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Articles 2014-2017
Listen, O coastlands, to Me, and take heed, you peoples from afar!
When Isaiah addressed his prophecy to the coastlands, his audience would have included all the continents that bordered the seas and the oceans. In other words, God was speaking to the ends of the earth. The problem was that not many (if any) from the ends of the earth were there in Judah to hear the prophesied word. Did God speak in vain? It might have seemed so for many years. How could there be any response if no one was listening? And yet today, we in the ends of the earth study that very word and gain insight into Him and His purpose. The word He spoke gave birth to the necessary ingredients for its fulfillment.
The most significant element in God’s declaration of His purpose on earth is not the ones listening, but the One speaking. For example, how could the universe possibly hear before it existed so that it could then respond and come into being? It couldn’t. But it came into existence simply because of the One who declared that it must. Who He is, what He has said and is saying, and what He has determined to do for the sake of His name is the solid foundation upon which all of human history rests.
Obviously, it is necessary for us to have listening ears and obedient hearts if we want to participate with Him in His work. But God’s eternal purpose and His proceeding word sent forth to accomplish it are greater than all of humanity put together; they are greater than the sin of man or the pride of man. And He will back up what He says by accomplishing what was in His heart when He spoke.
So Isaiah spoke to the whole earth even though few were listening. And great change has come into the nations because of it.
Similarly today, what God says in our midst when we gather is probably most often simply for those at the meeting. But there are times when what He says is for the whole earth. And great change will come among the nations because faithful men and women gathered into His throne room to behold and worship Him, to sit in His presence and listen, and to proclaim in the presence of each other and the angels the prophetic words on His heart. Here is just one of the reasons why it is so important to regularly gather together with other believers into the presence of God.
The Lord has called Me from the womb; from the matrix of My mother He has made mention of My name.
God spoke about Israel’s Messiah many times before He was born. Just two examples:
He referred to Him as Immanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14).
He then proclaimed that He would be both God’s exalted Servant (Isaiah 52:13) and God’s suffering Servant (Isaiah 53).
Not only did the Lord speak of Christ before He came, He also spoke about the ungodly king Cyrus many years before he lived (Isaiah 45). Personally, I think the Lord might very well have spoken with the angelic forces about each of us before we were born as well (2 Timothy 1:9).
Our God speaks of things to come with the eternal perspective that can look forward from the beginning and backward from the future simultaneously. He is simply greater than the ages of time that He created.[36] [37] We see this truth revealed in the fact that He sometimes would speak of future events as though they had already happened (Isaiah 53). In fact, what we are experiencing in our generation is simply the present outworking of what He has proclaimed from the eternal perspective. And we have the privilege of gaining insight into those eternal councils of Heaven, the priorities in His heart being performed in these last days. How awesome.
And He has made My mouth like a sharp sword;
To express on earth the eternal realities of Heaven, the Father spent many years fashioning His Son and preparing Him for His messianic ministry. And how He succeeded! Those who heard Christ heard the Father. Today the Lord Jesus is the Word of God waging war by the sharp two-edged sword that goes out of His mouth. And He will successfully culminate Church history as He carries out that role to its full implementation (Revelation 19:11 - 16). Significantly, we are challenged by Heaven to believe that His warfare in our generation is both strategic and victorious.
Notice that our Lord was not born with His mouth already formed into a sharp sword. Rather, He had to grow in wisdom and in stature and in grace. Though He was without sin, and though He clearly knew His identity at the age of twelve, yet He simply was not ready at that time to be unveiled to the nation as Israel’s Messiah. And so the Father kept Him hidden.
In the shadow of His hand He has hidden Me,
Scripture often refers to the Lord’s hand when speaking of His activity on earth (Isaiah 59:1; Acts 11:21). The gospel accounts reveal that God was doing a mighty work in Israel. He had broken in among men and had become one of them; the hand of the Lord was moving. But hidden away in the shadow of that hand was Christ. Men looked and saw only a carpenter; Heaven saw the emerging King of the universe.
The Kingdom of God is not about what fallen men see or what they can figure out when they look at the Church. It is about God’s eternal purpose and His perspective, His hidden work in the lives of His people, the prophetic word being formed in them because of His compassionate and strategic fashioning of their hearts, and the timing He chooses to reveal to others what He has been writing into them. In other words, human history really is all about His kingdom.
And made Me a polished shaft; in His quiver He has hidden Me.
The Father took thirty years to fashion His Son into His polished arrow. Over the course of those years the man Christ Jesus studied the Scriptures, and spent much time interacting intimately with His Father. His lifestyle of obedience required Him to submit to Joseph and Mary as well as to learn the trade of carpentry. When Joseph died, He was then able to support the family (Mark 6:3).
But at the age of thirty, because of Christ’s perfect submission, the Father was able to take His arrow and shoot Him into the heart of the enemy.
In our study of the Bible, we tend to concentrate on the three and one half years of our Lord’s ministry. And of course, those years are the focus of the gospel accounts. But in doing so, we can lose sight of Isaiah’s perception into God’s strategy. Jesus did not come into His messianic ministry by simply showing up from heaven as a full-grown man. Rather, He was born of a virgin, matured over many years, and finally stepped into His ministry only when the Father released Him.
