LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
The First and the Last
For the twisted heart of man, it is easier to put trust in visible, external things than in an invisible God who deals with man in the intimacy of his heart. So it was from the beginning with Israel. What were typological indications, became, in a people blinded by unbelief and vain religiosity, the antitypes, the realities that those types indicated.
Thus it happened, for example, with the place where God was to be worshipped. In Deuteronomy 12, God orders the people to worship in only one place, the place chosen by him. First it was Shiloh, then Jerusalem. That is why, even in the days of Jesus Christ, we find the Samaritan woman so complicated with the place of worship, not knowing what true worship consisted of.
So it was also with the law. The Torah itself encouraged the people to put their trust in the law, as if life were in it. Thus it says, for example, Deuteronomy 32:47: "For it is not a vain thing; it is your life...". The law certainly constituted the way to show them life, but life is only in God. In the days of Jesus, when the distortion was already complete, the Jews trusted in the law more than in the Son of God Himself. The Lord Jesus was often accused, according to them, of breaking the law.
What shall we say of Jerusalem, the city that God chose to put his name there? She had a wall and walls, she had been built on the holy mountain, who could move her? Idolatry towards Jerusalem was unscathed when it was destroyed by Titus in 70 AD. History records that when the city was surrounded by the Roman legions, the Jews who were outside, instead of fleeing from it, tried by all means to enter, considering that it was the safest place on earth.
What shall we say about the temple? The temple became, from continent, to content of the true religion. The temple was, by itself, the sacred place, in which they could trust. In Jeremiah's day, God already claimed this of his people (Jer. 7:14). They thought that Israel could not be touched, threatened or even destroyed, since the temple stood as a sure sign of God's favor. But in Ezekiel's day the glory of God left the temple - which was an irrefutable sign that this place was no longer God's dwelling place.
All this, the place, the law, Jerusalem and the temple, had supplanted God in the heart of Israel. The heart, empty of God, clung uselessly to those things, which being good and lawful, could not replace him. When are those 'lawful' and 'good' things useful? When God is at the center. If God -the Lord Jesus Christ for us today- does not occupy the first place, then all those things become a hindrance and a fetish.
Through Isaiah, God said: "Hear me Jacob, and thou Israel, whom I have called: I myself am the first, I also am the last" (Isa. 48:12). The same says the Lord Jesus in the New Testament: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord" (Rev. 1:8). Apart from him, there is nothing. Nothing has value, everything pales, becomes corrupt and perverted. He alone is God.