When I was in my twenties I got to go on a placement
to Sri Lanka. I knew that I was going to
encounter poverty there in a way that I had so experienced before, so I asked a
friend if he knew any good books about suffering. He recommended, ‘How Long, O Lord?’ by Don
Carson. That book changed my life. It didn’t give easy answers. It didn’t always give answers I would have
wanted. But it reasoned from the Bible
with a clarity that I had not seen before.
It made me realize that God is more in control of this world than I had
imagined.
‘I form the light and create darkness; I make
well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things’
(45:7). While God is never dirtied by
it, evil and chaos our not outside His control.
1.
‘I made you. I
know the future. I have plans to bless
you.’ (44:24-27)
This section begins with the verse containing the
words, ‘I am the LORD who made all things’ (44:24) and ends at ‘I am the LORD
who does these things’ (45:7). I don’t
know much Hebrew, but in the Hebrew original these are the exact same words and
form bookends of a little section. God
is telling Isaiah that He is in control!
He is the God who has made us. He is infinitely personal seeing ‘my unformed
body’ and knowing ‘all the days ordained for me … written in your book before
one of them came to be’ (Psalm 139:16).
Yet while infinitely personal He is also unimaginably majestic—He
stretches out the heavens.
He knows the future.
While ‘fools of diviners’ try to tell what is to come (44:25) the truth
is these false prophets haven’t a clue.
Yet God can confirm the word of His servant and fulfil the counsel of
His messengers (44:26). God tells them
what is going to happen and what He says comes to be.
Isaiah was speaking around 700 B.C., during a period
when the Old Testament people of God was divided into two kingdoms. Isaiah spoke to the southern kingdom of Judah
whose capital was Jerusalem. He warned them
about their corrupt religion. He told
them that if they did not repent God would punish them. The people did not listen, and eventually the
Babylonians crushed them and took them into exile around 600 B.C.
From chapter 40 Isaiah is speaking prophetically ahead
of his time to those who were in exile in Babylon. What were God’s first thoughts for those
wicked people? ‘Comfort, comfort my
people,’ says your God, ‘Speak tenderly to her …’ (Isaiah 40:1-2a). ‘God’s deepest intention towards His people
is comfort’ (Ortland). Now we are
introduced to somebody else—King Cyrus. Cyrus
was the Persian king. The Persians were
the superpower after the Babylonians. In
the first year of his reign, Cyrus issues an edict that says that all the
exiles in Babylon can go home to Judah and Jerusalem. That was 539 B.C. Isaiah is talking about things that take
place one hundred and fifty years after his time.
Can you see the problem for Bible scholars who do not
believe that God knows the future? The
Assyrians were the super-power of his day.
How could Isaiah know that they could be overwhelmed by the Babylonians? How could Isaiah know that the Babylonians
would take the people of Judah into exile?
How could Isaiah know that the Babylonians know that Babylonians would
be replaced by the Persians? How could
Isaiah know that the Persian leader would be called Cyrus? These things all took place after Isaiah
died! Many Bible scholars conclude that
someone later than Isaiah must have written these words. But we know that Isaiah was told these things
by the God who knows the future!
2.
‘Through my anointed I will bring you home’ (44:28-45:7)
God calls Cyrus ‘my shepherd’ (44:28) and refers to
him as ‘His anointed’ (45:1). The word
for ‘anointed’ is the word for ‘messiah’ (Hebrew) or ‘christ’ (Greek). God is going to use this evil man to issue a
decree that will pave the way for His people to return home. God is in control even over the mightiest
ruler of that time. ‘Many are plans in a
person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails’ (Proverbs
19:21). ‘In the LORD’s hand the king’s
heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him’
(Proverbs 21:1).
Through this ‘anointed one’ God will remove every
obstacle that threatens to get in the way of His purposes for His people. Though Cyrus does not know God (45:4) our God
says, ‘I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no
God. I will strengthen you, though you
have not acknowledged me; so that from the rising of the sun to the place of
its setting people may know that there is none besides me. I am the LORD and there is no other’ (45:5-6). God has plans that aim to display His glory to
the whole world!
So, God uses an evil man to bring blessing for His
people. This is control. This is what happens at the cross. Jesus was the anointed one/messiah/christ who
was not a tyrant like Cyrus but is gentle and lowly. He was the good shepherd who lays down His
life for His sheep. At the cross evil
men who did what they wanted to do, and yet they accomplished God’s greatest
and most loving plan for the return of His people. The cross enables us to return home, not from
exile in Babylon, but as forgiven people welcomed into the loving embrace of
the Father.
3.
‘I am in control’ (45:7)
There was a deacon in a church who was talking to a
group of people about the issue of suffering.
She said that she liked the idea of what she called a ‘weak god’. She comforted herself with the thought that
God would like to help us in our troubles but that He simply is not able to. Such reasoning might let God off the hook
when it comes to why He allows evil, but it is not really comforting. It would mean that ultimately chaos reigns. Speaking about their struggle with depression
someone said, that while God’s control over our suffering leaves me with many
hard questions, I would rather put my trust in the God who is all-powerful, and
who has revealed himself in the beautiful person of Jesus Christ, than think
that my life is going to be blown around in the whims of chaos.
Conclusion
It doesn’t matter whether you acknowledge Jesus or
not, you are not in control. You don’t
even know if you will be alive this time tomorrow. But what if the God who is in control was on
your side and that He would move heaven and earth to bless you? Wouldn’t that help you sleep at night?
A young man was honest enough to admit that he was
angry at God. He could not understand
why God was letting Him experience so much pain. I assured Him that God is big enough and
caring enough to deal with our questions.
Read the Psalms and you will see a raw honesty that
can be shocking. ‘How long, O LORD, will
you forget me forever? How long must I
wrestle with my thoughts all day long?’ (Ps. 13:1-2).
But then we must also remember the words that come after
our reading in Isaiah. ‘Woe to those who
quarrel with their maker’, like a pot saying to its maker, ‘what are you
making?’ or ‘your work has no handles on it’ (45:8-9). We can be honest in our questions to our
loving heavenly Father, but we must not accuse Him of making a mess of our
lives or not knowing what He is doing.
God promises to work all things together for the good
of those who love Him. But that does not
mean that you will never suffer or that He will say ‘yes’ to all your
prayers. The good He works in us often
comes through suffering. That good is to
make you more like Jesus (Rom. 8:28-29).
We are to look at His cross; trust in His character; lean into the
loving arms of our heavenly Father; remind ourselves of all that Jesus went through
that we could come home; and ask the Holy Spirit to keep our hearts from
bitterness.
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