Last Chapter of the Book:
Wonderful in Counsel – Excellent in Wisdom
Let’s read Isaiah 28:23-29. I typed here in bold:
23 Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say.
26 His God instructs him and teaches him the right way.
29This also comes from the LORD of Hosts,
We are instructed to “tune in” to His Voice, and really pay attention to what He is saying to us. Right?
Then, as we read on, we read about how farmers work their crops.
On the surface layer of this text, it seems as if we are being told about “agricultural land” and “crops” and how to “farm effectively”, right? In fact, even a non-farmer can get the jest of what is being shared.
There is much wisdom required to be a farmer! There are a lot of variables to be considered…And it clearly states that God is the one who instructs them… all the farmers…in their work.
But what if I was to tell you, there is a deeper meaning in this passage? A spiritual meaning. This is why we are being told to “Listen”. We need to hear what the Holy Spirit has to say about the scripture our eyes are seeing, and our minds are pondering. This is the way of God’s word… Depending on our level of “meditation” on a passage, we will begin to receive further revelation and deeper insight from the Holy Spirit.
In fact, to just highlight how “great a communicator God is through the Holy Spirit”, I will share an experience of mine: I was at a training meeting once wherein each attendee was given a paper with a scripture passage on it’s top portion and was then told to write what God was speaking to them about…i.e. what was its meaning? Then, leadership put us all into small groups to compare our notes and to share what we had written, along with our thoughts. It was a lesson I’ll never forget, because every single person in my group of eight received differently from the Holy Spirit…yet we all had the “same passage” that we considered! This blew me away! Meaning, I went away in awe, realizing how big God is! He is so incredibly amazing in how He communicates with us, His children! We were “individuals” as we received! God was giving to each one of us what we individually needed from His Spirit!
Yet, when we came together, each one of us grew even more knowledgeable of what He was saying, within the passage, as our pieces of the pie were shared!
So too, the Holy Spirit will teach inquiring minds and hearts about this particular passage, as we heed his instruction to LISTEN.
In fact, this is my good advice to all readers of God’s Word: When you see a passage that says to listen… then “tune in to the Holy Spirit” and ask Him for what He wants to tell YOU. He will answer!
Okay, so we will now proceed to look upon this passage, and as I share the things I received from the Holy Spirit, perhaps you already perceived these things yourself. This is good… for then by reading forward I will simply ‘bear witness’ to what you yourself “received” from Holy Spirit. I will also say, you may have received way more than me or something different than me. I can only share what I, myself, received…and I already know it’s not exhaustive. But I encourage you to embrace what I learned, okay? It’s good stuff! (smile)
Let’s look next at Verse 24, which I’ve bolded here:
“When a farmer plows for planting, Does he plow continually? Does he keep on breaking up and working the soil?”
God desires to place a picture here…in our mind’s eye. Farming is something that we all can sort-of relate to, right? We can envision how a farmer handles his work. Yet the Lord intends this for spiritual application.
So now, gaze upon this verse… and view the farmer as The Lord … and see your own self as the soil or field that is being plowed, broken up, and worked! You will immediately see “spiritually” as I did, I’m sure. If not, I’ll explain as we go.
Most of us begin as dry, hardened soil… unusable to God, as far as His planting his seed in us with the purpose of harvesting a crop from our lives. So, as any good and wise farmer, He finds it necessary to plow us, break us, and work on us…to make us ready…to receive his planting.
I know I was “unusable” for many years… until God softened me, and broke up the hard, cloddy soil of my heart. God had a lot of hard work to do as the Farmer.
And as the soil, I felt it. Ouchy! Being plowed often feels unbearable and harsh. Being broken up, hurts.
His working on us is not always pleasant!
Certainly, we’d all lose hope if the Lord “continually” did that, wouldn’t we?
But that’s what makes this verse so amazing! In fact, Joy ought to fill everyone’s soul at the connotation expressed: God will not carry on this type of work forever! This brought great hope, peace, and rest to my soul. I received it “as a promise!”
We all can trust the wisdom of God to not plow us beyond what “is needed” or beyond what we can endure.
In fact, I also can say to you, “If you know you are “being plowed” right now…cooperate with and embrace ‘the process’!” Why? Because, that way His Work will get done more efficiently; and what may be even more important, to you, is the fact that it will be accomplished sooner! You can enjoy relief later! Keep that in mind! This verse is your promise that your momentary trial won’t last forever!
