Ruminations on This Day
The women's Bible study I participate in is working through the book of Ezra now, with visits to some of the prophets. As we looked at Cyrus (Ezra 1), the question arose, Was he a believer in the God of Israel? or did God chose him to bring about His will for His people at that time even w/o Cyrus' faith in Him? We could ask the same question later in Ezra about Artaxerxes (Ezra 7.) According to Proverbs 21:1, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will." We are reminded in Lamentations 3:37-38, "Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?"
Daniel provides us with a portrait of another king: Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had been warned by God in Daniel 4 regarding his pride and its outcome if not repented of. Daniel put it to him this way in 4:27: "Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you: break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity."
Nebuchadnezzar did not take Daniel's advice, and suffered the consequences. He came to his senses and this conclusion, also recorded in Daniel 4: "At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'"
God speaks through Isaiah, also: "Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble." [Isa. 40:21-24]
Although generations have passed since then, still it is true that none can stay his hand or say to him, "what have you done?" He is still the One who raises up and takes down. As He was sovereign then, so is He sovereign now.