ISAIAH 44: 21-28
REMEMBER YOUR REDEEMER
[Ezra 1:1:2-4; 6:3-5]
God forgives and redeems His wayward people. God calls His people to take His truths to heart. Those who are form into God’s servant by His truth find grace to help in their time of need. He calls them therefore to remember who He is and what He has done for them and then to repent and return to Him. The authenticity of their repentance and return would be seen in their praising of their Redeemer.
God proclaimed He would deliver them from their captivity. In time God would raise up Cyrus and bring Persia into prominence. Cyrus would conquer Babylon and allow exiled Israel to return home to rebuild the foundation of the destroyed temple. Cyrus would see to it that Jerusalem could again be built. Israel could trust it would happen. For He is a God that can proclaim the future before it occurs.
I. REMEMBER AND REJOICE, 21-23.
II. YOUR REDEEMER AND REBUILDER, 24-28.
People of the world shape their God but verse 21 says that God shapes His people. “Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are My servant; I have formed you, you are My servant, O Israel, you will not be forgotten by Me.
The recollection of what God has done ought to motivate His people to obedient living. Life is to be lived on the basis of reflection upon the character of God as revealed in His treatment of not only you but also His people, both of old and present.
Because of Israel’s special relationship with God, He didn’t just shape them, but He shaped them for the special purpose of service.
Jerusalem and her temple were going to be completely destroyed and Israel was going into an extended period of captivity, but that did not mean God was finished with them or that He had forgotten them. Israel would go into a harsh and cruel exile but they were still His special servant and would not be forgotten.
God’s people are God’s servant formed by His grace in His service. We may rebel but it does not change who we are. We will never be forgotten by Him and may still turn to God at any time and allow Him again to form us in His service .
Verse 22 gives wondrous evidence of His grace toward them. “I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud, And your sins like a heavy mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.”
Israel felt forgotten. They were depressed under the load of their sins and the gloom their sins brought upon them. Their deserved suffering though should cause them to repent. Deliverance from exile was not their greatest need. The real cause of their exile was sin and their sin problem was their greatest need. Their sin must be forgiven and corrected.
YAHWEH announces that He had forgotten their sins. Removed them from before Him as the wind sweeps a cloud from the sky. His people are then called to return to Him (Jer. 31:18) and given reason why they should. So long as Israel stays in their hopeless and desperate spiritual condition His glorious provision of redemption, of and from sin, and from captivity, will be in vain. The great danger of the exile is not that God could not deliver them but that they would fail to respond to His deliverance.
Carefully observe the comparison made here: our sins are like a cloud. As clouds are of many shapes and shades, so are our transgressions. Clouds obscure the light of the sun and darken the landscape below. Similarly, our sins hide from us the light of Yahweh’s face and cause us to sit in the gloom of their consequences. Our sins, like clouds, are earthborn things and rise from the miry places of our nature. When collected so that their measure is full, they threaten us with storm and tempest. Unlike clouds, our sin yields us no refreshing showers, but rather threatens to deluge us with a fiery flood of destruction. How can there be fair weather in our soul while the black clouds of sin remain? Now consider the act of divine mercy-blotting out. God Himself appears on the scene, and instead of manifesting His anger, He reveals His grace. He forever removes the evil, not by blowing away the cloud but by wiping it out of existence. The great transaction of the cross has eternally removed man’s transgressions from him.
Hear and obey the gracious command, “Return unto Me.” Why should pardoned sinners live distant from God? If we have been forgiven of all our sins, let no fear keep us from again abiding in His Word and finding bold access to His presence. Let backslidings be mourned, but let us not continue in them. Let us in the power of the Holy Spirit strive mightily to return to the closest of fellowship with the Lord. [Adapted from Spurgeon, Morning and Evening.]
Because of this great news verse 23 calls them to rejoice. Shout for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done it! Shout joyfully, you lower parts of the earth. Break forth into a shout of joy, you mountains, O forest, and every tree in it; For the Lord has redeemed Jacob and in Israel He will show forth His glory.
God’s redemption of His people is so wondrous that nature itself is called to join the celebration (Isa. 35:1; 49:13). Glorious changes are coming. The prophet sees the day as though it has already happened as he calls upon heaven and earth, mountains and trees (49:13; 55:12), to shout with joy for what God is doing (54:1). Why should Israel and nature so rejoice? Because it is in His people that God will reveal His glory (35:2; 40:5). Ultimately the glory of God would be seen in Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:14; 11:4, 40; 17:4; Heb. 1:3) and in His coming to establish His kingdom (Mt. 16:27; 24:30; 25:31; Rev. 1:7), but His glory is also seen in His people (1 Cor. 10:31; 2 Cor. 3:18; Eph. 3:21).
