“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, 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.)