Turn in God's Word this morning to Isaiah 43. Isaiah 43. Our text is verses 9-13. And the theme of the sermon is, Ye Are My Witnesses. This was the theme of the conference in India last week. And this was the passage and text that we looked at during Sunday worship on the Lord's Day last week in India. It's a passage that applies very well to the Lord's Supper, and so we have it this morning. But it's also a pleasant thought among brethren in the Lord that the saints in India worshiped God with these truths last week, and that we here in Byron Center may worship the Lord with these truths this week. We'll read Isaiah 43. But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee. When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honorable and I have loved thee. Therefore will I give men for thee and people for thy life. Fear not, for I am with thee. I will bring thy seed from the east and gather thee from the west. I will say to the north, give up, and to the south, keep not back. Bring my sons from far and my daughters from the ends of the earth, even every one that is called by my name. For I have created him for my glory. I have formed him. Yea, I have made him. Bring forth the blind people that have eyes and the deaf that have ears. And now begin the words of our text. Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled. Who among them can declare this, and show us former things? Let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified, or let them hear and say, it is truth. Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant, whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he. Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Savior. I have declared and have saved, and I have showed, when there was no strange God among you. Therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God. Yea, before the day was, I am He, and there is none that can deliver out of My hand. I will work, and who shall let it?" That's the end of our text, but we continue our reading. Thus saith the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, for your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships. I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus saith the Lord, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters, which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power, they shall lie down together. They shall not rise. They are extinct. They are quenched as toll. Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. Now it shall spring forth. Shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The beast of the field shall honor me, the dragons and the owls, because I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to give drink to my people, my chosen. This people have I formed for myself. They shall show forth my praise. But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob, but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel. Thou hast not brought me the small cattle of Thy burnt offerings, neither hast Thou honored me with Thy sacrifices. I have not caused Thee to serve with an offering, nor wearied Thee with incense. Thou hast brought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast Thou filled me with the fat of Thy sacrifices, but Thou hast made me to serve with Thy sins. Thou hast wearied me with Thine iniquities. I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. Put me in remembrance. Let us plead together. Declare thou that thou mayest be justified. Thy first father hath sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed against me. Therefore I have profaned the princes of the sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the curse and Israel to reproaches. This is the word of God, holy and inspired. May he bless it to our hearts this morning. Beloved congregation, in our Lord Jesus Christ, at the beginning of Isaiah 43, we find Israel in great fear. That's evident from the fact that God has to come to her and more than once in these opening verses tell her, fear not. Israel was in great fear. And the reason she was in great fear has to do with the setting of this chapter of Isaiah. The setting for Isaiah 43 is the Babylonian captivity. Even though Isaiah wrote long before the Babylonian captivity, what he writes about here in chapter 43 is indeed the Babylonian captivity that would come upon the people of Israel many years later. In that Babylonian captivity, the people would have been removed out of their land and brought to the strange land of Babylon. Their beloved city of Jerusalem would lie in ruins and the temple would be destroyed. The Babylonians would call forth from the Israelites a song of praise to their God Jehovah, mocking the Israelites and using that call for a song as a way to say to them, your God is no God. Your Jehovah is no Jehovah. Our gods of Bel and Nebo are the true gods. Look, here you are captive in our land. Your God did not deliver you from our gods. That was mockery of the Israelites. And so the Israelites in that Babylonian captivity would have been very, very afraid. And what would have added to their fear was the guilt that would have attended them. because the Israelites in Babylon knew exactly why they were there. God had sent them prophets for hundreds of years, warning them against their ways of sin. And the people of God had disobeyed those prophets, had not taken heed, and had gone on in their ways of sin, so that the Babylonian captivity was in part chastisement for the sins of the people. The people waking up one morning in Babylon would have looked around and said, I