Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for sending your son
Jesus Christ to take our sin and to
die in our place for our sin.
We thank you for the wonderful promises that
he has given to us, that he's gone
to prepare a place for us that we
might be with him in his kingdom.
We thank you, Lord, for the promise of
the Holy Spirit and the help of the
Holy Spirit in the understanding of your word.
We thank you for the peace that you
have left with us.
We thank you, Lord, that you told us
things in advance so that when they come
to pass, it might be proved to us
that you are God alone.
Beside you, there is no God.
We pray, Father, that even this day, as
we turn to the scriptures, that you would
open now our hearts to understanding and to
the receiving of your truth in Jesus' name,
amen.
You may be seated.
Tonight, Pastor Skip is going to lead us
in a study from Isaiah 44 through 46.
These are some really exciting chapters.
I'm looking forward to tonight and hearing Pastor
Skip as he expounds on these great chapters.
He's done an excellent job on difficult chapters.
I'm anxious to see what he does with
these because they are so rich and so
full.
So, looking forward to this evening and our
continued study through the Bible tonight, Isaiah 44
through 46.
This morning, we'd like to look at chapter
44, verses 6 through 8, as we read,
Thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel,
and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I
am the first and the last.
Beside me there is no God.
And who as I shall call and shall
declare it, and set it in order, since
I appointed the ancient people and the things
that are coming and shall come, and I
let you see them, or I show them
to you.
Fear not, neither be afraid.
Have not I told thee from that time
and have declared it?
You are even my witnesses, that there is
no God beside me.
Yea, there is no God, I know not
any.
One of the strongest proofs of the existence
of God, and that he transcends time, and
that the Bible is God's revelation of himself
to us, is found in the 100%
accuracy of Bible prophecy.
Back in the 41st chapter of Isaiah, God
challenged the false gods to prove their existence
by bringing forth their strong evidence.
God said, Show us what will happen.
Tell us what's going to happen in the
future.
Declare to us future events that we might
know that you are really gods.
Now here in our text, this is exactly
what the Lord has said he is going
to do, to show that he is the
true God, the only God, beside him there
is no God.
He said, Thus saith the Lord, the King
of Israel, the Redeemer, the Lord of hosts,
I am the first and the last, and
beside me there is no God.
Now in verse 24 of this chapter, he
begins to speak of events that will take
place in the future, so that when these
events did come to pass, the people would
know that God is truly God, transcends time,
because he speaks of things in the future
with perfect accuracy and in great detail.
The Bible does declare that God is transcendent.
He transcends time and space.
A very easy thing for God to show
that he is eternal, that he transcends time.
You see, time is related to our solar
system.
It deals with the number of days it
takes our earth to make a rotation around
the sun.
It deals with the number of hours it
takes our earth to rotate on its axis.
And so our days and months and years
are related to the solar system in which
we live, the revolving of the earth around
the sun and revolving on its axis.
But God lives outside of space.
He lives in what is known as the
eternal domain.
He transcends time so that with God there
is no time.
Now he can prove that very easily.
All he has to do is tell you
with detail of events that will take place
at a future date so that when these
events do take place, that you will then
know that he is a God who transcends
time.
That's what he's going to do as we
begin reading in verse 24.
Thus saith the Lord, your Redeemer, he that
formed you from the womb, I am the
Lord that made all things, that stretched forth
the heavens, that spread abroad the earth, that
confirmed the word of his servant and performed
the counsel of his messengers, that says to
Jerusalem, you will be inhabited to the cities
of Judah, you shall be built and I
will raise up the ruined places.
That says of Cyrus, he is my shepherd
and shall perform all of my pleasure, even
saying to Jerusalem, you shall be built and
to the temple your foundation shall be laid.
Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to
Cyrus, whose right hand I have held to
subdue the nations before him.
I will loose the loins of kings, I
will open before him the two levied gates
and the gates shall not be shut.
And I will give to you the treasures
of darkness and the hidden riches of the
secret places that you may know that I,
the Lord who has called you by your
name, am the God of Israel for Jacob,
my servant's sake and for Israel, my elect.
I have even called you by your name.
I've surnamed you, though you did not know
me."
Now, the miraculous aspects of this particular prophecy
is that they were made a hundred and
seventy-six years before the event took place.
