Your heart is always in motion: You’re either moving toward Me or away from Me. That’s why you’ve got to continually seek Us out.

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There’s a fly in the olive oil, though, and his name is Ishmael. He is not a descendent of that first Ishmael way back from Abraham’s union with Hagar. Rather, he is a descendant of Isaac and even somehow connected to the royal line, though Jeremiah and the writer of Kings think so little of this Ishmael that they give him a genealogy so sparse you can’t tell how he has any royal claim. If there is any of the blood of kings in his veins, it’s of the wicked ones; Ishmael is jealous and murderous.

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And so, the servant who is Isaiah’s focus is a figure of tremendous importance in this journey. Therefore, before We leave Isaiah’s servant passages behind, let Us look for a moment at the last one in which everything comes together. If you’d like to have your own breakout session with all four of what are termed “The Servant Songs,” they’re found at these coordinates in Isaiah: 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; and finally the longest at 52:13-53:12.

 

Now, the significance of the final servant song is attested to by how Isaiah immediately follows it.[1] There is a shift in reality so significant brought by the servant that Isaiah immediately gathers himself and issues the command to “Sing!” He just happens to issue that command to a representative barren woman.

[1] At Isaiah 54:1.

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Since this servant is tasked with bringing Jacob/Israel back, the one about to be born must therefore be someone other than Jacob/Israel. And so, in the very least, while We Are not by any means issuing a road map in all these things, We are pointing to something, to someone, extraordinary who must be someone other than the entire nation acting as My servant, for they are going to be the vehicle of Israel’s restoration to Me.

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Jeremiah previously referred to My righteousness somehow becoming yours, and now Ezekiel adds a significant level to that by promising this: My Spirit will be inside you. If that doesn’t have the ring of a heaven-and-earth-shattering game-changer to you, then something’s wrong. We Are going to have a whole heaping lot to say about this as We go along, but for now, can you see the shift We Are building into the Abraplan with these words? My Spirit within you. We Are moving away from human obedience as the primary driver of covenantal relationship toward a new covenant in which I Am in the driver’s seat instead. Not that I haven’t been all along as Sovereign Lord of All that Is, but I intentionally lowered Myself and condescended to be bound by contract to mortals. By default, human weakness and inability to sustain prolonged fidelity has determined the current contract’s outcome.

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“Wrath” is a strong word. I hope that by now you see that, even though “wrath” is bandied about willy-nilly in association with Me, it takes Me a very long time to get to that point; and when I do, it’s because it’s the only option left. It has taken Us centuries to come to a moment of wrath with Our children – yet even that is tempered with mercy and with the hopeful prospect of a future remnant. Nebuchadnezzer, on the other hand, tempers not his temper, and pours his wrath out upon Jerusalem and Zedekiah for his foolish resistance. Yet even as he does so, Nebuchadnezzar is acting in accordance with the contract with which We and the kings and people of Jerusalem are bound, satisfying Our obligations outlined within the covenant, obligations triggered and contractually required by the people’s failure to abide by (or even make the attempt in many cases) the covenant.[1] The covenant that had not bound Our people to behavior half as much as it bound them in relationship – exclusive relationship – with Me.

[1] Once again, if We Are going to remain righteous and holy (and We must lest the universe be unmade), We Are bound and required by the mutually agreed upon covenant with Our people to allow its stated consequences and penalties to run their course.

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While We certainly use parable and metaphor with nearly all our prophets, Ezekiel takes this to all new, performance art form levels using all manner of props: clay, swords, scales, mountain ranges, luggage, wildlife, vines, kitchen utensils, bones, you name it.

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Then the dense promises of this passage hit: Israel will live in safety and Judah will be saved by the king from David’s line who reigns wisely and rules in justice and righteousness. All key words, but particularly that last one: righteousness. Remember, that’s the driving theme and force of Our entire story with you. I Am righteous, perfect, and holy. You begin so in Eden, but then when you choose to rebel and are rendered unrighteous by your actions, a rift is torn between us. It is the repair of that separation – the gulf between righteousness and unrighteousness, between perfection and imperfection – that is the purpose of the Abraplan in order that We can be face to face with you again, just as We rehearsed with you a few pages ago in the previous chapter.

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You actually get to eavesdrop on Our calling Jeremiah to write down his/Our prophecies – something We’ve obviously done with all the written prophets but rarely had you witness. He actually dictates it all to a finely educated fellow named Baruch, whose name you may recognize as “Blessed.” This takes a while, given that Jeremiah’s got a lot to say and that it’s all painstakingly recorded in an alphabet far more complicated than yours; so it’s not until sometime in the next year that the scroll is finished and has its first excursion.

