He’s Working It Out

I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.

Look at your neighbor and tell them, He’s working it out.

Now look at your other neighbor and tell them, even when I can’t see it.

My brother’s and sisters, we love testimonies that end in victory, but we struggle in the middle of the process.

We shout at the breakthrough, but we question God in the buildup.

We praise Him when the doors are opens, but we panic while we’re still standing in front of the doors.

But I came to tell somebody today: God does His best work behind the scenes. God does some of his best work when we don’t understand it, and when we don’t see it.

We may not see Him.

We may not feel Him.

We may not even understand Him.

But that does not mean that He’s not working it out.

May I tell you that He’s working it out, regardless of what it look like.

The book of Isaiah is written during one of the darkest periods in the history of Israel.

God’s people are in the Babylonian captivity. They are exiled, broken, displaced, and discouraged. They are not in their homeland. They have lost their temple, they have lost their identity, and they have lost their sense of direction.

But here’s what makes Isaiah 45 unusual and powerful:

God speaks about King Cyrus, who is a pagan king, but yet in Isaiah 45:1 God calls him His anointed, even before Cyrus is born.

God is telling Israel: I have already assigned someone to you that you don’t even know, in fact he doesn’t even know who I am yet, but I have assigned him to fix what you think is unfixable.

That’s shouting ground right there.

While Israel is crying in captivity, God is already shaping a ruler in another nation, in another culture, with another belief system to become the instrument of their deliverance.

Look at what God was doing. God was working it out for generations in advance.

May I tell you that you may be going through something, you may feel as though you are in captivity, but I need to tell you PTMC, that God is working it out on your behalf.

Let’s look at the text. In Verse 2 he says, I will go before thee.

In other words, he is not a God who follows behind us to clean up mistakes. Instead he is a God who goes ahead of us.

Tell your neighbor, God is already there.

Before the obstacle shows up, He’s already been there.

Before the enemy plots against you, He’s already there, to interrupted the plans of the enemyen.

Before the door closes, He’s already there with a key.

I know that things might look a bad. I know that times might seem a little hard. But it’s ok.

May I tell you that the crooked places in our lives represent confusion, delay, detours, and things that don’t make sense. But I can hear God saying, I don’t remove every crooked place, but I straighten them.

Meaning:

We won’t always avoid the struggles, but you won’t be broken by them either.

In Verse 2 he says: I will break in pieces the gates of brass.

Gates of brass, and bars of iron were symbols of impenetrable security. In the ancient cities, these gates said, you are locked out.

But God says, what looks unbreakable to you, is breakable to Me.

Tell your neighbor, these gate is temporary. Somebody song a song that reminds me that trouble won’t last always.

So, here it is:

That addiction is temporary.

That delay is temporary.

That opposition is temporary.

If God says He’ll break it, it doesn’t matter how strong it looks, or how strong it is. If God says that he’s going to break it, yo can consider it broken.

Verse 3 talks about the Treasures of darkness.

This is where it gets deep.

God doesn’t say treasures of light. He says treasures of darkness.

That means there are blessings hidden in some places you didn’t enjoy being in.

Ok, let me see if I can may it make sense. Some of things that we have gained didn’t come from the good seasons, it came from some the dark seasons.

Some of your discernment came from some betrayals.

Some of your strength came from some survivals.

Some of your prayer life came from desperation.

Tell somebody, I didn’t lose everything in the dark, I gained some things in the dark.