Keith Jones worked with the Mission Aviation Fellowship. He served for two years in Chad, and as chief executive. His wife Lynn was diagnosed with Leukaemia. He went to visit her in the isolation ward, and she was skin and bones. She looked at him and declared, ‘Keith, get out of my life. I don’t want to see you again.’ He told her at the end of the visit, ‘I will see you tomorrow.’ ‘Don’t bother,’ she replied. ‘But, I can’t leave you.’
Lynn died at the age of
forty-three. A few months later God
spoke to him in his mind. ‘Remember the
time Lynn rejected you? I felt something
similar. My Son was unrecognizable in
his suffering, I wanted to embrace Him.
But I turned my back on Him. I
did that for you.’ Central to this
passage is the cost God was willing to pay to redeem us.
1.
God’s
love is rooted in grace
The history of this
passage is a little complicated. Isaiah
has been warning God’s people in Judah that if they continue their sin they
would receive His discipline. They kept
on sinning, and they were about to be sent into exile. Now Isaiah is speaking, prophetically, a hundred
years from his time, to the people in exile in Babylon. There God sought to win them back for
Himself. Yet they continued to sin. Look at the last chapter and see what they
are like. They are blind—refusing to
look at Him, deaf—refusing to hear Him.
They had continued to sin against God, ‘in whose ways they would not
walk, and whose law they would not obey?’ (42:24).
To these sinful people
God declares, ‘But now’ (33:1a). He has
created and formed them. ‘Fear not, for
I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine’ (43:1b). They have shown no interest in God, and yet
He has moved in love towards them.
After speaking on these
verses in another church, a young woman, who suffers from terrible health
problems came and spoke to me. She said that
when she was a young Christian God had woken her in the night with these
words. ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.’
She had to look them up. She
holds on to them in the storms she passes through.
It was the people’s sin
that caused them to be in exile, and yet God speaks some of the tenderest words
ever spoken to these rebellious people.
God does not treat us as our sins deserve but according to His loving
kindness. He comforts in the midst of
all our deep waters. We are twice loved—both
created and redeemed. Redemption happened
when a person found themselves in slavery—maybe because of a debt that they
could not pay—and a relative paid the price to grant their freedom. What price did God pay to redeem you and I
from the punishment and grip of our sin?
He paid the price of His own Son, a redemption of infinite value.
No matter how far you have
strayed; no matter what you may have done; God waits with open arms to welcome
you home.
God
will be with you in every circumstance
‘When you pass through
the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers; they shall not overwhelm
you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame
shall not consume you’ (43:2). Note that
it is ‘when’ not ‘if’. These people in
exile in Babylon would pass through many difficulties before they returned
home. We are not promised an easy life
as followers of Jesus.
‘For I am the LORD your
God, the Holy one of Israel, your Saviour.’
The reason we need not be afraid is because He is the LORD—YHWH. That was the name of God revealed to Moses at
the burning bush. God told Moses, ‘I am
who I am’, or, as one commentator puts it, ‘I will be who my people need me to
be in their situation’ (Dale Ralph Dais).
He is our Saviour, who has proved His love to us through the death of
His Son. He has paid the infinite ransom
for us and so we are His. He loves us,
by name.
Think of some of the
waters Christ’s people have to pass through.
Jesus told His followers, ‘You will be delivered up by parents and
brothers and relatives and friends. Some
of you will be pit to death. Not a hair
on your head will perish’ (Luke 21:16-18).
How can He say that they might die for their faith and yet not a hair on
their head will perish? He can say that
because He will keep them spiritually safe.
At the end of Jude, we read of the one ‘who is able to keep you from
stumbling and present you blameless before God’ (Jude 24).
He
has paid the ransom of infinite value
‘I will give Egypt for
your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you’ (3b). There is a little bit of uncertainty about this. He is saying, ‘I will move history for you,
to bring you home’, but what is the reference to Egypt? It could be a look back at the Exodus, where
God brought punishment on the wicked people of Egypt in order to set His people
free. Or, it could be a reference to how
He is going to free them from exile in Babylon.
The Persian king, Cyrus, would sweep through Babylon and down into Egypt. All the pain associated with that expansion
God was willing to happen in order that His people could be free. ‘I give men in exchange for you, peoples in
exchange for your life’ (4b). In fact,
He gave a man, Jesus in exchange for our life.
‘Because you are precious
in my eyes, and honoured, and I love you’ (4a).
In Deuteronomy He had
warned them that if they persistently rebelled He would send them into exile,
but if they repented He would bring His scattered people home.
Note that our passage
ends with a reference to His glory. How
do we glorify God? We glorify Him by
being open about our brokenness. We were
not rescued because we were deserving.
We were rescued in our sin. He is
a gracious God who loves us, even though we break His heart.
Conclusion
When I heard that
illustration about Keith Jones and his wife, Lynn, I actually thought of it a
different way. I say ourselves being
like his wife saying, ‘Keith, get out of my life, I don’t want to see you
again.’ And God is the one who says, ‘I
can’t leave you.’ We break His heart all
the time, but He goes on loving us.
How do we know ourselves to
be one of those God knows by name? I am
helped here by a little book, by a puritan called Richard Sibbes, called ‘The
Bruised Reed’. There Sibbes explains
that, ‘the least love towards him is but a reflection of his first love shining
upon us.’ It is not a natural thing to even
want to love the Jesus of the cross, so if you are being drawn towards Him don’t
resist. Let Him keep showing you His
love until you become sure you belong to Him.
‘Fear not, for I have
redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.’
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