I invite you to turn back again to Isaiah chapter 43.
Several years ago, I was working at a church in Jackson, Mississippi.
And on Wednesday nights, we would go through various series on different topics.
And one time, we announced that the next series would be on the topic of anxiety and fear.
And the first Wednesday that we began that series, the attendance to our Wednesday night services somewhere between doubled and tripled.
And I don't know what single message to draw from that is.
Maybe it's that our society is so desperate for a word about fear and anxiety that they would even go to church to find some resolution to it.
It's about Israelites and the fear that they dealt with at one particular moment in their history, in one particular season.
And what God does is not only tell them not to fear, but he gives them a tool to kill their fears with.
And that's what I want to talk about tonight is I think in this passage, we see this principle that God doesn't just tell us not to fear.
He teaches us how to kill our fears with a word.
And the first thing I'll say about that is I'm making an assumption here, which is that our fears can be killed with a word.
And what I don't want to do and what this passage doesn't do if you read it closely is this passage does not trivialize fear.
It doesn't say that the problem with your fears is that you have silly fears that you just need to to ignore.
And one way that we know this is because.
Verse one, the first two words, did you see what they were?
It says, but now.
So this is words spoken in a context.
And the context is the people of God are going through one of the worst seasons in all of the Old Testament.
This may be the lowest point in the Old Testament where this is a nation.
It's really two nations, Israel and Judah.
In the past 200 years, Israel has been virtually wiped off the face of the earth.
They were conquered by this vicious nation called the Assyrians.
And then maybe 150 years later, Judah, another nation of God's people, is conquered by the Babylonians.
And the place where the temple of God was, where people would go and worship God, that city was brought to its knees.
It was destroyed.
The temple of God, where people would go worship God, was destroyed.
The last king of Judah was taken outside of the city walls.
And he had to watch his own son be executed.
And that was a way, from the perspective of the Babylonians, of completely destroying any hope that God's people had for a future.
So these are people who are not fearing for no reason.
They have reason to be unhappy with the situation that they're in.
They're people who live in exile, who have no hope.
If you look just before the passage that we read, in chapter 43, one way that Isaiah describes how hopeless their situation was, was in verse 22.
He says,
This is a people who have been plundered and looted.
All of them are trapped in pits or hidden away in prisons.
They have become plunder with no one to rescue them.
They have been made loot with no one to say, send them back.
Isaiah is saying, there's not even a person among these people who has the hope to say, send them back.
And if you were to ask God's people in this season, if you were to ask them, what is your problem?
What do you need fixed about your situation?
What they would not say is, our problem is that we're afraid.
Our problem is fear.
What they would say is, our problem is the objects of our fear.
We're afraid because there are things in our world to be afraid of.
We are a conquered people.
We are living in exile.
We have no hope for a future.
We have good reason to be afraid.
And we can all in our lives point to fears that we have that, on our best moments, we would say are not legitimate.
When a child, one of my children, come to me in the middle of the night and they say, I'm scared of the monsters.
One way that I can handle that, one way that I do handle it, is I convince them how silly that fear is.
I convince them that there are no such thing as monsters.
And to even fear them would be a foolish thing to do.
But then there are fears that adults can have.
I'm worried about what happens if I'm late to that meeting tomorrow.
And if you think about it, and if you really think about it, you might convince yourself, well, actually, if I'm late tomorrow, nothing's going to happen.
And I can remember how many times my dad used to tell me, he used to reassure me by giving me this thought experiment.
He would say, Hunter, what's the worst thing that could happen?
You know, this thing that you keep talking about, how afraid you are, being late to school tomorrow, what's the worst thing that could come of it?
And if I really thought about it, not much could happen.
But there are some fears in all of our lives that give us good reason to be afraid.
It could be fears that we have about future suffering, perhaps that we know are coming.
It could be suffering that we're in the midst of right now.
It could be mistakes that we know that we've made in the past.
And we fear how those mistakes will play themselves out in the future.
We fear that we've made, we've messed up in such a way that we cannot fix our situation.
