A word just about the sermon title because it can be offensive, I realize.

“Easter”. Putting Easter into anything can be really problematic. Some people know that “Easter” was a term that was given over to this holiday at some point in the Christian calendar, but for Christians we usually call this “Resurrection Day”. In some parts it’s called “Anastasia’s Day” which is the Greek word for resurrection. Other places it’s called “Pasca” after the Passover sacrifice; and now that Christ is the Lamb of God now sacrificed for us people call it “Pasca” in many areas within the Orthodox Church. I use “Easter” in the title just as the common celebration of a holiday, that is all. I hope that I have not offended anyone.

What I want us to see is beyond the day — beyond the celebration — there is so much more for us to know. There is so much more for us to celebrate, but we need to understand what that is. We need to understand why it is such a great celebration. We often celebrate the resurrection, and what does that entail? If we only talk about the resurrection as a historic event, we have so missed Easter.

So I’d like us to be able to understand what is beyond Easter, and I think Isaiah 43 is a great place to begin. Partially, because as I said in the invocation, “But now” — there’s a change – if you look at the last verse of chapter 42, it said:

So he poured on him the heat of his anger and the might of battle. It set him on fire all around, but he did not understand; it burned him up, but he did not take it to heart.

Isaiah 42:25

It’s actually referring to the nation of Israel. They are on fire. God has put them on fire because of their disobedience, and yet by verse 2 of chapter 43 it says:

When you walk through fire you shall not be burned.

Isaiah 43:2

You see something happened in the interim. “But now” — that’s the interim.

One person just kind of brought this out and said, “You know, if you look at this passage you see that it is an amazing passage, because God reveals not only himself, but he reveals so much more.” Consider just at the end of verse 1. He says:

Fear not, I have redeemed you.

Isaiah 43:1

Faith beyond fear.

Can you imagine going over to Ukraine right now, walking through the streets and saying: “Fear not!”? Or a friend of mine, who just got back from Albania, where she was helping to minister to Afghan refugees who were facing a hopeless future. Wouldn’t it have been unusual for her to walk in and say “Fear not!”?

What about us, when we hear these words? Sometimes it’s the timing that may be the important element in it. Was it during the entrapment by warring forces? Or were the words framed after a daring escape, and now in the midst of overwhelming lost and mind-numbing pain, when there is only desire to return home into those good old days — like in Egypt?

Do you remember when the nation got out to the desert, and things started getting difficult, and they said, “Let’s find a different leader so that we could head back to Egypt.”? The other idea not only is timing, but who said these words? “Fear not.” Is this someone who can change the circumstances?

See again, the Lord brought the nation out of Israel.

Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will deliver you from slavery to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.

Exodus 6:6

And yet, what happened? They escaped physically, but they didn’t escape spiritually. They were able to get out of the land. They were able to get away from having that drudgery of slavery seven days a week, 24 hours a day, but they were not free. In their minds they thought “You know, let’s revise our history. It wasn’t really that bad now, was it?”

You know when people can say slavery was a good thing you know there’s something wrong. Insanity is one word that comes to mind. They chose to abandon faith and embrace their fear, voicing their new craving to re-enter into slavery.

“Fear not.”

These are the words that God gave Abram in Genesis 15, the echo of which is repeated in Isaiah 29. They are the words of reassurance for Joshua as the nation was ready to enter the Promised Land. Similar language is used of the coming of the Messiah in Isaiah 62, as well as in the book of Revelation, chapter 22. You see, we focus so readily and so easily on this physical world that we sometimes miss the spiritual reality. The spiritual reality of knowing and being in a covenant relationship with the living God who promises, in fact, guarantees that we will all be brought to heaven safely. We somehow forget that the heart of the issue is freedom from the slavery of sin and being with our Christ forever.

That is what this Resurrection Day means; it means that we celebrate what happened many years ago, but it is beyond fear. It is where we live by faith beyond fear, because our God has said to us, “Fear not, I have redeemed you.”

Now there’s two thoughts that come to mind with this one. It’s that you’re redeeming, which means that you’re buying back something you already owned. Our God says that: “Fear not, I’ve brought you back to myself.”

But the second thing is, every time I think of the idea of the Exodus, and when Israel was brought out it seems that the problem was that he helped them escape from slavery, but that’s not the word that’s used. The word that’s used here is “redeemed”.

And not only that, but there are a couple of other words that just jump out. One is “ransomed”. Look at the end of verse 3.

“I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.”

Isaiah 43:3

That’s the price; redemption is the verb – a definitive verb.

I have redeemed you.

Done.

What was the price that was paid?

There was a ransom, there was an exchange made, and it was of nations. You see, when the opportunity came, God did not have a choice of “Well, let me see, I could leave the people there in Egypt. Maybe they’ll finally grow up and understand that I’m their covenant God” or “I could redeem them. Let’s see, which shall I do?”

