AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH November 5, 2006

A CONTINUATION OF THE THRUST AND BASE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
OF AUSTRALIA ON BIBLICAL LINES …

A MATTER OF RISE AND FALL, AND THAT'S NOT ALL

    Isaiah 66, Reflections and Applications:

PART II

THE KEY TO THE DELETE KEY - Isaiah 66:3-4

Consider the impact on those still following a sacrificial model of the faith, at the repetitive animal stage, when they are told that killing a bull is like killing a man, that burning incense is like blessing an idol! How will they interpret that!

Of course, this profound, prophetic book of Isaiah has specialised in the denunciation and exposure of sin, personal, social, religious, national, and in the manifestation of the coming sacrifice to cover sin on the part of the Messiah who, once for all, deletes it to those who receive this animated announcement, and receive the pardon of God for His sake (Isaiah 52-53 - the latter good to be learned by heart).

Hence we can discern, in the presence of such munificence from the Lord, and misuse of religion on the part of man, the divine detestation for the merely formal misuse of religious means and methods. Indeed, in Ch. 1 this is  made a special butt - God indicates that He has no time for their solemn assemblies!

Wash, be clean, learn to do good and  disesteem evil! this is the message. Now however we find that there is a straight announcement concerning sacrificial procedures of the Old Testament type. It is because the NEW has  by this stage been announced, even the new heaven and earth have been disclosed (Isaiah 65:17). Thus in Isaiah 66,  we look accordingly in coming history, to the movement to the end of the present Messianic Age,  and the thrust to the end of this world entirely. It is in this overall setting that the folly of insisting on keeping on with the multitude of sacrifices which Christ makes obsolete (Hebrews 8), is divinely declared. His word is against such blindness, and indeed such insult to His work with a deleting of  its applicability, as Judaism has evinced. It is ultimately against this and the very spirit of it,  that God expresses such horror and detestation.

Thus the key to the delete key, or if you prefer, the meaning of the message of rejection of the sacrificial system as it then was, is in terms of that far better one to come, when it all devolves on ONE, person, on God brought to act as man (Isaiah 48:16), not man seeking God; and to act forever in and through ONE sacrifice, ONCE made (Hebrews 2, 9-10): His own!

ROLE REVERSAL  -  Isaiah 66:5-6

How the early Jewish Christians suffered from the hatred, persecution or even murder handed out by the unbelieving Jewish sector of the population, who conceived the fruition of Moses' law in the prophet foretold (Deuteronomy 18), whose word, Moses declared, they must follow when He came, to be as nothing! No greater testimony could have been made for faith, in power, work, word, love, grace, mercy, the beauty of holiness than that wrought by Jesus Christ, Lord of glory.

Yet when God at the date foretold (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), and in the way prescribed in advance (Isaiah 29, 35, 49-55), acted with acuity and power,  not only in the life, but in the death and resurrection of Christ, did the nation believe ? Far from it! In fact,  the powers that be were beside themselves with negativity, and many worshipped in some ways more the actual system and structure of things, than the God who gave it as a help. When He came, the symbols were replaced with what is substantial, and His personal action made those symbols past,.

When He came and personally acted, those symbols were replaced by the reality of regality, crowned by God's blood of the covenant (Acts 20:28), by the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus (II Corinthians 4:4-6, 5: 17-21, Titus 2-3). So was it foretold and so did it occur (in Isaiah 52, 55, 66:20 and 11:10, for example). The nation led by false leaders, rebelled and even persecuted those who received the Lord.

Of such persecution as unbelief dynamised, and folly pursued: Stephen in one example; and Paul is another - you see two examples in Acts 7:51ff., and 20:1-4, and another in Acts 17:1-10. Even while the Christians were presenting Christ the Saviour to the nation, and beyond,  including many who disbelieved the very evident testimony of their senses (cf. Matthew 13:14ff., John 11 - they even tried to kill Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead, so that he would die a second time and stop being so powerful and clear-cut a testimony to the authenticity of Jesus Christ, Lord over death, and not on this occasion only): what did they do ? They categorically rejected Him and assaulted some of His servants, killed James, sought to kill Paul, arrested Peter (Acts 9-12).

Theirs was envy (Matthew 27:18), instead of worship: they wanted power ... and to survive. In fact, they were merely ensuring the judgment to come. It came in A.D. 70, just one generation after the crucifixion, so that those to be slain by Rome in its invasion and devastation of temple and city, were themselves fully responsible, and not just their fathers of Christ's day on this earth.

