THE JOY OF BEING GRAFTED-IN
THE JOY OF BEING GRAFTED-IN
I am impressed this morning with who we are, as human beings, in this world.
Created in the image of our Creator, and redeemed by Him out of the pit of our own making, and "crowned with love and compassion" (Psalm 103) we Gentiles have been privileged to be grafted in to the tree the Creator planted when He called Abram/Abraham to follow Him so that He could make an innumerable people out of his seed.
These descendants became a nation in the land the Creator promised Abraham his descendants would finally inherit. Under Joshua, who led them into the land that the Sovereign LORD conquered on their behalf, they created a home for themselves and became a nation which King David and his son Solomon brought to its greatest glory.
Today, Israel is again a nation! Hallelujah!
And we Gentiles can participate in Prophecy being fulfilled:
Isaiah 49 contains a wonderful passage in which Zion, symbolising the people of the Most High, cannot believe the Sovereign LORD calling to them to REJOICE; how is it possible for us to rejoice in this exile?
We, Gentiles, finally come into the picture in verses 22 and 23 as those who will participate in bringing His people home to their LAND. That Gentile participation is what Grace and I are called to; and we love to be in the land meeting people who know they are there because the Sovereign LORD, their God, has called them to restore the land. They are people who actively anticipate the triumphant coming of Messiah; as do we!
13 Shout for joy, you heavens;
rejoice, you earth;
burst into song, you mountains!
For the Lord comforts his people
and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.
14 But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me,
the Lord has forgotten me.”
15 “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
16 See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are ever before me.
17 Your children hasten back,
and those who laid you waste depart from you.
18 Lift up your eyes and look around;
all your children gather and come to you.
As surely as I live,” declares the Lord,
“you will wear them all as ornaments;
you will put them on, like a bride.
19 “Though you were ruined and made desolate
and your land laid waste,
now you will be too small for your people,
and those who devoured you will be far away.
20 The children born during your bereavement
will yet say in your hearing,
‘This place is too small for us;
give us more space to live in.’
21 Then you will say in your heart,
‘Who bore me these?
I was bereaved and barren;
I was exiled and rejected.
Who brought these up?
I was left all alone,
but these—where have they come from?’”
22 This is what the Sovereign Lord says:
“See, I will beckon to the nations,
I will lift up my banner to the peoples;
they will bring your sons in their arms
and carry your daughters on their hips.
23 Kings will be your foster fathers,
and their queens your nursing mothers.
They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground;
they will lick the dust at your feet.
Then you will know that I am the Lord;
those who hope in me will not be disappointed.”
This morning Ken Peters presented an inspiring sermon on the wonders of our place in CHRIST, through whom we are grafted in to the root I describe briefly above. It was a particular joy for me to have begun a blog before we left this morning and then to hear Ken speak of the very subject I began to write about.
Inspiring!
Grace and I are expecting to leave tomorrow morning for a 2 month stay in Israel, including Judea and Samaria. We expect to celebrate our 50th anniversary, September 25th, Rosh Hashanah on the Jewish calendar in Jerusalem. What a blessing for us to celebrate on such a day, the Head of the Year.
We are booked into a kibbutz for the first week, then Tel Aviv for few days before arriving in Jerusalem September 14th. We will be in Jerusalem for the whole period of the High Holy days, which include, of course, Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles.
Since it is getting later than I expected, I will bring this to a conclusion with a request for prayer. Pray that we will recognise and connect with the people the Sovereign LORD brings to us.
We will use this blog site and my Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/richard.knelsen.5, to keep up-dates flowing. As we have time to do so, we will up-load photographs to this site as well.
Jerusalem awaits!