God's Suprising Ways
Isaiah: God Saves Sinners • Sermon • Submitted
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Intro: Three definitions of apology - what is an apologetic/apologist?
1. a regretful acknowledgment of an offense or failure.
2. a very poor or inadequate example of.
3. a reasoned argument or writing in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.
But does God need an “apology” in really ANY of these senses?
no, God is sinless and perfect, in all his ways, perish the thought.
no, everything God does is for his glory and worthy of all glory honor and praise, all his WAYS are perfect.
really, yes and ultimately no. is it good to reason with the lost, to give them “a reason for the hope we have”
but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,
so yes, but God often does things that are far above our ability to ever offer a proper apologetic. His ways are above ours, this is why we state that we live by faith not by sight. and even recently we have seen some serious issues with men who held the role and job of reason above the role and job of faith. as Augustine said, we have faith seeking reason, it is NOT the other way around!
Finally it would be good for us to note, As Raymond Ortlund puts it: God does not need us to save him from himself.
God works in mysterious ways, God works in surprising ways, our job is not necessarily to UNDERSTAND, but ACKNOWLEDGE AND PRAISE. So today let me throw away my philosophy degree for the next 30 minutes, because we will be looking at some of the most surprising ways of God, told us directly, to help us understand who God is and what he has done.
So lets read our Passage for today, its a long one, Isaiah 44:24-45:25
and PRAY
Today I would like to just look at our passage and ascertain what it is about God’s ways and moving that make it so difficult for us to understand, see why we often refuse to understand it then see God’s solution to this.
God’s GREATNESS
God’s GREATNESS
It all starts with GOD’S GREATNESS
(SLIDE)
Why is it so difficult for us to see God’s ways? simply put it is because he is God and we are not, it is because he is so much higher above us that we cannot even hope to properly fathom who God is. He is “God incomprehensible.
as AW Tozer puts it in his work: The knowledge of the Holy: The child, the philosopher, and the religionist have all one question: “What is God like?” … He continues… Yet from the outset I must acknowledge that it cannot be answered except to say that God is not like anything; that is, he is not exactly like anything or anybody.
he is God alone and therefore he works in ways unique. in Our passage it is shown that he is the God who works in the past the present and the future.
Lets just glance again at verses-24-27
Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,
who formed you from the womb:
“I am the Lord, who made all things,
who alone stretched out the heavens,
who spread out the earth by myself,
who frustrates the signs of liars
and makes fools of diviners,
who turns wise men back
and makes their knowledge foolish,
who confirms the word of his servant
and fulfills the counsel of his messengers,
who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited,’
and of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built,
and I will raise up their ruins’;
who says to the deep, ‘Be dry;
I will dry up your rivers’;
First note the past tense movement of God’s great works. Is the one who FORMED you, past tense, who MADE all things past tense, who stretched out the heavens and spread out the earth, again both past tense.
and also he is the one who is currently working. verse 25. he frustrates, this is current and ongoing, he makes fools of diviners. I don't want to get into the grammatical breakdown of present perfect vs imperfect, but just note, this is a current and ongoing thing that God is doing, and the heart of the problem, he “turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish” so here, in the present working of God’s greatness a thought: the more we seek knowledge, the more we try and make sure we can have a perfect and complete and clear answer, the more we seek complete and total understanding, the more in danger we are of being frustrated fools.
and He is the God who WILL work in the future. He speaks of Jerusalem and says, she WILL be inhabited. He looks at cities of Judah, that have been destroyed in battles and left for a time of exile and he says, this is not the end, they will be rebuilt, their ruins WILL be raised up (verse 26). God is so great that he sees the past present and future all at once, and he sees his purposes on display. this is why we can read some things that sound to us, just crazy.
