A rather dire predicament appears in Isaiah chapter 6 verse 10 which then appears as confirmed in Matthew’s gospel chapter 13 verse 15. It raises the question of  the reliability of widespread understanding of divine revelation when the converted presents a panorama of chaos and a manifestation of the same kind of conversion hiccups.

Why the Isaiah predicament?  Why the New Testament times predicament?  Do we not have one too?

Isaiah 6:10

“Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Otherwise they might see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed.”

When the high priest Caiaphas uttered the words concerning the death of one man for the nation he spoke the truth, but it was not with the understanding of the Paschal Lamb becoming reality in the life of the Nazarene Yeshua.  He spoke out of ignorance but it was the truth.   So John tells us of that incident that Caiaphas prophesied; he spoke with authority but his mind was fruitless.

Matthew 13:14

And unto them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise understand; And seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive:

People say the truth without surrendering  to its majesty.  Every truth has a grace or we can kiss goodbye to conversion.  What truth might we be saying? 

Ahmaud Arbery: Trump laments ‘heart-breaking’ killing – BBC News

My heart goes out to the parents and the family and friends,” Mr Trump told Fox News on Friday.

I for one, in the community of people targeted by American racism, appreciate the current presidential heart be kept as far away as possible from humans. The bigots in the federal government should be pulling out all stops for an investigation of the coverup of the murder of Mr. Arbery.

What heart is potus45 lying about now?

our parents insisted that we tell the truth when a misbehaviour is under investigation and we should do so even when we know that someone is going to have to give account. I hope yours did too, because right now, AD 2020, is a bad time to flirt with lies of any kind, and we find Church and state frequently in collusiion with known lies and misdirection.

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John. 8:12

The opportunity to separate oneself from lying rhetoric seems to have come to Yeshua’s contemporaries after Yeshua announced that He was the world’s light. If he was the world’s light what were the sacred texts, the temple services, the priesthood and the Davidide monarchy? An examination of these staples in Jewish life were opportunities to not lie any more about history.

This saying – John 8:12 – was like salt in the wound, intended to heal, but the sting was volatile. It set off the bells about the self-talk that had guided the thinking of Yeshua’s contemporaries and many generations before and since. There was a great deal of stumbling in Israelite history and the darkness was never obscure. Sinai’s darkness, the cycle of subjugation duing the Judges era, the subsequent bad kings and exile made the Isaiah prediction of the land that walked in darkness seeing a great light an all the more attractive incentive to tell the truth.

The response to Yeshua’s testimony kept trying to separate him from God, while Yeshua did not even have to try: he naturally imitated God – his father. The work on the Sabbath (John 5:17), the healing of the sick (frequently), and the forgiveness of sin ( Matt. 9:2, Matt. 9:5, Mark. 2:5, Mark. 3:28, Luke. 5:20, Luke. 7:47, Luke. 7:48) were evidence that needed no explanation or debate. When did Satan ever open blind eyes or shone light into dark places? Never!

Being unable to separate Yeshua from what they knew to be God’s goodness they resorted to technicalities such (a) as a man canot be God, and (b) the need for two or three witness to establish a matter. We can overlook the “God cannot be man” argument by referring to the creation of mankind in God’s image. The question of witness was truly moot.

Yeshua was doing, in the first place, what the Father does and what people wanted the Father to do. Secondly, it is ridiculous for anyone to think that God was allowing someone to do work that was exclusively his. Did not God stop the Egyptian magicians immediately when they tried to duplicate the transformation of Moses’ rod into a serpent? Thirdly, which human could say he or she knows anything about the Father’s person? None. Only God knows God.

But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. Heb. 1:8,

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John. 1:17, No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. John. 1:18,

John 1:17-18

When it come to grace one lie ruins everything.

How dreadful a fate it is to hear from the One who holds the keys “You will die in your sin”! That is about as horrendous and alarming as a situation can be.

They knew neither Yeshua nor God, and Isaiah predicted (6:10) no path to conversion for the masses (confirmed in Matthew 13:15). They kept substituting their views and rhetoric in order to short circuit Yeshua’s message. Do not do this!

So he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.”

John. 8:21

How do you tell the boss he’s about to lose his business? How do you tell the king of kings that in a very short while his empire would crumble? Very courageously and without stroking his ego, and get ready to be fired.

Then the king gave orders to call in the magicians, the conjurers, the sorcerers and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king. The king said to them, “I had a dream and my spirit is anxious to understand the dream.”

Daniel 2:2-3

The great King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream and it was so terrifying it woke him and robbed him of sleep.

We also have to consider that the dream was also embarrassing to him. How could the ruler of the world tell anyone what he saw when it looked like his certain demise? His advisers would be hard pressed to ask him if he was certain about what he saw. They would be sure to say “No, your majesty, that’s not going to happen to you”.

