Summary
Consumed
The "but now" of Isaiah 43:1 is one of the most striking pivots in all of Scripture. To feel its weight, one has to read what comes just before it. In Isaiah 42:21-25, the Lord declares that He had been pleased, for the sake of His own righteousness, to magnify His teaching and make it glorious through Israel. He intended to make Israel a great nation, a beacon to which the surrounding peoples would stream. Instead, Israel became a people robbed and plundered, trapped in pits, hidden in prisons, with no one to say "Restore." And the prophet does not let the reader misplace the blame: it was the Lord who gave Jacob up to the spoiler, because Israel had sinned against Him and would not walk in His ways. God poured out the heat of His anger; it set them on fire all around, "but he did not understand." Wrath fell, and still Israel would not repent.
Then comes the turn. "But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine." The previous oracle was a word of righteous destruction; this is a word other than wrath. Notice how God grounds the comfort: not in Israel's improvement, but in four divine acts that Israel could not undo—He created them, He redeemed them, He named them, and He claimed them as His own. The covenant's burden never rested on Israel's faithfulness; it rested on Yahweh. That is why, even after the fire, He can still speak tenderly. As David confessed in Psalm 51:4, "Against you, you only, have I sinned"—and the same God against whom His people sinned is the God who keeps the covenant He made with them.
To be named by God in the Old Testament is to be drawn into intimacy. Abram became Abraham; Jacob, after wrestling at the Jabbok, became Israel Genesis 32:27-28. To be called by name is to be designated, befriended, set apart. So when the Lord promises in Isaiah 43:2, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you... when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you," He is invoking the very history He has already written for them—through the Red Sea, through the Jordan, through plague and exile. No earthly water and no earthly fire would have the final word over a people God Himself had named.
Then comes the question worth sitting with: what consumes you? Something is always burning up our attention—an anxiety, an anger, a love, a fear that fills every waking moment. The good news of Consumed is that God Himself is consumed—consumed with love for His people. He bears the burden of the covenant when we cannot. He forgives the unfaithful, redeems the captive, and pursues the wandering. That is why the same chapter says, "I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior" Isaiah 43:3.
This promise is not for ancient Israel alone. In Christ, the four divine acts spoken to Jacob are spoken over you. Created: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" 2 Corinthians 5:17. Redeemed: all have sinned and are "justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood" Romans 3:23-25. A people: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation... Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people" 1 Peter 2:9-10. Named: "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are" 1 John 3:1.
The tangible pledge of this naming is Holy Baptism. Paul writes that though we were once "foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures," God our Savior saved us "not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit" Titus 3:3-5. The waters that did not overwhelm Israel become for the baptized the waters of rebirth, where God Himself attaches His name to ours. He has not merely declared us His people in the abstract; He has called us His children, washed us clean, and given us His own righteousness. The God who is consumed with love for sinners has, in Christ, consumed our sin—and now sends His named and claimed children out to tell others that they too may be called by the name of the Lord.
Video citations
- "Consumed" — If you would please join me in opening your Bibles to the Prophet Isaiah, the 43rd chapter, the Prophet Isaiah, the 43rd chapter. If you look at verse 1, it begins, but now thus says the Lord. But…