CHAPTER  5
 

THE COHESION, COHERENCE
AND COMPREHENSION OF
ASPECTS OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH

In Three Parts

Part II

including the Isaianic Excursion

A

EXCERPT

FROM Galloping Events Ch. 4 - on Isaiah 42, 48, 49,
with references to Isaiah 1, 30, 50-53, 65
 
 

EXCURSION INTO ISAIAH 42, 49
where is to be found choice territory

*1
Isaiah 42 and 49, with 66 are of great interest. Let us add here a little to the account of the former.

First as shown in SMR Ch. 9 and elsewhere (see Isaiah excursions esp. in Scoop of the Universe 47; Biblical Blessings App.1,  3; Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium  11, The Biblical Workman Ch.  1, Barbs, Arrows and Balms  13, Divine Agenda Ch.  5 - esp. Isaiah  9, and Ch. 8, esp. *3 below), we have the Messiah before us in Isaiah to such an extent that Luther regarded this as the EVANGELICAL PROPHET.

From Isaiah 4, typifying the temple symbolism, to Ch. 32, exposing it as the prerogative in substance of a man, to fulfil its portent; from Isaiah  7 and the birth-that-surpasses (SMR pp. 770ff.), and Isaiah 9, to the child who is the Mighty God, we move on to Isaiah 11 with the King, maternally of the seed of David, whose kingdom is such that His word is per se equipped to do WHATEVER HE SAYS; from Isaiah 40 and the God who on earth takes the lambs tenderly, to Isaiah 52-53 where the pure sacrifice REQUIRES One not of Adam's race as to status, but merely as to format - a non-sinner for slaughter to cover sin; from Isaiah 55 with the free grace offer of a salvation thus paid for (53:5-11) to 65:13ff., where this replaces the Old Covenant; from Isaiah 62:1ff., where it occasions a new name for the New Covenanters, to Isaiah 66 (cf. Ch. 1 above) , where Israel is brought anew to the birth in a day, and the Lord uses power such as in Exodus
(cf. Micah 7, Isaiah 66:15-16) to rescue His restored people, we find Isaiah expressive of the depth and the scope of the movements.

Let us however now look a little further at Isaiah 42 and 49.
 
 

ISAIAH 42

Here, then, in the very face and light of the Messiah's coming, Himself to BE the covenant (for it is, after all, in His OWN BLOOD, Isaiah 53:10ff.), we find some repercussions for the nation which assailed Him (Isaiah 49:7). Let us look through this prophetic chapter.

DESPITE the fact that He is come to be a LIGHT to the Gentiles (49:6 cf. Appendix, Biblical Blessings, End-note *1), opening blind eyes, and removing those in the prison house of servitude to sin, and in the very midst of stating that He will NOT give His glory to another while at that very time of instituting on earth His servant as a light to the Gentiles, and in 53, as the Saviour, whereas ONLY GOD is Saviour (43:10-11): despise all these exquisite facts , focusses, features and facets, there is a sudden contrast. What is this absorbing injection, this new thing ?

Even though the Messiah, God Himself on earth (Ezekiel 34), doing the job as the Good Shepherd that those witheringly exposed 'shepherds' of Ezekiel 34 vintage so despitefully, disgracefully and emptily used, and abused, we come to an abysmal contrast. There, exposed to our eyes, as likewise in 49:10ff.,  is  a people who for all that, are still BLIND, and are dubbed His servant, a failed one (42:18ff)..

What then is this development ? "Who," the LORD asks, 49:19, in sublime irony, "is blind as he who is perfect, and blind as the LORD's servant!" HOW BLIND to you have to be not to NOTICE these magnitudes of divine splendour reported and exposed here,  as THIS MESSIAH! WHO is so blind as this ? WHo has such a blindness as to ignore what is predicted when it comes, what is in Jewish format when it arrives, what is the culmination of centuries of prophecy, when it surges into their midst... WHO is so blind as THIS! God exclaims with total justice.

This divine disengagement from the sinning nation (as in Isaiah 1 and 65), mocks their pretensions just as in Ch. 1 He scorns their ceremonial substitutes for spirituality, the end of all conceivable claim from the sacramentalists of this world (cf. Questions and Answers Ch. 2).

Clearly then, we are seeing sinning Israel in the sort of colours witnessed in Isaiah 30:8ff., and 30:15ff.. "Seeing many things, but you do not observe," God chides, very much as in the message to Isaiah concerning the nation in Isaiah 6:9ff.. THIS is made the worse, since in the intervening verses from the exposé on the Messiah, in 42:1-9, the LORD has been exposing ground for new rejoicing. Acting like an invisible but wholly effective magnet, the Lord is seen bringing back to their forsaken land, a rebellious people, with gratuitous grace, amazing power, tremendous determination, irresistible resolution. He carries, they come. He wills it; they are there. This is after a "long time" (49:14); but it comes. Twelve midnight seems far off at 5 a.m., but it comes. Wait for it, it will surely come. The LORD ... far more surely than that, for HE MADE TIME! It serves Him, He does not serve it!
 

• In this process, there is, as in Isaiah 66 at the dénouement, to be a strong work in battle:
• "The LORD shall go forth like a mighty man:

He shall stir up His zeal, like man of war,
He shall cry out, yes, shout aloud;
He shall prevail against His enemies"  - Isaiah 49:13.

• "I will lay waste the mountains and hills...