know why I'm here. Why I'm here is my own sin, my own iniquity. And so the fear for the people of God in Babylon would have been that they would be abandoned by their God, to be destroyed by their enemies. Is there any fear in the heart of the child of God worse than that fear? The fear that we might be abandoned by our God for our sins to be destroyed by our enemies. The children of God today know that same fear. We live in Babylon. That's where we are right now in Babylon. We are not home yet in Canaan. That comes later, in the day of our deliverance, when the Lord takes us to glory. But now, during our earthly sojourn, we're in Babylon. And the pressures that the people of God in the Old Testament faced in Babylon are the pressures that we face. the pressure of conforming to the clothing and the food and the gods of the Babylonians as the Israelites in the Old Testament were pressured to conform to the Babylonians. There's all kinds of pressure on the church and on her children today to conform to the entertainment and the worldliness and the pleasure seeking and pleasure madness of our current Babylon. And we know that one of the reasons for the difficulties of our sojourn here in Babylon is chastisement. God reveals in Hebrews 12 that He chastens every son whom He loves, which means that all of our afflictions here are part of God's way of teaching us to obey Him and to serve Him. And there can be fear for the child of God in this life, and especially as we face tremendous burdens, and as we reckon with the greatness of our sin, which we have examined in this past week, and which we are called to examine all of our lives, there can be fear that maybe God might abandon us. But to His church facing that fear, God comes with the blessed word of comfort, in Isaiah 43, and says to them, Israel, my people, fear not, fear not. Why fear not? Fear not because I love you. I love you. Yes, you are in Babylon. Yes, you have transgressed my law, but I love you. And the proof of my love for you is what God says in verse one. I created you. I formed you. I redeemed you. I called you by your name. You are mine. You're my possession. And I have made you for myself and for my glory and give you comfort and peace as mine. God tells Israel what he has done for them and tells the church what he has done for them. And then he tells us what he will do for us. And what He will do for us is that in every trial and affliction, through every river and through every fire of this life, He will go with us. Fear not. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee. When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. God declares to his beloved church, I love you. Do not be afraid. I will redeem you and save you from all your sins. And then God calls a contest to drive home his love to his people. The form of the contest that God calls in our text is a contest between the witnesses all of the idol worshipers are called to send forth their witnesses to testify of the idol's love for them, to testify of the idol's salvation of them. And when the idol worshipers are called to testify and witness to the love of the idols, they have to be silent. There's nothing that they can say. And then God calls forth his own witnesses, his own beloved church, and says to them, now you testify of my love for you. And the church of Jesus Christ has everything to say. She's not silent as the witnesses of the idols are, but can testify from her own experience the love of Jehovah God for her. God drives home that comfort to us this morning as we come to hear his gospel and to see that gospel given visible form in the Lord's Supper, the broken bread, the poured out wine, as symbols of the broken body and shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here in the house of God, we are witnesses of His love for us. We see with our eyes His love in the sacrament, and hear with our ears His love in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. and the purpose of this contest is to drive home to you and to me how we ourselves have seen the love of God to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. What a contest. What a beautiful, beautiful contest. And what a comforting word that God speaks to His beloved church. Let's consider that word this morning then under the theme, Ye Are My Witnesses. In the first place, consider the contest. In the second place, consider the witness And in the third place, consider the glory. Ye are my witnesses, the contest, the witness, and the glory. God here calls forth the witnesses of the idols and the witnesses of himself. The idea of a witness is especially twofold. In the first place, a witness is someone who has seen himself the realities that he is going to speak of. We sometimes add to the word witness the word eye, an eyewitness to drive home that point. And that eyewitness has some authority because he himself has experienced and observed the things he testifies of. In a court of law, for example, an eyewitness has authority to establish the facts of the case because he testifies those things that he himself has seen. A witness in the first place then is someone who has seen himself the truths of which he testifies. And then a witness in the second place is one who speaks of those truths, declares those truths, testifies those truths so that others who may not have seen them, hear a testimony from someone who has. That's the idea of a witness here in Isaiah 43 as well. You idol worshipers, call forth your witnesses who have seen and heard and can testify of the love of those idols. And now