Ruler and Overruler (Part B)

We can rate ourselves with each other, and you can boast there. Romans, Paul talks about this, but that's not the standard that we're going to be judged by.

You're not going to be able to drive by, you know, the house of numbers, jails, prisons, and say, well, I'm not as bad as those people there, so God's going to let me into heaven. Well, that's not the standard. The standard is Jesus Christ.

Are you as good as Him? And if you're not, you're doomed unless, unless He is your Savior. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now let's join Pastor Rick as he continues teaching in the book of Isaiah chapter 45 with this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. God made his choice of Abraham, then he refined his choice, began to narrow it down. And to do this, he chose Jacob, who became Israel, but he filtered out Ishmael and Esau, Abraham's son, his other son, and he had others with Keturah, and his grandson, Esau.

Why didn't they get chosen? What got Jacob chosen? Isaac and Jacob, that's the line of the Jewish people. Well, we know, of course, because we don't read of the God of Ishmael, the God of Esau. We do read of the God of Isaac and Jacob, because those other two men were just not the right stuff that God was looking for. I'm not saying they're doomed and going to hell. I am saying that they lacked what God wanted, and He founded enough of it in Isaac and Jacob.

And thank God they weren't perfect men, because then that would overshadow us, like, man, I can't be that good. Well, it's not our goodness that gets us saved, it's faith, it's trusting God's goodness. Well, he further refined, after choosing to identify with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, another filter was put in place to eliminate all who refused the lordship of another son, the son of Abraham according to the flesh. But the Spirit, this is the Son of God. This time, it's not Abraham's son Isaac, but God's son. God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. When we say gave, He means from the manger to the cross to the empty tomb to the return. Luke chapter 2, this is, you know, I love, these are my devotions, I'm in Luke also. I read the whole Bible every day. What would you do if you could do that? You'd be so, what?

Because it's impractical. Anyway, Luke chapter 2, then the angel said to them, these are the shepherds out in the field, and shepherds were tough guys, not only because they had to deal with the sheep and all that's out there, but they had to deal with, you know, sheep robbers and robbers, period. So they usually carried, you know, they were armed with little daggers and such. But anyway, these are the guys that the angels go to. Then the angel said to them, do not be afraid, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy. I bring you the gospel, which will be to all people. This is at the birth of Christ. There he is in the manger in Bethlehem, and the angel is saying, the gospel is for everyone. He didn't say, I'm bringing this to the Jewish people.

Well, they're included. Genesis 12 goes way, goes way back to Adam and Eve, but in Genesis 12, God said to Abraham, in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed, and the Jews miss this. Isaiah does not miss it. But the Jews as a people, they're still missing it. They still look down on Gentiles. And this is the rabbis pushing this forward over the centuries. Anyway, John 10 16, Jesus said, other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.

We'll pause there. They say, well, I don't believe in the New Testament. Well, I can give you Old Testament verses. Jesus is just pointing to the New Testament, you know, pointing to the Old Testament verses in the New Testament.

Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold. That means non-Jews. Them also I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd. Now, when the people heard that, they weren't thinking Gentiles. They were thinking people up in Galilee or somewhere or somewhere else.

But then when Paul and Stephen and the rest come along, they figured it out, and they had a hard road. Anyway, he says here in verse four, though you have not known me. Now, his acknowledgement of Yahweh, when he does acknowledge Yahweh in Ezra chapter one, but it's superficial.

It's politics. And because, again, he acknowledged other deities and other people's gods also. A blend of ecumenicism and universalism.

You know, God's everywhere. You know, all religions work. And what happens when those two religions disagree with each other?

How do you reconcile that? Well, with Christianity, what happens when two denominations don't agree? Well, we always agree on the essentials of our faith.

Where we start getting into fistfights, verbal fistfights, is on the little stuff. How does God save a person? Well, the Calvinists have their wrong views about that. So little things like that, that's not a critical doctrine.

You can make it one by causing trouble, but there are other ones. There are Christians that don't believe in the rapture. That will not keep them out of heaven. They just get there slower. People that don't believe in the rapture, you'll know when the rapture comes.