Let us pause before we see where This passage goes next and get ourselves into the proper context. and let me ask you a question: who is the great shepherd of God’s people? the one who calls his people, who gathers his people and cares for his people? When you hear
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
who do you think of? Who is the Christ? (for some of you this might seem a weird question so let me explain, Christ is a title, not a name…) Continuing, who is the one whom God will allow to “subdue nations before him?”
you probably have a specific person in mind, My hope is you are thinking about Jesus, because in one sense you would be right, but today we are talking about the surprising ways of God. and what God says here is past surprising and falls all the way to shocking.
who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd,
and he shall fulfill all my purpose’;
saying of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be built,’
and of the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid.’ ”
here it is Cyrus, pagan ruler, idol worshiper, the conqueror of conquerors, is here said to be God’s shepherd. even some hundred years before this man would be born God is proclaiming that He will use him, (again, because God is sovereign and in control of the future). Because God’s ways are surprising. But it gets worse.
Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have grasped,
to subdue nations before him
and to loose the belts of kings,
to open doors before him
that gates may not be closed:
if you were to read this verse in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, you would come across a word that you would immediately understand, because we have it as an almost direct transliteration from the Greek. In Greek Χριστός, in English, Christ. it would read directly thus says the Lord to his CHRIST, to CYRUS.
and for the Jew at this time this was JUST as shocking because though they didn’t know who Jesus was directly, the anointed of God was always supposed to be in the line of David, he was supposed to be of their people. How in the world could God call some pagan, foreign ruler the anointed? This is shocking and continues.
God will empower him to conquer to rule. We might love the WHY in this case, he tells us it is for “the sake of my servant Jacob” verse 4, but how can God choose Cyrus?!?!
It is because he is God’ his ways are not our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, he is a great and mighty God.
In all his ways he is sovereign, in fact, he is ABSOLUTELY SOVEREIGN. so he can use Cyrus, he can use us, he can use whatever means he desires, and in fact, he WILL use whatever means he wants. he works things for HIS glory and that often, NO THAT ALWAYS, means that he works in ways that we have no say in and aren’t promised to understand.
there is what seems to earthy man strange thought in verse 5 that attests perfectly to the sovereign greatness of God.
I am the Lord, and there is no other,
besides me there is no God;
I equip you, though you do not know me,
he will call and use even those who do not know him, he will call and equip and anoint Cyrus even if he is unaware. how is this? as Motyer says it: The Lords sovereignty is absolute, neither overriding responsibility nor requiring conscious cooperation
Because he is working in such a way that he will receive all glory, and only he will receive all glory. he will raise up and he will tear down, to God alone be the Glory,
he will bind and he will lose, to God alone be the Glory. It is not for me to demand understanding, it is for me to praise, for that is why God ultimately works
Our ARROGANCE
Our ARROGANCE
so why do we struggle? what makes us unwilling to accept such truths?
OUR ARROGANCE
(SLIDE)
it stems from a heart wherein we think we deserve to know, and deserve to understand, it is because though we are crated we think we have aright to say to the creatOR how and why he should do things. It is shown in any thought that begins with “If I was God I would” or really any questioning of “why would God do that?” this is arrogance on display.
and so scripture gives us two pictures to describe our arrogance in the form of two woes.
Woe one: woe to the one who is like clay
“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him,
a pot among earthen pots!
Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’
or ‘Your work has no handles’?
here is the point the pot CANNOT say anything to the clay.
and the second woe: Woe to the one who is like a child
Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’
or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labor?’ ”
and here is the rub. We are at best clay and a child yet we act like we deserve so much. Our complain and our questioning is like a clay vessel telling it maker what would be better, or a child questioning its parents. Because God is the one who makes us. he said that once before in 44:24 but he says it again, just in case we forgot.
He made the earth and all who are on it, and he therefore has the right to do what he will with the earth and all who are on it. It is just arrogance to think that God MUST give us all his reasons. it is pride to thik that we will ever understand it all.
God’s INVITATION
God’s INVITATION
Isaiah 45:14-25 is the passage portion
the issue: an invitation to return and be saved. Just because we don't understand always, see that Gd is good. Return to him in worship. then we will begin to understand.
The world does not understand the struggles of Christianity (see Isaiah 45:15) - but we should understand the truth, that God is the God who “did not speak in secret” (Isa 45:19)
But lets go full circle and get back to a thought about “apologetic”...