All human beings in their best moments have times where we realize the gravity of death.
And that can give us a sense of fear.
And if you think about it, the fear that the Israelites have is a combination of all those things.
Because they're worried about death.
They're worried about suffering.
And what makes it even more painful is they know that the situation that they're in is their own making.
So if you look at the very last verse before the passage that we just read in chapter 43, God has this really terrible message for them.
Verse 24.
Verse 24 says,
Who handed Jacob over to become loot and Israel to the plunderers?
Who did this awful thing to the Israelites?
Was it not the Lord against whom we have sinned?
For they would not follow his ways.
They did not obey his law.
So he, God, poured on them his burning anger, the violence of war.
It enveloped them in flames, yet they did not understand.
It consumed them, but they did not take it to heart.
One of the most terrible anxieties that a person can probably go through is to know that part of the reason that you're suffering is something that you had to do with.
It was actually a mistake that you made.
So these people have reason to fear, and they're facing the worst kind of fear a person could face.
And in a fear like that, the answer can't be merely something like breathing exercises or going for a walk.
Those things can have short-term help.
But the kind of fear Israel is working with, dealing with, is something that needs something stronger than just forgetting about it.
And the assumption of my premise tonight is that what a fear like this needs, what our deepest fears in life needs, is a word.
Something that we can speak to those fears, that can actually, we can face those fears and how grave they actually are.
But we can put those fears to death.
And if you notice, when you read Isaiah, and when you read all of Scripture, actually,
I spent time trying to actually figure out if this is true, and it is true.
Every single time in Scripture that God tells His people, do not fear, He never just says, do not fear.
He always gives them a reason not to fear.
And even if you just look in the book of Isaiah, God tells His people, or Isaiah, God through Isaiah tells His people,
14 times, either do not fear or do not be afraid.
And every single time, He attaches to it a reason not to fear.
And what that must mean is, the only way for us to conquer our deepest fears is not just by telling ourselves not to fear.
But it's by finding a word that we can bring to our fears that can quiet them.
And I think this is important to hear, because so often we can carry around a fact like this,
a fact that we know that Christians should not fear.
And you can walk in a place like this, and you can say,
I know that because I'm a Christian, I'm not supposed to fear.
But if that's the only thing that we remember,
what we end up doing is, we feel guilty for the fear that we have,
and we never actually think about the resolution that the Gospel offers to it.
So perhaps the worst thing that we can do is only remember that Christians are called not to fear.
Christians are called not to fear, and to not fear because we have a reason not to fear.
God teaches us to kill our fears with a word.
And the word is, redemption.
And you see this in verse 2.
Excuse me, at the end of verse 1.
This is what God tells his people.
At a given point in time, in a certain circumstance.
He says, do not fear, for I have redeemed you.
God says, take that word.
He says, do not fear, I have redeemed you.
And he says, take that word, I have redeemed you.
And Mr. Sladek here could tell you,
I have redeemed you in Hebrew is just one word.
Take that word, I have redeemed you.
And use that as the tool, as the means that I have given you to put to death the fears that you have about your situation, the situation that you're in.
Use this single fact that God has redeemed you to kill your fears.
And there's a lot of reasons why that's actually really hard to do.
One of the reasons is, if you don't actually think about what that word redeemed is, that tool that God has given you becomes blunted.
And part of the problem is that in our society today, we use the word redeemed in a lot of different contexts.
We love movies that are about redemption.
Usually, when we talk about movies that are about redemption, it's usually the story of a man or a woman who has made mistakes in their past.
But somewhere along the lines in their life, they figure out how to do better in life.
And what we say is that it's a story of redemption.
They've figured out how to redeem their past.
Or, you know, you're at a job.
It can be much more simple than that.
You're at a job.
You have a bad day.
And the next day, you do better.
And the boss comes in and says, good job, son.
You redeemed yourself.
What all those kinds of redemption have in common is, it assumes that the bad things in your life are things that you can fix.
And what the Bible is saying, and what the Israelites would have said about their situation is,
there are some situations that you can find yourself in.
