51. Rejoice, The LORD Reigns (4)

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Hymn: RHC 7 God Moves in a Mysterious Way 43 God Is Still on the Throne 532 Saviour, Like a Shepherd Lead Us

Isaiah 11:11-16

11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. 12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. 13 The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim. 14 But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them. 15 And the LORD shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod. 16 And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.

Rejoice, The LORD Reigns (4)

OUTLINE

  • Glories of His First Coming (v1-5)
  • Glories of His Second Coming (v6-10)
  • Return of Israel to the Promised Land (v11-16)

Continue…

A thought on the glories of Christ’s Second Coming.

The instant man rose up against God all the animals rose up against man.[1] There is no reason to believe that during the short and sunny day that was spent in Paradise the lion devoured the lesser animals, or that the wolf preyed and fed upon flesh that he had torn to pieces. Surely such a spectacle in Eden would have been incompatible with its peace, its blessedness, and its harmony. If then we can show, as we can by the highest possible probabilities, that the wolf becoming ravenous, that the lion becoming a beast of prey, were the results of the primeval fall, it is logical and just to infer that when the cause of the mischief shall be obliterated, and the Great Maker shall come forth the Redeemer and the Remaker of all things, these animals shall be restored to their pristine brotherhood, and shall again be the willing servants of man; and that the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and the wolf dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid; and that the child shall put his hand upon the hole of the asp, and shall not be stung or injured.[2]

We can still see in the constitution of the brute creation traces of the ancient lordship of man. It is said that if a man has nerve to look a lion steady in the face, unless the brute be wrestling with hunger and famine, the lion will shrink from him. There is upon the brute creation the lingering shadow of their ancient subjection; there is a sort of instinctive impression in the very nature of the brute that man is his superior and his lord; and that instinctive impression will one day become a grand reality; and all the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the fish of the ocean, in perfect harmony with each other, and restored to fellowship with man, shall be man’s willing and obedient servants, and recognise him as king, and lord, and ruler. Nay, it is added, lest there should be any mistake, “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.” Now what is to be the cause of all this? Here is the cause of it: “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” What does this teach us? That religious truth is the secret of social harmony and peace. This shall take place only when all men shall know God from the least to the greatest, and the whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of Him.[3]

11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.

Assyria was located in the northern part of Mesopotamia which corresponds to most parts of modern-day Iraq, as well as parts of Iran, Kuwait, Syria and Turkey.

Cush is Ethiopia, Elam is Persia, modern Iran, Shinar is Babylon, modern day Iraq, Hamath is a city in West of Syria on Orontes River, an early Hittites settlement.

The rise of Israel was given in Deuteronomy 28:1 (KJV) And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:

And Israel’s fall, scattering and dispersal was prophesised even before they entered the Promised Land in Deuteronomy 28:63-68 (KJV) And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it. And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see. And the LORD shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.

Deuteronomy 31:27-29 (KJV) For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the LORD; and how much more after my death? Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to record against them. For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye will do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger through the work of your hands.

From the establishment of the nation under Joshua after Israel crossed the Jordan River in 1405 B.C to the United Kingdom of Israel under David and Solomon in 1010 B.C., to the destruction of the Northern Kingdom in 722 B.C. and the Southern Kingdom in 586 B.C. And their return in 516 B.C. to the land and the building of the Second Temple to the time of Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 after the crucifixion of Christ 40 years earlier, came the second dispersal, called the diaspora.

In 70 A.D., the Roman General Titus destroyed Jerusalem the Holy City and set it on fire as recorded by the historian Josephus. A million souls perished in the flames and by the sword!

This destruction was prophesied by none other than our Lord in the Olivet Discourse:

Luke 21:20-24 (KJV) And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

An episode from the Jewish revolt that brought the holocaust upon Jerusalem is the story of Massada. Nearly one thousand Jewish men, women and children who had survived the fall of Jerusalem refused to surrender to Rome. They took over King Herod’s fortress on the steep rock-mountain of Massada by the Dead Sea. For three years they managed to hold their own against repeated Roman assaults to dislodge them. When the Romans finally broke through, they found that the Jews had committed mass suicide. Massada has become the Jewish watchword for resistance against the enemy to the bitter end. It is the symbol of courage and heroism and of the choice of death over slavery.

Massada Fortress is half a mile long, 220 yards wide and rises to 2,000 feet above the Dead Sea. First built by Alexander Jannavs the High Priest, it was reconstructed and embellished by Herod the Great in 40 BC. He “fortified it to protect himself from the Jews should they try to depose him.” The fortress was surrounded by an 18 ft wall with 38 towers each 75 ft high. Beside were store houses, barracks, arsenals, cisterns to collect rain water, and a royal palace. It was a masterpiece of engineering!

