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Articles 2014-2017
In our studies of Isaiah Chapters 53 through 55 we have seen God’s plan to bring the cleansing power of Christ’s blood to the whole world through the gospel. Chapter 56 then reveals a radical and revolutionary result; the Lord would redefine and expand His house.
First, His blessing would be upon those who kept the Sabbath.
Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.
God had given this special day as a sign that He was the One who sanctified His people (Exodus 31:13, Ezekiel 20:12). He was the only One who could make them holy. Abraham had not worked for righteousness; He simply received it when he responded in faith to the One who had called him. It was to be no different under the Mosaic Law. The Jews would not be made holy in God’s sight by keeping special days. But as they ceased from their physical labors each seventh day they would be reminded that their works could never establish His eternal righteousness in them nor in the society around them. But He would graciously impart it to them when they responded to Him in faith.
It is the same today; He is the One who sanctifies, who sets apart His people unto himself. He is the One who then builds His Church with those He gathers. He then extends His kingdom as He reveals His glory among the nations. To properly cooperate with Him in His work on earth, we must cease from our strivings and enter into His rest (Hebrews 4:1 - 11). As we thus keep the Sabbath appropriately, He will empower us to serve Him in His plan to fill the whole earth with His glory. If we do not, we will simply bring to bear our own human efforts to His work. Such an approach will bring a certain glory/attention to us and will necessitate His disciplines among us.
So how did God start to redefine His house? According to Isaiah, all foreigners and eunuchs were now invited to enter and pray. Whereas eunuchs had been excluded from the congregation of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:1), now they would be given a name in His house better than sons and daughters. And whereas Ammonites and Moabites had been barred because of how they had treated Israel in the Exodus (Deuteronomy 23:3 - 4), now all foreign-born peoples who loved the Lord would be made joyful in His house of prayer.
Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. “And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant–these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar;
To recap, because of the Messiah’s death and resurrection (Isaiah 53), God would now turn to the spiritually barren nations (Isaiah 54) and invite all who were thirsty to come to Him and drink of the water of life (Isaiah 55). As a result, He made this clear promise:
My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.
All nations would now gather to Him to seek His face. Changes were coming to the Lord’s house and the implications for mankind would be profound.
Near the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, He entered the temple, drove out the moneychangers, and quoted Isaiah’s prophecy (the above verse). Though God’s house was to be a house of prayer for all nations, the religious leadership had turned it into a den of robbers. Consider the unfolding conflict.
On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.
Jesus did not curse the fig tree because He was angry. He did so because that was what the Father was doing. And the Father wanted Jesus’ disciples to see it happen.
And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
The court of the Gentiles had become a marketplace. Of course, there was a clear logic to it all. If someone who lived far away wanted to offer sacrifice, they could sell the sacrificial animal before they left home and carry the money to the temple. There they could exchange it for the proper currency to purchase a carefully inspected unblemished animal for their offering. But, the noise! And the smells! With all the activity going on, how was someone to draw close to God? What was supposed to be a place set aside for prayer had become instead a place of distraction from prayer. As a result, those who wanted to seek God were being robbed.
Jesus’ response to the situation revealed the heart of the Father; He drove out the offenders. And what He taught about His house was not simply a one-time occurrence; He did so daily (Luke 19:47). But in challenging the status quo, He had become a threat to the establishment.
And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.
Clearly, a confrontation was underway.
And when evening came they went out of the city. As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God.”
Have faith for what? Are we all supposed to go around cursing fig trees? Is such a practice the evidence of godly faith?
Too many think of faith mainly in terms of receiving something from God. But faith is primarily about knowing the One who authors it. The story of Abraham is more about his relationship with the Lord than it is about the blessings he received. Though Abraham surely did receive many blessings, they must be seen in the context of his friendship with God.
Jesus cursed the tree and then continued on walking in fellowship with His Father and ministering among men. Matthew’s account of the fig tree event does not reveal the complete timetable. But in Mark we see that it took a full day for the immediate withering of the tree to be revealed. And God wanted the disciples to learn that when He speaks, what He says will come to pass even if at first nothing seems to happen. The Kingdom of God is not about our timetable; it is about His will being accomplished on earth like it is in heaven. And His will has as much to do with the timing of events as it does with the events themselves.
When we pray and nothing seems to change, we must continue walking with Him, having a listening ear and an open heart. Jesus heard the Father perfectly; we do not. But we can continue to believe in Him, to cry out for Him to develop in us a greater sensitivity to His voice, and to expect an increased assurance in us of the surety of His word. In other words, like Jesus said, we must – “Have faith in God.”
