The Temporary Empire of Cyrus Serves the Eternal Empire of Christ

Isaiah 45

Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God, and there is no other. (Isa 45:22)

Main Idea: God raises up Cyrus of Persia and gives him an empire so that the Jews will rebuild Jerusalem, so that the gospel of Christ may spread to the ends of the earth.

1. God Grants Cyrus an Empire for the Salvation of His Elect (45:1-8).
   1. God calls Cyrus his “anointed” and grants him an empire (45:1-3).
   2. God does this so that Cyrus, Israel, and the whole earth may know him (45:3-6).
   3. God alone creates success and disaster (45:7).
   4. The Lord makes righteousness spring up (45:8).
2. God Rebukes Arrogant Human Questioning of His Plans (45:9-13).
   1. Woe to him who quarrels with his maker (45:9-10)!
   2. Woe to him who questions God about his plans (45:11,13)!
   3. God created the universe; he knows what he’s doing (45:12).
3. God’s Mysterious Plans for Gentile Salvation (45:14-17)
   1. The subdued Gentiles will enrich Israel (45:14).
   2. God is a God who hides (45:15).
   3. God’s plan is shame for idolaters, salvation for Israel (45:16-17).
4. God’s Gospel Call to the Ends of the Earth: Turn to Christ (45:18-25)!
   1. God’s purposes will be fulfilled: an earth filled with worshipers (45:18-19).
   2. God’s clear challenge to idolaters: God alone predicted these things (45:20-21).
   3. God’s gospel call to the ends of the earth: turn to Christ and be saved (45:22-25)!

God Grants Cyrus an Empire for the Salvation of His Elect

Isaiah 45:1-8

The supernatural prediction of Cyrus the Great by name more than a century before his birth stands as one of the most stunning proofs of the Bible’s divine origin. No other world religion or cult has the credentials of this achievement to commend itself to the human heart. Because of the clearly supernatural power of specific prophecy, scholarly skeptics have suggested there was a later author of this portion of the book of Isaiah, the “Second Isaiah” (Bright, History of Israel, 355). But, given that in this section of this amazing book the Lord again and again presents his power to predict the future as clear evidence of his superiority to the “gods,” it actually is reasonable to accept the argument that the God who created the universe governs human history and is able to predict what he will do, even centuries before he does it.

God reveals the name of the coming conqueror, Cyrus the Great, who will destroy the Babylonian Empire and build an empire of his own. This Cyrus will decree that the Jews return to the promised land and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. God’s purpose in all this, however, is far greater than a surprising prediction or even than his covenant love to Israel. God’s ultimate purpose is the salvation through Christ of the elect from every nation, tribe, people, and language (Rev 7:9). God willed that “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22) and that the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ, should be born in Bethlehem in Judea (Mic 5:2) and die in Jerusalem in Judea (Luke 13:33). God also willed that the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ should begin in Jerusalem and spread to the ends of the earth (Luke 24:47). Thus God gave Cyrus a temporary empire so that God might ultimately give to Jesus Christ an eternal empire of souls from every nation on earth.

The Lord surprisingly calls Cyrus his “anointed” (Isa 45:1), a title usually reserved for the kings of the Jews. The Holy Spirit chose and anointed Cyrus to play a role in redemptive history as a type and shadow of the true anointed King—Jesus. God says that he takes Cyrus by the right hand and leads him to subdue nations and strip slaughtered kings. God promises to go before Cyrus and open doors, remove mountains, and cut through bars of iron and gates of bronze (Herodotus said Babylon had a hundred bronze gates, Histories 1.179, 97). No obstacle would deter Cyrus’s powerful advance through that region of the world. Paul said plainly to the philosophers in Athens, “From one man [God] has made every nationality to live all over the earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live” (Acts 17:26; cf. Deut 2:20-23; Amos 9:7). So the fact that God went before Cyrus and specifically gave him the territories of one smaller nation after another is consistent with his actions throughout all history.

