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Friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. This evening, we continue to consider various passages from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and this evening we are going to consider Isaiah 43, verses 25 through 28. You will find that passage on page 718. I am actually going to begin reading a little earlier to provide more context. I will start reading at verse 14 and continue through the end of the chapter, but our main focus will be on verses 25 through 28.
Friends, this is the Word of God. Once again, let us hear it with reverence and awe. Beginning at verse 14: Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. For your sake, I send to Babylon and bring them down as fugitives, even the Chaldeans and the ships in which they rejoice. I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior. They lie down and cannot rise. They are extinguished, quenched like a wick. Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches. For I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself, that they might declare my praise.
Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob, but you have been weary of me, O Israel. You have not brought me your sheep for burnt offerings or honored me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings or wearied you with frankincense. You have not brought me sweet cane with honey or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices, but you have burdened me with your sins. You have wearied me with your iniquities.
I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. Put me in remembrance. Let us argue together. Set forth your case, that you may be proved right. Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me. Therefore, I will profane the princes of the sanctuary and deliver Jacob to utter destruction and Israel to reviling. The grass withers and the flower fades. But the word of our God endures forever. Let us pray for the Lord to add his blessing to the preaching of his word tonight.
Our sovereign Lord God, Heavenly Father, how wondrous your love toward us in Christ is. What wondrous love is this indeed! We thank you for your amazing grace and love given to us in union with the Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, our Savior. And we pray, Lord, that as we turn our attention to this portion of your God-breathed, inspired, infallible word, that your Holy Spirit would cause the word to find a lodging place in our souls and cause your word to transform us. Lord, your word is powerful. It is breathed out by your Spirit and it is an instrument used by you to breathe new life and renewed life into our souls. So we pray, Heavenly Father, that by your Spirit you would build us up this evening, edify us, and we pray that you would also convict us and correct us where needed. Be with us and bless us now, and grant me, your unworthy servant, the grace to declare your Word with clarity and power.
We pray these things for Jesus’ name’s sake, and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is Forgiveness, Remembrance, and Destruction. And children, the key words to be listening for tonight are the words forgiveness, merit, and destruction. Of course God will forgive me. That is his work.
These words were reportedly the last words spoken by the famous 19th century German poet Heinrich Heine as he lay on his deathbed. Whether or not this account is true, whether or not Mr. Heine actually said these words, and whether or not he said them seriously or sarcastically, these words express one of many misconceptions present in the world today about God’s forgiveness. In this case, the misconception that God is obligated to forgive us, as if forgiveness were his duty, meaning that he must grant it regardless of circumstances.
But this would mean that we have a right to God’s forgiveness, whereas the word of God teaches that God’s forgiveness comes from his free choice and sovereign mercy. God does not owe us forgiveness, for divine forgiveness is a gift of God grounded in grace—meaning the undeserved favor and love of God toward sinners. It is not an entitlement based on divine obligation. After all, friends, the true and living Creator God is not subordinate to any of his creatures. We are his creatures. He is the Creator. He owes us nothing. He is the potter. We are the clay. And he certainly does not owe forgiveness to his sinful, rebellious creatures such as you and me, as sons and daughters of Adam.
Well, friends, our passage for this Lord’s Day evening serves, among other things, to highlight the truth that God’s forgiveness of our sins arises from his divine initiative and grace. This is true despite the seriousness of our own sin and rebellion. And it is ultimately for his glory alone. Now, I would remind us of the setting of our passage for this evening. In the overall context and setting of our passage for this evening, the careful reader will detect undercurrents of the theme of a second or greater exodus. And so, for example, let me just highlight some of the language used by Isaiah in verses 16 through 20.
It says, Thus says the Lord who makes a way in the sea. Does that not remind you of the exodus, when God made a way for His people through the Red Sea? Thus says the Lord who makes a way through the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariots, chariot and horse, army and warrior. Does that not remind you of the Egyptian army? A Pharaoh’s army that went after the Israelites as they were passing through the opening that the Lord had miraculously made in the Red Sea. The chariots and horses followed after. Pharaoh’s chariots and horses followed after. But then what does it say in verse 17? They lie down, they cannot rise. They are extinguished, quenched like a wick. That is precisely what God did to the Egyptians, to Pharaoh’s army and chariots that followed the Israelites into the Red Sea. He closed the Red Sea over the Egyptians. He caused them to be extinguished, quenched like a wick.
Then the Lord says in verse 18, Remember not the former things. He is not saying it is unimportant to remember the Exodus event. That was a mighty, glorious, redemptive event of Almighty God. But He is saying there is something greater coming. Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, pay attention, children. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? In other words, open your eyes, open your ears, be perceptive and discerning. Now He says, I will make a way in the wilderness. The way will not be through the sea, but in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor Me, the jackals and the ostriches, animals that are usually found in the farthest reaches of the wilderness, will honor Me. For I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to My chosen people, the people whom I formed for Myself, that they might declare My praise.
So you see this theme of a second or greater exodus here. And of course, it ultimately points us to the greatest redemptive act of the Lord—our salvation in Christ. For it is in and through Christ that we are redeemed and saved, not just from physical slavery in the land of Egypt, but also from our sins. To go back and review briefly, let us consider an overview of this passage leading up to our text for this evening, in verses 14 and 15. The Lord assures the people who will be exiled into the land of Babylon. He assures them that the Babylonians, who had captured and exiled the Jewish people, will themselves be conquered and exiled. That is why it says in verse 14: “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I send to Babylon, and bring down all the Chaldeans, the fugitives from Babylon, even the ships in which they rejoiced. I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.” In other words, I will bring justice against those who were my instruments of justice against you. The Lord will judge his instrument of judgment, the Babylonians, and will do to them as they did to the Israelites.