I will bring the blind by a way they did not know...
I will make darkness light before them,
And crooked places straight.
These things I will do for them,
And not forsake them" - Isaiah 42:15-16.

 

Thus the focus coming on this so disappointing servant, of such pretensions to spirituality as to be "perfect", but of such lapses into unloveliness as to be "blind", after all this grace of God, astonishes the reader. HOW COULD anyone be so unreceptive, unperceptive, in a word, BLIND! Well, that is the word of which the Lord makes use!

Despite their being a "people robbed and plundered", God "will exalt the law and make it honourable". The divinely long announced schema will be fulfilled; the promises will be redeemed; the Messiah will come and the restoration and restitution alike. WHO, He asks, "gave Jacob for plunder, and Israel for the robbers", concerning the covenantal people who as such are still a "servant", and as a disciplined servant have been lavishly exposed to plunder by explicit and often expressed divine design, from Leviticus 26 on.

Since it is undoubtedly His own removal of the divine shield to the covenant forsakers, which led to these disasters for this people, it is clear that He is making obvious one simple fact: HE acted in discipline, and it was NOT the power of the enemy which accomplished it. At HIS will and discretion, in HIS time, He will use the same power that instituted the nation (cf. Micah 7:15), to deliver it; the same resolution which left it in just rebuke, to bring it back, so making the nations look to their own foolish pride and imagination and forcing them to face this fact: GOD did it and GOD will restore it. HE took away and HE will restore, AS He will. It is HIS affair; and so, not quite so incidentally, are the sins of those who plundered what He disciplined! (Cf. Ezekiel 36:15, 37:28).

What then ? THIS: "All flesh shall know
That I, the LORD, am your Saviour,
And your Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob"  -
just as in Deuteronomy 32 we find that the Lord proceeds to "raise My hand to heaven,
And say, 'As I live forever,
If I whet My glittering sword,
And My hand takes hold on judgment,
I will render vengeance to My enemies..."

Then the Gentiles are asked to "rejoice... with His people...

He will provide atonement for His land and His people" - Deut. 32:43, precisely as inscribed in the detailed words of Zechariah 12:10ff.. It is then that the Redeemer, fulfilled in the Messiah in His works, is recognised, so that the faithfulness of God leads now to the faith perception of a changed people, who in large numbers receive the crucified, the pierced Messiah (as in Psalm 22, Isaiah 53) as Saviour, and wash in the fountain of blood which becomes to faith available (Zechariah 13:1ff), when the significance of their former  folly leads to repentance, repentance to life.

Now let us note further that God confirms, in Isaiah 42:25, the grounds of special, specific, historic anger on this servant people, who have had to be replaced by MY SERVANT, in WHOM MY SOUL DELIGHTS (Isaiah 42:1). Indeed, the Lord stressed in 41:26ff., the entire absence of anyone else whatsoever to fulfil the role of Saviour being unfolded at once thereafter, as in Isaiah 42, and reflected in 49 and 52-53 (cf. 51:18ff.).

Thus is the Jewish nation, located by divine restitution and grace once more in its land made desolate for their sins, which led to this "servant" being so plundered, and this "servant" being so blind. In this, it has been wholly unlike any other, for there are no others who have been as a nation in this position, and then being repudiated, have remained to be called a servant, and blind simultaneously! Gentile unbelievers have not the historic preliminaries, and so it is indeed to Jacob, as He says, that the Lord speaks.

He means what He says, and the covenantally unqualified promise is confirmed, both in its express statement and its sublime spiritual significance. GOD ALWAYS carries out His resolutions, duly set down and inscribed is His word.
By all means have fear about the sun rising tomorrow (cf. Jeremiah 33's promise of continuation of what is in view, Israel the nation); but never doubt this, that God is so honourable that it is a sweet rejoicing of the heart to behold it. HE IS TRUTH, as well as the way and the life for us who know Him; and there is no other for those who don't!
 
 

ISAIAH 49

In Isaiah 49, the next major focus on the Messiah, we see these things, not unexpectedly, extended. Again we see the Messiah in 49:1-9, with all the wonder of His being, facing the desolatory task assigned in its cost-effective ransoming aspect (49:4), as  when He cried as in Psalm 22, "My God, my God why hast Thou forsaken Me!" as sin hit (Isaiah 53:6 cf. Joyful Jottings 21, 22, 25), and the necessary sense of separation accrued (Isaiah 66:1-2).

Here, He cries, as with the bleak experience of the gaunt and unhallowed weight of sin coming to Him as assigned: "I have laboured in vain,
I have spent My strength for nothing and in vain.
Yet surely My just reward is with the LORD,
And my work with my God."

His "reward" is the multitude of children whom He redeemed, for though He lacked His own, in this He gains more, even from every tribe and nation. His NAME attests who and of whom He is, God in fleshly format (as in Philippians 2:1-10); and in this name has He exalted His Father who has exalted His Son.

With this immense payment of God the Sent (Isaiah 48:16), there is a magnification of the dimensions of the task: not as if it were suddenly thought of, but the weight of accomplishment by the Messiah, makes it now apt to expose this facet in the 8th. century B.C. prophecy, concerning His exalted mission, framed in ignominy, fulfilled in glory (cf. Luke 24:25-26).  Now we find this:

"Indeed He says, 'It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob,
And to restore the preserved ones of Israel.
I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles,
That You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth' " -
Isaiah 49:6, cf. Biblical Blessings, Appendix 1, esp. End-note 1.
 

