Isaiah 42.18-43.13 (click here to read the passage)
Can you recall a time when you took in something wondrous and breathtaking?
Perhaps it was an incredible scene spread out before you as you were high in the mountains, looking down at the valley stretching for miles below. It might have been an unusually remarkable sunset or sunrise. It might have been that moment on your wedding day when you looked into your spouse's eyes and exchanged your vows. It could have been that moment when your world changed as you held your newborn child for the first time.
We could make quite a list. Life is full of wondrous and breathtaking moments, and Isaiah is describing one for us here.
This section is one of those that begins with God talking about how far His people have fallen. They have absolutely refused to see and hear the Lord even though the Lord has made His truth great and glorious before them. However, they refused to hear and see in spite of all that the Lord has done. The people persisted in their sin, stepping further and further away from the Lord until they became plunder for other nations as they pursued their own way.
Then everything completely shifts and changes in 43:1. God boasts about who He is and what He will do and it's wondrous and breathtaking. God is the one who, despite being frustrated and angry with the people, still loves them and sees them as precious and honored in His sight. He will redeem His people. He will call them out of exile and restore them, and they will be His witnesses to the world. What I really love about this is that the Lord is above all, there is no other god, and nothing is going to stop or frustrate His plans. He will carry them out.
Here’s the wondrous and breathtaking thing that I love from the passage, and perhaps it caught your attention as well. God freely and unconditionally gives the people His love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace without requiring anything of them. They do not have to repent or make promises. The Lord is just, true to His word, and faithful. God simply declares in verse 43:1 that He has redeemed His people. It’s just a simple, completed fact.
Don’t miss the relational piece in all of this as we read further into chapter 43. Look at all the “I” and “you” connections. God is with them. He calls Himself your God, your Savior. The Lord gives Himself to the people as their personal possession because He loves them.
I love how John Oswalt explains this in his commentary, “Again this is cause for wonder. Why would the One who is beyond the stars even pay any attention to rebel beings on this small planet? But he does, and although these particular people have broken their covenant with him time and again, he will keep his side of the bargain.”
It is absolutely wondrous and breathtaking how true the Lord is to Himself and what the Lord does here, but it is just a taste, a foreshadowing of what is to come in His Son Jesus.
John 3:16–17
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
God bless you, and know that you are prayed for constantly!
Scott