Thursday 22 September

Isaiah 51:17-54:17

My gob is smacked.  I am quite literally churned up inside.  I’m not quite sure why - I’ve read this passage a good number of times before.  But today I’m feeling slightly emotional about the fact that Jesus is so vividly and undeniably foretold in these amazing chapters.  Isaiah was a man watching a nation’s hopes crumble around him.  He daily saw his country-men and friends plodding through life in exile, performing menial jobs in Babylon, aching with confusion over the loss of their temple and their land.  And then he somehow spoke of One who would come and take up his people’s iniquities and carry their sorrows.  He somehow perceived that One would come who would be assigned a grave with the wicked even though there was no deceit in his mouth.  Isaiah spoke about a coming servant who would be made a guilt offering and who would justify many.  What on earth could Isaiah have thought he was seeing?  Throughout all of Israel’s history there had been no sense of anything like this.  The thing Israel had that bore the sins of someone else was the atonement goat that was sent off into the wilderness.  And, although Isaiah said his vision had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him I don’t think he was seeing a goat.  Isaiah must have been seeing Jesus 600 years before He was born.  The pre-existent Jesus, the Word of John 1 was showing himself to his people half a millennium before he became flesh.  Jesus was whispering in the ears of his prophets through all the ages past.  He is so amazing.  He is so incredibly eternally, generous and tender towards his people.  Oh, I’ve started crying over the wonder of it.  That’s slightly embarrassing in Starbucks.

Ephesians 1:1-23

This is a stonking book.  While Galatians hammered in on the ‘now’, on what we do after we have come to faith, Ephesians sticks its finger under our chin and tilts our face up higher - we gaze in wonder at our future inheritance and the glorious majesty of the heavenly realms.  The heavenly realms are not just a future destination but have always existed.  And our names have been written there since before the dawn of time.  These heavenly realms don’t quite sit in parallel to our realm but engulf it and sit over it, always real, always majestic, always rumbling and effervescing with the glorious promise of hope.  These heavenly realms have always been fingerprinting the world but there will be a day - when the times have reached fulfillment - when the heavenly and the earthly will completely become one, under the headship of Christ.  That is when our calling - and the creation’s calling - will be made secure.  On that day we will become staggeringly holy.  On that day we will be completely blameless in His sight and in the sight of all mankind.  On that day every nugget and ruffle of creation will be fully and utterly caught up into perfection, into faultless rhythmic incandescent praise of the great King who made it and perfects it and satisfies it in every imaginable way.  And we have a foretaste of this day sitting within us now.  The Spirit is a deposit paid to us on the point of faith.  It is a portion of that future wonder and power that we can enjoy and experience and be reassured by now.  The Spirit brings that staggering holiness, that unimaginable power and shocking joy and injects it into our current reality.  The Spirit holds our hands and takes up residence in our hearts, continually speaking to us and showing us the One who is far above all rule and all authority, who effortlessly rises above all power and dominion and title that can be given.  The Spirit fills us with His fulness and He does it in every way.  It’s time to press into the Spirit.  

Psalm 109:21-31

They may curse, but you will bless.  Opposition to us following Jesus is virtually certain.  But ultimately it doesn’t matter at all.