There are some realities about this world that you can accept.
And if you accept them, you realize you cannot redeem yourself.
You know, for the most obvious example being death.
No matter how much you want to avoid death, you cannot, of your own will, avoid that.
There's no amount of work you can put into it.
Even if you try to be, even if you try it to help, be the healthiest person you can, you cannot redeem yourself from death.
When God says, I have redeemed you, when he says it in the Old Testament, when he says it here in verse 1,
it has a specific meaning.
And you have to know that meaning before you can realize why that would even matter,
why that would be an encouragement to someone.
Redemption in the Old Testament, generally speaking, has this idea that a person can be bought back.
So, for instance, in Leviticus, one of the laws gives an example of a man who becomes impoverished.
And he becomes so impoverished, the way that he tries to sustain himself is he sells his own life into slavery.
And the Jewish laws were such that one of his family members can come along,
and he can pay a price to set his family member free.
It's called the redemption price.
And he's called the redeemer, the one that redeems.
And the very same idea is being pointed to here in this passage.
And you know it because when you look at verses 3 and 4, this is what God says.
He says, excuse me, in verse 3.
He says, I have redeemed you.
And in verse 3 he says,
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
And then this is how he explains himself.
He says, I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead.
And then halfway down the next verse he says,
I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life.
So what God is doing is he's saying,
the way that I am going to tell you that you don't need to fear
is by telling you what's about to happen to you,
which is that I have redeemed you.
And what God is saying is, he's saying,
you are so precious to me.
You, my children, are so precious to me
that I am willing to give Egypt and Cush and Seba
in exchange for your life
to free you from the situation that you have found yourselves in.
And there's a historical truth to this
because in 539 B.C.,
the Persians come into power.
And one of the first things that the Persians do
is they allow all the Israelites,
all the people of Judah,
to go back home and to rebuild their temple
and to worship God again.
That's the moment where they find redemption.
And around the same period in history,
the Persians also conquer Cush and Seba in Egypt,
which is, these places are another way of talking about
basically all of known Africa in the time period.
So the Persians come into power
and they set the Israelites free
and they also conquer modern Africa,
excuse me, what was known of Africa at the time.
And one of the themes in the book of Isaiah
that comes up over and over again in lots of different ways
is God keeps trying to show his people
that the circumstances that they find themselves in
in this world are not just by chance
and they can't be explained merely by military power
or by geopolitical power.
Cyrus, who helped the Persians rise to power,
and if you go read Isaiah chapter 45,
one of the things that God says is,
he's not just there by chance.
He is my servant and he's doing what I want for you,
to save you, to redeem you.
And do you see how this kills fear?
How this one word, I have redeemed you,
kills fear for the Israelites?
Because it helps them see that the God of the universe
has come down and he has guaranteed,
you know, in their own language through this idea of redemption.
He says, you are so precious to me that I have purchased you back
and I've given you some of the most rich,
I've given some of the most rich nations in the world
in exchange for you.
That's how precious you are to me.
And this is the kind of idea that if you actually let it sit inside your mind,
if you're an Israelite in 550 BC,
you allow this to sit inside your mind
and you follow the idea to its natural conclusion,
which this passage does.
Why would God redeem a people?
Why would anyone ever redeem someone?
And, you know, if you're a Hebrew
and you redeem your brother from slavery,
maybe you do it out of a sense of obligation.
Maybe you do it because you're wealthy
and if you didn't redeem your brother,
you'd be frowned on in your society.
But that's not the reason that God gives
for why he redeemed his people.
What does he say?
He says,
I redeemed, you are,
verse four,
you are precious and honored in my sight
and because I love you.
That's why I redeemed you.
And what I love about this
is this idea of God's love
and this idea of redemption,
they interpret one another.
So you could say,
what does it mean that God redeemed us?
Why does he redeem us?
It's because he loves us.
And then if you ever were to doubt God's love
if you were an Israelite,
you would say,
well, how do I know that God loves me?
Well, you look back at the redemption.
