There is Only One GOD

Scripture: Isaiah 45: 1-8

Sermon: There is Only One GOD

Topics: sovereignty, Paul, missions, evangelism, Apostle Paul

Preached: April 29, 2018

Rev. Mike Abma

Preamble – we will be looking at Isaiah 45.

Why? You may ask.

What I have discovered, in looking closely at Paul’s Letters,

is that Paul quotes from the end of Isaiah, especially Isaiah 40-66 quite a bit.

In fact, he quotes directly from Isaiah 45 twice.

This evening we are going to ask why Paul does that,

and what it tells us today.

So let’s start by reading the beginning of Isaiah 45, then later we will read the end of Isaiah 45.

Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,

   whose right hand I have grasped

to subdue nations before him

   and strip kings of their robes,

to open doors before him—

   and the gates shall not be closed: 

² I will go before you

   and level the mountains,

I will break in pieces the doors of bronze

   and cut through the bars of iron, 

³ I will give you the treasures of darkness

   and riches hidden in secret places,

so that you may know that it is I, the Lord,

   the God of Israel, who call you by your name. 

⁴ For the sake of my servant Jacob,

   and Israel my chosen,

I call you by your name,

   I surname you, though you do not know me. 

⁵ I am the Lord, and there is no other;

   besides me there is no god.

   I arm you, though you do not know me, 

⁶ so that they may know, from the rising of the sun

   and from the west, that there is no one besides me;

   I am the Lord, and there is no other. 

⁷ I form light and create darkness,

   I make weal and create woe;

   I the Lord do all these things. 

⁸ Shower, O heavens, from above,

   and let the skies rain down righteousness;

let the earth open, that salvation may spring up,

   and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also;

   I the Lord have created it. 

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

PAUL’S PERSPECTIVE

The Apostle Paul was a Jew who felt called to be a missionary to the Gentiles.

This calling challenged his traditional Jewish way of reading Scripture.

The Jews were used to reading Scripture in such a way that God was their God,

often in exclusion of others.

You can see why this made sense to them.

God seemed to favor them

just like he favored Abel over Cain,

and Jacob over Esau

and the Israelites over the Edomites

and the Jews over the Samaritans.

And so, it seemed to make sense that God favored

the Hebrews over all Gentiles.

That was the Jewish way of reading Scripture.

They asked, “To whom does God belong?”

Answer: “God belongs to us, God’s chosen people.”

Paul comes along and,

because of his dramatic encounter with Jesus Christ

and because of the way the Holy Spirit began working in his heart,

concluded that perhaps his fellow Jews were asking the wrong question.

The question is not – “to whom does God belong?”

The question is, “Who belongs to God?”

“Who belongs to God?”

And the answer, for Paul, is that Everyone belongs to God,

whether they realize it or not.

Paul began to see in the Old Testament

a God whose love is bigger

and whose mercy is wider

than was traditionally acknowledged.

Paul saw this especially at the end of Isaiah,

and especially here in Isaiah 45.

This chapter begins with the stunning declaration:

Thus says the Lord

to his anointed, to Cyrus….

That does not sound too stunning to us.

But that is partly a translation problem.

Thus says the Lord

to his anointed

Thus says the Lord

to his Messiah (Messiah is the Hebrew word for anointed)

Thus says the Lord

to his Christ (Christ, is the Greek word for anointed.

And who is this anointed one in this passage?

Who is this Messiah,

this Christ?

He is Cyrus, the Persian King, the Gentile Ruler.

Cyrus, known as Cyrus the Great,

who had conquered Babylon,

and who ruled a vast territory stretching

from India to the Mediterranean Sea.

CYRUS the GREAT

If Babylon occupied what is now Iraq,

Persia occupied what is now Iran and ruled a vast empire encompassing modern day Iran, Iraq, all of the Mediterranean countries, as well as modern Turkey.

Cyrus was the Persian King who ruled this vast empire.

And by all accounts,

he was a surprisingly good monarch:

he was compassionate to his subjects;

he was respectful of his victims;

he was tolerant of other faiths.

Cyrus is mentioned by name 25 times in the Old Testament.

Why is he mentioned so often?

Because it is Cyrus who allows the first wave of Babylonian exiles

to return to Jerusalem.

Not only does he allow these exiles to return,

He does an almost unthinkable thing –

He pays for the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple.

He pays for the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple.

What politician does that?

But Cyrus does.

What Isaiah 45 does is remind the Jewish people

that it is God who picked Cyrus to rescue his people –

to be their Messiah.

It was God who gave Cyrus

the power

and the wisdom

and the will

to accomplish what he accomplished.

This text shows that God was not only the God of the Jews.

God was the God of Cyrus too.

God knows Cyrus.

And it is God who called Cyrus by name —

even though Cyrus did not know the name of God

God knew the name of Cyrus.

GOD’S RESUME

So who is this God?

Yahweh is the Lord. There is no other.

That is the repeated theme of this chapter.

Yahweh is the Lord. There is no other.

In this vast empire,

filled with many faiths

from the rising of the sun in the East

to where it sets in the west

there is only One God – Yahweh – there is no other.

And this God is ruler of all things:

He forms the light and creates the darkness.

He makes weal, he creates woe.

He is the Lord who does all things.

He is the sovereign God

Over All creation

Over All people

Over All time

Over All things.

SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

Jonathan Sheehan teaches history at the University of California, in Berkeley.

He writes that he gets his students to read John Calvin.

That is amazing isn’t it?

