Behold Your God: The Lord Our Helper | Isaiah 41
Phil Krause | October 11, 2020
I’m Phil Krause; I’m one of the elders here at Redeemer. Because of coronavirus related issues and to try to minimize any possible spread, especially among the more vulnerable in our congregation, we’re meeting online only today. At this point, our plan is to meet both online and in person next Sunday, October 18th, but as you know, plans can change, so stay tuned to your email, to the Facebook page or the church website, which is Redeemer.ch.
Let’s open in prayer, and then we’ll take a look at God’s word together.
Lord, life rarely goes the way we expect it to, but thank you that nothing takes you by surprise. We pray today for those who are sick; we pray that you would please heal them, if that is in your will. Would you help them to rest, help their thoughts to turn toward you in this time of being taken out of the normal pace of life, and remind them, I pray, of your sovereignty, even over disease.
I pray for those who are healthy, that you would keep them healthy if that is in your will, and that they would figure out ways to be able to help those who need the help. We acknowledge our need for you today. We say that apart from you we can do nothing. We’re about to open your word here, and Holy Spirit, I just pray that you would do your work of illumination today. Help us to see what you would have us see, help me not to say anything untrue or unhelpful. Give us ears to hear, hearts ready to receive the seed of your word. We pray it all in the name of Jesus your Son, Amen.
If you have a Bible handy, let me invite you to turn to Isaiah 41, and while you’re doing that I’ll tell you about a fascinating scene in the third Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Harry and his friends are at school, at Hogwarts, and they’re taking a class learning how to defeat a creature called a boggart.
A boggart is this mythical being that changes shape into whatever represents the worst fear that the person who is confronting the boggart has. The professor, Professor Lupin, shows them how to wave their wand, say the word “Riddikulus” while picturing something silly to turn that boggart into.
For example, Neville says his worst fear is Professor Snape. So the boggart comes out of his container, he turns into Professor Snape, and Neville goes, “Riddikulus!” and suddenly Professor Snape is hilariously dressed like an old. Poof! Right?
Harry’s friend Ron says he’s deathly afraid of spiders, so out comes this huge black widow spider, and Ron’s got his scared look on his face, and sure enough, he says, “Riddikulus!” and the spider suddenly has roller skates on and it’s sliding all over the room.
You get the idea. It’s a funny scene in the movie, but we know it’s not that way in real life, is it? It’s not that easy to get rid of our fears. Just imagining a ridiculous scenario isn’t going to make our fears go away.
The passage we’re about to look at here in Isaiah 41 shows us that yes, there are things we might fear, but even better it shows us the God who can tell us why we don’t have to fear. Let me read this, Isaiah 41:1-13.
“Listen to me in silence, O coastlands;
let the peoples renew their strength;
let them approach, then let them speak;
let us together draw near for judgment.
“Who stirred up one from the east
whom victory meets at every step?
He gives up nations before him,
so that he tramples kings underfoot;
he makes them like dust with his sword,
like driven stubble with his bow.
He pursues them and passes on safely,
by paths his feet have not trod.
Who has performed and done this,
calling the generations from the beginning?
I, the Lord, the first,
and with the last; I am he.
“The coastlands have seen and are afraid;
the ends of the earth tremble;
they have drawn near and come.
Everyone helps his neighbor
and says to his brother, ‘Be strong!’
The craftsman strengthens the goldsmith,
and he who smooths with the hammer him who strikes the anvil,
saying of the soldering, ‘It is good’;
and they strengthen it with nails so that it cannot be moved.
“But you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
the offspring of Abraham, my friend;
you whom I took from the ends of the earth,
and called from its farthest corners,
saying to you, ‘You are my servant,
I have chosen you and not cast you off’;
fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
“Behold, all who are incensed against you
shall be put to shame and confounded;
those who strive against you
shall be as nothing and shall perish.
You shall seek those who contend with you,
but you shall not find them;
those who war against you
shall be as nothing at all.
For I, the Lord your God,
hold your right hand;
it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not,
I am the one who helps you.’”
This is the word of the Lord.
Today we’re going to consider three aspects of this passage:
I. The Command
II. Why We Need the Command
III. How God’s Attributes Support His Command
I. The Command
First of all, the command, “Fear not.” This actually is one of the most oft-repeated commands in the whole Bible. “Don’t be afraid! Fear not!”
