#DailyDevotion God Has A Plan
Isaiah 66:18–23 [The final judgment.]
18“In spite of what they do and plan, the time will come for Me to gather all nations and languages, and they will come and see My glory. 19I will put signs among them and send some of their survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Putk and Lud, Meshek, Rosh, Tubal, and Greece, and the coasts far away, who haven’t heard any news of Me or seen My glory. They will tell about My glory among the nations. 20And they will bring all your fellow Israelites from all the nations as an offering toIsaiah the LORD. They will come on horses, in chariots, on litters, on mules and camels to My holy mountain, Jerusalem,” says the LORD, “just as the people of Israel bring their offerings in clean pans to the LORD’s temple. 21And I will make some of them priests and Levites,” says the LORD. 22 “As the new heavens and the new earth I’m going to make will stand before Me,” says the LORD, “so will your children and your name continue. 23Then the first of every month and every Sabbath all mankind will come to worship before Me,” says the LORD. 24 “Then they will go out and look at the corpses of men who rebelled against Me, since their worm will never die and their fire will never go out, and everyone will detest them.”
God’s mission to save the children of Abraham and the world would have its opposition. Some of that opposition would come from the very people who should have received it. I’m speaking of the leaders of the Jewish people in Jesus’ day. Never the less, the LORD would use their very opposition to bring about their salvation. As the apostles Peter said, Act 2:23-24 “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. (24) God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”
Just as God had planned Jesus to delivered up to the Jews to be killed for their sake and the sake of the world, so too does God plan to use the acts of wicked men to spread the good news of Jesus Christ and gather his children to himself. Again at first he used the wickedness of the unbelieving Jews to persecute their fellow Jesus who accepted the Lord Jesus Christ and sent them running to Antioch. Persecution would cause the apostle Paul and other apostles to go from one town to the next bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to the world.
So the Lord indeed set a sign, the cross of Jesus Christ, among his people the Church. He continues to send men from her throughout the world preaching the messiah has come. The messiah is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, the King of Israel, the Lord of nations. In Jesus it is preached, redemption has been obtained. The shedding of Jesus’ blood is the atonement for the sin of the world. By his blood being applied to us in baptism and the Lord’s Supper does the angel of death Passover all who put their faith in Jesus.
Today I don’t think there is a nation on earth in which news of Jesus Christ and the free gift of his salvation is not being proclaimed. The glory of the salvation of the cross of Christ is continually reaching out, gathering the physical seed of Abraham who have not heard of Jesus yet and those who would be Abraham’s descendents by faith. God’s servants are bringing them all to Jerusalem, that is the Church.
It is this Church which has Jesus who is the LORD which will inherit the New Heavens and the New Earth. We will continually offer up the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving in this new creation to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Father who saved us through the Spirit. It is the promise of this new creation and ourselves as a new creation in Christ that we have put our hope.
Heavenly Father, continually send forth your word throughout the world proclaiming your son Jesus as the very messiah so that your children throughout the world may hear, believe and inherit the new creation. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.