtract (as
if, with the Moslems, He had none and were an isolate, developing company extrinsically).

Next, let us note this: HAVING stressed that the Servant is to be glorious in HIS OWN DIVINE EYES, God then extends His mission to the Gentiles. In the Jewish gathering, the cherished Servant is to be so acting that GLORY IS HIS. GOD will see it so. Hence in the Gentile extension, the same feature is to be present. He is NOT a purveyor of what is glorious, what is the light. HE is it. He is to BE the GLORIOUS one as He acts, and NONE else is to be given glory but God who here accords it. (Even Jerusalem has merely HIS glory seen upon it! - Isaiah 60:2). The sinless sacrifice (Isaiah 53:9-10, cf, Lev. 5:15, Ps. 49:7,15, Proverbs 20:9), is glorious covenant. He then is God.

Constant in focus, divine in prerogatives, yet having BEFORE GOD glory, it is HE who is to be glorious in this venture AS light, AS covenant. That is the stipulated criterion, and it is to be met. Would a father tell a son that he will be glorious in his sight when he performs some task, when in fact it is something else which will be focussed, and become the real feature? If the father were not God, it might yet be conceivable, for the eyes of the father are so limited; but when it is GOD, then the glory is objective and ultimate, not some derogated minimum, seen as glorious because of the lowly estate of the one so deeming it.


and of course that shepherd, as Ezekiel 34 shows, is God in unique distinction from anyone and anything. God's word as covenant, this man, it is He who is God's word: focus, the salvation (Isaiah 52:13-53:12), and none but God is that (43:10). Indeed, the interstices of this salvation, personally procured and donated, are seen in Isaiah 52-53, where the Servant (52:13) who justifies many, does so, as God, by bearing their sins (53:11, cf. Psalm 49:7,15, 72:14).

He par excellence is then the Saviour. And that? It is God ONLY!