The Covenant People of God

I have said this before and I do want to say it again. Paul, when he wrote to the Romans, was looking expectantly to being with them and the mutual enrichment and blessing that would come from his visit to them. You know that is always true if the messenger of God has the privilege of being God's instrument of blessing to the congregation. Muriel and I have felt the reciprocal blessing of just sharing in your praises and in your prayers. It's been a great joy these past three occasions that God has blessed us with being in your fellowship and we do want to thank him for that reciprocal blessing that we experience. Now our meditation tonight is on the covenant people of God and I was glad that Chip read from Hebrews 8 which shows the differences between the Old Testament covenant people of God and the New Testament covenant people of God. Those under The same covenant, but a new and a better covenant. But I'd like you to understand, as we expound this passage from Isaiah 43, that we are not dealing with the differences in the two covenant communities who are the same community, but we are dealing with their continuity. So bear that in mind. Also bear in mind that what we are reading in Isaiah 43, although Isaiah addressed the people in his day, he was also addressing the people in Babylon during the exile, which would have been approximately 100 years later than these words were written. So bear in mind as we read these words from verse 1 to verse 21, he is speaking primarily to a people 100 years ahead of his time in the land of Babylon, who seriously doubted ever being able to come out of that land and go back to their homeland. The chapter is entitled The Redeemer of Israel. But now thus says the Lord who created you, O Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flames scorch you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Sheba in your place. Since you were precious in my sight, you have been honored, and I have loved you. Therefore I will give men for you and people for your life. Fear not, for I am with you. I will bring your descendants from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, give them up, and to the south, do not keep them back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I have created for my glory. I have formed him, yes, I have made him. Bring out the blind people who have eyes and the deaf who have ears. Let all the nations be gathered together and let all the peoples be assembled, who among you can declare this, and show us the former things, let them bring out their witnesses, that they may be justified. Or, let them hear and say, it is the truth. That is, the things that God has done are true. Then verse 10, he speaks now to Israel, You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and besides me there is no other, there is no Saviour. I have declared and saved, I have proclaimed, and there was no foreign God among you. Therefore you are my witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God. Indeed, before the day was, I am He, and there is no one who can deliver out of my hand. I work, and who will reverse it? Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, for your sake I will send to Babylon, I will bring them all down as fugitives, Chaldeans who rejoice in their ships. I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea and a path through the mighty waters, who brings forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power, they shall lie down together, they shall not rise, they are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick. Do not remember the former things." That is what he's just mentioned, the exodus from Egypt. Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. Now it shall spring forth. Shall you not know it? I, even I, make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The beast of the field will honor me, and the jackals and the ostriches, because I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to give drink to my people, my chosen. This people I have formed for myself. They shall declare my praise." God bless the reading and the meditation of our hearts upon his words. Thoughtful people, whether Christians or non-Christians, come back again and again to some of the basic questions of life. What is it that gives me as a person any significance in the world? What is life on earth all about anyway? Is there any meaning to the historical process? And somehow, deep within our hearts, We long for clues to these mysteries. We long for a key that is going to open up the door to these secrets. And the passage before us here in Isaiah 43 throws a great deal of light on these basic questions. Is there any significance in life? What is the meaning of history? Does it have any meaning? And this passage tells us that God's great purpose in creation and in history is to gather a people for himself. A people who were there in the Old Testament, a believing people, and a people in the New Testament who are also a believing people. For there exists in the world this unique community, a people who are unlike any other people upon the earth, because God has uniquely committed Himself to them. As we saw this morning and again was read to us this evening, I can't tell how many times God repeats his covenant pledge. I will be their God and they shall be my people. So the pages of history are simply crammed with the rise and the fall of empires and nations and peoples. But only one people has survived the vicissitudes of time and become a worldwide people without losing their distinctiveness. Though they have become integrated and become multiracial and multinational, they never lose their distinctiveness. It is the people of