With this augmentation of role for the Messiah, we find nevertheless the original sustained, to restore the preserved of Israel - for many fell, and raise up the tribes of Jacob. In the process, as already seen in Isaiah 42:10ff., we have this amazing phenomenon of the blind servant, in total contrast to the effectual one, who so far from being blind, IS the light!
 

• Nevertheless, then, the love of God is not quenched, and to this sinning people,

and He declares:

• See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands,
• Your walls are continually before Me.
• Your sons shall make haste;
• Your destroyers and those who laid you waste
• Shall go away from you" - Isaiah 49:16-17.

So we see the walls of the spent nation, the disciplined, blind servant, as a divine focus as He restores the people from their destroyers, who had reduced the prior magnificence of their servant post, to this desolation. This, it is  a thing true of no other people, as a nation, and the just opposite of Gentiles, themselves lacking any magnificence or post of past divine relationship; and here He is, performing this noble task, as becomes Him, with one amazingly and almost immeasurable one to be added! That ? The Gentiles, to be their light also.

It is not the world or the church, or Britain or Panama, it is not in the Himalayas or in Ireland, or in some South American place once patronisingly thought of for the "Jews", those wanderers, those dispossessed, those plundered and robbed, that people served with contempt by so many for so long, extending into the Middle Ages and well beyond,  Hitler himself,  a mere consummation. It is not another than those for whom so many have been assassins, and so many have THIEVED.

It is Israel the nation, to be restored, the perfect who is blind, the ex-grandee who is robbed, the servant who does not serve.

But wait! "For your waste and desolate places,
And the land of your destruction.
Will even now be too small for the inhabitants,
And those who swallowed you up will be far away.
The children you will have
After you have lost the others,
Will say again in your ears,
'The place is too small for me:
Give me a place where I may dwell' " -

just as if it were said by the hundreds of thousands reputedly demonstrated in Israel and Jerusalem. And what did they want, that they so demonstrated ? This:  that they did NOT WANT ARAB CONTROL of the Mount, and this was their concern, in parallel with those Israelis who for long and loudly have proclaimed, Enough! in the give-away mission of the rulers of Israel, seen so often of late. But this Israel, this restored nation, this suddenly reborn nation, they are indeed being crammed into the forsaken nation, to what the Lord calls so exactly, "the land of your destruction". It is there, not in heavenly places, that the action is to occur, it is here rather than in some spiritual condition, that the restoration statedly occurs, with battle, not balm, with blood, not choral items. It has been ghastly, but this is the prediction. It has happened as forecast. Sin involves costs to many, and when there is also redemption, this is even greater.

Thus it is to the land of their desolation, that they come, are returned by the resolution and faithfulness of the Lord, back to the site of the destroyed Jerusalem and the place from which went an exiled Judah and little Benjamin, and even in greater tragedy, aggravated after the murder of the Messiah, in a real saga of suffering, that nation. The suffering as itemised in kind in Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 32, with the clinical precision of a syndrome, addressed by the doctor, when diagnosed: it has come. The return has come. The nations in their turbulence have come; and the intervention by the Lord as so often predicted, both has come and is to come. But listen, to the recording in advance of the nation, Israel, on its restoration, phase 1 (see earlier chapters) ...

Then indeed, "You will say in your heart,
'Who has begotten these for me,
Since I have lost my children and am desolate,
A captive, and wandering to and fro?
Who has brought these up?
There I was, let alone;
But these, where were they?' " (from Isaiah 49:21).

In verse 23, we find the international actions which helped this staggering result of the murdered crush of Jews, yet yielding a nation so crammed. KINGS were to have helped; and how the British Government has helped since 1917 right up to the World War II time; and how Germany repaid in reparations, and how Nixon helped in 1973 with an incredible largesse of aid to the beleaguered Jewish people, with a SHUTTLE OF ENORMOUS SCOPE, through monster US cargo planes, constantly equipping and re-equipping the Israeli armies until they, in dashing bravado and initiative, drove the Holy Day attack of the Arabs back, with their allies, beyond Suez and surrounded and Egyptian Army on the FAR SIDE of that body of water!

Yes it is fulfilled.
 

• "Shall the prey be taken from the mighty,

Or the captives of the righteous be delivered ?
But thus says the LORD:
'Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away,
And the prey of the terrible be delivered:
For I will contend with him who contend with you,
And I will save your children.
I will feed those who oppress you with their own flesh,
And they shall be drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine.
All flesh shall know that I, the LORD, am your Saviour,
And your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob."

There is, as often noted on this site, MUCH MORE to come. But this much has in large part already happened, with just that zeal and bloodshed stated so pithily, pointedly and didactically by the Great Teacher, the LORD Himself.

HOW GERMANY suffered for the sins of her false and foolish government of World War II, and what German blood was shed for these follies. How USSR was bled in WWII, also as she was prepared for the eventual liberation of great numbers of Jews from her once entrapping midst! What developments have liberalised the Russian ways, to this end! How nations like France have suffered humiliation for their treatment under Louis XIV and others, of the Jews, in ways Hosmer points out in his story of the Jews. The Lord knows well how to repay, as He declares so, roundly (Deuteronomy 32:41).

Thus have the captives of the mighty been restored amid widespread bloodshed, and thus has the "land of your destruction", the very site on which they former grandeur of this 'blind servant' was so desolated, causing grief all but unspeakable to the rebelling people, the Jewish nation, thus has it become a source of concern for land sufficient for its returning sons.
 
