“Sovereign
Redemption”
[Isaiah
43:14-21]
August
30, 2020 YouTube
Having shut down the idols again, the God Who acts,
saves, and is Supreme speaks to Jerusalem about her salvation.
And we see:
First, the Father loves His children.
Notice how Isaiah introduces God speaking:
“Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of
Israel:”
Let’s unpack that – “thus,” since God has just shown that
idols do not act and cannot save and are not supreme – here is what God says –
and Who is God?
“The LORD” – He is YHWH – the I Am – the One Who speaks
to Moses out of the burning bush. He is
Being itself and brings all being into being – without Him nothing exists.
“Your Redeemer” – God is the One Who saves you from the
Wrath of God. You and I can’t do what is
necessary to reconcile us to God. God
chooses to redeem His people – to save us. He is intimately involved with each
one of us.
“The Holy One” – the God Who is completely other and nothing
like us – Who is Other from us – but in Jesus know everything there is to know
about being a human – including our temptations, but not sin.
The
Almighty God Who is beyond and above us in every way, and the One Who loves His
people and is intimately involved in their lives and saves them from their debt
to Him by Himself. Isn’t that
amazing? Bizarre?
He
is the God Who is able and provides for the needs of all His people. And looking forward some 170 years, God tells
Jerusalem what He will do.
“For
your sake I send to Babylon and bring them all down as fugitives, even the Chaldeans,
in the ships in which they rejoice.”
While
Jerusalem is in captivity in Babylon, God is going to send someone – Isaiah
names him as Cyrus – though he hasn’t been born yet – and Cyrus and the
Medo-Persian army will conquer Babylon and enslave the Babylonians and destroy
their ships in which they take so much pride and assume they cannot be defeated
in. And Cyrus will free Jerusalem.
God
says He is Sovereign over the nations – He will send Cyrus – who hasn’t been
born yet and won’t be for over a hundred years – God will send Cyrus and his
army to crush the Babylonians, and in this way, God will set Jerusalem free and
send her home.
Some
people may look at this and wonder where God is now as we see various tensions
in our country – rioting and looting – starkly different narratives about what
is really going on and why. And the
answer from Scripture is that God is right here, and everything is going
according to His Plan. Everything we
need is happening. We may not understand
that right now. We may be in a time of
discipline or be entering one, but it doesn’t change the fact that God is
Sovereign over this nation and every nation that is and will ever be.
And
then God confirms – reassures Jerusalem – and us – of Who He is:
“I
am the LORD, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.”
Again,
“I Am” – the Almighty God Who is self-existent, needing of nothing.
“Your
Holy One” – the God Who is separate and distinct and unlike His creation.
“The
Creator of Israel” – and here we have something new. God is the One Who brough Israel into
existence – not just the creation of the individual people, not just the
choosing of Abraham to father the nation, but God, Himself, chose to create a
nation for Himself through whom He would give the Law and the Prophets and the
Only Way to salvation through His Incarnate Son.
“Your
King.” Notice two things here: first,
God is the Ruler of His people. All
believers live under a monarchy first, and then whatever kind of human
government we live under. God is our
King, our Sovereign, to Whom we owe first and ultimate allegiance. Second, the King was also known as the father
of his people. God is in a personal and
loving relationship with everyone who ever believes. Out of love, He gave His Son to make every
believer right with Himself.
The
Father loves His people and is doing all things according to the counsel of His
Will, for His Glory, and for the good of all those who love Him.
If
we know and truly believe that this amazing, all-powerful, different Being –
God – is also our Father Who loves us, saves us through His Son, and is
bringing us through to where God knows it is best for us to be, does that not
give us a security and a peace an assurance as we go through troubled times?
We
have been going through an especially tumultuous time since March – with Covid –
and with the rioting and looting around the country – should our well-being be
affected by knowing that our Father loves us?
The
Father loves His people.
Second,
God is Sovereign in the redemption of His people.
“Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path
in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior; they
lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:”
Do we recognize what Isaiah is referring to?
Last week we noted that THE thing that God had done for
His people up to that point was to deliver them from their slavery in
Egypt. Isaiah is continuing the theme and
the reference with these words.
We remember that after the tenth plague – the death of
the first-born, Pharaoh let Israel go, but after a short time, Pharaoh changed
his mind and went after Moses and the people of Israel with his army, and they
got closer and closer until they reached the Red Sea. Now, Moses saw that they were coming and
called upon God, Who instructed Moses to lift up his staff and the waters of
the Red Sea divided and stood up as great walls on either side of a path of dry
land through the Sea, and Moses told the people to walk to the Sinai Peninsula
– 600,000 men, plus their wives and children – perhaps as many as four million
people walked down onto the dry land and crossed the Sea (http://www.prophecysociety.org/?p=8983).
Then we read:
“Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand over
the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots,
and upon their horsemen.’ So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the
sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the
Egyptians fled into it, the LORD threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea.
The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host
of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. But
the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a
wall to them on their right hand and on their left.