Jeremiah has been banned by officials from Our house because of the previous perilous brouhaha he incited there. He thus appoints Baruch not only the writer but also the reader of their project to the public, advising the scribe to wait for a day on the calendar appointed to a solemn time of fasting so that the people are more likely to be in a somber mood when hearing the sobering scroll. When the appropriate day comes along, Baruch delivers the great and vast message…

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If you’re familiar with the Book of Job, Habakkuk is nearly a CliffsNotes version of that masterpiece, with both men going through a similar questioning journey (though Habbakuk is spared Job’s personal strife) to find in the end their answer is to take the long view and trust that I Am indeed working and will prevail in the end.[1]

[1] There is of course more to Job’s 42 chapters which We shall eventually discuss a bit more.

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The broader point, of course, is that Josiah is a great example for you. This is why Kings and Chronicles gush over the fellow. He did the right thing. He didn’t know he wasn’t doing the right thing at first, but as soon as he found out, he had a “How do I fix this?” attitude and went to work. Now, that’s obviously an oversimplification, but you get the point. You may be merrily on your way but then faced with some new information about Me, Us, you and the whole shebang. (Listen, since you are incapable of knowing all things, it’s virtually certain you will be exposed to new information about Me, Us, and you on a regular basis.) The key to following Josiah’s example is to, like him, understand the overriding importance of anything that will get you closer to Me. Once you know you’re hearing from Me, follow his example of cutting out the negative and replacing it with the positive. You’ve got to go with what you know. He had one lousy scroll to work with: You’ve got the entire Owner’s Manual. Read it with Josiah’s attitude, and you’ll be On The Way, friend.

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And so it is that, one day, as Hilkaiah reaches the furthest and farthest non-descript door deep in the bowels of the temple – where the only footprints in the floor’s thick dust are his own – Hilkiah makes a double discovery. First is a chest, a money chest holding the untouched and forgotten upkeep cash from days gone by. Then the light of his torch flickers on something in the corner. There are piles of stuff here and there throughout the place, as nothing like a Hezekiah-cal systematic cleaning has hit this remote room yet. When he looks more closely, he sees the carved end of a wooden pole sticking out from under a nondescript heap. Stepping closer and moving things aside, he discovers that what caught his eye at first was the end of an ETZ HAYIM (the Hebrew term both for The Tree of Life and for the poles around which the Torah/Our Law[1] is wound [see Proverbs 3:13-18]). Hilkaiah practically drops his torch in excitement…

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So giddy is Hezekiah to be receiving ambassadors from Babylon that he loses all sense of good judgment whatsoever. Wanting to impress the Babylonian celebrities and show them how great Judah has become, Hezekiah shows these guys all his assets. And I mean everything – weapons, silver, gold, all the way down to the high-grade oil and spice used in the kitchen. As Kings and Isaiah sum up, “There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them.”[1]

[1] II Kings 20:13/Isaiah 39:2

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And thus comes one of the greatest moments of Hezekiah’s life, as he brings Sennacherib’s diplomatic cable and spreads it out before Me in the very temple Hezekiah himself reclaimed for its intended use: focused on Me On The Way. His noble prayer to Me not only speaks of his wisdom and faith, but also of one of the longstanding purposes behind Our relationship with Israel – that other nations may witness Our glory in Our faithfulness to Our children. You know I’d like for you to read it. How could I say these things about it and have you skip it? Handily, it’s in both II Kings 19 (14-19) and Isaiah 37 (14-20), whichever’s more convenient.

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You see, major change can happen quickly. Sure, Judah’s going to be working through some consequences for a while to come, but Hezekiah turns his heart and nation back to Me in a matter of days. You may all this time have been holding yourself back from turning to Me, thinking even that by working through Our story with humanity that you might gain some kind of momentum to work up the gumption to trust in Me like some of the people on these pages have done, Hezekiah at the moment. Well, then, let Hezekiah show you The Way and get moving already.

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You see, like you’re watching Me do on multiple levels, the prophets are fulfilling multiple roles simultaneously as they live out Our call on them. As We’ve stated, their primary purpose is to give Our kids one last chance to wake up and smell the pending destruction in the hope of spurring the sudden turnaround that would trigger the protection clauses We would love to be required to kick in at this point. Barring that, the prophets are also making sure We do all We possibly can to ensure that Our children learn something from the consequences they’re bringing upon themselves and are about to go through. Just as your judicial system not only determines guilt and punishment, but also endeavors to make sure in the process that the accused understands the charges against them and knows what they’ve done to merit the court’s intervention, We Are making sure Israel understands what’s going on.

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