Morning, brothers and sisters.
You know, the last time I spoke, I was speaking on Peter—what Peter saw in the Lord, what that meant to Peter, and what Peter saw meant to the Lord. At that time, I thought I would do something on Paul, and maybe John, about what they saw of Christ and what that meant to them.
That was my intention for today, but I got sidetracked. Somebody, either at a prayer meeting or at the table a few weeks ago, read a verse, and it just would not let me go. It was in Isaiah—Isaiah 43:1, I think.
I think one reason it caught me is that I am getting old. I know I am not as old as Kenny. What year were you born? Fifty-one? Oh, yeah, you are a lot older than me. I was born in fifty-three, so he is a lot older than me.
But as I am getting older, I am beginning to realize that time is short—for me. The average lifespan of a white male today is eighty-one years, so I have about nineteen years left, something like that. Just enough to get a little bit of Social Security.
You start thinking about your life—not your life that has passed, but what is left. It is not unnerving; all of a sudden, it is sobering. You begin to understand why Moses said that we need to learn to number our days, and what that means.
These two things have played on each other for me. So I would like to speak this morning out of this verse in Isaiah. I am sure I will throw some things about Paul in here, but I just feel that this is on my heart. I do not know why it is on my heart; it is just there.
Let us read a couple of verses in Isaiah 43. I have a new Bible, and the pages are really neat. The print is really big, and the pages are not those onion-skin kind that rip when you turn them. Nice thick pages.
Isaiah 43, beginning with verse 1:
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
and He that formed thee, O Israel:
Fear not, for I have redeemed thee;
I have called thee by thy name;
thou art Mine.When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee;
and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
For I am the Lord thy God,
the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior.
Then I would like to go to Acts 9 and read verse 15. This is the Lord talking to Ananias after Paul’s conversion.
But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way:
for he is a chosen vessel unto Me,
to bear My name before the Gentiles,
and kings,
and the children of Israel.
Let us pray.
Lord, I want to commit Your word to You and thank You that You speak to us. I pray that this will be Your speaking this morning.
I thank You that You have the times in Your hands. You know all things, and You know what is near and what is far. Lord, we want to be attentive. We want to be in the place where we are supposed to be and to see where we are and what that means.
We want to commit ourselves to You and to Your work for the rest of our lives. We do not want to be lost in the things that are happening, but to be fully in Your purpose, fully following You.
Lord, we need Your help for this. We need to be aware of the times, aware of what You are saying, and aware of where we are going. We cannot be unless You help us. So we turn to Your Holy Spirit and ask, Lord, that You open the word to us and speak to us in a way that resonates in our very spirits this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen.
There is an old Negro spiritual. I do not know how many of you have watched Ken Burns’s Civil War documentary, but I play it in my class when we do the section on slavery. At the beginning, they sing this spiritual called “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” and it is done beautifully.
The whole thing is a call-and-response song. One person sings out, and another person responds—actually echoes what they say. The way I am looking at this is that the Lord, at least in my life now, is looking for a call and response. He calls something out, and He is looking for a response.
I think that could be said for all of us and for people of all time. The Lord is always calling out, and He is looking for a response.
When I was looking at this verse in Isaiah, I was drawn to the time in which Isaiah was writing. Isaiah has sixty-six chapters. The first thirty-nine are when he is prophesying up through King Hezekiah.
Around Isaiah 37 and Isaiah 38, that is the high point of Hezekiah’s reign. Sennacherib is knocking at the door, the Assyrians are coming, and Hezekiah is standing his ground with the help of the prophet Isaiah. It is a wonderful thing.
But then, in Isaiah 39, everything changes. Hezekiah was going to die. The Lord said, “Get your house in order, because you are going to die.” Hezekiah started to weep and cry, as I am sure some of us would if we found out that some disease was going to take us in a year.
The Lord took pity on him and gave him fifteen more years. Now, what am I going to do with fifteen years? That is why I was wondering how much time I have left. If I were Hezekiah, what would I do with those fifteen years?
During those fifteen years, Hezekiah had children, one of whom was the next king. He also opened the treasuries to visiting dignitaries from Babylon, and that was the wrong thing to do.