God, the covenant people of God. A people to whom God has committed himself by that most solemn and eternal pledge. A people who before Jesus Christ were known as Israel, but a people who after Jesus Christ are sometimes known as the new Israel and sometimes as the church. A people who are the community of Jesus, but they are still the Israel of God. For this new international, this new interracial Christian community enjoys a direct continuity with the people of God of whom Isaiah is writing in this chapter. And so our text this evening is all about this unique covenant people of God. And I want you now to turn with me in the scriptures at that passage to the first verse. where Isaiah prophesying in the future to the people in exile, but now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name, you are mine. Obviously the creation of which Isaiah is speaking, or God is speaking through Isaiah here, is not the creation of the human race at the beginning of the world. It refers rather to the creation of a people for God right from the time of Abraham and his sons Isaac and Jacob. Jacob is particularly mentioned here, verse 1. Thus says Jehovah who created you, O Jacob. And you will notice that there are four parallel verbs that are used, because God says He created them, He formed them, He redeemed them, and He called them by their name. And as a result of this divine initiative, God can say, you are mine. And you know, that's a wonderful theme in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. In the reading this morning from, it's wonderful how God brings the right readings in for the things you are studying on a Sunday and brings various people into that mix, but in the passage that we read from Deuteronomy 7, again this theme came out. I hope you noticed it. that God speaks to the people there as his own special chosen people. But there is another verse in Exodus 19 verse 5 where God says, if you will keep my covenant you shall be a special treasure to me above all people and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Which you remember Peter takes up in his first epistle. But today we are reading these words in Isaiah 43 through Christian eyes, not through the Jewish eyes in exile, but through Christian eyes. And you know, Luther was right when he said, though we read the Bible forwards, we can only understand it backwards. We can only understand the Old Testament if we look at it through the eyes of the New Testament, where Jesus and his apostles apply these very truths of Israel in the Old Testament to the new Israel in the New Testament to the Church. Paul says, there is neither Jew nor Greek. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring and heirs according to the promise. So you and I, as Christians, are Abraham's children, not by blood, but by faith. And so Paul goes on to say in Galatians 6 near the end of the book, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation. Peter says, as I hinted just now, you are a chosen generation, speaking to us Christians, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people. He's using the very words that God uses in the Old Testament to Israel, to the Jewish nation. So, in the New Testament, we are everything that God made Israel in the Old Testament. There is this wonderful continuity. So that's the background. And friends, we have to understand it as we begin to dig into this chapter. It's an elementary biblical truth, I grant you, but once we understand it, it gives us an identity and it explains what life is all about, the significance of life on the earth for any Christian. Well, let's look at that community and we see first of all that it is a community of faith. The first thing Isaiah tells you in this passage is that the people of God are characterized not by fear, but by faith in Jehovah, by the very opposite. God says, verse 1, fear not. Why? Because I have created you, I have formed you, I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name. So, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the fire, you will not be scorched. And again, verse three, for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. And verse four, since you are precious in my sight and I love you, fear not, for I am with you. I like to call those five verses a fear not sandwich, for in between the two fear nots are all the reasons why we should not be afraid. I have created you to be my people. I have formed you, redeemed you, and called you. You are mine. And because you are mine, I will bring you home from Babylon, just as I brought your ancestors home from Egypt. When we get hold of that, and it sinks deep into our heart and our mind, then friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, we will never really be afraid, no matter what situation we find ourselves in the world. A people of God are a people of faith, not of fear. As Paul writes in Romans 8, if God is for us, in other words, if God is committed to us, who can be against us? Nobody can foil God's purpose for his people as his covenant people. Faith without fear, I say again, is a major characteristic of the people of God. The community of Jesus is a believing community. And so, when we come together like this, whether it's the morning or the evening, we are taking time to say in different ways, We believe in God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and in His Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, and in the new community that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have brought into being right from the time of Abraham until this very day. And in particular, we believe in this covenant, this pledge by which God has committed Himself to this people. I will be your