Isaiah 43:1-7
Isaiah 43, one through seven. So Israel, you know, God’s been
yelling at them, I’m going to punish you and all the rest.
You know, you’re deaf, you’re blind, you’re hardheaded, you’re
knuckleheaded, all those things. But now he’s going to comfort
them in 43, one to seven. So we’ll take a peek at some
of these terms of endearment. So Isaiah 43.1 says, but now
thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you,
O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you
by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm
you. When you walk through the fire,
you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you,
for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba, in exchange for
you. Because you are precious in my
eyes and honored, I love you. I give men in return for you,
peoples in exchange for your life. Fear not, for I am with
you. I will bring your offspring from
the east, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the
north, give up, and to the south, do not withhold. Bring my sons
from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth. everyone
who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom
I formed and made. Amen. This is God’s word. Perhaps
some of y’all are reading through your Bibles. Maybe you started
at the new year, maybe you got a different pattern, but you
know, a couple of different plans. Sometimes you’ll be in Genesis,
then a day in Joshua. Then you got the Psalms wisdom
literature. Then it throws you over into the prophets, you know,
the gospels, the act of the epistles. of the New Testament. And so
you’re all over the Bible. But there’s a great advantage
to that as you are reading the whole Bible and bits and pieces
of it. It seems in God’s wisdom and providence, it just happens
to fit all the other places where you hear the Bible. Maybe a podcast
you’re listening to matches the Sunday school lesson. Maybe the
Sunday school lesson jives with the morning sermon. Maybe something
you read and it’s amazing to see how the more you dwell in
God’s Word, it reaps benefits. It pays dividends. In the last
couple of weeks, I think I’ve been reading the book of Joshua
and it talks about how Israel, leaving the wilderness, goes
marching into the promised land and the scripture is very careful
to say, that when they are crossing into the promised land, the Jordan
is at the spring flood stage. Now, if you go to Israel and
you see the Jordan River, it looks a little less mighty, even
than the mighty Hall River. You know, say the Hall River
is 50 feet across. Well, the Jordan can get pretty
small in some places, but at flood stage, the river can be
a mile or two wide. And at flood stage, what do we
call it? the how many cubic feet per second. They didn’t have United States
geological water measurements. Anytime Patrick and I want to
go down the Hall River in our canoe, we have to go to the internet
and see how high is the river, because you can only run it at
two feet or something or better. But you want to see how many
cubic feet. You want to see if you’re going to die or not, or scrape bottom
or not. Well, this was at death stage. This was at Do Not Cross.
This was at Alert. You know, all the local news
channels would say, don’t go near the Jordan. what does God
say to Israel? You’re going to cross over into
the promised land. And when you do, once you get
some stones and you’re going to pile up a big monument in
the place in the middle of the river where your foot stood on
dry ground and you crossed. So God says to the priest, you’re
going to walk up to the river. And as soon as your feet touch
the river, it’s going to get held back. It’s going to be high
up in a heap. And as the priest stand in the
middle of the river with the Ark of the covenant, the presence
of God, Israel, millions of them are going to cross over on dry
land. And so most wouldn’t chance it. You know, there’s the few
that try the Darwin award thing. You know, there’s the few daredevils
that they just got to cross a river when it’s at high stage. Well,
they get permission here. God is going to be with them.
And that’s the picture you get in verse two. When you pass through
the waters, I will be with you. When you walk through the fire,
you shall not be burned. I think thereof. Is it Shadrach
and Meshach and Abednego? You know, bow down to the gods
of Babylon or else. So they chose the or else route.
And what did Nebuchadnezzar say? I think he was the king, wasn’t
he? He said to fire up the furnace, you know, what is it, seven times
hotter? And so as they tossed in the faithful Israelites, they
did fine, but the people that were dragging them inbound, they
were consumed, I think, by just the edge of the fire. But what
did the king see as he looked in the furnace? He saw Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, and then he saw a fourth person. Of course,
we believe that to be a Christophany, a Theophany, a pre-incarnate
Jesus therewith. And so verse two really becomes
mighty in our minds when we think of God being with us in hard
times, whether it seems like trial by fire, whether it seems
like the floods are all around us. If you’re reading through
Table Talk and you read the December issue, the theological articles,
I believe they were all on death. Maybe that’s this month. It’s
January. And you read, there’s one article
that speaks of death as crossing over the river, crossing over
Jordan. Sometimes the euphemism is very
powerful articles. A couple of years ago, when Lola
Knox passed away, met with her family and you know, try to get
a sermon passage out of both what the family need to hear,
but also something near and dear to that person. And this passage
was near and dear to Lola. And so it was, it was a fun passage
to, to walk through because I knew it would mean something to them
instantly. And so let’s pick our way for
a moment or two through this. Look at verse one. It says, now,
now that says the Lord, Okay. That’s his authority, right?
