“I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:” Isaiah 45:2.

I woke up this morning with this scripture on my heart.  Immediately I grabbed my coffee and my Bible and commenced to reading the entirety of Isaiah 45.  Imagine my surprise when I read a little further…

” Thus saith the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; ² I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: ³ And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. ⁴ For Jacob my servant’s sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. ⁵ I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: ⁶ That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside Me. I am the Lord, and there is none else.” Isaiah 45:1-6.

God’s anointed, whose right hand He held “to subdue nations before him”, was the heathen king Cyrus, whom did not know God (vs.4).  God chose a heathen king to deliver His people.  King Cyrus knew of God, his mother was Queen Esther, but he did not know God.  King Cyrus did mighty things for God’s people that was prophesied 200 years earlier. He was anointed in the sense that he was appointed by God to carry out God’s righteous purposes of delivering the Hebrew people from captivity.

“Woe unto him who strives with his Makers! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the Earth. Shall the clay say to him who fashions it, What do you make? or your work, He has no hands?”  Isaiah 45:9. Who are we to question God’s way?

“Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by Myself, the Word is gone out of My mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” Isaiah 45:22-23. 

Let us never forget, God moved on the heart of a heathen king to deliver His (God’s) people.  Many of us need to get our eyes off the heathen king’s heathen ways and look to God to see what God is doing through the heathen king.  God’s people were delivered because they were God’s people, not because of the king.  What do you think killed Goliath?  The stone or God?  – Donna Clark Warren