The Sent One and the Stubborn Saints Text: Isaiah 48:12-16
Introduction: The Only Voice That Matters
We live in a world that is drowning in information and starving for truth. Every day we are bombarded with predictions, analyses, and forecasts from a thousand different sources. The news anchor, the political pundit, the economist, and the social media influencer all want to tell you what is coming next. They are the modern equivalents of the ancient soothsayers, reading the entrails of the stock market or the flight patterns of polling data. And like the ancient idolaters, our culture is addicted to these voices, constantly seeking some word, any word, that will give them a sense of control over an uncertain future.
But the God of the Bible crashes into this babble of anxious voices with a thunderous declaration of His own absolute and exclusive sovereignty. He does not offer one opinion among many. He does not provide a forecast based on current trends. He declares the end from the beginning because He is the beginning and the end. He is not a commentator on the story of history; He is the author of it.
Here in Isaiah 48, God is speaking to His chosen people, Jacob, Israel. And He is speaking to a stubborn people. He has just finished rebuking them for their obstinate, idolatrous hearts (Isaiah 48:4-5). They are His people, and yet they are constantly tempted to listen to other voices, to trust in other saviors, to bow before other gods. They are, in short, just like us. This passage, then, is not simply a theological treatise on the nature of God. It is a sharp, pastoral, and urgent call for God's people to shut out the noise of the world's idols and to listen, really listen, to the only voice that has any authority to speak about yesterday, today, and forever.
What we have in these few verses is a compact and glorious revelation of who God is. He is the uncreated Creator, He is the unrivaled Planner, and, in a stunning turn at the end, He is the unveiled and Triune Savior. If we get this right, everything else begins to fall into its proper place. If we get this wrong, we are left with the dumb, mute idols of our age, which have mouths, but cannot speak.
The Text
"Hear Me, O Jacob, even Israel whom I called; I am He, I am the first, I am also the last. Also, My hand founded the earth, And My right hand spread out the heavens; When I call to them, they stand together. Assemble, all of you, and hear! Who among them has declared these things? Yahweh loves him; he will carry out His good pleasure on Babylon, And His arm will be against the Chaldeans. I, even I, have spoken; indeed I have called him, I have brought him, and He will make his ways successful. Draw near to Me, hear this: From the first I have not spoken in secret, From the time it took place, I was there. So now Lord Yahweh has sent Me, and His Spirit."
(Isaiah 48:12-16 LSB)
The Uncreated God (v. 12-13)
God begins by establishing His own identity, which is the bedrock of all reality.
"Hear Me, O Jacob, even Israel whom I called; I am He, I am the first, I am also the last. Also, My hand founded the earth, And My right hand spread out the heavens; When I call to them, they stand together." (Isaiah 48:12-13)
The summons is personal: "Hear Me, O Jacob." God is not speaking into the void; He is addressing His covenant people, the ones He has called. And what must they hear? First, the declaration of His absolute being: "I am He." This is the same essential claim as "I AM THAT I AM" from the burning bush (Ex. 3:14). It is a statement of aseity, of self-existence. God is not one being among many. He is not the biggest thing in the universe. He is a different kind of reality altogether. He is the uncreated reality upon which all created reality depends.
He is "the first" and "the last." This means He brackets all of created time and history. He was there before the beginning, and He will be there after the end. He is the Alpha and the Omega. This is not just a philosophical point; it is the foundation of His ability to speak with authority about the future. He knows the end from the beginning because He is the end and the beginning.
And what is the evidence for this audacious claim? His creative power. "My hand founded the earth, And My right hand spread out the heavens." Creation is not an accident. It is the deliberate, powerful act of a personal God. Notice the language. He didn't struggle; His hand founded the earth. His right hand, a symbol of strength and skill, spread out the heavens like a man spreading out a tent canvas. And this creation is not a machine that He wound up and left to run on its own. It is responsive to His voice. "When I call to them, they stand together." The universe is His army, standing at attention, awaiting His command. The stars in their courses, the laws of physics, the movement of galaxies, all of it is a testimony to His present and active rule.
The Unrivaled Plan (v. 14-15)
Having established who He is, God now issues a challenge to all rival claimants to divinity.
