Sovereignty means sovereignty!

 

READ Isaiah 16–20

After this weekend’s small taste of what God can do with people who seldom acknowledge Him, I’m thinking about the future when Jesus returns. What will happen to the nations who reject Christ? How will agnostics be treated? What will God do with the quasi-religious who are neither anti-Christ nor solidly for Him?

This portion of Isaiah’s prophecy is about the nations. Some will be judged severely, others not. These chapters are a challenge to understand, but a few verses stand out:

“Give counsel; grant justice; make your shade like night at the height of noon; shelter the outcasts; do not reveal the fugitive; let the outcasts of Moab sojourn among you; be a shelter to them from the destroyer. When the oppressor is no more, and destruction has ceased, and he who tramples underfoot has vanished from the land, then a throne will be established in steadfast love, and on it will sit in faithfulness in the tent of David one who judges and seeks justice and is swift to do righteousness.” (Isaiah 16:3–5)

This points to Jesus and His incredible love for even His enemies. Certainly, when He rules it will be in grace and faithfulness but also in justice and righteousness. Also, I’ve become more aware of His power in the lives of anyone whom He wants to use for His purposes, whether they have faith or not. This morning’s church service referenced how Peter declared to the Jews: “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23) and later added, “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled.” (Acts 3:17–18)

God is sovereign in the affairs of man. We are not puppets and yet He works in people’s lives to accomplish what needs to be done — like the crucifixion of His Son that we might be saved! Events like that seem negative in our minds, but purposeful in the mind of God.

Not all God does will have a happy ending though. Isaiah speaks of the nations who oppose Him and their downfall because they do not respond to His goodness:

He will not look to the altars, the work of his hands, and he will not look on what his own fingers have made, either the Asherim or the altars of incense. In that day their strong cities will be like the deserted places of the wooded heights and the hilltops, which they deserted because of the children of Israel, and there will be desolation. For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge; therefore, though you plant pleasant plants and sow the vine-branch of a stranger, though you make them grow on the day that you plant them, and make them blossom in the morning that you sow, yet the harvest will flee away in a day of grief and incurable pain. (Isaiah 17:8–11)

On the other  hand, He will produce a good and great change in these three: Egypt, Assyria, and Israel. Speaking through Isaiah, God says:

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.” (Isaiah 19:23–25)

Thinking in such grand scale is hard for me as a ‘detail’ person, yet the Lord stretches my mind as well as my hope. Someday this wonky and on-tilt-right-now world will be filled with people who worship Him. He will bring it to pass. It seems impossible yet God keeps His promises and fulfills every prophecy. I might not be here to see this highway, yet He says it will be there. Right now, I’m in awe of His sovereign power to do what He determines to do, with or without human cooperation.