Following the destruction of the Temple and City in 70 A.D. a large number of Jews were sold into slavery or exiled to neighbouring or distant countries. These countries were given in our text in verse 11.

Their descendants became the nucleus of the Jewish communities that sprung all over the world, even to this day. When another revolt occurred in the reign of Hadrian 132-135 AD, the scattering of all Jews from their homeland was complete. This is now known as the Diaspora.

12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

Then Isaiah repeats, “And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse,” that is, Christ, “which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek.”

The display of this ensign or Jehovah Nissi—that is, God our ensign—will be the signal of the restoration of His own ancient people: “The Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.

And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” This is a result which our country will probably help.

The dispersed of Judah are the race we see in the streets of every city still in existence. The suffering outcasts of Israel, the ten tribes that revolted under Jeroboam, are also somewhere on the earth.

To keep their chins up while in diaspora the Jews would say, “Next year in Jerusalem,” whenever they bade farewell to one another. The Holy City upon which God had put His seal was remembered and recited from the Psalms again and again:

Psalm 78:67-70 (KJV) Moreover he refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim: But chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved. And he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which he hath established for ever. He chose David also his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds:

13 The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.

I believe this to be a strictly literal prediction. What can explain the existence of that most extraordinary phenomenon that stares you in the face, go where you will—the Jew? You find him everywhere — retaining his sacred Hebrew and yet using the languages of the Gentiles. A Jew can speak two, or three, or more languages; they speak more languages probably than the people of any nation upon earth. They have been sifted over the earth — they are scattered through every nation.

Now if something like the breath of heaven should descend with its warm, genial, and regenerating force upon that scattered, disintegrated, sifted race, they would all at once and in a day recognize Him whom their fathers crucified. What an impression would that make upon the nations of the earth!

Men would then see that heaven at length touches the earth—that the Christian religion is no fable, and its prophecies no falsehood; that the persecutors of it for eighteen centuries, at last, by an impression as irresistible as deep, have embraced Him who is the Light that lightens the Gentiles, and hailed him as the glory of his people Israel. There is every reason to believe that this day cannot be far remote.

The Jews themselves say that if the Messiah do not come very soon they will give up the hope altogether. All their calculations have been overturned, all their expectations have been reversed; they have been looking for a conquering and triumphant Messiah to lead them back to their own land, and so far they do well; but they forget that the crown can be reached only through the cross; and that only by having an interest, a saving interest, in a Saviour’s sufferings, can they have any share in the splendour of a Saviour’s reign and glory.[4]

A day comes when God shall give a signal, that signal the revelation of the Son of God—an ensign lifted up—and instantly the ten tribes shall return from their hiding-place, and the two tribes from amid the various nationalities among whom they are sifted like seeds, and be restored to their own land; and Ephraim, the representative of the ten tribes, and Judah, the representative of the two tribes, instead of quarrelling any more, shall dwell at peace; Ephraim not annoying Judah, and Judah not vexing Ephraim.

It was 14 May 1948 when Israel returned to the land again.

When would Moses’ promise of the restoration of Israel from their wanderings and the words of the prophets on the revival of Jerusalem, Mount Zion their Holy City, be fulfilled? After nineteen hundred long, long years of Diaspora, suddenly on May 14, I948, less than three years after the conclusion of WWII, Israel was reborn before our eyes! An independent sovereign state among the nations!

While we recognise that the rebirth of Israel is a miracle of miracles from God in fulfilment of prophecy, we must not forget His patient working through Providence in bringing about this miracle.

Deuteronomy 30:1-5 (KJV) And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath driven thee, And shalt return unto the LORD thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul; That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee: And the LORD thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.

Immediately following the prophecy of Israel’s coming together as a united nation, no more as in the days of the Divided Kingdoms of the Northern Ten Tribes and the Southern Two Tribes, Isaiah sees the young nation at war with her immediate neighbours. “The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.

14 But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them. 15 And the LORD shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod. 16 And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.

From these three verses are unfolded a successive number of battles fought between Israel and her neighbours, the Philistines on the west and those of the east; Edom, Moab and Ammon and Egypt. It is easily identifiable that the Philistines on the west answers to the Gaza Strip, those of the east are the Syrians (2 Kings 13:17), while Edom, Moab and Ammon are the ancient lands now under Jordanian jurisdiction.

