Wait Upon the Lord
Category: Religion and Philosophy Isaiah
{40:12} Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?
So amazing! Can any man measure the waters in the hollow of his hand? Can any man mete out heaven with the span of his hand? Can any man understand the dust of the earth in a measure? No way! No man can do any of that. Who can weigh the mountains in scales? No one! Who can weigh the hills in a balance? None.
No man, only God. Only our creator. Only the one who created the waters, the heavens, the dust, the mountains and hills.
{40:13} Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or [being] his counsellor hath taught him?
None.
{40:14} With whom took he counsel, and [who] instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding?
None.
{40:15} Behold, the nations [are] as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.
A drop of a bucket, small dust- to God, to the One who created all things from great to small, we are a very little thing.
{40:16} And Lebanon [is] not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering.
No offering is sufficent for the greatness of God, how can it be? How? His greatness is something we can't begin to truly fathom.
{40:17} All nations before him [are] as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.
God doesn't seek anything for vanity, man think in terms of vanity, not God.
{40:18} To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?
God is truly indescribable.
{40:19} The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains.
{40:20} He that [is] so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree [that] will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, [that] shall not be moved.
{40:21} Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? {40:22} [It is] he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof [are] as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in
{40:23} That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.
{40:24} Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.
{40:25} To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.
{40:26} Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these [things,] that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the
greatness of his might, for that [he is] strong in power; not one faileth.
{40:27} Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God?
{40:28} Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, [that] the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? [there is] no searching of his understanding.
So amazing! The Creator of the ends of the earth, the everlasting God, the Lord! We cannot hope to understand, we just can't. We have to trust and believe in the Lord our Creator.
{40:29} He giveth power to the faint; and to [them that have] no might he increaseth strength.
{40:30} Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall
{40:31} But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew [their] strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; [and] they shall walk, and not faint.
They that wait upon the Lord!
Wait upon the Lord.
We wait upon You oh Lord our God, our Creator! We wait. By Your mercy and grace we wait.
We need to trust wholly in God.
Would you wait for something you had no hope in? No. You'd cease waiting. We can't stop waiting for our God in any sense of the word. God needs to be real in our lives, in our hearts. Here is a small paragraph from a C.S. Lewis book called Mere Christianity that is truly worthy of thinking on as we realize that our God, our Creator, our Savior, our Redeemer would have us wait. The waiting process isn't something that will garner you Salvation. Salvation is through God alone, through the sacrifice and grace of Jesus Christ, God's Only Son. We have to live our lives but not with the hope of our actions giving us Salvation. Our hope is in Christ and as we live we need to remember to wait upon the Lord.
'People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, "If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing." I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.' Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis
By the grace and mercy of God we live and have life everlasting.
Amen.
3-17-10
Continuing the study on Eternal Verities (Eternal Truths) -
I'm going to copy parts of a thought paper and we're going to delve into more about what I was talking about yesterday, the Godhead and eternal truths. I'll interject it with my own thoughts and probably end up breaking it up into digestable pieces, meaning give it bit by bit so it's not overwhelming and gives us time to think about what's being presented. If you're reading this you'll have access to the internet and as such it's easy to check various facts such as the meaning of Greek and Hebrew words. Don't hesitate to take time to check things for yourself. We are accountable for what we can do and that means seeking the knowledge where we can. In our time we live in something called the 'Information Age' and it is. Information is right at our fingertips and we have to avail ourselves of it.
May God bless us as we seek to understand more fully His will, His way, the truths that we need to know and believe as this world becomes more and more deceptive.
*******
John 1:1-3 In beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with the God, and God was the Logos. The same was in beginning with the God. All things through Him came into being, and without Him came into being not even one [thing] which has come into being. (Greek, literal translation)
(((Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Joh 1:2 The same was in the beginning with God.
Joh 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Standard translation.))))
The Gospel of John was among the last books of the New Testament to be written, if not the last one. In the first eighteen verses of his Gospel, John gives a prologue, setting forth data of what was prior to the Incarnation, as well as what happened at the Incarnation.
From these verses, we can observe the following data:
1) There were Two Beings - the Logos (the Word) and God.
2) The Logos was of the same essence as God. He was as much God as God Himself. "God was the Logos."
((IMPORTANT)) --> The article is used to denote separate Beings; and omitted when defining the nature of the Logos.
((NOTE- Article definition-
4. Grammar. Any of a class of words used to signal nouns and to specify their application. In English, the indefinite articles are a and an and the definite article is the.
