God is in control. That is the main point of this message from Isaiah 10:5-6. God is in control of the COVID-19 pandemic, He is in control of all the civil unrest we see on the news, He is in control of the events of your life. Sometimes it might seem like He’s not in control, and we might wonder about it intellectually or emotionally. But God is in control.
Discipline for God’s People
Isaiah 10:5-6 illustrates the fact that God is in control. Here’s how it starts in verse 5:
Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury!
If you remember, the Israelites had sinned and broken their covenant with God. As a result, they were going to suffer the consequences: being conquered by Assyria. This invasion was part of God’s plan. He was using Assyria to discipline Israel, much like parents use a paddle to spank their kids.
Assyria’s invasion wasn’t some random misfortune. It wasn’t bad karma and it wasn’t just “the way things go” in a political sense. God wanted Israel to know that this invasion was His doing – it was His anger and He was in control of it.
God’s People: A Godless Nation
Why was God angry? Verse 6 tells us:
Against a godless nation I send him [Assyria], and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
Israel had become godless. They were supposed to be called out from all other nations and dedicated to God, but they were living like He didn’t exist. God’s special nation wrote its laws as if God did not exist. They treated people as if God did not exist. They indulged in sin, made their decisions and viewed themselves as if God did not exist.
God’s people acting godless is an ancient problem. And it’s still a problem today. Many people go to church and consider themselves Christian, yet live as if God does not exist. Here are some modern examples of this:
- Sports. Many Christian families have exchanged God for sports, sacrificing their faith on the altar of baseball, basketball, etc.
- Retirement leisure. Instead of pursuing God’s kingdom, many Christians pursue their own kingdoms in the leisure of retirement.
- Social justice. Many Christians have exchanged God for social activism. They try to bring about social justice without God.
- Family. Many churchgoing folks devote themselves to their families – but to the neglect of God.
Now sports, retirement leisure, social justice and family are all good things. But if they replace God, they become idols and bad things. When this happens, we become godless. We do our work like God does not exist. We formulate our budget, make plans and talk to people like God does not exist.
Is God Really in Control of All Things?
In Isaiah, God’s people had become and He was not going to stand for it. He was bringing Assyria to discipline them. He was in control of them taking spoil, seizing plunder and treading the Israelites down like mud in the streets (v. 6).
You might be thinking, “Surely God doesn’t make such things happen. He just allows or initiates it, and then lets is pretty much hands-off.” But that’s not what Scripture says.
Verse 6 says specifically that God sent and God commanded Assyria to act. And this isn’t the only place in Scripture that God is in control over both good and bad (see Leviticus 3:38, Isaiah 45:7, Acts 4:28).
This really creates a problem for us.
If God is really in control of all things, does that include things like 9/11? Like the Holocaust? Like COVID-19? Is He in control of the untimely deaths of our loved ones? What about small things like stubbing your toe? Is God really in control of all that?
One sermon cannot answer all these questions. Christians have spent a lifetime wrestling with these questions – there are hundreds of books written about them. It’s beyond our ability to fully comprehend. Is God really in control of all things? Based on Scripture, the short answer has to be yes.
For our purposes today, consider the alternative – imagine that God is not in control of all things. That would mean:
- You stubbed your toe because God was powerless to stop it.
- Your loved ones had untimely deaths because God didn’t know about it until it was too late.
- COVID-19 spread because God wasn’t here and involved.
- The Holocaust and 9/11 took place because God is less than God, and He was unable to stop it.
If we look to God in calamity, He’s not standing in the corner shrugging His shoulders. If we look to God in tragedy, He’s not saying, “Oops! Sorry I let that happen to you – I’ll do better next time.”
God is purposely in control of all things. He isn’t weak, He’s omnipotent. He isn’t ignorant, He’s omniscient. And He isn’t absent, He’s omnipresent. He’s not like the idols that other people worship in that He’s powerless – He is the one true God. So we can say with absolute certainty (even when we don’t understand) that God is in control.
What This Means for Us
We can take great peace from the fact that God is in control. We’re not in some free-fall, and life isn’t all up to us. When bad things happen, we might not see how or why God would let it happen, but we can trust Him.
You can go to sleep tonight and be at peace – despite everything going on in the world. God is in control, and you can go about your life knowing that. You can love your spouse, raise your kids, work, serve and live at peace because God is in control.
