I invite you to open your Bible with me tonight to the book of Isaiah as we've been going through this book from chapter 40 and on. And tonight we're in chapter 43. Isaiah chapter 43. and we'll be reading the first seven verses. Just quickly again to give the context, Isaiah is a prophet ministering, speaking to Judah, the southern two tribes, about 700 years before the birth of Christ, and he is prophesying that God's judgment is going to come. And Babylon is going to come as God's going to discipline His people. And so it's a hard ministry. And yet in the midst of this message, this hard message, God gives, as we've been seeing, these wonderful reminders of His love for His people and great reasons for encouragement. And so we're going to see that again in Isaiah 43. Let's begin at verse 1. 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 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 Sheba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my eyes and honored, and 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, who I created for my glory, who I formed and made. Let's ask the Lord's blessing. Father, I pray that your spirit now would come and enlighten us so that we can understand and cherish and believe these truths. Thank you that you speak directly to us tonight through your word. And Lord, again, give us ears to hear, hearts to believe it, that we would be encouraged and strengthened in our time of trial. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, we come to a text tonight that reminds us that God's people are hurt. God's people go through times of great trial and tragedy. The first funeral I ever did was probably back 1990. I was an intern, a student at Westminster Seminary in California, an intern at a local CRC, and there was a beautiful, beautiful young couple there, Ed and Heather Kochi. And they had a little two-year-old boy, and they were at a friend's house, and he wandered out in the backyard and ended up in the pool and drowned. And the lasting memory I have, it's just imprinted on my mind, we were at the cemetery, and we were done with the committal service, and people were making their way back to their cars. And I turned around, and there was Heather standing, and I could tear up about it still. Standing by the casket with her hand on the casket, saying a final goodbye to her little boy. And those sorts of scenes are repeated over and over and over again. God's people grieve. God's people hurt. And Psalm, excuse me, Isaiah 43. It's just a wonderful word of God to God's people when we hurt. God's people are going to experience trial. God tells them they're going to be disciplined because of their sin, and it's going to be difficult. The Babylonians are going to come, and Isaiah's prophesying this. He's telling God's people it's going to happen, and he's telling them so that they'll repent, but they refuse to repent. And God tells them what's going to happen about a hundred years before it actually does happen. so that when it does happen, they will realize that they are not, well, they're not just pawns in the hands of this foreign power. What is happening to them is not random or an accident. God tells His people what is going to happen to them so that when it happens, they can have the comfort, the assurance of knowing that their life, their hurting life is in the hand of a sovereign God who loves them. and has a purpose for them. It's not going to be an accident, this thing that has happened, and God wants to make them to know that He's the actor, He's the one who's doing these things. In chapter 42, right before our text, verse 24, who gave up Jacob to the looter and Israel to the plunderers? Was it not the Lord against whom we have sinned, in whose ways they would not walk and whose law they would not obey? And so what's gonna happen to Israel is that God is going to punish them, but God wants them to know that it is not a punishment to the end or to death, but that it is God's sovereignly engaged to draw them back to himself, and that their life is in the hand then of a father who knows them and who loves them. And so chapter 43 begins after this sentence from the Lord of discipline, but now, But now, thus says the Lord, and God has a word for His people, and a word that He wants them to remember when they are suffering. God is wonderfully kind even in His discipline, even in His anger with Israel. He wants to make sure that they know that His judgment is not the last word. Eric Alexander says, judgment is always God's strange work. It is in mercy that the Lord delights. He reluctantly brings judgment. He delights to show mercy. There's one command in the text, repeated twice, verse one and verse five, and it's very simple, fear not. And it's spoken not as a harsh command, but as a comforting word, the way that a mother would comfort her little child. Don't be afraid, don't be afraid. It's okay, I'm right here. Now that's the tone of it. It's a parent comforting a hurting child. And it's a precious reminder to us in a life where we do face the reality of fear. We do get afraid. We are afraid because of circumstances in our life. We may be afraid because of what we see happening in our own heart and the battles that we're fighting with sin. Or maybe it's financial issues or relationship issues. I had a conversation just recently with a man whose wife has just told him that she's filed for divorce and he's devastated. Don Westrate just in July got the news that he has brain cancer. He had no idea. And now Don's on his deathbed. There are things that we're going to face. Hardships, heartaches, losses. And that's not unusual. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7, 5, for even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within. That's the apostle Paul. Fighting without, fear within. But into the reality of our life, God speaks this message of comfort and encouragement, fear not. For I am with you." God gives us, we're going to look in the text here just at two basic points. First, just what God, I'm calling it a foundation. It's God revealing who He is to Israel, what He has done for them, what they mean to Him, and then God making promises to them. So first just the foundation and then the promises that God makes on the basis of that foundation. Thus says the Lord." These are the very words of God. If you have your Bible, I encourage you to just keep it open. We'll be following it closely. But what's remarkable here is how God identifies Himself. He identifies Himself specifically in relation to Israel. He is the God who, the God who created them, the God who formed them. And when God says that He created them, He's not just reminding them that He is the creator in general, the way that He is the creator of all men, but that He is the creator of them in a specific way. That He has created them to be His own treasured possession. He's created them to be His people. That they are not just another nation in the world. But they're a nation that belongs to God. They are the special work of His hands. And God is their Maker in that unique way. Psalm 95, verse 6, "'O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. The other nations could not say that. They could say that God was the creator, certainly He was, but God was not their maker in the sense. God was not their God so that they were His people, the sheep of His pasture. God wants Jacob to know who they are to Him. He is their creator, they are his people. He formed them. And that word forming, in a sense, speaks of bringing them up. He not only brought them into being, but has brought them up. All through their history, God has been parenting them, providing for them. Every step of the way, God has been with them. Through the days of their infancy, back when Abraham and Sarah were childless, and yet there in the land of Canaan, trusting in the promise of God, God had been faithful. And when they were in Egypt, God had been faithful. And when they were in the wilderness, God had been faithful to provide for them. And in the conquest of Canaan, God had been faithful. And the triumphs of David and the glory of Solomon, God had been faithful through all of it. Even when Israel was suffering under wicked kings and wicked spiritual leaders, God had always been faithful. Always guiding, providing, sustaining, always caring for them. And God wants them to remember then that He is the God who, the God who's claimed them, the God who created them, the God who formed them, and a God who has saved them. If you look at end of verse 1, fear not, for I have redeemed you. I've called you by name. You are mine. Fear not, for I have redeemed you." That idea of redemption, when an Old Testament saint would hear that word, they would think immediately of what God had done in bringing Israel out of the bondage of Egypt. That was the defining redemptive event of Israel's history. Through the blood of the sacrificed lamb, the angel of death had passed them over and judged their enemies, and their salvation had been purchased, secured. They'd been through, led through the Red Sea as on dry land, and they had been brought to Mount Sinai where they were constituted as God's covenant people. God binding Himself to them as their God. Well, that great act of redemption is what God is pointing to. You are my redeemed people, my purchased people. And just as He had redeemed them from Egypt, He would redeem them from Babylon. Their Redeemer would not leave them. He would pay a great price for them. Verse 3, I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom. That's redemption. Cush and Seba in exchange for you, because you are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you. I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. God wants them to remember His great love for them, and that He had redeemed them and purchased them. And of course, as New Testament Christians, we have exactly the same story, but just all the more magnified in the redemption that we have in Jesus Christ, where God has not given a people for Israel, but He's given His Son, His only beloved Son. And on the basis of that, then God will say to us today, do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. God is for you. He has redeemed you. I was speaking with someone just yesterday who's going through a great, just great grief. His precious wife was taken away eight months ago, and the grief is overwhelming, and just mentioned how grief feels so much like fear. C.S. Lewis points that out in his book, that grief feels so much like fear. And God knows that, and God speaks into our grief and our fear. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. I've redeemed you. I've purchased you with the blood of my own Son. And Paul will take that logic in Romans 8, 32, that if he who spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not with him graciously give us all things? God wants us to be confident that he's a God for us and a God to us. Notice, I have called you by name. This is God's effectual call. He had redeemed them, and then He had gathered them. Israel's existence had been determined by this sovereign call. And there's wonderful comfort here, you see, because God's calling is irrevocable. Paul says that in Romans 11, 29. Now, we are not Christians by accident. We don't belong to God simply because we made a choice. We are Christians because God called us specifically out of darkness into his light. God called us by name. I love how it says, I called you by name. He didn't just randomly issue an invitation. He specifically and purposefully, individually called you by name. It's an amazing thought. You see, when Jesus called his disciples, you see this same particularity, that Jesus didn't put up, you know, help-wanted posters around Nazareth, around town, looking for a few devoted men willing to be disciples. But he went to specific men, like Peter, knowing full well what Peter was and what Peter was going to do. And he said to Peter, Peter, I want you to come and follow me. I'm going to make you fishers of men. And he went to a man like Levi, Matthew the tax collector, knowing everything about Matthew, knowing what people thought of him, knowing what Matthew had done, and said, Matthew, come and follow me. I'm gonna make you a disciple. Jesus calls his sheep by name. He says, I know my sheep, doesn't he? I know my sheep. You're not accidentally a Christian. You are not accidentally A child of God. And you are not accidentally in a time of trial. God has called you by name, and He knows you, and He's called you to the path you're on. Notice how God continues to comfort them with the words, you are mine. You are mine. There's a change in tense here. God's been telling Israel what he's done for them and it's all past tense. I created you, I formed you, I redeemed you, I called you. Those are all acts of God that he wants to remind us of things that he has done in the past. But now on the basis of these past acts, God wants to draw two present conclusions. He wants us to understand two things that are currently absolutely true. You are mine and I love you. You are mine, verse one, I love you, verse four. You see, when God says you are mine, he wants us to understand that his relationship with us is not just a saving relationship. You might be in a car accident and the emergency team comes and they rescue you and they pull you out of the car and they save your life. And that's a wonderful thing, but that's just a saving relationship. And then you never hear from them again. They don't send you cards. They're not concerned about anything else in your life. Well, that's not how it is with God. When God says, You are mine, He wants us to know and Israel to know that His relationship with Him is not just a saving relationship, but a covenanted parent-child relationship. He has not brought us just to safety. He's brought us into His family. He brought us into his fatherly embrace. When he says, you are mine, that's what a dad says to his kids. You're mine. You belong to me. I'm committed to you. This is the precious truth of divine adoption. that God has made us His precious sons and daughters. And Paul will say in Romans 8, 15 that we have received then the spirit of adoption by whom we cry, Abba, Father. God wants us to think of Him as our Father because that's exactly what He is. You are mine, He says, and He tells us that we are loved. You are precious in my eyes and honored you. and I love you. That feels a little gushy maybe to Dutch people. I don't know. If you grew up in a Dutch home, maybe that's different, but I think it was pretty typical. Most of us did not hear our dads talk like that. As great as our dads were, they weren't accustomed to this sort of intimate, son, daughter, you are precious in my eyes and honored and I love you. We didn't hear that from them and yet, God freely, willingly, happily says this to us. Our Heavenly Father wants us to know, wants you to know, His struggling son, His suffering daughter. God wants us to receive this. This is not just a Bible text. It's not a generic spiritual idea. It's not a doctrine. This is the living God saying to you through His Word, You are precious in my eyes and honored and I love you." And of course he's saying it to his church, but he says it to his children, his hurting children. He wants us, you see, to put the dots together and to come to this conclusion. Reverend Carl Haack, in a sermon on this, talks about this as gospel arithmetic, that God wants us to be able to add up things and come to the proper conclusion. And Reverend Haack says, so we've got to do our addition. I created you, plus I redeemed you, plus I called you, equals I love you. And it always equals I love you. I created you, I redeemed you, I called you, always equals I love you. In truth, more deeply than we can fathom. And that's the foundation of our life. Of course, that's precisely the thing that we're tempted to question when we come to trials. Does God love me? Has God forgotten me? Is God punishing me? Is He judging me? Has He cast me aside? And God speaks against those doubts with all the thunderous love in His heart. God speaks against those doubts with this reminder, this truth, this reality. You are precious in my eyes and honored and I love you. And on the basis of that foundation, then, God gives us