"The Rights of God" # 11

The Place of God In His House (continued)

In Isaiah 52:13-15, we see the Lord Jesus exalted and extolled:

"Behold, My servant shall deal wisely, He shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. Like as many were astonied at Thee (His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men): So shall He sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at Him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they understand."

And then we are taken further to the Cross, the great fifty-third chapter, and beyond the Cross to His reign.

"Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faced from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not....

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hat put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the travail of His sol, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He hath poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

Thus we have in Isaiah a comprehensive presentation of the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The people of Israel did not fulfill the thought of God. Captivity was the only way left for them. Because God wanted to demonstrate His plan for His people, it was necessary to cut them off from the place of His glory, Jerusalem. A large section of Isaiah points to the captivity which awaited them.

But our attention is now drawn to the context in which Isaiah sees all of these events. Even the captivity stands in connection to the Lord on His throne. What else does this mean, except the irrefutable assurance that God's will will be done, that God's plan will be fully realized. But if God wants to reach His goal, then He Himself has to create the prerequisite for fulfillment in His people. Therefore He must educate His people in the school of suffering, by way of purging, so that they will be willing to walk in the way of His thoughts, to act with the deepest interest from the heart for His will to be done.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 12)