They'll be the ones with the surprised look on their face and upside down. Well, anyway, again, so his, Isaiah's prophecies do not require that Cyrus renounce his false gods. The spotlight is on God, calling it before it happens.

It's really not on Cyrus. He's just the instrument. And God's vessels, here's the thing about God's vessels. They have a spigot. They're not just, you know, they do not just keep everything, contain everything, a jar with a lid, like the Dead Sea. When God pours into his vessels, it is with the intention of working through that vessel, flowing, and there must be an outflow.

That is effective Christianity. And you really can't do that sitting home in your living room all day and not rubbing elbows with people who annoy you. And other people are always a problem. It's always somebody else's kid.

But anyway, you've got to learn how to deal with that fact. He, there's a cylinder, the Cyrus cylinder. It's not very big.

It's made of clay. And it is, his scribes wrote down things about Cyrus that he attributed his successes to Marduk and Nebo, his gods. So there's the proof. Is there an outside chance? Is along the line he converted? Yeah, of course, but you can't live that way. You have to deal with what's in front of you, the facts that you have. And the fact is, he's not converted.

That's going to come up. I'm saying this because we're coming to things that will make us have to reconcile these words. Verse five, continuing, Isaiah speaks, God's speaking through him. I am Yahweh and there is no other, there is no God besides me.

I will gird you, though you have not known me. And that leaves room for, well, there you go, he doesn't know him. But anyway, this is the first of seven, there are no other gods, just in this chapter. And Isaiah hits it many times in, as I mentioned, this chapter, in chapter 43, chapter 44, and chapter 46. The Jewish people in Jerusalem going to the temple, but also had their little shrines at home.

I guess today we'd say they had their little statue on the dashboard still. Anyway, the king of Assyria, he was held accountable because he was so arrogant, of course, he refused to acknowledge the Jewish God. And in chapter 10, we read about that and God dealt with him for that. Cyrus is going to acknowledge the Jewish God as the God of the Jews. We remember the ancients had believed in the local gods. But unlike the Assyrians, Cyrus helped the Jewish people reestablish their nation and their temple.

And Syria, of course, took the Jews out of their land and they did it in a very vicious way. Verse 6, that they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting that there is none besides me, I am Yahweh, there is no other. Now, of course, Isaiah loves this.

All the righteous love this. One of the things we like so much about the prophecies of Isaiah are these kind of statements coming from God to us. Now, Cyrus means, incidentally, the name means the sun. And here it says that you may know from the rising of the sun. So, of course, there's some metaphor and poetic language there and veiled, you know, it's pretty slick of Isaiah. He's a smart guy. Anyway, by hearing what great things Yahweh did by Cyrus for God's people from east to west, this would create belief in some people. Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that Daniel influenced Cyrus using these prophecies in Isaiah. I don't doubt that. Daniel was around to the end. I mean, in his 90s or maybe a hundred or so before he finally left this world, and he was a remarkable figure. You know, one of the best scenes is when they want to decorate him with, oh, here's beads and necklaces for you telling us what the handwriting on the wall is and he said, keep your junk.

Wampum is what that was. He didn't want it. So, anyway, no other god but the God of the Jews, which is now the, so he moves Christ as Messiah unto Christ, the Gentile anointed one also. Ephesians 4, one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all. So, with the Trinity, they had to guard against polytheism. The Trinity is not three different gods. There's one God and three personalities within him for our sake. The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit coming from God and made available to us and is every bit has a personality and he teaches and he is, of course, a member of the Godhead.

We can only understand the Trinity so far, but we get enough of it to know that it ain't going away unless you use a black marker in your Bible to edit those words out. Verse seven, I form the light, I create darkness, I make peace and create calamity. I, the Lord or I, Yahweh, do these things.

Well, you love it. God steps forward and say, okay, let's get this out on the table. Where's all this mess coming from? Who's doing it? Whose fault is it? Who's in control? It's a typical Hebraic expression to use pairs of opposites, light and dark, peace and calamity.

That's their style and it's effective. But darkness is created. Darkness was not just there waiting for light, somebody to turn the light switch on. Darkness as we know it is a created thing.

