Isaiah 43:14-28
Amen. Turn to Isaiah 43 tonight. We’ll look at 14 to 21. I believe it says 28, but I chickened
out on those other verses. So they’ll come next week. So
Isaiah 43, 14 to 21, where we are in Isaiah, big picture is
we’re past 1 through 39, which was
the God yelling at all the nations section. Now we’re in 40 to 66,
where God is in a thousand ways saying, this is how I’ll be gracious
to my people, Israel. And so this section we’ve been
in 42 and 43, God has told Israel, you’re precious in my eyes. He’s
told them when you pass through the waters, Maybe a reference
to crossing the Red Sea or crossing the Jordan when you pass through
the waters. I’ll be with you He’s done the courtroom scene
where he says, you know, is there any any God like me bring some
evidence? Nice and silent because I’m the
only one there is Tonight he’s gonna tell them basically this
I’m gonna rescue and redeem you and here’s some good reasons
to believe me and So here’s a little handy way to think about God.
C and A and P, character, actions, and promises. So we think of
God’s character, maybe his names, his titles, his attributes. We
think of his actions, you know, the exodus or making promises
to Abraham or giving Sarah a baby when she’s old. You know, we
think of all the, all the acts of God and then think of his
promises. I will do this. And we remember Paul says in
second Corinthians, all the promises of God find their amen. They find their yes in Christ. And so I think of that tonight,
the new Exodus, God can do it. He’s done it before, but this
is going to be bigger, better. Uh, so, uh, here, here we are
Isaiah 43, beginning at 14. Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,
the Holy One of Israel, for your sake I send Babylon and bring
them all down as fugitives, even the Chaldeans and the ships in
which they rejoice. I am the Lord, your Holy One,
the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus says the Lord who makes
a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth
chariot and horse and army and warrior. They lie down and they
cannot rise. They are extinguished, quenched
like a wick. Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing.
Now it springs forth. Do you perceive it? I will make
a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beast
will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches. For I give water
in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to
my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself, that
they might declare my praise. Amen, God’s great word. So remember,
in the big picture, in the grand scheme of the Bible, God selects
or God chooses, he sets his affections upon a people. In fact, in Deuteronomy
chapter seven, God says to Israel, I didn’t choose you because you
were great and mighty. And when he says that he’s meaning,
I didn’t set my affections on you because you were lovable.
He says, no, I set my affections upon you because you were the
least of the nations. But then we begin to figure out
as, as he says things like that, we look back to Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob. And we remember the promises
where God takes an obscure people and makes a mighty nation of
them. And we find at the height of the people of God, maybe the
time of David and Solomon, where Israel is within the borders
of the promised land. David has stretched the borders
north and south and east and west as far as possible. And
finally, he has rest from all the enemies of Israel. They finally
conquered the promised land after 400 years. They finally gotten
rid of all the wicked people that would cause them to follow
after other gods or maybe cause the intermarriages that would
do damage to the holiness of the people. And so finally, at
last, under David and Solomon, you’ve got the temple with God’s
presence. You’ve got the city of Jerusalem, Zion, God’s holy
hill, and you’ve got this great mighty nation. And you’ve got
all these people surrounding nations looking in and saying,
we want whatever they’re having. And that was the whole point
of God forming a nation for himself. He wanted a people, that when
the world looked in on them, they said, whatever’s going on
there, that’s what we want. And so the hope was, the mission
was, the good news was, if you serve the living God, Yahweh,
like we do, this is what your life can be like. It’s a great
infomercial, isn’t it? Now that has changed because
now the scattered church goes out in the world and we live
as people of light out in the darkness. And we’re not a nation
everybody looks in on and says, oh, just like Israel. No, we’re
scattered throughout the world, scattered amongst the people.
We gather as the church on Sunday, but we’re scattered back to go
be evangelists. So Israel, though small in number,
is God’s servant. God delights in them and the
nations see and the nations hear. And especially in this case,
will Babylon see and hear. They’ve got all these Israelites
stuck in their country. God exported them or he deported
them from their own country and exported them into Babylon where
they would live among a strange people in a strange land for
70 years until Israel lied fallow for the 70 years of Sabbaths
they missed and all the other punishments God had promised.
But God, being full of grace, God keeping his promises, will
not leave Israel in exile forever, just as he won’t leave us here
on earth forever. Our home is a heavenly home.
