And Now Let Me Tell You What I Am Going to Do to My Vineyard

Excerpt From Newsletter

As I stated earlier, I have already explained the parabolic imagery in which Jesus Christ is depicted as the Seed of the Word of God (The Teaching). I did that in the article, “If You Plan to Reap What You Sow, You Had Better Watch What You Plant” in the April 1998 issue of The Voice of Elijah^®. In that article, I told you the account in Matthew 9–17 must be merged with the things that John tells us Jesus said about Himself as the “Bread” that came down from Heaven and the parabolic pantomime in which He fed thousands with just a few loaves of bread (John 6).

The reason for the overlap in the accounts found in the four Gospels is fairly easy to explain: The Holy Spirit was providing the information necessary for those with insight to understand what Jesus taught. Merging the four accounts discloses that, during that brief span of time, Jesus was privately explaining to His disciples what Isaiah was talking about in the passage above. But Jesus did not let any artificial division like a chapter or verse stop Him. Since he began in Isaiah 40, Isaiah has been parabolically talking about Jesus Christ as the Living Word of God Who came down from Heaven to replicate the Seed of the Living Word of God in others before returning there again. So Jesus continued following Isaiah’s train of thought in Isaiah 55 right on into the next “chapter”:

This is what His Majesty has said: “Guard justice! And do what is required!
Because My Jesus is close to coming!
And what I require {is close} to being revealed!
A blessed Man will do this!
And the Son of Adam will hold it fast—
The One who guards a Sabbath rather than polluting it,
The One Who guards his hand rather than doing anything evil.”
(Isaiah 56:1–2) —my interim translation

In light of Jesus’ repeated use of the parabolic imagery depicting His Incarnation in Isaiah 55, that passage would logically be one of the first ones He would turn to after He began to explain to His disciples why He referred to Himself as “the Son of the man.” I translated the Hebrew term yeshua (“salvation”) as “Jesus” just so you could see that Isaiah is still talking about the Living Word of God that comes down from “the Sea of Waters.” That translation should also help you to understand why the messenger of the Lord told Joseph to give Christ the name Jesus. That is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, which is a statement in which yeshua (“salvation”) is combined with “The Name” of God.

“And Now Let Me Tell You What I Am Going to Do to My Vineyard,” The Voice of Elijah^®, October 2004, p. 8

Newsletter Details