Isaiah told him in Isaiah 39, “You are going to be carried away to Babylon, but it is not going to happen in your time.” I was surprised at Hezekiah’s response. At the end of the chapter, he says that the word of the Lord is good because it is not happening in his time.
That is the way I took it: “It is not happening in my time. It is okay. My life is good.” But something is going to happen to the people of God. It is going to happen anyway.
When Isaiah wrote this, Judah was entering a very dark time—politically and spiritually. Israel had already been taken into captivity. Judah would have one more revival under King Josiah, but otherwise things were dark.
The next king was Manasseh, who took over when he was twelve. Manasseh was the worst king ever. If you read Chronicles and Kings, the Lord says that He is doing these things because of Manasseh.
Even though Manasseh repented at the end and tried to undo things, the Lord was gracious. It is a wonderful story of grace. When Manasseh was taken into captivity, he humbled himself, and the Lord heard him. Then he came back and tried to undo what he had done, like someone trying to put the cork back after everything has started spilling out.
But he had shed innocent blood. He brought all sorts of idols into the temple. He brought Babylon—worldly things—into the temple and into the worship of God. He even burned his children to Molech, or Chemosh, one of those gods. It was a dark time.
And I think, golly, is that like today? We are entering into a dark time.
When you are younger, you do not always see what older people see, because we have seen change. Some younger people—like my students—are like little toads in a pot where the heat is being turned up a little higher, a little higher. They do not notice what is going on.
But those of us who have lived longer have seen the change. We have seen it come slowly, creeping in, but it is going to come like a tsunami.
I watched a movie about a family that survived a tsunami, and it was frightening. The only thing they could do was grab onto a tree, because this thing came in like a flood, sweeping everything away.
That is what is coming. The tsunami is on its way. We are in the beginnings of it. Things are changing, and we are in for a dark time.
But in all of this, the Lord is true.
From Isaiah 40 through Isaiah 66, instead of ragging on the people—“Oh, you guys are doing this; you are messing up”—Isaiah gives the most beautiful prophecies of the future: prophecies of the coming kingdom, the coming Messiah, and even the end time, when everything is reconciled back to God.
Read Isaiah 60 through Isaiah 66, and you just worship. We know Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 53 speak of the suffering Messiah, but we have the most beautiful prophecies of the coming One during this dark time.
There is One coming. This was the coming end of the kingdom of Judah. In our time, we are coming to the end of the church age. The church is going to be taken up. What does the Lord have to say to us?
I think what the Lord says in Isaiah 43 to the people of that time is the same thing He says to every generation that has come closer and closer to the day of His appearing. He says it to every generation because He is eternal, His word is eternal, and He does not change.
As far as His calling on us, as far as our place is in His economy, it is the same. It has not changed since He first ordained it. Christ came to win back to Him what He planned from the beginning of time.
He has a message for this generation. Now, I have to be careful, because when we say “this generation,” we tend to think we are talking about young people.
No. This generation is everybody alive right now. That is this generation. Some of us may be farther along in this generation and ready to leave it, but this generation includes us all.
Do you understand that? It includes us all. What God is saying to this generation, He is saying to all of us. He is not just saying, “This is for the guys under twenty.” No, He is saying it to everybody.
That is encouraging. For some of us who are older, it means things have not passed us by. There is still hope. I have those nineteen years, right? For those who are younger, it is wonderful to know that God is speaking to them.
But what is He speaking? What is He saying to get us ready to face this time?
Times are different, but God is not. Every time, He comes in and says, “I want you to know what I say. I want you to know what I see. I want you to know who you are and what I am doing.”
That is what we see in Isaiah. He is calling us out to Himself as this time comes upon us. You need to come to Him, because that is the only way you will be seen through the things that are coming.
This is His word to us. He says four specific things in the first verse, and He is saying them to all of us.
The first thing He says is, “I have created you.”
When He says, “I have created you,” He is not talking about the sinful person, the sinful nature, or the fallen creation that you are part of. He did not create us in a fallen state. What kind of a God would He be if He created us in a fallen state?
