Untitled Sermon (5)
There’s No Way Out!
Though the Lord had been silent for a lengthy period, He would come like a mighty warrior and lead His people back to their land, demonstrating His superiority to the pagan gods. He made it clear that spiritually unresponsive Israel had experienced His judgment and the hardships of exile because of their refusal to obey His law. Nevertheless, as their Creator He assured them of His continuing presence and supernatural protection. He would raise up the Persians, who would conquer Egypt but allow the Israelites to leave Babylon. Eventually all of God’s dispersed people would return to the promised land. Summoning His people as witnesses to His sovereignty over the events of history, the Lord declared His superiority to the gods of the nations.
Speaking as the Redeemer of Israel, who in former times had led His people out of their Egyptian bondage, the Lord announced a new exodus. He would free Israel from their Babylonian captivity and provide for their needs on the journey home. In the past their sinful deeds had invalidated their sacrifices and resulted in severe judgment. (Isa. 43:28 is better understood as a reference to past judgment.) But the Lord reminded them that He is the God who forgives sin. The Lord addressed Israel by its ancient name Jeshurun, which Moses applied to early Israel as the recipient of God’s blessings (Deut. 32:15; 33:5, 26). Like that earlier generation, exiled Israel would experience an outpouring of divine blessing. Again calling His people as witnesses, the Lord reaffirmed His superiority to all other gods. Certainly the nations’ idols could not compare with Him. With great sarcasm the Lord ridiculed idol worshipers. After cutting down a tree, people formed idols from some of the wood and with the rest made fires to cook their meat and warm themselves. They never stopped to think that their god and the wood used for such everyday tasks were made from the same substance.
In conclusion the Lord exhorted Israel to lay hold of His promise of restoration and forgiveness. In anticipation of Israel’s redemption, the prophet urged the entire universe to break out in song.
Following the declaration of Israel’s repatriation in 43:5–7, the Lord’s speech turns to a judicial inquiry mode similar to that found in chapter 41. There the Lord summoned nations and gods to the inquiry, to establish the fact of the gods’ powerlessness. Here the inquiry focuses on Israel as the Lord’s witnesses.
In the first stanza the declaration of God’s people as blind and deaf means that they are unmoved by the prophetic word (43:8–9a; cf. Lind, 1990:155). In spite of these impediments, however, they are called to appear in court. It is well known that the blind and deaf have or develop extraordinary powers of perception to compensate for the loss of sight and hearing.
In court the nations are challenged to produce witnesses to prove their case (43:9b). The gods of the nations are the implied witnesses whom the Lord invites to affirm the truth of his powerful word to interpret the past. The Lord expects no answer and receives none. Instead, he turns to his own blind and deaf people and declares that they are his witnesses, and they are also his servant (43:10a). Though blind and deaf to the prophetic word, their calling continues to lie in knowing and believing and understanding the Lord’s power behind the prophetic word. Knowing, believing, and understanding represent three significant ways of grasping this reality. I am he means that the Lord alone interprets past events in such a way that his word of power is seen in them.
The Lord’s uniqueness, which may be designated by the English noun monotheism, is the focus of the third stanza (43:10b–12a). Monotheism is the belief in but one God. In a world replete with gods, such a testimony declares that divine plurality is a fiction. The Lord does not intend to say that he was formed before the formation of the gods. The Lord was not formed at all but proclaims himself as uncreated and existing from the beginning (Whybray: 85). The word savior indicates the Lord’s character as one who delivers his people in time of need (BDB: 446–47).
In 43:12b–13 is a return to the focus of the inquiry: Jacob-Israel as the Lord’s witnesses to his oneness and saving power. The NIV follows the Hebrew text in placing the phrase I am God at the end of 43:12 rather than at the beginning of 43:13 (as in NRSV, JB). Brueggemann is right in pointing out the connection between the theological claim of the Lord and the witness of Israel. Without Israel’s witness that the Lord is God, the world will not grasp this saving claim (1998b:57).
