If you’ll please turn with me, our first scripture begins in Isaiah chapter 45 at verse 20.
Thus says the Lord: Assemble yourselves and come, draw near together, you survivors of the nations. They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols and keep on praying to a god that cannot save. Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together. Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God beside me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me.
Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn; for my mouth has gone out in righteousness, a word that shall not return: to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear allegiance. Only in the Lord it shall be said of me: Our righteousness and strength. To him shall come and be ashamed all who were incensed against him. In the Lord all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory.
Bell bows down; Nebo stoops; their idols are on beasts and livestock. These things you carry are born as burdens on weary beasts. They stoop; they bow down together; they cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity.
Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnants of the house of Israel, who have been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb even to your old age. I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.
To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me that we may be alike? Those who lavish gold from the purse and weigh out silver in the scales hire a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god. Then they fall down and worship; they lift it to their shoulders; they carry it; they set it in its place, and it stands there; it cannot move from its place. If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble.
Remember this and stand firm; we call it to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.” Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country, I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.
Listen to me, you stubborn of heart, you who are far from righteousness. I bring near my righteousness; it is not far off, and my salvation will not delay. I will put salvation in Zion for Israel, my glory.
From the prophet Isaiah, we turn to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, beginning at chapter 2.
Paul writes: ‘And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