The Sylvr Pen – Page 103 – ……. toward living more fully the life in Christ.

Posted on 2011-12-202012-01-04 by Sylvia

Seeking the Christ Child (15) – Reluctance

Reluctance. I read about it this week. And now I see it all around: in Old Testament and New — and in myself. Reluctance to seek and obey what God desires.

I ponder my inner struggle, my fear of man’s opinions and what one smooth slanderous tongue can do — and I reproach myself. But then I reflect on Gethsemane, and even Christ’s reluctant struggling before He acquiesced, “Not my will, but Thine.”

So, I decide, it’s not the initial reluctance. It’s the stubborn hanging on to it…

Ahaz was reluctant, and hung on…

…

Ask for a sign, Isaiah says. God says.

“No. I won’t do that.” Reluctance

“I won’t try God that way.” Pretense

He’s been trying God mightily, with black and massive sin, horrible idolatry, even burning his own babies in sacrificial fires, following foreign gods, gathering pagan allies (he thinks, fooling himself).

Warned repeatedly against his rebellion, he repeats it still.

Yet now he has scruples about trying the LORD?

Isaiah quickly shoots this great false piety from its lofty sky: Isn’t it enough that you try human patience (mine)? Will you thus also try God’s? God commands, “Ask a sign.” You refuse. Fine! He’ll give you one of His own choosing!

…

Ahaz wants no sign from God, because signs give counsel, and he’s already chosen his own, or that of mediums. For help, he seeks not God, but the very king God warns him against. A strong king, whose idols seem to bring success, so Ahaz adopts them, too.

God has just declared judgment against two lesser kings Ahaz fears: If Ahaz will only rely on God, He will prevent the terror they plan (to bully Ahaz into alliance with them). But reluctant Ahaz trusts in the visible and human instead.

He stiffens in fear, but not the right kind: Not reverent, repentant, grateful fear of God that knows what doom he deserves, but also knows God’s never-failing mercy to the contrite heart that sees the Creator as stronger than anything created.

So Isaiah announces God’s sign:

“Behold, the virgin [or young maiden] will conceive and bear a son, and they will call his name God-with-us.”

Then Isaiah’s wife conceives and bears a son whose growth stages will mark disaster times Isaiah also predicts. But this foreshadows another birth, another Son, Whose mother’s virginity makes a true wonder-sign.

This light into the future flashes swift and bright, then fades amid prophecies of imminent doom: Ahaz rejects God’s counsel, mercy, and strength. So, the great human power now threatening to obliterate Ephraim and Syria will also sweep Judah, despite Ahaz’s alliance with him.

Isaiah pronounces judgment on people stubbornly reluctant to fear God because they fear humans more. “The LORD of hosts, Him you shall hallow; let Him be… your dread. He will be as a sanctuary, but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel…“ They need to seek His counsel, not wizards’ — need to seek Him! But they don’t, won’t…

So… doom.

But there amid forecasts of horror and loss another brief flare flashes, blinding yet revealing: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light: Those… in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined..”

“For unto us a Child is born,

Unto us a Son is given:

And the government will be upon His shoulder.

And His name shall be called

Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,

The everlasting Father,

The Prince of Peace.”

Clearly this prophecy reaches beyond Ahaz and Isaiah’s time, to when the Son born will embody God Himself, Father of eternity and life eternal. A coming Prince of Peace.

Declared fulfilled in Matthew 1:18, Luke 1:26-35, John 3:16, Titus 2:13, Ephesians 2:14…

And celebrated so beautifully in this segment of The Messiah.

To read: Isaiah 7:1- 9:7; 2 Chronicles 28

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Seeking the Christ Child (in the Old Testament)

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I am searching for prophecies and foreshadowings of the Christ child, book by book. I plan to post (nearly) every weekday (leaving myself some margin) a short peek at some hint or promise of the coming baby who would make all the difference. Like the wise men, I’ll be Seeking the Christ Child, but in Old Testament promises and foreshadowings, and sharing what I find. I hope you’ll join me, because if it turns out as rewarding as the past spring’s pre-Easter explorations, this focus could make this one of the richest, most blessed Christmas seasons yet.

(1) – A Baby Gave Her Hope

(2) – A Baby Gave Him Comfort

(3) – A Baby Made Her Laugh

(4) – Wrestling Babies Lead to Christ?