God and you shall be my people. It is the same covenant and commitment that you and I celebrate every time we come to the Lord's table. And the officiant holds the cup up and says this, quoting the words of Jesus, this cup is the new covenant in my blood which was shed for many for the remission of sins. Such faith, I say, banishes fear and it begets confidence. No, not self-confidence, but confidence in God's commitment to his covenant people. Christian security is found not in the fact that we have committed ourselves as Christians and as a church to God, but in the fact that God in Christ has committed himself to us, his people. Now, of course, it is important that we as Christians be committed to God and remain committed to God and to Christ. But it is much more important to understand that having committed ourselves to God and to Christ, Christ, or God in Christ, has committed himself to us, and our security is based on that commitment of God. Now Israel, I say, needed to be reminded of God's commitment to them through the prophet Isaiah, because Jerusalem and the temple now had been destroyed, and the people were in captivity in Babylon. The life of the nation was in ruin. And in that situation, God now speaks through his servant to them, fear not, I created you, I formed you, I have redeemed you and called you by your name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. They shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned. You are precious in my sight and I have loved you. So that's the message that Israel needed at that particular time. And you know, the church needs to hear it today, especially that church, brethren. I don't know if we feel their suffering as much as we should, but that large portion of the church today, which has been persecuted in Islamic countries and communistic countries, It desperately needs to hear this message of Isaiah 43, that God will preserve his people because he is committed to them no matter what. Many tyrants have arisen during the course of Christian and church history and have tried to destroy the church. And some of these tyrants have recklessly predicted the demise of the church. Voltaire said so in the 18th century, and Marx in the 19th century, and his successors Stalin and Chairman Mao in the 20th century. Christianity is going to be eradicated, they said. It's only a couple of decades and you will hear no more about a Christian church But even though there were more martyrs during the 20th century, listen, than all the previous centuries combined, the church is stronger today than it ever was before. Why have our enemies not been able to destroy the covenant people of God? because God has committed himself to us. Let all the tyrants of the world oppose the church. Jesus is building it upon the rock of his person, his divinity, and his humanity, and upon his work, and not even the final enemy, death or Hades. will be able to destroy the church. So the church is the only eternal society in the world. The Ruatans, the Communist Party, the Republican Party, the Kiwanis, you can name them all. They are going, they are going to fade away. The only eternal society in the world is the community you and I belong to. So that's the first thing about the people of God. They are a community of faith who believe in God's commitment to bring them to their final home in glory. That commitment was made to the Old Testament believers and to New Testament believers. Secondly, they are a community of witness. In verse 8, the prophet Isaiah issues a summons. And he says, bring out the blind people who have eyes and the deaf people who have ears. And it appears from verse 9 that the blind people and the deaf people are those who are called the nations and the peoples. They are summoned to gather together. And Isaiah says, bring out your witnesses. And it's the first time in this entire prophecy, the first time that Isaiah uses the imagery of a law court. And he says, now come up, I want you to stand up and bear testimony that you saw all of these things that God has done for his people Israel. That's what he means by the former things. Predict them, stand up and show me when you saw these things and when you predicted them. Of course they cannot do it. They never knew, they never understood how with the call of Abraham and the covenant he made with Abraham, they never understood how such a large multitude that cannot be numbered would come out of that covenant. How God brought the Jews out of Egypt and how He confirmed His covenant with them at Mount Sinai. Now, says Isaiah, which of the nations in the world have predicted these things that God has done for His people? Which of the nations knew anything about what God was doing under their noses in history? Come along, he says, produce your witnesses. And of course, nobody replies. Because although they have eyes, they are blind. And though they have ears, they are deaf to what God has been doing in history. And when you are blind, and when you are deaf, you cannot be a witness. Witnesses are people who speak out of what they have heard and what they have seen. And because the nations are blind and deaf to what God has been doing in history, even today, they are dumb. Not only blind, not only deaf, but they are dumb. They have nothing to say. So, who are going to be God's witnesses in the world to these acts of redemption? And the answer is, only God's people. Verse 10, you, he speaks to Israel, are my witnesses. And again, verse 12, you are my witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God. Now, listen carefully. Only the people whom God has redeemed can be his witnesses. Nobody else can bear witness to the Redeemer but those who have heard the word