Chapter 7
The Runt Shall be Our Deliverer
*The Lord has been revealing to me different things about Israel and the Church. I’m sure by now that you have noticed the way that I speak about these things is very unique. I do know of others who see the same way, but most people have never heard of them. The way that I view both the Church’s role in the earth and Israel’s role in the earth are the exact same way that I view Christ’s role on the earth.
*When Christ came to die, it was to be a propitiation for the entire world. He is the sacrifice of atonement, in which even the Gentiles have salvation. The Church is His Body. They should be fulfilling the same role that He had 2000 years ago. Israel is still God’s chosen nation, and there are many prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled concerning them, not the least of which is that “they shall bless all the nations of the earth.”
*I believe that there is going to be a cosmic drama to be played out, very possibly in our very generation. When you start to see and understand the immensity of this drama, you start to stagger under the revelation. How did we miss this? How is it that so many believers don’t know of the role of Israel in the last days? And how is it that the majority of the Church doesn’t know its own role in the last days?
*When you start to see the vastitude of this, you start to realize that we have been play-acting. The majority of the Church is out of the will of God. We have been the new Israel, and not in the good way, writ large. We have taken upon ourselves our own ideologies and interpretations of the Scriptures. We’ve given ourselves a comfortable Gospel that requires nothing. And all of this is in the exact proportion to how little we consider Israel. This is all in the exact degree to how much or how little we truly care and understand about the promises to them.
*We see time and again in the Prophets that Israel is the key to the redemption and the blessing of all the nations, and in turn is the key to the glory of God. Look at Isaiah 66. God says that He will cleanse them in a day. In a day! He will put a new heart within them, and they will stagger the nations, because their transformation to redemption will be so absolute and so utter that in a day the nation of Israel will be born. Our ideologies of salvation being a process and it takes time to be holy are false. I’ve seen it with my own eyes that after 48 hours a man would stop his drinking, smoking, cursing, fooling with women, and grab hold of his Bible and read almost non-stop all the days of the week. And God says, “I’ll do better than that; I’ll redeem all of Israel, all of the Jews, to the same extent in a day.”
*Guess whom the key to that transformed Israel is. It is we. The Church, which is mostly Gentile, is the very instrument that God will use to redeem Israel, and Israel is the key for the nations in God’s cosmic redemption. I am getting ahead of myself.
*Paul told us that he would have that we are not ignorant of this mystery, lest we be wise in our own conceit. We have been ignorant. What has happened? We’ve become wise in our own conceit; exactly like he told us would happen. We have come to a place where people think that we, as the Church, are the new Israel. We are the new vehicle that will be employed to bring God’s glory to the nations. We think that we are the spiritual Israel. God has not birthed these thoughts. He still remembers His prophesies.
*My question, even before we begin to really dive into the depths, is whether or not you are willing to suffer for Israel’s sake. If the nations shall rage against Israel, as it has been written that they will, and if we are to oppose our own nationality for the sake of Israel, then we must also suffer with them. Are we willing? Or is there some secret spot in our hearts that would say, “They don’t deserve it. They abandoned God”? Is there some sort of Anglo-Saxon or anti-Semitic root within us that would cause for us to oppose Israel with the nations, because they crucified the Lord Jesus?
*It is interesting how this will reveal our secret hearts. God will elect whom He will elect. He is not democratic. This is a theocracy. He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and judgment upon whom He will have judgment. Esau He has hated, but Jacob He has loved, and who will tell Him He’s wrong?
*If you are willing to hear me out, then I hope that God would bless you. Paul said, “I would have it that you are not ignorant of this mystery.” In Romans 9-11, you have Paul making statements directed at Israel. The commentaries are full of insight for Romans 1-8, and Romans 12-16. Yet, Romans 9-11 have very few insights and words. They are often misinterpreted and misquoted. Why? It is not that this is a mystery in the sense that it is something mystical or majestic, but instead that it is hidden. And God has not desired to reveal it. It is His prerogative. But the time is come that He has spoken into the hearts of some to speak forth this understanding. Please be patient, and read with open hearts, because I fear how this might be taken if it is placed through our spiritual filters and theological biases.