It’s a promised home. And one day God will bring us
there either through death or the second coming when Jesus
takes the quick or the living back
to heaven. So Babylon is getting a glimmer
of hope, or Israel is getting a glimmer of hope. We won’t be
in Babylon forever. In fact, this is the great hope
that Daniel prays of. Remember Daniel? He doesn’t bow
down to the statues. He doesn’t do all the things
that the wicked king says to do. Instead, he goes and opens
his windows and prays towards heaven. And he remembers God’s
character. He remembers God’s actions. And
he remembers God’s promises. You said that someday you would
bring us back. And so his prayer was make it
so. And of course, the return came. before the promise is realized,
God is making it known to his people. Now, I mentioned a few
moments ago when we read about the transfiguration, also when
we sang the kind of Easter hymn at the beginning of our service,
I mentioned that we think of the Exodus as the Exodus from
Babylon, or Egypt, the Exodus from Babylon, but it’s also the
great Exodus that Jesus affects from Satan, sin, and darkness.
Now, in our passage tonight, you’re gonna see a personal touch.
You’ll see the word your, Y-O-U-R, for your sake. I am your Holy
One. I am your Redeemer. I am your
King. There is a very personal touch
here that God is speaking to the captives. There’s a handful
of themes here, and we’ll just pick our way through them. The
first one is really the context, but also you find it in verse
14. God’s people are helpless. Sounds a bit like Israel and
Egypt. Remember, God says, your cry
rose up to my ear. I heard you. I raised up Moses
as your redeemer. God met Moses at the burning
bush. Your job is to go to Egypt, is to speak to Pharaoh, and it’s
to say, let my people go. And so here in 14, we have God
hearing or seeing the plight, the condition of a helpless people,
thus says the Lord, that’s Yahweh. Thus says your Redeemer, thus
says your Holy One of Israel. So if you’re the people of God,
the people He chose and formed, you’re Israel, He’s the Holy
One of Israel. For your sake, I send to Babylon
and I bring them all down as fugitives. That’s rich, isn’t
it? Here they are, the fugitives. or here they are, the ones needing
rescue. And then he says, your enemies,
I’m going to turn the tables on them. And in history, Cyrus
and the Persians will rise up and they’ll end the Babylonian
empire. And so Cyrus, remember when you
read Ezra and Nehemiah, how is it that Israel goes back in waves
to Judah and Jerusalem, it’s by decree of Cyrus. It’s by decree
of a wicked king, but God moves in his heart. And so the Lord,
the Redeemer, the Holy One says, I’ll bring Babylon down. They
won’t even be able to escape in their ships. the ships in
which they rejoice, there will be no escape. And so that’s the
context. The Israelites, the people of
God, are helpless. Now it’s their fault. They sinned
against God and he’d had it up to here with them. He promised
judgment, judgment came, but he remembers them. And I don’t
know about you, but we get ourselves into fixes, don’t we? We get
ourselves into, what is it? Stupid is as stupid does? Is
that the theologian Forrest Gump? And sometimes we have to go to
God and say, Lord, I’m in this mess and it’s a mess of my own
making. There is no one to blame but
me. And that’s the case for Israel. They heard God’s ways. They heard God’s warning. They
made covenant. He promised to give them blessings
if they obeyed, but he would curse them if they disobeyed.
He says, if you live wickedly as my people and my land, I will
send you into exile. And that’s exactly what happened.
But we need to remember God is merciful. And if we go to him
and say, Lord, I’ve been boneheaded. I’ve been a meathead. I’ve been
hard-hearted. I’ve been stiff-necked. And I’m coming to you because
I remember who you are, what you have done, and what you’ve
promised to do. And God will hear the prayer of the one who
is contrite in heart. And he will be your redeemer,
your rescuer. That’s a pretty sweet thing to
think of, isn’t it? Quite the fix we get ourselves
in at times. Well, what would give Israel
or what would give us reason to believe God? If he says, I’m
going to do this thing, how can we believe it to be so? Well,
verse 15, he tells the helpless people that he promises to rescue,
just think about my character. Just think about my past actions.
Think about my promises. And he’s echoing what we’ve already
read in 14. In 14, he said, I’m the Lord.
I’m the Redeemer. I’m the Holy One of Israel. And
then it gets repeated in 15. I am the Lord. I am your Holy
One. And then he says something a
little different. I’m the creator of Israel. He’s the one that
named them, called them, formed them, gave them a land, gave
them a king, gave them a law, gave them all their statutes.
And he’s the one that rules over them. Remember when they said,
we want a king like the other nations, Samuel got upset, said,
Oh Lord, they’re rejecting me. And God said, no, it’s me they’re
rejecting. But remember way back in the
law, God provided provisions when they would get a human king.
But still, ultimately, there’s a great Messiah over and above
all the little messiahs like David and Solomon. But the Lord,
the Holy One, the creator of Israel, the King, is the one
who can do this. He is the beginning and the end
of the covenant. So he named the people, he called
the people, he formed them, he fashioned them. Remember when
Moses is going to go to Pharaoh. And what’s his big question?
