Isaiah 43:3

EVEN down to the present day, the Jewish nation has not been destroyed. It has been made to pass through fire and through water. The story of the persecution of the Jews, both in earlier and later times, would fill many volumes with the most harrowing details. Had they not been a people whom God specially ordained to remain as His witnesses until the Messiah comes again, they would have utterly perished from among the sons of men! They have been a people scattered and peeled, rent and torn, hunted and harried—yet they still exist.

WHEN two Christians met together who were sitting under a very lean and starving ministry, one of them comforted his fellow concerning the miserable discourse by saying, "Never mind, my Friend, there is not much in the sermon, but the text is a feast by itself." So, this morning, if my words should seem to be very poor and powerless, what fullness there is in these three texts! Here you have a dainty meal of three courses.

WHEN two Christians met together who were sitting under a very lean and starving ministry, one of them comforted his fellow concerning the miserable discourse by saying, "Never mind, my Friend, there is not much in the sermon, but the text is a feast by itself." So, this morning, if my words should seem to be very poor and powerless, what fullness there is in these three texts! Here you have a dainty meal of three courses. You ought to be well nourished this morning, for I have set before you, in these passages of Scripture, quite as much as the largest capacity will be able to mark, learn and inwardly digest. Here is good pasture for the flock, wherein they may not only feed, but lie down! Did you say, "Too much text?" Possibly you might, on other occasions, reproach me with having too little of God's Word and too much of my own, but there can be no fault the other way—the more of the Word of the Lord the better! What is man's word compared with God's Word? It is as chaff to the wheat, at worst, and as mere gold-leaf to solid bullion at best! Indeed, my word is of no value at all, except as it is made up of the essence of the Divine Word. Far better than our best exposition is the Word itself—this is the pure light of the sun—ours is but a poor candle! Of the Scripture itself we cannot have too much. If you derive no other profit from this assembling of yourselves together but to have your earnest attention directed to this precious part of Holy Writ, if the Spirit of God is with you, your meditations will make this a profitable hour! Notice concerning these three texts that they are very much alike in this respect—they are each addressed to God's people under the names of Jacob and Israel.

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"?

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.

Beloved Friends, there are many lights in which we can see sin. And our perception of sin very much depends upon the light in which we look at it. Sin is very terrible by the blaze of Sinai, when the mountain of Law and terrors is altogether on a smoke. It is a dreadful thing to look at sin when God speaks in thunder and all the earth trembles before Him. It is an awful thing to see sin by the light of your dying day. More terrible, still, will it be to see it by the light of the Judgment Day. When Abraham rose up early in the morning and looked towards Sodom, it was a lurid light that met his gaze as he saw the guilty cities blazing and smoking up towards Heaven like a vast furnace. To see sin in that light is a solemn thing. But of all the lights that ever fall upon sin, that which makes it, "like itself appear," is that which falls upon it when it is set in the light of God's Countenance. To see sin by the light of God's Love, to read its awful character by the light of the Cross—beholding Christ bleeding and dying—is the way to see sin. Nothing makes us feel sin to be so vile and guilty a thing as when we realize that it was perpetrated against the God of Infinite Love. I am going to speak at this time mainly concerning God's own people. They are to be the direct object of my talk, and I want to set their sins in the light of God's Love to them. I mean, Beloved, your sins and my own. Let us set our sin in the light of God's eternal Love and if the sight should break us down, so much the better. If it should send us away humbled and ashamed, so much the better. And if it should make us praise eternal love beyond anything we have ever done before, so much the better. My one objective will be to set before you the contrast between God's action towards His people and His people's usual action towards Him.

Beloved Friends, there are many lights in which we can see sin. And our perception of sin very much depends upon the light in which we look at it. Sin is very terrible by the blaze of Sinai, when the mountain of Law and terrors is altogether on a smoke. It is a dreadful thing to look at sin when God speaks in thunder and all the earth trembles before Him. It is an awful thing to see sin by the light of your dying day.

EVEN down to the present day, the Jewish nation has not been destroyed. It has been made to pass through fire and through water. The story of the persecution of the Jews, both in earlier and later times, would fill many volumes with the most harrowing details. Had they not been a people whom God specially ordained to remain as His witnesses until the Messiah comes again, they would have utterly perished from among the sons of men! They have been a people scattered and peeled, rent and torn, hunted and harried—yet they still exist. For many a century they were equally abhorred by the heathen and the so-called Christians, yet they have lived on and they will continue to live on until a new heart and a right spirit shall be given to them and the Lord shall, in His great mercy, take away the blindness which in part has happened to Israel, so that they shall look on Him whom they have pierced and shall mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son. Then shall come the glory of the Gentiles, when more than the former glory of Israel shall be restored to her. But, Brothers and Sisters, every promise in the Scriptures, of a spiritual nature, which is made to the literal people of Israel and to the seed after the flesh, is, according to the Inspired teaching of the Apostle Paul, yet more fully made to the seed of Abraham after the spirit—for all Believers are his spiritual seed. Was he not the father of all the faithful, not of the circumcision only, but of them, also, who are uncircumcised, if they trust in the living God? To us, then, as well as to the literal Israel, is this promise made. And to the Church of God, as a whole, will it be fulfilled, even as it has been fulfilled to her thus far. Her martyrologists have told us how often she has gone through fire and through water, but the floods have not drowned her, neither have the flames consumed her.

I gave Egypt for thy ransom - This is commonly supposed to refer to the time of Sennacherib’s invasion; who, when he was just ready to fall upon Jerusalem, soon after his entering Judea, was providentially diverted from that design, and turned his arms against the Egyptians, and their allies the Cushean Arabians, with their neighbors the Sabeans, probably joined with them under Tirhakah. See Isa 20:1-6 and Isa 37:9. Or as there are some reasonable objections to this opinion, perhaps it may mean more generally that God has often saved his people at the expense of other nations, whom he had, as it were in their stead, given up to destruction. Vitringa explains this of Shalmaneser’s designs upon the kingdom of Judea after he had destroyed that of Samaria, from which he was diverted by carrying the war against the Egyptians, Cusheans, and Sabeans; but of this I think he has no clear proof in history. It is not to be wondered at that many things of this kind should remain very obscure for the want of the light of history, which in regard to these times is extremely deficient. “Did not Cyrus overcome these nations? and might they not be given for releasing the Jews? It seems to have been so from Isa 45:14.” - Secker. Kimchi refers all this to the deliverance of Jerusalem from the invasion of Sennacherib. Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, had come out to war against the king of Assyria, who was there-upon obliged to raise the siege of Jerusalem. Thus the Ethiopians, Egyptians, and Sabeans were delivered into the hands of the Assyrians as a ransom for Israel. - Kimchi. I cannot help thinking this to be a very rational solution of the text.

For I am the Lord thy God - This verse continues the statement of the reasons why he would protect them. He was Yahweh their God. He was not only the true God, but he was the God who had entered into solemn covenant with them, and who would therefore protect and defend them. The Holy One of Israel - It was one of his characteristics that he was the God of Israel. Other nations worshipped other gods.