the predicting and fulfilling God -- Isaiah 45

[a mere housewife]

I read this recently in a favorite devotional by Alec Motyer on Isaiah (Isaiah by the Day; and it was a comfort in light of many recent events.

This is the chapter where the Lord calls Cyrus by name invites the nations and the gods of the nations to predict the future or explain the past. None can but the true God, the God of Israel:

Fulfilment is not just a matter of stepping in at the right moment and doing what was promised centuries before. The Lord's fulfilments come about, so to speak, within the flow of world history . . . The Lord's fulfilments show not only his faithfulness to his pledged word, but his sovereign control and direction of the whole world and all its events until they reach his desired and appointed end. Jesus' birth in Bethlehem came about because Micah had predicted it, but it actually happened because Caesar Augustus made the appropriate decree at the appointed time (Luke 1:21): the Word of God is in the Lord's hands, to make it happen; the rulers of the world are in the Lord's hands to accomplish what he has decreed. The cross of Jesus came about by a sovereign decree, but it actually happened through the hands of wicked men (Acts 2:23); Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles and Israel assembled in Jerusalem 'to do whatever your purpose determined' (Acts 4:28). Prediction and fulfilment call us to wait patiently on the faithfulness of God -- 'Has he said and will he not do it?' (Numbers 23:19). They also call for restful confidence in the God who has the whole world in his hands.