Who shall I say has sent me? And it’s the great I Am. And
so in a sense here, you could ask the question, who is it that’s
coming to get us out of Babylon? Who is it that’s going to rescue
and redeem? Or you could put this into your own personal life
when you get yourself in a bind and fixed. Who can rescue me?
Only God. What does Paul say in Romans
7 when he says, I know the thing I ought to do, and that’s what
I don’t do. Then he says, I know the thing
I ought not to do, and that is the very thing I do. A wretched man
that I am, who can deliver me? not from Egypt, not from Babylon,
who can deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God
for Christ. And so when God promises redemption,
His character and His actions and His promises compel us to
believe in Him. Our covenant God acts very graciously
towards us. Doesn’t matter what fix you’re
in, you can always go to God. Well, in verse 16, You find the theme of being homeward
bound. They’ve been stuck for a couple
of generations now in Babylon. Thus says the Lord who makes
a way in the sea. There’s a reference to the Red
Sea. Thus says the Lord who makes a path in the mighty waters,
who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior. They
lie down so they cannot rise. Think of the song of Miriam and
Moses in Exodus 3. I will sing unto the Lord for
he has triumphed. Gloriously, the horse and the
rider have been thrown into the sea. When I was a kid on Wednesday
night at a prayer meeting, we sang all the Calvary church movement
songs from Calvary chapels out in California. We had Elon students
from InterVarsity and they played the guitar and we’d sing those.
And I remember singing Exodus 3 and it would go in rounds. I will sing unto the Lord for
he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and the rider have
thrown into the sea. The Lord, my God, my strength,
my song, he has won the victory. We need things like that in our
head, don’t we? So that we can remember we are
homeward bound or making the way to heaven. And if this pathway
home is full of sand and seas, full of enemies and wild beast. Remember that God makes a way
through the sea. We sang earlier that Israel walked through the
sea with unmoistened foot. I love reading the phraseology
of people who wrote wonderful things and thoughts about the
goodness of God. He makes a way in the sea. He
makes a path in the mighty waters. The chariot, the horse, the army
and the warrior, they lie down and they cannot rise. Isn’t that
going to be true one day of Satan? Lo, his doom is sure and one
little word shall fail him. They are extinguished and quenched
like a wick. Well, the next thing that pops
up, you could call it, it only gets better. If you think you’ve
seen something in God’s economy of redemption, how does the song
go? You ain’t seen nothing yet. This is it in verses 18 and 19. Remember not the former things.
You kind of scratch your head and say, what? God, you don’t
want me to remember all the past redemptive things you’ve done?
But it’s a rhetorical cue, isn’t it? Hey, you’ve seen some pretty
neat things. Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old. Verse 19, behold, I’m going to
do something New, I’m going to do a new thing. Now it springs
forth. Do you not perceive it? God has
written eternity into our hearts. If we know the story of the gospel,
we know the story of the end and maybe times get dark. We
have the fear, the dread that comes on us. But the empty tomb shines brightly. The empty cross is a good reminder. The sunshine in the morning,
the day spring, the thoughts of general revelation of creation
point us to a greater reality and our hearts and our minds
and our eyes begin to feel there’s something on the horizon. I think
it was last Sunday, last Sunday morning. I make my way out the
door about seven o’clock and come over here. And as I was
locking the back door of the house, I could hear the birds
singing. And that was after all these weeks of bitter cold. I
don’t know if y’all got your natural gas bill, but boy, got
mine. But it beats chopping wood. That’s
what I always say. But I could hear the birds singing
and thinking, they know something that we don’t know. And then,
of course, what’s the rodent that everybody looks at? The
groundhog, yeah. He says that we’re going to be
cold for a little longer. I don’t believe in his character and
actions and promises. He’s just a rodent. But you get
this sense, don’t you? You have this feeling that there
is a brighter day on the horizon. And so when God says, forget
the things of old. I’m about to do a new thing. Think biblically. Think about
how When God promised to Abraham and Sarah, you are going to have
a child from your own loins. Now, when he told them at 75,
that was probably pretty far fetched. But when he comes and
Abraham is 99 and says, I’m going to be back next year and you’re
going to have a boy. And Sarah’s back in the kitchen kneading
dough for the ones that are about to go destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And she’s having a good chuckle.
But what happens when Isaac is born? They laugh. I remember a couple of years
ago when we were starting to, I think we’ve been thinking about
this whole sanctuary mess for about six years now. It all started
when we put the new roof on and the mildew came that summer and
we started looking at what it was going to cost and how much
we could raise. And you know, our little congregation can’t
raise that kind of money. So we thought we’re just going
to have to trust the Lord. And we’re going to have to laugh.