Somebody heckled Abraham Lincoln in a speech and said, “So, you are a self-made man, huh?” Lincoln said, “Yeah.” The heckler said, “Well, you did a darn bad job.”
But God did not do a darn bad job when He created man. He created man as the apex, the pinnacle, of His creation. Man was the last thing created. You save the best for last.
If you look at creation, the way He created man is different from the way He created everything else. He spoke the other things into being, but how did He make man? He went into the dust of the earth and formed it with His hands. Then He breathed His life into him.
I think the Lord is trying to say to us, “I want to remind you that I made you. When I made you, I made you with purpose in mind.” There was a purpose in His making us.
Today, that is being driven away. We are told that we are nothing special, just another part of the ecosystem; that everything came out of some blob, and by chance we are here, with no purpose whatsoever. We live, we die, and that is it.
But God is bringing us to remembrance and saying, “That is not the way it is. I made you. I formed you. I made you with purpose in mind.”
He is speaking of His original intent. Last week, Gunther opened with Psalm 8: “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” What is man? He is the apex of creation. He is the top.
The psalm says that You have made him a little lower than the angels and put him into dominion. When God made man, He made him in such a way that man could commune with Him—not merely communicate.
There is a difference between communicating and communing. I can communicate with my dog: “Sit. Get out of here.” He knows. But I cannot commune with him.
Every once in a while, I tell my dog, “I love you.” And he just looks at me like, “Does that mean I am getting food?” He does not know. My dog may be faithful and friendly, but he cannot commune with me.
But God made us so that we can commune with Him. Why would He do that? Because He wants us to know Him.
In knowing Him, He wants us to know His will. He has chosen us to be those who carry out His will, and His will is good—good for all of creation.
He wanted us to carry out that will and to bear His image in our being—not simply in the way we look, but in the way we act and what we say. We bear the image of God to all creation, so that creation may see what God is like—not in deity, but in character and purpose.
So God says, “I have created you. I have made you with purpose. I have given you a capacity that no other being has: to know Me.”
It is a wonderful thing when God says of Moses, “I speak to him face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” That sends chills through me—to think that God would think that way of man.
We are made to know Him, to do His will, and to bear His unmarred image to all creation.
Then He says, “I have called you by name.” In other words, He is saying, “I know you.”
People who do not know you do not call you by your name. My students call me Mr. B, but they do not call me Jim. Better not. Those who know me can call me Jim.
What He is saying is, “I know you as you are right now.” He is calling us back to the original creation, but He is also saying, “I know you as a fallen creature. I know your name. I know who you are. I am intimately acquainted with who you are.”
You cannot hide who you are from Him, because He is all-knowing. He knows our condition too.
This is both a wonderful thing and a scary thing, isn’t it? It is wonderful that someone can say they know me and that I can relax with them. But it is another thing when we are like Adam, hiding from God: “I am naked. I did not want You to see me naked.”
I looked up some names that I thought were interesting. Remember Jabez? His name means, “One who causes pain.” “I cause pain.” How would you like that for a name? “Oh, here comes I-cause-pain. Let us get out of here.”
When Jabez prayed, he said, in effect, “I do not want to cause pain. Please enlarge me so that I can be a blessing.” And God heard that prayer.
Sometimes we have to discover who we really are. Remember when Jacob was wrestling with the angel, and finally the angel said, “What is thy name?” Jacob had to come to the realization: “I am Jacob.”
When he said, “I am Jacob,” I imagine all the things he had done flashed back—the cheating of Laban, what he had done with his brother, and all those other things.
When I was a young Christian, I was reading a book by Rabbi Michael Esses about the patriarchs. I was reading about Jacob and thinking, “Wow, this is Jacob. What a sleazy guy.” Then he said, “By the way, Jacob is the Hebrew name for the Greek James.”
Oh, I was devastated. I was upset. “My gosh, no, this cannot be.” It took me a few days to get over that. Do not call me James; I am Jim.
But sometimes the Lord, because He knows our name and we are oblivious, brings us to say, “I want you to know that I know who you are, and you need to know who you are.” He brings us into circumstances where that becomes clear.
