I invite you to open your Bible with me tonight to the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 45. And we'll read the entire chapter, Isaiah chapter 45. We're going through a series of the chapters of Isaiah, chapter 40 through 55, and just noticing how God is revealing Himself. Behold your God. And tonight, God is going to do the same as He gives a hard word to His people Israel, and we'll be explaining that as we go forward. Let's give our attention to God's Word. Just as we're reading tonight, delight in God's sovereignty and His saving power and purposes. Let's begin in verse 1 of chapter 45. 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 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. 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. Shower, O heavens, from above and let the clouds rain down righteousness. Let the earth open. Let the earth open that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit. Let the earth cause them both to sprout. I, the Lord, have created it. 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? Woe to him who says to a father, what are you begetting, or to a woman, with what are you in labor? Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and the one who formed him. Ask me of things to come. Will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands? I made the earth and created man on it. It was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host. I have stirred him up in righteousness, and I will make all his way level. He shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward, says the Lord of hosts. Thus says the Lord, the wealth of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush and the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over to you and be yours. They shall follow you. They shall come over in chains and bow down to you. They will plead with you, saying, Surely God is in you, and there is no other, no God besides Him. Truly you are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel the Savior. All of them are put to shame and confounded. The makers of idols go in confusion together, but Israel is saved by the Lord with everlasting salvation. You shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity. For thus says the Lord who created the heavens, He is God, who formed the earth and made it. He established it. He did not create it empty. He formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I did not speak in secret in a land of darkness. I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, seek me in vain. I, the Lord, speak the truth. I declare what is right. Assemble yourselves and come. Draw near together, you survivors of the nations. They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols and keep on praying to a God that cannot save. Declare and present your case. Let them take counsel together. Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior. There is none besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return. To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance. Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me, are righteousness and strength. To him shall come and be ashamed all who were incensed against him. In the Lord all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory. Let's ask the Lord's blessing. Father, thank you that you've revealed yourself in your Word, and we ask again that your Holy Spirit would come and open our eyes and ears to receive it, to delight in it, to rejoice in who you are as our sovereign God and Savior. And Father, we pray that as we see you, as you reveal yourself through your Word and by your Spirit, and through Jesus Christ, oh God, that we'd be transformed by that knowledge and be equipped by that knowledge to live a life pleasing to you. In Jesus' name, amen. For every different field of work, there are basic things you need to know. If you are going to be a car mechanic, you need to know how an engine runs. If you're going to be a computer program, you need to know how to write code. If you're a construction worker, you need to know how to use a tape measure. You need to know how to handle power tools. There are basic things that are required no matter what field that you go into if you're going to be successful. Well, my question tonight is what is the basic thing you need to know in order to live the Christian life? What's the non-negotiable, fundamental, necessary thing that you have to understand if you're going to live for the glory of God, if you're going to live a true Christian life? And the answer, of course, is you need to know God. You need to know Jesus. It's a non-negotiable, basic reality. Someone said to me just this past week that they had been trying for years to live the Christian life without Christ. It didn't go well. It can't go well. I think about all the trouble in our life. Couldn't we, without too much consideration, see that we could make a direct line between the troubles of our life, our anxieties, our fears, our addictions, and draw directly back to a failure in some sense to understand and grasp the reality of God? Either His goodness, His power, His faithfulness, whatever it might be. Jesus said in John 17, this is life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus whom you have sent. That's life. An accurate grasp of God and what He's like as He's revealed Himself in Scripture, as He's revealed Himself in Jesus, well, that's the non-negotiable, necessary, basic thing for living an authentically Christian life. That's true now, it was true in Isaiah's day. As we've been going through these chapters, we're