Isaiah 45:17

But Israel shall be saved in the Lord

A forecast of the Messianic age

As is usual in the prophets, the perfect dispensation, or what is called the Messianic age, is conceived as issuing immediately from the historical crisis which is the subject of the prophecy--in this case, the deliverance from Babylon.

(Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)

Israel saved in the Lord

I. THE GLORIOUS OBJECT. Everlasting salvation in the Lord.

1. Includes deliverance from ignorance, guilt, &c., and the possession of light, peace, &c.; and this state continued and increased for ever. It is grace consummated in eternal glory.

2. This salvation is “in the Lord”--the Lord Messiah.

(1) As a possession, purchased by His own blood, in whose right only we can obtain it.

(2) As an inheritance, kept in trust, and to be conveyed by Him to the appointed heirs of it.

(3) As in a grand exemplar, in His human nature, of the complete and final happiness of the saints (Romans 8:29; Philippians 3:21). It is in Him both as a beatific object and a perpetual medium, through which the blessed will see and enjoy God for ever.

II. THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSONS TO WHOM EVERLASTING SALVATION IS PROMISED. “Israel.”

1. A name of great distinction in Scripture The Israelites, to whom everlasting salvation is promised, are such as are so in a spiritual sense.

2. True Israelites are such as have given their unfeigned consent to be God’s people, subjects, and servants; such as have “joined themselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant.”

3. True Israelites are such as live in an unreserved subjection to the laws and government of God and the Redeemer (Romans 7:22). Through faith in Christ they are vitally united to Him, and from Him receive those hourly supplies of grace that qualify men for every good word and work.

III. THE GROUNDS OF THE CERTAINTY OF THEIR SALVATION.

1. The possession Christ has taken of it in the name and nature of all true believers in Him (Hebrews 6:20; John 14:2).

2. Christ’s intercession, which He ever lives in heaven to make for them Hebrews 7:25).

3. His mighty power which is engaged for them (1 Peter 1:4).

4. God’s promise (Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:17). (Sketches of Sermons.)

Saved in the Lord

That is, through Him (Romans 5:9). The elect of God dispersed over the earth shall be saved through the powerful operation of His glorious excellences, and in virtue of the perfect righteousness of the great Messiah. They shall be saved--

1. Through the love of God (John 3:16).

2. In His infinite wisdom, which He hath wonderfully displayed in devising and executing the astonishing plan of salvation.

3. Through His almighty power.

4. In His consummate righteousness; the rectitude of His nature, the equity of His providence, and the faithfulness of His promises, being clearly demonstrated by the accomplishment of this salvation. (R. Macculloch.)

Isaiah’s far-reaching glance

He foresaw the redemption of suffering Israel by the hand of Cyrus, but uses terms that it would be a misleading and inexcusable blunder to employ if they are intended to be restricted to those small bands of immigrants returning under Ezra and Nehemiah, whose descendants rejected the Christ, and went forth into the great and long-ending dispersion after the Romans had destroyed the rebuilt city. Standing once, at sunrise, on a lower height of the Himalayas--lower, though still 10,000 feet above the plains--we saw beneath us, stretching away into the blue distance, leagues upon leagues of rolling country clothed with evergreen forests of tree ferns, tree rhododendrons and magnolias, till the view was lost in cloudland. But, behold, even as we watched, the clouds broke and scattered, trooping away into the vault of heaven like hosts of white-robed angels. Between their ranks were revealed, one after another, the mighty flanks of Kinchinjunga and her sister mountains; then their snow-peaks and glaciers. Another few minutes, and the last cloud had vanished, and the glittering crest of Mount Everest, the loftiest summit in the world--we know not how many hundreds of miles afield--flashed upon the horizon. The lower and nearer landscape was not lost, it was there still, in all its beauty and verdure, but we had no longer any eyes for it because of the glory that exceeded. Something like that would have been the prospect unfolded to the “rapt Isaiah’s” spiritual eyesight, could he have understood all that was involved in his prophecies. He must have had at least a partial understanding of their meaning, for we read that “these things said Isaiah because he saw [Christ’s] glory, and he spake of Him.” Nevertheless, it is reserved for us to see most distinctly the full extent of the prophetic landscape, because from before our eyes even the remotest clouds that linger on the horizon have been lifted by the sun-rising of New Testament teaching. (F. Sessions.)

“World without end”

“To eternal eternities.” (F. Delitzsch.)

The expression does not occur again. (J Skinner.)