He was willing to give Seba in Africa,
all these places he said,
I was more precious than these nations.
And what an Israelite was called to do
is to look at their fears in that present moment
and put those fears to death,
not because those fears weren't legitimate,
but because God had offered them a hope
that was greater than their fears.
Now, it can be a cheap trick
for a minister preaching through the Old Testament
to look at a word like redemption
and say,
you see, we're all redeemed.
And part of the cheapness of that trick
is that this is talking about
a specific moment in history.
But there's two reasons
why this has something to say to us.
And one of them is passages like this
that talk about a God
who would redeem Israel.
They're telling us about who God is.
God never changes.
And the God of 2,500 years ago
is the same God today
so that we can look at a passage like Isaiah 43
and we can say,
what I know about my God
is that it is in his character
to look at a situation,
to look at a people
who have gone so far away from him
and as far away as they can get,
he can still redeem them
and he can still bring them back to himself.
And he can still look at someone
who goes as far away as they can,
a prodigal son and a prodigal nation,
and God can still say,
they are precious in my eyes
and I will do whatever it takes
to bring them back to myself.
That's one reason why we can look at a passage like this.
But another one is,
moments like this
in the history of God's people
prepared God's people
to see Jesus.
And this is when my imagination
begins to run wild
and I admit that I'm speculating here.
But I imagine those,
you know,
I imagine the disciples
after Jesus had ascended into heaven
and they're sitting around a campfire at nighttime.
They're having dinner together.
And they're trying to think,
how can we communicate
what Jesus has done for us
to our Jewish brothers and sisters?
How can we explain to them
that Jesus Christ has died for their sins?
And you imagine them going,
thinking in their minds,
going Genesis,
Exodus,
Leviticus,
Numbers,
Deuteronomy,
going through all of the Old Testament
and saying,
how does this,
how was this all along
preparing us to see who Jesus was?
And then they get to a passage like
Isaiah 43.
And this had to have been
one of the most obvious passages for them
because
the story of God's people
in this moment in time
is in so many ways
the story of the gospel.
It's a preview of the gospel
because in it
you have a people
who have gone
as far as they can from God,
who have no hope
and who are looking around in fear.
And then
Jesus,
excuse me,
and then God steps in.
Jesus steps in
and he offers
a way out.
He offers them a redemption.
It's even the same word.
The New Testament
over and over again
describes what Jesus did
as redemption.
Jesus goes to the cross
and he redeems his people
from their sins.
Just like God
redeemed
the Israelites
from the consequences
of what they had to go through.
It's like
the whole story
of Jesus Christ
and his redemption
is everything that happens
in Isaiah 43
but greater.
fear.
And because of that
we can look at a passage
like this
and we can say
when God tells us
not to fear
he even gives us
a word
to apply to our fears
to kill them.
And it's the same word
it's redemption.
And what we have to realize
is that
when God gives us
a word
to kill our fears
he hasn't just
changed our psychology.
He hasn't just said
you need to think
more positively.
What he has done
is he's changed
our objective situation.
He's saying
I'm telling you
not to fear
not just because
I want you to be
more positive
but because
your objective situation
has changed.
you were hopeless.
You were living
in your sins
and you had no hope
and the fears
the fears that you
dealt with in life
the same fears
that everyone deals
with in life
about death
and what comes after
these were things
that you had no answer to
and so you were right
to fear.
And then God says
I have given you
an answer
which is that
you have been redeemed
and that you are
precious to me
in your sight
in my sight.
So God teaches us
to kill our fears
with a word
and that word
is redemption
but
in some ways
that's the easy part
isn't it?
Just recognizing
what is true
especially if you're
already a Christian
it's easy to say
I know that God
calls me not to fear
because he has redeemed me
but then the next challenge
is and the challenge
of every day
of our lives
is how do you
take that truth?
How do you take
that one word
that God gives us
and make it a habit?
Make it a habit
of applying the gospel
applying redemption
to our lives
so that every day
we're putting our fears
to death.