They were made by Isaiah in the year
of around 722.
And it was not until the year 536
that these prophecies were fulfilled.
The amazing thing is the prophecy was made
over a hundred years before Cyrus was even
born.
But the Lord calls him by his name
and calls attention to the fact that I
am calling you by your name, that you
may know that I am God, the God
of Israel.
Now, the prophecy declares that Cyrus would be
the one who would allow the rebuilding of
the temple in Jerusalem after its destruction by
the Babylonian invasion.
At the time Isaiah made this prophecy, the
temple was still standing.
It was there in all of its beauty
and glory as had been restored under Hezekiah's
reign.
But now the prophecy is that it's going
to be rebuilt.
This is before it was destroyed.
And we know that the destruction took place
during the Babylonian invasion.
But a hundred and seventy-six years later,
the temple has been destroyed and has been
lying in ruins.
Cyrus, the king of the Medes and the
Persians, is now ruling.
And we do read this historic account concerning
Cyrus.
Thus saith Cyrus, the king of Persia, Jehovah,
the God of heaven, has given me all
of the kingdoms of the earth, and he
has charged me to build him a house
at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
That's the decree.
We read, also Cyrus the king brought forth
the vessels of the house of the Lord,
which Nebuchadnezzar had brought forth out of Jerusalem,
and he had put them in the house
of his gods.
Even those did Cyrus, the king of Persia,
bring forth by the hand of the treasurer,
and he numbered them unto Shezhebazar, the prince
of Judah.
And they gave money also to the masons
and to the carpenters, and food and drink
and oil unto those of Sidon and Tyre,
to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the
Sea of Joppa according to the grant that
they had received from Cyrus, the king of
Persia.
So the name, the mission, told in advance
over a hundred years before Cyrus was born,
God named him.
So when this couple in Persia were pregnant
and they were discussing what shall we call
our son, you know, our child.
Well, if it's a boy, call him John.
No, I don't like that name.
Well, how about Cyrus?
Oh, that's great.
Let's call him Cyrus, you know.
Directed by God, named him in advance.
The Lord said that he would loose the
loins of the kings.
Again, reading from the record, Belshazzar the king,
king of Babylon, made a great feast to
a thousand of his lords.
He drank wine before the thousand, and Belshazzar,
while under the influence of the wine, commanded
that they bring the gold and silver vessels
which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of
the temple, which was in Jerusalem, and that
the king and his princes, his wives and
his concubines might drink from them.
Then they brought the golden vessels that were
taken out of the temple of the house
of God, which was in Jerusalem, and the
king and his princes, his wives, his concubines,
they drank from them.
They drank wine, and they praised the gods
of gold and silver, brass and iron, wood
and stone.
And in the same hour, they came forth
fingers of a man's hand and wrote over
against the candlestick upon the plaster of the
wall of the king's palace, and the king
saw the part of the hand that wrote.
Then the king turned pale.
His thoughts troubled him, so that the joints
of his loins were loosed, and his knees
smote one against another.
I will loose the loins of kings, God
said to Cyrus.
And thus it happened to Belshazzar.
And you think, well, that's just such a
minor little thing.
The guy's knees began to shake because he's
so scared.
And yet, minor details that the Lord gives
us of what he will do for Cyrus
in helping him to conquer the great Babylon.
The Lord said that he would open to
him the two levied gates, and the gates
will not be shut.
Now, when Cyrus took Babylon, according to a
historian, Herodotus, he wrote this of Cyrus's conquering
of the city of Babylon.
This is out of the historic records of
Herodotus.
It so happened that in the scene of
revelry, which prevailed in Babylon when Cyrus took
the city, that the gates that were in
the city that led from the streets to
the river were left open.
The city was not only a closed with
walls, but there were walls within the city
on each side of the river Euphrates with
gates by which the inhabitants of the city
had access to the water of the river.
Had not these gates been left open on
that occasion, contrary to the usual custom, the
Persians would have been shut up in the
bed of the river and could all have
been destroyed.
It also happened in the revelry of that
night that the gates of the palace were
left open so that there was access to
every part of the city.
Herodotus goes on to say, if the besieged
had been aware of the designs of Cyrus
or had discovered the project before its accomplishment,
they might have affected the total destruction of
these troops.