II. YOUR REDEEMER AND REBUILDER, 24-28.
Having asserted His promise to redeem God now reveals the agent or means of His redemption. God will raise up Cyrus, the Persian conqueror, to deliver His people from Babylonian exile.
Verse 24 references God’s creative power. Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the One who formed you from the womb, “I, the Lord, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself, And spreading out the earth all alone,
The LORD God not only formed Israel, He has made “all things” without assistance or advise. As the sole Creator of the World, Israel has no one else to look to for redemption. He who takes responsibility for the world takes responsibility for His people. [God and God alone has measured out at what He decided should be the dimensions of the heavens and the earth and then made them.]
Verse 25 indicates that what ever power the other gods may boast of they can’t alter the course of events. “Causing the omens of boasters to fail, making fools out of diviners, causing wise men to draw back, and turning their knowledge into foolishness,
False prophets were people who claimed to bring messages from the gods (Dt. 18:10-11). Diviners were people who would take omens and use them for their own benefit. Astrologers, diviners and readers of omens base their predictions upon the idea that events of the past foretell the same thing each time they occur. Repeated events were thought to bring the same result. God though is not bound to keep events constant. His power and wisdom allow Him to do new things as they fit His purposes.
“God condemned the false prophets because they gave advice opposite to His. Because God is truth, He is the standard for all His teachings. We can always trust His Word as absolute truth. His Word is completely accurate, and against it we must measure all other teachings. If you are unsure about a teaching, test it against God’s Word. [” [Application Bible, 1245].
At the heart of the argument for God being the Lord God among the false gods is that He makes fools of all who rely on techniques to tell the future. Only He alone can foretell the future. If these claims can be proven wrong, we do not have great theology, but are self-deluded.
Not only does God confound the diviners, verse 26 states that God confirms the Word of those who speak for Him. “Confirming the word of His servant, and performing the purpose of His messengers. It is I who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited!’ And of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built.’ And I will raise up her ruins again.
God’s messengers are those who are carrying out His commission. They are not forcing back the curtain of the future on their own but are revealing One who wishes to reveal Himself by revealing the future. God forms His own counsels and then communicates them to His messengers or prophets. He then watches over His word to perform it.
What is the God’s climaxic word to the future? God definitely adds “Jerusalem will be inhabited and Judah’s cities” rebuilt so that His people may know that they shall be restored and have hope. For it not only seem impossible that Babylon would fall but that Israel would be released. And then even more improbable that Jerusalem would be rebuilt and order bought to the devastation, especially for those who saw Jerusalem after its total destruction. Yet all this and more was foretold in advance, indeed far in advance [Oswalt, 195].
Since God is true and powerful, let us not doubt that there will always be a Church. Even when it appears to be in a deplorably ruinous condition, let us entertain good hope of its restoration. If the visible church be in frightful and hideous desolation, let us rely on this promise, that she shall at length be raised up and perfectly restored. [Calvin’s Commentaries]
Very great difficulties would be in the way of their deliverance; but verse 27 promises that by Divine power they would all be removed. “It is I who says to the depth of the sea, ‘Be dried up!’ And I will make your rivers dry.
Is this a prediction of Cyrus drying up the River Euphrates as a means of gaining access to Babylon? More likely it is a declaration that God will no allow any barriers stand between His people and their return to the promise land. He who dried the Red Sea and the Jordan River would make a way for His people even when there seems to be no way.
[The Euphrates in the middle of the summer, from the melting of the snows on the mountains of Armenia, like the Nile, overflows the country. In order to diminish the inundation, and to carry off the waters, two canals were made by Nebuchadnezzar a hundred miles above the city; the first on the eastern side called Naharmalca, or the Royal River, by which the Euphrates was let into the Tigris; the other on the western side, called Pallacopas, or Naharaga, (nahar agam, The river of the pool), by which the excess waters were carried into a vast lake, forty miles square, contrived, not only to lessen the inundation, but for a reservoir, with channels, to irrigate the barren country on the Arabian side. Cyrus, by turning the whole river into the lake laid the channel, which ran through the city, almost dry; so that his army entered the city, both above and below, by the bed of the river, the water not reaching above the middle of the thigh. The great quantity of water poured into the lake and dams were destroyed which were never repaired. The waters spread over the whole country below, becoming a quagmire, in which the river is lost.—Adam Clarke’s Commentary]
Verse 28 is a unmistakable and profound prophecy. “It is I who says of Cyrus, ‘He is My shepherd! And he will perform all My desire.’ And he declares of Jerusalem, ‘She will be built,’ And of the temple, ‘Your foundation will be laid.’”
