We're in a series called Grace That Transforms. The transforming grace of God is the lens we are looking through. The foundation of the whole series is simple and profound: Our lives are different as followers of Christ, but they're not different so that we can earn God's love or become acceptable to him. They're different because God's grace has already been poured out on us in Christ Jesus. The order is foundational to the Christian faith. 

Two weeks ago, we saw that grace unchains us from the past, both our regrets and our trophies, so we can press forward. Last week, we saw that grace changes the way we move through life day to day. We rejoice. We give our anxieties to God. We think about whatever is honorable, just, pure, and lovely. 

This week we will look at how God’s grace transforms the way we look at history in general and history as it unfolds in our own lives. God gives us a peek at human life and human history from his perspective, and that changes how we see everything. 

Let's start with how the world looks from the inside. It's a place of competing interests. Survival of the fittest. Whose will wins out, who has more power, who comes out on top. There are a lot of scary things out there, and some days it feels like the whole thing is careening out of control. We're always wondering who is doing what to whom, and what's happening behind closed doors that maybe we ought to worry about. 

If that’s you, I don't think you're seeing that incorrectly. I just don't think you are seeing it completely. Without the Scriptures, we aren't seeing it with the eyes of faith. 

Listen to what God says through Isaiah about a Persian king named Cyrus: "I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me" (Isaiah 45:5, ESV). 

Cyrus ruled Persia from 559 to 530 BC. He wasn't a Jew. He didn't worship Yahweh. He may not have even heard of Yahweh until his armies got close to where the exiled Jews were living. But Cyrus conquered Babylon, and as a result, God's people got to go home. 

Here's the thing to notice. God says he grasped Cyrus by the right hand. God used him without his permission, even without his knowledge. Twice God says, "though you do not know me." Cyrus never converts. He never asks for Yahweh's direction. God directs him anyway. How? Because he's God. He's not only the God of people who love and trust and follow him. He is the Lord of all creation, and there is no other. 

If God can take a pagan king by the hand, then the rulers and powers of our own day aren't outside his reach either. Paul says it plainly, and it can be hard to hear: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God" (Romans 13:1, ESV). 

That's a rough one. Think about all the authorities that have existed. On its face, what Paul says sounds kind of crazy. But remember who wrote it. Paul had sat in prison under unjust and cruel authorities. He was writing about the same empire that crucified Jesus and would eventually execute Paul himself. 

Honestly, this would paint God as cruel and capricious if it weren't for Jesus. The greatest man who ever lived was executed after a trumped-up trial by corrupt authorities. From the inside, it looked like everything had spun out of control. And yet Peter says, "this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men" (Acts 2:23, ESV). Then God raised him from the dead. 

This is the thing you need to remember: God isn't wringing his hands wondering what's going to happen next. He took Cyrus by his right hand. Jesus was crucified and then was raised from the dead. And God is still God. 

The point isn't that we'll understand everything that happens in history. The point is that we can trust God in the middle of it. We can trust him to be gracious, because he has shown us his true character in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. 

That doesn't mean life gets easy. Paul told the Christians in Thessalonica that they "received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 1:6, ESV). I don't usually put affliction and joy in the same sentence. I'm joyful when the affliction is over, right? But they had both at once. They were dragged before the city courts and faced mobs, and they still had joy, because their whole world had been remade. Through Jesus, they had become children of God. And children of God look at the world the way their Dad, their heavenly Father, looks at it. 

So if everything serves God, what about the hard things? The suffering, the calamity, the evil? 

Here it really matters to be clear about what God has promised and what he hasn't. Suppose you asked me to take you to a hockey game this afternoon. I said no, and you got mad because you thought I'd promised. But I never promised. That's not really fair, is it? We do that with God. We feel like he promised us things simply because we think he ought to. 

God doesn't do evil, and he isn't responsible for it. But he never promised us sunshine and roses either. He has promised what we really need: joy and peace. In fact, Jesus promised trouble: "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NIV). 

Jesus has overcome the world. 

That's why Paul can say, "for those who love God all things work together for good" (Romans 8:28, ESV). Not most things. All things. Not that all things are good, but that God, who is Lord of all, works through every one of them. 

Jesus said not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father, and even the hairs of your head are numbered (Matthew 10:29–31). Notice what he doesn't promise. He never says sparrows don't fall. He says the Father is with them when they do. Your suffering doesn't escape God's notice. He sees you. He knows your pain, your confusion, your longing, your regret. Hard things happening to you are not a sign that God has left you. 

There's an incident in the life of Jesus that points us to this same perspective. Some religious leaders wanted to trap him, so they asked him a loaded question: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Jesus asked to see the coin used for the tax. "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" he said. "Caesar's," they responded. Then he said to them, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:20–21, ESV). 

There's a little humor here that's easy to miss. The people who came to test Jesus were Pharisees, and they brought the Herodians along. The Herodians backed the Herod family, who ruled only because Rome let them, so they had made their peace with Roman power. The Pharisees were devoted to strict faithfulness to God's law and resented that kind of compromise. This is "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" in its purest form. And the trap was clever. If Jesus says to pay the tax, he loses the people who resent Rome. If he says not to pay it, the Herodians have him for sedition. But don't get into a battle of wits with Jesus. You'll be unarmed, compared to him. 

Caesar's image is on the coin, so give it to Caesar. But God's image is on you. 

And here's the good news at the end of it all. God told Cyrus, "I equip you, though you do not know me." God equips us too, but he tells us about it. We are "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10, ESV). The difference is that we know him, because Jesus has made him known. 

So when things happen in politics or anywhere else, we don't have to panic. Of course we work for justice. Of course we work for compassion and peace. But we do it without panic, because the Lord is God and there is no other. 

This week, if you find yourself anxious, pray Isaiah 45:5 back to God: "You are the LORD, and there is no other." Then keep your eyes open for the good works he has already laid out ahead of you.