Excerpted from The American Heritage Dictionary))
Conclusions which can be drawn:
1) Since "God" is defined as "Spirit" (John 4:24 - no article, literally, "God is Spirit"), then the Logos was as God, also "Spirit."
We are "flesh" in our reality; God is "spirit" in His reality.
Paul could use the word, "form" to designate both the reality of God, and the reality of man. (Phil. 2:6,7)
Php 2:6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
Php 2:7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men
2) The Logos created all things in conjunction "with the God." Paul states that "God ... created all things by Jesus Christ." (Eph. 3:9)
Eph 3:9 And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ
3) In John 1:1-2, the word "was" (hn ) is used 4x. This is in the Greek imperfect tense and denotes continuous action in past time. John is simply saying that there never was a time when the Logos was not.
p 4 -- Genesis 1:1-2, 26 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ... And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. ... And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
The Hebrew for "God" in these verses is Elohim, plural in form.
It is used with singular verbs and adjectives, and thus perceived as the "pluralis majesticus" or majestic plural.
However, in verse 26, the Elohim concur in "Let us." The question arises - How do you obtain a singular force from a plural word?
Here is where the Shema of Israel enters the picture.
It reads - "Hear, O Israel: The Lord God our God is one Lord." (Deut 6:4)
The key word is the compound word (two words), Elohenu - "Gods" and the suffix, a plural pronoun, "our."
"The masculine plural [In this case Elohim] has before all suffixes the ending ay. ...
But certain modifications in the form of this ending take place, due to the character of the following consonants: ...
b. The original form ay is contracted to e before all plural Have no hebrew alphabet suffixes." (Elements of Hebrew, Wm. R. Harper, p.144)
This is the case in the Shema of Israel. Thus it reads literally, "Jehovah, our Gods is one Jehovah."
The word for "one" (Echad) expresses oneness in duality.
The word appears in Genesis 1:5 - "There was evening; there was morning, day one (echad)"
It is also used in Genesis 2:24 - "They [two] shall be one (echad) flesh."
This simply implies that both the Logos and God of John 1:1-3 are one Jehovah.
Let us return now to the text in Genesis 1:2 - "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
The Hebrew word translated, "moved" is merahepheth - brooded. Gesenius in his lexicon, observes that this word in the Piel Hebrew form (as used here) implies "to cherish one's young, to brood over, as the eagle its young (Deut 32:11) ... of the Spirit of God as thus brooding over and vivifying the chaotic mass of earth. Gen. 1:2" (p.976)
Does this suggest the conclusion that the Spirit of God which "vivified" the mass at creation is the Logos of John 1:1-3, by which nothing was created except by Him?
***
My thoughts--
The preceding calls for reading and re-reading until understanding comes- at least for me. I'm no scholar of Hebrew, I'm not even very adept at English grammar. I'm not always the brightest bulb in the bunch especially when it comes to these types of studies however I know that God would have us at least try and comprehend what is being said because knowledge of truth comes in many ways and we shouldn't believe that we can pick and choose what we learn, but learn all we can. Do I fully understand it all, no, but I'm trying, I'm praying for understanding and trusting in the Lord that I will be able to understand all that is necessary for me to understand.
It's hard for us to imagine Jesus as just Spirit. Even after He rose from the dead it was in the flesh- Thomas doubted and he was told to touch Jesus and see for himself the reality of Jesus' form.
Joh 20:24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
Joh 20:25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
Joh 20:26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
Joh 20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
Joh 20:28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
Joh 20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
And Mary who saw him--
Joh 20:16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
Joh 20:17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
Jesus as simply an ethereal being isn't something we easily believe, or rather comprehend. Jesus as spirit form before He became flesh isn't something we dwell on as a rule. Yet to be with God in the beginning, to create all things He had to be Spirit form. It's not a long stretch at all to be curious as to whether or not the Spirit that moved over the deep was in fact Jesus in Spirit form, is it? Or do we simple need to believe that it was the Holy Spirit, this Spirit, 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee'
Heb 9:14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Yes, this is a complex and very thought provoking study and that's just what is intended. We need to think, to study hard, to delve deep into the Bible.
I won't pretend to understand it all, or ask you to comprehend it all but if you do that is wonderful. I will continue this study until the article is completed and hope that full understand comes to me, to all of us. If not we just have to keep studying and of course leave to God the things that we don't fully know.
May God bless us and keep us in Him Always.
By the grace and the mercy of our Lord and our Savior, now and forever.
In His love.
Amen.
3/17/11