The Temporary Empire of Cyrus Serves the Eternal Empire of Christ

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.

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.

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.