Hear the word of our God. Verse one. 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. I will go before you and level the exalted places. I will break in pieces the doors of bronze cut through the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hordes in secret places, that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name. For the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel, my chosen, I call you by your name. I name you, though you do not know me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. Besides me, there is no God. I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord. who does all these things. This is God's holy word, let's pray. Our God, we do seek to come before you, the holy God, with reverence and awe, we approach your word. with humility, with our hearts bowed before you, asking that you would speak to us according to your word, according to your truth. We pray that the preaching of your word might be in accordance with the truth that your word reveals. We ask, Lord, for the help of your Holy Spirit in teaching and in hearing. We ask that the spirit might give us the encouragement from the scriptures that we desire and that we need. Lord, we pray that your sheep will hear your voice and follow you and know you as the good shepherd. And we pray these things through our savior, Jesus Christ, amen. Well, you've probably heard of the Nobel Prize or prizes, and it comes from the Nobel Foundation, where they give six prizes in different areas each year, and each prize is worth about $1.2 million. And the Nobel Prize and foundation is named after a famous inventor, a scientist named Alfred Nobel. And he became very wealthy from his inventions. But the patent that he made the most money off of was patenting dynamite. And dynamite is a combination of the chemicals nitroglycerin with silica powder. And he made this into a patent and after a couple of attempts where two times his factory was blown up, he was able to invent dynamite. And so the dynamite then began to be sold. This chemical compound was sold to governments and to those who were making weapons. And so of course they began to make weapons for war using dynamite. So now you know the Nobel peace prize is funded by the sale of bombs. Isn't that ironic? Well, Nobel discovered or made dynamite, but it was actually his lab mate who discovered the chemical nitroglycerin or made it and brought it together. His lab mate discovered this nitroglycerin and 20 years later, Nobel turned that into dynamite. And the lab mate did not want that chemical to be used for explosives. He didn't want his partner to make dynamite out of it. And so once he saw that this dynamite was being sold and ended up being used for war, he lived with much regret that he was the one to discover or to invent this chemical. He said, when I think of all the victims killed during nitroglycerin explosions and the terrible havoc that has been wreaked, I am almost ashamed to admit to be its discoverer. He lived with regret that he felt that he now had a part in the death of many that would continue throughout history. Well, that story brings us to this question that we have from this text, and we addressed some of this in Sunday school last week when it comes to God's decree. God decrees all things, and yet there are different ways in which different people are held morally responsible for things, different ways in which people are guilty. So when someone sets off an explosive in World War I, who is guilty for that? We could call it murder. Was it the general that commanded? Was it the soldier who set off the explosive? Was it Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite? Or was it his lab mate for inventing nitroglycerin? How much is that lab mate responsible morally for the things that he has done? Well, these are all kinds of big questions, deep questions, and this sermon is not the time to get into all the depths of it. But it is in this text that we do have this same kind of question come up. Here in verse seven, God tells us where everything comes from. He says he forms light and darkness. He makes well-being and he creates calamity. He says, I am the Lord who does all these things. But what we're gonna see in this text also is that God uses instruments. And there's one particular instrument that he uses in this case, and his name is Cyrus. And Cyrus is a pagan, someone who does not love God, who does not worship God. And I think we can even say someone who does evil things, someone who sins, someone who murders. But God is going to use a murderer to accomplish His purpose. Why does God do these things? Well, we're going to learn some of the purposes of why God works in this way, why God moves in such mysterious ways, and one of the main purposes that I want to highlight that I hope comes across is that God does these things for the good, for the sake of his people. This is not philosophy. This is not just abstract. This is not fun thought experiments. These are relevant truths for the sake of the people of God. God communicates