Bring out the people who have eyes but are blind, who have ears but are deaf. Gather the nations together! Assemble the peoples of the world! Which of their idols has ever foretold such things? Which can predict what will happen tomorrow? Where are the witnesses of such predictions? Who can verify that they spoke the truth? “But you are my witnesses, O Israel!” says the Lord. “You are my servant. You have been chosen to know me, believe in me, and understand that I alone am God. There is no other God—there never has been, and there never will be. I, yes I, am the Lord, and there is no other Savior. First I predicted your rescue, then I saved you and proclaimed it to the world. No foreign god has ever done this. You are witnesses that I am the only God,” says the Lord. “From eternity to eternity I am God. No one can snatch anyone out of my hand. No one can undo what I have done.” Isaiah 43:8-13
The prophet
is taking his beloved kinsman to task (as most prophets did!). Their history was unmistakably orchestrated
by the sovereign will of Jehovah, Creator of the universe and all it
holds. Yet, they had somehow forgotten
that, and taken the seemingly more convenient approach of accepting their neighbors’
gods. It was “convenient” in the sense
of going along, to get along.
It is easier, in the short run, to
surrender truth to those who only believe what denies the facts. But, in the long run, you eventually run
into….God, specifically, the one, true, living God. Everything else is an idol.
Isaiah
reminded Israel they were supposed to be faith-believing witnesses of the God
Who stretches from eternity past through eternity present and future. There is no time when God did not exist or
rule the universe, and that includes forever, as well as today.
So, the
question for Israel, for us, for anyone, is:
When
does it ever make sense to trust in anyone but God?
Consider
this picture; a 7-year-old boy was delivered from his mother’s womb. She and the dad fed, diapered, and loved
him. They trained him to walk and
talk. They taught him to act like a
human…sort of.
One day the
dad took his son to work with him at the nuclear reactor energy plant. He showed him all the dials, levers, gauges,
and control panels that ran the place.
He showed the boy how, when he flipped a switch, things buzzed, moved,
and either turned on or off. He even let
his son get in on the fun, allowing him to flip one switch that returned
electricity to a neighborhood that had been powerless due to a storm. The emergency crew had finished their
repairs, and the boy was permitted to flip the switch, and voilà, there was light!
I do not
need to carry this imagined scenario any further. A seven-year-old, turned loose near the
controls of a nuclear reactor is a tragedy just waiting to be written (assuming,
of course, anyone lives through the day).
Imagine
Israel as the little boy; favored by their Father, Jehovah, and heir to the
power of the universe, far superseding anything manmade, such as a little
nuclear energy plant. This is what
Isaiah saw, an heir of universal greatness, running around in juvenile
playtime, instead of growing up to boldly proclaim the name of Yahweh to the
nations. Like the little boy in the
imaginary tale of going to work with daddy, Israel had grown bored with just
pushing buttons as instructed. I can
just hear the words: OK, dad. I got it from here.
That is the
condition of our world today. God is
largely ignored, and we, human children are pressing as many buttons as our
pudgy little fingers can reach. Some day
we will press the wrong button – not the nuclear annihilation one connected to
all those bombs – but the one that crosses the line of God’s patience.
For You Today
If Yahweh was God before the beginning, and He will be God after
whatever ending we humans engineer, it is safe to assume He is God right
now. What further call do we need to
worship Him at this (and every) moment?
Title image Pixabay.com ∞
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The
New Living Translation©
For other posts on Isaiah 43 see Eyes that Do Not See; Ears that Do Not Hear and
No Other God
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