(5) – Hope Hanging by a Slender Thread

(6) Power in Small Things, and Fear of Babies

(7) Heart-felt Reflections on Foreshadowings so far

(8) Musings about Midwives

(9) Two Widows and a Prostitute

(10) Two Poetesses (Their Babies Made them Sing)

(11) Tangled Strands and Broken

(12) Son of Whom?

(13) Broken Weavings, Strands, and Stumps

(14) Stumped!

Linked to…

Posted on 2011-12-162012-01-17 by Sylvia

Seeking the Christ Child (14) – Stumped!

On the hill in the dim dawn, wind whips round us, wild, portending coming chill. Things once vibrant rattle in pale grays, charred blacks, rusted browns — shades of death emphasized by remnant green of grass.

Raspberries have gone russet.

Strawberry bed’s become a grave.

And trees! The heart nut with its rings of bird-pecked holes, the apple trunk all punky-dry and crumbling, the plum… plum dead! — cracked and fallen. Lifeless wood feeding fungus.

A stump.

Not long ago a hopeless sight. No prospect of life or fruit here, we’d say.

And then…

A shoot.

A shoot that grew…

became a tree, and put forth blossoms, even fruit already this past spring.

And the peach! Its dead stump we can no longer find! Rotted away! And yet, behold the tree.

Behold its budding growth!

Behold its springtime fruit!

Like the stump of Jesse.

Like the sprout of promise, hope, life redeemed and resurrected…

…”There is a son born…” And they called his name Obed. He [is] the father of Jesse, the father of David (Rth 4:17).

Now the LORD said to Samuel, “…go; I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite. For I have provided Myself a king among his sons …invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; you shall anoint for Me the one I name to you.” So Samuel did what the LORD said, and went to Bethlehem…. Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons, and invited them to the sacrifice. So it was, when they came, that … Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, “The LORD has not chosen these... Are all the young men here?” Then he said, “There remains yet the youngest, and there he is, keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him… So he sent and brought {David} in… And the LORD said, “Arise, anoint him; for this [is] the one!” Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward (1 Sa 16:1-13) … Thus David the son of Jesse reigned over all Israel (1Ch 29:26).

Despite the “cutting off” of the (royal, trunk) line of Jeconiah/Coniah, David’s descendant…

“[As] I live,” says the LORD, “though Coniah … king of Judah, were the signet on My right hand, yet I would pluck you off; and I will give you into the hand of those who seek your life… So I will cast you out, and your mother who bore you, into another country … But to the land to which they desire to return, there they shall not return… this man Coniah a despised, broken idol–A vessel cast out, he and his descendants…

O earth, earth, earth, Hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the LORD: ‘Write this man down as childless, A man [who] shall not prosper in his days; For none of his descendants shall prosper, Sitting on the throne of David, And ruling anymore in Judah (Jer 22:24-28)…

Still, by God’s good grace…

There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots… And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, Who shall stand as a banner to the people; For the Gentiles shall seek Him, And His resting place shall be glorious (Isa 11:1,10 ESV).

And again, Isaiah says: “There shall be a root of Jesse; And He who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, In Him the Gentiles shall hope” (Rom 15:12).

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Seeking the Christ Child (in the Old Testament)

(1) – A Baby Gave Her Hope

(2) – A Baby Gave Him Comfort

(3) – A Baby Made Her Laugh

(4) – Wrestling Babies Lead to Christ?

(5) – Hope Hanging by a Slender Thread

(6) Power in Small Things, and Fear of Babies

(7) Heart-felt Reflections on Foreshadowings so far

(8) Musings about Midwives

(9) Two Widows and a Prostitute

(10) Two Poetesses (Their Babies Made them Sing)

(11) Tangled Strands and Broken

(12) Son of Whom?

(13) Broken Weavings, Strands, and Stumps

Linked to…

Posted on 2011-12-142011-12-16 by Sylvia

Seeking the Christ Child (13) – Broken Weavings, Strands, and Stumps

In the dark of early morning I woke today, thinking of King Hezekiah.

Yes, really.

