Isaiah 10:5-7 - Things that Fall Out Freely

Isaiah 10:5-7
5 5 Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger
And the staff in whose hands is My indignation,
6 I send it against a godless nation
And commission it against the people of My fury
To capture booty and to seize plunder,
And to trample them down like mud in the streets.
7 Yet it does not so intend,
Nor does it plan so in its heart,
But rather it is its purpose to destroy
And to cut off many nations.

Message: Things that Fall Out Freely

Time: Isaiah prophesied from 739–681 BC to a nation that had turned a deaf ear to the Lord. He wanted to see the nation of Judah return to serving God with humility and love for their neighbors. But he was called to pronounce judgments to on a people offering meaningless sacrifices in the Temple and committing injustices throughout the nation. It provides the most prophetic picture of Jesus in the entire Old Testament.

What the Lord is Saying:

The idea of God's sovereignty and man's free will has always been a big question for me. Fortunately, I've arrived to the part of this study that discusses what it means. The idea from the Westminster Shorter Catechism is that there is a first cause - God, as He creates and sustains all of life. God is first. We are here because of God. God determined the cause for everything in life. He created the physical laws, humans, animals. This includes man's ability to reason and examine information. For much of what he created there is an effect from these causes. He is active in creation, beginning but also continuing to create and make it all work together. He provides us His word to instruct us. He is over the big things of life, the small things and even miracles.

I learned recently that atheism believes in determinism. The idea is that we live according to laws and everything in life is the outcome of a cause. There is no free will. And these causes, well, they just happen. How they originated we don't know. But atheists are confident that they will discover the "why" behind the cause. We don't choose to do things, but rather our actions are the domino effect of previous causes. The contrary idea that God puts forth is free will, that we are not machines or robots or required to choose choices. God is the great cause in history but then there are secondary causes. And these secondary causes per the Westminster Shorter Catechism (5.2) are in 3 divisions: causes that operate necessarily, freely, and contingently.

The "necessarily" things are the physical laws that he establishes like the Law of Gravity. Gravity happens no matter what and as a physical law it takes place throughout the universe, at all times, and never changes. Gravity has always been there. Now, it is important to see that the discover of gravity was aided by a scientist. Thankfully, scientists have helped us to identify these physical laws. We need scientists. Science and faith are not incompatible.

The second division within secondary causes today I look at is things that "fall out freely." This seems to be the crux of free will in our lives. Each person has their own desires and therefore chooses based upon those desire whereas atheism would say our choices are determined from the environment in which we are in.  Each person is born into this world with a sin nature. "For all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God" - Romans 3:23. That is the conclusion of Romans 3:9-18 in which God makes it clear that no one is righteous. My big takeaway from this is that each person will sin. No one will be perfect, albeit Jesus. But in life, we still have choices. A sinful person may desire to do good things in life but that person is still operating on the basis of living life selfishly in order to achieve acceptance or fulfillment in life for their choices.

Until God saves us and gives us new hearts, our desires are to sin. But as God works through us, righteousness becomes more and more what we want and what drives us. A saved person is still a sinner, but that saved person now has a desire to please God in their life and this pleasing God aspect results in living a life that is not in sin. God may know who is going to end up in heaven and who will end up in hell, but the people in heaven and hell are there due to their own choosing and so both groups of people basically choose to be there.

Human freedom therefore specifies that people will choose what God has ordained but those reasons do not always coincide with what God finds pleasing. I saw this article by Phil Ryken, president of Wheaton college in which he states

God typically works out his purposes through human decisions, natural laws, and the many causes and reactions that are constantly at play in ordinary life--what the Westminster Confession refers to as "second causes." A "second cause" is simply "a cause caused by something else."But whether things happen by necessity or contingency, they all occur under the overarching providence of God. 

Humans make decisions, yet God knows those decisions ahead of time, and it taking those decisions and working everything out in the way He decrees. Man could make a seemingly bad decision and God will take that bad decision and work out an outcome to His liking.

This passage today from Isaiah 10:5-7 looks at one situation and sees that there are two reasons that it occurred. There is a divine or God desire in God choosing to send Assyria against Israel as His rod of wrath. Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger. But Assyria came at this situation differently, as a desire to line its own pockets and expand its territory - its purpose to destroy and to cut off many nations. Both wanted the same outcome - Assyria to invade Israel - yet both want it for different reasons.

Promise: Human beings always do what they most want to do. God does not force us to act against our wills. We can never blame God for we do.

Prayer: Lord, this is some heavy material for me to understand. This idea of your sovereignty, man's free will versus determinism starts to sort of baffle my mind when I start to think about how it all works together. I trust Your word and what is says and yet my mind doesn't work in a way to make it all make sense. But, Jesus died on the cross for my sins and has risen from the dead so I will always believe what He has to say and so I surrender to Him. This is what is most important, but help me to still understand the details.


Note: I follow the readings from the Tabletalk Magazine devotional, though I am a little behind and working through 2017 devotionals. 2017 is a study of key biblical doctrines with March being about the sovereign providence of God and looking at how the Bible reveals His control over all things.