He Makes A Way

In this new year, we eagerly anticipate what God has in store for us. However, it is also wise for us to reflect on the previous year(s) and glean valuable lessons. What did we witness? What did God accomplish? What did we discover about ourselves? What was praiseworthy? What should we focus on this year? Regardless of how far we may stray, we can find solace in the unwavering faithfulness of God. It is comforting to know that the One who created and is forming us is for our flourishing. This instills confidence and assurance as we embark on a new year. It is essential to recognize that the focal point lies in the goodness and holiness of God, rather than solely improving ourselves in the coming year. As we look at Isaiah 43 on Sunday morning, discover how the faithful Craftsman keeps molding us and treasuring us as His own.

Introduction

If you have ever gone hiking with any regularity, there are times in the beginning of when you don’t really know what you are getting into. That can happen to if you trust your friends/partners to figure out the details. Or, if you are anything like me that sometimes you just want to go because it sounds fun.

Lake Constance was this way for me. Many years ago, a few friends and I thought we’d take this little 2.2 mile hike up to this beautiful Mtn. Lake. As we got into it we realized that the trail rarely ever leveled out. We ascended 3300ft in just in 2 miles. Which is ridiculous! At one point during the last quarter mile or so you are climbing on roots and rocks to ascend to the lake.

They had little metal tabs that indicated the trail. They must have placed them there in 1970, because the time we got there, 35 years later, they were gray and completely impossible to find as they blended in with the gray and brown trees.

I was a gluten for punishment and have ascended this trail at least four more times only to ever take the same way twice…

Each time though, I was able to prepare those who were with me what we were going to encounter. While I wasn’t always able to make out the safest path, we got there. We enjoyed the water of the mountain lake and then descended back down safely.

Couple years ago as my daughter and I were traveling we were staying in this costal town. We had heard that you could hike to another town just north of where we were staying and over look the water. I just looked up the information on the trail this week (which is what we would have saw at the time):

Time for walking: 1hr

Distance: 0.86 miles

Elevation gain: 817 ft

Difficulty: medium

THEY LIED

As we do, we put on our fitness app and go walking…

Total time: 1:37 (we were moving)

Distance: 2.86 miles

Elevation gain: 737 ft

It was HOT too… the temperature reflected at the time was 82 degrees, 53% humidity, and no shade…

As we came near to the end of our journey, there was another couple that were about to ascend onto the trail. It was steep at both ends (and in the middle… everywhere really), they were not prepared for the hike.

We were able to let them know our experience and answer the questions they had. We had run out of water and so we were interested to get into the town and get something to drink.

As we enter into this new year, how wonderful it is to look back and think about what God has done. We’re not to live there though. It’s tempting to because its what we know.

If we’ve been hurt, it feels good to blame and say it was someone else’s as opposed to acknowledging it and then figuring out what is in our power to move on and up.

If it’s been good, it can be scary to move forward because often times it may not seem as good as it once was. But living on past glory does nothing for future glory, glean from it yes, but we can’t be Uncle Rico still sending our football tryout tapes trying to get picked up by a professional team 15-20yrs later.

Our text this morning is a helpful encouragement as we move into this new year. No matter what our past has been, God is the God of the present and will remain faithful all of our days.

If you have your Bibles or on your devices, please turn to Isaiah 43 (in the middle of your Bible).

If you are willing and able would you stand with me as I read God’s word this morning. Isaiah 43:1-7, 16-21

This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray.

Please be seated.

What God has done

There are three dynamics that are at play in the first two verses:

verse 1: But now makes a logical connection with what has gone before: ‘Now then’. Israel has been revealed as blind (42:19), inattentive (42:20), falling short of the Lord’s plan (42:21), defeated (42:2), sinfully disobedient (42:24), spiritually uncomprehending and insensitive (42:25). ‘Now then’ is enough to make us quake in our shoes! How will the Lord react to such a catalogue of culpability?

Created … formed: the verbs are used in their established sense, the former to bring into being, de novo, by a sole and free act of God, and the latter to fashion and mould into shape as a potter would. So the Lord determined to have a people for his very own, brought them into being and shaped them on the wheel of circumstances.

This is the first ground (created (barah) and formed (yatser)) on which the Lord will say, you are mine (Eph. 1:4; 2:10).

The second ground is redemption. The verb is √gā’al (35:10). The Lord made himself the Next-of-Kin of the people he had created. They are his family and he shoulders all their needs as if his own.

The third ground is the personal relationship between the Lord and his people (summoned by name) whereby, as we might say, they are on first-name terms.