When we see it, we often come to the place of saying, “Oh, my gosh.” We are like Peter when the Lord told him to cast the net over the side and there was that great catch of fish. Peter said, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
But what was Jesus’ response? “Oh, you are right. You are a sinful man. Get away from Me. I will hang out with James and John.” No. He said, “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men.”
God knows who we are. Israel was falling into idolatrous practices, and yet He said, “I know you.” In a dark place, He says, “I know you. I know where you are. I know where you are living.”
He also says, “Fear not,” because the third thing He says is, “I have redeemed thee.”
We often limit redemption to the forgiveness of sins. That is part of redemption, but it is much more than that. In 1 Peter 1:18-19, it says that we were redeemed, not with perishable silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish.
Redeemed from what? From our vain manner of life.
What is a vain manner of life? Vain means purposeless. There is nothing to it. It is like vapor. Vapor is there, and then it is gone. In a dry atmosphere, it disappears. It is vain; it has no purpose.
The Lord says, “I have redeemed you from this vain manner of life.” For some of us, a vain manner of life was because we did not grow up in church. We were wandering stars. We did not know where we were going. We went from place to place, with no purpose.
That was what disturbed me the most in my own life. If there is no purpose, why am I here? What is the big thing about this? Why not just do away with myself? Why have pain and sorrow and joy when there is nothing to it? It is gone.
Others of us grew up in a church situation. We know all the stuff: we have our quiet time, we go to church, we know the truths. But it can still be vain. It can be meaningless to us. We just grew up knowing that this is what we do.
I grew up Catholic. I went to Mass, confession, and communion. I did all those things, but they meant nothing to me. I had no idea what we were doing. We were doing it because Dad said we had to go.
Then the man across the street came over and shared Jesus with me. I had heard of Christ before, but He was meaningless until this man, by the Holy Spirit, brought meaning to it. I was redeemed from a vain manner of life.
It is not just when we come to the table that we are reminded of our redemption. Every time you hear the Lord speak to you—at a conference, through someone who gives you a word that helps you—that is proof of your redemption.
When we are redeemed, we are made alive to God and made alive to His voice. This is the witness of redemption. If you can hear these words, He is saying, “I redeemed you.”
“I brought you in. I made you alive again, so that you can come back to where I created you. I created you for purpose. Now you are in tune with that again and are being brought into that.”
He redeemed us for purpose—not simply to say, “Your sins are forgiven. You do not have to go to hell. See you later.” No. He redeemed us to bring us into the purpose He has for us all.
Then the fourth thing He says is, “Thou art Mine.”
I think this is one of the most important things—if not the most important thing. We often say that we are His, and we take Romans 8:28 through the end: “What shall separate us from the love of God?” That is a good and comforting thing.
But that is only part of being His. What He is saying is, “You are Mine. I bought you. I bought you with a price—a great price.”
The word for redemption, for redeeming or buying back, has to do with buying a slave. In all intents and purposes, He is buying us to be His servants. I am not kidding you.
Do not think He is some cruel taskmaster. He is bringing you back into His purpose—to serve the purpose for which He created you. He has bought you back for that. You are His, to be about what He made you to be.
In 1 Corinthians 6:20, it says:
For ye were bought with a price:
glorify God therefore in your body.
Steve Sheridan once gave a word on Romans 6. Whoever you give yourself to, you are a slave. You give yourself to sin, and you are a slave; or you give yourself to God, and you are His slave. It is one or the other.
Or, as Bob Dylan aptly put it, “You gotta serve somebody. It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you got to serve somebody.”
This is probably the biggest thing Israel had to realize. How long had Israel been redeemed from Egypt? Many say around 1200 B.C. By the time the northern kingdom was carried away, perhaps five hundred years had passed, and they had forgotten.
Even closer than that, in Judges, it says another generation arose that did not know the works of the Lord. They forgot about His ransoming them. It does not take long for us to forget.
But I think the Lord is saying to us, “I want you to know—you are Mine. I bought you, and at great cost.”
It was not as though He had money to throw around. He gave the most precious thing He had for us.
We, as His people, need to recognize this. We need to be conscious that we are His—not in some merely legal way, but consciously saying, “I am Yours.”