God promised to Cyrus the “treasures of darkness and riches from secret places” (v. 3), clearly referring to the plunder he would gain from these conquests. This included the fabulous wealth of Croesus, king of Lydia, whose land contained a river with rich gold deposits (Herodotus, Histories 5.101). This fabulous wealth and the power of a mighty empire would motivate a man like Cyrus, who did not know the Lord and did not act for God’s glory (v. 5). It is important for us to understand that God directs the hearts of kings like a watercourse whatever way he chooses (Prov 21:1), whether that king acknowledges him or not. Yet, as Paul said to the Athenians, God does all these things “so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27-28). So in our text God promises to give Cyrus these rich treasures so that he would know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has called him by name (Isa 45:3). Now, there is no clear indication that Cyrus ever did repent and follow the Lord as the only God, forsaking all idols. True, he did give credit to Yahweh for his empire in the decree to rebuild Jerusalem (2 Chr 36:23; Ezra 1:2), which Josephus tells us that Daniel pointed out to him in the very words of this Isaiah scroll. But in the Cyrus Cylinder (a baked clay cylinder with Akkadian writing ascribed by archaeologists to Cyrus the Great), he gives credit to Marduk, the god of Babylon, in almost the same language he used for the Lord (D. W. Thomas, Documents, 357).

However, God’s purpose goes far beyond one man. God intends to use Cyrus’s conquests to advance his master plan for the salvation of the elect from every nation, including the Jews first. So God tells Cyrus plainly that he summons him by name for the sake of Israel, his chosen one (vv. 4-5). And beyond even Israel, God has his eyes on the elect from every nation, “so that all may know from the rising of the sun to its setting that there is no one but me. I am the Lord, and there is no other” (v. 6).

The absolute sovereignty of God over human history is essential to this plan. One empire rises from the rubble and ashes of the previous one; emperors become wealthy by plundering the coffers of people they have slaughtered. So verse 7 makes plain that God creates both light and dark threads in the tapestry of human history; God brings success (shalom, “prosperity”) and also disaster (ra, sometimes translated “evil”). Because of this, some feel that Isaiah 45:7 teaches that God creates evil, and they struggle with such a view of God. But shalom has a fuller meaning of prosperity in all areas of life: health, happiness, abundant harvests, full granaries, and overflowing vats. Thus the opposite is not moral evil but disaster. So we must see verse 7 in the light of the couplets: the “evil” is the opposite of the “prosperity” and must refer to Cyrus’s invasion. To the Medes and Persians under Cyrus, their military conquest is unmitigated “success”; but to the Lydians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other conquered peoples, it is “disaster.” And God does it all.

Verse 8 sums this theme up powerfully with a poetic call to the heavens to “shower righteousness” so that salvation and righteousness may spring up from the earth. Heaven initiates; earth responds.

God Rebukes Arrogant Human Questioning of His Plans

Isaiah 45:9-13

Such a complex plan of salvation using Gentile emperors might have seemed preposterous to many Jews languishing in exile in Babylon, to those who refused to accept that God was chastising their wicked nation for its sins. They would be strongly tempted to argue with their Maker. God proclaims “Woe!” to all who would show this kind of disrespect. These verses stand as a timeless warning to the entire human race to refrain from arrogant questioning of God’s sovereign plan. We are the clay; he is the potter. Actually, we are just pottery fragments, shattered by sin, among many such fragments on the ground. So how dare we question our Maker? It is absurd for us corrupt sinners with such a narrow perspective to question the King of the universe about the children he created with his own hands (vv. 11-12).

God was determined to raise up Cyrus to execute his righteous plan, and he will level all of Cyrus’s paths so he can succeed. Cyrus is the one who will rebuild the city of Jerusalem and set the Jewish exiles free. But he will receive no price or financial reward for doing it. This action can only be explained by the sovereign activity of God on his heart; God “moved the heart” of Cyrus (Ezra 1:1,5 NIV), and so it was done.