Let’s go on to the next verse now… Isaiah 28:25:
“When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and scatter cummin? Does he not plant wheat in its place, barley in its plot, and spelt in its field?”
Once again, there are multi-level interpretations of this passage for us to explore:
Clearly, we see that the plowing, breaking up, and working the soil, described in verse 24, was for the particular purpose of “leveling the surface”. In other words, debris was removed, rocks were lifted away, and the soil made ready to receive how and what the Farmer then would choose to plant in your soil.
Spiritually speaking, you are made ready for what God chooses to put in and do with your life.
The farmer, God, does this to remove sin, works of the flesh, wrong motives, and whatever else He has to “till out of you, his soil” to level the surface of your life, to be able to receive what He wants to produce from your life.
We see also that each is sown in a unique way: sown, scattered, planted…right?
This means, my friends, that we aren’t all the same!
Nor will we have the same planting within our lives by the Lord! This goes right in line with the other teachings in the bible about gifts and callings, doesn’t it…
Who determines what is planted? and what the soil will produce?
And spiritually speaking, who determines what is planted IN US and what WE will produce?
Yes! The answer is clear! It’s The Lord!
We do well to remember this! It will make life so much easier for many of you who are “kicking against the pricks” as scripture would say! …which means, to resist incontestable facts or authority; to protest uselessly!
If you’re in a rebellious place… wanting to do your own thing… and produce what you want… Guess what? It won’t work! You are not the one in control! God is! He’s the farmer. Your life is his field. And, He has His Plan!
And guess what else? …Besides having His Plan for your life, He also has the counsel and the wisdom to execute That Plan!
We need HIM every step of the process! Amen?
The farmer remains the most important subject of this passage. He is preeminent!
Realizing this, we can now move on to discern some other things God is telling us from this verse:
Glance back over it again, you will see that The Farmer sows one type of seed: caraway… and scatters another kind: cummin…and plants several other kinds of crops mentioned. If God is the farmer, then this means that besides determining what crop he wants to produce, he also changes “how” he sows that crop.
He sows, or scatters, or plants!
Then, as we read on, we even see another depth of revelation, in that The Farmer also determines “where” He sows each crop.
It says, In it’s place… In it’s plot…. In it’s field.
God, our great and wise farmer, knows exactly WHAT He is planting, HOW He is planting, and WHERE He is planting. Right?
So, when you look at someone else, and someone else’s life, are you to compare yourself to them?
I would say, “Absolutely Not!”
Because it’s futile! We are so unique!
And because you are to never able to become like them. You yield a different crop and have a different way The Farmer sows with you. You’re meant to be where He intends you to be, and each of us are to produce on a different scale and in a different measure!
You can’t “by your own will and desire” change God’s plans FOR YOU! There are too many variables! You, again, would be “kicking against the pricks!” Right?
(I believe God is giving this chapter to help many of you “overcome” tormenting thoughts that come from comparing yourself to others. Satan will lose his stronghold in your mind, as you begin to take in the truth of this amazing passage we are looking at!)
Because we aren’t the Farmer, i.e. God…and because we are unique and therefore can’t compare ourselves to others, having established that it is God who is in control…How do we then go forward?
We look at the very next verse in the passage!
“His God instructs him and teaches him the right way.”
I will tell you how: We get “instructed” by Him and “get taught” the right way!
God is able to do this work in our lives. Amen?!
He has to be ‘your’ God, first, by receiving Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Then God and Christ, through the Holy Spirit will instruct and teach you. You and I must be confident in God’s ability to do this in our lives!
“I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.”
And one passage most believers are familiar with is Proverbs 3:5-6 which reads:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.”
So, each believer can rest assured that God will give you everything you need! You will follow him, and in the doing so, you will receive and produce the wonderful planting He intends!
Now, let me share another verse the Spirit of Truth led me to… intended to give us all great peace of mind:
“I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them. and crooked places straight. these things I will do for them. and not forsake them.”
Sometimes it helps to bold and underline phrases as we read them in scripture, for then clarity comes! So, by doing this, from the underlined words, you can also notice one other important truth. And that is… that you may remain unaware and obstructed… until God acts… until He does His Doing.
Allowing yourself to be wholly His is therefore “A Key” to your own future!
You’ll want to stay in Christ. You’ll want to stay trusting. You will want to continue on with an awareness that you are not in control, but God is… and HE WILL do all the leading, as He intends! Amen?