of Jehovah and experienced the salvation of Jehovah. So what is the witness of the people of God? It is this, says Isaiah, that our God is the only God there is and He is the only Savior. The witness we have to bear in the world, the Jews in the Old Testament, Christians in the New Testament, is to this double uniqueness of our God. Verse 10, Before me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after me. Verse 11, I, even I, am the Lord, and besides me there is no Saviour. Do you see this double claim? to uniqueness, there is no God but Jehovah, and there is no Savior but He. Oh, to be sure, as Paul reminded the Corinthians, there are many gods and there are many lords among the lands and the peoples, but they are false gods. They are useless saviors. There is no God but the living and true God, who has revealed Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ, and there is no Savior other than the Son whom He sent to be the Savior of the world. So, although there are many ways of salvation and many gods touted, I say touted, by the multitude of ethnic religions in the world, they are all false. There is no God but Jehovah and no Savior but He who acted through Jesus Christ. Now, I know that there is Nothing in the gospel that people today outside of the church resent more than the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. For we insist that Jesus is the full and the final revelation of God, that he spoke the truth when he said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father, or no one comes to the Father except through me. That there is no salvation in any other, for as Peter says, there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. That Christian claim, cannot be surrendered. But so fierce is the world's opposition to this claim of Christ's uniqueness, that even some church leaders today, and I'm afraid to say more than some, many, have surrendered this uniqueness. They've become either syncretists, amalgamating, like the Universal Church, or the Universalist Church, syncretizing the various religions into one, or else they have become universalists, saying all religions are equal because all of them eventually are going to go to heaven. And you know, this very doctrine was preached in 1983 in July at the World Council of Churches in Vancouver. And you can hear it constantly today in the various liberal and ecumenical conferences that are conducted throughout the world. But you and I and the Christian community today, the evangelical community, we say no! Just as Israel bore witness in the pluralism of their society, we today bear witness in the pluralism of our society saying there is only one God and there is only one Savior, His Son. So the church must bear witness to this very unique this very unique attribute of Jesus Christ, that there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Now, why must we insist on this? Well, because our eyes have been opened and our ears have been unstopped. We have seen and heard the evidence of scripture that in no other person but in Jesus of Nazareth has God ever become flesh and taken our human nature to himself. And that in no other person but in Jesus of Nazareth has God borne the guilt and the sin and the condemnation of mankind. And in no other person but Jesus of Nazareth has God risen from the dead. and destroyed and abolished, as Paul says, the power of death. So in the incarnation and the atonement and the resurrection, to give them their theological names, we have the uniqueness of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is nothing even approaching these teachings in any of the ideologies or religions of mankind. And so besides the God who spoke and acted in Jesus Christ, we can say confidently, and we must affirm, there is no other Saviour. Therefore, just as Jehovah said to Israel, you are my witnesses because you have experienced my redemption from Egypt and you will experience it from Babylon. So Jesus says to us today, you are my witnesses to the uttermost parts of the earth. I say again, we can only witness to people out of what our eyes have seen and out of what our ears have heard and our hearts have experienced of the saving grace of God. And friends, let me finish this point by saying this is precisely what the world is waiting for, though they don't know it. They are waiting for us to show them the reality of Jesus Christ in our lives and His uniqueness. Our contemporaries want to meet the Christ who is alive and they come to us like those Greeks came to Philip on Palm Sunday and said, Sir, we want to see Jesus. Well, that's the challenge God puts before us as Christians. The same challenge He put to His covenant community in the Old Testament, that we must be His witnesses. And then thirdly, and quickly, the Church or the covenant people of God are a worshipping community. In verse 14, the Lord promises that just as He had previously taken His people out of Egypt, so now He will take them out of Babylon and restore them to the promised land. He brought their first exile to a close with a mighty act of redemption. And He will bring their second captivity to a close with another mighty act of redemption. Those are not my words, those are God's words. He promises them here, notice carefully, a second exodus. So tremendous. that it will eclipse even the first exodus. He says, verse 14, for your sake, I, your Redeemer, will send to Babylon. And he said, they will become fugitives. Just as they took you out of your land, I am going to drive them out of their land. Verse 16, thus says the Lord who makes, and it should be a past tense, thus says the Lord who made a way through the sea, that is the Red Sea, and a path in the mighty waters. But