In other words, God’s messianic kingdom did not break into history at Jesus’ baptism but at His conception. To put it another way, what started as a single small seed began to grow into a large tree (Matthew 13:31 - 32). And it is still increasing in size today as our King reigns from heaven. My point is that many believers think of the Kingdom of God primarily in terms of ministering to others when they should be thinking mainly in terms of intimacy with God and working faithfully on their jobs and caring for their families. If that is how God himself conducted His time on earth, it makes sense that we should also think and act similarly.
Certainly, it is quite a blessing when the Lord takes us out of His quiver and shoots us into a situation causing someone to be healed, strengthened spiritually, or delivered in some way from the enemy’s influence. But too many think of their time on their jobs or of spending time with their families as somehow disconnected from God’s priorities in extending His kingdom. The truth is that such activity lies at the very heart of His kingdom.
We often are impressed with the visible results that God reveals in other people because of our speaking with them or our serving them in some way. And we should be. It is so amazing that the Lord would use us to assist His work in others. But we must also see that He takes great pleasure in fashioning us into His likeness so that our service would reveal Him and not some other agenda. After all, God’s kingdom has as its goal the accurate revelation of Him and of His will being done on earth just like it is in heaven.
Notice Isaiah’s continued prophecy. In verses one and two, the Messiah is clearly speaking. But in verse three He seems to step into the role of Israel and to stand before God on their behalf. And when He did, the Father spoke to Him a word of promise.
And He said to me, “You are My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
The Father would indeed be glorified in the Son. But now He would also be glorified in the nation of Israel. And Christ’s resurrection would be the guarantee. Not only did God send His son for the sins of the world but also specifically that Israel might be gathered again to her God.
”And now the Lord says, who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel is gathered to Him (For I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and My God shall be My strength).
If the Messiah on earth was indeed glorious in God’s eyes and lived according to His Father’s strength, then surely Israel would be gathered back to her God. Did Christ succeed on earth? Will He succeed from heaven? He came to earth for the salvation of Israel. Believers must come to grips with this aspect of Heaven’s strategy and decide in their own hearts whether or not they believe He will succeed in His great quest. And His promise continues to hover over the Jewish nation in our day. God’s pledge supersedes the plans of everyone who hates her and wants to see her destroyed. We must ask ourselves if we believe that the spoken word of the Lord is greater than all the strategies and plans of the enemy.
No matter what men and nations do, God will surely glorify His great name through the nation of Israel. He has already done so to some extent. Surely He was glorified in the hearts of many when He divided the Red Sea and brought His people to Mount Sinai. And surely He was exalted when Elijah called down fire from heaven. But in our day, Israel is also remembered as the nation that rejected her Messiah and that has suffered greatly over many years. And when we look at her in our day we see great spiritual mixture because of secular humanism just like we see here in America.
But God’s promise remains. And His name is at stake. Like He was glorified through His work of fashioning His Son into a polished arrow and of making His mouth a sharp sword resulting in His powerful ministry, His obedience unto death, and His glorious resurrection, so our God has determined to succeed in His work of bringing the Jewish people to the end of themselves so that they might turn to Him and find Him to be their whole life and the purpose of their existence.
There simply is no way that God will fail to glorify His name in the coming years in Israel. As surely as He raised His Son from the dead so shall He cause Israel to emerge from spiritual death to stand on her feet as an exceedingly great army.
Like Ezekiel we must prophesy to the scattered bones, the Jews living among the nations, to arise, to gather, and to integrate with one another in their land. But a united nation in itself is not enough of a sign for God to be glorified. Just like He came and breathed upon Adam and gave him life, and just like He raised His Son from the grave, so also He intends to come by the power of the Holy Spirit and breathe upon Israel.
Also He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” ‘ “ So I prophesied as He commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great army.
God will breathe His Spirit of life from the four winds, from the four points of the compass. In other words, Israel’s birth/resurrection will require many among the nations to arise and identify with Ezekiel’s prophecy. Today, God is bringing to a measured fullness His work in His worldwide Church to facilitate the spiritual birth of a whole nation. This is an amazing calling. To participate, we must become in practice His royal priesthood.
Remember, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, the Church of the firstborn is our mother (Hebrews 12:22 - 23, Galatians 4:26). We have come to spiritual birth because someone preached the gospel or shared their testimony with us. Or maybe a believer(s) somewhere who we may not have even known went into spiritual travail. They may have even lived on the other side of the planet. But at some point, they began to sense a burden to pray (perhaps in tongues) without even knowing why. But when the burden lifted, we were born of the Spirit. In the same way, Israel will come to spiritual birth through the intercessory travailing of Heaven’s priesthood.
Rooted in an intimate relationship with Him, the Church will experience a growing fullness of God’s burden for what He intends to bring to birth in this and coming generations. Let us turn to Him with all of our hearts. Let us wait upon Him in His presence. And let us learn and cry out to Him those thoughts of His own heart for one another, for our nation, for Israel, and for His eternal purpose to be fulfilled in all the earth.
Donald Rumble – October 2016
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