Not my normal thought mode on blinking away sleep! But this whole picture of the Messiah’s line and strands cut off has been rolling repeatedly in my brain. Comments on recent posts have reinforced it. And so did my speaking last Saturday at a Ladies’ luncheon about wool and spinning… and weaving…

At which point weaving, weaving, began weaving itself into the fiber imagery in my head. So I thought of how the loom picture pops up here and there in scripture… including in Hezekiah’s mournful words, on hearing prophecy of his own imminent death: “I have rolled up my life, and He is cutting me off the loom!” (my own paraphrase of Isaiah 38:12 NIV).

I lay there, silently wondering if an absence of heirs was increasing Hezekiah’s grief. I didn’t recall reading of any sons born to him before this time, and his son Manasseh, who did inherit his throne, was born three years later, during the fifteen-year life extension God granted Hezekiah.

If so, here we are with more fiber strands, and another “cut off” imagery…

…to add to the one Monday’s and Tuesday’s posts mentioned: Manasseh’s line would not prosper. God Himself would cut it off from ever occupying the throne of David (after King Coniah/Jechoniah). (Those two posts represented it as one strand cut off in a cord.)

Cut off. A phrase the Bible repeats at least two hundred times!

Hezekiah speaking of himself as a weaving cut off a loom.

And Husband just came upstairs here and related this to “the stump of Jesse…”

A stump is a cut off tree.

Jesse’s tree gets cut to a stump. But a shoot springs out of it.

“You ought to have a picture of a stump with a shoot…”

Too bad I never realized I’d need such a thing when that poplar we cut down sent up that desperate bunch of shoots the next spring. Or when the broken off peach tree and plum tree both did the same thing.

All we could think of for photo op was sumac, growing all over the hill (and valley), which Husband fights war with, trying to eliminate — but can’t. Because they keep sending out these other shoots…

Strands broken off in a yarn — or deliberately cut off.

Weaving about to be prematurely cut off life’s loom.

And Jesse’s lineage cut to a stump!

Yet, from it, a single shoot springing forth...

All those attempts of enemies — of the enemy — to cut off the line of the Savior, so that He might not come and set us free…

Yet always a strand, always a weaving’s extension, always a shoot to grow stronger than the stump from which it sprang. Because “the Spirit of the LORD has done this,” and “not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the LORD.

Seeking the Christ Child (12) – Son of Whom?

A friend of mine once expressed her main difficulty in reading through the Bible: As soon as she got going, she’d come up against a whole string of “begats.” Daunting – and boring!

I replied that even the begats might be interesting, if you take the time to scrutinize them. We were studying Genesis in a group then; so I suggested we slow down on Chapter Five’s “begats” and see what would result. Indeed, doing the numbers within them revealed fascinating things!

But we’re talking here about Jesus, the Christ Child, “Son of God.” That’s His (heavenly) lineage. But His human genealogical record gets interesting, too.

One thing that makes it interesting is the problem with it: Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38 give two different genealogies! What do we do about that?

Some people say, Aha! See, the Bible contradicts itself! Some people just hide from issues like that. I’ve learned instead to ask the hard questions and wait patiently for their answers. In my Bible’s margin next to Luke’s genealogy for Jesus, I long ago wrote a big question mark and filed the difficulty with my “UAQ’s” (UnAnswered Questions) that I store in notebooks or brain till I get my answers.

Usually that takes a while. This one about Christ’s lineage did! What finally clued me in was R. A. Torrey’s Difficulties in the Bible. It turns out, the seeming contradiction in lineage actually helps verify the fulfillment of Bible prophecy!

Line up Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies, side by side (Mt 1:1-6; Lk 3:23,31-34), and move forward in time from Abraham on (which means in Luke you have to start with verse 34 and backtrack), and you see: Everything matches up until after David. Matthew’s account names Solomon next, then his descendants – all in the historically “royal” line. Luke names a different son of David – Nathan – and then lists Nathan’s offspring – not in the historic royal line.

This is important, because the Old Testament contains two kinds of prophecy about “the coming King” that also seem to contradict each other. One says He will be a Son of David. The other declares that no descendant in David’s royal line after King Jeconiah (a.k.a. Coniah) will ever sit on the throne of David (Jer 22:28-30). Christ’s two genealogies reveal that, in fleshly lineage Christ, the “seed of the woman, did descend from David, but not from Jeconiah.

