The indicative informs us of an accomplished fact. For example, “He made peace by the blood of His cross.” On the other hand, the imperative is a command or direction. In Ephesians 4:32, Paul gives us this command: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.”

“The gospel is not an imperative, but an indicative; not a condition to meet, but an announcement of what Christ has accomplished for sinners. However, the Divine summons to believe the gospel is an imperative (Acts 17:30, Matt 17:5, 6, 1 John 3:23) … a command stony hearted men refuse to believe (John 3:19, 20) unless God mercifully turns our heart of stone to a heart of flesh (Exek 36:26).” – John Hendryx

– David Pawson, Unlocking the Bible

Isaiah is (also) fascinating because of the way the book has been arranged in our Bibles. The chapter headings in the Bible are not inspired. (I wish we had a Bible without chapter and verse numbers, because then we would know our Bibles according to the flow of thought, and not in an artificial way according to ‘texts’, as we do today. For at least 1,100 years the Christian Church had Bibles without any chapter and verse numbers.)

But whoever divided Isaiah into chapters did a rather interesting thing, though I doubt whether it was deliberate. They divided the book into 66 chapters, the same number as the books of the Bible. Furthermore, they divided Isaiah into two distinct parts of 39 chapters and 27 chapters. It just happens that the Old Testament has 39 books and the New Testament 27.

Also, the message of the first 39 chapters summarizes the message of the Old Testament, and the message of the last 27 chapters summarizes exactly the message of the New Testament! The second part of Isaiah (i.e. chapter 40) begins with the voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord’ – words later used by John the Baptist. It moves on to a servant of the Lord who is anointed by the Holy Spirit, dies for the sins of his people, and is raised and exalted after his death. It then moves on to the declaration that ‘You shall be my witnesses to the ends of the earth’, and it finishes up with God saying, ‘I am making all things new. I create a new heaven and a new earth.’

In other words, if someone took the whole Bible and squeezed it into one book, you’d finish up with the prophecy of Isaiah. It is the Bible in miniature.

Even more remarkable is the fact that chapters 40-66 divide very clearly into three sections, each of nine chapters. So in chapters 40-48 the theme is comforting God’s people; in chapters 49-57 the theme is the Servant of the Lord, who dies and rises again; and chapters 58-66 are about the future glory.

Furthermore, each of these sections of nine chapters divides into three sections of three chapters. If you take the middle three there are three very clear sections; 49-51, 52-54 and 55-57. If you take the middle section (chapters 52-54), and the middle verse of the middle chapter of that middle section, you come to the key verse in the book: ‘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’ (53:5). None of this is inspired as such, but it is remarkable that even the central verse of the second section should sum up the central theme of the New Testament.

Dane Ortlund: Listened to some music and thought about Jesus this week. Here’s what I jotted down.

1. His forgiveness gets down underneath not just our conscious, but everything that is broken within us.
2. He ate lunch with hookers and crooked businessmen, not the conservative seminary professors.
3. Discipleship to him does not involve attaining a minimum level of competency. No resume is needed. Discipleship to him involves humbling ourselves, putting ourselves low, not high, and anyone can do that, if they will simply let Self die and be swallowed up by light and beauty and joy.
4. Those in union with him are promised that all the haunted brokenness that infects everything—every relationship, every conversation, every family, every email, every wakening to consciousness in the morning, every job, every vacation—everything—will one day be rewound and reversed.
5. Those in union with him are promised that the more darkness and hell we experience in this life, to that degree we will enjoy resplendence and radiance in the next (Rom. 8:17–18).
6. He never, ever asks his friends to walk through a trial that he, as the Pioneer-Author-Founder-Trailblazer (archegos: Heb 2:10; 12:2) has not himself, in an even more profound way, gone through himself.
7. His sinlessness does not encourage him to be aloof from us, holding us at arms length, but a substitute for us.
8. Unlike the laws of ritual cleanliness in Leviticus, Jesus’ touch of messy humans like me does not contaminate him. It cleanses me. In the OT, clean + unclean = unclean. With Jesus, clean + unclean = clean (Mark 1:41).
9. His mercy to sinners is not calculating, scale-weighing, careful. It is lavish, outrageous, unfettered.
10. His atoning death means he is free not to scrutinize. He needs not. All has been wiped clean. Faults remain, not just in our past but in our present. But the whole atmosphere in which we live has been transformed from one of scrutiny, both toward us by God and by us toward others, into one of welcome, both toward us by God and therefore by us toward others.
11. He no longer calls us servants, but friends, and he is the friend of sinners. Of sinners. Many of us are born again, serving the Lord with faithfulness, and have never really swallowed that.
12. He is not an idea or a philosophy or a theory or a framework or even a doctrine. He’s a Person. His blazing wrath upon the impenitent is matched by his gentle embrace of the penitent. He has nothing to say to the righteous (Mark 2:17).
13. He doesn’t resent me, as I do others, though I have given him many reasons to.
14. In all my stumbling and failing, he has not yet said, ‘Enough is enough. I’m out.’ Where sin abounds, grace hyper-abounds (Rom. 5:20). Continue reading →

GOD’S INHERITANCE

“For the Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.” (Deuteronomy 32:9)

This verse brings before us a most blessed and wonderful line of truth, so wonderful that no human mind could possibly have invented it. It speaks of the mighty God having an “inheritance,” and it tells us that this inheritance is in His own people! God refused to take this world for His inheritance—it will yet be burnt up. Nor did heaven, populated with angels, satisfy His heart. In eternity past Jehovah said, by way of anticipation, “My delights were with the sons of men” (Proverbs 8:31).

