Eternal One, among the gods worshiped? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders?” He alone is sovereign. His very being is superlative. Excellent. Supreme. Autonomous. Paramount. Absolute. He rules over individuals and nations. He is over all the earth. The theme of God’s sovereignty and grandeur pervades the book of Isaiah, which exalts “the Holy One of Israel” as Creator of all things and Ruler over heav- en and earth. He “has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, meas- ured heaven with a span and calculated the dust of the earth” and “weighed the mountains in scales” (40: 12). He “sits above the circle of the arth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers” (v. 22). He is “the ever- lasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, [who] neither faints nor is weary” (v. 28). It’s difficult to imagine someone could read Isaiah and not be awestruck by God’s incomparable majesty and power. Isaiah experi- enced these attributes firsthand, which may be why his prophecies project such a strong, imposing image of God as sovereign King: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; . . . And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” (6:1– 3). Seeing this manifestation of the Lord made Isaiah so acutely aware of his own sinfulness that he trembled for his life: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (v. 5). Yet God, ever merciful, purged Isaiah’s sin as soon as the prophet confessed his unworthiness (vv. 6–7).
Things to Come
Not only does Isaiah stress God as
Creator of all, but it also stresses God
as controller of all. His limitless power
is unhindered by time and space, and
nothing deters Him from obtaining
His objectives—which He is fully
capable of revealing long before He
accomplishes them:
World Events
He is also sovereign over nations and
world events: “The nations are as a drop
in a bucket, and are counted as the small
dust on the scales” to God (40: 15). He
establishes them and destroys them. He
used the cruel, pagan Medes, calling
them “My sanctified ones” (13: 3), to
inflict judgment on Babylon. He devastat-
ed Egypt with civil war (19: 2), drought,
and economic calamity (vv. 5–10); and
yet, one day, in God’s sovereignty,
Egypt will possess a blessed position
in His Kingdom (vv. 21, 25).
Steve Herzig is the director
of North American Ministries
for The Friends of Israel.
33 ISRAEL MY GLORY
