If we find a difficulty in the expression `Blessed be Egypt My people'

or `Assyria the work of My hands', let us pause to think of the terrible sins

of Israel who are here called `Mine inheritance'.  The same redeeming Love

that can restore and cleanse and forgive such a gainsaying people as Israel

after all the light and truth vouchsafed to them from the days of Abraham

onwards, can restore, cleanse and forgive such terrible people as were the

Assyrians and the Egyptians who did not have the light and truth contained in

the covenants of Abraham or of Moses.  And so, we return to Isaiah 45, and

read the call to the escaped of the nations afresh.

`Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am

God, and there is none else' (Isa. 45:22)

The insistence upon the fact that `there is none else' coupled with the

statement of Isaiah 45:23, provides an overwhelming proof of the Deity of

Christ, when we read in Philippians that this glorious prophecy is to be

fulfilled when every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory

of God the Father (Phil. 2:11).  To appreciate the relationship of the two

terms `A just God' and `A Saviour' (Isa. 45:21), or the two statements

concerning Israel,

`Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation'.

`In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall

glory' (Isa. 45:17,25),

demands a treatise in itself.*  The reader possesses the finest and fullest

exposition of this mighty theme however, in the epistles of Paul to the

Romans and to the Galatians, where it is explained how God can be `just and

the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus' (Rom. 3:26).

*

The Just and the Justifier, an exposition of the epistle to the Romans,

attempts this fuller exposition.

What hope, what comfort, what solid peace the contemplation of these

purposes of grace brings to the heart of all who believe God.  The fact that

salvation, as used by Isaiah, is a wider term than we should have at first

gathered from the New Testament usage, does not detract from its blessedness,

but adds to its glory, and if we who had been enemies find reconciliation,

according to the evangel of the epistle to the Romans, let us rejoice that

other enemies like Israel, Assyria and Egypt, find a place at last in God's

great salvation.

The title `Saviour' according to Isaiah cannot be shared, `There is no

God else beside Me, a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside Me'.

These words cannot contradict the plain testimony of the New Testament that

the `Saviour' is, pre -eminently the distinctive title of `The Man Christ

Again, the God Who is Saviour, in Isaiah 45, is at the same time the

Creator `God Himself that formed the earth and made it ... I am the Lord, and

there is none else', yet it is most surely the testimony of the New Testament

that the One Who created heaven and earth, visible and invisible, is none

other than He Who in the fulness of time became man, but Who `In the

beginning' was the Word, the Form, the Image of the Invisible God.  In other

words the Lord God of Israel, and the Saviour of the New Testament are titles

of One and the same glorious Person.