"Not Hidden" Sermon: Isaiah 45:14-25 (manuscript)

 

“Not Hidden”

[Isaiah 45:14-25]

October 25, 2020 YouTube

            Today is Reformation Sunday.  It was on October 31, 1517 that Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle desiring to debate the issue of indulgences, but inadvertently began the Protestant Reformation.

            In Luther’s writings about salvation, he argues that God is both hidden and not hidden.  And we may think, “That makes no sense – that’s a contradiction – something cannot both be and not be in the same place at the same time and in the same relation – as the Law of Non-Contradiction states.”

            The fact of the matter is that God is both hidden and not hidden in this way:  God is hidden to those who do not believe savingly in Jesus, and God is not hidden to those who do believe savingly in Jesus.  And the way that one gets from one state to the other is by God alone giving both grace and faith to a person so he will be able to believe.

            As Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10, ESV).

            Now, last week we saw the reaction of Jerusalem to God saying He will use the pagan king, Cyrus, to free Jerusalem and rebuild the city and the Temple, and the people are aghast with this idea – they want God to rethink what He is doing.

            God tells Jerusalem that God is beyond questioning and He is Sovereign over all.

            So, we turn to this morning’s text.

            As we continue to look at the prophecy of Isaiah, we see, first, God is hidden.

“Thus says the LORD: ‘The wealth of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush, and the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over to you and be yours; they shall follow you; they shall come over in chains and bow down to you. They will plead with you, saying: “Surely God is in you, and there is no other, no god besides him.”’”

Were Egypt, Cush, and the Sabeans ever conquered by Israel?  Were they ever put in chains and caused to bow down?

The answer is, “no,” this never happened.  So, what do we do with this text?

We look at the end of this text where we are told that they come because they recognize that the only True God is the God of Israel.  Therefore, we read this text spiritually.  We are not being told that Israel will conquer Egypt, Cush, and the Sabeans, take their wealth, and put them in chains as a historical reality.  Rather, the conquest of the nations is spiritual, saying that they will come to acknowledge that the True God is only found in Israel.

Has this occurred?

Yes.  It is said that Mark spread Christianity in Northern Africa.  St. Augustine was from Northern Africa.  Today, there are more Christians in Africa than in any other continent on Earth.  (https://thelastwell.org/the-current-state-of-christianity-in-africa/) There are more Christians in Africa than in the United States, more than in Europe, more than in Asia, more than in South America.  That’s really quite remarkable.

Expanding this out, we understand Egypt, Cush, and the Sabeans are representative of the Gentile world.  The Gentile world will come to understand that the only True God is the God of Israel – the God of the Law and the Prophets in the Old Testament – Who is Incarnate in the New Testament for our salvation.

 How do they get to this point?

“Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior. All of them are put to shame and confounded; the makers of idols go in confusion together. But Israel is saved by the LORD with everlasting salvation; you shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity.”

God is hidden.  What that means is that no one naturally seeks after God.  The idea of a seeker sensitive church is ridiculous.

Paul writes:

“as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one’” (Romans 3:10-12, ESV).

So, the point is that God is hidden in the sense that there is a necessity of revelation for salvation.  If God does not open a person’s eyes and change out his heart and fill him with God the Holy Spirt, he will never see God, he will never seek after God, he will never believe savingly in Jesus, the Only Savior.  God is hidden from every mere human until God reveals Himself in the salvation of a person.

And so, the distinction is draw between those who worship idols – for whom God is hidden – and Israel – for whom God is revealed in salvation.  And we need to recognize that when Israel is mentioned here, it is spiritual Israel, not biological Israel, because the idol worshippers were members of biological Israel.

Paul writes, “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring” (Romans 9:6-8, ESV).

In other words, God chose a biological nation, Israel, to be the people through whom the Law, the Prophets, and the Savior would come, but the true Israel are all those who believe in the Savior God sent – Jesus.

God is hidden to all those who do not believe in the Savior, Jesus.

Second, God is not hidden.

God has not concealed Himself and made it impossible for the world to know that He exists and sends the Savior to make all those who believe right with Him.

“For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): ‘I am the LORD, and there is no other.’”

Anyone who looks at the created order understand that God exists.  God is the Creator and did not leave everything in chaos, but made the Creation into a logical, rational system of varieties that scream out God’s existence.

Paul writes, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse” (Romans 1:19-20, ESV).