I'll get to that in a couple of ways. Beginning with Psalm 104, the psalmist says to God, you make darkness and it is night in which all the beasts of the forest creep about. And they do. Look, I stand in my woods at night, I turn the light on and I see all these little green things. They look like, they're red and they're green, they look like little rubies. They have spider eyes. You walk up to them, it's like, this is spider.

Who wants to go camping? Anyway, it's incredible what's out there at night. Anyhow, God created darkness but he did not create what men would do in the darkness. You see that goes back to that free will thing. You're sticking this one on God. Yeah, I created darkness but I didn't tell you you had to do those things that are wrong and harmful in the dark.

You can do good things in the dark, like look for spiders at night. If we remove physical and spiritual creation, then all that would remain would be God. The Bible says God is light. 1 John 1 5, God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

There's an emphasis there in the English and the Greek. Revelation 22 5, there shall be no night there, this is the New Jerusalem. This is where we're going to live at the end of the tribulation. They need no lamp nor light of the sun for the Lord gives them light and they shall reign forever and ever.

And we know that it goes on to say the Lord is the light, he and the lamp. He then says here in verse 7, I make peace and create calamity. Well, peace is often made by war. In a fallen world, that sometimes is a good thing. We're grateful that cops, when you need one to put down the bad guy, I mean, you don't want him to show up with origami stuff.

You would like him to be armed. And so, just getting things in perspective here. Man cannot account for evil. You can't use a microscope, you cannot use a telescope, you can see its work, but you can't say, where does that come from?

Where do viruses come from? You can only answer that, but so far. Poet, the physicist, they can't tell us the origins of evil.

They can guess at it, they can make things up, but they've got nothing to hang their hat on. Only God reveals this to us in his word. Satan's not going to do it.

He's not even going to get the chance. Well, he'll lie any chance he gets. But no need, God tells us. And God works with what he has to achieve his will. And that often requires just a lot of calamity, a lot of things going this way and that way.

He used the Assyrians, he used the Babylonians to judge his people. So, yeah, God is saying, yeah, I did that. Because if it weren't, well, he permitted it, and he did it in that case, but there are times he permits evil. If it were any other way, then evil would be sovereign. Then evil would be calling the shots. Then things would be out of control. There would be no purpose to life. Then, in the end, you get nothing, but maybe more pain and suffering.

And so, it does make sense from the things that we know. And God will use evil for his purposes, and that will not make him guilty. Job, suffering as he did, in all this, Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.

Job did not say, fine, this is a mess, lost all my stuff, I'm going to go get drunk or something else. He did not sin, and he did not turn on God. And so, God is said to cause whatever he allows.

Otherwise, there's no such thing as sovereignty. Just because it is said that way doesn't mean that's all of the story. We see God as sovereign, and therefore responsible, which causes me a problem when I'm suffering.

Where is the love he's talking about? Well, our imperfect knowledge will always mess things up, and that's why we default by faith to the light that we have from his word. He cannot be God if created things can hold him accountable.

It doesn't make any sense. He holds himself accountable. He's going to get to it elsewhere in Amos, too. But he comes out and says, I make peace, I create calamity. How do you create calamity? Well, the conditions are under his control. And so, ultimately, the buck does stop there. But not in the sense of it's sort of like God made a stone, but he didn't put it into the heart or the hand of Cain to strike his brother Abel and kill him with it. And so, there you have.

Yeah, I made the stone. I saw that was going to happen. I let it happen.

And I got my reasons why. So, maybe we'll open a little bit more light on this. This is a question.

I don't want to pretend that I've got all the easy answers on this, but I believe I have enough of them for me to sleep well at night on this one. In scripture language, as I mentioned, God is frequently said to do that which he has permitted. In physical creation, darkness is the absence of light, but the presence of God is light even in the darkness. God is light. Evil is the absence of love, but God is love. In the presence of whatever men do in darkness, 1 John 4-8, God is love.

1 John 1-5, God is light. So, God's unwillingness to instantly deal with evil does not mean that what he is doing is evil. I mean, that's how we think.

We apply that to humans. It's negligence. If you don't, at least where I used to live, if you didn't shovel your walk in a proper time due to negligence and someone walked and slipped on the ice, the snow, they could sue you for negligence. You had a responsibility as a homeowner.