I will interject here though, one other New Testement scripture that the Spirit has brought to mind, in regard to the Lord leading us. It is found within Jesus’s teaching of Mark 4. I won’t type it all here, for I teach on it in my chapter “A Matter of Hearing” from Book One of the Receive From Me Book Series, but I will share some insight here. Mark 4:14 says “The Sower soweth The Word.” and verses 15-20 explain that the ground it is sown into matters… and that is a matter of our “really hearing” what we are being instructed. This is our part, friends: hearing and responding as good soil…i.e. cooperating with God! Verse 20 says if we are good ground, we will hear the word, receive it, and bring up a crop 30-60- or 100 fold! Definitely important is our listening and responding to God with an expected response.
So now we will continue on with this amazing passage! There is so much more to learn!
Let’s look at Isaiah 28:27-28. It reads:
27 Caraway is not threshed with a sledge, nor is the wheel of a cart rolled over cumin; caraway is beaten out with a rod, and cumin with a stick.
28 Grain must be ground to make bread; so one does not go on threshing it forever. The wheels of a threshing cart may be rolled over it, but one does not use horses to grind grain.
God handles each of us differently!
These two verses have to do with threshing. Threshing is “the process” we all go through, as God separates from us the chaff…i.e. the bad stuff that doesn’t belong in our life and is not part of our good crop.
This threshing is up to the farmer! In other words, spiritually, this is up to God!
From a simple pondering of these verses, we see that… depending on what our lives are meant to be… we are handled differently. God is amazing! He alone knows how to do this! He knows, even when we come to maturity, what is needed to “make us even more useful”!
He protects us and our crop (our witness) in the way He handles us!
Read the verses 27-28 again… this time looking at the underlined words.
How ‘heavy’ the farmer’s hand is upon us is important, isn’t it…
As we glance over these verses, we see that a horse with cart, wheels alone, a sledge, a rod, and a stick all represent levels of severity in handling a particular crop.
What ‘severity’ He shows toward you is determined by your purpose…what crop you are to produce… and what His Plan is for you!
The Lord is trying to tell us, His children, and show us by this illustration, that He is wise enough to know what is best for each crop… how to handle us… how not to harm us… how to bless us… etc.
I don’t know about you, but this brings me great comfort!
It releases me suddenly from many cares! I know He can be trusted with who I am… and what I am to be, and to do…and can lead me, oversee me, and use me…to fulfill his plans!
God is the Farmer! God is the one it is all dependent upon!
Yes, we must surrender…meaning we must allow him to do as He wills…but He is the one who does “the work” to produce what “He intends!“
As Mark 4 says, we remain mindful of this work of the word within our lives, and really hear God, and respond, and we will produce a harvest if we faint not. We are each given this exhortation, as well:
And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
I will testify that even in the compiling of the Receive From Me five-book series, and the writing of this two-book series, at the time of my “receiving the seed” I had no clue what God was up to! Even now I don’t know of the full extent of the harvest The Farmer waits for from His sowing The Word into me.
He ‘worked on me’ and ‘sowed in me’… as I was surrendering to the Holy Spirit in real-time.
He was already mindful of what HE wanted TO PRODUCE! I did not know that books would come up from my soil.
I did nothing but be available and obedient…and even that, He made possible! My sincere prayer is that all He has given in the books I’ve penned will reflect the glory of My God… His Sovereignty, His Planning, His Purposes.
My “person” and my “works” are all His Workmanship!
He’s the Farmer planting in me, His soil, the crops He wants to produce!
God, The Farmer in our passage, is doing this work in all of us! You too! He’s handling each of us differently!
As the scripture of Ephesians 2:10 so perfectly states:
“We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
Indeed, as a farmer “ordains” that one field has one crop, and another field another… So, God ordains what you are to be and do! You are His Workmanship! Hallelujah!
And we are all so different… Amen?! So quit trying to make people “conform” and “be like you”!
And, quit trying to be like “another person”! Let the Farmer take care of your soil, determine your crop, fix your place, and trust His handling of you!
Just as verse 24 comforts God’s people with inference that He won’t plow us – beyond – what is necessary or needed to prepare our soil, so too verses 27-28 comfort us, that He won’t thresh us beyond what our crop needs, to produce a good return.
Verse 28 also clarifies, in no uncertain terms, that He won’t thresh, even the grain (the heartiest among us), forever! When we are in our season of bearing our crops – We will not be overly threshed!