C.H. Spurgeon once preached a whole sermon on that phrase, and here’s how he began. “‘Fear not’ is a plant which grows very plentifully in God’s garden. If you look through the lily-beds of Scripture you will continually find by the side of other flowers the sweet ‘fear nots’ peering out from the doctrines and precepts, even as violets look up from their hiding among places of green leaves.” That’s such a sweet picture! It’s like a little flower popping up in the midst of all the other doctrines.
He then went on and gave various examples in both the Old and New Testaments, examples of people who God told not to fear, not to be afraid. That may be a Bible study you could do sometime. Go to a Bible app or BibleGateway.com, some website, and search for phrases like “fear not” or “do not be afraid.” See who said it, to whom it was said, what was the cause of their fear, and what solution was God offering to their fear? I can tell you that a study like that is going to work a lot better than some crazy “Riddikulus” spell.
Since the Fall, though, fear is common to the human experience. In fact, speaking of the Fall, I mean, what were the first words out of Adam’s mouth to God right after he had sinned? God said, “Where are you? Adam, where are you?” He said, “I heard you coming and I was—” what? “I was afraid, because I was naked.” Since Genesis 3, sinful fear has been this common to all of us result of sinfulness. We’re often fearful, almost by default.
God understands that. We’re frail, we’re fragile, we’re prone to be anxious. Over and over, God says, “It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. I have this.”
In fact, even in this one chapter, Isaiah 41, “fear not” occurs three different times. We didn’t read verse 14; that’s actually the third “fear not,” but verse 10 also includes this, “Be not dismayed,” which is very similar to, “Fear not.” I’ll read the verse again. “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
That Hebrew word there that’s translated “dismayed” in the ESV actually carries the sense of looking around a lot. One translation, the New American Standard Bible, actually uses that term. It says, “Do not anxiously look about you.” I think that’s a really graphic way to describe this concept of being dismayed. It’s always being afraid and looking around.
I think of birds, for example. Many birds are automatically very skittish, but think of chickens. They are easily startled. Some of you are actually raising chickens. They can be contentedly scratching and pecking, scratching and pecking, scratching and pecking; but if a hawk flies over, what do they do? They run for cover immediately; they scramble.
That might actually be a good kind of fear; it keeps them safe. But think about colloquially. What do we call someone who’s always afraid? We say, “You’re a chicken!” To which Marty McFly responds, “Nobody calls me chicken,” or whatever. This kind of fear is really just a symptom that we’ve lost perspective and we need to see the bigger picture.
Verse 10 here is a beautiful promise that God gives to his covenant people. Now, in Isaiah’s day, obviously, that was the nation of Israel. In fact, he spells that out in verse 8 when he says, “You, Israel, my servant; Jacob, whom I have chosen.” Well, thankfully, this can apply to us, too, because Romans 11 applies here. As Gentiles, we’ve been grafted into the vine of God’s covenant relationship with Israel. So we can rightly include ourselves as recipients of this promise. If you are a child of God, if you have turned from sin and trusted Christ, you can take this passage to the bank.
These are the main commands here: Fear not, be not dismayed (or don’t anxiously look about you).
II. Why We Need the Command
Now, let’s back up and consider what this passage teaches about why we need these commands. That’s our second point, why we need it. To do this, I want to walk you through an exercise that I often challenge people to do, whether I’m in the Tiny Tots teaching little kids or my family; it works with people young to old. That is to ask two questions of any time you encounter God’s word. The first question is, “What does this passage teach me about God?” and the second question is, “What does it teach me about people?” If you approach God’s word with that kind of perspective, with that kind of a plan, you will actually find great reward in just learning, “Okay, this is what I’m like, this is what it teaches me about people like me; and this is what God is like.” Often (I would say most of the time) you’re going to see quite a contrast, and that’s very true here.
We’re going to do this here in Isaiah 41 as we observe this really stark contrast between helpless, fearful us and mighty, almighty God. We’re going to be better able to understand why we need to be told not to fear and why he has the authority to tell us not to fear.
Let’s look at verse 1. What does verse 1 say about God and what does it say about people? Again, “Listen to me in silence, O coastlands; let the peoples renew their strength; let them approach, then let them speak; let us together draw near for judgment.”