this to you because he wants you to have comfort and encouragement and knowledge of his goodness in your life. Herman Bovink, he used the analogy of a sharp knife. And he said that A father would not let a little child use a sharp knife because a child doesn't know how to wield the sharp knife, but the father can know how to use this knife for something that is good and productive. And so he says, this is how God uses evil and suffering. We don't know how to wield the sharp knife of evil and suffering. That's why it's such a concern for us. It's such a big question for us because we can't comprehend how evil could be used for good. In the ultimate sense. But God does. God is that father who knows how to wield the sharp knife and what his people really need to understand is that that sharp knife really is being wielded for your good. your good as his child, one saved by him. Here we have Cyrus as the sharp knife, Cyrus as the dynamite who will cause all kinds of destruction and harm. And yet Isaiah says, you need not fear Cyrus because it is God working through this instrument of Cyrus. So let's begin looking at the text, and we see first this sharp instrument that God uses, the sharp, sorry, the surprising instrument that God uses. So this chapter comes after we looked last time we were here in Isaiah chapter 44 where Isaiah mentioned Cyrus or this man named Koresh. He mentioned him for the first time and there at the end of chapter 44 God through Isaiah predicted that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed, but then it would be rebuilt and that God would use this man Cyrus to fulfill that purpose. And this is being spoken to the people at a time when Judah has been destroyed, Jerusalem is the only thing left standing, and Jerusalem has been under siege for a long time, and they've just been delivered, that's the last story we read, is that they were delivered from King Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. And so Jerusalem is in tatters, the people are struggling, much destruction has taken place, and now here comes the prophet and he says, Jerusalem's gonna be destroyed. Oh, that's not good. But it's okay because Jerusalem isn't going to be rebuilt. Oh, that's good. And then it's going to be rebuilt through this man named Cyrus. And who's Cyrus? And Isaiah is making a prediction 150 years in advance of this man named Cyrus. And so we have to remember to put ourselves in their shoes. We don't, they don't know the end of the story. Some random name, That's not a Hebrew name, it's a Persian name. They might hear some families of people that use the name Cyrus way, way far away, but he's no king at this point, so how is God going to do all these things? 150 years in advance, Isaiah makes this prophecy. And so, he continues this in verse 1. Thus says the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus. Now that is a surprising verse. What if I translated it this way? What if I said, thus says the Lord to his Christ, to Cyrus. Or thus says the Lord to his Messiah, Cyrus. Isaiah is using the word Messiah or Christ and referring to Cyrus. The word Messiah literally just means anointed, to be anointed with oil, and it's a reference to the kings. The kings, when they were installed, they would be anointed with oil, and this is where the term Messiah comes from. So Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the true Messiah, the true Christ. But remember, if you're in the shoes of the people hearing Isaiah make this prophecy, you're hearing about a Messiah named Cyrus, and Cyrus is, some foreign name that you don't know who this person is. Why does Isaiah call him a Messiah, an anointed one? Because a Messiah, an anointed one, is someone who has been given a special mission, who is on a special purpose, chosen, singled out by God himself to accomplish a mission. So let me just be clear, Cyrus is not the Messiah. There aren't other Messiahs. But it's a word being used sort of to to shock us and get us to see that God has a special purpose to save in a certain way to save the people of God. And he's going to use this surprising instrument named Cyrus. So he goes on in verse one, he says, whose right hand I have grasped. I hope you remember some times recently in Isaiah where the right hand has come up. Maybe you remember a hymn. It's a hymn many of us love that you are upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand. And it comes from these verses in Isaiah. So verse 10 of chapter 41. Fear not. I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." God strengthens us with his right hand. Then chapter 41, verse 13, Three verses later, for I, the Lord, your God, hold your right hand. It is I who say to you, fear not. I am the one who helps you. And so we are weak. We do not have strength in ourselves in the way that Isaiah is using to explain this is the right hand. Most people, that's their strong hand. And so if even your right hand is weak, then you're weak and you can't lift things that you need to lift to to get help, to save yourself. And so God comes