July 24 - Isaiah 44:6-48:11

Good morning everyone,

Our reading begins this morning with God, yet another time, through Isaiah giving us the “what for” on idols. Chapter 44:14-17 kind of made me chuckle a little bit. They speak to the carpenter who cuts down the tree, and the different things he uses the wood for such as cooking and warmth but with the left over wood he whittles an idol, prays to it and says, “You are my God.” Seriously?! We live out in the country and our only source of heat is our wood stoves. Matt spends a lot of time cutting, chopping, splitting and stacking wood for our winter warmth and there can be found, at any given time, chunks of left over wood around our property. The thought of going out and carving up one of those lumps of wood into a face of my choosing and then praying to it is so off the charts ridiculous to me, and yet, there are those who do essentially just that. It begs the question, how can someone actually believe that a piece of wood or metal could respond with love, how can someone put their faith and trust in such an inanimate object as that? For me the answer is obvious, it can not express anything so why bother, but God in heaven, Yahweh, the creator of heaven and earth can. He loves us so much! 

In 44:28 we see the name Cyrus in a prophecy that is one of the most incredible prophecies of all the Old Testament. When God gave this information to Isaiah to share with the people, he had to have exercised an enormous amount of faith because, you see, it predicts that the man named Cyrus would order the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the foundations of the temple would be laid. Hmmm, the thing is, when Isaiah prophesied this, Jerusalem was already built and doing well, not only that but the temple was standing tall. Use your mind’s eye to see this, here we have a thriving city and a temple that is in great shape, it is used daily, people are happy, things are going good and Isaiah, an old man, comes through saying, “Um, yea folks … Cyrus will rebuild Jerusalem for you and see to it that the temple is rebuilt as well, so don’t worry about a thing, God just wants you guys to know that.” (paraphrasing of course) What would your response to that be? As it turns out, 200 years later a man named Cyrus, king of the Persian empire, would rescue the Jews from Babylonian captivity and oder the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem and it’s temple that had been destroyed when they were captured. I love that fulfillment of prophecy. God always keeps His Word.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of prophecies in the Bible. One prophecy that occurs again and again in the Old Testament is the prophecy of the people of Israel being scattered to all nations. In the past few months we have read how the northern ten tribes were taken into captivity by Assyrians and that Judah was taken captive to Babylon and though Cyrus helped them rebuild, the land was never quite the same. Later we’ll read that in 70 AD, Rome will annihilate them, and that the Jews who were not killed were scattered into all nations, however in Ezekiel 11:17 it says, “Therefore say: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.” And so it was that in 1948 Israel did, in fact, after more than 2500 years become an independent nation where today more than a five million Jews have returned to this small piece of real estate, about the size of New Jersey, and Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, a language that had been all but dead for 2200 years has been revived and proclaimed the national language of Israel. Today Israel is once again under attack and could use our prayers. Would you please pray for this small but mighty country?

Well all that to say, our God is not an ole lump of something that stares back at you, at me, that stares back at us with a blank expression it’s face and no response. Oh no, no, no! Our God is an awesome God, a loving God, a God of His Word. Every single one of God’s prophecies has come true or the time for them to come true has not arrived yet. You can and should believe Him. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, “God said it, I believe it, so for me that settles it. Amen?

Have a great day to God be the glory.

God bless you all ….