Called, Created, Formed, Made

Isaiah 43 and the Promise to God’s People

You'll turn with me, please, in your Bibles to Isaiah, Chapter 43,. Isaiah, Chapter 43 will be our text for this evening. Let us begin with verse one, but now that says Yahweh, your creator, O Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel, do not fear for I have redeemed you.

I have called you by name.

You are mine.

When you pass the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overflow.

You.

When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you. For I am Yahweh, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I have given Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in your place.

Since you are precious in my sight, since you are honored and I love you, I will give other men in your place and other peoples in exchange for your life. Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bring your offspring from the east and gather you from the west.

I will say to the north, give them up, to the south, do not hold them back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name and whom I have created for my glory, whom I have formed, even whom I have.

Made.

Amen.

Deutero-Isaiah, the False Gods, and the Historical Setting

This section of Isaiah's prophecy, I suppose I should warn you ahead of time, if you go to a commentary, this section of Isaiah, I will warn you ahead of time if you go to commentaries and things like that, almost any commentary written in the past 200 years will call this deutero-Isaiah.

And that is because in the majority of modern commentaries, primarily based upon a naturalistic assumption, because there becomes so much specific discussion of Cyrus and the captivity and things like that, and prophets can't know what's happening in the future.

So this must have been written after that, and so this is written by someone pretending to be Isaiah, and it was attached to the later point, so on and so forth. And so when you buy those commentaries, you go to various places.

That's what you will encounter at that time. But leaving that aside, this section of Isaiah, especially chapters 40 -48, we have visited many times before, and I have styled it the Trial of the False Gods.

The Trial of the False Gods. And you have some of the most amazing material here in regards to demonstrating who the true God is over against the false gods of the peoples. Tremendous material, especially if you're dealing with Mormons and things like that, this is where you want to go.

Called by His Name, Created for His Glory

But I wanted to focus just briefly this evening before our prayer time, and evidently some activities even thereafter, on just one verse, and that's Isaiah 43 -7. I look at it again. Everyone who is called by my name, and whom I have created for my glory, whom I have formed, and even whom I have made.

Now, we are always intent on accurately representing the text of Scripture, and there is no question that when you read from Isaiah 43 -1 to Isaiah 43 -7, the initial context of these comments has to do with God redeeming his people Israel, and specifically bringing them back from captivity.

And gathering them together once again. But, obviously, we ask the question, is there not a general biblical theme that this gathering together of the people of God is to be seen especially fulfilled in the gathering of God's elect from all the nations together.

And that many of the promises that are made in the Scriptures can only truly be seen as being fulfilled as far as the knowledge of God going all over the earth and so on and.

So forth.

Not in the gathering of the Jews for just a couple of hundred years prior to the time of Christ there in Israel, but is seen in a much greater proportion in the gospel and in the church and in the fulfillments therein.

And so, when we look at this seventh verse, I want you to notice a few terms that I think are very, very important. You see the term called, and we Calvinists immediately start thinking of tulips and things like that, but realize that that term can have many meanings and many applications in.

Scripture.

Here, it is called by my name, and hence you would have much more of an identification of a certain people, and they're being identified as the people of Yahweh, the people of God. You'll notice that when I read it, I read the Tetragrammaton, so you could hear the divine name that was there, and hence called by my name, this would be Yahweh's people.

But then you have three terms that are used, three terms that appear in this particular verse that I think are very, very important to us. Whom I have created for my glory, whom I have formed, even whom I have made.

Now these three Hebrew terms used throughout, of course, the text of the Old Testament, and here the author weaves them together, and when in the Hebrew Old Testament, and we see this all the time reading through the Psalter, and depending on which English translation you're looking at, you will see that most modern translations will place some segments of Isaiah, most segments of Isaiah, in poetic form.

But then all of a sudden, you'll have a paragraph that's just in prose form. It's not indented, it's not broken into the poetic form. Now obviously that's an editor's choice, it's not like you're looking back at Hebrew manuscripts and Hebrew manuscripts are written in modern poetic form or something like that.

This is the editor looking at the way that the text is written and seeking to identify particular marks of poetry, and of course most of the Psalms, all the Psalms, are in that form as well. There might be a paragraph where something is described as a background or something like that, but these are, this is poetry.

And not necessarily in the same way that we would understand poetry with rhyme and meter, but it will have similar characteristics to it. In Hebrew, you have something called Hebrew parallelism. And so many times, you will remember in the Psalter, you will have what sounds like pretty much the same phrase repeated in different words.

And this is the author's way of providing color to the language that he's using. Rather than just saying it once, he'll say it twice and he'll use synonyms or he'll use words that their ranges of meaning will coincide.

And so this is the area of meaning that he's specifically looking for, that he's specifically seeking to communicate to us. And so here, when you have these three terms that are used of God as creator, God as maker, being put together, this is something very important to notice.

The People of God, His Exclusive Ownership, and His Name

Now, it's talking about a people, but it also talks about a people as a whole. Everyone who is called by my name, everyone who has relationship with Yahweh God. And so you really could put all four terms together, called, created, formed and made.

Called, created, formed and made. Now, what is this promise? This promise is God says, I am going to gather my people together, even though it looks to you, it looks to you and it certainly looks from any human perspective.