And anytime you, in the scriptures, come across a, thus says the
Lord, that’s big time. And it has a rapid fire set of
statements. He who created you, he who formed
you, the one who redeemed you and the one you called by name.
And so you’ve got four very special words, very, very dear words. He who created you, old Jacob.
Remember Paul says he’s the potter or the clay he forms in fashions.
But there’s an ongoing sense with the created word, the creation
word for us as believers. God doesn’t just make us and
toss us out there and say, good night and good luck. No, our
creator continues to providentially provide for us. And so when we
read words like he who created you, O Jacob, we can remember
God made the world and everything in it. And he gives us every
day a competent portion of what we need to live life. He gives
us breath in our nostrils, strength and energy to serve him. And
he gives us enough bread for the day, clothes for our back.
And so we can seek first his kingdom and then he adds all
the things we need to them. So thus says the Lord, he who
created you, O Jacob, but also he who formed you, O Israel. And we can think of God creating
the nation, calling the nation Jacob, calling them Israel. But
we also, our minds go back to Genesis when God took the dust
of the ground and made Adam. And then he took ribs from Adam
and made Eve. And then from Adam and Eve, she
being the mother of all mankind, we have babies galore. We have, as God promised to Abraham,
dust. stars and sand. And so God has
formed each and every one of us. David reflecting on that
in Psalm 139, you saw my unformed being, you knit me together in
my mother’s womb. And so another sweet image of
how God works in our lives. And then he says, I have redeemed
you. That’s the price, the slave price. He’s bought us at a price.
The scripture tells us. And he’s bought us in order that
he might have an ongoing relation. This morning we mentioned Ruth
and Boaz and how Boaz served as Ruth’s kinsman, redeemer.
That’s a picture of God. He not only redeems us, but he
marries us and he provides for us and he nurtures us. And so
there’s prosperity. There’s, vindication, there’s
adoption, there’s all these beautiful things. And then he says, I’ve
called you by name. You are mine. Think of ownership in the right
sense of the word. Think of Moses telling Aaron
and his sons, the priest, in number six, when the people of
Israel need blessing. You’re to bless them this way
or raise your arms and the Lord bless you and keep you and cause
his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord
lift up his countenance upon you, give you peace. And at the
end of number six, that command to give the, what we call the
Aaronic for Aaron, the Aaronic benediction. He says, so you
shall put my name upon My people, I have called you by name, you
are mine. And so there’s a significance
to name, but what’s the reason he’s going into this creating
and forming and redeeming and calling? Well, it’s the details
of the fear not. They’re going to go into exile.
They’re going to pass through the waters and the fire of the
wicked, nasty, mean, destroying Babylonians. And he says, fear
not. I’ve created you. I’ve formed
you. I’ve redeemed you. I’ve called you. And when you
pass through the waters, I will be with you. The waters being
judgment. When you pass through the rivers,
they shall not overwhelm you. You’ll be spared. When you walk
through the fire, you shall not be burned. The flame shall not
consume you. We sing of that, don’t we? affirm
a foundation, you saints of the Lord, that dross to consume,
that gold to refine, the flame shall not hurt you, he only intends. We think of that as we go through
hard times and perhaps you’re not going through the judgment
of Babylon, the judgment of the destruction of Jerusalem, but
you’re going through some temporal hardship and God is with you
through it. He says, fear not. Fear not,
incidentally, is one of the kind of most pretty often repeated
commands of the scripture. I don’t know how many times it
appears. Think of God telling Abraham in chapter 15 of Genesis,
fear not, Abraham. I am El Shaddai. I am God Almighty. He says to Hagar in chapter 21
of Genesis, when Remember Ishmael makes sport of Isaac, the promised
son, and, you know, they’re having a little party for Isaac. It’s,
you know, he’s weaned, he’s probably three years old, wearing one
of those goofy little balloony outfits we, for some reason,
put our boys into. And so Ishmael’s making fun of
the child of promise. And so what does Abraham do? He gives her a skin of water
and says, take a hike. And God hears the cries of the boy and
says to Hagar, fear not. Isaac, later on in the book of
Genesis, when the fear of the people in the land of Canaan
are maybe overwhelming him, God says to Isaac, fear not. Your
father Abraham received my promises and I’m going to be good to Abraham.