Isaiah in 66:3-4 is telling us that the Christians (those Jews like Paul were a first instalment - cf. Isaiah 66:20, Romans 15:16) who were repudiated by the officialdom which loved the authority they paraded, but not the humility before the authority of the only God and the only Master (Matthew 23:8-10), would one day be vindicated. The persecutors, unless they repented, preferring to be masterful themselves, would have a very different end. Those who paraded their demeaning hatred of the brethren of Christ, will be on parade. Not beneath their feet, will they place now their victims, but at their feet they themselves will bow in recognition of their vast evils and odious persecutions (cf. Revelation 3:9).

They ignored their testimony, and so brought first Israel and then the world to the point of ruin! Their latter day types are now persecuting Christians in Sudan, in China.

The end however comes, as the day of destiny breaks, and the light which cannot be extinguished (John 1), becomes inescapable at His return (Revelation 1:5, Matthew 24:30). Indeed, Malachi 4:1 shows the same, and 4:2 adds this by contrast for those who receive His pardon: "But to you who fear My name, the Sun of righteousness will arise, with healing in His wings."

A fire comforts, but not if you are in it.

Thus there is a role reversal - the lords among men will bow in the presence of God before the feet of their victims. The testimony of truth was in love, and the testimony of hatred brings severance from grace and truth, except there be repentance. What pre-devastation Jerusalem foolishly did to the Christians, the next parade of improper power, Romanism from its Rome, did to those of a later Age in the Inquisition (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14). Later,  there came modern despots, such as those of the grossly misnamed Communism (in fact the worst and most blatant system of hierarchical tyranny ever known, for all the powers are in one place, and that, it is not in the people but in the prejudice and absolutism of deluded men ), or the Islamic militants (cf. Divine Agenda Ch. 6).

WHO PAYS ? IT IS THE LORD OR THE SINNER:
IT DEPENDS ON FAITH (John 8:24)

The Lord, we read, "fully repays His enemies" (Isaiah 66:6).

In Divine Agenda Ch. 6, we reveal the famous case of the 'Lost Boys', who eventually amounted to thousands, bereft in the raids of the North (Islamic) of Sudan on the South (which has a significant Christian testimony, though murder will have reduced this, on the vast scale of the violence attested!). The bereft boys moved from land to land, their parents murdered. Eventually, after they learned to live in a compound, they were taken in large measure by the USA! As we look at the inveterate and sustained persecution of these boys in the Africa lands in which and to which they fled, we asked certain questions, which in substance follow. The references given may be found at Ch. 6, as hyperlinked above, so that if any wishes, they may readily be traced.

Referring to Islam, much is declared in that Chapter,  concerning the error of such human religions.

The throes come in the name of a religion innovated into existence in Arabia, long after both the Old Testament and Christ, with a caricature of faith here REQUIRED of many, as shown in this suppression move towards faith, by the vilest of excesses. The evil militancy acted as  if God were some monster and man were some product, instead of God being love and man the monster in his parodies of it, this volcanic steam and burning ash rushed into deplorable existence. In our own time, in Sudan, the contemporary version has come alive in ministering death. The North attacked the South.

In so doing, ISLAM demanded the submission of Christians, amongst others. The way over the centuries has included efforts to force their creed into their mouths of victims, and demand that it be spewed up again in words of acquiescence. In the Sudan, it is often simply kill, kidnap and lay waste the butt of their belligerence. Where this occurs, it is indeed Islamic fascism, doctrinaire autocracy with force for securing submission of mind,  body or both.
 

• Was faith to become a gullet tic, or spiritual rapine to grow into a faith industry!

 
• Would the Inquisition become born again into the festering rivers of crocodiles ?

 

• Would a new excuse now claim acceptance, in the name of another world-clutching religion ?
   

• Was this to add from another source, to the never repented follies of Rome in its ludicrous assumptions of divine power and place for a particular sinful man (the papal "God Almighty on earth"), woman (Christ's mortal mother is made Redemptrix despite Matthew 12:48-50) and piece of bread (broken by Christ, true man who remained intact in the last Supper), when none of them is God!
  
       (See on this: John 6:62-63, Luke 1:22ff.,  Hebrews 2, 9, and consult SMR pp. 923ff.,
        977ff.,    1055ff., 1070ff., 1086 and 1042-1088H.)
   
• Would this Arabian imagination now parallel the Roman 'need' to broadcast those three idolatrous inventions (for none of these concepts is authorised by the Bible),  and seek to rule by all available means, just the Pope has, for a thousand years, claimed the RIGHT TO RULE  HIS WORLD parish (SMR pp. 903, 1088G, 1070ff.), of whatever name it might be called, and never repented!
   
• Would a newly rich Islam now seize many again, as in the 8th century and debase or enslave in the name of faith! as not in just judgment on immorality but in the sacking of souls it came, spirits clamorously to be clashed into conformity.
   