along with his powerful right hand and he says, I hold you by your right hand. He helps his people. He gives power to his people. But now here we're surprised in chapter forty five. I have grasped Cyrus's right hand. God is going to give power, strength to Cyrus. He's going to go on and subdue nations before him, Cyrus's, he's going to loose the belts of kings, which is a sign of defeating them. He is going to open doors before Cyrus, God is, that gates may not be closed. So Cyrus is going to go on a rampage. And this is what Cyrus does. He's an emperor. He's a warrior. He starts from Persia and he conquers. He's going to conquer Assyrians, Babylonians. He's going to go and he's going to conquer many nations. But God is saying, He's going to do that because I give him the power. I opened the doors before him. We see this in verse two, especially. He's talking to Cyrus, but remember, Cyrus doesn't exist at this time. So he wants Israel to overhear. He says, 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. I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hordes in secret places that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name. See, in those two verses, there's a word that happens four times, and it's the word I. God wants to make it crystal clear that as Cyrus is going and he's defeating and he's murdering and he's plundering. I go before you. I'm the one making this possible. I'm the one making your enemies fall. Cyrus is a sharp knife. He's a sharp knife of evil. He is not fighting a just war. He's not just fighting out of self-defense. He's not only going to retaliate according to what has been done to his nation. No, Cyrus is a power hungry emperor. His only goal in life is to conquer more territory out of his own desire for power, out of his own pride. He is not righteous. And so he goes and what does he do? He kills people. His armies murder people. And yet God says, I want you to know I am wielding the sharp knife. I go before you. I give you the enemies into your hands so that you, Cyrus, so that you may know that I call you by your name. So. Isaiah uses phrases like leveling the exalted places that should remind you of Chapter 40. John the Baptist is prophesying of the Messiah and Isaiah is prophesying of John. And John says, make straight the way of the Lord. Let the things that are exalted, the level, the exalted places be made level. This is John prophesying about the true Messiah, and the same language is being used about God doing this for Cyrus. And it is so that Cyrus would recognize who God is. Cyrus is not converted. He does not become a Christian, or he doesn't become a Jew. But Cyrus does call upon God, the Lord, the God of Israel, and he recognizes that he has this through God. So if you would like, you could please turn with me to the book of Ezra in the first chapter. Ezra earlier in the Old Testament and the ordering of the book. But this is chronologically taking place after Isaiah. So here's what happens 150 years later, in 539, 38 BC. Ezra 1, verse 1. In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing. Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem. We'll stop there. The point in reading is just so that you see Cyrus mentions the Lord and he mentions the Lord was the one who gave him the kingdoms, and that's why he was going to sponsor them to go back and rebuild the temple. Again, Cyrus is not saved here. Cyrus is a pagan. He's a polytheist. And so when you're a polytheist, you just go with whatever God gives you what you need at the time. And so if Israel's God can help him conquer at the time, he's going to say, thank you, God of Israel, and move on with his life. And the next time he needs something else, he'll go to another God that he thinks will give him what he needs. So this is not some super spiritual religious thing. This is just, Hey, I recognize that I won and I'm going to attribute this to the God of Israel. So God works through this surprising instrument. We see throughout the Bible that God works in the hearts of leaders, kings, especially those who are in charge of nations, that God is working through them. Proverbs 21 verse one says the heart of the king is like water in the hands of the Lord. He turns it wherever he wills. Cyrus is just one clear example of how God rules over nations. God rules over kings. We see this also with Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, who has a very similar experience to what Cyrus goes through, where Nebuchadnezzar is humbled because of his pride and he has to eat grass like an ox. But then something happens. And somehow Nebuchadnezzar recognized that this is the hand of the God of Israel. And so he says this in Daniel 4. about God, his dominion is an everlasting dominion and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing. And he does according to his will among the host of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. And none can stay his hand or say to him, what have you done? Nebuchadnezzar thought he could do what he wanted. He thought that he could