promises, precious promises. Verse 2, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, and the flames shall not consume you. There's three things God promises here. The first is trials. He promises There's going to be waters and rivers and fires. There are false teachers out there who deny this. People who say that if you find yourself in the river, if you find yourself in a fire, you've done something wrong. God doesn't do that to His children. You must have gotten out of the center of God's will. You must not have been believing enough or you haven't been obedient enough. If you find yourself in a hard, heartbreaking circumstance, God would never do that to His children. Well, that is just simply a lie. God calls it a lie. God says that there will be rivers and waters and fires, right? Jesus says, in this world you will have trouble, and people will drag you in front of kings, and people will persecute you, and children will turn against their parents and parents against their children, and they will put you to death for my sake. we will walk through waters of suffering and rivers of grief. And we'll do so because that's where our Savior leads us. It's not an accident. Jesus isn't in heaven saying, I wish it didn't have to be so. I wish there was a different way. Jesus is lovingly, sovereignly guiding his children through paths that go through water and along roads that will go through rivers. and sometimes fires, and every one of us will experience it. Every child, every beloved daughter and precious son will experience these realities. For some it will be an unexpected illness, some a hard marriage, some just difficult loneliness, some the devastating loss of a loved one. And the tragedies at times will just be absolutely overwhelming. And it won't maybe just be one thing. It might be just one thing after another thing after another. There's a book by Joseph Bailey. Can't remember the title of it right now. He lost several sons at different times. I think three of his sons lost their lives. And he talks about it in that context. He's still trusting and following the Lord. And God wants His people to know that, again, it's not accident. It's by design. This is the path that He's laid out for us. And some of you maybe tonight are in that place. You're in the midst of the water and the river seems about to sweep you away. And God wants you to hear in that very place two things. I will be with you and you are not going to be overwhelmed. I will protect you. I will be with you, and I will protect you. The first thing God wants us to know is a promise of companionship, abiding presence. When you go through the waters, I will be with you. That's a deeper truth than we can imagine, and it's oftentimes only when we go through the trial that we experience the wonder of it. This is our comfort. in the middle of devastation. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Why? For you are with me, and your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Talking to this friend of mine who lost his wife eight months ago. He's talking about how his world really has just fallen apart. He's just struggling so hard, and yet the one thing that's there, the one rock that remains is God. He says, no one can help me but God, and it's true. These are the words that we can cling to when the waters and the flames seem about to overwhelm us. God promises to be near to us. He promises to be with us. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted. We can say, be still my soul. The Lord is on thy side. Bear patiently the cross of grief. or pain. Leave to thy God to order and provide. He faithful will remain." God promises His presence and then He promises His protection. The rivers will not overwhelm you. The fires will not consume you. And so there might be heartache, but there won't be genuine harm. There will be hurt, but not loss, not in the deepest sense. There will be loss. When you lose a loved one, you've lost something, something precious. When you lose your physical abilities because of disease, you've lost something. When you lose a child, you've lost something. But God promises that there's not going to be a consuming involved and overwhelming so that we're crushed and washed and swept away. That we won't be lost in the trial. He's gonna lead us through the waters and through the flames. We won't stay there. I remember reading a book, again, I won't remember the title, but the lady just talks about how her husband and son were killed in a small plane accident. And for a year, she was just crushed by the grief of losing these two precious people. And she went to church and the preacher was gonna preach on Psalm 23 and she was a bit disappointed by that because she knew Psalm 23 and had it Heard it many times and there was no real comfort there for her. But the preacher just really made a point that absolutely grabbed her attention. And the preacher just made the point that we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. We don't stay there. And she said, I suddenly had a vision of my husband and my son walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Not the reality, the shadow of death and walking into the arms of God. And that set her free. The rivers will not overwhelm you. The fire will not consume you. I think one of the great stories of this in the Bible is the story of Daniel's three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel chapter 3. If you