just noticing God saying over and over again, behold your God. Behold your God. See me. See what I'm really like. Understand who I am. And God needs to do that, you see, because we tend to craft for ourselves images of God. Ways that we think about God that or assume God to be which are just simply false and one of the wonders of Scripture is that it blows apart our small self-serving manufactured visions or assumptions about God and presents us with God as he really is and The real God we're going to find is if we're reading our Bible the real God can be shocking and I had that experience just recently, I've been reading through the book of Numbers, and I came to the story of Israel defeating the Midianites. And so they went into the land, they destroyed all the cities, they killed all the men, and they took all the women and children back as captives. And Moses met them and was angry with them. because they had not slaughtered everyone. And so Moses commands them to kill all the women and all the male children and leave only the young girls who were virgin to be slaves. Now, if you believe that really happened, which I believe that really happened, that's a hard story. That's a hard story. I think there were 32,000 young girls that were left. So think about how many thousands of women and male children were killed. And the story clearly communicates that this was at the Lord's command. Now, the world will point to a story like that and denounce the God of the Bible to be nothing more than a genocidal terrorist. They mock people who would believe or serve a God like that. But what if, in fact, a story like that is an invitation to get to know God as He really is? To ask questions like, what must the holiness and righteousness of God be like in truth in order to make an act like that just? What must God be like for that to make sense, even if it doesn't make really sense to us? Could it be that God is vastly more aggrieved and offended with sin than we had thought? Is it possible that God truly hates it with every fiber of His holy being and is utterly committed to destroying it in a way that we had sort of known maybe intellectually, but we'd never really dealt with? until we come to a story like that. And we're stunned by what God is committed to doing for His namesake and for righteousness. I saw a short video clip just this past week of Oprah interviewing her friend Rob Bell, and it just a couple of years ago looked like. And she was asking him a series of questions about religious things, and she asked him, what is God? And he laughed, and he said, that's easy, love. That's it. God is love. Well, that isn't it, is it? The Bible also says that God is a consuming fire. vastly more than our nice little neat, tidy, comforting ideas that maybe we have about Him. And we need to know that truth about God in order to really know God. See, the hard stories in the Bible are meant to pry open our blinded eyes and rip away our false assumptions so that we meet the real God, the true God. And we have such a story like that tonight. This would be, A very hard truth about God if you were an Israelite. Tonight we're going to look just at two points. First the Sovereign God and then the Saving God. As I said, the text begins with a really hard truth. Now God is prophesying this, announcing this, about 150 years before Cyrus is going to show up on the scene. This message is primarily intended for the people of Israel in captivity, so they understand what's happening around them. But this message would be very concerning to those who heard it both in Isaiah's day and even 150 years later. The text says, God says, He's going to make Cyrus a great nation. And God wants Israel to understand this is going to happen very specifically by God's own hand. So, thus says the Lord, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before Him. God's going to do the subduing. In verses 2 and 3, notice all the I will language. I will go before you and level the exalted places. I will break in pieces the doors of bronze. I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hordes in secret places. God is going to be the acting agent in Cyrus' accomplishments. Now, the problem with all that talk is that God is promising to do all this for a pagan king. Cyrus is a pagan. He worships idols. He does not know or acknowledge the God of Israel. He does not observe the law of God. And the text of God is very open about that. I name you, verse 4, though you do not know me. I equip you, though you do not know me. God knows that Cyrus is a pagan, and he's still going to bless him. And to make the matter even worse, God calls this pagan king His anointed. Now if you're an Israelite, the word anointed means something. It's a special word of God's special favor on God's own kings. So David is the paradigm of God's anointed king. And Israel is waiting with eager expectation for the Messiah, the ultimate anointed one of God. They're waiting for the Messiah right now in Isaiah's day. They're going to be looking for the Messiah when they're in Babylonian captivity, the one who's going to come and rescue them and free them from their bondage to pagan kings. And so when God says to Cyrus, My anointed, it is Well, it's like a religious oxymoron. It doesn't make sense. A pagan king who is the anointed king of God, how could God possibly use that word and apply it to him? It's intensely offensive. This is not what they were expecting. But you see, God does not bind himself to act or operate according to our expectations. God will say, my ways are not your ways, Isaiah chapter 55. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Macher in his commentary says, the Lord's purposes are always on a larger scale and a wider canvas than humans can grasp and filled with a more complex wisdom. God does not exist to satisfy our expectations. You would think that would be obvious to us, and yet, have you ever found yourself in a circumstance that was hard, and your heart and mind sort of went to, really, God? Seriously? You're gonna do that to me? It has to be like this? You've never felt a bitter resentment with what God has done, with how God has decided to do things? Sure you have. Sure you have. God wants us to know, well, He's not required to meet our expectations. He's got greater purposes in mind to make sure that traffic flows smoothly for your convenience. And He's got greater purposes in mind than the deliverance of Israel. His primary goal in the world is to manifest and magnify His name before the world, to communicate the fact that He and He alone is God. You find that just coming through the text over and over and over and over. There is no other God besides Me. I am the Lord, verse 5. There is no other. Beside Me there is no God. But notice that the purpose he has is to make that known. So he says to Cyrus, 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. God is just thundering this truth. And he wants the world to know. He wants the world to know that He is God, and because He's God, He gets to do as He pleases. He gets to do as He pleases. If you notice verse 7, I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. There are all sorts of people who profess to be Christians who do not believe that's true. All sorts of professing Christians who, they are convinced that God is only responsible for sunshine and roses, and if hard or painful things come, that must be the work of the devil. Well, it's not what God says. And God says it on purpose. You see, God wants his people to understand who he is, what he is really like, and to accept him as he is, and to accept what he does. And that means accepting the way that God has determined to orchestrate the affairs of human history. God takes offense with those who chastise Him for His works and His ways. If you see verse 9, 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? You see, God pronounces woes on those who chastise Him, who say to God, what are you doing? This thing doesn't… it doesn't work. There's no handles. This makes no sense. What are you doing? What are you making? Well, you see, the Bible… It says, what right do we have to admonish him? Verse 11, thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, will you command, will you question me concerning my children and the work of my hands? You see, when people get angry with God, and when we get angry with God, what we're basically saying is, who does he think he is? What gives him the right to do it this way? What gives God the right, people will say, right, to dictate their life, to dictate their behavior, to dictate their gender identity? Who does He think He is? Well, God answers that question with explicit clarity. He is God, and He has the right to rule this world as He pleases because He made it. Verse 12, I made the earth and created man on it. It was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their hosts. Look at verse 18. Verse 18, "'For thus says the Lord who created the heavens, "'He is God who formed the earth and made it. "'He established it. "'He did not create it empty. "'He formed it to be inhabited. "'I am the Lord and there is no other.'" And so God's first response to Israel's dismay at this announcement, His first response is, I'm God. I'm God. I've ordained. all things, and I've ordained this, and I will not be chastised by the creatures of my hand." But you see, this is not just a rebuke, it's an invitation. It's an invitation, you see, for Israel to break out of its assumptions about God. Israel, the Israelites would, well, they would have just sort of fallen into natural ways of thinking. In fact, God rebukes them, I think it's Psalm 52, where God says, you thought that I was altogether just like you. We do that all the time. Israel would have begun to think about God the way the nations around them thought about their gods, that God was a tribal deity. He sort of belonged to Israel. Sort of their mascot, their good luck charm, the one who made things work for them. It would have been easy for Israel to assume that sort of small thinking, and God rebukes them and invites them. To perceive what He is really like, to sense His glory, that God does not exist for Israel, Israel exists for God. That's his first response. His second response is to remind Israel that He is actually a saving God. He's not only a sovereign God, but a saving God. And that His sovereign purposes in regards to Cyrus are saving purposes for Israel. Verse 13, I have stirred him up in righteousness and I will make all his ways level. He shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward, says the Lord of hosts. God wants Israel to see that he's raising up this pagan king to accomplish his purposes for the salvation of his people. It's the same reason, right? Why did he raise up Pharaoh? Well, he rose up Pharaoh to accomplish his purposes for the magnifying of his name and the rescuing of his people. Now Cyrus is going to be involved, not resisting, but Cyrus is going to be involved doing. He's going to build Jerusalem, and he will, his kingdom will, in Nehemiah's day. He's going to set the exiles free as Cyrus destroys the Babylonian Empire. And Cyrus is gonna do all this without any understanding that he is God's agent