stay God's hand. He thought he could rule and be a mighty emperor. And God humbled him to make him see this. Nebuchadnezzar is in the hand of the Lord, he is a tool, he has a knife that God will wield as he wills. So we'll get to how this encourages us in the next point, but just for now, as we apply it just to nations and leaders, This should help us to have peace and calm and sanity. In our world today, politics is people's religion. People are obsessed with politics. It's their life. It's their cause. It's their cause is to change things in the political realm. And of course, Christians can be involved in politics and good Christians should do good Christian work politically to help our nation according to what God directs us to do. But Christians do this in a different way. We understand that no matter what happens with leaders and nations, that all of this is directed by the hand of the Lord. So there's no panic. There's no freaking out, no crying. Somebody might be in office that you wouldn't want to be in office. Well, the people of Israel would not choose Cyrus and call him their Messiah. But God says, I want Cyrus to be the Messiah in this sense, Messiah to do a special mission, to accomplish a special task, and I'm gonna use Cyrus. Why didn't God raise up the true Messiah? Wonder about that. Why didn't Jesus Christ come at this point? Why didn't he defeat the Babylonians and he bring them back to Jerusalem? And then everybody would have said, hey, that makes sense. He's Israel's Messiah. But no, God, for some strange reason, chooses a pagan Persian king named Cyrus. And so for us, whatever might happen, whoever might be mayor or governor or president or Supreme court justice or whatever it is, we can say, this person is an instrument in the hand of God. God will accomplish the purpose that he has. We don't have to figure out what that purpose is. We can have confidence and trust that it is God working in all these events. So that's the surprising instrument of Cyrus. But now we see two clear purposes that God gives us. Verses four to seven, he tells us why he's doing this. He's told us that he wanted Cyrus to call upon his name. But then he comes to another main point, which is that he wants the nations to know that he is God. That all the nations would know that the Lord is God. He wants Cyrus to know that he's God, but he wants everyone to know. Notice this as we read again, verses four to seven. For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name. I name you, though you do not know me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. Besides me, there is no God. I equip you, though you do not know me. That people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. You see again how many times the word I is used. God wants us to know who is doing all these things, and he wants us to know who is God. He is the Lord. He is God. And there is no other. And so he mentions how he says, I call you by your name. Why does he call him by his name? Why does he mention the name Cyrus 150 years in advance? Well, we've seen in the last few chapters of Isaiah that one of the main points Isaiah is trying to get across is that the Lord is the only God. He is the true God. And starting in chapter 41, his main argument, really, that he was using is that only the Lord can predict the future. Idols don't know the future because they don't have brains. They don't have power. And they can't speak the future because they don't have voices. So if you're a pagan, you can't have your God reveal the future to you, but the people of God Israel in the Old Testament knows what the future is that as far as God will reveal it. God can tell exactly what is going to happen. And so to reinforce this point that only God is God because only God can predict the future. He says, I'm going to give you a specific name, Cyrus. And we've seen. And Ezra 1, that's exactly who did all these things. And Ezra, by the way, he's just writing history, and this is a historical fact that everybody agrees. Everybody agrees historically that Cyrus allowed the people to go back to Jerusalem. What they don't agree with, the skeptics, is they think that Isaiah made this up, that somebody else wrote this stuff. Isaiah didn't really write it, but this is the word of God. This is Isaiah's words. So that we might know that there is only one God. Notice four times how he makes this claim. There is no other. Besides me, there is no God. And then at the end of verse six, there is no other. So four times, also in verse six, there is none besides me. Four times he's making this claim. He is God and there is no other besides him. The pagans believe in many gods. They believe in a pantheon of gods. They will even say many of them and the people in Babylon, they would say they believe in a supreme God. They believe they would worship only one God and that this one God had power over all the lesser gods in his pantheon because he defeated them. Marduk or Bell, he defeats the lesser gods so he can be the supreme God. That's what pagans believe. But