Isaiah 43

Today’s Passage: Isaiah 43

After a chapter that ended with a people bruised and burned by their own rebellion, the LORD turns and speaks two words that change everything: “But now.” Here is some of the tenderest language in all of Scripture. The God who made Israel bends down over His frightened, exiled people and tells them not to be afraid, because He has redeemed them and called them by name, and they are His own. He promises to be with them through the deepest waters and the hottest fire, for He is their Savior, and beside Him there is no other. He gathers His sons and daughters from the ends of the earth, calls them His witnesses to a watching world, and announces that He is about to do a brand-new thing, cutting a road through the wilderness and pouring rivers into the desert. And though they have wearied Him with their sins rather than their sacrifices, He declares the astonishing thing He does for His own name’s sake: He blots out their transgressions and remembers their sins no more.

As you read, hold this: The redeemed belong to God by name, and He is with them through every flood and fire, for He alone is Savior and He blots out their sins for His own name’s sake.

Isaiah 43:1–3 (BSB)

¹ But now, this is what the LORD says—He who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine!

² When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you go through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched; the flames will not set you ablaze.

³ For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your place.

Slow down at those first two words, “But now,” and let them do their work, because they turn the whole page. The chapter before closed on a people handed over to loss, and here God does not leave them there. He speaks, and the very first thing He reaches for is His own hands: He created them, He formed them, they are His own workmanship, and a maker does not throw away what he has lovingly shaped. Then come the words that have carried more trembling souls than we could ever count: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed (גֹּאֵל) goel, pronounced go-ALE. Strong's H1350, kinsman-redeemer, one who redeems or avenges on behalf of a relative. This is a warm, family word before it is ever a theological one. The goel was the kinsman-redeemer, the near relative who took responsibility for one of his own who had fallen on ruin, buying back the field that had been lost or the person who had been sold into slavery, paying the debt out of his own pocket because that was what love in a family did. You meet him beautifully in the book of Ruth, where Boaz steps forward to redeem Naomi’s line and take Ruth as his own. Now hear the wonder of it: the LORD says He has done this for His people. He is not a distant deliverer but a near kinsman who has come to buy them back and bring them home, and He counts the cost as nothing beside the worth of the ones He loves. This is the very heart of the gospel drawn centuries ahead of time, for the same God would one day pay the ransom in His own Son. To be redeemed is to be someone’s again, bought at a price, called by name, and told, “you are Mine.” Praise God that He would stoop to be our Redeemer. you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine.” Notice He does not promise them a road with no waters and no fire. He promises something better. He promises Himself in the waters and in the fire. The flood will not close over their heads and the flames will not consume them, not because the trial is small, but because the God who is with them is great. And why? Because He is “the Holy One of Israel,” their Savior, the God who spends whole nations to buy His people back. What a thing to praise Him for, that the Holy One should call frail people His own and walk with them straight into the deep.

Isaiah 43:4–7 (BSB)

⁴ Because you are precious and honored in My sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you and nations in place of your life.

⁵ Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east and gather you from the west.

⁶ I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back!’ Bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth—

⁷ everyone called by My name and created for My glory, whom I have indeed formed and made.”

Here God gives the reason behind the ransom, and it is almost too tender to bear. It is not that His people had earned it or proved their worth. It is simply this: “you are precious and honored in My sight, and because I love you.” That is the whole of it. He loves them, and love does not count the cost. So He speaks like a Father whose children have been scattered to the four winds, and He commands the horizons themselves to give them back. To the east and the west, to the north and the south He calls, “Give them up, do not hold them back, bring My sons and My daughters from the ends of the earth.” Not one of them will be left behind in a far country. And see the reason it all holds together in verse seven: they are “called by My name and created for My glory.” That is what we are for. We were made to bear His name and to shine back His worth, and when He gathers His own from every corner of the earth, He is gathering a people who exist to praise Him. Let that lift your heart. You are not an accident and not a burden. You are precious to Him, loved by Him, and made for His glory.

Isaiah 43:8–13 (BSB)

⁸ Bring out a people who have eyes but are blind, and who have ears but are deaf.

⁹ All the nations gather together and the peoples assemble. Who among them can declare this, and proclaim to us the former things? Let them present their witnesses to vindicate them, so that others may hear and say, “It is true.”

¹⁰ “You are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you may consider and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, and after Me none will come.

¹¹ I, yes I, am the LORD, and there is no Savior but Me.

¹² I alone decreed and saved and proclaimed—I, and not some foreign god among you. So you are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “that I am God.

¹³ Even from eternity I am He, and none can deliver out of My hand. When I act, who can reverse it?”

Now the scene shifts to a great open court, and God calls the nations and their idols to the stand. He throws down a challenge no false god can meet: which of you ever foretold what would come, or announced beforehand the things that have now come to pass? The silence of the idols is their conviction. Then, wonderfully, God turns to His own people, the very people He has just called blind and deaf, and He says, “You are My witnesses.” That is grace of a high order, that He would take stumbling, half-seeing people and make them the ones who testify to the world that He alone is God. And what a testimony they carry, ringing out in verse eleven like a bell: “I, yes I, am the LORD, and there is no Savior but Me.” There is no other. Not one god was formed before Him and none will come after; from eternity He is, and no power in heaven or earth can snatch anything out of His hand. When He acts, who can undo it? This is the God we get to know and proclaim, the only Savior there has ever been or will ever be. To read these verses rightly is to want to worship.

Isaiah 43:14–17 (BSB)

¹⁴ Thus says the LORD your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “For your sake, I will send to Babylon and bring them all as fugitives, even the Chaldeans, in the ships in which they rejoice.

