John H. Paterson
Fear not; for I have redeemed thee,
I have called thee by thy name;
thou art mine. Isaiah 43:1
GOD calls His own, and knows His own by name. This is true when He calls them as individuals: it is also true when, as here, He was addressing a whole nation. And for those He knows He will do anything. He will go to any lengths to bring them through their trials, regardless of what He has to do to deliver them. He will see to it that nothing overwhelms them -- neither fire nor water (Isaiah 43:2).
These are words of wonderful encouragement for any of God's people who are struggling with opposition or defeat. And when we say that God will go to any lengths for them, notice the lengths to which this forty-third chapter of Isaiah says that He did go. He says (vs.3), "I gave Egypt for thy ransom". Have you ever stopped to consider what was the state of Egypt by the time God had completed His people's release from slavery? The country was absolutely devastated: the crops and herds ruined, with no immediate possibility of recovery; the firstborn of every family was dead -- the next generation upon which the country would depend -- and the army was wiped out, drowned in the Red Sea. And why all this? Verse 4 tells us: "Thou wast precious in my sight ... and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life."
That, then, is the measure of what it means that He knows us by name! But surely, we are tempted to say, that kind of privileged treatment only applies in very special cases, to very special people? To stand so high in God's favour that others are left in the dust behind us must demand a uniquely high standing on our part?
On the contrary! Notice the circumstances in which Isaiah's words from the Lord were spoken. This Jacob, this Israel whom He knew by name was a nation in exile, and it was in exile because of its constant, apparently inveterate habits of disobedience and disloyalty to the Lord who was speaking. Far from having merited the kind of reassurances offered to them in this chapter, Israel had done everything imaginable to anger the Lord and undermine His love. That is the context of the chapter, and it is significant, I think, that the first word God gave His people was a word that recalled their waywardness: "Fear not: for I have redeemed thee." That was the first thing He had to do, before He could make any progress at all.
How great this is: how reassuring -- that in the depths of their disobedience and disgrace He still knew them by name; that He did not disown them! But now let us read on in the chapter, and notice two other points that follow from this great declaration of God's personal relationship with His people.
The first of these is that Israel's God took a personal interest in them because He is a personal God. Read again this forty-third chapter of Isaiah and notice, if you will, the drumbeat of personal pronouns: I, me, mine.
I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed ...
Yea, before the day was I am he; I will work and who
shall turn it back? (43:11-13).
There may seem to us nothing remarkable about this: it is in keeping with our idea of God. But in the context of Isaiah's day it was something [67/68] that needed emphasising. The surrounding peoples, including Israel's captors, worshipped idols. Did they know people's names, those blocks of stone, or wood, or metal? Could theycall, or hear, or act? Of all those peoples Israel was the only one who could say with confidence, "There is somebody there! Our God is a God who is alive; who acts; who knows; in fact, who knows me".
That is a tremendous claim: He knows me. But of course it leads us straight on to the question: do I know Him? As He called His people, so they were always being urged to call upon Him. That they seldom did so, and then only when they were in the greatest trouble, showed that they had little or no knowledge of Him. For long periods of their history, they did not even know how to call upon Him, let alone what to ask for: they relied on men like Moses and Samuel to do the necessary calling for them.