Because isn't it true
that you can worship you
and you can say
I know God calls me
not to fear
I know he's redeemed me
and yet even as you're
sitting in this pew
you could be thinking
about what tomorrow
might bring
that stressful meeting
that you know
you're going to have
all kinds of anxieties
things that keep us
awake at night
things that we can't sleep
and we don't know
how to get over it
and what we have to do
is we have to become
midnight theologians
people who
when we wake up
in the middle of the night
and we find that
we have anxieties
that we don't know
how to deal with
we have to
begin the process
of saying
if I really am
redeemed
as the gospel
tells me that I am
what does
what does my
redemption have
to say to this fear
because my conviction
is
and I hope this is
your conviction
as well
that there is no
fear
in our lives
there's literally
no fear
in our lives
that we can face
that redemption
doesn't touch
if we're in Christ
and
part of the challenge
is realizing
sometimes I think
we fear
and we don't even
stop to think
that the gospel
might have something
to say to this fear
and part of our challenge
is to think of all
the fears that we face
and say
what does the gospel
have to say to this
just to give one
example
of a new challenge
that part of our
society is facing
there's a
New York
University psychologist
named Jonathan Haidt
and he
he studies a lot
of teenage development
and he wrote
in an American
journal called
The Atlantic
last year
an article
that he called
The Dangerous
Experiment
The Dangerous
Experiment
on Teen Girls
The Dangerous
Experiment
on Teen Girls
and what his
article was about
was
as a psychologist
he's noticed
that
when you study
teen girls
and their experiences
of depression
over the past
15 years
teenage girls
are reporting
about a 66%
increase
in
self-identified
depression
sorry let me put
that a little bit
more clearly
if you compare
a teenage girl
15 years ago
to a teenage girl
in 2021
there's 66%
more likely
in 2021
to report
having had
a depressive
episode
in the past
month
and Haidt's
argument
this psychologist
is that
the only reason
that we can give
to explain this
and the only reason
we can give to explain
why this is happening
not just in America
but in UK
and in all western
countries
is the rise of
social media
and so his argument
is
our young women
are facing
depression
at a scale
they've never faced
before
because they're
using social media
more than they
ever have before
and you know
maybe part of the
solution is to think
about how much
we actually use
social media
but there is
there is an issue
there of something
that's happening
to the teenage girls
among us
our daughters
and our granddaughters
and the people
that we know
and love
where because
they're using
social media
more and more
they're having
their sense of
identity challenged
every single day
where they're
looking at pictures
of beautiful people
online
beautiful peers
who are using
technology to make
themselves look
more beautiful
and then they look
at themselves
and they might say
I am nowhere near
as pretty as that
I am worthless
and that kind of fear
when it begins to
settle into a young
mind
that I am
I am not beautiful
I am not
I'm not precious
that fear can expand
into a person's life
I am not lovable
and you can begin
to look to answers
for that fear
in all sorts
of places
and my question
tonight is
is it not possible
that even in
something like that
that has come around
so recently
can we not look
at a problem
like that
and say
even there
the gospel
has something
to say
to that fear
that we can teach
our young women
that the word
redemption
says something
about who they are
and about their identity
and hope
maybe
maybe if we can
if we can tell them
in a thousand different ways
that God looks at them
and he says
that they are precious
so precious
that he has
died for them
that he has sent his son
to die for them
on the cross
maybe when they look
at those images
on the internet
they're not thrown
so off kilter
because they have
this anchor
in their soul
that says
I need not fear
whether I am
beautiful or not
because my God
has told me
that I'm precious
now
that's not my fear
that's
that's a fear
of someone else
but all of us
have the responsibility
to look into our lives
and say
what am I fearing
that I haven't even
put a name on
and say
what does the gospel
have to say to this
what does the fact
that God has redeemed me
have to say to this
and one of
one of the takeaways
from an example
like I just gave
where you talk about
a teenage girl
and the hope that
you know
we can teach
our daughters
and teach our friends