now, he says, verse 19, notice this, and there are many churches that have these words up on their front wall, I will do a new thing for you. I will even make a road in the wilderness, that is, the wilderness of Saudi Arabia. I made a way through the sea for your ancestors in Egypt. I am now going to make a way through the desert for you. And it will be such a wonderful deliverance, says God in verse 18, that You will no longer remember the exodus. You will no longer have the exodus to remember, or let me put it better this way, you will not just remember the exodus as a mighty act of redemption and give God praise for it, but also your redemption from the land of Babylon. Now, why is the Lord going to go to all of this trouble? Well, he says in verse 21, I'm going to do this, that the people I have formed for myself may declare my praise. They may glory in me for redeeming them from captivity. Suffice it to say that worship is the third thing that the new community exists for. You and I I find it stated equally clearly here in verses 6 and 7. I will say to the North, give them up, and to the South, do not keep them back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I have created for my glory. How clear this objective is. And friends, our existence as the people of God is not due to our doing, but to the initiative of God. And that's why redemption is at the very heart of Christianity. That God has liberated us, delivered us from our captivity. Whether for His people in the Old Testament, or from Egypt, or from Babylon, or for us in the New Testament, delivering us from the captivity of sin and all of its bondage, that is the essence of Christian worship. Verse 25, I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. And again verses 29 to 21, I will make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to give drink to my chosen people, the people I have formed for myself that they may declare my praise. So I say worship can never be peripheral in the life of the church. Worship is not an optional part of our Christian duty. It belongs to the very essence of who we are. as the people of God. We who have trusted in Christ, says Paul in Ephesians 1, should be to the praise of his glory. And so what we do on a Sunday when we come together is to verbalize in our prayers and in our songs and in our meditation of God's Word the continual attitude of reverence and adoration and of awe in the presence of God. Well, here are three things we've learned about the doings of God. First, He is creating a people. You can't understand history unless you understand that. You can't understand the significance of your life unless you understand that you are part of that community. And so you have real significance. And third, Second, God has committed himself to this people forever. He will bring us home to our final home, which is going to be glory. And third, the whole purpose of creating this new community is that while they are on earth, they may be for his praise and for his glory and may continue to be so in the hereafter. Now how do we conclude? Just a couple of straight questions and I won't keep you long. One, am I a member of this people? Are you? Has God called us to himself through Jesus Christ? Do you know beyond any doubt that you are a member of the people of God? Will you be able to sing in our next hymn that final verse which begins, Save your sins of Zion's city, I through grace a member am. Wonderful words. If you are able to sing that, I beg you, sing it with all the air in your lungs that you can muster. And my second question is, are we living as members of this new community of God. Because you see, whether we do what God says depends on whether we believe what God has said. If we believe that God has created us, redeemed us, formed us, and called us by our name, that we are precious in His eyes and that He loves us. I say, if we believe that, then it isn't difficult to listen to Him when He says, fear not. It doesn't matter if you're being persecuted, if your church leaders are being thrown into jail and are being killed. It doesn't matter if you're being made a widow and the breadwinner in the family is martyred for the sake of Jesus Christ. Fear not. How can you be afraid if you believe these things that I am saying about you? And again, when God has done this new thing for us in delivering us from the guilt and the bondage of our sin, and finally from the very presence of sin, when he takes us to be with himself in glory, then we have reason to be his witnesses of salvation in the earth. And when God says, I created and redeemed you for my glory, it isn't difficult for us to give him our praise and our worship, is it? Worship, witness and faith arise naturally out of what we are. If we believe what God says, we are. His demands are not unreasonable, they arise out of the truth of what he has done in redemption for his people in the Old Testament and in the New. O may God enable us to live as consistent members of his believing, witnessing, and worshipping community, who in that redeemed community find our identity and our significance in the passage of history. Let's pray. Our gracious God and Father, we We thank you that we are indeed members of this community of Zion, whose history we see through all the pages of the Old Testament and right into the New Testament. We thank you that we are the children of Abraham by faith, that we are the new Israel of God, that we are the heavenly Jerusalem, the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ, and our Father Our prayer this evening is, make us the believing, witnessing, worshipping people you desire us to be. And we will give you all the praise and all the glory in Jesus' name. Amen.