 

B

EXCERPT

with substantial references from Isaiah 40-55

(ex 44,46,47,54) and 2, 9, 10, 30, 35

 

From Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium, Chapter 15 -

 

LIKE RAIN UPON THE GRASS

The Explanation of Families, the Family of God,
the Criterion of Love, the Meaning of Life,
the Key of Destiny, the Refreshing of Life,
the Avenue of Eternity: in
Jesus Christ the Righteous (Acts 3:14-15)

WHAT is the meaning of this! thunders the Headmaster! What indeed is the meaning of anything ? might reply the cheeky child of today.

Christ is the ONLY meaning of anything.

What of God the Father ? HE it is who GIVES Christ as the meaning, and none other is.

WHY should He do so ?

It is simply this: that Christ IS that meaning. In the beginning as the everlasting WORD of God, He was, as He is, the expression towards the outward things, of the inner things. He is the face of the magnificence of God, the declaration of His will, His covenant (Isaiah 42:6, Matthew 26:28,42), made with His blood, His life poured out for sin, because it was
 

1) without sin of its own
2) freely made available and
3) adequate for any without limit, the infinite for the finite.

If it was equally LIMITED to those who received Him, that is still no limit on the love, since the reception of deception instead of direction, of unbelief instead of correction, of delusion instead of deliverance, this is limit not on the love, but on its application. And what IS that limit ? THIS is their condemnation, that light has come into the world (described in great detail in John 1-2) and men have preferred darkness to light.
The WORLD has been loved, has been lost and only a selection is to be found.

But let us return to our cheeky child. That MEANING, we might tell him/her, is this: that God is no isolate, but exists as an inner Being and an expression, an outer declaration. We mirror that, being in His image.

He also exists as the Holy Spirit, and we too have a spirit, which decides whether to rebel or to realise, to hope or to fume in the follies of rebelliousness of mind, stubbornness of heart and grandeur of self-imaginings, whether because we are exalted, and want to be proud, or depressed, and strive to be re-assured in our own impoverished little selves.

The tenderness of fathers to children, derives from the tenderness of God to His word, who incarnated by a direct act equivalent to procreation, through Mary (God does not NEED to use the means, since He made them and knows their meaning and ways), in the virgin birth. AS Father of Christ, He declares that Christ is His ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, and the word of God declares this with clarity that excels in Luke 2:35.

What then DOES the angel say to Mary ? This: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you: THEREFORE also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called he Son of God" - Luke 2:35. Note the ADDED emphasis. It is BECAUSE of this act of originating the embryo, that the Son will be the name of the Father who begot Him! That is WHY He bears this title, Son of God.

The Church does not require us to believe it, says William Barclay. WHICH church! The ONLY church which is the Christian Church (cf. Refreshings Ch. 8) is the one which declares what GOD has declared, hence receives the BIBLE as His utterance, His SON as His only begotten and His sovereignty as final. Any 'other' church merely preaches some other gospel, or has some other spirit or has some other Jesus, NOT so begotten (II Corinthians 11:4ff.).

If YOU were begotten by James Smith, then someone of whom we need not affirm that, is NOT YOU! Now another Jesus is the production of false apostles, Paul declares in II Corinthians 11. Anyone who wants one, can have one, with the little football dolls and the striped hats of parties. Anyone who wants God cannot have one. God's children follow God's ways. The church which is the church of God is the pillar and ground of the truth, like a candlestick HOLDING UP the light of life, not extinguishing it by hiding it under a 'bushel' as Christ put it!

It is quite vital to realise WHO Jesus the Christ IS. HOW can you believe in Him if you do not know who He is!
 
 

THE WONDERS OF THE FAMILY OF GOD

The Christ was SENT INTO the world (I John 4:9). He was OUT of the world before that (John 17:1-3), in the glory of His Father. He CAME INTO the world IN THE FLESH (I John 4:3) to be the SAVIOUR (I John 4:14) BECAUSE GOD SO  LOVED the world (John 3:16). Having come, He LOVED HIS OWN to the end (John 13:1ff.), served them and saved them (Titus 3:5, Ephesians 2:8), having foreknown who they would be (Ephesians 1:4), and indeed having in His own love, predestinated them to this very thing. As HE IS LOVE (I John 4:8) and HENCE became a propitiation for the sins of those who receive Him as He is (John 4:23, I John 4:10), this ALSO He did in love, not willing that any should perish (I Timothy 2:1-3). While the SCOPE of His offering is as wide as the world, the EFFECTIVENESS and REALISATION of it is as narrow as those who believe, for no PAYMENT of redemption is made where there is no acceptance of the same.

This LOVE, this tenderness, this solicitude, this concern, this willingness to do what it takes to secure the deliverance from the oppressions of delusion and confusion, the profusion of folly and the intrusion of damnation (the ultimate damage) is the very heart of God (Psalm 102:18-21, Isaiah 61:1-3). You see it in Isaiah 42:1ff., where the DELIGHT of the Father in the Son is declared, as indeed, it was when Christ actually DID at length in the predicted time, come to earth. Then it was audibly announced from heaven, and that not only once! (Matthew 3:16-17,17:5). Then, as John shows, His Father's willingness was likewise declared, even as He approached the DEATH OF REJECTION AND MORTAL CONTEMPT at the hands of the rabble (John 11:48), even if it was a ruling rabble: the will of the Father as of the Son, in love for the lost (Isaiah 53:10), like the violent desire of the rabble, yet opposite in kind, was quite clear and direct (cf. Luke 22:42ff.). Nothing was withheld that salvation demanded!