*One of the passages of Scripture that show Jesus’ ministry to mankind is Isaiah 53. I want to use this to show His ministry, the Church’s ministry, and also Israel’s ministry. The Lord willing, I hope to relate a lot of Scriptures to this.
*“Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on his the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the laughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. He was assigned a grace with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, through he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, for he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.”
Jesus our Lord
*It is a strange thing to me to consider Jesus in context to this chapter. He is, in Himself, the very prophetic display of Israel’s sifting through the nations, and the Church’s response. It is a strange thing to me that those people who should have understood and seen the Lord upon that cross were the very ones who were employing His death. What a remark this is to us, who think ourselves to understand grace and mercy, that we might be the ones who employ and justify ourselves in the persecution of world Jewry.
*This synonym, or real life display, is what we should expect to see in Israel. It is something that will shock us. We all have our hidden agendas, and truth be told, we seem to have a false piety that would expose that we believe we deserve the mercy we’ve been shown. Those who love God for His mercy and grace will be the same who cannot extend mercy to the Jews in plight.
*Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? It is a strange thought when you consider the message of the apostles. A.W. Tozer writes in his book Paths to Power (pg 7), “To carry on the work of a man who was known to have died – to have died as criminals die – and more than that to persuade others that this man had risen from the dead and that He was the Son of God and Savior.”
*How ridiculous it must have sounded (and still sounds) to hear 120 people bursting forth crying out in all sorts of languages about Jesus who is the Messiah, and how He rose from the grave and commands everyone everywhere to repent. Who could believe such a message? Who would even be able to fathom such a thing? It is insulting to the intellect and exhaustive to human wisdom.
*Then, to go even further and say that we also must be born again would be something to mock. Who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? The question seems to answer itself: not many. How fraudulent and a disgrace it is to those of this world, especially those who are heavily influencing and influenced by the world system and wisdom.
*In Jesus Christ, we have the full revelation of the person of God, and in Jesus Christ, we see the full revelation of human hatred of that God. It is a requirement of God that we would understand that those who crucified the Lord Jesus are one and the same with ourselves. The principalities and powers are the ones who have set up the world system, and it is by their doing that the Lord was martyred. Though it is true to say that it was God the Father’s will for Jesus to die upon the cross, it is not fair to then discount our own sinful nature and our own inward hatred of God and the things of God.
*We must acknowledge the same sin in ourselves as what was displayed by the Jews and the Romans. We must take upon our own shoulders the guilt and blame of killing the Lord because He has revealed to us our secret hearts and shown us the ways of God. There is a unique parallel between our hearts and the hearts of those who lived 2000 years ago, because the condition of man is still the same. We have not evolved into some sort of better man, but instead have only continued to prove our depravity.
*“He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.” The Land had been bare of any kind of prophetic voice for 400 years before John the Baptist came. Jesus was soon to follow the ministry of John the Baptist, and the ground was still dry. The religious society was as hard and fallowed as ever. Yet, out of this ground was to come a break in the ground and a small sprout of life. That life would then be a tender shoot, or a full bloom, that would bring forth a plentiful and beautiful field. From where did the water come? From where did the seed come?
*The seed itself is Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter whether we take this verse to mean that there was no prophetic voice for 400 years, or if we look into the history of Israel to find that the ground has always been dry. From Egypt, Israel has never truly accepted the Lord their God. Though there have been times of repentance, it has not been but a short period of time and the repentance seems to fade. This seed is God Himself, because “the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable.”
*God Himself had made a promise to Israel, and it was God Himself who would bring forth that seed to be the Messiah. God will hold to His word. Even when He changes His mind, He still holds to His word, and in fact does something different at the same time as fulfilling the old word that has been changed, and thus brings even greater glory to His name. God doesn’t give up. He doesn’t change His mind. His gifts and callings, which He promised to Israel, in this case of the Messiah, are irrevocable.
*“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” When Saul became king, he was picked out of the crowd for being the tallest man. He was the easiest to spot, and towered over all others. Jesus was not so. He was the average-Joe, so to speak. People even mocked and giggled when hearing of Him by asking, “Can anything good come out of Galilee?” What was it that drew you to Him? Was it His great reputation, or was it the Father’s sovereignty? Nowhere in the ministry of Jesus did He use any tactic or method to draw men to Himself, but the Father, and the revelation that comes from the Father of who Jesus is, gave all.