No, quite the contrary.

Our God said “I’ll give anything to get you back with me. I will give nations in payment for you.” You know, the thing is that sometimes we don’t understand this concept of redemption. Somehow, we think that there is some element of it that needs to be more, there’s something that needs to be more for us to be worthy of redemption, worthy of that ransom. Because our sin is so terrible and when we actually see our sin and we see how we have offended God and rejected him, we sometimes believe there can’t be a remedy for this. And so even though we might accept the theological terms and the truths that we see in Scripture, we may balk at that idea and yet…and yet we need to be able to see and understand this well — David understood this truth. He understood that the sin was not seeing the physical reality versus the spiritual reality alone — but he saw that what he was living was on one plane but actually had more of a reality in the spiritual plane.

You remember his sin with Bathsheba, a married woman. He took her, he impregnated her, and then to cover it up he made sure that her husband was killed, and then he took her for himself, and his sin was discovered. His sin was discovered in the in the courthouse of the kingdom. It was in the court where anyone could bring their troubles to the king, and he would adjudicate for them. And God brought the prophet to tell a wonderful story that just raised David’s ire — he was angry — and he judged, and he judged correctly what was wrong, what was evil, what was sinful. And then the prophet said, “and you’re the man”.

Paul Tripp has this wonderful little book – I’ve used this illustration numerous times because I found it so helpful to my own soul. He has a little devotional book called “Whiter than Snow”, they’re devotionals on Psalm 51. Now Psalm 51 was the Psalm that David wrote after this thing with Bathsheba. You want to advertise your sin? Look at Psalm 51, because David does not advertise, he instructs. And right at the beginning of it he says,

Against you, and you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

Psalm 51:4

 Really David? That’s not how the event went down — that happened in open court. Everyone saw it. Everyone knew what you had done. It was whispers before and now it is front line news: 

“The King Bedded Bathsheba”.  “The King Killed her Husband”. “The King Sinned Against God.”

The king who was supposed to represent the covenant before the nation has failed utterly.

Paul Tripp says that he was once in, he lives in Philadelphia, he did live in Philadelphia, and he was once going around the house in their neighborhood, and he saw that the front door was open. And there were craftsmen who were up there helping to renovate. Now he knew they were doing renovation because a wrecking ball was not seen in the front yard. And so he went through the open door, and he saw a craftsman who was taking off triple crown molding. And he was doing it very carefully. He had a small hammer and an apron full of little wedges, and he would pry up just a corner of the crown molding, and then he’d stick a little wedge in there, and he’d tap it in – not the whole way just part of the way – and then they take another one and he moved further down, and he tapped that in, and then he’d do another one. He was doing it in such a way that the molding didn’t crack, but rather that it was kept, because as a craftsman he was able to see how it could be renovated to its former glory.

It would have been just and proper for God to take a wrecking ball to the house of David for his sin — doubly so because he was the king, the representative for the whole nation. But God didn’t take the wrecking ball. No. No. Instead, God gave a small wedge of a well-worded story. God gave a wedge of justice that welled up in David’s heart. God used the small wedge of repentance that when David was confronted, his eyes were open, and he saw that he had sinned against God. And he realized that the mess that was around him was because he had sinned against God and God alone. He’d broken that relationship first and foremost. And he was given a wedge of forgiveness. And he was given a wedge of restoration.

There are so many times that we think that we are deserving of God’s wrecking ball of wrath. I’ve used this devotional often with people who are in hospital, and I said, “Do you see? Isn’t it wonderful to realize that we are not going to be destroyed by God, but we’re his reclamation project? He’s renovating us, he is gently dealing with us that we might be restored to him, redeemed by him. Isn’t that good news?” Do you know every time that I’ve done this for one of our members in hospital, before I can leave the room the person who’s in the other bed has said “Pastor, would you stop and pray with us? Because we happened to hear what you were saying, and we can’t believe it’s true.”

This truth is amazing, and when we understand it — when we truly understand it — it brings great joy. Because suddenly we realize that we have been redeemed, that we are being we are being restored, because our Christ has put great value upon us, and he says to us,

Fear not, I have redeemed you.

Faith beyond fear.

There’s a second word if you look just down in verse 5. It says,

Fear not, I am with you.

Isaiah 43:5

This is hope beyond enslavement or exile. You see when we look at verse 3, we kind of look and say, “Oh yeah, why is Cush, why are Cush and Seba included in that with Egypt?” Well, I think it might be coming at a different time in the history. Years later, during the Babylon exile, Cyrus was the great king of Persia who conquered Babylon in 539, and he issued a decree that the Jews should be allowed to go back to Jerusalem. But that was difficult because Egypt still had control in that neighborhood, and so the Persians came down and they defeated Egypt, but more than that, they kept going and they defeated far beyond that, and Cyrus allowed the Jewish nation to come back. Some people have considered that that was what God meant by exchanging people, so that Israel could return to the Promised Land. You see, there was hope beyond it.