God has created everything with purpose, so everyone knows God exists – is convinced that God exists – and knows God’s Attributes, so they understand that the Savior is necessary.

God is not hidden – the Creation reveals Him.

“’I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, “Seek me in vain.” I the LORD speak the truth; I declare what is right.’”

God is also known through His Word.  God’s revelation of Himself is a spoken revelation.  God has revealed Himself through the books of the Bible.  And we see in the books of the Bible that God calls all people to Himself – God calls all people to repent and believe in Him and the Savior.  When God calls Jacob – and the whole world to Himself – God does not do this to taunt and frustrate all those who will believe – it is an honest call to all people to come, repent, and believe.

It is also in God’s spoken Word, recorded as the Bible, that we understand that God is the definer of what is true and what is right.  All true morality is based on the foundation of what God has said is true and right.  And so, God is known because what He says is true and right is what people generally believe is true and right, and there must be something outside of ourselves and greater than us which is the foundation for our belief in what is true and right.  There must be an authority behind our claims of what is true and right – something greater and outside of ourselves.

“’Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, you survivors of the nations! They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols, and keep on praying to a god that cannot save. Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together! Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the LORD? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me.’”

God commands the nations to come to Him – Jews and Gentiles – every people who will ever be.  And God rebukes the idolaters saying that God told them to bring their idols and argue their superiority before Him years ago, and the answer has always been the same:  there is only One God, the righteous God, the Savior, and there is no other God.  Everyone knows He is God, the only God, the only Savior, the God Who has made Himself known through the Creation and through His Word.

God is not hidden.  To anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear, God is not hidden.

            Third, God calls all people and peoples to true conversion.

“’Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.’

Conversion – or repentance – means turning one hundred and eighty degrees from where you are.  God commands all peoples and all people to repent and turn and convert to God, the only Savior, because there is only One God, and He is the God of the Bible – all others are idols and worthless blasphemes.

 “’By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.’

God shall not fail to accomplish what He has set out to do.  God has sworn by Himself to save a people for Himself and for His Glory and it will happen, because God cannot swear by anything greater than Himself.  For God to fail in this would mean that God would no longer exist, which is impossible.

So, God sends out His Word.  Christianity is the religion of the Word.  Early on, Christians were called, “the people of the book.”  We don’t look for mystical revelations and consult our bellybuttons, God has spoken and His Word is written, so we know Who God is and what He has done in history and what He requires of us – and especially we who believe.

The Word that has gone out is that every knee will bow, and every tongue swear allegiance of God.

Paul writes, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God’” (Romans 14:10-11, ESV).

And, “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11, ESV).

Notice what we are told – among all the creatures that bow before God and the Savior to confess Him and worship Him – are every human who ever lives.  Believers and non-believers will fall before Him on the last day – in the judgment.  Those who never believe will fall before Him in terror and agony; those who believe will fall before Him in everlasting joy.  Every human will acknowledge the Truth of God – whether they like it or not.  God will be glorified in judgment and salvation.

 “’Only in the LORD, it shall be said of me, are righteousness and strength; to him shall come and be ashamed all who were incensed against him.’

The true conversion of all those who believe is accomplished by God in such a way that God is proven righteous and strong, and all those who never believe savingly in Jesus will come and be ashamed on the last day.

God is righteous in the conversion – in the salvation – of the people He has chosen.  God is morally right.  He is just in making a people for Himself for this reason:  the Savior both perfectly keeps the Law of God and credits that moral perfection to all who believe and He pays the debt to God for all the sins that believers ever commit.  So, God’s Grace and Justice are satisfied.

 “In the LORD all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory.”

What a day it will be for all we who believe – the Israel of God – when we are brought into the Kingdom of God in all its fullness and have eternal joy with our Savior!

God is hidden to those who do not believe savingly in Jesus.

God is not hidden – He is obvious in Creation and His Word.

God calls all people and peoples to true conversion, which is accomplished by God Alone.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You chose a people for Yourself before the foundation of the world and we have spiritually blinded ourselves to You through our first parents’ sin.  Thank You for choosing a people for Yourself, for opening our eyes and changing out our hearts, for proclaiming Yourself in the Creation and Your salvation in Your Word.  Empower us by the Holy Spirit to show You and Your salvation to those who do not yet believe and be pleased to draw many to Yourself in the salvation merited by Your Son.  For it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.