*This is especially important to understand for us who are called to be light unto the world. We do not draw men to Jesus. The Father that is in Heaven draws them. There is also no way in human possibility to fancy Jesus up so that people would be attracted to Him. If we are fancying Him up, most likely, we are preaching another Jesus, another Gospel. God is who He is. He draws men because He is God, not because He has something that men want.
*“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.” We know that it says in John 1, “He went to that which was His own, and His own received Him not.” He was a man who was bent on doing the will of the Father, no matter what the price was. To live was to suffer. He must have been torn through and through with sufferings when looking upon the people and seeing them as “sheep without a shepherd.” He must have been stricken to the heart most severely when He would beg and plead with the Pharisees, but they only got worse in their sins.
*We also know from John 1 that Jesus has been with the Father from the very beginning. We can see in Genesis one that “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” In these two verses we have the trinity. We have God, the Spirit, and the Light that “is the light of all men.”
*If Jesus was with God in the beginning, then we can deduce that He has always been acquainted with sorrows. Jesus has always had to suffer, because He longs to be with His creation, and His creation has been in a state of rebellion since the fall. One of the characteristics of God is, in fact, that He desires to suffer with His people. Yes He suffered for them, but He also suffers with and because of them.
*Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. What agony must the Lord have faced every time He spoke and people would then turn away? How grieved must He have been when He asked his 12 disciples, “Do you want to leave too,” John 6:67? How few there were who actually esteemed him. The majority of Israel did not even consider Him as a possibility to be their Messiah, and they still do not consider Him.
*This goes in with the last statement about being a man of sorrows. I have to think that Gethsemane was a time where Jesus asked, “Take this cup from me,” because He was looking at the reaction of the people. He could see that they didn’t understand. They didn’t want Him. They didn’t desire for God to save them. They were, and still are, their own messiahs. Jesus would have went forward asking if there was another way, but the Father had destined it to be the only way.
*“Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted.” From the time Jesus started His ministry to the time He died upon that tree, and even all through the book of Acts, the majority of the Jewish society scoffed at Him and considered Him “stricken.” They figured God was cursing him when He died upon the cross. Why else would God allow such a righteous man to die?
*They are blind to the reality. This is why the statements were made at the cross that if Jesus were who He says He is, then lets see Him bring Himself down from the cross. We can see in this ultimate drama the heart of God in Christ who would hold nothing against His people by praying, “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.” The heart of man is also exposed, especially in the Jews who deny depravity or wickedness or sin in them, by their fierce anger and hatred for the Son of God. They didn’t just have a little bitterness because He called them out on their sins. They despised Him. They absolutely loathed, hated, gruesomely demoralized, viciously abominated and execrated Him.
*“But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds, we are healed.” I listened to a message by Paul Washer titled He Drank Your Hell. I think the title alone is enough to settle upon. He took upon Himself all of our sin, all of our transgression, all of our iniquity, and all of our condemnation.
*“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” What is interesting is that the only apostle that saw Jesus die was John, the brother of James. Every one else had run away. Even when Jesus had died, Mary, Martha, Mary the mother of Jesus, and John all went away.
*None of them had stayed with Him in heart. All had turned away. The evidence that they turned away in their hearts, even upon watching His death, was that no one believed He had risen from the dead. He was abandoned.
*“He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.” Isn’t it an amazing statement to consider that Jesus never once complained? He never grumbled. He took on this torture with joy. He knew what it entailed, and He did not shrink from it. Because of His submission even unto death, He was granted to be called the Lamb who is worthy to open to seals in Revelation 5. He was the Lamb that was silent, so now He is the Lamb of all authority.
*It says something about the nature of God. He was silent. Really consider this verse. When men are falsely accused, they blurt out their innocence. Paul and Silas experienced this. When they were imprisoned, it was a false accusation, and a false incarceration. Yet, they didn’t speak up. They were silent. They rejoiced in God within the jail. What is it about silence that is such an articulation of otherworldliness? What does silence in the midst of adversity speak that is so shocking?
*We have the very wisdom of God being displayed. This is something that is too holy to ignore. It is too sacred to pass over. This question of why was He silent and what does it mean is a burning bush for us. The wisdom of this world must defend self. Yet, the wisdom and character of God lets God defend. It doesn’t trust in self. As it is written, “Cursed be the man who trusts in man.”
