43:3
“I am the Lord your God”. It is often said that religion was invented by man, that god is a product of man’s imagination. This may be true of all the false religions, but the Lord is God. He is self-existent, completely independent of us. Yet He is also our saviour. The “otherness” of God is something we must never forget, we must never make an image of God, mental or physical, for it will be utterly distorted. Egypt, Cush and Seba were lands that Cyrus was allowed to conquer. History was directed at saving Israel. This fact has not changed, and Israel will one day be saved, but on God’s terms, in His ways, not Israel’s ways.
43:4
We get more of the Godly vision of Israel and of history. Israel is “precious and honoured” in God’s sight and is loved by God. So He will give up nations for her. There are two very wrong views of Israel. One sees Israel as effectively doing no wrong, and see her salvation as intrinsically linked to land. This is not true, and the whole of the Old Testament demonstrates that this is not the case. The other view is to see Israel as now no different from any other people, seeing the church as superseding Israel. Both these views are mistaken, and both fail to appreciate the full glory and wonder of God’s plan. God loves Israel. Has He stopped loving Israel? I don’t think so! Yet He sees here salvation in a very different way to what we do. He sees our salvation very differently. He knows the full depths of sin in Israel, and He knows the full depths of sin in us. At the same time He knows the full glory of His plans for Israel, and the full glory of His plans for us. And the two are not in contradiction.
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