All of the precision in how the prophecies play out point to the precise nature of God’s knowledge and control over the events which are yet to come to pass. We can trust a God who has a plan and is bringing all He plans to pass. All of history centers on the promise of the coming man who will crush the serpents head. The man who will establish a kingdom which will never end. The man who is not only the Messiah but also God’s only beloved Son. We continue to work through this really precise prophetic declaration by the angel of the Lord. We don’t serve a God who only has the big picture in mind. He is not just fixed on the big points of history. He knows all the details and all of those details work together to exalt the person and work of Jesus for eternity. This means our hope rests not in blind faith or not yet fulfilled promises. Our faith rests in our faithful God who sent His only begotten Son to be our substitutionary sacrifice. He paid the penalty for our specific sins so we would never have to pay that penalty. He died in our place so we would never have to die the second death. He lived a righteous and holy life so we could be made righteous and holy in God’s sight. All of history is truly His Story.

We will continue to look at an additional fundamental aspects of God’s nature. As worshippers these things help us to worship Him properly. Isaiah was prophet who had ministered during the time of king Uzziah. Notice how the opening verse here takes place in the year king Uzziah died. Uzziah was mourned by the people as a great king even though toward the end of his reign he had become prideful and ultimately died of leprosy for his prideful acts. Given the context of king Uzziah’s death Isaiah going to the temple was probably to seek comfort and wisdom in a time of national and personal grief. Instead of comfort Isaiah has a life altering vision.
The vision begins in verse one with I saw the Lord. The word translated as Lord is the word Adonai and it is used to refer to a sovereign or king. The picture this is painting is the king is dead but Isaiah is confronted with the fact there is still a king on the throne. The ultimate king of Israel has not stopped being king. He is sitting on a throne which is high and lifted up.

We worked through the first part of Daniel 11. It seems very much like an interesting prophetic passage with lots of what appears to be generic odd indecipherable references. Yet as the angel declares these things and we look in history at what took place it becomes really clear the angel of the Lord was declaring for Daniel things which quite literally came to pass. On top of this the things which happened all happened in sequential order following the order laid out by the angel. There are declarations in here which match up with kings daughters who were married off for potential alliances. In both cases what appeared to be a power move was either cut off by the death of the princess or the queens loyalty changed from her father to her new husband. Both of these things are clearly prophetically declared to Daniel. There is even a reference to a king who essentially does nothing significant. The section we looked at wrapped up with the story of Antiochus III. He conquered Egypt gave his daughter to the Egyptian king with hope of her extending his power of Egypt but it did not work out this way. Antiochus then began to conquer the coastlands here he encountered the growing might of Rome. Ultimately he returns to his own land where he dies not at the hands of an enemy but of an angry mob. His son arises to rule but ends up being poisoned by a man he appoints to collect tribute for Rome from the people. All of the precision in how the prophecies play out point to the precise nature of God’s knowledge and control over the events which are yet to come to pass. We can trust a God who has a plan and is bringing all He plans to pass. All of history centers on the promise of the coming man who will crush the serpents head. The man who will establish a kingdom which will never end. The man who is not only the Messiah but also God’s only beloved Son.