In today’s passage (and through v42) the Lord
emphasizes the fact that He is the one who is judging both Israel and the
nations. Why does God need to emphasize
this point? Who is it that doesn’t see
His hand at work? And why? Consider the following and you will see that
the nations, and even Israel itself, don’t acknowledge the hand of the
Sovereign God in all of this.
·
After destroying and taking captive the Northern
Kingdom of Israel the Assyrians boasted that they would do the same to
Judah. The God of Judah would be no
different than the gods of the other nations they had subdued (Isa. 36:18-20). But God had actually predicted this arrogance
(Isa. 10:5-11). But God also predicted
that when He was done using Assyria to do a work on Mount Zion and Jerusalem
that He would then punish the fruit of
the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the glory of his haughty looks
(Isa. 10:12), which He did (Isa. 37).
·
At the time that Babylon had taken Judah captive
and sacked Jerusalem and the temple, the people of Edom seized the
opportunity to try and take the vacated land (Ezek. 35:10). They shed the blood of Israelites that remained
in the land (Ezek. 35:5). Thus God
poured out His judgment on Edom so that they would know that I am the Lord (Ezek. 35:4,8,12).
·
In the early Church people questioned Israel’s
future. Romans 9-11 (and in a sense Rom.
1-8 also) answer such questions as, has
God cast away His people (Rom. 11:1)? Or have they stumbled that they should fall (Rom. 11:11)? There are people today who continue to think
the answer to these questions is yes;
that Israel’s complicity in the death of Christ and rejection of the gospel in
Acts has led to the transfer of God’s promises from Israel to the Church.
·
In the future, when Christ returns, both the
nations and Israel will understand that God was working in Israel’s
punishment. This is the testimony of an
amazing prophecy in Ezek. 39:21-29.
Today people in Israel and worldwide are confused on this. They see the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD
as the result of Israel irritating the Romans.
They see the rebirth of the nation as the decision of the United Nations
or as the response of a compassionate world to the holocaust. In Israel today the holocaust is not seen as
a fulfillment of God’s promised punishment; rather it is a failure to defend
themselves. But when God sets His glory
among the nations then all will see His hand (39:21).
What we see is the constant attempt to explain
Israel in terms of being just one of the nations. Of course this is man’s sinful tendency
always, to explain the hand of God by natural means. But God will be glorified in all things, and
this includes the outworking of The Song
of Moses in the nation of Israel.
And a time will come when this Song is sung in praise of God, when His judgments have been manifested in the
Revelation of Jesus Christ (Rev. 15:3-4).
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