¹⁵ I am the LORD, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, and your King.”

¹⁶ Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea and a path through the surging waters,

¹⁷ who brings out the chariots and horses, the armies and warriors together, to lie down, never to rise again; to be extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:

God now names the very empire His people will one day dread, Babylon, and promises that for their sake He will bring even the proud Chaldeans low. He stacks up His titles like a king announcing Himself: “your Redeemer,” “the Holy One of Israel,” “the Creator of Israel,” “your King.” Every one of them is a reason to trust Him. And then He calls to mind the greatest rescue in their history, the exodus, when He carved a dry road straight through the sea and drowned the pride of Egypt behind them, its chariots and horses and warriors snuffed out like a spent candle wick. He reminds them of it for a reason. The God who split the sea once is the same God speaking now, and He has not weakened with the years. When your King has already made a highway through the deep and laid the mightiest army down to rise no more, you can face whatever waters lie ahead. But then He says something that turns even the exodus into an appetizer, and we come to it next.

Isaiah 43:18–21 (BSB)

¹⁸ “Do not call to mind the former things; pay no attention to the things of old.

¹⁹ Behold, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

²⁰ The beasts of the field will honor Me, the jackals and the ostriches, because I provide water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to My chosen people.

²¹ The people I formed for Myself will declare My praise.

Having just recalled the exodus, God now says the most surprising thing: do not dwell on it. Not because it did not matter, but because what He is about to do will be so great that the old wonder will look small beside it. “Behold, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it?” Where once He made a way through the sea, now He will make a way through the wilderness itself and pour rivers into the desert, turning the very place of death and thirst into a road home flowing with water. This is God’s way. He does not merely repeat His old mercies; He outdoes them. And look at the reach of it: even the wild creatures, the jackals and the ostriches, will honor Him for the water He brings, and His chosen people will drink and live. Then comes the golden purpose of the whole rescue, the line to write over your life in verse twenty-one: “The people I formed for Myself will declare My praise (תְּהִלָּה) tehillah, pronounced teh-hee-LAH. Strong's H8416, praise, a song of praise. This is the word for praise, for a song of praise, for the renown and glory that rightly belong to God, and it is the very word that gives the book of Psalms its Hebrew name, Tehillim, the Praises. When God says His people are formed to declare His tehillah, He is telling us the deepest reason we exist. We were not made merely to be kept safe or to be comfortable, but to give back to God the praise He is worth, to be living witnesses whose whole lives sound out His glory. There is a beautiful order in this chapter: first He redeems, then He is with us through the waters and the fire, then He does the new thing, and out of all that flows praise, welling up like the rivers He pours into the desert. A redeemed heart cannot stay silent. Having tasted so great a salvation from so great a Savior, it must declare His tehillah. And here is the sweetness of it: the praise God asks of us is the very thing that makes us most fully alive. We are never more truly ourselves than when we are declaring the praise of the God who formed us for Himself. .” That is why He redeems, why He gathers, why He makes rivers run in the sand. He forms a people so that they will praise Him. Praising God is not a chore laid on top of salvation; it is the very thing salvation is for.

Isaiah 43:22–24 (BSB)

²² But you have not called on Me, O Jacob, because you have grown weary of Me, O Israel.

²³ You have not brought Me sheep for burnt offerings, nor honored Me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings, nor wearied you with frankincense.

²⁴ You have not bought Me sweet cane with your silver, nor satisfied Me with the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened Me with your sins; you have wearied Me with your iniquities.

After all that soaring comfort, the LORD speaks a sober and honest word, and we must not skip past it, because it makes the mercy that follows shine all the brighter. His people, He says, have grown weary of Him. They have not called on Him, not truly honored Him with their worship. His complaint is not that His requirements were heavy, for He points out that He never wore them out with endless demands. The problem was never the weight of the law; it was the coldness of the heart. And then comes the aching reversal in verse twenty-four. God had asked so little of them, yet they had given Him something they were never meant to give: “you have burdened Me with your sins; you have wearied Me with your iniquities.” Read that slowly. The people who grew tired of God had, all the while, been laying the tiresome weight of their sins upon Him. It is a picture of the whole human problem, that we withhold from God the praise He deserves and hand Him instead the burden of our rebellion. And it sets the stage perfectly for the most astonishing sentence in the chapter.

Isaiah 43:25–28 (BSB)

²⁵ I, yes I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake and remembers your sins no more.

²⁶ Remind Me, let us argue the matter together. State your case, so that you may be vindicated.

²⁷ Your first father sinned, and your spokesmen rebelled against Me.

²⁸ So I will disgrace the princes of your sanctuary, and I will devote Jacob to destruction and Israel to reproach.”

Right on the heels of that sad indictment, before His people can say a word in their defense, God speaks pure gospel: “I, yes I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake and remembers your sins no more.” Marvel at every part of it. He blots them out, wiping the record so clean it is as if it were never written. He does it “for My own sake,” not because they have earned it or could ever earn it, but because it is His glory to be a forgiving God, His nature to show mercy, His name that is at stake in saving sinners. And He remembers their sins “no more,” choosing never again to hold against them what He has covered. When He invites them in the next breath to argue their case, He knows they have none; the previous verses have shown they cannot plead innocence. Their first father sinned, their leaders rebelled, and justice would rightly bring reproach. Yet the great word of the chapter is not the deserved judgment of verse twenty-eight but the undeserved pardon of verse twenty-five. That is the wonder we are left holding: a holy God who, for the honor of His own name, blots out the sins of a people who had only wearied Him with them. If ever there were a reason to break into praise, this is it.