First of all, who’s speaking? God. That’s something we see about God right off the bat: he speaks! Right? What a blessing that is. He deserves to be listened to respectfully. He says, “Listen in silence,” right? This is courtroom language. God the Judge is inviting the coastlands (that’s representative of all the nations) to present their cases. God speaks, God judges.
What about the people? What do we learn about mankind here? They need to listen in silence. That means what? They’re not in charge in this scenario. They need their strength renewed; we also see that. This phrase actually hearkens back to just a few verses earlier, in Isaiah 40, one that Pastor Brian preached on just a few weeks ago. That last verse of Isaiah 40 says that it’s the ones who wait on the Lord whose strength is renewed. We need to listen in silence, we need our strength renewed, and we see that people will be judged.
Already—this is just verse 1!—we see this contrast. God is the great Judge, he’s in charge. People are not in charge; they need to listen in silence. They need their strength renewed, and they will be judged.
Moving on, look at verses 2-3. “Who stirred up one from the east whom victory meets at every step? He gives up nations before him, so that he tramples kings underfoot. He makes them like dust with his sword, like driven stubble with his bow.” Verse 3, “He pursues them and passes on safely by paths his feet have not trod.”
Some commentators actually believe this is talking about King Cyrus, the Persian king who would one day overthrow Babylon. This was yet in the future in Isaiah’s day. In fact, just a few chapters later, Isaiah 45, God through the prophet Isaiah refers to Cyrus as his anointed, his chosen one. But what do these verses teach us about God? Well, he stirs up this amazing conqueror; God does. So is God greater than Cyrus? The answer is yes. As John Piper puts it, God is portrayed here as the “ruler over rulers.”
How would people feel with this victorious conqueror invading their land? Yes, I think fear is a natural response. It’s understandable to this kind of scenario. So what do we see about people? They fear invasion, they fear being trampled, they feel vulnerable, like they’re only as effective as dust at trying to stand up against this terrible sword.
Now, let me pause for a second and just say, I think today we are experiencing a slow, ongoing invasion, of sorts, with COVID-19. It’s an enemy that is systematically entering our bodies. It’s an invasion. It’s unstoppable, and it’s causing a lot of fear. That’s the aside.
What else do these people fear? They fear being no more meaningful or useful than stubble. You’ve seen cornfields after they’ve been harvested. The ears of corn are gone, the stalks are taken to the nurseries to sell to unsuspecting victims—I mean fall decorators—for their homes, right? What’s left in the field, though? It’s these little sticks of stubble that aren’t good for anything else other than to be just plowed under and gotten ready for the next year. This is one of those things that people fear. I fear being useless.
In verse 4, Isaiah asks, “Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, the first and with the last; I am he.”
Now we see that God is not only the ruler, the great judge of the nations, the ruler over rulers; he actually called the generations forth. He created them. He’s the great I Am who has always been. These two things: He’s creator God and he says, “I am the first, and I am with the last.”
Who are we? We’re the ones he created. We’re the last, in this verse. The contrast here is evident again. We have creator God versus creation and creature. We have the eternally present, the first, versus the last. We have the one who is permanent versus us, we who are transient and temporary.
Then, in verses 5-7, we see how the nations try to deal with their fear. These are like bad “Riddikulus” charms gone awry. They don’t work. It’s the best the nations can do, though. Verse 5 says, “They are afraid and come together.” They draw near, as it says in the ESV. After all, they might say, “There’s strength in numbers,” right? They’re desperate. There’s this invading army coming, they’re trying to draw near; they’re saying, “We have to do something about it.” They’re actually trembling, it says, in the face of this invading army.
Verse 6, they try to encourage each other with their words. “Everyone helps his neighbor and says to his brother, ‘Be strong!’” Now, there’s nothing wrong with encouraging one another, obviously, but do your words and my words actually give hope to someone who is in despair or in dismay? Well, it depends on the words, I suppose.
Verse 7 mentions the craftsman and the goldsmith. Do you know what these guys make? That’s right; they make idols. This is a major theme through the whole—well, really the whole Bible, but especially here in Isaiah—the futility of idols to do anything for us, the utter stupidity of bowing down to something incapable of helping you.
In fact, we didn’t read this section, but later in the chapter, in verses 21 through the end of the chapter, it spells out more of that complete nonsense of idol worship. The last verse, verse 29, says, “Behold, they are all a delusion. Their works are nothing, their metal images are empty wind.” A delusion!