This verse takes the allusions of 41:2-3 and 41:25 and makes them clear. Who is God going to call from the north and east to terrify the nations and to set His despairing people free? It will be the Persian emperor, Cyrus.
God who has often declared the future in the past, does so yet again. God knew who would be the Deliverer of His people; and let them know it, so that when they heard the name talked of, they might know their redemption was approaching. It is the greatest honor of the greatest men, to be employed as instruments of the Divine favor to God’s people. [Shepherd is often applied to a ruler (2 Sam. 5:2; Jer. 23:2). Calling a foreign king God’s shepherd must have been irksome to most Jews. God uses unbelievers to do His work.]
What is equally remarkable about this prophecy is that it predicts the laying of the foundation of the temple rather than the total rebuilding of it. Ezra 1 (also 3:10 and Zech. 4:9) let us know that Cyrus support just such an effort. The Ammonites prevented the building; nor was it resumed till the second year of Darius, one of his successors. It was thus many years later before the temple was complete under the ministry of Haggai and Zechariah. There is often a precision in the expressions of the prophets which is unnoticed by causal readers.
WHAT IS PROPHECY? To show the difference between human surmising and a prophecy from God is simple to do. When a poll is taken, or when a politician in Washington surveys the nation and predicts that this coming November so-and-so is going to be elected, that is political logic, not prophecy. But suppose the same politician were to stand up in Washington and name the man who will be elected in A.D. 2180. That would be prophecy. To stand up and call the name of the President of the United States two hundred years in the future is prophecy.
In the forty-fourth and forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, God foretells the coming of Cyrus nearly two hundred years before he came into history. That is prophecy as it can be known only by God, the Holy One of Israel, the One who could say to Cyrus before he was even born, "I have called thee by name; I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside Me."
God sees all the age of time, declaring the end before the beginning, and from ancient times the things that have not yet come into being. Only God can thus prophesy, and that is what He has done in His Word, the Bible (Isaiah 41:2, 25).
See Ezra 1:1-4; 6:3-5; Isaiah 45:13; [41:1-4].
Isaiah, who prophesied from about 740-681 B.C., called Cyrus by name almost 150 years before he ruled (559-530 B.C.)! Historians have said the Cyrus read this prophecy and was moved to carry it out. Isaiah also predicted that Jerusalem would fall more that 100 years before it happened (586 B.C.) And that the temple foundation would be relayed about 200 years before it happened. It is clear from these prophecies that God precisely knows the future. [Application Bible, 1245]
CONCLUSION / INVITATION
Exiled Israel would see God would raise up Cyrus and bring Persia into prominence. Cyrus would conquer Babylon and allow captive Israel to return home to rebuild the foundation of the destroyed temple. Cyrus would see that Jerusalem could again be built, just as God said. For the LORD is a God that can proclaim the future before it happens and then bring it into existence.
Not only did Isaiah’s predictions of Cyrus prove true, his prediction about the coming of Messiah have proven true also. Therefore we await the Lord Jesus coming again just as Isaiah predicted.
An experienced factory worker approached his supervisor at the end of the day looking confused. "How do I turn off my machine?" he asked. "you don’t remember?" his boss asked. "No," the employee said. "In fact, I’m not sure where I am and what I’m doing here." The concerned supervisor sent him to a doctor. The diagnosis? AMNESIA. [According to the MD at the hospital where the man went almost daily they see people with memory loss.]
This situation has a spiritual parallel in Isaiah 44. God’s people Israel apparently had forgotten who they were, whom they served (v.21), where they came from (v.24), and how much the Lord had done for them (v.22). They needed to be reminded that it is foolish to depend on anything made by human hands (vv.9-20), and that it is the Lord alone who is able to control the course of human events (vv. 24-25).
What could be worse for us today than forgetting that we belong to Christ, that He has bought us with His own blood, that He knows how we should live, and that He is the One who is in control of all the circumstances of our lives? Let’s check ourselves. Maybe we, like ancient Israel, have had a lapse of memory. If so, let’s forsake our sin, return to the Lord, and remember who we are and why we are here.
Spiritual amnesia is a dangerous condition, but it can be reversed by remembering and repenting.
"Lest I forget Gethsemane, Lest I forget Thine agony,
Lest I forget Thy love for me, Lead me to Calvary." -Hussey “Lead Me to Calvary”