There was hope beyond because our God, our God is the kinsman redeemer. The word here is “ga’al” — the kinsman redeemer – it’s the word we know so well from the book of Ruth. You remember that, right, when Ruth decides to follow her mother-in-law back from Moab, back to Israel, to a country she didn’t know, but she wanted to support her mother-in-law. She wanted to support that family, her husband’s family, even though he was dead and gone. Even though she was still a young woman. Why? Because she said to Naomi,

Your God shall be my God.

Ruth 1:16

She embraced that, and what’s interesting is for them they didn’t know quite how God would provide for them. They were going back to a country that had just gotten over a famine. They were going back to a place that they could not own property. They had to hope that there might be a redeemer — a kinsmen redeemer — who might step forward. And sure enough, there was a man who was there, a man who was able to look beyond this Moabitess, to look into her heart, and to be able to see that she was a woman of great faith. She didn’t try to go after a younger man to be her husband. No, she waited until a kinsmen redeemer might come and redeem them, because she trusted in God. She had hope beyond the difficult situation in which they found themselves. And Boaz did redeem them.

Our God has used the same word here when he says that he will redeem us. God is saying, “I am determined to be your next of kin. Your troubles are mine.”

Now we need to go beyond this, because beyond that fear is this hope beyond enslavement. You see, we need to be able to say who is this person? This is the person who wants to take our troubles on his shoulders. Not only has he redeemed, but there is so much more that he desires to do.

Who is he? Well, let’s just read through the passage.

First, he’s our covenant God. Look in verse 3.

For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One, your Savior.

Isaiah 43:3

You know, this is the strongest argument for the unity of the book of Isaiah. “The Holy One of Israel” is referred the whole way through it, and as a result there is a unity in all of the book though it spanned many, many years.

Second, in verses 1 and 7 there’s a very interesting phrase where it says this person is

the One who created and formed you.

Isaiah 43:1,7

“Created and formed” are the exact two words that are used in the creation of the world. The Hebrew word for “create” is bara, “to create out of nothing”; and “form” is the word yatser. Let me put these in context for you.

In the beginning God bara the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1

Then the Lord God yatser the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living creature.”

Genesis 2:7

God fashioned the man out of the material that was there and present. These words are in the perfect tense. In Genesis they were completed acts, and yet here it’s ongoing. There is an ongoing creation and forming of God’s people. God is continually creating for himself and forming into greater beauty his people, not as individuals but as a community, O Tenth.

Third, he calls us by name. One, see it’s personal. “What’s in the name?” Juliette opined, “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Wonderfully poetic. Hardly true.

In Scripture, naming is a very important exercise. Do you remember how Adam couldn’t quite find someone that was just right, and so God brings all of the animals to Adam to specifically name them, but also the underlying cause was that he might find a good partner. And he goes through, and he names all of the animals,

but for Adam there was not found a partner suitable for him.

Genesis 2:20

Why did God give a fail first time out? Or did he? You know, with pets you name, you claim, you take care of, right? Well, this was part of the role that Adam was going to have within the garden. He was naming those animals that he would take care of. I wonder what name he gave the one that was sacrificed for their sin at the end of Genesis 3.

God calls us by name, but in the naming is also a specific task to be completed. God creates and entails naming and numbering of the stars, Psalm 147. Or the darkness, Genesis 1:5. But this summons is also included of Christ. If you look back in Isaiah 42, verses 6 and 7, he says:

I am the Lord; I have called you” that is, the Messiah, “in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.

Isaiah 42:6-7

The physical world, the spiritual reality. Our God also summons us as a people.

For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

Deuteronomy 7:6

Fourth, this person is the one who has redeemed us, and he promises to be with us, verses 2 and 5. To help us, chapter 41:10. He says, “I myself will help you” to uphold us with his righteous right hand, and to bring back all of our offspring, wherever they may be from across the globe because they are also his people, both for his reputation as well as for our joy.

Fear not, I have redeemed you. I am with you.

Why? That’s where we need to end: Why? And this is where verse 4 just stands out:

Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.

Isaiah 43:4

This is love beyond Easter.

Fear not, because I love you. I love you. I value you.

Here’s the motivation behind what we celebrate. We are highly valued, not perhaps in the eyes of others, but we are precious in his eyes, because he loves us. Here is love beyond Easter. We’re not a charity case. We’re not deserving, but rather we are merely the recipients this is the reason for our celebration and assurance of his return.

Faith beyond reason. Hope beyond enslavement. Love beyond resurrection.

And the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:13

This is the reason why beyond Easter, and Christ’s historic resurrection from the dead, and his imminent return is his love for you and me.