Isaiah 45:20-23
20 “Gather together and come;
assemble, you fugitives from the nations.
Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood,
who pray to gods that cannot save.
21 Declare what is to be, present it–
let them take counsel together.
Who foretold this long ago,
who declared it from the distant past?
Was it not I, the Lord?
And there is no God apart from me,
a righteous God and a Savior;
there is none but me.
22 “Turn to me and be saved,
all you ends of the earth;
for I am God, and there is no other.
23 By myself I have sworn,
my mouth has uttered in all integrity
a word that will not be revoked:
Before me every knee will bow;
by me every tongue will swear.
Reading this, it’s almost as if God has left this message on humanity’s answering machine and is just waiting for us to call Him back. He speaks directly (at least, directly through the prophet Isaiah), calling us to “gather together,” to “assemble, to “turn to [Him] and be saved.” This is God as authority figure, God as our Heavenly Father, firmly calling for us to come home where we belong.
Here, we see God referring to the rampant idolatry of Biblical days in no-nonsense words; He treats the many false prophecies about the future in the same way. There is “no God apart from [Him],” He also states–by Himself God swears, to doubly prove how dependable His Word is on these and all other issues. And, at the end of this passage, He promises that “every knee will bow” to Him and “every tongue will swear” by Him, likely on Judgment Day.
This can read as an “angry” statement by God, but I perceive it more as a resolute statement of facts. What is left for us to do is to “declare what is to be”–declare whether we are coming back to God or not. While we worship “gods that cannot save,” like mere “idols of wood,” God waits for us each to make the decision to come back home to Him. He’s laid His terms out there in plain language, which speaks to us just as He spoke to His people in ancient Israel. In fact, He speaks to each of our hearts today…but will we answer?