“The remnant of his people” – That is, the remnant of the Jews, still called His people. In all the predictions respecting the calamities that should ever come upon them, the idea is always held out that the nation would not be wholly extinguished; that they would not cease to be a separate people; but that, however great the national judgments, a remnant would still survive.

This was particularly true in regard to the fearful judgments which Moses denounced on the nation if they should be disobedient, and which have been so strikingly fulfilled (Deut. 28). As the result of those judgments, Moses does not say that Jehovah would annihilate the nation, or extinguish their name, but that they should be ‘left few in number’ (Deut. 28:62); and that Jehovah would scatter them among all people, from the one end of the earth even to the other (Deut. 28:64); and that among those nations they should find no ease, neither should the sole of their foot have rest, verse 65.

In like manner it was predicted that they should be scattered everywhere. ‘I will scatter them also among the heathen—whom neither they nor their fathers have known. I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach, a proverb, a taunt, and a curse, in all places whether I will drive them,’ etc. (Jer. 24:9, 10; 15:7). ‘I will execute judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds’ (Ezek. 5:10). ‘I will also scatter them among the nations, among the heathen, and disperse them in the countries’ (Ezek. 12:15). ‘I will sift the house of Israel among the nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. They shall be wanderers among the nations’ (Amos 9:9). ‘I will make a full end of the nations whether I have driven thee, but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in a measure; yet will I not utterly cut thee off, or leave thee wholly unpunished’ (Jer. 46:27, 28). From all these, and from numerous other passages in the Old Testament, it is evident that it was designed that the Jewish nation should never be wholly destroyed; that they should be scattered among the nations, but should still be a distinct people; that while other nations should be utterly wasted and ruined, and should wholly cease to exist, yet that a remnant of the Jewish people, with the national peculiarities and customs, should still survive. How entirely this has been fulfilled, the remarkable history of the Jewish people everywhere testifies. Their present condition on the earth as a people scattered in all nations, yet surviving; without a king and a temple, yet preserving their national prejudices and peculiarities—is a most striking fulfilment of the prophecy.

“They are now, and will continue to be, scattered in all nations. They have been driven to all parts of the earth—wanderers without a home—yet continuing their customs, rites, and peculiar opinions; and continuing to live, notwithstanding all the efforts of the nations to crush and destroy them.

They speak nearly all the languages of the world. They are acquainted with all the customs, prejudices, and opinions of the nations of the earth. They are familiar with all that impedes the extension of the one true God. They would, therefore, be under no necessity of engaging in the laborious work of learning languages—which now occupies so much of the time, and consumes so much of the strength of the modern missionary. The law of God is thus in all nations. It is in every synagogue; and it has been well said, that the law in all their synagogues is like extinguished candles, and that all that is needful to illuminate all the world, is to light those candles. Let the Jew everywhere be brought to see the true meaning of his law, and his customs; let the light of evangelical truth shine into his synagogue, and the world would be at once illuminated. The truth would go with the rapidity of the beams of the sun from place to place until the whole earth would be enlightened with the knowledge of the Redeemer.

The Jews, when converted, make the best missionaries. There is a freshness and fulness in their views of the Messiah when they are converted which Gentile converts seldom feel. The apostles were all Jews; and the zeal of Paul shows what converted Jews will do when they become engaged in making known the true Messiah. If it has been a characteristic of their nation that they would ‘compass sea and land to make one proselyte,’ what will their more than three millions accomplish when they become converted to the true faith of the Redeemer? We have every reason, therefore, to expect that God intends to make great use yet of the Jews whom he has preserved scattered everywhere—though they be but ‘a remnant’—in converting the world to his Son. And we should most fervently pray, that they may be converted; and that they may be imbued with the spirit of the apostles; be filled with love to their long-rejected Messiah; and that they may everywhere become the missionaries of the cross.”—Barnes.[5]

CONCLUSION

With God on the throne, God’s people have no cause for distress or worry. Let His people rest in Him.

[1] Cumming, J. (1862). Readings on the Prophets: Isaiah (p. 95). Richard Bentley.

[2] Cumming, J. (1862). Readings on the Prophets: Isaiah (pp. 95–96). Richard Bentley.

[3] Cumming, J. (1862). Readings on the Prophets: Isaiah (pp. 96–98). Richard Bentley.

[4] Cumming, J. (1862). Readings on the Prophets: Isaiah (pp. 98–100). Richard Bentley.

[5] Cumming, J. (1862). Readings on the Prophets: Isaiah (pp. 100–104). Richard Bentley.