Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text on which this morning's message is based comes from our Old Testament lesson (Isaiah 44: 28 to 45: 7).

This is an amazing Old Testament prophecy. Isaiah, writing about 700 B.C. predicts that a foreign king, he calls him by name, would come to power and that this foreign king, Cyrus, would rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. You have to understand how remarkable this is. At the time Isaiah writes, Jerusalem and the first temple, built by Solomon, are still standing! They are not destroyed by the Babylonians until about 100 years after Isaiah. When the Babylonians do destroy Jerusalem and Solomon's temple, as Isaiah predicted earlier, they cart thousands of Jewish survivors off into captivity in Babylon, survivors like Ezekiel, Daniel, Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego.

And there they stay for 50-70 years, a people without a homeland, helpless, enslaved, a time not unlike the captivity the Hebrews had in Egypt before Moses, 1000 years before. Many of them thought that God had abandoned them. They thought that the promises God had made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David were dead promises, no longer in force because of the centuries of wanton sinfulness by the Israelite kings and people.

But yet God is still in control. God still foresees the future and directs its ways. He knows the bad that will occur and works out all things to his glory (Romans 8: 28). This prophecy and its precision would be similar to God telling us here in the U.S. that Mexico was going to come up and overthrow us, destroying all of our major cities and then a specific man from Canada would come later and rebuild our cities. That is exactly what happened here. The Jews were carted off into captivity and oppression. 50 years later a specific king, Cyrus, summoned by name by the Lord, comes to power in the most unique way. In a story recorded in Daniel, chapter 5, the arrogant king of Babylon Beltashazzar is throwing a huge, raucous party. "5 Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. 6 His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way." The king calls Daniel to interpret and Daniel tells him boldly that the message says his kingdom has come to an end and will be given to the Medes and Persians, the armies of Cyrus. That night God opened the gates of Babylon to Cyrus' army and Beltashazzar is killed. The Babylonian empire easily falls to the Persians and Cyrus allows the Hebrews to start returning to their homeland just a few months later (See Ezra 1). They rebuild the temple and Jerusalem, and repopulate the region with faithful believers.

By now you might be saying, "well pastor, this is all an interesting history lesson, but how does it apply to my life? This might help in a Bible trivia game, but how else? If someone were to ask me later what the main point of your sermon was, I'd have to say that one king took over from another king and sent the Hebrews back to Jerusalem 2500 years ago. Sooooo… what?"

Today we find ourselves living in a world complicated by the same regions. What was then Babylon and Persia and Assyria are now places we call Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan, regions whose leaders still act out in arrogant and powerful ways. We live in country stricken with fear. The head of the CIA just said this week that Al-Quaeda terrorists are likely positioned to cause more destruction on our own homeland. A crazed gunmen stalks the streets around our nation's capital, picking off innocent people at random. Kids take guns to school, and use them. Parents in California get into a brawl over a little league football game. What kind of world are we living in, a world that seems so out-of-control? We do live in a world out-of-control, a world that cannot, by human power, regain its control. It never has been in control of humans, never will be. If we were truly in control, it's hard to imagine how deeply this world might have sunk. It's not governments, nor multi-national companies, not science, not terrorists that are in control, even if they appear to be. Granted, human sin has its consequences. The good things that humans can create with their God-given intelligence can also be used for evil. The wonder of atomic energy can be turned into the most deadly of weapons. The marvel of modern beneficial chemicals can also be turned into deadly chemical weapons of mass destruction. Through it all we can be tempted to ask "Who is in control here? God are you really in control?" Through it all we can become tempted, like the Hebrews carried off into captivity, to doubt that God is in control or that he has a plan for us. We can begin to doubt His plans, or that He is involved in our lives personally. We can begin to wonder if He really knows our names. But our text bears proof that God has a plan, that he is in control, even 100's of years in advance. He says to Cyrus more than 100 years before he was born "I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me. I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me." The Lord does this, not because he enjoys moving nations around like chess pieces, but for another, more holy, more loving reason. He says to Cyrus more than 100 years before he was born "For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name." Eventually, through Cyrus and Daniel and Ezra and His chosen descendants of Jacob who returned to Jerusalem, God brings about the most amazing miracle of all, what he had planned all along, the birth a specially named baby in Bethlehem. The angel says to Joseph (Matthew 1: 20) "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."

We might sometimes doubt that God is in control, but we see in our text God's ability to not only control human history on a day-to-day basis, but to be in control centuries ahead of time. We see that the Lord has the capacity to name names and steer events to lead to the ultimate plan that He has, to give birth to His Son, to call His NAME Jesus, which means "the Lord Saves." We can be confident that despite the world's attempts to trap Jesus, despite the devil's efforts to subvert Him, God was in control all the time. Jesus (John 10: 17-18) 'laid down his own life of his own accord', giving himself up on the cross for you and for me. He laid down his life and took it up again at the resurrection, all a part of God's long range.

But still, what does that have to with you personally? What is the application for your individual life? This: The same Lord who called Cyrus by name to be his temporary political shepherd on earth, that Lord has called you by name as well. The same Lord who gave his Son the name Jesus and sent him to die for the sins of the world has said this about all who listen to him: (John 10) "The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. … the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." The world may seem like it is out of control, and by earthly standard it is. But we know who is in control, and we listen to his voice spoken here in God's Word. "He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." He has called you out by name at your Baptism. At that time He placed His name upon you and called you his. He continues to call you through his word, and leads so that we may follow. He is in control, knowing centuries and millenia ahead who are His, and we are comforted by his control formed by his love for his chosen people. He knows the plans He has for you, plans to give you a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29: 11)

The Lord, who controls the future says this about his chosen people, both then and now -- "Isaiah 43:1 But now, this is what the LORD says-- he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine."

And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4: 7). Amen.