But now God will come to your rescue

Sermon for Midweek of Lent 2

Isaiah 43:1-15

At the end of Isaiah 42, God spoke to Israel in their future captivity and reminded them that it was He who had brought about their punishment, because of their sins against Him and because of their refusal to repent. Chapter 43 begins with a great “But now…”

But now, thus says the LORD, who created you, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine.

Yes, God had brought about Israel’s punishment. But that didn’t mean that He had forgotten them or abandoned them forever. He had punished them severely. But now, He chooses to redeem them, to rescue them, to claim them again as His own. Why? Had they somehow earned their release from captivity? Not at all! It’s by grace alone that God will step in to save them from their well-deserved punishment for their sins. His grace, as well as all the as-yet unfulfilled promises about the coming Christ, who had to be sent to Israel in the land of Israel.

St. Paul says something similar to the Romans. He spends nearly two full chapters exposing the sins of the pagan Gentiles and of the hypocritical Jews. He ends that accusation with sharp words of condemnation: Whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God… But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.

The Law condemns everyone and stops the mouth of everyone. But now God has provided redemption through faith in Christ Jesus. And the tender words of God now go out to everyone who believes and is baptized: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, Nor shall the flame scorch you. For I am the LORD your God, The Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

Israel wasn’t to understand these words as a promise that no calamity would ever strike them on earth again. It wasn’t a promise that they could never drown or never be burned by fire, although sometimes God does literally save from those things, as when He brought Israel through the Red Sea and across the Jordan River on dry ground, or when He saved Jonah from drowning by sending the great fish to swallow him, or when He protected Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. But this is a solemn promise, to Old Testament Israel and to the New Israel of the Christian Church, that God is with us through every adversity, and that He will let nothing bad happen to us that does at the same time serve His purpose for us, to make everything work together for our good. He is the LORD our God. He is the One who saves us.

I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in your place. Since you were precious in My sight, You have been honored, And I have loved you; Therefore I will give men for you, And people for your life.

Already in the past, God had devastated Egypt with those terrible ten plagues so that the people who were called by His name might go free. He pushed aside the nations that stood in the way of Israel getting to the promised land. Now He will do the same with the Babylonians who were holding them captive and with any other nation that should oppose their return to the promised land. Those nations would fall so that His people Israel might live.

But it’s not as if God just saved Israel for no reason and wiped out good and noble nations that were peacefully minding their own business. All the nations that God displaced for Israel’s sake had it coming for their own wickedness and unbelief. And His salvation of Israel was rooted in the covenant He had made with Israel, a covenant of grace that pointed ahead to the coming Christ as the true Savior of all men. The New Covenant in Jesus’ blood doesn’t guarantee Christians a life of freedom in this world. But it does guarantee that God will watch over us, care for us, and, at the Last Judgment, displace all the wicked and unbelieving so that we, the people of God, can live in peace and safety forever.

Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your descendants from the east, and gather you from the west; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ And to the south, ‘Do not keep them back!’ Bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth— Everyone who is called by My name, Whom I have created for My glory.

Here God promises to gather Israel together, to make a way for them back to their homeland after their 70-year captivity. It’s also a promise that God will gather others to the spiritual Israel, just as Jesus Himself said, Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd. He’s talking about the gathering of the Gentiles into the Holy Christian Church, the gathering of the elect, of everyone who is called by My name, which is exactly what happens every time a person is baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

To summarize some of the next verses, God calls on all the nations to come together as witnesses in a sort of courtroom. Did any other of the “gods” foretell any of these things? Answer: No. Did any other “gods” step forward to save their people? Answer: No. But Israel was God’s witness of all that He had foretold, of all the great works of salvation God had done and was about to do. “You are My witnesses,” says the LORD, “And My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the LORD, and besides Me there is no savior.” There is no other savior, and yet God Himself named the Son of Mary, Jesus (“Savior”), testifying to the fact that Jesus and the LORD are one.

Our text this evening concludes with these words: Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, The Holy One of Israel: “For your sake I will send to Babylon, And bring them all down as fugitives— The Chaldeans, who rejoice in their ships. I am the LORD, your Holy One, The Creator of Israel, your King.”

God’s final promise here is not a promise of deliverance, but a promise of divine retribution—retribution against the Chaldeans and all who had mistreated God’s people, retribution against all who took pride in their “ships,” in their own power and glory and success, all who dared to persecute Israel and Israel’s God. So, too, in the New Testament, God promises even worse retribution against all who persecute Christ and His Christians. For God’s enemies, these are words of judgment. But for penitent Christians, these words are pure comfort and joy. It’s God’s promise that the devil and all the wicked will perish, while all who believe in the Lord Jesus will not perish, but have everlasting life. Amen.