(3) Open your ears, come listen to me, and you will live,
And I will make an eternal covenant with you,
David’s grace-filled, faithful covenant.
(4) He is the one I have made a witness to the nations,
And a prince and commander to the peoples.
(5) You will call a nation that you don’t know,
And a nation that doesn’t know you will run to you,
because of YHWH your God, and the Holy one of Israel,
because he has made you glorious! — Isaiah 55:3-5
In the first two verses of Isaiah 55 we learned something about putting our focus on God. He is the only one who can satisfy, and he does so by grace. We simply have to be prepared to accept that grace. Our tendency is so often to replace what God can do with lousy substitutes that have no chance of working. That’s the essence of idolatry. When the Israelites made a golden calf at Mt. Sinai, and announced that it was their god who brought them out of Egypt, the claim could hardly be taken seriously. The calf that they just made defeated the Egyptians, opened the sea, then provided water from the rock to drink, or manna to eat.
But now God has a second command: Not only do we need to come to him because he is the only one who can satisfy, but we need to give him our full attention. “Listen!†he says. He wants to make an eternal agreement with us, the same covenant he made with David. That covenant has three characteristics: It’s eternal, it’s characterized by grace, and it’s reliable. It has one core purpose: Witness.
I have heard a great deal about different types of anointing and different calls that people have. My wife and I are called to be teachers. We express a strong anointing for music as a Davidic anointing. And indeed David was a musician. But there is something more powerful going on here. David was anointed in witness. He was to give testimony to what God had done for him, which David tells us was quite a bit.
What I think we need to notice here is that the Davidic anointing was not just to produce music; it was to be a witness. That doesn’t just apply to music, it applies to everything. I must never say that I am called just to be a teacher, and that my task only applies inside the church, that I have no call to witness. Whatever I do involves my witness.
Now the key part of my witness is not some great effort that I put forth. It’s something that God does for me. Notice verse 5. God is going to send people who don’t know me, and people I don’t know running to me. Why? Because of what God has done in and for me.
Whatever gifts God has given you, whatever anointing, whatever call, whatever position—he has given them all to you so that you can be a witness. He has made you glorious so that people will run to you, and see HIM.
If we’re having a hard time being a witness, perhaps we need to examine our time with God, and what we’re letting God do in our lives. Perhaps we’re still carrying around some of the junk from the wrong spiritual shopping mall!
Has God made you glorious? Are you willing to give him credit?
