Page 95 - Isaiah Student Worktext

V. 5-6 God promises protection to Cyrus even though he has ‘not known’ God. He does this again to
demonstrate His own power, not Cyrus’s.

V. 7-8 This verse is a subject of some disagreement. God says that He formed the light and the
darkness, peace and calamity. For some it is difficult to imagine that anything other than good could
have or would have been created by God. Does God create evil or does He simply allow it?

Most of us can testify to situations in our lives where evil seemed to prevail. Even in those things, God
can use these things to grow us.

In V. 8, we see clearly that God desires that from whatever comes, righteousness would spring up.

V. 9-10 It is not our job or our right to question God’s actions. It would make as much sense for clay to
question the potter about his intentions.

V. 11-13 People in the time of Isaiah and later Cyrus might have questioned God’s wisdom in using this
pagan king. Again, the Creator of the earth knows what He is doing. He chose and in fact created Cyrus
for a particular purpose.

The personal fulfillment of this is that He created each of us, likewise, for a particular purpose. Had He
chosen to have done so, He could have had us called out and written about us by name as to what His
purposes for us are as well. God chose Cyrus to be the one to rebuild the city and to bring the exiled
Jews back home.

Again, why go through all that…why not just keep the city from being destroyed or the people from
being taken captive in the first place? They brought those consequences upon themselves through
disobedience and needed to be taught.

V. 14-17 Now, God is speaking to Israel, the Jews. Their enemies will come to them, they will serve you
and they will confess that their God is the only true God. The wealth and the merchandise of the enemy
nations will be used to rebuild their city and their temple. We see this in Ezra and Nehemiah, that the
riches of the Babylonian empire were used to rebuild.

V. 18-19 God didn’t create the universe in vain. He created the earth specifically to be inhabited by His
people and His creation. Likewise, He didn’t establish His covenant with ‘the seed of Jacob’ in vain.

V. 20-22 God issues an invitation to the pagans, those who ‘have no knowledge’, and those who carry
wooden gods and pray to them instead of trusting the one true God.

Bring those gods, and testify what they have done for you. There is no other God beside Him, and
certainly none who are just and bring salvation.

This shows God’s desire that all men would be saved. Look to Him and be saved, all you ends of the
earth!

V. 23-25 This is repeated in Romans 14: 11. There will come a day when those who believe will find that
their faith is now their sight, and their knees will bow. For those who don’t believe, they will bow their
knees in fear of the coming judgment.

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