Then suddenly, He began to talk about mountains. This topic did not seem to be on anyone’s mind.
Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.
Some have suggested that maybe Jesus was referring to Mount Moriah where the temple stood. On the other hand, the Mount of Olives was nearby. But so was Mount Zion. The truth is that history has not supported the idea of believers throwing physical mountains into the sea through prayer. In fact, neither is there any record that Jesus did so during His earthly ministry.
Perhaps we should consider the Scripture’s use of the word “mountain” as a symbol of something else. Three examples:
In the Bible, a mountain could refer to a place where God met with His people. For instance, Moses went up on Mount Sinai in order to meet with Him (Exodus 19:2 - 3, 20). Jesus’ disciples met with Him when He went up on a mountain, sat down, and began to teach them the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1). Today, believers gather at a mountain that cannot be touched (i.e., a spiritual mountain). This Mount Zion is where the Church of the firstborn assembles together with many angels in order to worship our Lord (Hebrews 12:18, 22 - 24).
Mountains could also have reference to kingdoms. The kingdom of Babylon was a destroying mountain that God would judge and reduce to a burnt one (Jeremiah 51:25). Also, Daniel saw the coming messianic kingdom as a singular stone that would then become a great mountain filling the whole earth (Daniel 2:34 - 35).
Finally, and most important to our discussion, a mountain could refer to something opposed to God’s work of building His house.
In order to examine this last point, we should consider the words of the prophet Zechariah. In his day, the Jews were experiencing great opposition in the reconstruction of the temple (Ezra 4). As a result, the people stopped work, and God’s house continued to lie in ruins (Haggai 1). Not only that, there seemed to be sin in the life of Joshua the high priest (Zechariah 3). When Zerubbabel, the one in charge of the construction project became discouraged, God strengthened him with a word through the prophet Zechariah.
”This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’”
The great mountain of opposition to the building of God’s house would be leveled to the ground. And while the Lord’s servant would succeed in his task, all would recognize that it was the grace of God that enabled him to overcome.
Like Zerubbabel, the Messiah’s task would be to build the temple of the Lord. But He would do so while holding the offices of both king and priest (Zechariah 6:12 - 13). Today, Christ is the King of all kings and our Great High Priest who has passed through the heavens (Hebrews 4:14). And while functioning in these two roles He is building God’s house with living stones (Ephesians 2:19 - 22, 1 Peter 2:4 - 5).
Echoing the words of Zechariah, Jesus had just confronted the mountain of opposition to God’s plan of establishing His worldwide house. Instead of recognizing the precious cornerstone, the foundation for that house, religious leaders instead saw Him simply as a threat to their present practices. But their customs were not only failing to attract seekers to God, they were actually distracting them from Him. And whatever drew attention from Him would certainly be removed.
It is the same today. Whatever distracts us from Him must be removed from our midst. All such mountains must be taken up and cast into the sea. After all, the project we are involved in is His house, His kingdom, and His glory.
Then significantly, Jesus made a statement that when taken out of context has been easy to misunderstand. But if we see his words keeping in mind both Heaven’s worldwide temple building project and also Satan’s attempts to distract and oppose, I believe it will be helpful.
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
Simply put, we must stand with an absolute confidence in God’s plan to remove everything in His house that misdirects our attention from Him. No matter what opposes God’s architectural work, pray for its removal and then stand in faith believing in the One who is more committed than anyone on earth to building the place of His habitation (Ephesians 2:22).
Because Jesus had heard the Father, He knew the fig tree had to wither. So also, not many days later when He prophesied the soon destruction of the whole temple system (Mark 13:2), His disciples were to be certain of its coming removal even if for a whole generation it seemed indestructible.
Then Jesus spoke of the greatest mountain of opposition that His people would ever face – something that would sabotage our relationships with Him by which we receive everything that Heaven has to offer. Over the last two thousand years, we have stumbled again and again when facing this threat. I speak of our tendency to fail at forgiving those who have offended us.
And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
Here is where we must target our prayers. It is in the face of this frailty of our flesh so often stirred up by the enemy of our souls that we must stand in faith proclaiming with assurance that we now have the power to forgive. It is ours. God has bestowed among us the grace necessary to release from our debt those who have wronged us – even if every emotion in our soul says otherwise. If we believe that we have received it, it will be ours.
May our tendencies to hold on to our hurts, our wounds, and our bitter attitudes be taken up and cast from our midst. In fact these mountains shall become a plain before Christ the builder of God’s house as well as before those co-laboring with Him in the project. And He shall successfully bring forth the final touches, the capstone with shouts of “Grace, grace” to it! Amen.
Donald Rumble – May 2017
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