or that he's serving God's purposes. God says, the text is very explicit, though you do not know me. And he's not gonna do it because God paid him off. Not for reward or price, verse 13 says. That means that Cyrus is not God's ally. Cyrus is God's servant. And he will do this because God has ordained and determined that he will do this. I just, man, we have a sovereign, saving God in the heavens, orchestrating human history for the magnifying of his name and the salvation of his people. And that's a good thing to remember in the world that we live in today. We see evil men like Putin and what he's doing, and you maybe can be tempted to ask God, why aren't you doing something? And we need to just understand God is doing something, and in some way beyond our ability to discern, God is sovereignly acting to magnify the glory of His name and to bless His people. Putin is not an autonomous actor on the stage of human history. He is a pawn in the hands of a sovereign, saving God, though he denies that God exists. And he will accomplish exactly what God has purposed, no less, no more, God promises it. God has a purpose. He has a purpose. And He wants Israel to know that He is raising up Cyrus, this pagan king, in order to deliver Israel from their Babylonian captivity and to magnify His name in their midst. So in verse 14, you see the nations bringing their wealth to Israel. and following Israel and acknowledging that Israel's God is the only God. It's so wonderful, verse 14, where the nations come and they say, surely God is in you and there is no other God besides him. This reminds me of in 1 Corinthians 14, 25, I believe, where Paul says to the church that as they're prophesying, as they're speaking the word of God, The visitors, the world, the unbelievers who are visiting will be struck because the secrets of their heart will be laid bare and they will fall down and say what? God is really among you. That's God's vision for his church. That's his vision for the Old Testament church here in Israel and his vision for the church today. That God is acting and moving and speaking in a way that the nations realize God is in you. and there is no other God besides Him. As the nations come and recognize that their idols are worthless, they're empty, and that salvation is found in no one else but Israel's God alone. And that theme of the nations awakening to the saving power of God and God's invitation to them, that runs throughout this prophecy. You see, God is not just the Savior of the Hebrews. He's not just the Savior of people who go to church. God is, right, saving the nations and bringing them in to belong to his people. And so he invites the nations to come. Verse 20. Assemble yourselves and come, draw near together, you survivors of the nations. Look at 22. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, And there is no other. What a wonderful invitation. And it's a universal invitation. Turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth. That the God that we know, the God that we love and serve, His saving purposes are not confined to the borders of Israel, but embrace every nation and every tribe and every tongue. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Peter says that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance, 2 Peter 3.9. God says through Ezekiel 33.11, He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. God is a saving God who has a passion for the nations, for those he has made in his image, that they turn from their ways and live. And when I read that, it just reminds me to repent of how easily I live with the fact that there are millions and millions and millions of people, billions of people, who do not know this God, who do not worship this God. And we shrug our shoulders and we say, well, no, they're Hindus. They're Muslims. They're Buddhists. They don't worship. I mean, that's just, they don't do that. And we get on with our day. Instead of realizing that the heart of God says, you have billions of people who worship idols. And he calls and says, turn to me. Turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other." As Christians and as the church, we've got to have that. We just need to share that passion. We need to believe this for our city, that God's desire for our city is that people turn and are saved as they acknowledge that salvation is found in God alone. This is real God, right? The God of the Bible. But we see in the text that whether people come in faith or in fear, every single person will at some point acknowledge God as God. God says in 23, by myself I have sworn and from my mouth has gone out righteousness, a word that shall not return. To me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear allegiance. Only in the Lord it shall be said of me, our righteousness and strength. To him shall come and be ashamed all who were incensed against him. God's vision is that His name is magnified. God's vision is that there is a day when He will be glorified. Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess. We read that in Philippians as well, don't we? Philippians 2. That at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. There will be a day when everyone will believe. If not savingly, they will believe truly. Everyone will confess the fact that God is God alone and that Jesus Christ is Lord alone. Man, if we see and sense the passion that God has for that day, if we see how it grieves Him that His name is not honored, that His glory is not valued, That He is not treasured for all His goodness and greatness, for all of His saving faithfulness and kindness and compassion. God's vision is that one day the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And all the nations will be gathered together. And we will be there with brothers and sisters from every tongue, tribe, and nation, acknowledging Jesus Christ is Lord. The Father, friends, today is on the move to accomplish that goal, that end. The Father is seeking worshipers who worship in spirit and in truth. And he promises great blessings to all those who come. Verse 25, in the Lord, all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory. Three wonderful truths, and I'll, very shortly, In that little line, in the Lord all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory. Who are the offspring of Israel? Well, they're not just, of course, Abraham's ethnic, physical blood descendants. Paul says in Galatians 3.29, if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring. You are heirs according to promise. So God is talking about you if you believe in Jesus Christ tonight. You are the offspring of Israel that shall be justified. That's the great gospel promise. That those who turn to Jesus Christ, no matter what pagan background that we might come from, we will be justified by faith in Jesus Christ. He justifies the ungodly. He declares the ungodly to be righteous and innocent, robed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And we can invite our friends and neighbors, this is our God. And He invites you to come and to know Him and to be justified by Him freely. It's an act of grace. And all of Israel's offspring show glory in their God. All of those who believe in Jesus Christ are called to glory in God, to trust Him as their sovereign God, to trust Him as their only Savior. And brothers and sisters, my invitation to you is to call you to, let's live like that this week. Let's take the reality of God into the reality of our life. Let's take the reality of a sovereign God into the truth of our life, into whatever hardships we face. Maybe you're experiencing them right now. What comfort could it bring for you simply to say, God, I know this isn't random. I know this isn't a mistake. I know this isn't judgment. In Jesus Christ, as I belong to him, I can receive tonight that you are acting in my life for your glory and my good and it's sufficient. Could you say that? Could you trust God that way and own him as your sovereign and saving God? And if you're not a Christian tonight, Friend, this is the only God there is. This is the God who created you. This is the God who loves you. This is the God you will stand before on the last day. This is the God who does not desire that you should perish, but sent his son so that you might have everlasting life. This is who he is. And this God invites you tonight to confess your sin and turn to him and be saved. And that can happen tonight. There's no need to wait. Confess your sin and call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Bible promises that you shall be saved. You shall be an offspring, one of God's offspring. You shall be declared just and righteous before the throne of heaven. I just charge us tonight to take this truth of the real God and see Him, really see Him. Christian, behold your God. Amen. Father in heaven, I thank you for speaking your truth concerning who you really are. We get confused. We make assumptions. We walk about, Lord, forgetting these things. And Father, I beg that your Holy Spirit would help us understand the glory of the real God, the glory of his wonderful sovereign power and his sovereign purposes, and the glory of his saving love for us and his saving love for those who are lost. Father, I pray that we would be molded, our lives would be molded then according to the truth of God, that as we see you as you are, Lord, we will be transformed into your likeness. and that we will begin to share your passion for your glory and your desire to see lost men and women converted and turned. And Jesus, I pray that we would have the joy of seeing that take place as we begin to pray for our neighbors and speak the truth in love. And Father, I pray that knowing you would remove our fear and our anxieties would free us from our addictions, would give us a confidence and a boldness as we live this life, knowing that this God knows our name, and this God has called us to trust in Him. Oh God, give us the grace to do so, in Jesus' name, amen. We're going to stand together tonight now and sing the hymn that we heard at the beginning of the service, and the ensemble will come and lead us in that. We're going to sing together, My God is the Ancient of Days. Would you stand to sing? There is still one King reigning over all. So I will not fear, for this truth remains, that my God is the Ancient of Days. For him, all hope died in his hands. For his throne it shall remain and ever stand. I will trust in his name, for my God is the Ancient of Days. He is here with me. I am not alone. Oh, His love is sure. And He knows my name. For my God is the Ancient of Days. time in his hands, for his love it sheds. ♪ All the glory I will trust in his name ♪ ♪ For my God is the ancient of days ♪ ♪ Though I may not see what the future brings ♪ ♪ I will watch and wait for him to come ♪ The Savior King, let my joy complete, Standing face to face in the presence of the Ancient of Days. All the power, all the glory I will trust in His name For my God is the Ancient of Days Receive the blessing of the Lord your sovereign and saving God and may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God your father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you and abide with you till Christ come again. Amen.