Newsletter February 25, 2009
From the Senior Pastor. . .
Yesterday the DOW dropped to its lowest point since 1997. What in the world is going on? And how is this going to impact our future as individuals ... families ... a congregation ... a denomination ... the church ... a nation ... a world?
I’m confident I know, though I’m not at all clear on the details.
Seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, God said through the prophet Isaiah, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things” (45.7).
God is speaking to a future Persian king named Cyrus. Cyrus will not rule over Persia for another 150 years.
During the intervening years, the Lord will use Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to punish His covenant people. He will carry off into exile the citizens of Judah for some seventy years.
But then, God will raise up the Persians, to overthrow the Babylonians. The ruler of Persia, will be Cyrus. And it is Cyrus who will issue a decree allowing the people of Judah to return to their homeland to rebuild the Temple.
What does all of this have to do with us? Everything.
It reminds us that Yahweh is not simply the God of Judah, but is, in fact, the Ruler of heaven and earth. The Babylonians do His bidding. The Persians do His bidding. He uses them to both punish and bless His people.
God says in Isaiah 45.21-22, “There is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but me. Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other.”
And then He tells us at the end of verse twenty-three: “Before me every knee will bow, by me every tongue will swear.” In Philippians 2 Paul writes about Jesus, the One who is “in very nature God” (v 6). In Philippians 2.10-11, Paul quotes Isaiah 45.21-22, applying Yahweh’s words to God the Son: “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.”
I have no idea about the details of what lies ahead, but I am confident that God is working all things together to gain for Himself all the glory, honor and praise that is rightfully His, as He disciplines, protects, and cares for His people, whom He is recreating in His image.
So, knowing that He is in control, am I worried? Sure. I’m still a son of Adam. Am I confident? Yes. Because I am a child of God’s. Am I at peace? By God’s grace.
Let’s pray that God will use our circumstances to turn the hearts and minds of a generation to Him. And whatever the future brings, I pray that we will be found resting in the assurance of His promise that all the things of this world we will ever need He will provide for us, if we are striving daily to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt 6.33).
Pastor Caines