Okay, so back to verse 7. “The craftsman strengthens the goldsmith, and he who hammers with the hammer him who strikes the anvil, saying of the soldering, ‘It is good.’ They strengthen it with nails so that it cannot be moved.” Notice that the word “strengthen” is used twice in this verse. That’s going to be significant when we get to verse 10 again.
Now, I think the part about the nails is kind of funny. I mean, I can imagine a conversation kind of like this. You have a guy over here, and he’s pounding on a hunk of wood or he’s making something, and another guy comes up to him and says, “Whatcha makin’?”
This guy goes, “Hey, yeah, I’m makin’ me a god. This is Baal. He’s gonna save me from the invading army.”
“Oh!” the friend says. “Okay, that’s really nice, this Baal—oh, I think your god just gave me a splinter!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry about that part. Yeah, that part isn’t quite done yet. I haven’t sanded it appropriately.”
The guy goes, “Oh, hang on! It almost fell over there!”
“Yeah, I haven’t figgered out the whole balance thing yet. It kind of—yeah. I need to figure out how to get it to stay still.”
The other guy goes, “Well, have you ever tried—how ’bout nailing it?”
“Oh, ya know, that’s a great idea! I’m going to nail it in place! That way it won’t move!”
It’s ridiculous! Crazy! Are you serious? Is there something wrong with this picture, that you are actually going to bow down to an idol that you have to strengthen with nails? What kind of god are you worshipping?
And yet, you and I are guilty of this very same kind of foolishness all the time. The desperate, fearful people are trying hard to deal with their problems in their own way. They’re self-reliant, they’re idolatrous, and you might say, “Well, I’m not making wooden images and trying to nail them in place.”
Okay, you may not have an actual wooden image, but according to God’s word we are idol makers. All the time we’re trying—anything that we turn to for satisfaction other than God for a source of joy and satisfaction, that’s an idol. Ezekiel 14 talks about idols of the heart.
So, this desperate, fearful people are idolatrous, they’re self-reliant. Now, contrast that with what God says to his people in verses 8-9. Verse 8, “But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend, you whom I took from the ends of the earth and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, ‘You are my servant; I have chosen you and not cast you off.’” This is so rich! Do you hear the intimacy in God’s words? “You’re my servant; I’ve chosen you. I have chosen you!” says God. “You’re my friend. You were far away, but I brought you close.”
Again, I ask, what do—looking at the whole, verses 1-9—what they do they teach us about people? Well, unbelievers have to answer to the judge. They’re afraid of invasion, they’re afraid of being insignificant, afraid of being trampled upon, being temporary, like stubble. They try desperately to fix their own problems; they quickly turn to idols for help.
Believers, on the other hand, are servants of the Lord. That means they’re not their own masters; they serve someone else. They’re chosen by God, they’re not cast off. They’re befriended by God, they’re brought near to God. Folks, that’s what God has done for us in Christ! Amen? Amen! Did you notice who’s doing all the doing in all of this? It’s God! It’s all of God.
Yes, we are fearful by nature, and apart from Christ we blunder around trying to shore up our courage, fix our problems in our own way, and this is why we need to be told not to fear.
III. How God’s Attributes Support His Command
Now let’s look at point number three, how God’s attributes support his command. Now, I’m indebted to John Piper for much of the terminology in this sermon. He preached on this passage, and as he put it, “As always in the Bible, there are reasons for the commands. Commands don’t hang in the air with no basis in reality. If God commands us to do something, there are good reasons to do it, and power comes from understanding and believing those reasons.”
Here are the five reasons the Lord gives us in verse 10; these are his reasons. “For I am with you” is the first one. He says, “Fear not, for I am with you.”
Think about that for a moment. The great God of the universe is with me! In that one phrase, we’ve just shot down deism, which says there is a God but he basically just wound the clock, left everything in motion, and is not involved at all with his creation. No. This says he’s with us.
In Deuteronomy God said (and it’s also quoted in the New Testament, in Hebrews), “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Take great comfort from that precious, precious promise today!
Now, if the worship team had been able to be with us today, we would have sung,
“There is another in the fire,
Standing next to me;
There is another in the waters,
Holding back the seas.
And should I ever need reminding
What power set me free,
There is a grave that holds no body,
And now that power lives in me.”
Praise God that he is with us.
The second reason God gives, “I am your God.” He says, “Be not dismayed, for I am your God.” Not those helpless idols, right? Not your own attempts to be in charge of yourself. No, “I am your God.”
