Wednesday Bible Study: Drive-By Isaiah, part 11

 

So why, you might ask, does God keep hammering in these same points every chapter?  Those points being:

-The stupidity of idols

-the power and pre-eminence of God

- the concept that if God can be trusted to tell the future before it happens, He can be trusted with everything

This week, as we start in chapter 46, God explains why:

Isa 46:12  "Listen to me, you stubborn of heart, you who are far from righteousness:
Isa 46:13  I bring near my righteousness; it is not far off, and my salvation will not delay; I will put salvation in Zion, for Israel my glory." 

 

Because we're stubborn of heart.  How many times do YOU fight the same old sin?  I don't even want to count, for my part. Because we're far from righteousness, and we need to be set right with God.  And His salvation will not delay;  there comes a time to accept that salvation, and if you miss that boat, you might not get another chance.

In Chapter 47, God discusses the ending that shall come to Babylon.  We haven't had a time fix for a while, so let's establish where we are.  The last timeframe we were sure of was around 700 BC;... Isaiah was supposedly sawn in half by the evil king Mannaseh; he began his sole rule in 687 BC, so this prophecy cycle had to be in that 13-15 year period.  Babylon did not finally destroy Judah for another hundred years, and at this point was still under the personal rule of Esarhaddon of Assyria.  The end which Isaiah is predicting- in part- came in 539 BC, a full 143 years after the latest point it might have been prophesied.  Now, on to the prophecy:

Isa 47:8  Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your heart, "I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children":
Isa 47:9  These two things shall come to you in a moment, in one day; the loss of children and widowhood shall come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and the great power of your enchantments.
Isa 47:10  You felt secure in your wickedness, you said, "No one sees me"; your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, "I am, and there is no one besides me."
Isa 47:11  But evil shall come upon you, which you will not know how to charm away; disaster shall fall upon you, for which you will not be able to atone; and ruin shall come upon you suddenly, of which you know nothing.

And so it did, we all probably know of how it was that the Medes and Persians under Cyrus dammed the river and went under the wall to destroy Babylon almost without a fight.  I said "in part" earlier, because when WE sin, do we not also say, "No one will see me?"  Just as with physical Babylon, there will come a day of reckoning for sin.  We just have to choose whether that day was the day of Christ's death, or the day of OUR death.

But God knows how stubborn man is, and how so many see themselves as their own ultimate arbiter of destiny...

Isa 48:3  "The former things I declared of old; they went out from my mouth, and I announced them; then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.
Isa 48:4  Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass,
Isa 48:5  I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, 'My idol did them, my carved image and my metal image commanded them.'

"My idol did them";  "Evolution did it"; "Science figured it out".  But God is abouit to reveal the new level that this is all coming to:

Isa 48:6  "You have heard; now see all this; and will you not declare it? From this time forth I announce to you new things, hidden things that you have not known.
Isa 48:7  They are created now, not long ago; before today you have never heard of them, lest you should say, 'Behold, I knew them.'
Isa 48:8  You have never heard, you have never known, from of old your ear has not been opened. For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously, and that from before birth you were called a rebel.

Here I want to share the next upcoming verses, because one will explain again God's reason for doing what is going to come, and the other will make a connection that you might not have seen...

Isa 48:9  "For my name's sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off.

The ultimate goal of God is His own glorification- and He has chosen the single most stubborn, wayward people in the history of man to do it.  But now, catch what comes next...

Isa 48:10  Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.

"...but not as silver..." Silver is refined at 1,763 degrees F, almost as hot as the pools of magma underground.  And the refining by affliction of His people will be that much hotter... I'll just add one thing here- consider the Holocaust.

And now, God leans over, so to speak, to tell them a secret:

Isa 48:16  Draw near to me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there." And now the Lord GOD has sent me, and his Spirit.
Isa 48:17  Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: "I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.
Isa 48:18  Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;
Isa 48:19  your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me."

A secret that comes to fruition in the words of Jesus some 700 years later:

Mat 23:37  "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!
Mat 23:38  See, your house is left to you desolate.
Mat 23:39  For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"

But now, God is going to give them one more astounding revelation, so that those who will live centuries later SHOULD get the point.  And in fact, we backtrack a couple of chapters to see it, but I wanted to save it for this week's closer:

Isa 45:1  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:
Isa 45:2  "I will go before you and level the exalted places, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron,
Isa 45:3  I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hoards in secret places, that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the God of Israel, who call you by your name. 

This is the Cyrus who will conquer Babylon some 140 years in the future... but here's the thing:  Isaiah NAMES him, some 90 years before he was born!  And just in case you say, "Yeah, but he was probably from a line of kings that had the same name...", well, there was one king who held the name before, his grandfather... but that was still 30-50 years in the future!  In 559, our Cyrus ascended the throne... do you think any of the exiles, in their 30th year in Babylon, took note?