Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2167
“I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Sa vior: I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for you.” Isaiah 43:3.
IN this chapter the Lord comforts His people. By His Divine foresight He perceives that there are great and varied trials a little way ahead and therefore He prepares them for the ordeal. They are to go through rushing waters and flaming fires and He kindly bids them not to be afraid. How often in God’s Word do we read those tender, gracious words, “Fear not”? Should not the trembling ones listen to the voice of their God and obey it when He says to them, “Fear not”? It is not right for you who fear God to fear anything else. Once brought to know the Lord, what can harm you? Abiding under the shadow of the Almighty, what danger need you dread? No, rather, be of good comfort and press forward with peaceful confidence though floods and flames await you.
To encourage His people to rise superior to their fears, the gracious God goes on to issue matchless promises— “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.” Present good—“I will be with you.” Absent danger—“they shall not overflow you.” God stays His people’s hearts by His own promises. In proportion to their faith those promises lift them up. If you do not believe the promise, you shall not be established by it. But if, with childlike confidence, you accept every Word of God as true, then His Word shall be to you the joy of your heart and the delight of your spirit—and you shall be a stranger to fear.
The Lord proceeds, after giving those promises, to set before them what He Himself is and what He has done for them and what they are to Him. He is speaking, of course, to Israel—and He says of Israel, His chosen nation—“I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for you.” What cause for fear now remains? All Believers are of the true Israel. Abraham was the father of the faithful. The faithful, or the believing, are, therefore, Abraham’s seed according to the promise. The seed was not after the flesh, else would the children of Ishmael have been the heirs of the Covenant. But the true seed was born according to promise and in the power of God, for Isaac was born when his parents were old, by faith in the power of God.
Isaac was not the child of the flesh, but he was born according to promise, so that we who are not born of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God, by His Spirit and according to the Divine promise, are the true children of Abraham. We are the spiritual Israel. Though after the flesh Abraham is ignorant of us and Sarah acknowledge us not, yet we are the true seed of him who was the father of Believers. The literal Israel was the type of those chosen and favored ones who by faith are born-again according to promise. To these heirs according to promise the Lord says, “I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for you.”
I am sure I shall not be straining the passage if I now apply it wholly to the chosen of God. But if any of you feel staggered at my use of that term, I would remind you that the chosen of God are made known by their believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith is the sure evidence of election. If, therefore, you are a believer in Christ, you are of the true Israel. “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” And being born of God, you are of the family of His love—you are heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ. If you are not believers in Him, what can I preach to you that can comfort you? The unbelieving, living and dying such, have no portion in the Covenant of Grace. If you believe not, you must perish. The promise is given to obedient faith only—“He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be damned.”
If this day you become Believers, you have, in that faith, the token and mark of the Divine choice and you assuredly belong to the Israel of God! Every heavenly blessing which God promises to Israel belongs to you who are in Christ Jesus and so are in union with the promised seed.
Coming to our text, I shall ask you, first, to listen to the Lord’s declaration of His own name— “I am Jehovah your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” When you have carefully listened to that solemn name and learned something from it, then I will ask you to note the Lord’s estimate of His people. What does He think of them? What price does He set upon them? “I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for you.” When we have wondered a while at this, we shall briefly consider the outcome of this very wonderful statement of God’s value of His people. They are precious in His sight and He loves them and therefore He will withhold no good thing from them.
I. First, I pray you, LISTEN TO THE LORD’S DECLARATION OF HIS OWN NAME. May the Holy Spirit open our ears to hear to profit! He says, “I am Jehovah your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” He gives His name thus at large to distinguish Himself from the false gods. Other things there were, which men called gods and these had names, though, indeed, they had no being, but were the creatures of man’s imagination and fear. God, the living God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, sets forth His own name and title that there may be no mistake as to who He is. “I am the LORD,” He says, “and My Glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to engraved images.”