*God Himself will be our deliverer, or we won’t have a deliverer. It is that simple. This is the wisdom that Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego held to. God will deliver us, but even if He doesn’t, we still won’t bow the knee. We won’t worship your system. We won’t be bought over with your wisdom. We won’t indulge ourselves with your values. Our trust is in the Lord, and He is our High Tower. Even if He doesn’t deliver us and we die at the hands of the wicked, we know our eternal destiny. We know in whom we have believed, and He is able to save to the uttermost.
*When we are not silent in our extremedies, or maybe a better way to put it is if we are complaining or defending self, then we are not truly trusting in the Lord. All of our acknowledgment of His Lordship is in vain. We might have the right words and the correct doctrines, but without the actuality in our personal lives, we are bankrupt and our so-called spirituality is null and void.
*“By oppression and judgment He was taken away. And who can speak of His descendants? For He was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgression of my people he was stricken.” It is interesting that one of the things that is pointed out is the oppression and judgment. This is actually something that symbolizes the principalities and powers of darkness. They’re whole system is governed on threat, intimidation, and scare tactics. The fact that Jesus was taken away by these very things displays to us that those who slew Jesus were indeed the spiritual forces at work in the world, not Jews.
*He was a eunuch for God, for “who can speak of His descendants?” He spoke once on how some people are born eunuchs and others are eunuchs by choice. He was one by choice. It helped Him to better serve His Father. He was undefiled by idols for His Bride. This is the definition of being a eunich: a virgin in spirit.
*The ideology of being a eunuch for God doesn’t mean that we don’t marry. It is a spiritual thing. Some people are born eunuchs; some are eunuchs by choice. God is coming back for a pure and spotless Bride. Have we been tainted by idols? Have we given ourselves over to doctrines without applying them into our own personal lives? Have we been more prone to enjoying a nice service with a few songs and a prayer and a sermon than to enjoying the Holy Spirit in silence? This concept of being a spiritual eunuch is not something that is favorably taught or learned today.
*It speaks of a suffering for the glory of God, and that suffering is, by nature, painful. We must undergo disconnect of some sort. We’ll be mocked and humiliated. We’ll be scorned. Those who don’t understand will constantly be pleading with us to go back to church, join our small group, bow to our system, take hold of the traditions of men again, eat with us though our hearts are not with you, lets have a laugh about it. In a sense, we are suffering for the glory of God so that we might not be impure before Him. In another sense, we are suffering for the sake of those immediately around us so that they have an alternative lifestyle presented before them. Though there is much ridicule, it is the very heart of God that we suffer for the sake of others, as Christ did.
*“He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.” I find it most interesting that Isaiah prophesies that His grave would be a rich man’s tomb. He was put in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb (Mark 15:43). Joseph of Arimathea was a “prominent member of the Council.” He was a rich man. He died the death of murderers and thieves, and was buried in a rich man’s tomb, just like Isaiah prophesied hundreds of years before.
*“Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the Lord makes His life a guilt offering, He will see His offspring and prolong His days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in His hand.” Notice that Jesus obeyed God’s will, even in becoming sin for our sakes. Was Jesus sinful? Did He somehow become the object of sin itself? No. It was imputed to Him the same way that the goat in the Old Testament would have sin imputed to it and then sent away into the wilderness to die.
*Jesus was, in the exact same way as that goat, led outside the city, the sins were imputed to Him, the Father, for the sins of the people, crushed him, and therefore He was made the guilt offering. Jesus was the fulfillment of even our offerings before the Lord.
*“After the suffering of His soul, He will see the light of life and be satisfied; by His knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, and He will bear their iniquities.” The point of the beginning of this verse? Jesus was raised from the grave. He saw the light of life and was satisfied. The resurrection has come. There is now freedom from death, sin, judgment, and self. By being raised from the dead, Jesus has broken the chains that bind us. We are invited to participate in that death burial and resurrection for our own freedom. This is how He justifies many.
*“Therefore I will give Him a portion among the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong, because He poured out His life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, for He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Isn’t it interesting how the chapter ends with “therefore,” he is pronounced as ruler? “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against His Anointed One… The One in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them… I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill… You are my son; today I have become your Father,” Psalm 2:1-7.
