6 June (Isaiah 43-45)

Isaiah 43

(v.1) You are Mine. God has purchased Israel, and He has purchased His Church. He is a jealous God, meaning He wants us to acknowledge His work, and praise Him for it. After all, He is the One who created us, so we should worship Him who gave us life, and can take it away.

(v.7) This answers the age-old question of, Why are we here? God created us to have fellowship with Him, and in order to do that, He had to redeem us...that is His glory! He is worthy to be praised.

(v.10) We who love and follow Jesus are His witnesses...His ambassadors on earth. 2 Cor 5:20

God wants us to reach out to the lost, and to love and serve them as Christ did for us.

(v.21) God chose Israel to reveal Himself to the world. It doesn't mean that they are more wise or spiritual than anyone else inherently, but since God was with them from the beginning, they are the light of the world. Since they rejected Jesus, America and the Gentiles have been that light, but one day when the Church has been Raptured, God will work through Israel again.

(v.25) This is an early reference to Christ. In the days of the Temple when this was written, according to what God told Moses to teach Israel, they were to sacrifice offerings to God to COVER UP their sins. The only way sin could be blotted out, was to be washed away...God did that Himself on the cross at Calvary!

Isaiah 44

(v.3) This speaks of Pentecost and of the Millennium to come...both are acts of God where His Spirit will affect the world for good.

(v.6) Who is the First and the Last? Is it the Father, Jehovah? Well, as we saw a few chapters ago, Jesus calls Himself this very same thing in Rev 1, 2 and 22. Is Jesus a liar or blasphemer? As Paul would say, "Certainly not!" Jesus is God, as John 1:1 says, and He is our Creator and Savior...a part of the Holy Trinity.

(v.28) Who is Cyrus? We shall see in the next chapter!

Isaiah 45

(v.1) Cyrus was the leader of the Medo-Persian Empire that conquered Babylon. When we get to the book of Daniel, we'll see the succession of Empires that conquered and ruled Jerusalem, but for now, we need to remember that the Persians conquered Babylon after Babylon conquered Israel.

This book was written over 200 years before Cyrus was even born, and here is God, putting in His Scriptures the very man who will rule Israel by conquest! When Cyrus eventually conquered Jerusalem, the Jewish Scribes showed him this part of the book of Isaiah, and needless to say, Cyrus was impressed and awe-struck!

(v.3) God has told Cyrus here, that God will give Cyrus wisdom and knowledge that only the Jews have been privy to before. God wanted to use Cyrus for His purposes, and He did just that!

(v.4) God is reminding Cyrus that He predicted that Cyrus would rule Jerusalem over 200 years before Cyrus was even born. God had plans for Cyrus!

I focus on this with my kids, for it gives great proof that the Bible was written outside of our time constraints. Isaiah was dead for over 150 years when Daniel presented the book of Isaiah to Cyrus, where Cyrus read that he would conquer and rule Jerusalem!

Cyrus was so impressed, he gave money and incentives to the Jewish captives from the Babylonian rule, to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple! Try to picture this...a conquering king just won over an empire, and gives freedom to those he conquered! Only someone who was empowered and influenced by God would do that!

This is all confirmed by Josephus, in his book, Antiquities XI, I, 2. Josephus was a Jewish Roman historian, whom Rome hired to document the history of Israel. Josephus also wrote of Jesus and the fact that He was arrested, crucified and rose again!

(v.23) When we all face God, every knee shall bow, which is confirmed in Phil 2:10