GOD IS IN CONTROL

Well here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into Ollie! As if the times we live in are not tumultuous enough, now we have a repeat of the hanging chads of the Bush/Gore election. God only knows how this is going to play out. But therein lies the key to surviving all this nonsense with your sanity intact! God KNOWS! I want to drive that point home tonight with a passage that is probably familiar to many of you and that is certainly germane to our situation.

Isaiah 45:1–10 (NKJV) — 1 “Thus says the Lord to His anointed, To Cyrus, whose right hand I have held— To subdue nations before him And loose the armor of kings, To open before him the double doors, So that the gates will not be shut: 2 ‘I will go before you And make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of bronze And cut the bars of iron. 3 I will give you the treasures of darkness And hidden riches of secret places, That you may know that I, the Lord, Who call you by your name, Am the God of Israel. 4 For Jacob My servant’s sake, And Israel My elect, I have even called you by your name; I have named you, though you have not known Me. 5 I am the Lord, and there is no other; There is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me, 6 That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting That there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; 7 I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.’ 8 “Rain down, you heavens, from above, And let the skies pour down righteousness; Let the earth open, let them bring forth salvation, And let righteousness spring up together. I, the Lord, have created it. 9 “Woe to him who strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ Or shall your handiwork say, ‘He has no hands’? 10 Woe to him who says to his father, ‘What are you begetting?’ Or to the woman, ‘What have you brought forth?’ ”

POLITICS

A conversation with Cyrus

The fact that we have this prophesy at all is remarkable and substantiates the claims that are made in it.

Isaiah prophesied this about Cyrus approximately 200 years before it happened. Cyrus was not alive, and yet here is Isaiah quoting God, speaking to a man who did not yet exist!!

It gets even more remarkable: God calls Cyrus “His anointed”. This was a term that was used of kings, prophets, priests…servants of God! There is no other reference in the Bible to a Gentile being called God’s anointed. The idea behind the anointing obviously includes empowering by the HS, calling and being set apart to God’s purpose, and God given position and authority.

And all this to someone of whom God says “You have not known Me” twice!!

Now we know that Cyrus fulfilled this prophesy, defeating Babylon, establishing the Persian empire, and sending the Jews back to Israel to rebuild Jerusalem.

So here is a marvelous revelation of the sovereignty of God and it is in the context of all the upheaval of kingdoms and conquest and power.

Politics!!! And one of the most remarkable prophecies in the OT because of the actual naming of a known historical figure 200 years in advance is all about the rise and fall of nations and empires and God’s plans for His people. What an appropriate text for the moment.

Perhaps you are familiar with the prophecies that were pronounced over Trump in the 2016 election cycle that called him Cyrus, and Netanyahu’s allusion to Trump as Cyrus when Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. I think Israel minted a coin with Cyrus and Trump’s image on it to memorialize the occasion.

Now I am not commenting on the validity of any of this. I am not endorsing the prophecies nor suggesting that there is some sort of messianic anointing on Trump. I really have no idea what God is going to do in this election cycle. That is not the point of this sermon. But the upheaval and the uncertainty that Israel faced when they were overrun by Babylon and carried into captivity was addressed in this text well ahead of the events, and our own uncertainty and distress are equally addressed in this same text.

That they may know

Isaiah 45:4–6 NKJV

For Jacob My servant’s sake, And Israel My elect, I have even called you by your name; I have named you, though you have not known Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; There is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me, That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting That there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other;

God declares that He is naming Cyrus by name, the key political component in these events, so that THEY MAY KNOW!!!

From the rising of the sun to its setting…from the East to the West and throughout the tracks of time, we can look at this prophesy and come to the same conclusions about our time now as God reveals through Isaiah for their time then! The eternal, infinite, timeless God changes not! There are some specific things God wants us to understand tonight that are directly related to hour we are living in.

PEACE AND CALAMITY

I create light and darkness

Isaiah 45:7 NKJV

I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.’

This is an uncomfortable revelation, but one we have to accept if we are to process life correctly.

We are all happy and willing to attribute the light and the peace to God’s creative, merciful, loving, all wise hand. It’s the darkness and calamity that trips us up. Especially when God claims to be the author of both!!

Now understand, God is not claiming to be the author of evil. Keep it in the context of history and the political upheaval. The rise and fall of nations, the raising up and setting down of kings, it’s all in the hands of God.

Habakkuk 1:5–7 NKJV

“Look among the nations and watch— Be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days Which you would not believe, though it were told you. For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans, A bitter and hasty nation Which marches through the breadth of the earth, To possess dwelling places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful; Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.