that these are truths
is that
the redemption
that's talked about
in a passage
like Isaiah 43
is not
merely individualistic
God talks
to the nation
of Israel
and he talks
to the nation
of Jacob
and yes
he talks about
bringing sons
and daughters
individually
from the far
sides of the world
back together
but this is a redemption
that if we really
understand it
we understand
it's a redemption
that we all share
now the sins
that I have been
redeemed from
and the sins
that you have been
redeemed from
may not be the same
but we can look
at each other
and say
we were in the same
spot
and we needed
we needed hope
and we needed
something to kill
our fears
and the same God
died for both of us
and killed our fears
and that gives us
a reason to celebrate
together
I'll give one more
caveat with this
and then
I'll close
with a
with a brief story
the caveat
is this
anytime we talk
about things
like fear
grief
it can be easy
to hear
that God
tells us
not to fear
and that we should
just be happy
all the time
and that we should
never do something
like grieve
that we are not
people who should
ever admit
to suffering
or to sorrow
but if you were
to
if you think
about the Israelites
the day they
received this message
or the day they
realized this message
was about them
what was the difference
between the day
before they heard
this message
and the day
after they heard
this message
the difference
wasn't
their physical
situation
they were still
as oppressed
the day before
they heard this prophecy
as the day after
they heard this prophecy
but the difference
was
they finally knew
there was a hope
and what God
does sometimes
is he comes to us
in the moments
when we are
the most grieved
and when we have
the most reason
to objectively
have fears
and he doesn't say
just ignore
what's going on
around you
what he does
is he says
as grave
as you realize
that these fears
are
know that even here
I have provided
an answer
and I haven't
been in Becli
very often
but just before
I came into
the service
I realized
I read all
those plaques
that are just
by the entrance
and the one
right in the corner
to I think it was
John Simm
I believe
talked about
how he died
on the Sabbath
and at the bottom
one of the passages
that it quotes
about his death
is
well now I've
just challenged
myself
I've embarrassed
myself
it's either
I think it's
1 Thessalonians
chapter 4
either 1 or 2
Thessalonians
chapter 4
but it's the passage
where
Paul says
do not grieve
as
we as Christians
do not grieve
as those who are
without hope
and I don't think
he was saying
don't grieve
but he's saying
our grief
looks different
our grief
is the kind of grief
that even though
it is sad
and it recognizes
that this world
is
immensely
not as it should be
we have hope
and we have something
to look forward to
and that allows us
to live
when we are in the pit
and I'll finish
with a story
which may seem
trivial to you
but I've thought
about a lot
over the years
I had a friend
come visit me
once when I was
in Washington D.C.
and I lived
in a small
one bedroom flat
where the kitchen
was right next
to the shower
and so
I was cooking breakfast
and my friend
was in the shower
right next to me
in a manner of speaking
and I could hear him
talking to himself
and he began
talking to himself
very loudly
and when he came
out of the shower
I said
just so you know
I heard you
talking to yourself
in the shower
but I couldn't
make out what he was saying
so I asked
what he was doing
because
if you're going to talk
at least sing
right
and he said
he said
every morning
when I wake up
and I take a shower
I repeat
the whole gospel
to myself
so that every morning
I hear the gospel
and that may seem
trivial to you
but let me tell you
if that's what it takes
that's what it takes
all of us need to
be reminded
that the fears
that we experience
in this life
have an answer
and we need to
tell ourselves
the gospel
as often as we can
let's pray
heavenly father
we praise you
that you have not
left us
without hope
and you've not
just told us
to change our minds
but you've actually
changed our
objective situation
you have redeemed us
from the pit
and even when we
walk through darkness
we know that you're
with us
and we pray
that as we look
to tomorrow
and the fears
that are trivial
and the fears
that are real
and that hurt us
would you give us
hope
in your gospel
not in ourselves
but in what you
can do for us
and what you have
done for us
in Jesus Christ
and we ask this
in his name
amen
if you would join me
our final hymn
this evening
is
there is a redeemer
let's stand
this evening
please
hear me
this evening
oh
you
have a hard
to do
with calling
you
I saw
I