Announced, Saved, Proclaimed
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1 But now, says the Lord— the one who created you, Jacob, the one who formed you, Israel: Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; when through the rivers, they won’t sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you won’t be scorched and flame won’t burn you.
3 I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your savior. I have given Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in your place.
4 Because you are precious in my eyes, you are honored, and I love you. I give people in your place, and nations in exchange for your life.
5 Don’t fear, I am with you. From the east I’ll bring your children; from the west I’ll gather you.
6 I’ll say to the north, “Give them back!” and to the south, “Don’t detain them.” Bring my sons from far away, and my daughters from the end of the earth,
7 everyone who is called by my name and whom I created for my glory, whom I have formed and made.
8 Bring out the blind people who have eyes, the deaf ones who have ears.
9 All the nations are gathered together; the peoples are assembled. Which of them announced this? Who predicted to us the past events? Let them bring their witnesses as a defense; let them hear and say, “It’s true!”
10 You are my witnesses, says the Lord, my servant, whom I chose, so that you would know and believe me and understand that I am the one. Before me no god was formed; after me there has been no other.
11 I, I am the Lord, and there is no savior besides me.
12 I announced, I saved, I proclaimed, not some stranger among you. You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and I am God.
13 From the dawn of time, I am the one. No one can escape my power. I act, and who can undo it?
Announced, Saved, Proclaimed
Announced, Saved, Proclaimed
This is a passage of grace from God. The title in my Bible for this section is “Don’t Fear.”
How we need to hear that message of “don’t fear.” If you give in to all that is heard on the news and out of the mouths of politicians it would seem that the world ended a week ago.
There is a non-stop news cycle about all the bad stuff that is supposedly happening.
Before Christmas it was the supply chain crisis. Guess what? We still celebrated Christmas.
We have lived with about 2 years with this virus. It has instilled so much fear in our world. Is it real? Yes, but it has been so politicized that you don’t know what is the real truth from what the politicians are saying is the truth.
There is a snow storm coming this afternoon. If you’ve watched the news it would seem that the world is going to come to an end. Some of the advice the news people were handing out is simply crazy.
Don’t Fear God says.
This is a pretty amazing thing for God to say if you go back to the previous chapter. In chapter 42:18-25 Isaiah has just read the Jews the riot act.
Did you ever read the riot act to your kids? You know what I mean. You stand there, maybe with a finger pointing at them, loudly telling them all that they have done wrong and warning them if they don’t knock it off you are knock them off. Now I don’t think we really mean that we will “knock them off,” but we want to get the point across that we are not going to put up with that behavior any longer.
That is what Isaiah has done. You can almost picture the fear in the people. Now this was given as a prophecy so it wasn’t like Isaiah was standing behind a pulpit preaching at them, but it has the same effect.
Isaiah ends what he has to say in chapter 42 verse 25 by writing:
25 So God poured out on Jacob the heat of his anger and the fury of battle. It scorched him, and he didn’t know it; it burned him, but he didn’t give it much thought.
It sounds like God is going scorched earth on them. Scorched earth is a military strategy that aims to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy. In this case it is the entire nation.
I don’t know about you but that is just a wee bit scary to think about. The sad thing is that Judah didn’t even realize what had happened. Judah was oblivious to what was happening.
That is just the way sin in our lives works. Sin blinds us to what is really going on. It takes us far from God.
Isaiah even asks that question.
Isaiah 42:24 (CEB)
24 Wasn’t it the Lord, the one we sinned against? They were not willing to walk in God’s ways, and wouldn’t listen to his teaching.
Not willing to walk in God’s ways. Wouldn’t listen to his teaching.
I don’t know about you but it sounds like the Church with a big C today. Hey, I don’t like how the Bible puts it there so I’ll just do my own thing. God didn’t really mean that did He? Of course, He didn’t.
I don’t like what the Bible has to say about my sin so let me justify it or rationalize it away. God’s loving, He’s never going to really send anyone to hell is He?
One of this days and maybe sooner than we think, God is going to go scorched earth on sin and those who doubt the reality of hell are going to learn the truth.
I’m so glad that God is a God of grace. There is forgiveness through Jesus. If we repent of our sins they are forgiven and forgotten.
God’s grace comes rushing through our scripture text this morning.
1 But now, says the Lord— the one who created you, Jacob, the one who formed you, Israel: Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.
I love how God begins His response here. But now. Isaiah had hit the scorched earth approach in the prophecy. But now God says and He brings words of grace and mercy.
I am so glad that I serve a God of Grace. I grew up with a faith that was based on Judgement, there was no grace, no mercy. It was all about judgement and I really did not want anything to do with that.
I cannot even begin to describe to joy I experienced when I discovered that yes there is judgement, but the Bible if full of Grace and mercy from beginning to end.
God says “Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.”
The Jews, God’s special people are engulfed in sin and rebellion. Isaiah has just let them have it and God says
Isaiah 43:1 (CEB)
Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.
They didn’t deserve that, they deserved judgement but God gave them grace.