"Assemble, all of you, and hear! Who among them has declared these things? Yahweh loves him; he will carry out His good pleasure on Babylon, And His arm will be against the Chaldeans. I, even I, have spoken; indeed I have called him, I have brought him, and He will make his ways successful." (Isaiah 48:14-15)
The challenge is a public one: "Assemble, all of you, and hear!" God is calling all the idols of the nations, and all their priests and prophets, into the courtroom. The test is simple: "Who among them has declared these things?" Who told you that Babylon, the current world superpower, would fall? Who predicted the rise of a specific liberator to accomplish this? The answer, of course, is a deafening silence. The idols are nothing but wood and stone, the projections of man's rebellious imagination. They cannot speak because they are not.
In contrast, Yahweh not only predicts the future, He reveals the motive and the means. The means will be a man whom "Yahweh loves." This is a staggering statement because the man in question is Cyrus the Great, a pagan Persian king. God's sovereign plan is not limited by the piety of His instruments. He can raise up a pagan to accomplish His good pleasure, which is the judgment of Babylon and the liberation of His people. This is both a comfort and a warning. It is a comfort because it means God's plans cannot be thwarted by a lack of righteous men. It is a warning because it means we must never assume that God is limited to working through the people we would choose.
And the success of this plan is guaranteed by the one who initiated it. "I, even I, have spoken." The repetition is for emphasis, to drive the point home into their thick skulls. The rise of Cyrus, his conquest of Babylon, his decree to let the Jews go home, none of it is an accident of history. It is the direct result of the spoken word of the sovereign God. "I have called him, I have brought him, and He will make his ways successful." God's providence is not a vague, general oversight. It is meticulous, personal, and effectual.
The Unveiled Speaker (v. 16)
This final verse is one of the most remarkable and Christologically rich passages in the entire Old Testament. The speaker, who has been identifying Himself as the Creator and Lord of history, now says something that should make us stop in our tracks.
"Draw near to Me, hear this: From the first I have not spoken in secret, From the time it took place, I was there. So now Lord Yahweh has sent Me, and His Spirit." (Isaiah 48:16)
First, He calls them to intimate listening: "Draw near to Me, hear this." He affirms His consistent, public revelation. "From the first I have not spoken in secret." God's Word is not some hidden, gnostic knowledge for a select few. It is a public proclamation. He then makes a claim that only the eternal God can make: "From the time it took place, I was there." The speaker is claiming to be present at the foundation of all things, to be a witness and agent of creation itself. This is the voice of the eternal Word, the Logos, through whom all things were made (John 1:1-3).
And then comes the stunning pivot. The one who was there "from the first," the one who is clearly divine, now says, "So now Lord Yahweh has sent Me, and His Spirit." Wait a minute. The speaker who is God, is now saying that He has been sent by Lord Yahweh? And that the Spirit is also involved in this sending? This is the doctrine of the Trinity breaking through the surface of the Old Testament text with breathtaking clarity. The one speaking is God, but He is distinct from the one He calls Lord Yahweh. And the Spirit is also present as a distinct person. The speaker is the pre-incarnate Son of God, the Messiah, the Sent One. He is the one who was present and active in creation, who spoke through the prophets, and who would one day be sent into the world in a new and final way to accomplish an even greater exodus than the one from Babylon.
The God Who Sends and Saves
This passage is a direct assault on every form of idolatry, ancient and modern. The idols of our day, whether they are political ideologies, scientific materialism, or the cult of the self, are all mute. They cannot tell us where we came from, why we are here, or where we are going. They offer no reliable word about the future because they have no power over it. They are nothing.
But our God, the Triune God, speaks. He speaks in creation, He speaks in history, and He speaks in redemption. The same divine person who was "there" when the world was made, and who announced the fall of Babylon, is the one who was sent to accomplish our salvation. "When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law" (Galatians 4:4-5).
The mission of Cyrus was a type, a foreshadowing, of the mission of Christ. Cyrus was sent to free a captive people from a physical city, Babylon. Christ was sent by the Father and the Spirit to free His people from a spiritual Babylon, the city of man, the kingdom of sin and death. Cyrus conquered with the sword; Christ conquered by becoming a servant and dying on a cross. Cyrus sent the people back to rebuild a temple of stone; Christ is building His people into a living temple, a spiritual house for the glory of God.
The call to Israel is the same call to us today. "Hear Me." "Draw near to Me." In a world of a million distracting voices, we are called to listen to the one true God. We are called to trust His unrivaled plan, even when He uses instruments we do not expect. And above all, we are called to worship the Sent One, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son who was with the Father from the beginning, and who, in the fullness of time, was sent by the Father and the Spirit to be our Redeemer. He is the first and the last, the author and finisher of our faith. He is the only one with the authority to speak, and the only one with the power to save.