Jeremiah 25:8–14 (NKJV) — 8 “Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Because you have not heard My words, 9 behold, I will send and take all the families of the north,’ says the Lord, ‘and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, and against these nations all around, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, a hissing, and perpetual desolations. 10 Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp. 11 And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 12 ‘Then it will come to pass, when seventy years are completed, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity,’ says the Lord; ‘and I will make it a perpetual desolation. 13 So I will bring on that land all My words which I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah has prophesied concerning all the nations. 14 (For many nations and great kings shall be served by them also; and I will repay them according to their deeds and according to the works of their own hands.)’ ”

God will judge Israel AND THE NATIONS with Babylon. Then He will judge Babylon by those same nations!

God has always used nations to judge nations, kingdoms to judge kingdoms. The processes of world politics are often more than just the random events of human struggles, though our text, as we will see, acknowledges that.

And God uses politics to judge His people and His nation.

Isaiah 3:1-5 (NKJV) 1  For behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, Takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah The stock and the store, The whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water; 2  The mighty man and the man of war, The judge and the prophet, And the diviner and the elder; 3  The captain of fifty and the honorable man, The counselor and the skillful artisan, And the expert enchanter. 4  "I will give children to be their princes, And babes shall rule over them. 5  The people will be oppressed, Every one by another and every one by his neighbor; The child will be insolent toward the elder, And the base toward the honorable."

My point is not that this is or is not judgment. It could be. The story is still being told! My point is that God is in control! God’s point in doing what He is planning on doing through Cyrus is so that we might know 2500 years later, that God has plans and God has purposes and none of this is taking Him by surprise or aborting His purposes.

I command the rain

Isaiah 45:8 NKJV

“Rain down, you heavens, from above, And let the skies pour down righteousness; Let the earth open, let them bring forth salvation, And let righteousness spring up together. I, the Lord, have created it.

God speaks to the heavens and commands revival…rain down righteousness…bring forth salvation! God is in control! Can you see this? God is in control…light and dark, peace and calamity, revival…God is in control.

DO NOT STRIVE

Misunderstanding the Creator

And so God applies this truth to us.

Isaiah 45:9 NKJV

“Woe to him who strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ Or shall your handiwork say, ‘He has no hands’?

What a remarkable statement: Let the pots strive with the pots! Let men strive with men. Let the Democrats strive with the republicans…but don’t question what I am doing or whether or not I am still sovereignly in control!!

Isaiah 45:9 (NLT2) 9  “What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator. Does a clay pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying, ‘Stop, you’re doing it wrong!’ Does the pot exclaim, ‘How clumsy can you be?’

God is saying to us, “Look. I may not be doing it the way you think I should be doing it…but you’re way out of line to question me.

See, I wish someone had preached this to me last night before I started fussing and fuming with God about what the heck He was doing and why didn’t he hear the prayers of countless saints in America that were praying for this election and for a righteous outcome.

Well first of all, it ain’t over! It remains to be seen if God will in fact answer those prayers. 100,000 more votes were cast in Wisconsin than there are registered voters. What if God is setting things up for a massive exposure of fraud? What if something bigger is at work?

But that is beside the point! What God is saying is, trust ME!!! Which is what He’s always saying. TRUST ME!

You misunderstand your Creator. I am not the god of the deists who believe God created and then abandoned His creation. I am not like your idols who have no hands!

Misunderstanding the creation

Isaiah 45:10 NKJV

Woe to him who says to his father, ‘What are you begetting?’ Or to the woman, ‘What have you brought forth?’ ”

Isaiah 45:10 (NLT2) 10  How terrible it would be if a newborn baby said to its father, ‘Why was I born?’ or if it said to its mother, ‘Why did you make me this way?’”

Not only are we misunderstanding who God is, we’re misunderstanding His creation. We are suggesting that there is something fundamentally flawed in the creation He has brought forth.

There is no doubt something fundamentally flawed in us, but not by design. Not by God’s doing. A beautiful baby girl can grow up, shave her head, cover herself with tattoos, and put a bone through her nose. She may look horrible by the time she gets through with herself, but that isn’t how she was made. The creation was good, until it made itself not good!!

So let’s step back and get a picture of what is going on. A beautiful world filled with everything needful for a beautiful life, populated with people made in the image of God…and it was all good. And then creation was deceived and rebelled and all the good was broken. And the creation said: “Why have you made us thus?”

Does that mean God has lost control? Does that mean, as the atheists suggest, that either God is immoral or God is impotent? What we see is that God is neither. We are!

So what do we do with our present circumstances? We step back and say: “God is in control of these strange turbulent unpredictable times, and therefore, we can trust Him! Dark light, peace, calamity…what can we say? Our God reigns! Our God reigns. Our God reigns. No matter what it looks like, our God reigns.