Now, you can probably sue the shovel maker, the city, and the clouds. But anyway, so if it were again any other way, there would be no sovereignty. You cannot explain the wickedness of this world as merely human. And you can't explain it by saying God is the cause of it.

Those things don't fit. It is human, the evil that we see when humans commit evil, because there are other calamities, your volcano wiping out a village is pretty evil. It is human plus something else. We know that something else is. This is why non-Christian religions are so successful.

Because there's something else involved. There are supernatural forces beneath the surface hard at work. You can create an environment where if you accept the truth and can reason your truth through against those things that are forbidden, you'll be killed. Again, you can go to Riyadh or Saudi Arabia and stand in Chop Chop Square and make the boast of Christ being the only Savior, the only God, and you will be killed. So they have created a situation in which truth is suppressed and evil has done this. There are no competing deities, Isaiah is saying. God alone, Yahweh alone. There are competing ideas of God. So Isaiah, he attacks polytheism that there are other gods, and he also attacks what is Zoroastrian beliefs where yin yang comes from. There are these evil forces in the universe and they're just duking it out.

There's no evidence. There's somebody just, you know, that's their opinion. And so Amos chapter 3 verse 6, they're the prophet speaking with just as much authority as Isaiah says. If the trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid?

That's the alarm. If there is calamity in a city, will not Yahweh have done it? Well, whether he has these rhetorical questions, whether they're rhetorical or just fair question, it's a fair question. He is saying God is never out of control, but that doesn't make him evil. So he says here in verse 7, I, the Lord, do these things. Isaiah 55 8, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says Yahweh. That puts man in his place. Don't forget, you don't know everything. You do not have perfect knowledge.

You don't understand how all these things affect other things. My sister had a car triumph. It was a disaster.

It had two cylinders that had to be like 14 of them. They all had to be in unison. Nobody on earth could get that right. It was never right.

It was just, that's why you don't find them anymore, I guess. But one of my point is there are other things that are involved and to get them and to synchronize them, to get the results that God is looking for under these circumstances way past us. Verse 8, I hope that doesn't confuse you any.

It should not depress you. Sovereignty of God is not something we fear. It's we rejoice. Yeah, Lord is in control. We get it.

Proving ground. This is what this life is. Thank God for the blessings that we do have and that this life is not forever. Verse 8, rain down you heavens from above and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth open. Let them bring forth salvation and let righteousness spring up together. I, Yahweh, have created it. And so his will overrules in the affairs of men.

He's in control. Verse 9, woe to him who strives with his maker. That's, you don't need a comment. There, let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him who forms it, what are you making? Or shall the handiwork say, he has no hands. Woe to him who says to his father, what are you begetting?

Or to the woman, what have you brought forth? So Isaiah is saying, you know, let's reason through this. This is all we can do.

We have this ability to reason. Well, let's not waste it. Cyrus wasted it. The crowning moment of his life before God was to send the Jews back and he missed it. He missed his significance. So anyway, now the Lord is addressing the Jews that are criticizing him for using a pagan king. That was so bitter to them.

How could you use him? You know, why couldn't you not raise up an Elijah to set your people free? A Samson to come wipe out the enemy.

That's how they were thinking. And Isaiah is anticipating them challenging the earlier section of this prophecy. It is a great and deep truth to learn that we are nothing before God and we have nothing before God. We can rate ourselves with each other and you can boast there. Romans, Paul talks about this, that that's not the standard that we're going to be judged by.

You're not going to be able to drive by, you know, the house of numbers, jails, prisons and say, well, I'm not as bad as those people there so God's going to let me into heaven. Well, that's not the standard. The standard is Jesus Christ.

Are you as good as him? And if you're not, you're doomed unless, unless he is your savior. And so the standards, who makes the rules? Well, the God who made the planet, the potter decides what that clay is going to be, whether it's going to be a lamp or a jug. He's the one that decides not the clay and thus the folly and uselessness of rebellion. And he calls for faith through every turn in life. God calls for us to trust him. Alan Redpath wrote, until I accept this, I battle with God and imply that I know better than he.

You don't, we don't. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new additions of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick right here on Cross Reference Radio.