"The Exclusivity of God" Sermon: Isaiah 43:8-13 (manuscript)

 

“The Exclusivity of God”

[Isaiah 43:8-13]

August 23, 2020 YouTube

            In the first seven verses of chapter 43, God comforts Jerusalem – and all believers – that we are created and saved by God, brought through our trials, and all of this is done to the Glory of God.

            From here, we move to another courtroom scene – because, as much as God comforts Jerusalem and us – in exile, in Covid, in times of stress with no good answers – many will turn to idolatry and the attempt to justify and worship God as one god among many. 

            And we see, first, God acts; idols don’t.

“Bring out the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears!”

God calls out His witnesses – the people of Jerusalem.  But, as we saw not long ago, the people of Jerusalem are blind – even though they have eyes that work, and they are deaf – even though they have ears that work.  Through their sin – their despising of the Law of God, they have made themselves spiritually deaf and blind.

What good is the testimony of the blind as to what they saw? Or the deaf as to what they heard? Nothing.

The nations – the Gentiles – the non-Jews – are called to testify about their idols.  And they are asked if they can declare or show the former things – and if so, to provide witnesses in the form of the idols who can do so.

“All the nations gather together, and the peoples assemble. Who among them can declare this, and show us the former things? Let them bring their witnesses to prove them right, and let them hear and say, It is true.”

God gathers all the people – the nations and Jerusalem – God and the idols – and He asks which of the idols can declare that God did “this” and the “former things” that God did.  God challenges them to come forward and show that their idols have also done something as incredible as what God did.

And the question for the twenty-first century reader is “What in the world is God referring to?  What event or things is God holding up as His prime example of acting on behalf of His people?”

In 700 B. C., Jerusalem would understand that THE thing that God did was deliver them from 400 years of slavery in Egypt:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

“You shall have no other gods before me.

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:2-6, ESV).

And what did God accomplish for the deliverance of His people:

God turned the Nile River to blood.

God sent frogs to overrun the unbelievers.

God sent gnats to overrun the unbelievers.

God sent flies to overrun the unbelievers.

God killed the unbeliever’s livestock.

God caused the unbelievers to be covered with boils.

God sent hail to destroy the unbeliever’s crops.

God sent locusts to eat the unbeliever’s crops.

God covered the land in darkness.

God killed the first-born son of the unbelievers.

“What has your god done that compares with the work that God has done for His people?”

There is no answer because God acts, idols don’t.

We know that as modern believers:  God so loved the world that He sent His only Son to save His people.  No idol has ever saved anyone.  No idol has ever sent his son to live and die for his people.  Only God acts – He is alive and involved in our history – our lives.  Idols are impotent.

Second, God is the Only Savior.

“You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.”

God tells Jerusalem that she is His witness.  But they are blind and deaf!  God chose a people for Himself – God chose them – and us – and made us His servants – we are to represent our God to the world, but when we get involved in idolatry, we are blind and deaf and do nothing to advance the cause and glory of our God.

God tells Jerusalem that He chose them – and us – so we would know God, so we would believe in God, and so we would understand God.  God wants us to know Him as He knows us, because that is our joy – to know God, to enjoy Him, and to glorify Him – to show Who He is and what He has done in the world.

Our sin – and our idolatry – cloud people from seeing Who God is in us.  We fail to glorify God when we do not obey the moral law of God – when we commit idolatry. So, there is a disjoint between what God wants and intends for us and who we are now – and that should not surprise us – though it should shame us.

Paul writes of his holiness – of his completion of all that God requires of him, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.  Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Philippians 3:12-16, ESV).

So, who will witness for God?  The Only One Who can: God.

“Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior. I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and I am God.”

God testifies that there is no god before God and there is no god after Him.  Before anything else was, God is, and nothing will ever become a god or a true competitor to God because He alone is God.  God brought everything into existence, even the thing that we make into an idol.  Only God always exists even before anything existed.

God says, “I, I am.”  And we should recognize that – when Moses meets God in the burning bush, Moses asks God Who he should tell the people God is, and God says to tell them, “I Am Who I Am.”  It can also be translated as “I Was Who I Was” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be.”  The point being that God is the Eternal.  God is and always is.  Before the creation God is, now, God is, and in the restoration, God is.  God is always and never changing.

We are familiar with this as we see it given to us in the New Testament: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8, ESV).

