Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Weal and Woe
Isaiah 45:1-7
INI
Over the past few weeks our nation and the world has gone into panicky
financial tailspin.
What's behind this?
Many say loans made to people who could
not repay them.
Others say greed on the part of Wall Street and high-paid CEOs of
financial institutions.
Some say George Bush, others Barach Obomba and the
Democrats.
Our text offers another explanation.
It says that the Lord is behind both
prosperity and disaster.
This gives us reason to be both humble and confident.
If you think your prospects don't look very good due to the latest financial
crisis, it's still not as bad as what the Israelites of Isaiah's day were facing.
The
northern kingdom of Israel had already been taken into captivity by the Assyrians in
722 b.c.
The Assyrians did no harm to Jerusalem, but it fell in 586 b.c. to the Baby-
lonians, and its inhabitants were marched several hundred miles away into exile.
They would not remain in Babylon forever.
God had made a promise that the
Savior would be born in the little town of Bethlehem just outside of Jerusalem.
To
insure that promise He planned to use the Persian king Cyrus to bring His people
back home.
Our text explains: "Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and to loose the
belts of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed: 2"I will go
before you and level the exalted places, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze
and cut through the bars of iron, 3I will give you the treasures of darkness and the
hoards in secret places, that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel,
who call you by your name.
4For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my
chosen, I call you by your name, I name you, though you do not know me.
(Isaiah
45:1-4).
One gets the impression that God was speaking directly to Cyrus.
Well, God
is certainly speaking directly to that king but these words were written over a hund-
red years before Cyrus's birth!
Cyrus's people, the Persians, weren't even a world
power yet and so predicting that a Persian king would conquer most of the then
known world would be like saying that, in a hundred years, Equador will dominate
the world financially and militarily.
It seems a bit unbelievable doesn't it?
But God could make such a bold prediction concerning Cyrus and the Persians
because he controls history.
The Lord would give Cyrus his power and cunning so
that no gate or walled-city would withstand his forces.
If, in the midst of today's troubled times, you can give thanks for a good job, a
nice home, food, or good grades, remember that it is the Lord who made all these
things possible for you.
He took you by his hand and guided you.
He opened the
doors to give you the opportunities you are now enjoying.
Don't think that you
have a comfortable life because you somehow earned it.
Look at Cyrus.
He hadn't
done anything to earn God's favor.
Why, he wasn't even born yet when God made
those pronouncements about him.
And even after he was born he didn't prove that
he was deserving of God's attention.
Twice in our text God said he would bless
Cyrus even though Cyrus did not acknowledge him (Isaiah 45:4, 5)!
As Christians we acknowledge the Lord by confessing our faith in him.
But
that doesn't make us deserving of God's love.
On our own apart from the work of
the Holy Spirit who brings us to faith in Jesus Christ, we are just like Cyrus.
By
nature there's nothing good in us that deserves any special favor from God.
So why does God bless us with so much?
He blesses us because he is a God
of undeserved love.
So be humble.
Don't take credit for all the blessings you have.
Acknowledge that they are undeserved gifts from a loving God.
But now what if things aren't going so great?
Do you still have reason to
thank the Lord?
Of course you do.
Our text makes the startling statement that the
Lord is behind disaster as much as he is behind prosperity.
God said through Isaiah:
"I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, (I love the
way the RSV translates this) "I make weal and create woe" I am the Lord, who
does all these things" (Isaiah 45:7).
From the point of view of all who would go up
against Cyrus and lose, calamity had come upon them.
And since God was behind
Cyrus, he was behind the calamity Cyrus created.
Why?
What was God up to?
As
I said at the beginning, God was using Cyrus to bring his people back to the
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