“Thus
the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw
the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the LORD
used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in
the LORD and in his servant Moses” (Exodus 14:26-31, ESV).
As
we have seen, though the Exodus truly happened historically, it is also used as
a parallel for other images of salvation that occur. Here we see it being used regarding God using
Cyrus to deliver Jerusalem. God
delivered out of Egypt and will one day deliver out of Babylon by His servant,
Cyrus.
And
yet there is another parallel, as we know that Jesus Christ has delivered us
from our slavery to sin and brought us into His Kingdom – and will, one day, throw
the devil and his angels and all those who never believe into the lake of fire,
and it will close over them and they will be drown and tortured forever.
Of
Jesus’ deliverance of us, we read:
“giving
thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the
saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and
transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:12-14, ESV).
And
God speaks:
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things
of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not
perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
God tells Jerusalem that there will come a time when their
reference point for THE thing that God does for His people will no longer be
(merely) His deliverance of them out of the land of Egypt, but His deliverance
of them out of the land of Babylon. Even
before the captivity occurs, God tells them that the day will come when God
does something new – He delivers them out of their captivity when their
discipline is through – and they will be restored – God will bring them through
the wilderness and provide them with
water – and all their needs – from Babylon to Jerusalem – just as He provided
for them for the forty years in the wilderness of Sinai. As Nehemiah reminds us, “Forty years you
sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did
not wear out and their feet did not swell” (Nehemiah 9:21, ESV).
The return from Babylon is not only a parallel to the
deliverance from Egypt and a new deliverance, it is also the beginning of the
coming of the Messiah, Jesus, because the deliverance that Jesus brings is a
parallel to the deliverance from Egypt and Babylon. These are real historical happenings, but
they were given as examples and parallels to what Jesus does spiritually in
delivering us from the kingdom of Satan.
Babylon is the name given in the book of Revelation to the
personification of all sin and evil.
Jeremiah prophecies: “Therefore, behold, the days are
coming, declares the LORD, when they shall no longer say, ‘As the LORD lives
who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ but ‘As the LORD
lives who brought up and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the
north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ Then they
shall dwell in their own land” (Jeremiah 23:7-8, ESV).
God continues by hinting at the restoration of the
Creation as well as deliverance from slavery to sin and Satan as He says, “The
wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches,” The wild beats of the wilderness were often considered
to be demon-possessed, so the fact that they honor God is a sign of their
deliverance from Satan as well – Satan will no longer have control over any
part of the Creation once it is totally free from the effects of sin and the
rule of Satan. Every animal will bow
before their Lord and Maker – as we believers do and will – honoring and
glorifying Him for Who He is.
Paul writes of all we who believe that we were chosen and
saved by God to praise Him – to glorify Him: “even as he chose us in him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ,
according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with
which he has blessed us in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:4-6, ESV).
God continues His promise of provision: “for I give water
in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,” And we remember that God did give Israel
water in the wilderness – Moses hit the rock and water was given to the
people. But, again, this not all that we
should see here, because the water imagery is brought over into the final act
of deliverance. We remember Jesus speaking to the woman of Samaria:
“A
woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’
(For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan
woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman
of Samaria?’ (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If
you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a
drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’
The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well
is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father
Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his
livestock.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be
thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never
be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of
water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this
water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water’” (John
4:7-15, ESV).
Water
symbolizes the salvation that Jesus gives us – a deliverance that never ends or
wanes, but continues to well up in us to eternal life where we will experience
the fulness of salvation – no longer able to sin, but fully obedient and filled
with the joy of our salvation in Jesus.
This section ends as God again confirms that He made His
people into His people and created us that we would praise Him:
“the people whom I formed for myself that they might
declare my praise.”
We are not accidents.
We are not individuals with no connections. We are not lost without hope if we have
believed. No, we were formed by God –
not just in the womb, but to be His people – those for Who He sent Jesus to
live and die and rise, and we are formed to praise God for Who He is and what
He has done.
Peter tells us, “But you are a chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may
proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his
marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once
you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:9-10, ESV).
God the Father loves His people. He delivered them from Egypt. He delivered them from Babylon. And He delivers all who believe from sin and
the kingdom of Satan through the gift of His Son, Who He gave in love to be our
Savior.
And the Triune God is our Sovereign Redeemer. We could not save ourselves from sin and the
Wrath of God any more than Israel could free herself from Egypt or
Babylon. Salvation is the work of God –
and the salvation given to us in Jesus continues until all sin and evil are thrown
into the lake of fire and we are forever
received into the Kingdom of God and the restored Creation.
So, let us praise God and give Him thanks. Even though we endure “light sufferings” at
this time for our sin and due to the sin in the world. Let us see the new thing that God has done in
Jesus and be prepared; He is coming soon.
Let us pray:
Almighty God, we thank You for loving us so much You sent
Your Son to deliver us by Yourself and for Your praise. Help us to be faithful and obedient in all
things as we look forward to the completion of our deliverance in the return of
Christ, and may Your praise ever be on our mouths. For it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
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