*Jesus is pronounce King and supreme Ruler to rule and reign and judge with righteousness all of the nations and kingdoms of the earth. He is also given all authority, even above the angels, to judge them, and the gods of this earth who are the principalities and powers of darkness. The reign of Satan is over. It isn’t coming to an end; it has already ended. The only thing that the enemy can do now is to deceive His people.
The Church
*The rulers of this age (i.e. the kingdom of darkness) should be in fear and dread of every member of the Body of Christ. We tear down strongholds, build up cities, come against demonic forces, and push back the kingdom of darkness. The sad reality is that this is not true about us. For the most part, we have not been pushing back the kingdom of darkness, but have instead been tolerant and acceptant of it.
*We can see in Isaiah 53 our role on the earth, both to this world and to the fallen angels. God has placed the responsibility of being a light to the world, and therefore to the principalities and powers of darkness. “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” This very first verse is a key place to begin. It is upon the Church that God has made known the mysteries of Christ. Who can believe our message? Who can understand our message? The fact that God would even ask this question would beg the answer: not many.
*I know that I am repeating myself here. I said the same thing about Christ. I want to ask the question, which I’ve already answered, of what the Gospel really is. What does it mean to evangelize? My belief falls around that evangelism itself is living out a lifestyle that is counter to what this world presents. We should be living as though we are in heaven. The government of God should govern our actions and our lives, and therefore we ought to be displaying before all men a lifestyle that is completely opposite of what they experience and know.
*Our daily lives should be the revealing of the arm of the Lord. Our witnessing, when in words, should be a direct reflection of who we are. It is in that reflection that we have authority and power. Because the Gospel we preach is not in word only, but in demonstration and in power of the Holy Spirit, our testimony demands the attention of our hearers.
*I would like now to establish the question of who our hearers are. Romans 1:16 tells us that the Gospel should go, “to the Jew first, and then also to the Greek.” Why do we need to go to the Jew first? The ministry of Paul certainly portrays this belief. Yet, why would God have us to go to the Jews before the other Gentiles?
*The Jew is the ultimate challenge for the Christian. The truth of the matter is that if you don’t go to the Jew first, you don’t go to him at all. We know that it says in Romans 11:28 that the Jews are the enemies of the Gospel for our sakes. What does that mean?
*Deuteronomy 32:7-9 says, “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations. Ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”
*What does this mean? Notice in verse 8 that God says, “when I separated the sons of Adam, I set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” Paul speaks on this, briefly, in Acts 17:26-27. “God has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation (their nation’s boundary lines), that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from every one o us.”
*What I’m trying to set up before you is something that is foreign to our modern teaching and understanding entirely. I believe that God says His people Israel are the epicenter of the world. The nations, and all the population of the world, are in direct proportion to Israel’s population and dispersion. They were called to be a nation of priests to all nations. Remember that “the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable,” Romans 11:29. God has called His people to a certain destiny, and they will fulfill it, or God is not God.
*Who do we witness to? “…to the Jew first, and then to the Greek.” Why would God set it up this way? As I began to say earlier, the Jew is the ultimate challenge for the Christian. Why and how is the Jew so challenging that it is an ultimate requirement? To be very blunt, the Jew is at the forefront of the whole world system and the wisdom of that world. Who else, but the Jews, have given us men such as Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Steven Spielberg, most of the banking presidents and lead CEO’s of major businesses throughout the world, weapons specialists and military tactic geniuses, corporate industry of modern times, and much, much more?
*When we witness to the Jew, we don’t merely bring a small thing. These are the men and women who have designed our modern times. To bring the Gospel to the modern Jew is to bring a world-view that is totally opposite and threatening of their mode of being, as well as all that they hold dear to and stand for. By God sending us to the Jew first, He is sending us to Pharaoh. He is sending us to the center of all filth and perversity in this world. He is sending us to the very kingdom of darkness.
*And how will you witness to them? Will you go and give them the 4 Spiritual Laws or 5 Things God Wants You to Know? Will you present to them clichés such as John 3:16 and God loves you and are you a believer? Will you ask them if they have repented? Are you going to give them some sort of quick truism that sounded good to you, but has barely any kind of weight or substance to it?