Christians believe that those other gods do not exist. There are no lesser gods in a pantheon of God. There is only one God. So when the Bible mentions other gods, this is just because other people think there are other gods. 1 Corinthians 8, there are many who are called gods, but for us, there is one God and one Lord, Jesus Christ. Christians believe There is only one God. Angels and demons are angels and demons. They're not gods. And so this truth of one God alone, God wants all the nations to know. Verse six, from the rising of the sun from the west, he wants everyone to know that only he is that one God. Now, this is why we get verse 7. This is why God says, I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and I create calamity. Because in a pagan understanding of things, the gods fight with each other. Or maybe there will be one God who creates light and another who creates darkness. And there might be a battle of the gods. There's a Mozart opera of the Queen of the Night and the Sun King. And they fight with each other. And that's how the pagans view the world. And that's why God says, there's no Queen of the Night and Sun King. There's one God, one King. I form light. I create darkness. I bring the rain. I bring the storms, there's no other God for the storms. I bring the hurricanes. I'm the one who shakes the earth. I'm the God of fertility that you should worship. I'm the one who opens the womb for the mother. I do all these things. As I'm God, I'm the Lord. There is no other. John Calvin says, They who formerly were inclined to ascribe everything to idols or to other gods shall acknowledge the true God so as to ascribe power and government and glory of all things to him alone. God's the only one in power. God's the only one governing the universe. This is why we need to know there is only one God. Second, second purpose that he gives us for why he uses Cyrus is for the sake of his people. In verse four, he says, for the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel, my chosen. Put yourself again in the shoes of Judah in 690. You're surrounded by the rubble of the rest of your land. And God gives a prophecy. Someday, some guy named Cyrus is gonna make it all okay. It's gonna be destroyed, but it'll be rebuilt. Everything will be all right. But what does that mean to you? You're gonna say, well, that's great. But when's that gonna happen? We don't know when that's gonna happen. Isaiah doesn't tell them when. So they don't know when it's gonna happen. They just know it's gonna happen. They don't know how it's gonna happen. What do you do when you don't know what's gonna happen? What sets in with you when you don't know the future? It's called fear, anxiety. The unknown brings fear and anxiety. So what they're hearing is Jerusalem's gonna be destroyed. Well, it'll be okay one day, but I don't know when, but Jerusalem's gonna be destroyed. And some Cyrus Joe Schmo guy is gonna come and make it all right. What do we think? What do you think they're thinking? They're thinking, how am I gonna get food on my table tomorrow? Is my insurance gonna go up $10,000 because of this? What's gonna happen? And Isaiah comes along and he gives a promise and he says, it'll be all right. In the future, everything will be restored. And say, a preacher comes along and says, don't worry about it. You're going to heaven. You're gonna have eternal life. Everything will be good. And you say, well, yeah, that's good. but I need to know what to do about the $10,000 of insurance. That's good, but my kids are starving and I need to feed my family. How does the knowledge of great things in the future help me now? What do I do now? That's why God says, for the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel, my chosen, I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. The same God who in 150 years, which they don't know about, but in 150 years will restore them through Cyrus, this same God who does all these things for the sake of his people, he will do all these things for the sake of his people today and tomorrow. He works all things for the sake of his elect. Now, yeah, does he do it for his glory? Yeah, we saw that he does all things for his glory. But here he says, I do all these things for the sake of my people, for the elect. Matthew 24, 22, why does God cut short the days of tribulation for the sake of the elect? God is counting the days of the history of the world, orchestrating, governing all of history, all the well-being and all the calamity, all the light and all the darkness for the sake of God's elect. He will cut the calendar short for the sake of the elect. God is working in all of these things. God works in all things. Now, we've seen that God uses instruments like Cyrus, and so that should teach us that we are not to be fatalistic or deterministic. We don't believe there's a big theology where hard determinism is this is what we talked about last week. Hard determinism is just God does everything. It doesn't matter what you do. What we saw in our confession is that God determines all