And so I will be good to Isaac. Then there’s Jacob wrestling
with God. when he’s fleeing his brother Esau after he ripped
him off from his birthright. And God says to Jacob that night
as he’s sleeping with his head on a rock, fear not. Or the people
crossing the sea, the Red Sea with Egypt in pursuit. God says,
fear not. And you can go through the scriptures,
do a little search. How many times does fear not
come up? Jesus says it. Paul says it. And what are we
not to fear? We’re not to fear death. We’re
not to fear rumors of war. We’re not to fear the arrow that
flies by day. We’re not to fear pestilence. Fear not. I’ve created you. I’ve
formed you. I’ve redeemed you. And when you go through the mess,
the hardship, I will be with you. And the very center of the
passage is verse three. For I am the Lord your God. I
am the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. So what follows, verses
four, five, six, and seven, follow really after the center of the
passage. What does God assure them of? Well, he says, I am
the Lord, your God. That’s covenant language, isn’t
it? I am. We remember the burning bush.
I am. I am the Lord. Remember Jesus
and all his I am statements. You can count on him. You can
hope in him. He will not change. Think about three weeks ago,
y’all heard a message. Jesus is the same yesterday and today
and forever. I am the Lord, your God, the
Holy one of Israel, your savior. He’s mighty to save. He’s pure.
He’s holy. He’s the God of the Exodus. And
he gave as your ransom, Egypt and Cush and Seba. He gave us
the ransom, the whole of Egypt, and he can save you from any
enemy. Now, if you were to list your
enemies tonight, perhaps it’s, you know, something going on
in your body, something going on in your brain, something going
on in your, your flesh, a sin issue. Maybe it’s relational
within the family or, or. wherever you have friends and
relations. And you could go through the list of those things. And God says, you can call on
me. You can depend on me. I’ll see you through these things.
And, you know, people can be nasty. Nations can be nasty. Organizations, institutions can
be mean. You know, cancers and cells in
our bodies can go rampant and they can bring us, cause us great
fear, hardship. But God says, I am with you,
I’m the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. And
I’ve already ransomed you pretty big, right? But notice verse
four, you are precious in my eyes. You are honored and I love
you. God has great value in you. He says, I give men in return
for you, peoples in exchange for your life. And think about
the great exchange, his son for you. Christ for you, he who knew
no sin became sin in order that you could be the righteousness
of Christ. He gives what he promises, does
he not? You’re precious in my eyes, honored,
I love you. I give men, even his own son
in return for you, people in exchange for your life. And again,
he says, fear not, verse five, fear not for I am with you. And
now he’s gonna let them know that you’re gonna come back from
Babylon. I’ll bring your offspring from
the east and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the
north, give up, and to the south, do not withhold. I will bring
my sons from afar, my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone
who is called by name, who I created for my glory, whom I formed and
who I made. God will gather his elect from
the four corners of the earth, from exile, from hardship and
he will bring them home as he promised. I think I’ve told y’all
a handful of times, my mom’s mother, we called her gran probably
40 years ago, probably more than 40 years ago, 40, 43, 44 years
ago. She lived with us in the summer.
She had Alzheimer’s and she would live three months out of the
year at each of the kids’ houses. And so 40 years ago, she was
probably about 75, something like that. She had Alzheimer’s
and she worried us to death. Walked around with a broom. She’d
chase our neighborhood friends away from the house, thinking
they were coming to attack or something. All kinds of funny
things. She’d lose her false teeth. And she was from the low
country of South Carolina. So she had a Scottish background,
low country, GOLA, a little bit mixed in there. And she’s always
saying, woo child, woo child to us. But she had all these
little funny sayings. And one of them was, she’d say,
well, they can kill you, but they can’t eat you. And I can
remember that all these years. And I guess what she meant was,
don’t fear those who can kill the body but can’t destroy the
soul. And so in the end, whatever we
may face, they might kill us, right? But they can’t eat us,
because that’s ultimately in God’s hands. He will keep us
and bring us safely to our heavenly home. Give Him thanks for these
promises. Pray with me. Lord, we ask for
grace to remember how wonderful you are. Let us not forget in
this week to come your character, your actions, and your promises,
and how they are all yes and amen in Jesus. We thank you for making us, taking
care of us, redeeming us, calling us by name, and giving us your
presence whatever we endure. It’s our only comfort in life
and in death, and we give you thanks now in Christ’s name,
amen.