Do you believe what the Lord has foretold in the Scriptures?
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| The Reformed Church of France, Paris, France (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Isaiah here returns to his former argument that only God is all-powerful and only He can determine the future. When God says that He “raised up one from the north,” some see this as relating to Cyrus and others as relating to Jesus Christ. But John Calvin maintains that Isaiah denotes two different things, for when he says “from the north” he means die Babylonians, and when he says “from the rising of the sun,” he means the Medes and Persians. It is as if the Lord had said, “Two changes shall happen that are worthy of remembrance; for I will raise up the Babylonians, whose empire I will exalt on high, and next shall come the Persians, who shall become their masters.”
God was displaying His power before the people, for He testified that both the captivity and the deliverance of the Jews would be His doing. This way it would be evident that both foreknowledge and power belong to Him, not to the empty idols of foreign nations. It belongs to God not only to foretell or declare what shall happen, but to arrange everything according to His pleasure. This is because every divine attribute belongs to God alone and cannot be ascribed to another. To simply foretell denotes no power, but to foretell and execute by the same hand reveals the power of God.
It is interesting that the gods of the ancient world, especially those of Greece and Rome, did not assume all divine attributes into one. For instance, Apollo would see the future, Jupiter would execute it, and another would do something else. Never would one god do all things. Only in Jehovah are all the attributes of divinity assumed, for He is the only true God.
The Jews would need to remember this, because they would be surrounded by idolatry in Babylon. Their God would be the one who would call foreign nations to take away the Jews, and He would be the one who would call forth Cyrus to permit His people to return to their native land—an event that would happen one hundred and sixty years after Isaiah uttered this prophecy. From the very beginning, the Lord testified that He was the author of these events. He would raise up the Persians and Medes to subdue me Babylonians. They would not act by their own power, but by His hand, for His oracles were certain and His Word would be established among the nations.
Do you believe what the Lord has foretold in the Scriptures? Do you believe that those who trust in the name of Jesus Christ will be saved? Do you believe that He will protect His people? Do you believe that He will come again and rule over the new heaven and new earth? Believe in the Word of the Lord in all things great and small.