WITHIN the Godhead there is this mutual delight, this cohesion of beauty, this conclave of wonder, and it is beyond all that we conceive, for here is no combination of parts, but the infinite intimacy of what comprises the Godhead, three persons; for God is a SPIRIT and space is not a criterion, but a creation! How foolish are those misled and confused physicists who imagine that space is a criterion. It is a mere stage. Fancy seeing a play and studying the exact configuration of the nails in the platform and stage trappings, when the PURPOSE is the play.

Hence OUTSIDE the Godhead, when God makes His will known, there is this same love, this same (but now created and hence merely IMAGED sense of a unity) as is seen
 

1) in our mind, body and spirit capacity for mutuality,  and

2) in our families and

3) in our friendships and

4) in our societies of choice, in some degree, at their best. Indeed, it spreads out like a flowing stream (Isaiah 58:6-10, 13ff.), as it moves in the path of His revealed and revealing kindness. God, being uncreated, does not vary as do those who are made; for the elements are His, and the knowledge is HIS, and what He would be He is, and what He would not be, He is not, and what He would become, He is, and what He would have become, He did, and where He is to go is where He is.

As He says, when Moses asks, "... when I come to the children of Israel and tell them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'What is His name?' what shall I tell them?" - "I AM WHO I AM.. Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.' " This is found in Exodus 3:13-14. Thus Christ declared (John 8:58), "Before Abraham was, I AM!" It is NOT just that He happened to mention Abraham here, but since the setting is Jewish, He is saying that HE pre-dated the initiation of the very nation of Israel, the first call of the first patriarch, and He is adding something equally important.
BEFORE Abraham CAME TO BE, He had a style of existence in which what we know as TIME DID NOT FIGURE. Past and present, future and the whole matrix and web of time were no constraint on Him or His mode of existence. Through this created thing called time (Romans 8:38-39 makes it clear that it IS created) and beyond it, as sovereign over all, creator of all, was the Being who as Christ came into the world, the one who simply can say, I AM; before this or that, I AM; when this or that comes, I AM.

It is so simple. A novelist does not say to a character in her/his book, I was around when you were doing that. The author/authoress is PRIOR in kind. The SORT of time which eventuates in the book was WRITTEN, created by the writer. Outside of it, the creator of the book is not enmeshed in its toils (except perhaps it were an autobiography) or limited by its turmoils; not in creative writing.

How much more the creator of the universe.

But IN THIS UNIVERSE there is the opportunity for love and tenderness and peace and unity which ONLY GOD has. It is derivative for us; integral, intrinsic for Him. If HE did not have it, there would be no source. SINCE He has it, this IS the source. WHERE the source is cut off by unbelief, there is the gap, the awful, the atrocious gap, the source of all atrocity, whether done with gentlemanly graces of externals, or with slicing scimitar. The end, the objective, the heart it is which matters (cf. I Timothy 1:5), and there is the source and criterion of all atrocity. It may be invaded by the antagonist of the universe, the autocrat of unholiness, flinging his tinny tinsel about as if its glitters and glamour were anything but deceit, deception and confusion of the issue. It may be expanded by egotism, pride, hatred and contempt. If the love of GOD is not in the heart, then that lifeless instrument of life is merely a place for categorisation of the lack: as in vitamin deficiency of the spirit. It is however far more serious.
 
 

THE WOES AND WITNESS FOR THOSE
REFUSING THE FAMILY OF GOD

Since GOD IS LOVE and GOD IS LIFE'S SOURCE, the absence of God, self-defined, self-declared BY HIS ETERNAL WORD, is the absence of life. The result may be like a vine branch recently cut off, or like one long scorched; but it has no life. Its derivative biological life may continue, but its living condition is defunct. Corpses without tags, bodies without funerals, they continue, and their hearts are proud, or spiteful or grievously afflicted with egotism, desire, some delirium of conception, some poised hope for recognition at last because of their empty selves, as though debt were credit, and absence were presence; and so they hope to evade hell.

But hell is no mere penalty. It is the recognition of the CONDITION. It is the passport's end, which is called unbelief, it is the destiny of category, it is the empty shell for the empty husk to call its own. It is the cover of the uncovered, the exposure of ignominy far worse in this, that it is WILLINGLY deserved, NOT through some deprivation, but through persevering rejection of that God who is the I AM, who IS love; and hence through the rejection of love, uncreated love, in favour of some sentiment, affection, affectation or desire. It is the end of justice deferred (cf. II Peter 3:9), and the exclusion of mercy (cf. Matthew 7:21ff.). Its name rots, and its contents are as its name (Mark 9).

There is no INSINCERITY in God. If you are His, so then you are; and if you are not, then no pretence or substitution is possible. You CANNOT worship what is NOT God and get away with it, as if to ask the Government department on spiritual returns to make some sort of correction. It is YOU who must make the correction through REPENTANCE WHICH IS REAL, corresponds to reality, and hence accepts the TRUTH of God where it may be found, in HIS WORD, His eternal word, His son, His Only-Begotten Son, whom He sent INTO the world, from the glory He hitherto had enjoyed with His Father. Into this world He came, we read (Philippians 2) by a CHANGE OF FORM.

