The Wonderous World and Works of God

Why no terror?

15–17 The reason why terror will not come to the people now is the very same reason why it came to them in the first place (cf. 5:26–30): the lordship of God in history. Just as the Assyrians did not come as an accident of history, neither will the survival of the people of Israel with their faith and identity strengthened be an accident. Whatever trouble may come to them, God will not have sent it to them as a means of judgment and destruction.

This point is as important as the last. Although God is in control of history, and nothing happens outside that control, he is not a puppet master whose sovereignty requires that every event be individually initiated by him. We live in a fallen world where trouble comes to all people. But those who are living in obedience to the righteousness of God need not fear such trouble. It is neither a sign of retribution nor discipline, but merely of the patience of God in allowing cause and effect to take its natural course.

But those who, in the course of events, decide to make trouble for the people of God should think very carefully. God has laid the cornerstone of the city (28:16), and those who stumble over it will have a very unpleasant fall.

Subpoint A

Death is the king of terrors and the terror of kings.

Anonymous

Subpoint B

Psalm 19:1–6 ESV

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

God does not promise us that trouble will not come. Indeed, Jesus promised his disciples just the opposite (Matt. 10:25), and both Peter (1 Pet. 4:12) and Paul (Rom. 8:17) echoed that teaching. But he does promise his presence in the trouble, and he promises us that he will not allow it to tear us from his embrace. Those who make the trouble have another kind of assurance: they will fall and the fall will be great.

This is the point of vv. 16–17. Since God is the Creator who creates not only the warrior (the destroyer) but the weapon in his hand, and not only the weapon but even the blacksmith who made the weapon, we should not think that anything can come to us that will contradict God’s purposes for us.

Isaiah’s point should not be overlooked. He is saying that no part of the universe is exempt from the purposes of God.

The two heavily emphasized occurrences of I, I have created drive this home. If armies are in the world, they are here within the creative purposes of God. This is not to enter into the quagmire of “intentional will” and “permissive will,” which probably would have been a meaningless distinction to the Hebrews anyway.

It is to say that things do not happen simply because they are “fated” to do so as an expression of the inscrutable determinism of a cyclical cosmos, but that all things will serve the purposes of a Creator who is himself the Redeemer.