Matthew (written with the Jewish people in mind) gives Joseph’s lineage. Luke gives Mary’s. A literal translation of Luke’s passage, says Jesus was “as it was supposed, [the] son of Joseph.” (If Mary was a virgin. Jesus was not Joseph’s natural son.) Immediately after that it names “Heli, of Matthat…” etc., going back through Mary’s line to David and beyond, all the way to Adam.

How significant Mary’s line is, showing Jesus as truly a fleshly descendant of David, but not of Jeconiah!

Isn’t it wonderful, how the very things that seem to be “problems,” “difficulties,” “contradictions,” in these Bible passages actually turn out to verify Jesus as indeed the prophesied Messiah (Christ), born of a virgin – Messiah who will one day return to rule as King over all? Something else to rejoice in while celebrating the birth of the Savior!

[Edited, from the archives]

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Seeking the Christ Child (in the Old Testament)

Previous posts in this series:

(1) – A Baby Gave Her Hope

(2) – A Baby Gave Him Comfort

(3) – A Baby Made Her Laugh

(4) – Wrestling Babies Lead to Christ?

(5) – Hope Hanging by a Slender Thread

(6) Power in Small Things, and Fear of Babies

(7) Heart-felt Reflections on Foreshadowings so far

(8) Musings about Midwives

(9) Two Widows and a Prostitute

(10) Two Poetesses (Their Babies Made them Sing)

(11) Tangled Strands and Broken

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Linked to…

Posted on 2011-12-122011-12-13 by Sylvia

Seeking the Christ Child (11) – Tangled Strands and Broken

If my Christ-life is a scarlet cord, the sad and foolish, pitiful and inconsistent way I spin out my strand far too often leaves ugly lumps and frail fragments thinning down at times to threat of breaking. Sometimes the tension with which I hang on, hang on, refusing to let go, kinks up the yarn into a tangled mess, hard – or impossible – to undo. And sometimes with my too-thin or too lofty spinning, the strand drifts apart or snaps, broken!

And sometimes I think the whole thing’s broken. And I sit in the gutter outside Castle Despair, and look low on my miserable spinning.

But broken strands still being spun can yet be rejoined… And there’s another thing:

One strand alone a cord doth not make! And a multi-ply cord, with one never-failing strand, continues on, steady and strong even if all other strands should break at some point. Such is God’s grace and faithfulness, entwined with my life-strand.

Such also was the historic scarlet line from Eve down to Jesus. Times came when it seemed completely undone, irrevocably broken, even by God Himself…

Ruth gave birth to Obed, and, generations later, God sent Samuel the prophet to the household of Obed’s son Jesse, to anoint his son David as king-to-be. Still later, God promised not only that Solomon would be Israel’s next king, but also promised David himself, “When… you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever… And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.“

The eternal king would be David’s seed, David’s line. BUT…

THREAT ONE: Before David had even died, news came to him that Adonijah was ambitiously setting up and carrying out his own coronation, even as the messenger spoke! (1Ki 1:11)

… replacing the Solomon-promise strand!

Remedy for this wasn’t too hard: quickie coronation of Solomon, beating the usurper to the throne! Solomon quickly spun in firm!

But worse problems arose…

THREAT TWO: Many generations (of mostly bad kings) later, Althaliah, wicked-witch-of the-west-type queen, took over reign in place of her dead son, and, determined to eliminate the competition, ordered anyone in the royal line wiped out. Kill the children! Kill the babies! Kill them all! And she thought she did.

But…

another woman to the rescue! Her name: Jehosheba.

“Jehosheba… took Joash [wee babe in the royal line], and stole him away from among the king’s sons [who were] being murdered; and they hid him and his nurse in the bedroom, from Athaliah, so that he was not killed” (2Ki 11:2 ).

The kingly strand grown fearfully thin – yet restored in the adventurous story you can read in 2 Kings 11.

BUT…

It got worse yet. As bad as it could get…

THREAT THREE: After Joash, the kingly line grew so abominable that… GOD HIMSELF CUT IT OFF (Jeremiah 22:28-30) – and promised no descendant of King Jeconiah (alias Coniah, Jehoakim, Jehoiachin) would sit on Israel’s throne.

Now what? How could God get around His own cutting off?

Stay tuned…

Tomorrow… wonderful evidence of how precise Bible prophecy is! And how great God’s power and grace!

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