God’s Mysterious Plans for Gentile Salvation

Isaiah 45:14-17

Here we have a clear sense of the glory and mystery of God’s salvation plan. The wealth of Egypt, and of the Cushites and Sabeans, comes over to the Jews and becomes theirs. That verse 14 is speaking of the Jews and not of Cyrus can be seen in what these representative Gentiles say: “God is indeed with you!” (cf. Zech 8:23). In this verse the image is more forceful and almost a little disconcerting: are the Egyptians, Cushites, and Sabeans enslaved to the Jews? The verse says, “They will come over in chains and bow down to you.” However, in the larger context of Isaiah’s message we see the merchandise of wealthy Gentile nations being used to build and adorn the temple and the city of Jerusalem (Isa 60:7-14). This depicts the success of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth; the “riches” of these nations has to do with the delight Jesus will have in their Spirit-empowered, heart-felt worship. The “chains” they wear may either be the chains from which Christ will liberate them or the forcefulness/compulsion of the Spirit’s drawing them to Christ: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44; emphasis added).

Such an awesome and complex plan draws our minds up to breathless wonder, to say with Isaiah, “Yes, you are a God who hides, God of Israel, Savior!” This “hiddenness” of God is in the secret councils of his eternal plan, and that same hiddenness and mystery caused Paul to cry out, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways!” (Rom 11:33). God’s ways are untraceable; truly he is a God who hides in mysterious providence.

God’s Gospel Call to the Ends of the Earth: Turn to Christ!

Isaiah 45:18-25

To accomplish this glorious plan, God must proclaim the truth to the ends of the earth (vv. 18-25). We see God’s eternal purpose in verse 18. God did not create, shape, and form the world to be an empty wasteland (Hb tohu; “empty” in Gen 1:2). Step by step, throughout the account in Genesis 1, God prepared a place for the human race to live. Advocates of intelligent design have spoken of a “fine-tuned” universe just right for human life (Bradley, “The ‘Just-So’ Universe,” 157–70). This is especially seen on planet Earth: the atmosphere, climate, water, soil, interactive ecosystems, and thousands of other factors are exactly what they need to be to sustain human life. God did not go to all that meticulous trouble so that he could wipe out all humanity in the end! So, though God will judge humanity for its sin, God has chosen a remnant from every nation on earth, and he will cleanse this sin-soiled universe with fire (2 Pet 3:10,12), resulting in a new heavens and new earth. He will populate that beautiful place with redeemed worshipers who will inhabit it for all eternity and give God the worship he deserves. All of God’s original purposes will come true!

To make it happen, God must call to a world full of idolaters to seek him and find him. He does not dishearten people by saying, “Seek me in vain” (v. 19 KJV; Hb tohu), which is in fact the case for those who pursue “wooden idols . . . who cannot save.” God does not speak from somewhere in a land of darkness, like the occultic pagan priests assert about their mysterious gods (8:19). God speaks openly and clearly through his servants, the prophets. Once again, he summons the idolaters (45:20) to come to a place of judgment, to contend for their “gods” and see if they can do what he is doing in this chapter: predicting actual historical events long before they happen (v. 21). The God of creation is the only one who can!

So he calls out to the distant lands in plain, gospel language: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God, and there is no other” (v. 22). The word turn implies a turning away from something and a turning to something else. First Thessalonians 1:9 says of the Christians in that pagan community, “You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” So also God commands every nation to turn “to me” (and away from idols), for all those idols are false, and he is the only true God. The promise is plain: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth” (emphasis added). This salvation is more than from mere exile or from the evil of a powerful invasion by the Medo-Persian conqueror, Cyrus. The salvation is from the just wrath of God for our sins. And Jesus Christ’s death on the cross purchased it for us. So those who live in the remotest regions will be commanded to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ for salvation.

To that end, God swears a solemn oath. He swears by himself because, as the author of Hebrews says, “he had no one greater to swear by” (Heb 6:13) and because he wants to give a sense of absolute certainty to his elect: “Every knee will bow to me, every tongue will swear allegiance” (Isa 45:23). This means that, in the end, the kingdom of God will win out and all rivals will be removed forever. This bowing of the knee and swearing allegiance should be understood in two ways: (1) by the elect, both now by faith and later in worship by sight; (2) by the rebels, in cowering fear at the impending judgment that God’s righteous wrath will pour out on them. Both groups will see plainly in the end that “righteousness and strength are found only in the Lord.”