We will be given our times to flourish! And to be “left alone” without his “heavy hand” upon us.
This should relieve all fears. This should enable us to further trust Him.
He won’t ask for more yield than we are meant to give him.
He won’t require a crop he has not sown.
He won’t be so rough on us that what we have produced would be destroyed.
He will not test or try us beyond what we can endure!
Why? Because he wants a good crop … not a ruined crop.
All is in His authority and power to make certain of.
I’ll use my husband and I as an illustration of how each of us is unique… from the Farmer’s workmanship:
God doesn’t handle my husband, Leonard, at all like He handles me! We’ve both “been broken”…or should I saw plowed… and have received our planting…i.e. we know our main calling (crop) and where we are planted. And threshing continues as God takes from us both, the chaff… a work He will perform until we die or are raptured…i.e. until true harvest time.
God knows the severity to use with each of us to prepare us for his coming and cause our lives to produce.
And we are wise to remain surrendered to His Will!
Leonard and I produce different crops! He is left-brained, a spiritual watchman, and He preaches zealously! He is a teacher, as far as spiritual gifting. I, on the other hand, am very right-brained and creative, an author and musician. I am an exhorter, as far as my spiritual gifting. We serve different purposes! We have different ways!
Yet, Current Affairs are read and studied by Leonard, and as a Watchman, the Holy Spirit lets him know what to warn God’s people about. He is able to see what God is doing and how He is bringing forth his end-time prophecies via these current events. On the other hand, I tend to be in the Word more… for I crave intimate private time to “hear the Spirit’s voice” and by my listening, I can tell others of God’s ways. They can be gleaned from my writings and music.
The Sower has determined what Word we have received and our callings. Quite fascinating, our differences…and we’ve come to celebrate them.
God knows how to handle Leonard, and God knows how to handle me!
I even have to go to God to know “how to handle” Leonard!
And He goes to God to know “how to handle” me!
I’m sure glad we both have God! Hallelujah! Lol
Look at yourself and the people in your own life!
Each is a different soil producing a different crop for God’s purposes, and the scope even varies… locally via schools, hospitals, workplaces… or perhaps in communities via politics, agencies, corporations… or world-wide via media, ministries, missions, and governments. The possibilities are endless; places, plots, and fields being “His Choice.”
If you return to “Communication Depends on Me” in the RFM Wisdom Series Book One, you will note that that lesson emphasized the scopes of God’s intent.
Just how far-reaching does He intend for your influence to be experienced? It is up to Him, with your cooperation, Amen?!
Just meditating on this passage has helped us to realize his wisdom is as a Farmer with his crops.
Suddenly you receive the awareness:
God knows what He is doing! We might not be aware of what the seed He has planted is doing…over time...but He is aware.
God is producing something from what He has sown into your life! In the natural, it is a mystery of sorts how the seed produces the crop while the farmer can “rest”; Yet, spiritually, we know it is the working of the Holy Spirit that brings forth our fruit!
You can then trust Him way more! Amen?!
Not only with your life, but with others you love too!
Parents, especially, if you realize the truth of this passage, you can pray for and then entrust your children into God’s hands…allowing God to use you to help in the process yes, but ultimately your “worry and care” will lift when you realize that God is an amazing farmer! (smile) He can handle your kid’s soil! Plant the crop! And harvest what He desires from their life, according to His Plan! Yes, pray for “their surrender” … but leave the rest to Him. The unseen workings are entrusted to the Holy Spirit!
And, as with any sowing and reaping season, give it time! You’ll then see!
The farmer can handle his own work!
He is patient and waits for his yield!
He is even more patient than us, and that’s why He tells us all to “faint not” for we will reap a harvest…. eventually…(See Gal 6:9)
In the meantime, the Lord God gives counsel and wisdom to us all. It is a matter of our hearing and responding.
In closing, let’s look at the last verse of this passage, and the one that spoke so loudly to my own heart, that I titled my books with the words within it:
This also comes from the LORD of Hosts,
Everything received from the Lord holds great value! He is Wonderful in His Counsel, and Excellent in His Wisdom. We do well to heed all that He says to us. This is truly the basis for our joy and peace!
“For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.”
I will close with those words, again emphasized for us:
God wants you and I to remain:
And we can do this by knowing our Lord is:
Wonderful in Counsel
Excellent in Wisdom