2003-01-17
Good Morning Fellow Believers,
There are certain passages in the Scriptures which are very precious to us. Such is the case with IS 61: 1-4. In yesterday’s message, I wrote about how Christ used this passage in spiritual warfare with the people of His own home town who rejected Him [LK 4: 16-30]. This part of God’s word is important enough that it bears a closer examination. It is the Good News of Deliverance given to a people written by Isaiah about 300 years before Israel would go into enforced exile and experience a dyaspora [temporary loss of nationhood and scattering]. God wasn’t being mean or unrighteous in allowing this. He was responding to the refusal of the Jews to stop practicing idolatry, thus disobeying the first commandment found in EX 20: 1-5. It was God’s attempt to punish the Jews by allowing Babylonia to capture them and then His promise to return their nationhood and territory to them after His appointed length of time. He even told Jeremiah, who was basically ignored by his sinful countrymen, that it would be seventy years of exile in JER 25: 11. We have the hindsight of history to show us that God kept His promise.
Now, let’s look at IS 61: 1-4, the words Jesus read and then discussed in the synagogue in Nazareth. “The Sovereign Lord has fill Me with His Spirit. He has chosen Me and sent Me to bring Good News to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to announce release to captives and freedom to those in prison. He has sent me to proclaim that the time has come when the Lord will save His people and defeat their enemies. He has sent Me to comfort all who mourn. To give to those who mourn in Zion joy and gladness instead of grief. A song of praise instead of sorrow. They will be like trees that the Lord Himself has planted. They will all do what is right, and God will be praised for what He has done. They will rebuild cities that have long been in ruins.” If we read this carefully, there is a time break that happens right after the words “when the Lord will save His people and defeat their enemies.” In the preceding portion of the passage, Isaiah is speaking of events in our past. After those words, He is speaking about events yet to happen but promised by Him. All three personalities of the Trinity appear in the first sentence, which to me is an indication that this is important, a kind of “heads-up.” The second sentence evokes an earlier verse that is also a treasure to me, IS 52: 7 [KJV], “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publsiheth salvation; that saith unto Zion Thy God reigneth!” In the case of IS 61: 1, the him is Him! The time was to come that Israel would be released from the Babylonian captivity (about 445 BC) and reunified as a nation under God’s leadership, as it had originally been created to be. The story of what happened during this post-exilic period is found in the books of Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi.
As happens from time to time in the Bible, the writer abruptly switches from prophesying about the near future to doing so about the far future, events that have not yet happened in our time but are promised by God. Beginning with the words, “He has sent Me to comfort all who mourn…” Isaiah is referring to the second coming of Christ and the establishment of His Kingdom. The words “to comfort all who mourn in Zion” evoke the thought of Zechariah’s key words in ZECH 12: 10, “I will fill the descendants of David and the other people of Jerusalem with the spirit of mercy and the spirit of prayer. They will look at the One Whom they stabbed to death, and they will mourn for Him like those who mourn for an only child. They will mourn bitterly, like those who have lost their first-born son.” When we put that together with RO 11: 25, the prophecy that a remnant of the Jews living at the time of the Tribulation will come to faith, “have the veil lifted,” we realize that the OT Jews had been given the truth about the Messiah and His message of salvation and peace even before Christ’s incarnation. They just didn’t get it. The cities long in ruins that will be rebuilt referred to in IS 61: 4, are the ruins left by Armageddon. The rebuilding here will be the new Jerusalem of REV 21-22. Dear Ones, isn’t it remarkable how much those Jews in the synagogue in Nazareth missed? Had they understood what Christ was saying the way we do, they would have seen Who He was and would have bowed down before the Lord, asking Him for His guidance for their people.
Now, the question arises, how does this apply to the spiritual warfare we wage today? The answer is deceptively simple. If we take the time to know God’s word from daily time with it, ask the Holy Spirit to help us to gain God’s perspective on it, and use it as our “sword of the Spirit” in answering those attempting to reject our Lord, we have a powerful weapon against the devil. The time we are taking each morning to delve into God’s word not only helps us to win the battle, but it allows us to understand why we can claim this victory in Christ’s name on the grounds of the cross. Our own appreciation of the great sacrifice that God made of His only Son on the cross for us is heightened. Our faith is strengthened, and then we can go on to help build faith in others.
PRAYER: O Lord, You gave David a very special heart that was definitely a work of art wrought by Your own inward transformation by the renewal of his mind. Today, we ask Your permission to use some of His words to express the content of our hearts. PS 146: 5, “But happy are those who have the God of Israel as their Helper, whose hope is in the Lord their God.” Our faith is given to us by You out of the love for us that we don’t deserve, but which You have through Your most excellent grace. That faith leads us to place our hope in You, to know that You will keep Your promise of deliverance from all that is ahead for us. Some of us are captives in the prison of unbelief, entrapment into false teaching, or doubt. All of these things are the work of the adversary. Those of us with strong faith believe that You can and will deliver many people from these negative realities. Our hearts break for stubborn traditional Jews who refuse to study Your word directly, but instead, opt for rabbinical commentaries only. They are placing human intermediaries between Your Spirit and themselves. We pray that You will soon “lift the veil” that covers their eyes from the truth of Who their Messiah really is. We also pray for those ensnared by false teaching of other religions, who are also kept from knowing Your magnificent attributes, Your valiant deeds, Your loving and comforting presence, and most of all the deliverance that You promise. We ask for Your special attention to the lost, that their numbers may be reduced or even, if it is Your will, eliminated. PS 25: 8, Good and upright is the Lord; therefore He teaches sinners in the way.” We ask You to pardon us for our own sins. PS 25: 11, “For Your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is great.” We assert our belief that You will deliver Your people from the misery and hopelessness they have before they have let You in their hearts. We humbly offer Your our adoration, worship, loyalty, diligence, glory, honor, trust, obedience, thanks, and praise. In Christ’s name, amen.
There is still more to say about IS 61: 1-4, so I will begin tomorrow’s message with that. I am led to summarize the main points Christ made in His comments on this passage and then to take a look at Christ’s own battle with evil during his public ministry. It never fails to amaze me how God sends people certain important messages, and they miss them. The reasons for this have to do with busyness, with inattention to things that should be their first priorities, lack of faith or immaturity in the faith, arrogance, irreverence, ignorance, no self-control and discipline, greed, or a host of other reasons. And yet, in the face of all of this disobedience, the Lord hasn’t stopped loving His creation. He has come once for them, and will come again. How can we miss the sweet grace in this? We, who are so undeserving, are still saved by faith in Him and a concern of His in the process of sanctification. Our loving Abba wants nothing more than He wants to see us glorified, brought back to His dear presence for eternity in joy, fellowship, and peace. That is real love of the kind we should all have. Peter and I send each of you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn