Isaiah 44:24-28

These words provide an introduction to the next chapter.

The Bible teaches that there is one creator God and He ‘’alone’’ (24) made the Universe. He didn’t sub-contract it out. He didn’t require any help. Although there is no specific mention of Genesis in this passage, we know from the first book in the Bible that God spoke and things came to be. It is interesting that we see that same pattern in the final verses of Isaiah 44. God’s Word is a creative Word.

  • He gives His Words to His ‘’servants’’/ ‘’messengers’’ and then ‘’fulfils’’ them (26a). It’s not that they can say any old thing that comes into their heads and God will do it for them. True prophets (as opposed to false ones: verse 25) hear from God, and He then does what He has said through their mouths. At the same time, He will thwart the work of those who are false. When God says that He ‘’overthrows the learning of the wise’’ (25) He is referring to worldly wisdom (see 1 Corinthians 1:19-21 and 3:18-20). He will expose it for the empty thing it is.
  • God promised again and again to restore and repopulate Jerusalem (26b). That is what He said would happen, and it did. May God speak a word of ‘population explosion’ over His church this day! If He speaks it happens. Surveying the church landscape in the western world, we know that there are churches that need inhabiting; there are new churches to be ‘’built’’; there are ‘’ruins’’ to be ‘restored’. God only has to command it and it will be!
  • What God had done before by His Word He would do again (27). At the Exodus He had commanded the Red Sea to part, and it happened. There was going to be a new ‘exodus’ in which He would bring His people home to Judah and Jerusalem. Every barrier and obstacle in the way was going to be overcome. He would ‘’dry up’’ any figurative waters in the way of His people.
  • All of this would happen: the captives would return across the desert to their homeland; and that home would be restored, rebuilt and re-populated, because God was going to raise up a Persian Emperor named Cyrus to get the job facilitated (28). The Lord was going to employ him for His own purposes. (See 45:4 and 41:25). God foretold this , and, of course, it happened!

One final thought: verse 28 pictures Cyrus saying essentially what God says in (26b; see Ezra 1:1-4), and what God wants happens. What God decreed, Cyrus did. When God’s Word incubates in our hearts, and faith grows; when we declare it, lining up our words with God’s Word, then powerful and creative things take place. I’m not suggesting that we can speak anything we like into existence. But when our words line up with God’s Word mighty things happen. Who of us has truly begun to understand the power in our Bibles?!! May that power be unleashed through lives and lips that are in line with Scripture.

Prayer: Help me Lord to be so immersed in your Word that I live and speak in agreement with its truth