Do you know who creates calamity? Isaiah 45-50

Isaiah 45:7 (NASBStr)

The One forming light and creating darkness,

Causing well- being and creating calamity;

I am the Lord who does all these.

Isaiah 45:7 (NIV1984)

I form the light and create darkness,

I bring prosperity and create disaster;

I, the Lord, do all these things.

Isaiah 45:7 (NIV1984)

I form the light and create darkness,

I bring prosperity and create disaster;

I, the Lord, do all these things.

The passage above (in three different versions) is an amazing verse for us to mediate upon. When disaster or calamity come into our world, or lives, we have a tendency to distance ourselves from it.   We tend, if not always, credit the disaster to Satan and attribute him will all things bad.   In fact, we almost have a dualistic theology, attributing all good to God and all evil to Satan; as if they are both Gods and have equal power and equal sway on the world.  The only difference, we tend to believe, is that God uses His sovereign rule for doing good and Satan is allowed to do what he wants for evil.  We tend to want to distance God from all calamities in the word.  When a hurricane wipes out the eastern seaboard of the country we make sure all our friends and neighbors know that God didn't do this.  We tell them with full assurance that this was just evil (through Satan's hand) doing what he does.  We say to them: Don't blame God.  Yet, read the above passage in Isaiah again?   In fact, read the entire chapter.   God is speaking through Isaiah that He is going to bring calamity onto Jerusalem and HE is going to use wicked countries to do so (this, by the way, was Habakkuk's complaint in his little book of prophecy ... why can a good God use bad people to punish HIS people?).    This passage teaches us that God IS TOTALITY SOVEREIGN - even over the bad.   God "creates" the calamity.  God doesn't say He monitors calamity. He doesn't say He allows calamity.  He says He creates it.   Ask Job about this (See Job 16:11).   We have to remember that IF we believe God is sovereign, than we have to allow God TO BE sovereign.   God creates calamity, as in this chapter, to purify His people (see also Hebrews 10).   God creates calamity to punish the wicked (see the book of Nahum as God destroys the Ninevites).  God creates calamity to glorify Himself (see John 9).   God creates calamity so that we know HE IS SOVEREIGN.   Don't try to distance calamity from God.   He wants the glory from it.   Notice that the above verse also says that God creates peace and well-being.   Why if we prosper and can give God glory we can't also praise Him for the creation of the calamity.  If we are declared righteous by God we will never have to worry that we will be punished by God's creation of calamity (Romans 5:1; 8:1).   But, we can know that God is totally and always sovereign.  Even when creates calamity to foster glory for Himself through it.