• Would the earth be besmirched again by such sordid repetition, breaking like successive lightnings from the stormy clouds of man’s mind and devastated heart!
 and would Israel fall to them as they confidently predicted in the day of Nasser ? Pretending that what was mere charade or parade, would HAVE to be, as did Romanist, Communist, both alike in vain, so now the militant Islamicist became more and more vocal!
 
• Yet the destruction of Israel did not happen, though many nations sought to depress it, concerning themselves with it as Zechariah 12 predicted for the period before a multitude in Israel  would "look on Me who they pierced" and repent. It is unlikely as was the return of Israel: but as certain to come! Neither could Islamic or other forces achieve this destruction, being tilted against truth in their lust for control, for whatever reason. It is God's word alone which always happens, because it has to - being that of God Almighty. It too remains, unequivocal, irrepressible, director of history, record of truth.
   
• Was grabbing, destruction and force-fed ‘faith’ once more to become the testimony of truth, as if the word were arrestable also ?
   
• Would theft become pious, would injury become innocence, in the interests of a false 'faith' ? One's own eyes - as assuredly Psalm 50, verses19-23, give decisive answer.

Thus these new ravages were from a religion which RESTS on the authenticity of Old Testament prophets (cf. SMR pp. 1080ff. - cf. Surah 5:44) and yet excludes the basis of sacrifice for sin in the system of revealed truth, on which that rests! (Leviticus 1-4, Isaiah 50-55).  Thus like other heresies, it hangs on to what disowns it, like a mistletoe on a gum.

These are however but examples, whether Communist, Islamic or Romanist. Whether from these or other sources, the vile violences come, the substitution of force for the means of faith, the abuse of both power and of the name of the God of love, mercy and kindness, even the desecration of the Gospel and the glory: there is one result.  Alas, short of repentance, we see this in the last verse of Isaiah 66 as in Mark 9. Light rejected MEANS darkness; and grace overthrown alters not the Gospel, but the result of it for the rebels (John 3:19,36). For these we mourn (John 3:17), as in Christ we love those dissidents who daily ask for judgment, and seek freely to deliver them. Yet the aweful fact remains: truth denied is mercy despatched.

Meanwhile, we find in Isaiah 66:5 the intense and immense role reversal when judgment sits! Those among men "who hated you, who cast you out for My name's sake, said, 'Let the Lord be glorified, that we may see your joy.' But they shall be ashamed." Note the extraordinary vigour of the ironic exposure of the lust in the persecutors who, while mouthing violence and surging into action with it, gloat over the horrors to come for their victims. "Let us see your joy!" they chant, as if to terminate the delight of the Lord's people in Himself. But Christ has the answer for then and the judgment both together.

"YOUR JOY NO MAN TAKES FROM YOU!" (John 16:22). It is internal as from a Spring (John 4:14), and rough hands do not ruin its source! Indeed, in Revelation 3:9, we see the situation in the end, between persecutors and those who have persevered in faithfulness to the living God according to His prevenient word, and not turned aside to false worship of any kind. While the text refers primarily to the case of the Jews, it is typical of the variant-versus-reality situation.

"Indeed, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie- indeed I will make them come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you."

Whatever variation in the style of rebuff however, God is no respecter of persons and those who acted to humiliate in evil and fickle faiths, sects large or small, misusers of the name of God, persecutors of the faithful, will like all proud things be abased (Isaiah 2:17-22). What trembles at the word of God, the one who is poor and of a contrite heart before Him, receptive of redemption and building on His word, however, will be received with joy into everlasting abodes (Luke 16:9, John 14:1ff., Isaiah 51:11). 

Not in mantras or muscles, in scimitars or thumb-screws, in screamings or personnel-bombs, with iron-laden bodies destroying the bodies of persons: not thus is the kingdom of heaven won.  It is by faith, not force; it is in love, not licence; it moves by grace, not guile, and lasts for ever in Him who came to show the way. There is no other, but that to secure loss, with all the passion of one who takes out insurance negatively to cover any possibility of gain.  The way of the wicked shall perish, but the work of the living God remains, spiritually confrontational, imputational, merciful and mighty.  

Rising and falling is by Jesus Christ: you arise in Him as called, or like a stone, He pulverises the creeds of inveterate power and chronic odium and with judgment arrests their purveyors (Matthew 21:44). Meanwhile, whatever man does, the power of God is fulfilling history according to His word, year by turmoiled year. The Jew remains as Christ foretold, Jerusalem is back with them, as He also predicted (Luke 21:24), and has become an index to His near return; the same Gospel acts in its unalterable purity (Gal. 1) while predicted false christs and prophets like acid rain, arise, ready to fall in disgrace at the return of Christ. In these as in multitudes of ways, He begins already to send dark signals and enlightening flashes to the earth which failed to receive Him, but now awaits His coming (II Thessalonians 1). The door is still wide open for ANY who enters!