Isaiah Chapter 55, verses 8-13 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereunto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier, shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.	
	This evening, let us view the scriptures of our past consideration in the light of the significance of what God’s intent for eternity holds in the marriage of the Beloved, Christ and His Church. We are the planting of the Lord, and there is a crucial aspect held in this which we dare not overlook. Marriage and planting require the very severe pruning away of self, those thorns and thistles that have no place in the garden, in the marriage bond. In the Church, the bramble will be rooted out and separated. There will be no room for anything less than a perfect expression of the Love of God to be forthcoming in the beauty that will replace all the ashes that once were the lives of those lost in sin and trespass. 	
	Psalms 139:23+24  Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. 
	We began our studies of the past few weeks with this verse. We saw it in terms of what is necessary in our lives for the Lord to accomplish. It takes a mighty work of God to effect in us the desire to have the Lord God Almighty bring to the surface of our minds and hearts, anything that displeases Him in us. It is neither an easy nor simple task, because God is gracious enough to not allow the least element of self to stain our beings as He is working effectively to bring about that which He desires to have evidenced in us, the Lord Jesus Christ living out from us. 
	We further concentrated on the fact that we are not the individual focus of God’s eternal plan and purpose. Now, I am in no-wise saying that God doesn’t work in the individual lives whom He so freely and personally loved unto Himself in Christ. That is most certainly the truth. He deals with each one of us on personal terms to show us just how much we each mean to Him. And praise His holy name for that miraculous aspect of how He is our personal Lord and Savior! However, because He does love us so very much in Christ, He has a greater plan in place than we have yet experienced on an individual basis. He so loves us that He has joined us together, one with each other, in the best that He has to offer us, in Jesus Christ. There are several aspects to this truth. The first is that we do not go through any of the dealings of God alone. Everything that He is accomplishing in one is also being accomplished in the whole body of believers. This reality means that we are being knit together, as a body is knit together, sinew by sinew, vein by vein, nerve and muscle, bone and marrow. This is not a new description by any measure. The New Testament writers referred to it often, because it describes just how tightly interwoven we are with each other as we together undergo the Lord’s operating work of love and grace and mercy.
	We are growing together in Christ. That brings with it the conditions of such a close relatedness. We can’t grow apart from the fellowship of each other in Him. As God is working to create, in His body of believers the fullness of Christ, so is He at work in each of us one with another. He brings us through crises and difficulties with each other in order to establish and strengthen that continued bond of utter reliance upon Him in everything. Not much more needs to be said except to emphasize that we need each other for growth unto a mature stature in Christ, individually and corporately, as much as we need Christ. And, what God is establishing in His Beloved is not possible without the body of believers. Christ cannot be fully glorified without His church. There is a vital connection that we dare not miss, and it is the purpose that God will have in Christ and His church. He will not be denied because He so loves the Son for the great love wherewith He so fully loved us. He will accomplish whatever needs to be done in order to glorify His Beloved, Christ in indispensable union with the Church.
   Isaiah 61:10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels. This was the second consideration that we undertook, that even Christ was prepared as the husband to the church. He had to undergo severe testings as to His readiness to be so joined to the church in all the love of the Father. What was in the heart of God, in the Beloved, was not whimsical, neither was it simply a good idea. All of eternity is wrapped together in the creation of God’s full intent in Christ and the Church. Before the ages of the ages were even created, God determined to bring into being a complete relationship of Himself with man. In the course of His resolute intent, the Son gave up His position, as God, and took upon Himself the body of a man. He did not just use the shell to cover His deity. He became a man in every sense of the createdness that is part of mankind, but without sin. He underwent the full course of temptations and struggles that beset us in this creation, in order to overcome them once and for all of us. He did this, not with the tools of His Deity, but with His heart of love for the Father, and for us, His church, which was not even in existence, but soon would be. What He underwent, He did for the sake of those of us to follow, who would but believe on Him and accept Him in all His love for us. In line with this, He was prepared for the position at the right hand of God, not as the Son, that was already His right, but as the glorified man, the one who had given up everything for the sake of bringing into being the very desire of the Father’s heart. Jesus took upon Himself the course of becoming the fulfillment of the whole love of God for His creation by becoming eminently incorporated with mankind in His perfect expression of God’s will and love. 