“I declared and saved and proclaimed.”

God is the One Who called all things into existence – God declared that things would be, and they are.  No idol has ever spoken anything into existence.

God is the Only Savior.  Due to our sin and the sin of our first parents, no one is able to be made right with God except through God – the Incarnate God in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. No idol can save a person from anything.

God is the Only One Who has proclaimed His Word and the One Way of salvation in it.

God testifies of Himself that He is, and He is It!

            Before a single strange god – before any idol existed – they are a product of sin – God is and no one and nothing was with Him or before Him.

            And God tells the deaf and the blind – God tells all of His chosen people – including you and me – He has chosen us and appointed us to be His witnesses to the world – including being witnesses before those who would follow idols and ascribe to them powers that they do not have.

            God is the Eternal Creator Who lives before time and space existed, so Only He is able to be the Savior of His people.  No one else is equipped, because they are sinners or non-entities.

            If our hope is in another mere human, or in our 401k or our home or the government – know that they can all fall away and all of them are pitiable and small and impotent before God the Savior.

            God says, when everything else and everyone else falls away – when we recognize how finite and small everything else is – how temporary – God is, and He is our Savior Alone.

            Third, God is Supreme.

            And, so, the case in concluded with this pronouncement:

            “Also henceforth I am he;”

            I Am – YHWH – is THE God, the Only God, the Exclusive God.  He is Supreme. There is no other God, but God, so the worship of an idol is an affront to God and utter foolishness.  Idols cannot help or do anything – as we saw in an earlier sermon – idols cannot speak or foresee the future – only God, the One God, can.

            The Son of God, Jesus, says that He is the Exclusive God, and His Salvation is an exclusive salvation:

            “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6, ESV).

            “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12, ESV).

            “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3, ESV).

            And the One Salvation from the One God cannot be lost:

“there is none who can deliver from my hand;”

Jesus says, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:28-30, ESV).

“all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35, ESV).

In holding His people and never letting them go or doing whatever pleases God among the peoples of the earth, no one can be delivered in either sense from the Hand of God.  He is Supreme in His Love and His Wrath, and no one can teach Him or correct Him that He would do other than what He has chosen to do.

 “I work, and who can turn it back?”

“Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?” (Ecclesiastes 7:13, ESV).

What God does, no one can undo – neither human nor idol.  God does it and it is so.

            So, God tells Jerusalem – and us – it is blasphemous and stupid to trust in idols and to worship them.

            Why?

            Because God acts, and idols don’t – they are impotent – they cannot do anything.

            Because God is the Only Savior – the only way to become right with God is by God through God’s Savior, and Him Alone.  No one can become right with God and escape His Wrath except through Jesus.  No idol has any power to save.

            Because God is Supreme.  God does all things in accordance with His Holy Will.  Nothing can occur, nothing can be changed, no one can ascend to the throne of God – God is the Exclusive Savior and the God Who is active in history bringing all things together for the good of His people and to His Glory.

            This week, a dear woman of prayer and service, Joan McBride, died.  She was a person of love and self-sacrifice who showed her faith mightily and cared for me and my work in Christ.  She died suddenly and left us all shocked.  Joan has been received into the Presence and the Glory of Jesus.

            We know that her death – though it takes us off guard – was according to the Plan of God.  God was not surprised to see her, though we mourn the surprise to us.  God set the day and time that she would die.

            She was a woman of faith – a great woman of prayer.  She longed to know her Savior more and understand His Word better.  Her longing is now being satisfied because she believed in the One Savior.  The Exclusive God of Salvation.

            There was nothing we could have been done to prevent her death.  God from all of eternity planned this to be the time of her death and to be received as His daughter into Paradise.

            As we mourn her death and being away from us for now, let us rejoice that she knows God the Only God, her Savior, the Exclusive God, the Supreme and Only God, the Sovereign God before Whom she is now and forever.

            Let us turn from our idols, confess our sin, and keep our focus on the God Who says “I Am” and no other – the God welcomes each one who believes into His Kingdom forever and ever to His Glory and our eternal joy.

            Let us pray:

            Almighty God, we thank You for this testimony of Your Exclusiveness in action, salvation, and sovereignty and supremacy in history. Help us to never turn away from You, but to trust You wholeheartedly and be received into Your Glory at the right time.  In Jesus’ Name, Amen.