They only had to secure the little gates
that led to the river to have manned
the embankments on either side, and they might
have enclosed the Persians in a net from
which they could not have escaped.
And yet here it is, 176 years before
it happens, God declares, I will open to
you the levied gates so that when Cyrus
came in, the soldiers who guarded the gates
were so drunk, they didn't close them.
And thus the gates were left open and
Cyrus and the troops were able to move
right in and take the city.
The Lord also mentions up the drying up
of the river in chapter 44 verse 27.
Now it is interesting how Cyrus conquered the
city of Babylon.
The city was considered unconquerable because the walls
of Babylon were 300 feet high.
They were 80 feet thick.
There was actually a double wall, but the
main wall 300 feet high and 80 feet
thick, towers along the wall.
The wall was 60 miles long, sort of
in a square 15 miles in each direction
and towers along the walls.
And the city was thought to be impregnable
so much so that when the Persians had
laid siege on Babylon, Belshazzar the king was
so confident that they could not penetrate the
walls that he ordered this big party, a
big kind of a drunken orgy where they
bring in the women, they bring in the
booze and they just sort of in your
face to the Persian troops that are outside
trying to figure out how in the world
they could ever conquer the city.
But what Cyrus did was that he had
the river Euphrates diverted into a lake that
was 40 miles square.
And the level of the river dropped to
the extent that the Persian, Medo-Persian troops
were able to come on into the city
and the river bed and then up in
through the gates and conquered the city.
As the Lord said, he would dry up
the river and that's exactly how Cyrus conquered
the city.
Having told these things over a hundred years
in advance, God then declared in verse five
that when these things had come to pass,
transpired, Cyrus would know that he is the
Lord.
There's no other God beside me.
God said, I girded you though you did
not know me.
That all may know from the rising of
the sun unto the west that there is
no God beside me.
I am Jehovah.
There is no other.
So God declares that I've told you this
in advance so that when it does happen,
you will know that I am the transcendent
God, that I do live outside of time
and that I can speak of things with
accuracy and with detail before they ever take
place so that when you see them happen,
you will know that I am God.
So it's offered by God as the proof
of his existence, a God who transcends time
and space.
It should be noted that there are thousands
of examples in the Bible where predictions are
made of things that would happen in the
future.
Some of them were fulfilled within a matter
of months.
Some of them were fulfilled in matters of
years.
Some were fulfilled in the matters of centuries
and some fulfilled in the matter of millenniums.
In other words, in the Bible, there are
prophecies of things that are happening today, 2
,500 years after they were written.
God's word stands in the book of Ezekiel.
The Lord spoke of these last days and
he said that this land of Israel, which
had been a barren wilderness, was going to
be tilled and it's going to become like
the Garden of Eden.
The wasted and desolate and ruined cities will
become fenced and are inhabited.
The heathen that are left roundabout will know
that I am the Lord who builds the
ruined places and plants that which was desolate.
I, the Lord, have said it and I
will do it.
And what can you say?
He's done it.
You go to Israel today and you see
they're building fences around Israel to protect them
from the terrorists.
You go to Israel today and you look
at the land around Beersheba that was so
barren, desert wilderness.
You look at the Sharon Valley, which was
just a wetlands, a marsh.
You look at the Valley of Megiddo, which
was a marsh.
And you will see rich, verdant fields of
wheat.
You will see orchards.
You'll see a land that for 1500 years
was nothing more than a barren wilderness.
But you will see it today like the
Garden of Eden for the verdants and the
abundance that is there in that land.
Jesus said that he told his disciples things
that would happen so that when they did
happen, that they might believe.
In other words, it was to give fodder
for your faith.
It was to give you a proof for
your faith, a reason for your faith.
Fulfilled prophecy should bolster your faith that the
Bible is the word of God, a revelation
of himself and displaying and proving that he
is the only God, a transcendent God above
all other things that are worshipped by men.
Peter speaks of seeing certain events.
He said, I saw them.
But having declared that he was a eyewitness
of these events, he then said, but we
have the more sure word of prophecy.
You may challenge what I am witnessing of
what I saw, but there can't be a
challenge to the prophecy when it has been
written and then it comes to pass years
or millenniums later.