Rather than being afraid of the judgement, God redeems them, He calls them by name, they are His.
That is God, that redemption is for us. When Jesus came, He came to redeem all of humanity. He came on the greatest rescue mission of all time. He came to redeem us.
16 God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life.
There it is in a nutshell. Isaiah was writing in the before. God is speaking in the “but now” time frame. Isaiah is writing in the “this is how its going to be” while God is speaking in the here and now.
We sort of lose the concept of redemption. You might earn points by visiting a store and spending so much over a period of time. When you make the limit you can then redeem those points for something free. I stop and get tea on my way to work. Every time I do that, I earn points towards a free cup.
Redemption was a concept that resonated with the Jews. It was something they understood. There are four different meanings found in the Old Testament. The one we are most familiar with is found in the Book of Ruth.
20 Naomi replied to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the Lord, who hasn’t abandoned his faithfulness with the living or with the dead.” Naomi said to her, “The man is one of our close relatives; he’s one of our redeemers.”
Boaz was a kinsman-redeemer. Boaz was not related to Ruth, but he was related to Naomi. He had the obligation by law to redeem the property that had belonged to Naomi’s husband.
Kinsman-redeemers had two responsibilities. They had redeem family property that had been sold. They also had to marry the widow of a relative who had died.
Boaz did both. He bought back the land of Naomi’s husband. He married Ruth who although not a direct relative she was the daughter-in-law of Naomi who was related to Boaz by marriage.
As great as that is, God’s idea of redemption goes way beyond that. God through Jesus redeemed us. Paul captured it well:
20 You were God’s expensive purchase, paid for with tears of blood, so by all means, then, use your body to bring glory to God!
God redeemed you! You were God’s expensive purchase. God did what He had to do in order to redeem you.
Skip down to to verse 12 in our text
Isaiah 43:12 (CEB)
12 I announced, I saved, I proclaimed, not some stranger among you. You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and I am God.
God announced it, He announced redemption. I love this verse because it is all about what God has done. The verbs used there are all past tense.
That means that it is something that has already happened.
God says that He announced, He saved, and He proclaimed.
There are a lot of false teachers out there who are claiming to have some new revelation from God. The truth is that God has already done everything. There is not some new secret revelation from God.
God has done it all.
Think of the proclamation that happened that first Christmas. The Lord’s Angel appeared to those shepherds who were minding their own business. They were doing what they did every evening. This angel shows up and tells them this awesome news. If that were enough we read in that passage from Luke.
Luke 2:13 “13 Suddenly a great assembly of the heavenly forces was with the angel praising God.”
Can you imagine what that must have been like? I do not believe for a second that it was some soft praise. This was a great assembly of heavenly forces.
What were they praising God for? God had fulfilled his promise from a proclamation long ago.
John in his Gospel wrote
10 The light was in the world, and the world came into being through the light, but the world didn’t recognize the light.
11 The light came to his own people, and his own people didn’t welcome him.
12 But those who did welcome him, those who believed in his name, he authorized to become God’s children,
13 born not from blood nor from human desire or passion, but born from God.
When we believe in Jesus, when we confess our sins, we are born into God’s family.
That is salvation. The cool thing about salvation is that it is right there ready for a person to receive. We sure make it complicated.
It is not complicated. God has done everything necessary. It is up to use to believe and receive it. Why do we make it so complicated?
We are not the gatekeepers to salvation. It is whosoever will may come. We don’t get to define the whosoever is.
I tell every client that comes into my office at work that my office is a judgement free zone. I have somewhat of an ulterior motive. That motive is to show the Jesus.
The only ones that Jesus judged were the religious leaders. He didn’t judge the woman who was caught in that adulterous relationship. He didn’t judge Zacchaeus for taking more in taxes that he should have. He didn’t judge the woman who came to well who was on her 6th husband.
What did Jesus do? He showed them grace.
When someone comes into my office, I show the grace, I show them compassion. That has opened the door so many times to actually talk about the one who announced, saved, and proclaimed.
Is that not what we are supposed to be about?
The last thing that God said there was I proclaimed.
That is a reminder that God has done it all. There is nothing left to be done by God. God proclaimed loud and clear through Jesus that He loves His creation.
Look at that last verse in our text:
13 From the dawn of time, I am the one. No one can escape my power. I act, and who can undo it?
The answer is obvious. No one.
Not only does God save us, He sanctifies us, He fills us with Himself. In the passage that was read from Acts we heard:
14 When word reached the apostles in Jerusalem that Samaria had accepted God’s word, they commissioned Peter and John to go to Samaria.
15 Peter and John went down to Samaria where they prayed that the new believers would receive the Holy Spirit. (
16 This was because the Holy Spirit had not yet fallen on any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)
17 So Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
The received the Holy Spirit, God Himself.
The one who announced, saved, and proclaimed came to live within them. He comes to live within us so that we can go.
We’re not meant to be comfortable sitting here. We are to go, to go and make disciples. That is the mission that Jesus gave those first disciples and it is the same mission for us.
Praise God for His message of grace.