“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. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.’”
Isaiah 43:1-3a
But now.
Two words. That’s where this passage begins, and those two words are doing more work than it might appear. The chapter before this one ends in darkness. God has described His people as blind and deaf, plundered and looted, trapped and with no one to rescue them. It’s a portrait of a people in serious trouble, and God does not soften it or pretend otherwise. He lets the darkness be dark.
And then He speaks again. And the first thing He says is but now.
Not after you’ve improved or sorted yourselves out. Now. Right here, in the middle of the mess, in the condition you’re actually in, with the situation exactly as bleak as it looks.
But now thus says the Lord.
The most tender words in Scripture have a way of arriving not when everything is fine but when everything is not. That’s not an accident. That’s the character of the God who speaks them.
Before God says a single word of comfort, He tells Isaiah’s people who is speaking.
He who created you, O Jacob. He who formed you, O Israel.
This matters more than it might seem. The word translated formed here is the same word used in Genesis 2 when God formed Adam from the dust of the ground. It’s the word of a craftsman, a potter, someone who works with intention and care and personal involvement. God isn’t addressing Israel as a category or a nation or a file in a cosmic database. He’s speaking as the One who made them, who knows them from the inside out, who was present at their beginning and has never looked away.
When the One who made you speaks to you, it’s different from advice from a stranger. It’s different even from the encouragement of a friend. The One who created you knows what you’re made of. He knows what you can bear and what you can’t. He knows where you’re weak and where the pressure is being applied. He’s speaking as the One who formed you and knows you completely.
And then, out of that knowledge, He says three things in rapid succession that are worth slowing down to hear individually.
I have redeemed you.
Past tense, settled, done. The word means bought back, rescued from bondage, recovered at a price. It’s the language of the marketplace and the battlefield all at once. Someone was owed something. Someone paid it. And you are the one who was brought back.
I have called you by name.
Your name. The specific, individual, personal name that belongs to you and no one else. The God who created the universe and sustains it by the power of His Word knows your name and has called it. You are known to Him the way a shepherd knows each sheep, the way a father knows each child. You are not a face in a crowd to Him.
You are mine.
That’s the one that settles everything. You are mine. The possessive that ends the search, that answers the deepest question any human being carries. To whom do I belong? You belong to the One who created you, who redeemed you, who called you by name. You are His.
And then God does something unexpected. Having established who is speaking and what He has already done, He doesn’t promise His people that the hard things won’t come.
He promises to be with them when they do.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned.
Notice the word when. Not if the waters come. Not if the fire starts. When. God isn’t offering His people an exemption from difficulty. He isn’t promising that faith will keep the hard things at a safe distance, that following Him means the waters stay shallow and the fires stay cool. He’s promising something better and more honest than that. He’s promising Himself.
I will be with you. The rivers won’t overwhelm you. The flame won’t consume you. The promise is His presence in the danger, His company through the fire, His hand holding yours in the water.
And then He names Himself.
I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
Hold those three names together for a moment. The Lord, sovereign, ruling, the One who holds all things. The Holy One of Israel, the title that made Isaiah fall on his face in the temple, the title that belongs to the One before whom the seraphim cover their faces. And then, right after that title of terrifying holiness, the third name: your Savior.
The holy God and the saving God are the same God. The One whose holiness undoes us is the same One who saves us. Those two things don’t cancel each other out. They belong together, and this passage puts them side by side so we won’t miss it.
Fear is not a weakness. It’s the most honest response available to a human being living in a world that is genuinely dangerous and genuinely uncertain.
The fear that settles in when the relationship you counted on is fracturing and you don’t know if it can be repaired. The fear that wakes you up at three in the morning when the money is running out and you can’t see the way forward. These aren’t failures of faith. They’re the natural response of a creature who knows its own limits and feels the weight of what it’s facing.
But underneath all the specific fears there’s a deeper one, the one that gives all the others their power. It’s the fear that nobody is in control. That the universe is indifferent. That we are ultimately alone in whatever we are facing, that our name is not known by anyone with the power to do anything about our situation. That when we cry out, no one is listening who is capable of helping.
That’s the fear this passage speaks directly into. God answers it with three declarations and a name.
You are redeemed. You are called by name. You are mine.
The One who says I have redeemed you in Isaiah 43 paid the price of that redemption, in the fullness of time, on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem.
The word redeemed isn’t poetry in the New Testament. It’s a transaction. It’s the blood of the Son of God, given as the price for people who couldn’t pay their own way back. The redemption God declares in Isaiah 43 finds its cost in the cross of Jesus Christ, where the Holy One of Israel became the Savior of the world in the most concrete and irreversible way possible.
And the One who says I have called you by name is the same Jesus who stood in a garden on resurrection morning and called one word into the darkness.
Mary.
One name. And she knew Him. He calls His own sheep by name, John tells us, and leads them out. By name. Each one.
The God who spoke to a frightened and defeated people in Isaiah 43 has not changed His approach. He still speaks into the darkness. He still arrives with but now when everything around us has gone quiet and bleak. He still knows your name. He paid the price to call you His.
And He still makes the same promise He made to Israel in the middle of their trouble. Something that doesn’t depend on your circumstances cooperating or your fears cooperating or anything cooperating except the character of the One who made you.
I will be with you.
Whatever water you’re standing in right now, whatever fire you’re walking through, the but now is addressed to you too. In this moment. In this situation. In the specific fear that has been sitting on your chest since the thing happened that you didn’t see coming.
You are redeemed. The price has been paid and it wasn’t paid by you.
You are called by name, because He knows it. He’s always known it.
You are His. That’s a declaration made by the One who formed you, who bought you back, who calls you by name and will not let go. It holds in the dark the same as it holds in the light.
The waters and the flame won’t have the last word, because they answer to the Lord.
Fear not.
Lord, I bring you the specific fear I’ve been carrying. You know what it is. You know my name. Remind me today that I am redeemed, that I am called, that I am Yours. Walk with me through whatever water and fire this season holds. I’m trusting not in my own steadiness but in Yours. Amen.
What a beautiful and always timely message.