“Here am I and the children whom the LORD has given me!
We are for signs and wonders in Israel
from the LORD of hosts,
who dwells in Mount Zion.”
(Isa 8:18, NKJV)
In the last teaching we came to the amazing revelation that each person who is born from Jesus becomes part of his lineage. We have been born from Jesus’ eternal seed (1 Pet 1:23)! Please realize the implications of this 42nd generation – we are part of the genealogy of Jesus according to the flesh. A mystery (Eph 5:32) had thus taken place, that through being born again from ‘above’ we had actually become bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh (Eph 5:30).
The mystery is nestled in the fact that the physical is taken up by the spiritual (indicated by the use of the word ‘above’). There had thus been a new spiritual race (John 3:6) which had come to existence on earth, arising from Jesus the Christ – each of us born from Him has part of his Godliness while we are still of the flesh! We have now received his Godly nature, declares 2 Pet 1:14. Now it is absolutely clear what Gal 3:28 states, “There is neither Jew nor Greek … for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
In Isa 53:8-10, in the prophetic prediction of the death of Jesus, the prophet asks – “WHO WILL DECLARE HIS GENERATION? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked— but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, HE SHALL SEE HIS SEED, HE SHALL PROLONG HIS DAYS, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.” Through Jesus’ suffering He became the firstborn amongst many brothers, so that we too could become conformed to Him (Rom 8:29). David had known this and prophesied, “A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.” (Psalm 22:30-31).
Read again the Scripture in Isaiah quoted at the beginning of this teaching. Each of the sons born from Him is a sign and a wonder. The world as an idolatrous generation no longer needs to search for signs and wonders (Matt 12:39) – they can only look at us, who like Him were buried and who rose again! (This is the sign of Jonah to which Jesus had referred – read Matt 12:39-41. We will later look at what it means to have been buried and raised with Him.) The prophet Isaiah states that we now live on mount Zion, which is echoed by the writer of Hebrews – “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” (Heb 12:22). Verse 23 calls us “the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven”. We collectively ARE the mount Zion, the New Jerusalem, the city of our God, the wife of the Lamb, the Bride. We are the “express image of the Father in the earth” (Eph 1:22). In short – we are the 42nd generation.
In later teachings we will return to this mystery, as it holds immense implications.
- Sela: Explain the 42nd generation to someone.
- Read: Deut 1 Joel 1; Ezek 27
- Memorize: Ezek 27:4