When we wake up in the morning, we have that quiet time to worship Him and say, “Oh, God, I present myself before You as Yours. You created me. You redeemed me. I am Yours all the way through.”
If we had never sinned, He still created us, and we would be His for His purposes. But we did sin, and He redeemed us. Therefore, now we are His for His purposes. He bought us. We are His. This is our worship to Him.
We need to accept this. It is hard because we are so free as Americans. Or like the Jews, who said to Jesus, “We are Abraham’s seed, and have never yet been in bondage to any man.” How about slaves to sin?
We need to accept that we are His. What does that mean? You have to find that out.
“I have created you to know Me, to know My will, to do My will. A body hast Thou prepared for Me. I delight to do Thy will.” I am Yours. That is what it is.
As I said at the beginning, this is call and response. God is calling us out in this generation so that we are able to go through the times that are coming.
He is saying, “I have created you for purpose. I know your name. I know your weaknesses. I know who you are. But I have redeemed you. I brought you back into Me, into My purposes, and you are Mine.”
Because we are His, we cannot be snatched from Him. That is Romans 8: “Who shall separate us?” But we are also His to serve Him. That is the part that will bring Him the most pleasure: that we serve Him.
There is a Catholic community in Ann Arbor, Michigan, called the Word of God Community. They have done some wonderful songs. One song takes these verses and sings them back to God rather than presenting them as God speaking to us.
They rephrase it like this: “Lord, You have created me. You have called me by name. I am Yours.”
This is the response God is looking for in us, in our generation.
As we come to Him, we also become aware that we have been chosen. We are chosen vessels. Each one of us individually is a chosen vessel, and corporately we are a chosen vessel together.
This is a daunting thing. When you realize you are chosen for something that God has planned and purposed, and that you are in this big thing He is doing, you feel, “I am out of my league.”
I remember being a sophomore in high school. I was a big skinny guy, and they called me to play varsity basketball. I did not want to, because my friends were playing JV and I wanted to play with them. But I also felt that varsity was out of my league.
I was six foot three and 145 pounds. One day I was guarding Jim Lee, who was six foot six and 230 pounds. He was leading the league in scoring and got about thirty-eight points that game.
My brother said, “We thought you were guarding him, but we could not see you.”
That is silly, but this is what I found out, and I think this is what we find out when we are chosen: we are brought into a company.
It was not just me playing basketball one-on-one. It was a whole team. Not everybody started. Everybody had different roles. We all practiced together. We were all for each other. We were all in it together.
I think of how daunting it must have been for Paul when he was first converted and the Lord said, “I have called you into this marvelous thing. You are a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.”
My gosh, I cannot do that. Who am I? Like Moses: “I am going to send you to Pharaoh, and you are going to deliver My people.” “I cannot do it.”
Isn’t it wonderful that, when Paul was in Damascus, the Lord brought him into a company of believers? The Lord told the company, “I have a new one. He is a chosen vessel, just as you are chosen vessels.”
He told them to go, make themselves known to him, and let him know that they knew the Lord had called him. When you are in a company, you get to know from the others that you have been called into the company and that you have a place in it.
He was not merely brought into an assembly in the sense of a meeting. He was brought into a Christian community. We have not been brought into a meeting; we have been brought into a community—the communion of saints.
We all have our place in God’s economy. Paul was brought into this, and now the church has a ministry to this generation.
This is what I want to end with. The church has a ministry to this generation. And when I say this generation, I am talking about us as individuals.
God has put this calling on us as individuals: “I have created you. I have called you by name.” But then He brings us into a community, and the church has a ministry to us.
What is the ministry of the church to this generation? First, we have Ananias. What does Ananias do? He goes to pray for Paul.
In Acts 9:17, he says:
Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus,
Who appeared unto thee in the way which thou camest,
hath sent me,
that thou mayest receive thy sight,
and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Before he did anything else, Ananias was praying. That is one ministry of the church to the generation: prayer.
It is not generic prayer: “Let us pray for this generation.” No: “Brother Saul.” Very specific. “Brother Saul, receive your sight.”
Isn’t that what Paul prays for the Ephesians? “Lord, open their eyes so that they can see the riches of what they have been brought into.”