King Nebuchadnezzar sure seems to have lost it. Whether he was factually robbed of his memory or was simply incredulous about his fate, we have to realize that his terror was real. He believed that the content of that dream was something that the wisemen and the soothsayers would be able to tell him, and he wanted from them both the dream and what it meant.

Your steely term ends

More than a few of rulers think of themselves as golden and immortal heads. Truth be told, all are bound for a collision with the stone of God. Since Nebuchadnezzar was king of kings nations have deteriorated into cheap metallic identities. There followed Persia, Greece, and Rome, identified respectively by silver, brass, and iron. Monuments and memorials are futile attempts to keep alive dead people. We are far better off paying attention to the heroes that are alive. There are not many. Real heroes are rare. There are certainly no Nebuchadnezzars, Dariuses, Alexanders, or Caesars because the gold, silver, and bronze are gone. All that is left is iron, and iron mixed with dirt. The Brits and Americans can hurl a lot of steel around kick up a lot of dirt but fewer and fewer people are buying the promise of a land that flows with milk and honey and lasts forever.

Every cookie crumbles. The flows of people into Europe and North America are historic: the flow of people has thrown migration for a loop, and empire means nothing today except a technological and virtual drama played out in situation rooms. The next move is up to the hardliners, those who think that they have a destiny to rule the world by demanding worship and threatening death. Utopia gets fried in its own rhetoric of greatness.

The frequency of Nazarene dustups with the deadly triad should leave no doubt that the barrel was over the “falls”. John was polite about it and called the situation “axe about to chop the tree”: timber time. The Nazarene too kept his evaluation of the powerbrokers of the times until the third year of his ministry. Does a “house desolate” and “chickens rejecting the safety of the hen’s wings” sound like the rubberstamping of the patriarchal tradition or the covenant that underpinned the action at the centre of life in New Testament times in Judea?

We can tell that he became the target of envious elders, paranoid priests, wannabe rulers like the Herods and shallow and corrupt experts in the Law of Moses as predicted in exquisite detail. They saw the end arrive and an empty future beckoning.

Was there really a god in Israel? Did we not hear from Yahweh that the effect of his personally accompanying the Israelites on the journey to Canaan would be destruction? We have to believe that the Lord himself was not present until the second temple. The third temple, sometimes associated with Ezekiel’s vision, is yet future, and is problematic because, for one reason among many, its services include an offering for the prince’s sins (Ezekiel 45:22). The prince in a third temple cannot be a sinner, especially not after the divine presence in the second temple.

Second temple glory

The temple of the restoration period was not much to see when compared to Solomon’s construction project. The older individuals made the comparison and saw the second temple as “not much”.

Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?

Haggai 2:3

It was this house/temple (bayit בית) that God promised to fill with glory.

And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.

Haggai 2:7

Malachi reports this same progress, identifying the house and the One with the glory.

1. John the Baptist, my messenger
2. Yahweh, the one sought, the covenant messenger
3. His house, Yahweh’s
4. behold, (=”mark it”)

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.

Malachi 3:1

The Present God with Benefits

There is a saying in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians that teaches us that character change occurs by observing. The saying takes the lie with dog rise with fleas proverb to a realistic level by registering intelligent thought and not just presence. It is a special kind of self-reflected viewing with Christ as the essential window, mirror or eyepiece. Without Christ people can not expect to acquire holiness.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:18

We might also recall that in ancient Israel, lepers and widows, representing the depths of anguish and poverty, did not get the privilege of a visitation by either God or a messenger.

Remember too the cloud and fiery pillar and the intermittent conversations with Moses in a particular place can hardly called residence. It is a long held position that there are sacred spaces in every land, and people are warned about the sacredness of churches and other buildings for religious purposes.

And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.

1 Kings 18:27

No change no God

Thousands of years hanging with Yahweh ends in failure to show he was not there. America’s spacious skies are polluted with idolatry, and the amber waves of grain are weeds planted by the enemy.

There is no God in any human institution but he certainly lives in the hearts of those who have come to God by faith in Christ. This is the ultimate configuration of God living with humans, and is confirmed as permanent by the very gift of the Holy Spirit.

who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Ephesians 1:14 (compare 2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5)

The fertility of a land is not proof of divine presence. Let’s remember that even the desert is beautiful for what it contains and what it goes through. Dates from the Republic of Iran, mangoes from Mexico and pomegranates from Israel are produced by the same natural processes and for the same purpose. God is no more present in the Middle East than he is in Glasgow. God has blessed the earth and seas and feeds humanity from their bounty. There is no need for an elitist land – ultimately because true worship has no fixation on any location. The earth is still beautiful everywhere. Ask the people on every continent.