How Many Firsts?

"Listen ta mea. Listen ta mea." (Sorry about the spelling. My "Southern language" skills are still developing.) Does that ring any bells for anyone? I have listened to several sermons by Billy Graham and I don't know if you would call that his calling card or idiosyncracy, but it does show up fairly regularly in his preaching. Incidentally, his daughter, Ann Graham Lotz uses it very often. Her pronunciation is clearly less accented than her Dad's. "Listen to me." One cannot help but wonder if they got this from Isaiah. (Isaiah 48:12)
    "Listen to Me, Jacob, and Israel, the one called by Me: I am He; I am the first, I am also the last.
(This might be an identifying characteristic of the Lord in Isaiah. This phrase is repeated five other  times. Isaiah 46:3, 12; 51:1, 4, 7)

"Thus sayeth the Lord," or "This is what the Lord says," is a common introduction to passages offered by all the prophets including Isaiah. That is to impart the gravity and authority of what they are about to say. And it marks it as "God talk," not just something that I thought up. Our present society is afflicted with deafness to what the Lord says. Like little children, they clap their hands over their ears and chant, "Nanananananana! I can't hear you."

That was a problem with the hearers in Isaiah's time. Notice to whom he speaks: Jacob and Israel. Not to read too much into the passage, but Jacob was his name "before" the transformation in Genesis 32, where it was changed to Israel. Could the Lord be implying that the "calling" was both before and after the change? If you are in God's plan, you have been called.

So the Lord introduces the passage with an identification of Himself. "I am He." This was a repeat of Isaiah 41:4 where the Lord used the same language. He also repeated the "first and last" part of His statement. More about that in a little while. "I am He," also appears twice in chapter 43 (v. 10, 13) and in chapter 52:6. One last time in the Old Testament is Jeremiah 29:23.

"I am He," occurs six times in John and that leads us into our topic for today. Notice the second phase of His introduction: "I am the first and I am also the last." As noted before, this was a repeat from 41:4, as well as the "I am He." This is definitively referring to Jehovah God: Yahweh. But the six times we find it in John, it is directly referencing Jesus. And to make us more aware and convinced that this was not a fluke of language, the "First and Last" designation is also applied to Jesus in at least two of these three New Testament references. (Revelation 1:17; 21:6; and 22:13)

I asked a guy one time about that and he informed me that there were two different kinds of "first." The First that is Jehovah is different than the first that is Jesus. Wisely, I refrained from refuting him and asked a question. (A lot of times a good question beats the best refutation.)

"And just exactly what is the difference between the two firsts? What makes one a first, first and the other a different first? It cannot be a second first, can it? That is nonsense."

He stammered about many different "firsts" but gave no concrete response.

"You mean like when two teams win the conference championship? They are both first, but tied, or co-champions."

"No," he wisely (or luckily) responded. He saw that trap coming.

"Right," I continued. "Just to be sure, we are in agreement that the Bible is true and has no mistakes, right?" He acquiesced. I usually use their own Bible so we avoid the "translation" error argument.

"We both know that the Old Testament quotes Jehovah as saying that He is God, alone, and there is no other or anyone equal to Him." Thus we disposed of the sports metaphor. (End of quotes and just editorializing from here on.)

He is God. There is no other and no equal. He is First and Last. Some translations use "Alpha and Omega, Beginning and the End." That doesn't help with the conflict, however. Revelation 21:13
 just uses all of them: "First, Beginning, Alpha, and Last, End, Omega."

There can only be one First. Any other interpretation or construction either does violence to the language, not to mention the intellect, or relies on hoodoo language to escape the conundrum. And a careful observer can take other instances of "first and beginning" and literarily strangle both the argument and the arguer.

Back to the context, we might surmise that Cyrus may have been tempted to equate this Yahweh with his own god or gods. The Lord, through Isaiah and later Jeremiah, and finally Daniel completely shattered that argument. People have been denying the primacy of God since the beginning. Recall Babel. They were going to circumvent this God stuff with their own approach. And as our friend Dr. Phil would ask, "How's that working for ya?" (Question again. Smart boy, that Dr. Phil.)

So "First" means first and nothing else. If we had to intellectually correlate the two uses of first on the basis of our human understanding, we would be lost. But the Scripture aids us in John 1. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Two distinct entities, but one Being. Jesus further explained that in John 10:30. "I and the Father are One."

This was not "one" in mind and ambition. Upon hearing this, the Jews were going to stone Him. They explained later that it was because He had equated Himself with God. This was, to them, blasphemy. I defy anyone to translate that differently than how the speakers, themselves, explained it. "You—being a man—make Yourself God." (Verse 33) (Except they probably did not capitalize the "yourself.")

"Listen to me...." That advice is just as relevant and reliable today as it was 2700 years or so ago. We do not listen to Isaiah or or any other person. Listen to the "I am He." He is the one and only First.

"Listen to me.