by people I call you as witnesses who see and hear and can testify of my love for you. We find in this contest that when God calls the idolaters' witnesses forward, that He demands they give Him an answer. That's evident in verse 9, when God says, This gathering of the nations and this assembly of the people is a gathering and an assembly before Jehovah Himself so that they may testify to Jehovah Himself of the love of the idols to them. The idea here is not this, that God calls an assembly and gathering of the idolaters to testify to us of the power of their idols. The idolaters do that all the time. They're always testifying to us the power of their idols. Think of the idolaters in Babylon, who would have testified to the Israelites, Bel and Nebo are the true gods, because Bel and Nebo brought you out of Jerusalem and brought you into Babylon. They would have testified to the Israelites, those are the true gods. Or think of the testimony that the saints in India, in Kolkata here, surrounded by Hinduism as they are, with family members, co-workers, neighbors, all bowing down to the multitude of Hindu gods and saying to their Christian neighbors, What is this Jesus you speak of? What can his power possibly be? Look around you here in India at the power of the Hindu gods so that a whole nation of a billion plus people goes after these gods and worships them and gives offerings to them. Behold the power of our gods. Or think of the testimony that the idolaters make to us in our own day. all of the idols of money and wealth and pleasure and entertainment, and all the culture around us proclaiming at the top of their voice, this is the good life, to be wealthy, to be at the top of the world in economic power, to be entertained at every point by the godlessness of this world, to find pleasure here below. Behold the power of the good life, that these gods can provide. All the idolaters are always testifying to us the power of their gods. But God here calls them to assemble before himself. Gather and assemble that you may give a witness to me of the power of your gods. When the idolaters stand before Jehovah, they have to fall silent. There's nothing they can say in the face of the true God. God drives that home to them and to us. by demanding in verse 9, who among them can declare this? Who among them can declare this? And by this, he means what he had just said in verse 7, bring forth everyone that is called by my name, for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him, yea, I have made him. What God is saying to the idolater witnesses there is, who can declare about your idols the reality that your idols have made you and formed you for their own glory? I alone can say that, God says, about my people and my church. The idolaters would have to admit before Jehovah the idols did not create me, But I made the idol. I remember that day I went out into the woods and chopped down that tree that was perfectly straight with a beautiful trunk. I remember taking it home and carving into it eyes and a nose and a mouth and hands and feet. I remember painting it in beautiful colors and I remember adorning it with all of my gold and my jewelry. I made that idol. That idol cannot declare about me that he made me. How different for the Church of Jesus Christ and Jehovah, who can declare this, that God has formed us. He has formed us individually, but He has formed us as His people and as His Church. Go to the Old Testament to see that. How did it come to pass that there is such a nation as Israel? Well, it came to pass because of Jehovah, who called Abraham out of the Ur of the Chaldees and brought him into the Promised Land. called Isaac and Jacob his sons with the same promise who protected Israel in their 400 years of bondage in Egypt and made of them a great nation though they were slaves in Egypt brought them out by the hand of Moses cared for them in the wanderings in the wilderness through the hand of Joshua brought them into the land of Canaan and established them there Israel could say about her forming, God did this. And so it is for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ who formed us, but our God. From all eternity in His decree of election, He set His love upon us and chose us as His own in His perfect good pleasure. In the fullness of time, He gave Jesus Christ to the death of the cross and in our own lifetime brought us forth into this world He gathered us into the church, either as the children of believers ourselves or from outside. Who formed us, says the church, but Jehovah alone. The idolaters' witnesses are silent. We, as the witnesses of Jehovah, may testify. God goes on to say, who among them can show us former things? Verse 9, who can show us former things? And by the former things, God not only means the things that have already happened, but he means the explanation for the things that have already happened. Who can show us the purpose and the meaning of Egypt? And who can show us the purpose and the meaning of Seba and Ethiopia? And who can show us the purpose and the meaning of Babylon? And the purpose and the meaning of those nations is that those nations exist for the sake of the church. What idolater could say that about the great nations of the earth? What idolater in the days of Babylon could say, Egypt rose as a world power with its pharaohs and its might and its army and its wealth and its control over all things. Egypt rose as a world power for the sake of Babylon. They couldn't say that. At the very most, the idolaters in Babylon would say Bel and Nebo are stronger gods than the gods of Egypt. But they couldn't say the meaning and the purpose of Egypt as a nation is us as Babylon. But that's exactly what God says with regard to His church. The meaning of Egypt and the meaning of Seba and Ethiopia and Babylon itself is for the sake of the church. God raised those world powers and made them mighty nations that the world still talks about today for the sake of his people. He says that in verse 3. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. God has raised these nations for the sake of His Church, sometimes to chastise them, other times to show His power. The meaning and purpose of all history is found in God's purpose with His Church of saving her for His own glory. God further calls the idol witnesses to, in verse 9, let them bring forth their witnesses that they may be justified. The idea here is that the witnesses would be able to testify before all the truth of what they themselves have said, what they themselves have claimed with regard to their idols. Justify your claim! Prove your claim! is the idea here. How are the idolaters going to prove their claim? How are they going to go to those idol gods in their temples made of wood and stone and have those idol gods say anything or do anything to prove the claim that they make regarding them? The idolaters must be silent when they must prove their claim. but how different it is for the church of Jesus Christ. And that takes us to the next part of verse nine. Let them hear and say it is truth. And the idea of let them hear and say it is truth is that the idle witnesses are called now to be quiet. Shut your mouths, idle witnesses, and just listen for a moment. Hear, hear. And what are you listening for? You're listening for the voice of your God. You're listening for that idol to tell you what will happen next. You're listening for that idol to tell you what is the truth. And you idol witnesses may not speak and say it is true what my idol has said until that idol first speaks. These idol witnesses are going to be waiting until the day they die for the idol to speak because the idol has a mouth But he cannot speak as he has eyes that do not see and hands that do not handle. So the idol witness will never be able to testify it is truth what my idol says. He cannot prove and justify his claims. But how different for the church of Jesus Christ who hears God speak to her, who hears Jehovah's voice this morning in the worship service. The Word of God, as that Word is expounded, as it is proclaimed, that's the voice of Jehovah Himself. The Church of Jesus Christ studies the Word of God together, which is the living Word of God. As the Church of Jesus Christ sees in the sacrament the declaration of the truths that are contained here in the Scriptures, the Church of Jesus Christ can witness the truth of God and justify and prove her claims about the trueness of this God from the Word of God. That's a reminder to the church of our Lord Jesus Christ and the vital need that we have of the Word of God, the truth of God, the proof for the existence of God and the proof for the love of God and the proof of all things that the Christian church says about God is found here in the scriptures. And the proof to your fearful heart and mine of the love of God for us that covers our sins is found here in the scriptures. Let the church hear and say it is truth. But now, how is it that the church is sure of these things that she has seen and heard and must testify in this contest? And that takes us to the very interesting verse 10, and the witness, the witness, Notice in verse 10, God says to us, as the church, with all of the members, ye are my witnesses, in the plural. And then, in that same breath, says, ye are my servant, in the singular, whom I have chosen. Ye are my servant. And when God uses the singular there for servant, He is not meaning first of all this, the whole church viewed as one body, but He means this, the individual head of that body. That's the servant He's referring to. In many places in the book of Isaiah, this servant of God, my servant or the servant of the Lord or the servant of Jehovah is referenced. And that servant of Jehovah is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. God is declaring here to the church that you are my witnesses because the truth of what I say is fully revealed in my servant, the servant of Jehovah, the Lord Jesus Christ. That servant is the one whom I have chosen The New Testament bears that interpretation out in Ephesians 1 verse 4, for example, where we read that we are chosen in Him, that is, in Christ, before the foundation of the world. Jesus Christ is the first elect. He's the first chosen. And all of us are chosen in Him. God is saying to us this morning the proof and evidence and revelation of My love for you. is in this servant. That's how you witness, see, taste, and hear the truth of my love. And that's how you testify the truth of my love. It's through that servant. How is it that the servant of Jehovah is the witness to us of the truth of God's love? And God goes on to say in verse 11, I even I am the Lord and beside me there is no Savior. I have declared and have saved and I have showed when there was no strange God among you. Therefore ye are my witnesses saith the Lord that I am God. Yea before the day was I am he and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. I will work and who shall let it. What God refers to repeatedly in those verses is His great work. His great work that no man can let or prevent or turn back or stop. His great work of saving His people by