ISAIAH 55
1 Ho, every one that thirsteth [Come, kol tzameh], come ye to the waters [mayim], and he that hath no money [kesef]; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy [yayin and cholov without kesef and without mekhir ].
There is more joy in the exercise of the understanding and of the higher faculties than can ever be found in the pursuit of merely secular aims of life. The service of God, the love of God, the opening out of the mind in the daily contemplation of God in prayer and reading, open out sources of peace and joy unknown to the man who knows not God and obeys not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ...
But the chief incentive relates to prospect. What prospect is there in natural life? None.
Human life is most truly compared to a flower. There is bloom and fragrance and beauty and promise in the first stage, but it is all short-lived-so short-lived. Everything is on the move, and we hasten on towards decay and death. There is nothing but darkness on the natural horizon. This is not pessimism but truth-from which it is the habit of men to avert their eyes. Avert eyes as they may, the fact waits them there, and every one sooner or later gets bitter wind of it.
All this is changed for those who listen to the voice of God appealing to them and pleading with them out of the Scriptures. "Ho every one that thirsteth, come to the waters . . . come to me. I will make an everlasting covenant with you. Hear, and your soul shall live. I will give to him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely." "Come out from among them (the unheedful) and be ye separate, and I will receive you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters." "To you that fear my name the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his beams."
With such relations and prospects, there is no darkness on the horizon. There is nothing but brightness and joy ahead. Even the present darkness is illuminated by the glory of joyful hope. Even in distress and infirmities, like Paul, we are enabled in a measure to take pleasure, knowing that they work out for us a state of preparedness for the unspeakable goodness which God has in reserve for those who love him.
Bro Roberts - Sunday Morning 259 TC 11/1894
3 Incline your ear [ozen], and come unto Me: hear, and your soul [nefesh] shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant [Brit Olam] with you, even the sure mercies of David [chasdei Dovid hane'emanim].
cp Acts 13:34, Rev 22:17
"The God of Israel spake to me, saying, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And He (the Just One) shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear sbining after rain. Although my house be not so with God; yet He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure; for this is all my salvation and all my desire, although He make it not to grow" (2 Sam. 23:3-5).
This covenant of the throne and kingdom was David's desire and salvation, because it promised him a resurrection to eternal life, in the assurance that his house, kingdom, and throne, with God's son and his son, one person, sitting upon it, should be established in his presence for ever.
..."I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, saying, Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations. He shall cry unto me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation. Also I will make him my first-born, higher than the kings of the earth. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing which has gone out of m lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven'' (Psalm 89:3, 4, 19-28, 34-37).
After these testimonies there requires no further proof that David's family was constituted by a solemn covenant the Royal House of God's Kingdom; and that one of David's posterity whom God should acknowledge to be his son, should be its everlasting king. The claims of Jesus to be David's Seed and God's Son have been fully established by his resurrcetion from the dead; which is an assurance to all men, both Jews and Gentiles, that God hath appointed him, as the Holy one of Israel their king; to rule the world in righteousness, and to establish truth and equity among the nations; as God sware to Moses, saying, "Truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord."
Elpis Israel 2.4.
7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto Yahweh, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our Elohim, for he will abundantly pardon.
Many feel that they are too evil to come and accept these glorious things of the Spirit. There is a certain amount of truth in that, yet we are invited not to stand back on account of it. ..The wicked man is told not to stay away because of his wickedness, provided he forsake his way. He is assured that the Lord will have mercy upon him. God says,
"My ways are not your ways, they are higher than yours."
Man is unmerciful; God is gracious and full of compassion. This is one of our comforts. If we are failing and shortcoming, we have to deal with a God who is slow to anger and ready to pardon. Of course there are conditions. A reasonable man would be eager to conform to the conditions. It would be terrible anarchy if there were no conditions, yet the conditions are simple. Let a man believe in Christ and obey him, and he will receive forgiveness of sins. Afterwards there will be fightings and overcomings. We must be doers of the Word and not hearers only;
"Faith without works is dead."
If we do not always come up to the full mark of the attainment in Christ, we have a High Priest. Peter actually denied Christ, but was forgiven because Christ prayed for him, for he knew that Peter loved him. If we love Christ and are bending our strength to the doing of his will, he will ask God to pardon us, and God will pardon whomsoever Christ asks for. ..., that we may not be overwhelmed by the sense of our shortcomings, and that we may be emboldened to-
"Lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees."
Seasons 1.104
11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
We need not be discouraged because of the stolid indifference of the people to the truth. Flesh and blood is naturally swinish and unimpressible by the thoughts of God. The world, which is choked with religion, such as it is, is made of this stiff-necked material. It is in the state of an inebriate who has caroused himself into delirium tremens, or a snoring apoplexy. Its excitation or brain-congestion can only be relieved by copious depletion.
To preach the truth to it is like telling fables to a deaf man; putting a jewel in a swine's snout; or casting things holy to dogs. This is the nature of the flesh and blood world-it is only evil, and that continually. But all the individuals of this perverse race are not so absolutely controlled by the evil thereof as to be incapable of sobriety in word and deed.
The race has some "honest and good hearts" yet, which are as salt, preserving it from total and irretrievable corruption. They require, however, to be salted with wisdom, and persecution, or fire, for the truth's sake, to make them fit for the Master's use. Mark 9:49, 50; Col. 4:6.
It is for the salting of these hearts that those who are already salted have to labor with a right good will. They must
"contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints,"
with the conviction all the time, that a Paul may plant, and an Apollos water, but God only gives the increase.
All we have to do is to dig, plow, sow, work, as men do who leave it to the sun by day and moon by night, and to the air, earth, and rain, to give the increase from that begotten in the soil.
We as day laborers need not be discouraged if we do our duty, be there increase or not. All that we have to do in the premises is that we be "workmen who rightly divide the word of truth," Tim. 2:15, and not as those who handle the word of God deceitfully; and fear to affirm his principles boldly lest some one whose corns are pinched by the gospel-shoe (feet shod with the preparation of the good news of peace, Eph. 6:15,) should cry out "sectarianism!" and threaten you with the rebuke of Jesus and the apostle Paul!
The word, where properly put into the right kind of soil, will yield just such an increase as God has predetermined. He has sent it as the rain and snow of heaven for the fructification of the earth. that sowers, and reapers, and eaters, may all rejoice together at harvest-home.
...What hath he pleased, and what hath he sent his word to do? "To take out of the Gentiles a people for his name." Acts 15:14. He is going to set up a kingdom which is to rule over all the earth and sea; and He requires a people sufficiently numerous to administer its affairs to his praise, honor, and glory.
This being his purpose, he does not need as great a multitude as is generally supposed when men entangle themselves in speculations about the number of the saved. "Many are called," says the King," but few are chosen;" "strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it;" "many will seek to enter in, and shall not be able." Mat. 7:14; 20:16; Luke 13:23. These are not our words; but they are his, who spake the words of God.
Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Mar 1858
12 For ye shall go out with joy [simcha], and be led forth with peace [back with shalom]: the mountains and the hills [harim and the geva'ot] shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field [kol atzei hasadeh].
13 Instead of the thorn [thornbush] shall come up the fir tree [cypress], and instead of the brier [sirpad (nettle, prickly herb)]shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to Yahweh for a name [Shem], for an everlasting sign [ot olam lo yikaret] that shall not be cut off.
When the marriage, or union, takes place between the sons of Zion, and their King, with the Land of Promise in Eden, it will again become the garden of the Lord, or Paradise, which His own right hand hath planted. For
"the Lord shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places; and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody " (Isaiah 51:3).
Elpis Israel 1.2.