I mean, think about what it was like when the people in captivity years later read these words and said, oh, God knew what God knew what situation you're going to be in. And God had a plan and God had a purpose and and the promise that he's given is that everyone who is called by the name of Yahweh, that people, they God has created that people for his glory.

And he has formed that people, he has made that people. It sounds like God has a purpose in all that is taking place and and all that has happened to us, and he's provided to us even before we knew that we would need these promises, knew that we would need this provision, God has provided promises for us in his word.

But notice this for a specific people called by my name, called by the name of Yahweh, they are not afraid of their commitment to God and their commitment to Yahweh is an exclusive commitment. This isn't for people that are called by the name of Yahweh and Bell and Dagon and Baal.

No, this is a specific people who have been called by my name. Now, that doesn't mean that they were called, not just talking about, they were called Yahwehites or something like that. This term to be to be called is something that God does.

This is something that God is actively doing. He has identified, he has chosen this people and placed his name upon them. Reminds me of certain language that's found in Matthew chapter twenty eight when it says that we are baptized into the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit, not the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, as if there there's three different names, but the very construction that is used there communicates to us this idea of being baptized into one name and hear everyone who is called by my name.

And it's and it's not called by other people, but called by God. These are all things that God is doing. He's the one that's done the calling. He's the one that's creating. He's the one that does the forming.

He's the one that does the making.

God the Creator and the Glory of His People

So these three terms at the end are all used of God's specific activity as creator of the physical universe, and I think it's purposeful on the author's part that he uses terms that that everyone would agree, at least in that day before Darwin came along, that God had created all of the physical universe.

And so he uses those same terms to speak. If you have certainty, you recognize that God has done these things and bring about the natural universe. Well, guess what? God is also the one that brings about the defining, calling, forming and making of his people.

He is the one who defines his people. He is the one who exercises and just as it took great power and great authority for God to bring everything into existence and to sustain everything. Well, it takes great power and authority for him to bring into existence the people of God and to sustain them as well.

And so the point is, here you have a promise, a promise to the people of God, only to the people of God, to the people of God who recognize who their God is, who are not ashamed to be called by his name, who have a personal relationship with him, to know someone by their name.

You know, today we can, you know, we can know someone's name without really knowing who.

They are.

But names had a lot more meaning at that time and to know someone by name indicated more of a.

Relationship.

And so this promise that God's going to gather these people together is for everyone who's called by my name. And God has had a purpose in this calling out in this creation and knows what it is and whom I have created for my glory, for my kavod, my glory.

For His Glory, Not Ours

Now, when we think about that term, it means heaviness, weightiness, the glory of God. When we think about that, what God is saying is he has gathered this people, he has called this people out, he has created this people, he has formed this people, he has made this people.

And it's not about them.

It's not about them.

And that's really hard for us to really grasp and live in light of. You know, it sounds real good. The gospel is not about us. It's about him. OK, everyone's going to agree with that. But living in light of that's a different thing.

And when you see the mad bent of man towards synergism in the gospel, toward constantly rebelling against the idea that God is sovereign salvation and and and the ways that man will come up with the amazing ways that man will come up with.

To stick his finger in and to control something within salvation and to twist the scriptures off, man just just exhaust himself to find some way of grabbing hold. And yet, even back here in Isaiah. Where you have shadows and you have prophecies, we're going to see the greater fulfillment in the new covenant and in Jesus Christ and so on and so forth.

Even here, we have the same teaching that we had in Ephesians chapters one and two. I mean, what is the ultimate answer for really everything as to why God has done everything, but especially as to why he is called a specific people in Christ Jesus and has has given them spiritual blessings in him from eternity past?

What's it all to the praise of his glorious grace? And here he says, I have created this people for my glory, my glory, not their glory. They will be they will experience glory because they're in him.

But if that's the first thing you're focused upon, you've completely missed the point. I have created this people for my glory. And that means he gets to define who the people are, he gets to define what he does with them, what he calls them to endure, what he calls them to experience.

You see, once you get it backwards and you think that God's just really lucky to have us and we're pretty much in charge, once you get it backwards, the result is going to be disastrous because you get to start determining what God can and cannot do with his people.

That's not what the scriptures teach. We have to always keep in mind that all of this is not about us. It's all about him. It's about his glory. And yes, there are times when personally in our own lives, when corporately as a body, we cannot see and may not be able to see in this life how God is to be glorified by what we're going through.

When we see martyrdom of Christians, when we see arrogant, ignorant, evil men killing Christians around the world. We may not see in this life what all of God's purposes were, but we have an overarching promise that we are asked to believe.

And that is he chooses his people and he uses his people. In such a way that the result will be his glorification will someday we see that glorification. We most certainly will. Does that mean that we will have omniscient knowledge of exactly how everything, maybe that's something we're going to be doing through eternity is seeing how that works.

I don't know. But I do know that the promise of scripture is that this people that God is calling out, he has created them. He has formed them for his glory. That's a great comfort to us, but it's also a great warning that we always have to keep in mind.

It's not about us. It is about him. And since it is about him and his glory, he gets to define exactly what he is going to do with us. So that is the word of the Lord. I hope it is encouraging to us.