He did not cease to be, who IS ETERNAL, the I AM, but He changed His form. In heaven, EQUAL with God, this WORD, this eternal light (Revelation 21:23, John 3:3-13, 12:35-36,47-50, 9:5), shines as He has shone, for ever (Micah 5:1-3). "His GOINGS FORTH are FROM EVERLASTING." His proceedings are not limited to, or in time. Time is His and He made (Romans 8:38); and without HIM was NOTHING made that is of the made category (John 1:1-3). NAME IT! If it is made, He made it. HE is not made, for He could not have made Himself, being not there: the CLASS of being, "made", is exclusively and totally HIS production. He is the word who WAS WITH GOD AND WHO WAS GOD.
 

The Jehovah's Witness folly, that there is more than one God

(for there is ONLY ONE CREATOR by definition in Isaiah 45:18-19, 44:25-26, 43:10, 40:11-14, 45:5, 21-25, re both el and elohim, and it is He who is also the ONLY Saviour and the EXPLICIT speaker, and there is no god formed before or after - this is explicit, so that any other being allegedly co-creating is another God, a polytheistic implication, and an affront to the truth, both logical - SMR Ch.1 - and Biblical),

in the face of Ephesians 4:4 not to mention the entirety of the Bible including the ten commandments

is so ludicrous that it is a marvel any can stand without blushing in such manifest and total contradiction of the Bible, which is professed as if believed!

The "gods" who have NOT made heaven and earth are mere pretences and pretensions (Jeremiah 10:11) who will perish, as God says so dramatically in Ezekiel 28:9 and Psalm 82. You may SAY you are gods, but you will DIE like men! He declares with unremitting and scathing irony. Gods! there is ONE who counts, who made all,  who is everlasting. The rest are the inventions of the heart of men, or the excrescences of heaven, like dispossessed Satan (Revelation 12), removed even from the purlieus of heaven because ...  though created, he rebelled; though in heavenly places, he fell; though given glory, he demitted. But even he, he was not GOD, he did not create, except for his rebellion, he created that! for there is ONLY ONE. THIS ONE is what the Bible affirms is the CREATOR of all that is, the Christ, one of that trinity of persons who comprise God, one God, one Being. It is ONE FOR ALL, and all must come to the One.. For there is ONE CREATOR ONLY (Isaiah 45:18). "There is no other," He there declares.

The category : creator but not God, when it comes to the universe, has ZERO occupants.

As to those who believe in any such being, such a fabricated nonentity in such a category, they are worshipping the god of their own creation, which cannot save them, since he is no God!

THAT is precisely what Israel did, they worshipped "that which IS NOT GOD"! and God so declares. They invented, they lamented, they spewed out gods, and they worshipped them in vain, like silly kids who do not know the difference between pantomime and reality (Deuteronomy 32:17-21). This is like those who perpetually want what they are not, to do what they cannot, and hence fail to be what they might be, or do as they ought. It is illusion and a profusion of confusion, a severance from reality, the more awful in this, that reality, God, who has fathered time and creation, is so very wonderful. Truth is illustrious, glorious; and personal. It is hence able to be propositional, revelatory and realised.
 
 

 THE NECESSITIES OF TRUTH IN THE FAMILY OF GOD

It is necessary to live in the truth, according to it and to face it in all things.
The alternative is not to trifle, to hire a lawyer or to engage in a talk-fest! It is hell.

That, quite simply, is where it belongs: it CANNOT of necessity belong where truth rules (Revelation 21:4-8). Sorrow goes, but so do lies, when heaven is in view.

Now Christ is the key, He is the fresh showers upon the mown grass that gives it light, upon the grass to be mown, which gives to it beauty and fulness (Psalm 72). His is the UTTERANCE, the DECLARATION, the REVELATION and the OUTGOING of God. HE it is who is sent after the glory (Zechariah 2:8), and it is HE who says,

"From the time that it was, I was there,
And now the Lord God and His Spirit
Have sent Me!" (Isaiah 48:16).

Without Him (Isaiah 51:6, in context 50:4-5, 49:3 -

"an Israel in whom I will be glorified" (Israel = prince with God),
the One who DID it, and did not fail, for His people, being likewise
"a light for the Gentiles" (Isaiah 49:6), though rejected by the nation (49:7),
the One who in Himself was THE COVENANT (Isaiah 42:6), and
on whom was laid the iniquity of all who were to be healed,
who had believed the report of Him (Isaiah 53:1 - still the issue!): as in Isaiah 53:3-6 ...

WITHOUT HIM, NOTHING!

This is not too dramatic. As Isaiah 51:6 makes clear, this effective Israel, this One who took it, did it and make it happen, this Christ, this Prince of Peace of whose kingdom there would be no end (Isaiah 9:7), this one who could be named 'everlasting Father', but who at the same time was the earthly Prince on whose shoulder the government would by divine decree, interminably be placed, this One whose name included the very matrix of deity specifications, in nomenclature, WONDERFUL, COUNSELLOR, THE MIGHTY GOD (as in 10:21), this everlasting WORD of GOD, this brilliance of His glory: He was crucial to all. WITHOUT HIM ? Nullity and straggling segments of the disjointed, embroiled in a horrid ruin.

But with HIM ?
God explicitly states (Isaiah 51:16):

"And I have put My words in Your  mouth:
I have covered You with the shadow of My hand,
That I may plant the heavens,
Lay the foundations of the earth,
And say to Zion, 'You are My people!"