	It was necessary for Him to undergo every temptation of this world order as evidenced in the Gospels, in order to manifest the truth that He was able to serve as the vehicle of mankind’s salvation. As God, that was not the issue, but, as a man, with all the frailties and desires of a man, His perfect obedience to the Father made Him the only way of salvation. In Him, by His love, we are now incorporated into the Beloved of God. There is no other way. There is no other means. There is no other fulfillment of God’s desire than to be found in Jesus Christ, members of His body, married to Christ. 
	Verse 11 continues For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. It is in this marriage to Christ, as the church, that God will see the accomplishment of His eternal design. The oneness that we share with Christ is beyond description in the wonder of God’s design. We all benefit in having every need met in the unsearchable riches of Christ, yet that simply looks at matters from our side of the wedding band. More importantly, all of creation will be in awe of the marvelous work of God revealed in Christ Jesus. What this world order is after in trying to usurp God’s legitimate placement will be exposed for the folly and the lies and the illegitimate being that it is. Rather, the glory of God will eminate forth from the Beloved to envelop this whole creation in righteousness and praise. What God has established in the relationship of Christ and His church will flow forth from His Beloved unto all of God’s created beings. There will be an overflowing of the manifest glory of God that will overwhelm the universe. This was never seen by God as limited to one race of people, one solitary nation. The fullness of Christ cannot be limited to that finite focus. God’s provision of love was eternally aimed at any who would be joined to Christ. As scripture tells us, there is no more Greek nor Hebrew, male nor female, slave nor master, there is only Christ and those who acknowledge their love for and in Him. He transcends every political, racial, social and economic spectrum. He alone stands as the means by Whom all the fullness of God is lavished upon His bride, the church, and then, together, as one, it is dispersed throughout the universe. It is the perfect plan of God, to accomplish that after which He desires. All of creation, all the nations, all the realms of beings are going to see the mighty hand of God evidenced in this resplendent manifestation of the Love of God. It is being tested, proven, finalized, and manifested in the Beloved, Christ and His church.
	Please note the manner in which Isaiah brings this marvelous relationship into fruition. He describes it in terms of the marriage of two individuals, the bride and groom, and the preparation that is required on both parts, as we have discussed. Then, there is an evident transition into the terms of a garden, and the process used in the planting of God’s glory. The marriage develops into a fruitful harvest of God’s righteousness and praise in all the nations. The wedded relationship spreads, like the seeds planted in the earth, throughout the nations. Then, in the perfect timing of God, like the seasons of growth, there is evidenced, to His complete glory, the outgrowth of the germination process of which we are presently undergoing. Trees of righteousness, the myrtle and the fir, will flourish throughout creation as the planting of the Lord.
	In no-wise, do I want to minimize, or bring down to this earthly level, the reality of what God is doing, but we are limited by those examples that our finite minds can comprehend. It is the best available expression of how God operates, and the two aspects of farming and marriage do shed a bit of light on His tremendous process of spiritual life and growth. Marriage is very much the planting of the Lord. He is the One who prepares the soil for the nurturing of the seed, the relationship. We all have seen the hand of God working to make the soil supportive and nutritive to receive His seed of the Word. Then, after the planting, after the vows are said, there is that period of death. The seed dies, and the marriage shows that same process, as the two are being put to death in order for one to spring forth in life. Christ died for our reconciliation to God. He laid down His life for us. We, at our second birth, have laid down our life unto Him. We have signified that we are no longer living, but rather that the life that we now live is Christ living His life in us. Both the bride and the bridegroom have given up their personal interests and desires for the sake of the whole, the Beloved. The remnant of that old life, the seed, is dead, dead in deed, in order for another life to spring forth in newness, in the Word of God. It is a completely new life that issues forth from the planting of the Lord. It springs up in all the nations, in every climate, in every realm with a glory that is unrivaled by anything that is part of this world order. Its growth comes from God, is nourished by God, is watered by God, and is blooming in the glorious radiance of God’s own Beloved. 