This is by no means the only scripture which teaches that God’s inheritance is in His saints. In Psalm 135:4 we read, “For the Lord has chosen Jacob unto Himself, and Israel for His peculiar treasure.” In Mal. 3:17 the Lord speaks of His people as His “special treasure” (see margin)—so “special” that the highest manifestations of His love are made to them, the richest gifts of His hand are bestowed on them, the mansions on High are prepared and reserved for them!

The same wondrous truth is taught in the New Testament. In Ephesians 1 we behold the apostle Paul praying that God would give unto His people the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him: the eyes of their understanding being enlightened that they might know “the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance” (verse 18). This is a truly amazing expression; not only do the saints obtain an inheritance in God, but He also secures an inheritance in them! How overwhelming the thought that the great God should deem Himself the richer because of our faith, our love and worship! Surely this is one of the most marvelous truths revealed in Holy Writ—that God should pick up poor sinners and make them His “inheritance!” Yet so it is!

But what need has God of us? How can we possibly enrich Him? Does He not have everything-wisdom, power, grace and glory? All true, yet there is something that He needs, yes, needs, namely, vessels. Just as the sun needs the earth to shine upon, so God needs vessels to fill, vessels through which His glory may be reflected, vessels on which the riches of His grace may be lavished.

Mark that God’s people are not only called His “portion,” His “special treasure, but also His “inheritance.” This suggests three things. First, an “inheritance is obtained through death: so God’s inheritance is secured to Him through the death of His beloved Son. Second, an “inheritance” denotes perpetuity—”to a man and his heirs forever” are the terms often used. Third, an “inheritance” is for possession, it is something which is entered into, lived upon, enjoyed. Let us now consider five things about God’s inheritance:

1. God purposed to have such an inheritance. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord; and the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance” (Psalm 33:12). The “nation” here is identical with the holy nation,” the “chosen generation, royal priesthood, peculiar people” of 1 Peter 2:9. This favored people was chosen by God to be His inheritance: it was not an afterthought with Him, but decreed by Him in eternity past. Before the foundation of the world God fixed His heart upon having them for Himself.

2. God has purchased His people for an inheritance. In Ephesians 1:14 we are told that the Holy Spirit is the “pledge of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory.” So again in Acts 20:28 we read of “the Church of God which He has purchased with His own blood.” God has not only redeemed His people from bondage and death—but for Himself.

3. God comes and dwells in the midst of His inheritance. “For the Lord will not cast off his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance” (Psalm 94:14) This is a clear proof that these scriptures are not referring to the nation of Israel after the flesh. Just as Jehovah tabernacled in the midst of the redeemed Hebrews, so He now indwells His church, both collectively and individually. “Don’t you know that you (plural) are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (I Cor. 3:16). “Don’t you know that your body (singular) is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” (I Cor. 6:19).

4. God beautifies His inheritance. Just as a man who has inherited a house or an estate takes possession of it and then makes improvements, so God is now fitting His people for Himself. He who has begun a good work within His own is now performing it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6). He is now conforming us to the image of His Son. Each Christian can say with the Psalmist, “the Lord will perfect that which concerns me” (Psalm 138:8). Nor will God be satisfied until we have been glorified. The Lord Jesus Christ “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body!” (Phil. 3:21) “When he shall appear—we shall be like Him!” (I John 3:2)

5. And what of the future? God will yet possess, live upon, and enjoy His inheritance. In the unending ages yet to be, God will make known the “riches of his glory” on the vessels of His mercy (Romans 9:23). The glory which God shall ever live upon—as upon an inheritance—shall rise out of His people. What a marvelous statement is that which is found at the close of Ephesians 2, where the saints are likened unto a building “fitly framed together (which) grows unto a holy temple in the Lord,” of whom it is said, “in whom you also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”

Wonderful and glorious is the picture presented before us in Revelation 21:1-4: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a beautiful bride prepared for her husband. I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, the home of God is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will remove all of their sorrows, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. For the old world and its evils are gone forever.”

What a marvelous statement is that in Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with his love, He will rejoice over you with singing.” The great God will yet say, “I am satisfied: here will I rest. This is My inheritance that I will live upon forever, even the glory which I have bestowed on redeemed sinners.” Surely we have to say with the Psalmist, ” Such knowledge is too wonderful for me—too great for me to know!” (139:6). May Divine grace enable us to walk worthy of our high calling.