Here is the "Mine elect in whom My soul delights" (Isaiah 42:1), the sinless substitute of Isaiah 53:10-12,6, the enabler, the doer of the works (42:3ff.); and it is ONLY BECAUSE GOD has put in the MOUTH of His Son, His words (as reflected in John 12:48-50, cf. John 10:30-33) that the HEAVENS WERE PLANTED, OR 'THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE EARTH' LAID (Isaiah 51:16).

Thus in Isaiah 49:6, we read of this same Messiah:

"And He has made My mouth like a sharp sword:
In the shadow of His hand He has hidden Me,
And made Me a polished shaft,
In His quiver He has hidden Me."

It is HE who is to be as a covenant to the people (Isaiah 49:8, cf. 42:6).
It is only through Him, that this plan of salvation being operable, God says to Zion, "You are My people!" (Isaiah 51:16 cf. Hosea 13:14 with Hosea 14, in the parable of the life of Hosea). Here is the One who stands out of Israel, beyond Israel, for Israel^*1A, or more especially, for those who believe in Him. Thus in Isaiah 51:20, we see the sons of Israel are all fallen. "BY WHOM WILL I COMFORT YOU ?" the Lord dramatically asks, only to answer, soon, clearly, decisively (Isaiah 52-53). THEY, Israel and her sons, they are sold FOR NOTHING (Isaiah 52:3); full of the fury of the Lord, they are weak, pathetic, powerless; nevertheless they may arise…

WHY is this so ? How can such a transformation occur when the means so entirely lack, as so repeatedly insisted! It is because of the beauty of the feet upon the mountains (Isaiah 52:7), which carry those who "proclaim salvation". Where ? How ? By whom ? we naturally ask. In 52:13 we find the quite astounding answer: It is by MY SERVANT, who shall "be exalted"  - and so far, this fact is not astonishing. It is by this one, "You are My servant, an Israel in whom I will be glorified," this single, and singular star of the morning, in the starkest possible contrast to the repeated estimates and judgments on the degraded state of the nation! Far from sin, He was able to become the sin bearer; without sin, He was the Saviour; from God He performed as deity alone can do (Isaiah 40:10-11,25).

But then ? Yes we follow the exaltation of such a contradistinct person, with such an advent (as in Isaiah 40:1-10), with peaceable equanimity; but consider what allows! This:
 

"Just as many as were astonished at you,
So His visage was marred more than any man,
And His form more than the sons of men:
So shall He sprinkle many nations… WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT ? …"

and so it moves on into Isaiah 53, and the Saviour, the substitutionary sacrifice for sin, the alive and triumphant overcomer of death, indeed of murder.

TO HIM, this NOTHING (as in Daniel 9:26 - "there is nothing for Him"), so that to man might be something, might indeed be in fellowship with God. By this Christ,  the abuse is abused, the death is dismissed, life in its liberality accounting triumphantly but vicariously, for the doom of deserved death in its destruction (as Hosea 13:14, I Corinthians 15:53-58 declare with the eloquence of a loving realism, the immortal words of Him who alone has immortality, but confers eternal life to whom He will, and is most willing).

He accordingly, is this way, and He made it; but it is a way to be travelled, a highway to be entered (Isaiah 55:1-6, 35:8).

Already, we have been introduced to Him, just before,  in Isaiah 50:4-8 indeed in amazing circumstances, where His resolve and purity when under mordant assault are focussed, and of course He appears in Isaiah 40:10, 42 and 49, at length.

Thus we have learned and re-learned that Israel the nation, they fail (41:27ff., 51:19ff. - indeed right from Ch.1); but here is AN Israel (49:3) who will NOT "fail or be discouraged" (42:4) "till He has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands will wait for His law." Without THIS Israel, this replacement, this Saviour from heaven, Israel all and altogether would be defunct. ONLY because of Him, has history been unleashed! - for as with Israel itself, so with the Gentile nations, He who comes for the one, comes also for the other. Rejected by the first (Isaiah 49:7), He is received by many in the second, until the time come (Zechariah 12:10), and Israel repents of this murder, and cries in anguish of soul, with profound mourning, for "they shall look upon ME whom they have pierced," the Lord declares.

It was because of this provision of THIS servant, THIS, "mine elect", that history was ever unleashed! That is what we learn in 51:16 in context (with 50:4ff. for example, and 49:1-6). Let us hear it:

 
"And I have put My words in your mouth, and I have covered you in the shadow of My hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundation of the earth, and say to Zion, You are My people."

It is just as in Revelation 5:1-7, when history cannot be unscrolled until the Lamb seizing the plan, enables its execution!

As in David, so in Isaiah, the word can turn from the needy sinner to the necessary Saviour, from sin’s need, to sin bearer (cf. Psalm 40:1-5, then 40:6). The reason is clear: it is through man, God in this format, that man is able to be saved. It is through, specifically, AN Israel, or prevailing Prince,  or Prince of God, who is in the format of a man, but without sin, and sent from heaven, with the throne of God His own (Psalm 45), that anything can be done; and it is only BECAUSE the plan is secure, that the creation was performed!
 

Here is the crux in creation,
of salvation, prepared beforehand in the plan for the universe (cf. Ephesians 1:4),
known from the first, executed to the last!
His death was not for His own sin, but

"for the transgression of My people was He smitten",
and
"Surely He has borne our griefs";
but wrongly: many having considered Him
"smitten of God and afflicted",
even though it is written,
"But He was wounded for our transgressions".
 