	The blooming of the marriage of the bride and groom is fulfilled in the light of the oneness that springs forth. No self-interests, no self-pity, no self-righteousness, no self-preservation, no self period. Rather, it is the wholeness and the completeness of the purity of Love manifested in the radiant glory of God on high, living forth among the nations of this realm. We bloom where God plants us, because we bloom in Christ. He is our life-source and the Holy Spirit is our water, as He manifests His living Word in us. 
	Hosea 2: 19-20 And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the Lord. 
	This is how we come to know the Lord. As our life is His very life to live, as we are knit together, one with each other in Christ, so He evidences Himself unto us, in us, and through us. We live in His righteousness, not our own. We have no standing before God or before man in ourselves. It is a very lonely situation when we are trying to prove our self-righteousness in the face of the working of God. Very rapidly, we experience the fiery flames as we are cleansed of all unrighteousness. Our plans, and our purposes, and our desires, and our understandings, and our fears quickly are seen for the limitations and worthlessness that they contain. What we consider to be a good situation, is abruptly shown for folly in light of the best that God has to offer in Christ. 
	The judgment of God is His placement of things back into their proper order. We have been placed into Christ on the basis of His right standing before God. What He has accomplished has stipulated that we no longer live in fear of the wrath of God, but rather are now in our legitimate place at His own right hand in Christ. The areas of our lives that are not in line with our proper standing are being removed from us in the effective working of God. He uses whatever it takes, whatever means necessary in order for our lives to manifest the placement into which God has put us in Christ. He does all of this in His lovingkindness and tender mercies, as the passage indicates. Each of these carry with it the full impact of how much God loves us in Christ. Each is an exceedingly excellent outcome of the working of God in our lives, as we deal with one another, in Christ. Lovingkindness and tender mercies are required in order for any relationship to flourish and develop. These are the things that the church is learning in the relationship that we share with each other in Christ. We are in that marriage process of denying self, dying to self, in order for only the wholeness of the glory of God to live forth from us. And God does all this work in His Beloved, in His faithfulness. He doesn’t begin to tear out the weeds of our self-life, and then take a break, or consider the job insignificant in the grand scheme of His workings. Rather, He faithfully completes every dealing in the same manner that He does everything, in His perfection. And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth: And the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel. And I will sow her unto me in the earth: and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them, which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God. (Verses 21-23 of Hosea 2)
	Once again, we see the marriage bond brought together in the terms of the planting of the Lord. What is the purpose for planting? It is for the nourishment of those who partake. Jezreel means Whom God planted. He is the One Who determines the proper planting for each season. What is needed, He will supply in the precise and exceedingly abundant supply of Himself, through His Beloved as He sows us here and there among the nations. There is no question that what He is doing is for the nourishment of the universe as a whole. The evidence of His tremendous efforts on the behalf of humanity, pales in comparison to the magnificent fruition that will be reaped in the eternal ages yet to be seen. The harvest of this time is for the spiritual realm of which we have little comprehension. What God is doing, He is doing perfectly, with the weight of all creation at stake. Everything is viewing the working of God in man, with wonder, and with anticipation, and with concern. All yearn to see what God is going to accomplish, not realizing that He has already done everything in Christ. The fruition is yet to be realized, but the planting has been done. We are yet in the times of the removal of the thorns and the briers, but that is being done in the church. God’s searching gaze is examining all of His planting, to weed out and to remove the thistles in order that the myrtle and the fir trees, the church in Christ, will be found in the strength and the solid foundation of a root system flourishing in the righteousness, judgment, lovingkindness, tender mercy, and faithfulness of our Husband, the Lord Jesus Christ, a planting to stand for eternity.  
	As the prophet Isaiah records in Chapter 55, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereunto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier, shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.