Motyer, J. A. (1999). Isaiah: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 20, pp. 301–302). InterVarsity Press.

verse 2: The LORD will not desert His people. They may have given up on Him (Isa 42:18-25), but He will not give up on them. That even in the midst of hard times, the worst of times, God will see them through with miraculous provision.

Because of who He is

verses 3-7: The safety they enjoy under and within such life-threatening experiences (2) is explained (For) in five ways.

(a) By the Lord’s name, Lord, Yahweh, the everlasting statement of his character (Exod. 3:15). Yahweh is the God defined in the exodus revelation as the One who delivers and redeems his people (Exod. 6:6–7) and overthrows his foes (Exod. 12:12). Unless he changes his name (alters his character), he is committed to his people.

(b) By the relationship between himself and his people: notwithstanding all their failings (42:18–25), he still calls himself your God.

(c) By his holiness: the great Isaianic title, the Holy One of Israel (1:4), holds together the reality of his holiness and the reality of his relationship with Israel. If his holiness and their sinfulness did not militate against forming the relationship, then it cannot militate against its continuance.

(d) By his saving ability: while the verb √yāša‘ expresses salvation from sin (64:5), it majors on deliverance from afflictions (1 Sam. 9:16; 2 Sam. 22:4), suitably to this context.

(e) By the evidence of the past: niv follows many in the translation I will give, and, of course, the Hebrew perfect tense can well express a confidence for the future (‘I have determined to give’), but this is understandable only if we take it to mean ‘I have determined to give (if I have to)’, for Egypt has no part to play in the Lord’s future care of his people. Furthermore, to translate the perfect here as a future destroys the contrast with I will give at the end of the verse. Rather, the titles of the Lord in verse 3ab flow naturally into a reference back to the exodus: because he is Yahweh, Israel’s God and Holy One, their Saviour, he actually did give Egypt as their ransom. Faced with Egyptian intransigent refusal to let the people go, the Lord, so to speak, weighed up whether he was prepared to shatter Egypt in order to free Israel. There was ‘no contest’, and it was ‘at the expense of’ (ransom, kōper, the price paid; see 6:7) Egypt that Israel was freed. Cush and Seba are respectively the extreme south of Egypt and lands still further south. They are a poetical elaboration of the picture of the price paid. In your stead expresses one taking the place of another (Gen. 22:13; 1 Kgs 11:43). Israel was under sentence of death (Exod. 1:16, 22), but Egypt ‘died’ (Exod. 14:27, 31) instead. This past flows into the present, in which the Lord treasures his people (precious) and has not withdrawn their honoured position as his people. Consequently, for the future, not even humankind (men) itself nor all people (‘peoples’) would be too high a price.

5–7. I will bring: the wide reference to ‘humankind’ in verse 4 is now justified. The Lord foresees a worldwide scattering and a worldwide regathering. From all the compass points (5–6), embracing everyone of his people (7). My sons … daughters: right up to the End the Next-of-Kin relationship (1; Exod. 2:21) remains unchanged, and the initial thoughts of created and formed are enhanced by the added thought that, in so doing, the Lord purposed his own glory. Thus his honour is bound up with the final security of those whom he chose to be his people.

Motyer, J. A. (1999). Isaiah: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 20, pp. 302–303). InterVarsity Press.

What He will do

16–21. Isaiah derives his pictures from the Red Sea event (16–17; Exod. 14) and from the wonders of that earlier wilderness journey (19c–20; Exod. 15–17), but he issues an important reminder: the past can teach and illustrate but it must not bind (18–19b).

The Lord always has greater things in store; he is revealed in the past, but he is always more than the past revealed.

Made … drew: the verbs are participles in the Hebrew. What the Lord did then remains a changeless aspect of what he is: undeterred by opposing circumstances (16) or hostile people (17). Former things (18), i.e. the exodus, as in verse 9; new thing, i.e. the deliverance from Babylon, patterned on the exodus. My people, my chosen (20): ‘people’ is the relationship sealed at the exodus (Exod. 6:7); ‘chosen’ is the divine will behind and implementing it.

Formed: the motif of the potter means that we can face with confidence the troubles of life—even when, as here, we are the causes of our own misfortune by disobedience. The pressures of life are loving touches of the Craftsman’s hand as he perfects what he has planned.

Motyer, J. A. (1999). Isaiah: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 20, p. 306). InterVarsity Press.

Conclusion

As we encounter this new year, forging territory that might seem vaguely familiar (or completely unfamiliar), one thing remains true. God will show Himself strong on behalf of His people. He takes on our burdens (asks us to take His yoke upon us); He is in the midst of us; He has chosen to bind Himself to us as His people. In that we can take comfort that He will accomplish His good and great purposes in and around us.