Isaiah 43: Called and cared for

Major Catherine Smith suggests that knowing we are prized makes a difference.

Key texts

• Isaiah 43:1-13

Do not fear… Do not be afraid’, the Lord says in verses 1 and 5 of our study passage. When a person is anxious, the worst thing to say might be: ‘Don’t be afraid!’

The group of exiles Isaiah addresses have plenty to make them fearful, including God’s displeasure at their fickleness (see Isaiah 42:21–25). Even in the midst of their sense of fear and abandonment, Isaiah’s opening words – ‘But now’ (v1) – make his hearers pay attention to God’s voice. God communicates that he cares – he has picked and protected them, he prizes them, even as he called them home and commissions them to testify to truth.

Monday 19 January has been called ‘Blue Monday’. It’s said to be the year’s most emotionally difficult day. Moving into this week, let’s heed God’s voice via Isaiah. Reflecting the story of Creation in Genesis, God starts by reminding his people that he created and formed them.

Pause and reflect

• Spend time reminding yourself that you are created and formed by God.
• How does that impact your emotional state today?

God reminds these exiled people that they are redeemed. In the Westminster Bible Companion on Isaiah 40–66, Walter Brueggemann intimates this language has the sense of a family intervention, ‘whereby a stronger member of the family intervenes to assure the wellbeing of a weaker member’.

God has called them by name. They are known intimately. Their lives have meaning to God. God said to them: ‘You are mine.’ Therein lies a sense of belonging. This nation is not an accident; it is God’s chosen handiwork.

In reading Scripture as a personal guide, we can miss the depths of God speaking to a community. There are communities today, maybe your own, that need to know they are not forgotten. Indeed, that God continues to see them even if they have acted without reference to his presence.

What does the Church do to remind communities that God continues to redeem people, call them by name, and choose them as named family members?

Pause and reflect

• How might your congregation share an ‘intervention’ with another part of the community?
• Who in your community needs to be named as being seen and known by God?
• Where can your congregation do better at helping others to belong?

God is mindful of his people’s experiences. Our study passage speaks of overwhelming experiences: ‘When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you’ (v2). The idea of water would have resonated with what God did at the Red Sea and the Jordan. God’s people will go through challenges. God has protected them before and there is the promise of future presence. Psalm 46:1 affirms: ‘God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.’

In his book When Faith Gets Shaken, Patrick Regan confesses: ‘When I’m in pain, and I see those around me suffering, I sometimes lose sight of God. But when I strip everything back … I realise that I need to look again at the person of Jesus… He doesn’t leave us on our own … he’s desperate for us to know how much he loves us.’ How much we need reminding of that fact today!

Pause and reflect

• Recall a time when God was with you through a difficult time. Share your story with someone.
• Invite Jesus into a situation you know about. Use Scripture to speak God’s presence and protection into the challenge.

We might find verses 3 and 4 a tricky read: ‘I give Egypt for your ransom… I will give … nations in exchange for your life.’ It sounds like God is prepared to trade one group of people for another. The intention, however, is to convey to this little band of failed followers that they are deeply important to God. That is the message of the passage that uses contextual practices to communicate an incredible truth to a people who had perhaps forgotten that they were precious, honoured and loved by God.

Earlier this year, I was mentoring a young asylum seeker. He carried a painful story of oppression and abandonment. When his bike was stolen from the hostel he was staying in, he was distraught. Through the generosity of Recycles at Ilford Corps, we replaced it. He said to me: ‘I thought no one cared, but God answered my prayer.’ Society told him he was not wanted. But God prizes him.

Pause and reflect

• Who are the most ‘abandoned’ people in your community?
• How can your church demonstrate to them that they are precious, honoured and loved by God?

Many exiled people take hope from verses 5 to 7, which pronounce God’s desire to release and restore the people back into community again: ‘I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west’ (v5).

Verses 8 to 13 go on to remind them that they are to testify to the truth and be his witnesses. They have failed by trusting anything and anyone other than God. Now, God calls them back to truth and commissions them to witness to it: ‘I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no saviour’ (v11).

Today, we see this passage fully fleshed out through Jesus. There are distractions, and the new year presents many ways to live a better life. Yet, Jesus reminds us: ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (John 8:31 and 32). Isaiah tells us to witness to the truth of who God is.

However you are feeling today, pay attention to the fact that God cares, calls you home, and commissions you to tell others his truth.