AC: God said, ‘Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury!’ (Isaiah 10:5). He said this, then the Assyrian army ransacked, pillaged and massacred Israel. Why should we worship a God who does that?
Ed: God is at work in world affairs in many ways. ‘The Most High rules the kingdom of men’ (Daniel 4:17). He uses human politicians and militaries to carry out His purpose. Inevitably, this means that He uses human wickedness—if He only used virtuous authorities, He would be able to do nothing!
And He doesn’t just use people’s good deeds. He used the Assyrian army to judge the nation of Israel for its rebellion. The Assyrians were famously cruel, and history shows that the Assyrian invasion of Israel was horrific.
Isaiah continues: ‘When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eyes’ (Isaiah 10:12). God used the Assyrians to punish Israel, then He punished the Assyrians themselves.
What do we learn from this? God does not only give blessings, He also executes justice. And He may use wicked people to do that work. That does not mean He condones their wickedness.
The crucial point is this: as the patriarch Abraham said, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Genesis 18:25). Unpopular though it may be in our day and age, the fact is that God knows best, and what He does is right.
Perhaps the ultimate example of God using human wickedness to carry out His will is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Peter told a crowd of Jews shortly afterwards, “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). It was God’s will that His Son should die as a sacrifice for our sins. He used the jealous Jewish rulers to engineer it.
God operates in our world. Because it’s a world of violence and suffering, His work may result in suffering. But we have the guarantee that He does what is right, and the promise that it won’t always be like this. The prophet Isaiah looked beyond his own age, beyond our age, to the Kingdom which God has promised to establish when Jesus Christ returns: ‘The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever’ (Isaiah 32:17).