And then again, as I pointed out, as we read in verses 16 through 21, God will bring about a newer and greater exodus. The initial fulfillment of this prophecy is, of course, God’s people returning from their Babylonian exile. Yet there was something even greater than that, because, relatively speaking, the return from Babylonian exile was a small event, even when compared to the original Exodus. Therefore, the return of God’s people from Babylonian exile ultimately points to the greater redemption and deliverance from sin that would be accomplished through the saving work of Jesus, the promised Messiah, as we will see. Nevertheless, as we learn in verses 28 through the end of the chapter, this newer and greater exodus will not be based in any way upon the merits or moral worthiness of Israel, for they have consistently proven themselves over time to be a faithless people who have wearied the Lord with their iniquities. Let not the people think that God’s rescuing them from their Babylonian exile and bringing them back to the promised land is in any way based upon their worthiness to be restored to the promised land.
For as it says in verse 24, “You have not brought me sweet cane with money. You have not satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices, but you have burdened me with your sins. You have wearied me with your iniquities.” Rather, Yahweh their God will blot out their transgressions for His own name’s sake, by His grace alone, as we are told in verse 25: “I am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake. And I will not remember your sins.” As we turn our attention to our passage for this evening, particularly verses 25 through the end of the chapter, let us focus first on verse 25, as we consider Yahweh, the Lord’s unmerited forgiveness of our transgressions—the Lord’s unmerited forgiveness of our transgressions.
This forgiveness is portrayed in two ways. God blots out the transgressions of his people and he forgets their sins. He says, “I will not remember your sins.” Let us consider this one at a time. First, we learn here of Yahweh’s unmerited forgiveness. The Lord says, “I, I am he.” He repeats himself for emphasis. And I, the Lord, do what? He says, “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake. And I will not remember your sins.”
Our transgressions are pictured here as a sin debt recorded in God’s book of remembrance. But by His grace, and for His own name’s sake, the Lord Yahweh—Israel’s faithful covenant-making, covenant-keeping God—has entered these sins into His record book, as He did in justice. In His mercy, He will blot them out. As Kyle and Delitzsch explain, Jehovah Himself here announces sola gratia, meaning grace alone, and sola fides, faith alone. This blotting out of sin is so far from being merited by Israel that it is a sovereign act of His absolute freedom. The phrase “for my own sake” indicates that this act is grounded solely in God—namely, in His absolute free grace, the movement of His love by which wrath is subdued. The debt stands written in God’s own book. Justice has entered it, yet love alone blots it out.
Thus, God ultimately forgives us, blots out our sins, brothers and sisters, not to benefit us, although certainly God desires our blessing and benefit. He desires to bless us with His good gifts of grace and salvation. That is part of one reason He does it. But ultimately, the primary reason the Lord blots out our iniquity is for His own glory, for the praise of His glorious grace. But how can He do this?
How can God blot out our transgressions? If sin is so serious and God is so infinitely holy, how can God possibly blot out our transgressions? Of course, we know from comparing Scripture with Scripture that this forgiveness, this blotting out of our transgressions, is only made possible by the payment of blood through the atonement for sin rendered by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is revealed later on in Isaiah as the promised messianic suffering servant.
And I know this is a familiar passage. We have read through it many times, but I do want to draw your attention to a couple of verses in Isaiah chapter 53. So keep your finger there, at the end of chapter 43, and let’s go ten chapters later to chapter 53. Let me read first of all verses 4 through 6, where we see that the ultimate basis for God being able to forgive— the ground of our forgiveness—is the atonement of Christ. It says of this messianic, suffering servant of the Lord:
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned, each one, to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
The Lord is able to blot out our transgressions. Why? Because the Lord, in sovereign grace, has laid on him, Christ, the messianic suffering servant of the Lord, the iniquity of us all. Then stay in Isaiah 53 and jump down to verses 10 through 12. It says: Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, Christ’s death was a guilt offering. He shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.
By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Again, he can blot out our sins because the Lord Jesus has borne our iniquities on the cross. And again, it says in verse 12, Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong. Because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.
What wondrous love is this? Oh, my soul. Oh, my soul. A few takeaways from what we have considered so far. First of all, beloved, our sin incurs an enormous debt before God. We do not take our sin as seriously as God does, nor do we take God’s infinite, white-hot holiness as seriously as we ought. You see, our sin is not just something that the Lord can ignore.
I remember, I think it was last week or a couple of weeks ago, I was watching a YouTube video. The particular video was posted by a content creator who asked this question: Why did Jesus have to die for God to forgive my sins? Her answer was, he didn’t. God could just forgive my sins. This is clearly not a believer. But again, God cannot just forgive us, as I will explain in a few moments.
You see, there is an enormous debt before God, and God’s justice demands that our sin debt be paid. Consider this: when you and I sin, we sin against our Creator, the one who has given us life, who gives us each and every breath that we draw. Who enables every heartbeat that beats is ultimately enabled by God’s sovereign hand. When we sin, we miss the mark of living up to God’s glory. We commit cosmic treason. We incur an infinite debt with each and every sin because we sin against an infinitely glorious being. And that requires infinite punishment. This is bad news for those of us who are sinners.
So God cannot simply forgive sins without the sin debt being punished or paid, for that would contradict God’s justice. