The ‘church sign’ read “The end is the place to begin”. Think about it ...; many of us would only say it differently: You begin with a goal. Successful ventures are started that way. Objectives, intermediate measurements of progress, are established and the work is begun; success will be measured by contrasting the results with the planned ending, the vision.

INC 500, a listing of the fastest growing new business ventures testifies to the success of this method ... at least in the short run. The life cycle of organizations should be much longer than the founder’s endurance; ‘should be’! Instances abound of the ‘contra-experience’, however. Founders wear out, management ages, and the weary step aside; the second generation of leaders come in and contribute to the goal, but repeat the process in time, and age out. Now, a third set, a ‘new breed’, which doesn’t remember the goal, sets about establishing their own, usually managing the maintenance of ‘status quo’. Hark: the 3rd Generation Syndrome, and the vision falls aside.

By Isaiah’s time, Israel was in perpetual captivity and Judah was ‘in the ditch’. They and their prophets could now only see the immediate objective: get right with God, and get back to Judea. Lost to them was God’s vision of redeeming all mankind to Himself. Blinded to their role in His plan, they saw themselves ‘as His plan’.

This analogy to man’s shortsightedness, though, breaks down at this point, because mankind’s redemption is not an enterprise of man; we only fill a role in God’s plan. Today’s scripture reference is part of a longer prophecy concerning the coming of “the Holy One of Israel” (49:7), one of 31 references in the Old Testament to the Messiah, Christ Jesus. Through Him, God would bring salvation to all the earth, “spiritual Israel”. Thankfully, God’s goal trumped Israel’s objective.

“And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob’”; Rom 11:26. And your role is ...