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?’”
(Isaiah 49:14-21)
The Lord is now trying to raise up a new generation in East Asia.
Dr. Kim of Cohen University has begun teaching “Tefillin Education”(reciting the Word of God) to the world and today more and more children are receiving Tefillin Education in Korea and especially in China where Tefillin Education is expanding enormously.
“Listen to me, O coastlands (the islands), listen to the people far away, listen.” (Isaiah 49:1)
Isaiah 49 is a wonderful promise that the Lord’s people will come from the end of the east.
The Lord uses His servants to not only let the people of Israel return home to Israel but also uses His servants as lights in the world to deliver salvation to the ends of the earth.
(Isaiah 49: 6)
But they said,
“The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me”
(Isaiah 49: 14),
but the Lord said,
“Behold, I carved you in the palm of your hand ”
(Isaiah 49:16).
Yes, the Lord “carved” us into the hands of Jesus on the cross.
Jesus was crushed for our sins and His wounds remain forever.
(Revelation 5:6)
If ever we think that “The Lord has forgotten me,” we should forever remember that we were carved into the nail marks of Jesus’ hands when he was nailed on the cross for our sins.
Why are the people of Zion stubbornly saying, “The Lord has forgotten me?” It was because they were kept in a foreign land where they were held in bondage, robbed and deprived.
Why were they in bondage in a foreign land that was far away from Israel? It was because of their own sins.
The Lord had been speaking to the people of Israel through His prophets that the people should keep all of God’s commands and to live their lives correctly by obeying the guidance of God’s Word.
However, the people of Israel did not correct themselves and they did not stick to God’s path strictly. They did not stop doing the things that God said not to do.
Therefore, because the people of Israel did not listen to the Word of God, their houses became ruinous, their children were robbed, and the enemy took from them everything that was valuable to them.
“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.”
(Isaiah 49: 18)
Jeremiah 2:32 says that in marriage, the bridal bands is a necessity for all brides. At that time, which were decorated with beautiful and precious stones.
The Lord says that He will gather His children as decorations like the bridal bands. These children are marvelous.
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?’”
(Isaiah 49: 21)
I wonder what kind of children these children are. The key is found in Isaiah chapter 54.
“Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted,
I will rebuild you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with lapis lazuli.
12 I will make your battlements of rubies,
your gates of sparkling jewels, and all your walls of precious stones.
13 All your children will be taught by the Lord, and great will be their peace.
(Isaiah 54:11-13)
What matters here is that the word “be taught by the Lord”.
If you feed a person with God’s Word, it forms a spiritual parent-child relationship just like the relationship between Paul and Timothy in the Bible. You can become like a birth parent of a child who is like a precious jewel, even if they are not your biological child, by feeding them with God’s Word.
The Bible is filled with special relationships between non-biological parents and children.
In the bible, Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth were infertile women who became mothers of children who went on to become great leaders and kings of many countries.
Why couldn’t they have children normally?
It was so that their hearts would turn to the LORD and so that they would pray enthusiastically for as long as they could not have children, and also so that they would devote their children to the Lord.
Children will sigh if their parents always tell them to, “be a wonderful child when you grow up.”However, for Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth, their children grew up to become wonderful children and precious jewels because of how they were raised with God’s Word.
(Isaiah 49:21)
The Key Is: “Whose delight is the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.” (Psalms 1:2)
When reciting scripture with children in their education(Tefillin Education), God’s Word is engraved upon the minds and thoughts of a child as they develop.
Tefillin Education is not a style where parents say, “Do this and do not do that.”So, parents do not get tired and also their children do not get tired.
Many people who have raised their children with Tefillin Education have the impression that they have helped to raise wonderful children indefinitely.
At Eden, woman received the suffering of childbirth as a penalty, because of the sin of overcoming the Word of God.
But, maybe the child-rearing to send out the child into the world is larger suffering than the birth?
People experience a lot of suffering in child-rearing in terms of values that go beyond the Word of God, and the child does not grow up to be like a child of God.
But if a person who has surrendered to the Lord entrusts the child to the Word of God, and if the Word of God raises the child, then there is little suffering from child-rearing, and they will soon wonder who raised such a wonderfully reared child.
In this distant easternmost country of islands, in this land of Sinim, I pray that there will be a multitude of children who will receive the Lord’s education, children not born of humans but born from the “Word of the Lord”!
May everyone be decorated like a bridal band that is studded with sparkling jewels!
Bless you in the name of Jesus!
