Isaiah 48:8-13 – Nothing can happen to us without God’s permission

The fall of Babylon and the rise of Cyrus to rescue His people were all be part of God's design to vindicate Himself. He knew all these events long before they happened. What He did was also intended to assure His vacillating people that though they had not been faithful to Him, He remained faithful to them. He would be the One who engineered their Babylonian captivity. And He would also be the one to raise up a Cyrus to deliver them from their captors. His intention was clearly to rescue them from the destruction of their own making. In everything that He would do for them, His goal was for them to recognize His superiority and would give themselves willingly to serve and honor Him alone.  

 This passage reveals the all-knowing God to us. All events from beginning to the end had been outlined by Him to fulfill and establish His purpose. Everything, past, present, or future, would happen to accomplish His own good pleasure. In calling on His people to remember the former thing, God was pointing them to the prediction He had made pertaining to their deliverance from Babylon. In saying that He would call “a bird of prey from the east,” He was pointing to Cyrus whom He would raise to deliver His people from their exile in Babylon. 

Here we are called to remember that our God is the Sovereign all-knowing God. He alone knows an event long before it happens. Nothing can frustrate the event He had planned and would set in motion. We see here that He knew about Cyrus long before He was even born. The prediction of his appearance was made long before he arrived on the scene. No one, other than God, could have predicted all these with such amazing accuracy. In effect, God would also be the One who would bring all these predictions to pass. The outcome of God working through Cyrus would bring about three things: righteousness, salvation, and glory. We can see that the deliverance of Israel from the Babylonian captivity and God’s name were all interwoven. God was putting His reputation on the line in declaring Israel's deliverance long before it happened. And when all these come to pass, God's righteous work would be established, His people would experience salvation and His name would be glorified.

One lesson is clear. What happened to God’s people of old, tells us also that nothing happens to us without the knowledge of God. Everything that we experience in life, positive or negative, happens with His knowledge and permission. They are all part of His perfect plan to complete His righteous work in us. Remember that salvation is a journey. It started at our conversion. We are now in the process of being sanctified where God is constantly transforming us through the circumstances we experience in life. God’s ultimate plan is for us to perfectly reflect the glory of Christ. What a glorious thought!