So why does Professor Sheehan do this?

Well, John Calvin was very good at emphasizing the sovereignty of God.

God as the creator of all things.

God as the ruler of all things.

Next to God, our own thoughts are tiny, puny even.

What Prof. Sheehan wants his students to begin to feel in their gut

is the true greatness of God

and the vast difference between God’s majesty and our puniness.

These students are often not ready for that.

They even sometimes rebel against it.

But once they begin to allow this BIG IDEA into their hearts,

once they allow themselves to be surprised by how GREAT GOD is,

these students begin to feel in their gut this thing called AWE –

AWE, being overwhelmed with wonder,

which in the language of the Bible is often expressed as

“the fear of the Lord.”

This is the deep sense that the LORD is GOD and there is NO Other.^[1]

Now to the next section of Isaiah 45.

PART TWO Isaiah 45: 20-25

²⁰ Assemble yourselves and come together,

   draw near, you survivors of the nations!

They have no knowledge—

   those who carry about their wooden idols,

and keep on praying to a god

   that cannot save. 

²¹ Declare and present your case;

   let them take counsel together!

Who told this long ago?

   Who declared it of old?

Was it not I, the Lord?

   There is no other god besides me,

a righteous God and a Saviour;

   there is no one besides me. 

²² Turn to me and be saved,

   all the ends of the earth!

   For I am God, and there is no other. 

²³ By myself I have sworn,

   from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness

   a word that shall not return:

‘To me every knee shall bow,

   every tongue shall swear.’ 

²⁴ Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me,

   are righteousness and strength;

all who were incensed against him

   shall come to him and be ashamed. 

²⁵ In the Lord all the offspring of Israel

   shall triumph and glory. 

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

Anti-Idolatry

God is the cosmic God. God is the Sovereign God.

He is the creator of all things.

He is the redeemer of all things.

He is the ruler of all things.

Anyone looking to anyone or anything else to save them

is simply chasing after idols.

That is the theme of the end of this chapter.

This text mentions idols made of wood.

The truth is, few of us are attracted to idols made of wood.

But many of us are attracted to idols made of our own wooden prejudices.

The great Rabbi Abraham Heschel

once observed

“That any god who is mine, but not yours;

and any god who is concerned for me, but not you –

well this god is not the true god.

This god is an idol.

For the true God, is the God of All.

And the true God is concerned for the salvation of All.”

Turn to me and be saved,

all the ends of the earth.

For I am God, and there is no other.

If there is an Old Testament verse that motivated the apostle Paul,

it was this one.

If in the Old Testament,

all the nations were to be blessed through Israel,

with the coming of Jesus,

all the nations are blessed through him,

the world’s Anointed One, the Messiah, and the Christ.

The Grand Scope of God’s Sovereignty

and the Grand Scope of God’s desire to redeem all people

drove Paul to go to the “Ends of the Earth”

so that all people would turn to the Lord and be saved.

TOKYO

Has that desire to have the whole world turn to Jesus ever gripped you, overwhelmed you?

I remember a trip my wife, Shirlene, and I took to Japan in 2012.

We were in Tokyo,

one of the world’s largest cities.

We went to Tokyo’s City Hall

and went up to the 45^th floor.

From there you could look over this vast city

of about 33 million people.

A city with more people than many countries.

I remember looking over this vast city

and thinking

all these people belong to the Lord

whether they know it or not.

All these people are loved by the Lord

whether they know it or not.

I remember thinking

turn to the Lord and be saved

all you neighborhoods of Tokyo,

all you ends of this vast city.

Turn to the Lord….

Turn to the Lord now ….

For one day….one day

every knee will bow

and every tongue will confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Here is the text from Isaiah 45 that Paul uses twice:

Paul uses it in Philippians 2

and then again in Romans 14.

In Philippians 2

Paul uses it to remind the Philippians

of the majesty and exaltation of Jesus Christ as Lord.

In Romans 14

Paul uses this Isaiah verse

to remind the Christians in Rome

that we should not be overly judgmental of others.

We should not ever despise another person

because we are all accountable to God.

And one day

every knee shall bow to God

and every tongue will praise God.

KAY WARD’S STORY

Seeing every single person in the world

as a potential brother and sister in Christ

is what drove the apostle Paul.

And it needs to keep driving us too.

Kay Ward of Wisconsin tells of boarding a plane for a trans-atlantic flight.

The plane took off, ascended, and got up to cruising altitude.

During that whole time,

she heard some loud voices coming from a few rows behind her.

The two people were speaking in what sounded like a Middle Eastern language.

It sounded to her like Arabic.

And it was loud, shouting even.

It was emphatic and urgent.

Kay admits to being unnerved.

Were these people plotting something?

Was something terrible about to happen?

She just had to get up to see who was talking like this.

So when they got up to cruising altitude,

and when they could leave their seats,

Kay got up and started down the aisle as if to use the restroom.

And there,

a few rows behind her

was this elderly couple

talking very loudly to one another –

both clearly in need of some hearing aids.

They were not angry — maybe just a little nervous.

They too, like Kay, were maybe a little afraid, because they were holding

hands.

Kay smiled to them as she walked by.

The woman smiled back

and as she did so

Kay caught a glimpse of a cross around her neck.

A cross – reminding her with a start

that these strangers were not enemies at all.

They were in fact brothers and sisters in Christ.

1. Jonathan Sheehan, “Teaching Calvin in California” New York Times, Sept. 12, 2016 ↑