It is vital for us as Christians to see how stunning is the fact that the apostle Paul alluded to verse 23 and directed it to Jesus. Isaiah 40–48 is fiercely monotheistic; the repeated message is that there is no one but Yahweh, no one even remotely close to him. He will not share his glory with another; he alone created the universe, and he alone is the Savior. Before Yahweh alone will every knee bow; in Yahweh alone will every tongue swear allegiance. And Paul ascribes these ideas to Jesus Christ: “At the name of Jesus every knee will bow—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:10-11; emphasis added). The sum total of this chapter is this: God the Father orchestrated the rise of Cyrus the Great, going ahead of him in sovereign power, to give Cyrus an empire; and God would move Cyrus to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. But God did this so that his far more glorious purpose could be accomplished: the building of the empire of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

Applications

Obviously the greatest application for this chapter is to obey God’s command in Isaiah 45:22 to turn to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith and find salvation in him. Nothing is more important than that. And anyone who reads Isaiah 45 and finds its primary message in the immediate circumstances of the restoration of the Jews to the promised land under Cyrus the Great has missed the whole point. God did not create the world to be empty but rather to be filled with worshipers who would be righteous and exult in him. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can change sinners from the idolaters we were to the God worshipers we must be.

Second, we should stand in awe of God’s awesome sovereign power over the rise of Cyrus the Great to world-dominating power. God called him by name more than a century before he was born. This gives us a sense of how minutely God orchestrates history for his own ultimate purposes. We should embrace that God controls the actions of great “movers and shakers” in world history even though most of them never acknowledge God. Of course, along with that, we should understand that the Bible is a miracle; the Bible violates the laws of nature in that it contains a record of actual prophecies that have been fulfilled as well others that have not yet come to pass but surely will. This sets both the Bible and Christianity apart from all the false religions of the world.

Third, we should embrace the deep truths of Isaiah 45:7 and take them to heart, no matter how difficult they are to accept. Some days may seem “light” to us, filled with prosperity and success. Others may seem “dark” to us, filled with what we think of as disaster. For the children of God, there are no disasters but only afflictions by which God is strengthening our faith (Jas 1:2-4). For the wicked, though they do not recognize God, everything they experience comes from his hand, and both the success and the disaster of world history are from the sovereign hand of God. As Christians, we are called on to grow up to full maturity doctrinally and accept that God does all these things, though his ways are often hidden (v. 15) and mysterious.

Fourth, as a direct corollary of this, we should learn to stop murmuring and questioning God when he afflicts us. We should humble ourselves before his infinite wisdom and power and not question what he does with us. We should meditate on the rebukes of verses 9-10 so that we are quiet under the mighty hand of God when we are suffering.

Finally, we should yearn for the day when people from distant lands (like the Egyptians, Cushites, and Sabeans) will be drawn inexorably to Christ, in chains of love and Spirit-led compulsion, and find salvation in him. This should make us yearn to be involved in the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth, praying for unreached people groups to hear this gospel message and bow the knee to Christ by faith.

Reflect and Discuss

1. What does the fact that Isaiah the prophet mentioned Cyrus the Great by name more than a century before he was born teach you about God? What does it teach you about the Bible?
2. How do verses 1-3 harmonize with Deuteronomy 2:20-23; Amos 9:7; and Acts 17:26? What does this teach us about God’s orchestration of human history and the rise and fall of every nation/kingdom/empire that there has ever been?
3. What makes Isaiah 45:7 a difficult verse to understand and accept? How does the commentary help bring understanding that God is not the author of evil, but he is the author of disaster?
4. What does verse 8 teach us about God’s initiative in salvation? How does it relate to Isaiah 55:10-11?
5. How does Isa 45:9-10 convict you? When are you tempted to argue with your Maker? How could we learn to humble ourselves and not question God so much?
6. How does verse 14 point to missions? How does Isaiah 60:7-14 help shed light on it?
7. How does God “hide” (Isa 45:15)? How does this verse relate to the fact that in verse 19 God claims to speak openly for all to hear?
8. Why will idolaters ultimately be disgraced (v. 16)? Why will believers in Christ be freed from all shame (v. 17)?
9. What do verses 18-25 teach us about missions? How does verse 22 stand as a key verse in the chapter?
10. Compare verse 23 with Philippians 2:10-11. What is the significance of the fact that Paul applies this verse to Jesus Christ?