The Hebrew adverb gam (Yes, NIV) introduces the climax of the section (43:13). With a repetition of the announcement I am he, the Lord rests his case that he is the only God (cf. Clements: 86, 61).
Doing a New Thing 43:14–28
The second part of the Lord’s discourse reflects on the new thing (see TBC) that the Lord is doing among his people after he has gathered them together. The first comment pictures the exiles on their way to a safe place (43:14–21). The second and third comments contemplate the persistent rebellion that brought on the exile, as well as the Lord’s saving grace within that rebellion (43:22–24, 25–28).
Verses 8–13 return to the courtroom scene introduced in chapter 41, with God’s calling Israel as witness to his unchallenged supremacy over the phony gods of pagan nations (v. 9; cf. 40:21–29). Verse 14 resumes the theme of Babylon’s downfall, foreshadowed in 41:2, 25 by God’s rousing of Cyrus the Persian. No longer should Israel look back to its ancestors’ miraculous exodus deliverance through the Red Sea, for a new set of divine wonders awaits in a “second exodus” from captivity in Babylon (vv. 16–21).
Only God’s determination to save his chosen people for the sake of his own name prevents defiant Israel from forfeiting all these plans for good (vv. 22–28). Fortunately for Israel, God’s justified frustration with the nation does not cancel out his gracious forgiveness of their sins. These transgressions go all the way back to their “first ancestor” (v. 27), a probable reference to Jacob, renamed “Israel” and forebear of the 12 Hebrew tribes. Only through this ill-deserved pardon could Israel hope to escape God’s total destruction (v. 28; cf. Joshua 6).
Ver. 11. I, even I, am the Lord, &c.] Jehovah, the self-existing, eternal, and immutable Being; this is doubled for the confirmation of it, and to exclude all others: and besides me there is no Saviour; either in a temporal or spiritual sense; the gods of the Heathens could not save them out of their present troubles, and much less save them with an everlasting salvation; none but God can do this, and this is a proof that Christ is God, since none but God can be a Saviour.
Ver. 12. I have declared, and I have saved, and I have shewed, &c.] The Targum is, “I have shewed to Abraham your father what should come to pass; I redeemed you out of Egypt, as I swore to him between the pieces; and I caused you to hear the doctrine of the law at Sinai.” But the sense is, that God had declared by his prophets, long before the Messiah came, that he would send him; that he should come and save his people by his obedience, sufferings, and death; accordingly he was come, and was the author of salvation; the Lord had wrought out salvation by him, as he had declared he would; and this he had shewn, published, and made known by the everlasting Gospel, preached among all nations: when there was no strange god among you; that assisted in this salvation; the arm of Christ alone wrought it out: or, and this is not strange among you; this work of salvation wrought out is not strange among you; it is well known unto you, being published in the Gospel.
Ver. 13. Yea, before the day was I am he, &c.] Before there was a day, before the first day of the creation; that is, before time was, or from all eternity, I am he that resolved upon and contrived this method of saving men; and ever since that day was, as it may be rendered, I am he that have spoken of it by all the prophets, from the beginning of the world, and now it is accomplished: and there is none can deliver out of my hand; either such whom the Lord determines to punish, or such whom he resolves to save; none can snatch them out of his hands, there they are safe: I will work, and who shall let it? as when he wrought the work of creation, there was no opposition to it, or hinderance of him; and in providence all things are done as he pleases; so all his purposes and decrees, which are his works within him, are exactly accomplished according to his pleasure, and none can resist his will. The work of redemption is finished just according to the draught of it in his eternal mind; and when he works upon the heart of a sinner at conversion, whatever obstructions and difficulties are in the way, these are removed, and the work is begun, and carried on, and performed, until the day of Christ. The work of the Lord in his churches, and the setting up of his kingdom in the world, in a more visible and glorious manner, shall be done, and none will be able to hinder it: who can turn it back? either his work, or his hand in working; his purposes cannot be disannulled; his power cannot be controlled; his work cannot be made void, or of no effect; he always succeeds, for he has no superior that can obstruct him.