Third, he says, “I will strengthen you.” Remember those failed attempts to strengthen one another that we saw in verse 7? Words from friends can’t offer true, lasting strength. Nails in our idols, well-made solder joints, can’t help us in the end. But when God says it, he says, “I will strengthen you,” well, now it means something, because this is the God who’s in charge of everything.
C.H. Spurgeon said, “There was a bush in the wilderness, and it was nothing to look at, nothing but a bush, but oh, how it glowed with splendor when God came into it, so that it burned with fire and yet was not consumed! God can come into you, my brother, and into you, my sister, and can make you ablaze with glory like the bush in Horeb. He can make you so strong that you can endure anything.”
Wow! That’s so great.
The fourth reason God gives: “I will help you.” One more illustration from Spurgeon on this point. He tells the story—this is me telling you something that Spurgeon says someone told him, but anyway— “A minister once told me he was one day bringing his books upstairs into another room, for he was going to have his study on the second floor instead of downstairs. His little boy wanted to help Father carry some of his books.
“‘Now,’ said the father, ‘I knew he could not do it, but as he wanted to be doing something, to please him and to do him good by encouraging his industry, I told him that he might take a book and carry it up. So away he went, and picked up one of the biggest volumes, Caryl on Job or Poli Synopsis, I should think. When he had climbed a step or two up the stairs, down he sat and began to cry. He could not manage to carry his big book any further. He was disappointed and unhappy.’
“How did the matter end? Why, the father had to go to the rescue and carry both the great book and the little man. So, when the Lord gives us a work to do, we are glad to do it, but our strength is not equal to the work, and then we sit down and cry, and it comes to this: that our blessed Father carries the work and carries the little man, too. Then it is all done, and done gloriously.”
I love that. It’s a simple illustration, but we’re like the little boy who can’t even carry the book, and God is like the father who picks up the book and the boy and takes them where they need to be.
The fifth reason is, “I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Notice God doesn’t say, “I’ll take all your problems away!” No. “Don’t be afraid; I’ll make your life easy.” No. Instead, he’s saying, “I’ll uphold you. I’ll support you. Life isn’t necessarily going to get any easier, but I’m here with you; I will help you.”
John Piper said that we could say it like this: the five pillars of fearlessness are, “God is with me, God is my God, God will strengthen me, God will help me, and God will uphold me.”
But remember, as we looked at verses 1-9, we saw some things that are true of God. Piper calls them “glimpses of God’s greatness” that intensify those five pillars that we just listed. “Therefore, because I am the judge of the nations; therefore, because I rule the rulers of history; therefore, because I call all nations, all generations forth, I call them into being; therefore, because I choose freely my own; therefore, because I, this great and sovereign God, I am your God and am with you and will strengthen you and will help you and will uphold you; therefore, do not fear.”
“Change the image for a moment,” says Piper. “Not five pillars that are supporting the command, but God in five relations to you expressed in five different prepositions. ‘I am your God over you. I am with you by your side. I will strengthen you from inside you. I will help you all around, from wherever the enemy comes. I will uphold you from underneath you.’” So, over you, by you, inside you, around you, underneath you! Therefore, do not fear! What a blessing!
I mentioned earlier that these promises are from God for those in his family; that he has chosen, he’s called us, he’s saved us.
In conclusion, let me say this. If you don’t have a personal relationship with God, there is honestly no guarantee that God will be with you and he will strengthen you and help you. So cry out to God today. Repent of your feeble attempts to do it all yourself, repent of your idolatry (turning to anything other than God for true joy or satisfaction). Tell him you want to be in his family. Believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died in your place on the cross, and that he was raised to bring you to life. If you need to, talk to someone who can help you walk through the process of confessing your sin and casting yourself on the mercies of Christ.
If you are a believer, remember, we still do our fair share of trying to do it ourselves or trying to worship false gods. Even though we’re new creations, the old patterns still rear their ugly heads from time to time, so we need to tell that to Jesus. Keep looking to him. Fear not, for he is with you; be not dismayed, for he is your God. Let’s pray together.
Lord, we need your help. We need your strength. We are weak; we need to be upheld. Thank you that in Christ it is not only possible, you’ve already done it for us. So I do pray that you would comfort and strengthen all who are listening today.
As we go about our week, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Phil Krause