And I think we thought our laughter would come with the possible
assail that fell through a little better than a year ago. And then
all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, because God doesn’t. It’s not
like that. He just did it. But we have the
funds and the Lord has been favorable to us. And we have to just laugh
and say, he can do his new thing anyway he wants. Now, sanctuaries
and dollars and wood and nails and all that’s one thing. But
what about our hearts, our minds, our lives, our spiritual life?
He can do something that we have not seen. Do you perceive it? Do you think on these things?
Do you know God’s character, His actions and His promises? Now, what is this new thing?
Is it Israel going back from Babylon to Jerusalem and saying,
let’s start picking up pieces? Let’s start sifting through the
rubble. Let’s rebuild to rival Solomon’s splendor. Everything
they did was small and it was a small beginning, but it was
a beginning and it never was the same. They went back to being
ruled by outside kings, outside authorities. They were under
the Greeks and they were under the Egyptians and they were of
course under the Romans by Jesus’ day. And so is the little bitty
kingdom of Israel, Judah and Jerusalem, is it the new thing
or is it bigger? Is it the cross? Is it the Savior? Is it the Messiah? Is it the
righteousness of God that comes to us? It’s never in bricks and
mortars. It’s always in spiritual houses. But we got to think also of the
long look. The long look in verse 19, he
says, I will make a way in the wilderness. and rivers in the
desert. So they’re going to come back,
you know, from Babylon through the desert. This isn’t the way
from Egypt, it’s the other side of the country, but they’re going
to go through a pretty wild wasteland where there’s nothing. And God
says, I’ll make a way. Now, I don’t know if this is
maybe a play on words or what, but exodus can mean departure,
but it also means the way, right? What does Jesus say? the way. I am the truth. I am the life.
And so we think about our own sin. We think about our own struggles
and we think, how is the pathway possible? But what does Jesus
do? He gives us new hearts. What
does he do? He makes a way in the wilderness. What does he
do? He puts rivers in the wilderness, streams of living water, bread
from heaven. And so we have the long look.
We long for heaven. We look to Jesus. And we kind
of bump along through life painfully sometimes, sorrowfully at times,
but triumphantly because we know our end. And there’s divine provision. Verse 20, the wild beast will
honor me, the jackals and the ostriches. This is the king of
creation talking. This is the sovereign God. And so the wild beast, The water
and the wilderness all will listen to the voice of the great God
and King. There’ll be rivers in the desert.
I remember sitting on the coffee table in my grandmother’s house.
She always had her pretty, pretty things. We couldn’t touch them.
We could look at them. I think we’re not allowed to look at
them either, but she’d have little stacks of books, you know, with
a little something sitting on them, like a turtle or something.
But I remember streams in the desert. Maybe y’all have that
devotion on? Is it by Cowan? I’ve never read it, but I remember
the title. Where do you think he got the title? Did he just
make it up? No, he ripped it off from Isaiah, right? Biblical
title. God gives us streams in the desert,
gives us the word. He gives us food. He gives us
drink. He gives us provision. And I noticed how it says in
verse 22, my chosen people, if you are God’s child, you will
not do without. Today we read in Luke’s gospel,
after the confession of sin, bring the cloak. Bring the ring,
bring the shoes, kill the fattened calf. For this my son was lost
and is now found. And so he gives these things
to his chosen ones. Verse 21, the people who I formed
for myself that they might declare my praise. Why has God named
us, rescued us, and redeemed us? Why does he put up with our
foolishness? And why does he forgive us? It’s
so that we can, by his grace, live for his glory. And so that
his name is seen and proclaimed on the face of the earth. Think
of what we say in the Heidelberg Catechism. What is my only comfort
in life and death? You know, belong to Jesus. He
has rescued me from the tyranny of the devil. He’s rescued me
from the tyranny of the devil. Think of the Lord’s prayer, lead
us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. And then there’s that great prayer
at the end of the Bible, Mera Natha, come Lord Jesus. And you see how all of this kind
of swirls and comes to a big head in our lives. We’re walking
through the valley of the shadow of death, but we don’t fear evil.
for your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Let’s go now
to God and give thanks. Lord, we thank you for an oasis
in the desert, a house of God with the people of God and the
word of God, where we can stop, we can rest, we can refill, So
as we walk out the doors tonight, may the spiritual goods we have
put in our market day basket, may they go with us and last
us the week. Help us not to be like the people
James writes of, who look in the mirror and see, but walk
away quickly and forget. But help us to jot down some
notes, to wake in the morning and to think, to ride in the
quiet and ponder, and help us to lean in, uh, our exodus walk
to the heavenly city. Help us to be singing pilgrims,
praying pilgrims and joyful pilgrims longing for the festival gathering.
Help us. We pray in Christ’s great name.
Amen.