This they did, rejecting Him in unbelief, then as now:
for the nation of the Jews, however, as for the new nations of the Gentiles,
where it becomes both de rigueur and a terminal rigor of the dismissive soul that does so.
Blessed are those who repent (Luke 13:1-3, Hebrews 2:3,12:25).

Let us hear a little of these words in Hebrews:

"See that you do not refuse Him who speaks.
For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth,
much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth {in the Exodus and following events};
but now He has promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only,
but also heaven."

Again we read:

"How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation" - in 2:3.

 

C

EXCERPT  

from

Grand Biblical Perspectives

with specific reference to Isaiah 48-49 and the progression to 50-55

 

On this topic, see also:

DASTARDLY DYNAMICS ... Ch. 3,

 

APPENDIX

 

DEITY PERSONALLY SENT, PERSONALLY SENDING,
AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD, IN ISAIAH 48-55

AS IN TRUTH

In Chapter 8, we were looking at Isaiah 48:16 and its triune wonder
as God comes to do His great, His remarkable and strange work for man;
but strange though it is to carnal ears,
it is shining with the light of eternal splendour
to those who realise, at last, the way, will and wisdom of God.

 

Indeed, this declaration of 48:16, that God is moving from heaven to earth for a task to be performed, sent by God and His Spirit, is not only trinitarian. It shows the mode of relationship, just as does John 15:26, with 16:5ff., 14:25ff. and especially 16:7.

There we find that on Christ's DEPARTURE from this earth, then the Spirit of God will continue the application of His power in His name. It is expedient that He at the completion of His incisive, sacrificial work and demonstration, should depart so that the Spirit of God more broadly and most intimately should continue His work. It is this which Acts 1:1 reflects, and Acts 2ff. illustrates, just as Christ in Luke 24:49 implied.

In this context of Isaiah, it is well to ponder its depth and purport.

Thus, the Lord, having shown the coming ruin of Babylon, in Isaiah 47, in 48 asks Jacob to listen as He makes a personalised address of some length. Challenging them because of their unbelief, despite His unique and demonstrated power to show what is to come, and then do it, stating "I have declared the former things," God tells them that new things are to be told them, which were not in this depth and scope before known, so that there is no chance for them to pretend "Of course I knew them," in that know-all and idolatrous lapse for which Israel was so noted, so often.

For His own name's sake, in accord with His mercy, pity and truth, God then opens the books and tells Israel what is to be, and what deliverance He is about to unveil.

LISTEN! He says (48:12), and setting the perspective, that He has founded heaven and earth, He declares that He will indeed subdue and demolish Babylon (as in Isaiah 47 just preceding), but He has more than Cyrus in mind (as in Isaiah 44-45).

Now begins a lament and exhortation combined of the most moving and heartfelt kind. There is a way, the Lord indicates, in which they should go. It is not hidden, obscure but declared and demonstrated. If ONLY they had followed it, what peace and order would have been theirs! But they did not ... (Isaiah 48:17-19).

In speaking thus, the Lord makes a stupendous revelation about His name and way. It is to this that we next must give attention

Continuing to speak and demand as God their attention, He says this:

"Come near to Me, hear this. I have not spoken in secret from the beginning: from the time that it was, I was there. And now the Lord God and His Spirit have sent Me." He continues speaking as "the LORD, your Redeemer", and "the Holy One of Israel."

While Babylon is about to receive her recompense for the assault on Israel Isaiah (48:14), as in Isaiah 47, yet God has a deeper message, for which He asks them to come near, listening intently.

Thus not only has God poured scorn on idols, including pomposity and self-belief (Isaiah 48:5,7), but He has differentiated Himself in the whole realm of history and His long association with Israel, from ALL that is not God, pursuing it back to the creation itself, and insisting multiply on speaking in His name, in the most direct, infinitely discrete and separate fashion from all else. In fact, as has been seen from Deuteronomy 32,  in Ch. 4 and Ch. 5 above, this differentiation from NOT-GOD is fundamental at all times to the word and way of God - just as parents are not to be confused with other children, so God is not to be confused with NOT-GOD! This is a call to the revelation from the first, in order in those very terms, to extend it and divulge what is amazing in the very texture of divine communication for man.

Having brought things to this focus, then, the Lord proceeds with more.

He then divulges as a thing that Israel cannot know, find out or pretend to have discovered in itself, and shows that this is nothing less than what proceeds from Him who is the first and last and the Lord, and that He for His name's sake, thus established in their minds and memories, is about to ACT! In what way is He then to do this ?

Firstly, the generic, the fashion of it is shown and declared. He declares that He has not been a secretive God, and from the first has revealed Himself (Isaiah 48:16). From the first, in all time, all things, He was there, as to the last, He knows and declares, foreseeing what is to be (as in 45:7,19,21,22); and it is He who is their salvation (as in 45:22, 42:6, 49:6).  Having demolished the fraud of idols (46), and shown the fate of powerful and imposing Babylon in its imperial strength brought to the dust (47), He now identifies Himself in this manner, beyond all human thought and ascription, but dependent on revelation alone: this being His very name, mode of being, status and majesty.

Always there, never absent, God from everlasting to everlasting (cf. 45:12, Psalm 90:2, 44:24ff.), without parallel, gives death and shame to pretenders and postulations. It is He now reveals that He is SENT TO ISRAEL, and who is sending Him ? Who is this but  "the Lord God and His Spirit."

As God, God co