remember, boys and girls, you remember the story when they were threatened that if they did not bow down to the king's image, then they would be thrown into a fire. They didn't bow down and they were thrown into the fire. We read in Daniel 3, these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning, fiery furnace. And then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, did we not cast three men bound into the fire? And they answered and said to the king, true, O king. And he answered and said, but I see four men, unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt. And the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods." What a wonderful picture. in that story of exactly what God has promised, that in the midst of the fire we're not alone. The flame will not consume us, and God is with us. And of course, that fourth person we know is our Lord Jesus Christ himself. Jesus Christ who came to this world to be with us in this world, to be tempted in every way that we are, and to experience the fire, the true fire of God, so that we would not experience it. Jesus giving his life so we would not lose our life, but we would find and gain our life. And Jesus then being the ultimate evidence that everything God says here, he means, and it's absolutely true, sealed to us by the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we need simply then to receive it. We have a choice to make. As we think about future trials, and there will be future trials. There will be times you hurt so hard, so badly it's hard to breathe. And in that moment, we have a choice to make, to receive this by faith. Because you see, in that moment, we'll struggle to understand. Notice God doesn't ask us to understand. He says the secret things belong to God. The revealed things belong to us and to our children. And so our calling is to take the revealed things, the things that God has said, and to believe them. and to speak them to our children. When I stood outside our house on a summer night watching the house burn down, dad barely able to walk because he was just out of the hospital, this is what we stood on. Why would God burn our house down? I don't know. We didn't know. But we were thankful that the Lord had preserved us all. We were all safe and we knew that going forward God would be faithful. This is what we stand on. Why did he take my loved one? I don't know. Why does it hurt so badly? Because we love people and it's hard to say goodbye. But this we know. God is with us. God has not left us. God has claimed us. And God will be faithful to us. And that's the testimony of God's people all through the ages. It's the testimony of God's people today. Talk to Carol Personnaire who just buried her dear husband, Bob. And she'll tell you how faithful God is being to her. How God is caring for her. God's people testify over and over again to that truth. The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose, he will not desert to his foes. That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, God will never, never, never forsake. Believe it. Thank him for it. And we look forward as God's hurting people to the day when all the hurt will be done, all the tears wiped away. and we worship and celebrate with glorified bodies and minds in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's coming soon. Let's pray. Father in heaven, you're the God who leads us in our life. And Lord, you lead us to some really, really painful, hard places, some devastating places. and we fear that the river will overwhelm us and the fire will consume us, and it hurts so bad we don't know where to turn. And yet, Father, I thank you that in those places, in those times, you have a word for us. Fear not. I am with you. Do not be dismayed. I am your God. And Father, what a precious thing it is to be the children of a heavenly Father. And I pray, Lord, that you would take these words and inscribe them on our hearts and our minds so that when we stand beside the grave of a loved one, when we hear the doctor's prognosis that it's cancer, when we suffer, Lord, betrayal in relationships, through the tears and the hurt, we will not be despairing, but trusting, and that, Lord, we would have the ability in those times to honor you by believing your word and trusting, Lord, exactly what you tell us, that we are not alone, that we will not be harmed, and that one day all this will be made right and new. And so, Lord, I pray for your people tonight that you'd minister this word to us. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's stand together and confess our faith in the faithfulness of God. He will hold me fast. Christ, the Lord be Thine. And I, tempted, would prevail. He, the Lord be Thine. ♪ Through life's fearful path ♪ ♪ For our love is often found ♪ ♪ In God's loving hands ♪ ♪ In God's loving hands ♪ My Savior loves me so, He will hold me fast. For He saves our busy lives, Christ the Holy Fast. His prophesies shall last all my years, and such a cause He will promulgate. He will hold me fast. My life He hath endowed, Christ will hold me fast. God's grace has been satisfied in the Holy Christ. Praise to Him! We will all be blest, till our faith is turned to sight, when He comes at last. For thy sake, O God, we sow. He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. Now go with the blessing of God, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be and abide with you all until Christ come again. Amen.