Not Far From Each of Us

Isaiah 45:16–25

“All the makers of idols will be put to shame and disgraced; they will go off into disgrace together. But Israel will be saved by the LORD with an everlasting salvation; you will never be put to shame or disgraced, to ages everlasting. For this is what the LORD says— He who created the heavens, he is God; He who fashioned and made the earth, He founded it; He did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited— He says: “I am the LORD, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek Me in vain.’ I, the LORD, speak the truth; I declare what is right. “Gather together and come; assemble, you fugitives from the nations. Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save. Declare what is to be, present it— let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago, who declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, the LORD? And there is no God apart from Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but Me. “Turn to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. By Myself I have sworn, My mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before Me every knee will bow; by Me every tongue will swear. They will say of Me, ‘In the LORD alone are deliverance and strength.’” All who have raged against Him will come to Him and be put to shame. But all the descendants of Israel will find deliverance in the LORD and will make their boast in Him.”

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one (Deut 6:4)”! There is only one true God and the rest of the things/spirits the world bows or burns incense to are but idols. Jesus Christ claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), all others would then be lostness, falsity, and death. "The God who made the world and everything in it is the LORD of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives all people life and breath and everything else. From one man He made every nation, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that people would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. 'For in Him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are His offspring’ (Acts 17:24–28).” We will not be shamed (v. 17), brothers and sisters, because we worship God who is real and the one true God, who created and designed the universe (v. 18), who determined the days of each one of us, and the boundaries of our dwelling places, positioned each individual (as does He for all the atoms, quarks, bosons, things we do not perceive with our limited senses and conprehend with our naked, finite minds), each human being, where she is right now, to be able to sooner or later respond to Him. In Isaiah today we read that indeed, one day every tongue will confess He is God and one day every knee will bow (v. 23, Phil 2:10–11), whether they acknowledge Him now or not, and in the end know that “in the LORD alone are deliverance and strength. All who have raged against Him will come to Him and be put to shame (v. 24).” Indeed, brothers and sisters, the Apostle Peter proclaimed the words of the prophet Joel: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on My servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the LORD. And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved (Acts 2:17–21, Joel 2:28–32).”