You can't deny the fact that it was
written so long ago, and yet it is
happening now before our eyes.
Solomon, when he was dedicating the temple, said
not one word has failed of all that
he has promised.
Solomon was able to say that up until
his day.
Those prophecies that were made in the five
books of the law, those prophecies that were
made during the period of the judges, not
one word at the time of Solomon had
failed.
God had kept his word.
Here we stand some 3000 years later, and
we can make the same declaration of Solomon.
Not one word has failed of all that
God has promised to do.
You can rely upon his word.
Not one word has failed.
If you believe in God, that should be
great assurance to you.
If you don't believe in God, hopefully that'll
scare the hell out of you, because God's
word is going to come to pass.
Now, it is true that not all has
yet come to pass.
There are prophecies of things that are yet
future.
We are catching up with some of the
things that God declared.
For instance, the rebirth of the nation of
Israel, the development of the land.
That has only come to pass, you know,
in recent times.
For over close to 2000 years, the land
just lay desolate, the city's waste.
But now, it is being fulfilled before our
very eyes as we're finally catching up with
the word of God.
It tells about how that the Muslim nations
will invade Israel in these last days.
Now, we haven't gotten there yet.
But would any of you be surprised if
Iran attacked and Syria and Libya attacked Israel?
Would that surprise you or shock you?
Of course not.
Because we realize that the Muslim nations have
set themselves to the destruction of Israel.
The Bible says that they will come, but
they won't destroy it.
They will be themselves destroyed.
But the Bible is such a fascinating book
in that it tells of things that are
yet future.
But if the Bible has been 100%
accurate in the prophecies that we have already
seen fulfilled, what chance do you suppose there
would be that those things that are yet
future will not be fulfilled?
You can be certain.
As God said, I said it and I
will do it, that God will keep His
word and keep the promises and the prophecies
that He has inspired.
In Hebrews 9.27, the Bible tells us
it is appointed unto man once to die.
And after that, the judgment.
In other words, the Bible tells us that
death is not the end of your existence.
That it is appointed that you should die.
But after that, there's going to be a
judgment.
In Revelation chapter 20, beginning with verse 11,
John describes this judgment for us.
He said, And I saw a great white
throne and him that sat on it, from
whose face the earth and the heavens have
fled away.
And there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great,
stand before God and the books were open.
And another book was open, which is the
book of life.
And the dead were judged out of those
things which were written in the books according
to their works.
The sea gave up the dead which were
in it.
Death and hell delivered up the dead which
were in them.
And they were judged every man according to
their works.
And death and hell were cast into the
lake of fire.
This is the second death.
And whosoever was not found written in the
book of life was cast into the lake
of fire.
This is a prophecy.
It's a prediction.
It tells you of an event that is
yet future.
Event that is not yet taken place.
But God has said it.
And because God has said it, you can
be sure it will happen.
You can be sure that one day we
will be there, we will see the throne
of God, and we will see the judgment
of those who have rejected Jesus Christ.
We'll be there.
We'll observe it.
God's word is certain.
God's word is going to be fulfilled.
That which has not yet been fulfilled, you
can be sure of it.
You can bet your life upon it.
And you better bet your life on it.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for the sure word
of prophecy that you have given to us
advance notice of things that you are going
to do.
Things that would transpire.
And Lord, what a thrill and what a
joy it is to see these things, so
many of them transpiring before our very eyes
today.
We know, Lord, that even as you told
your disciples that if you went away, you
would come again and receive them unto yourself,
that they might be with you.
Where you are.
And so, Lord, we know that you're coming
again for your church, that we might be
with you in your kingdom.
We thank you, Lord, for the hope that
this gives to us and the confidence and
the assurance that your word is certain and
that your word will come to pass and
it shall be just as you have spoken.
It will be fulfilled.
I pray, Father, for those today who are
gambling with their eternal destiny, who are gambling
with foolish interpretations of your word.
We know that your word is clear and
that you speak clearly, Lord, concerning life and
how you would have us to live our
lives.
We pray, Father, that we might bend ourselves
to your word rather than seeking to bend
your word to ourselves.
Speak to us today, Lord, in Jesus' name.
Amen.