taking them into His own hand in such a way that no one can pluck them out of His hand. Delivering them from all of their sins and iniquities. Redeeming them through the blood of the Lamb. which was a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. God declares, I have a great work that I've done upon you, and my great work is that I've saved you. Imagine how that would have gone for the Israelite in Babylon, being mocked by the Babylonians, being called to sing a song of Zion through his tears. As his fear rises in his heart that God would abandon him, And then he remembers the promise of God. The promise that there shall be a servant who comes forth and a seed. A servant who redeems by his own blood. That that servant is God's means of taking his people into his own hand and into his own bosom. So that regardless of the mockery of the Babylonians and the destruction of Jerusalem and the smoke rising from the temple over there on Mount Zion, regardless of all of that, they're safe in the hands of God and shall return according to His promise. The servant of the Lord reveals the great work of God of saving His people. And so it is for us. in all of our fears and the burdens of our guilt and that doubt that we fight against and hate that God might abandon us to be destroyed by our enemies. The way the church responds to that fear is by looking to the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the servant of God who is the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. The one in whom God has done this great work of delivering us from our iniquities. That's what this supper testifies to which we come this morning. It's the broken body of the Lord, the shed blood of the Lord that has redeemed us from all our sins. My servant is my revelation and the proof and the truth of all that I have said so that when we see the servant we are witnesses And verse 10, God explains further how that proof through the servant works. Verse 10, Ye are my servant, whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he. Ye may know, believe, and understand. And God is talking about, talking there about that beautiful gift of faith. We know the truth of God and believe it and understand it deep in our own souls by this faith that God gives us in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how we receive the gospel. We receive the Gospel by faith. That's how we partake of the Lord's Supper. We partake of the Lord's Supper by faith so that in the Gospel and in the Supper we are very really hearing and eating the Lord Jesus Christ. We partake of Him and all His benefits really truly become ours through that faith that God gives us. And God gives us that faith through the proclamation of that servant. That's how He gave it to His people in Babylon. When they would be afraid, then this passage would land in their laps. And this passage would be spoken to them. Remember Isaiah 43. Remember the contest of the witnesses. And remember that all these witnesses of the Babylonians are dumb and silent before Jehovah God. But you and I know the certainty of our salvation in His servant, for He has declared it. That declaration of that prophecy would build their faith in that servant. And so it is for us, in our fear and in our uncertainty, the preaching of the Word of God creates that faith in our hearts by the work of the Spirit. And the partaking of the sacrament strengthens that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ so that the object of our view this morning is the Savior, the Servant, the One who performs this great work of God, delivering us from all our sins. And that testimony that the church makes is to the great glory of our God. Imagine the glory of God in Babylon as his people captured by the Babylonians, removed from their home, languishing in a foreign land. would nevertheless testify over against the witness of the idolaters around them, there's only one Jehovah, only one God. And He's not your Bell. He's not your Nebo. He's my Jehovah. He was before the day. That is, He's from eternity, whereas I know the day your bell was created on. I saw Him made by your hands. The glory of God would be testified by the witnesses of Jehovah in the midst of Babylon. And so the glory of God is testified today by we who are His witnesses, who have heard and seen and tasted our own selves, His mercy and love for us in Jesus Christ. We testify over against all of the witness of the idolatrous culture around us. The good life, the blessed life, the highest thing is not what you say it is. It is not the pursuit of your gods. the things here below, but the highest, best, good life is the life that we have through the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. That glorifies the God who has redeemed us. At the beginning of Isaiah 43, God's people were afraid. By the end of this prophecy in verse 13, imagine the comfort and consolation that would have flooded their hearts. We don't have to imagine very hard because that's the same consolation with which the Lord floods our hearts today through his gospel and at his supper as he says to us, my people, I love you and ye are my witnesses of these things. Amen. Our Father, which art in heaven, we thank Thee for Thy word to us this morning. Bless it to our hearts that we may be encouraged. We thank Thee, Father, for Thy servant, Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior, in whom we know Thy love and have a clear testimony of our salvation. Feed our hungry and thirsty souls at this table. Forgive our sins, hearing our prayer. For Jesus' sake, amen.