things as the primary cause, and he uses secondary causes and he actually establishes them. He establishes Cyrus, Cyrus really does things, Cyrus has his own brain, and he decides to go and conquer a nation. And yet God says, I'm the one who does all these things. So this keeps us from being fatalistic. No, it doesn't matter what we do. No, we do what God commands us to do. We trust in Him. We go to Him. We pray to Him. We pour out our hearts before Him, trusting that He's the one who does all these things. This also reminds us, we need to remember also, God is not sadistic. God is not doing all these things, light and darkness, well-being and calamity, because He gets a kick out of making people suffer. Because he enjoys bringing hardships into our lives? No, that's not the way the Bible talks about God. Lamentations 3 verse 33 says, Five verses later it says, Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and calamity come? So we don't have the option of saying calamity doesn't come from God. No, it comes from God. But there is something in verse 33. He does not afflict from the heart. It's a secondary cause. He's the surgeon who uses a sharp knife and the sharp knife of pain and suffering comes But because God loves his people, he does these things for the comfort, the health, the good of his people. He can wield the sharp knife of calamity and evil for the sake of the good of God's people. This is what we see best at the cross of Jesus Christ. When Jesus went to the cross, he went to die for sin and he took on himself the sins of God's people to pay for them so that we could be righteous in God's eyes, despite all of our unrighteousness, all of our sin. God can count us righteous if we rest in him and trust Christ as our savior. But God used instruments to get Jesus to the cross. God used a pagan governor. A pagan named Pilate. Pilate made decisions, Pilate spoke words, Pilate sent Jesus to the cross, soldiers used instruments, they used sharp nails and these sharp nails nailed Jesus to the cross. Who was the murderer? The soldiers murdered Jesus. The high priests, the Jewish leaders, they murdered Jesus by asking for his condemnation. Pilate murdered Jesus. He tried to wash his hands, but he was in charge. He could have stopped it and he didn't. Who is guilty of murdering Jesus? All of them. But God predestined before the foundation of the world that God would send Jesus to the cross. God formed the light and the darkness of those three hours on the cross. God created the calamity of the murder of Jesus Christ. It's the Lord who did all these things. Why did he do this? For the sake of God's elect. For the sake of my people, God says. I can wield all of these sharp instruments, to save you from your sins. Jesus, the true Messiah, was sent to the cross, went to the cross laying down his life. Jesus was the one who comes to truly save us by paying for the sins of his people. Jesus is the one who goes to defeat the enemy and break down the doors and break down the gates of hell And it is God, God who goes before the Lord Jesus and God raises him from the dead so that he can break down those gates of hell and rescue souls out of darkness. God is the one who does all these things for our sake. This is the whole argument of Romans eight, that if God does not spare his own son, will he not graciously give to us all these things? If you're regarded as a sheep for the slaughter, if you experience tribulation or distress, persecution, nakedness, or sword, if the powers and thrones and dominions and the angels and demons are all trying to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, this is what's happening in Romans 8. There are sharp knives being wielded, someone, something is trying to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And Paul's answer is. Nothing is able to do that. Because there is someone wielding those knives. Someone is working All of that suffering, tribulation being led as a sheep to the slaughter, he is working all that. It is God who does all these things, God works all these things for our good. So most likely. Your reward. Many years from now. is that you will get heaven and eternal life. But right now you have to deal with the calamity, the sharp knife, the pain and suffering. Same God who works through Jesus and sends Jesus to the cross, who does all these things is the same God who does all these things. In your life, there is one God. There is only one in control of this world. And we can praise God that he controls all of these things for our sake. Let's pray. Lord, our God, we praise you for your might, your power, your great wisdom, your holiness, and your great love. Lord, we pray that you would help us, your people, to trust in your love, to trust in your care. We pray, Lord, that you would answer our prayers, answer our calls out to you, that you would Show us your goodness. Show us your goodness, even in this life. Show us how you are working for good. Help us to rest in you. We pray these things in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.