“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (Isaiah 45:1-2)

God promises Cyrus that He will open the gates of an otherwise impenetrable city for him. Most people would not know how to take a promise like that. They want to spiritualize it away. They want to delay it ‘til the future, preferably the after life. But Cyrus lived in the here and now and believed he was born for precisely that purpose… to subdue nations, not metaphorically, but in practical reality.
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“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (Isaiah 45:1-2)

This verse speaks of Babylon, the strongest most fortified city in the known world at that time. There were 100 gates to the city and they were made of bronze. No point in hurling flaming arrows at that. No point in using a battering ram either. It was impenetrable. Everyone knew that, even Cyrus. But that didn’t deter him. (Note: I said the seeming impossibility of the task, DID NOT deter Cyrus).

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“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings, (Isa 45:1) “Only rebel not against the LORD, neither fear you the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defense is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not.” (Num 14:9)

God promises Cyrus that He will loose the armor of kings. It means He will enfeeble them. It was not without precedent. In Numbers 14, Joshua and Caleb having returned from spying out the Promised Land with ten other spies, tried to assure the people that although there were giants in the land, their “defense had departed from them and the Lord is with us”. It’s an unusual expression which quite literally means the shadow or “favor” of God was not with the enemy.

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 “Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (3) I will go before you, and (4) make the crooked places straight: (5) I will break in pieces the gates of bronze, and (6) cut asunder the bars of iron: And (7) I will give you the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the LORD, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel.” (Isa 45:1-3)

In my last blog on this series of sons in the marketplace, I asked what it will look like to see a corporate body of sons rising in the marketplace. And while that answer may well be as diverse as there are sons arising, I would like us to look at Cyrus as a possible model. Cyrus, the Persian king, was not a Hebrew. He did study Isaiah and knew the Scripture spoke of him and most agree he is a type of Christ or anyone who is anointed of God. My premise is that most of us, like Cyrus, were heathens who God sovereignly chose and anointed for His purposes.

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“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (3) I will go before you, and (4) make the crooked places straight: (5) I will break in pieces the gates of bronze, and (6) cut asunder the bars of iron: And (7) I will give you the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the LORD, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel.” (Isa 45:1-3)

God takes Cyrus (his anointed) by the hand to subdue nations and He promises seven things to Cyrus. We will look at all of them over time, but I want to draw you to something significant. We are the anointed of Christ. (2 Cor 1:21) We are called to the marketplace, but not as mere merchants or fatherless ones who must fend for themselves and operate on the world’s terms. Regardless of our gender we are called to something higher… We are called to be sons in the marketplace, and that gives us a distinct advantage, for a higher purpose.

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“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the armor of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; Remember the picture. Babylon had impregnable walls 75 feet thick, 200 feet tall with 100 gates of solid brass which were surrounded by a wide ditch of flowing water from the Euphrates. But the Babylonians had been enjoying a night of feasting and some fool left the gate open affording Cyrus the opportunity to march right in take over with barely a fight.

There is a powerful lesson here. You can have every outward sign of strength. You can go to church every time the door is open and do all manner of good works. But if you have left a gate open, you are vulnerable to attack. Consider for a moment the eye gate… What do you allow your eyes to look upon? Job made a covenant with his eyes so that his thoughts would not be upon a maiden. (Job 31:1) Do you set your eyes upon riches which certainly take flight like the eagle? (Pro 23:5) There are many things clamoring for the focus of our eye gate but to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple (Psa 27:4) surpasses them all.

Your life may be a fortress of good works and good intentions, but if you leave your gate open… if you feast upon the wrong things, you may find one day, your city, your life has been taken over by hostile forces and you were unable to put up any serious resistance. What have you been feasting on?

“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; (Isa 45:1) Cyrus was the only Gentile king to ever be hailed by the Jews as a messiah, a divinely appointed king. Cyrus conquered the Medes, united the two Persian empires, then went on to conquer most of Asia and established the largest, most powerful world empire ever known by that time in history.

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“Thus says the LORD to his anointed… I will go before you…” (Isa 45:1-2) Examine the powerful promise given to Cyrus in Isaiah 45:1-3. What you may not know is that this prophetic word given through Isaiah announced the release of the children of Israel from Babylonian captivity by the intervention of Cyrus who not only had not yet been born, nor named, but the children of Israel had not yet been taken captive. In fact, this prophetic word was released around 712 B.C. and Cyrus didn’t begin his reign until 550 B.C. some 162 years later! (I wonder if Isaiah’s generation thought him to be a false prophet? But I digress.)

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“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the armor of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before you, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of bronze, and cut asunder the bars of iron: And I will give you the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the LORD, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel.” (Isa 45:1-3)

For the next several emails, I am going to break out this passage for all of us to consider. It has profound implications for believers, but I will focus my remarks on the business community. God gave this prophecy to Cyrus — a heathen king — who was given the task to overthrow Babylon and rescue the tribes of Judah and Benjamin from their captivity. It was an awesome task. The walls were seventy-five feet thick and two hundred feet high, surrounded by a wide ditch full of water, and defended with one hundred gates of brass. It was considered impregnable and Cyrus well knew the difficulty of his assignment.

To be clear, I know this was a word given to Cyrus and had literal fulfillment, but as so often true in Scripture, there is spiritual truth to be gleaned from historical happenings. In fact, oftentimes the historical event happened as an intended foreshadow of a future event. Consider Abraham who was about to sacrifice his only son Isaac as a clear picture of God later sending His only son to die for us.

Back to Cyrus, he was given a task that was so challenging, so seemingly impossible that it required God to go before him. By the way, God did go before Cyrus. The Babylonians had been feasting the night before the attack and forgot to shut the gates to the city! God truly opened the two-leaved gates for Cyrus! So here’s my question to you today… Has God given you an assignment that requires His presence to go before you to complete or are you working on something that sheer determination can get you through? If you can do it in your strength, what have you really accomplished? If it requires His presence, the second question must naturally follow; did He ordain you for this task? If He did, He will go before you and you can follow Him in the garden of His turbulence. (To be continued.)