Then Ananias says, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.” This is the ministry of the church for this generation. This is what we are to pray for—not merely generic prayer, but singling people out.
There was a ministry on prayer a couple of years ago, and Jeffrey said that sometimes we cannot pray everything, but at least we can recite their names. That rolled a big burden off me.
I thought, God knows. I can tell Him these names and say, “Lord, You know what their needs are right now. I do not know for sure, but I want to bring them to You. I want to pray for them.”
“Lord, You take them. You have things You want to do in their life. I just want to pray with You and say amen to what You are trying to do in their life.”
That is the ministry of the church to this generation: to take people up by name. We are not just talking about young people as this generation. We are talking about all of us, by name.
I know some people took me up by name this week because they knew I was going to speak. Some of them told me, “We are praying for you.” What a great encouragement that is.
When someone is going through a hard time, call them and say, “You have been on my heart. I want to tell you I am praying for you by name. I know something has happened. I do not know what it is, but I am praying for you.”
Pray by name: “Lord, fill Jim with the Holy Spirit. Just fill him. He needs Your Spirit.”
What about Epaphras? We have been reading about him in Colossians. Who is Epaphras? A fellow laborer—someone who comes alongside other people to labor with them.
Didn’t Jesus send out the disciples two by two? He sent them with fellow laborers. Isn’t it wonderful when we know someone is going out to speak and we pray for them? Fellow laborers.
God is saying to the church, “I want fellow laborers for those who are going out. I want fellow laborers for those who are doing these things. Work with them. Care for the people they are going to minister to.”
Epaphras was beside himself for the saints in Colossae. He cared deeply for those people.
Then there are Aquila and Priscilla. They had a corrective ministry. Remember Apollos in Acts 18? He came preaching, and they took him aside and said, in effect, “Did you know this also?”
They added to what he understood. “You are doing a great job here, but we want you to know this. We want to expand this for you.”
Floyd Police was that for me. When he taught those Bible studies, he expanded the word. It was bigger than we had ever thought it was. Christ became bigger to us because of it.
God in the church is looking for Aquilas and Priscillas—fellow workers who can come alongside someone and give them a better footing in what they know.
Finally, what about Barnabas? Those who encourage others.
Wasn’t it Barnabas who really took Paul under his wing when the others were unsure? “No, come here. He really is a Christian.”
Wasn’t it Barnabas who, after he went to Antioch, went looking for Paul? “Where is he? I know him, and I want to encourage him in his ministry.”
It is a wonderful thing to be encouraged in ministry. I am not talking only about this kind of ministry. When you see something, see the blessing, and encourage someone—“I was so blessed by your coming and visiting. Thank you”—that is encouragement.
When a person is encouraged, a willingness is built up to do it again. They also have a willingness to be corrected.
An encourager can take a Mark and say, “You did blow it when you came with us that time. That is okay. Just come with me this time.” At the end, Paul said, “Bring Mark: for he is useful to me.” What a wonderful thing.
This is the ministry of the church to this generation. The question is: are we ministering to this generation—not generically, but specifically?
Brothers and sisters, as this time is coming upon us, let us take hold of what the Lord says to us: that He created us, that He called us by name, that He redeemed us, and that we are His.
And let us likewise say, “You have created me. You have called me. I am Yours.”
Let us pray.
Lord, we thank You that You are ever mindful of the time in which we live. We hope this is the time when You are coming back. Lord, we do not want to be swept away in all the things that are coming.
I read 2 Timothy 3, and it speaks of all these things that are happening. Lord, we see it, and we do not want our love for You to grow cold because of the things we see. Please help us.
Lord, help us to give ourselves to You. This is the hardest part of everything. It is so nice to say that You created us. It is so nice to say that You redeemed us. It is so hard for us to say, “I am Yours.”
We need grace for this, Lord. We need to be helped to see that what You ask of us, what You claim for us, is good.
We need to see that, in laying ourselves on the altar, we discover that Your will is good and acceptable. Lord, help us to see.
We want to be those who stand in this time because we are Yours. We ask Your help in Jesus’ name. Amen.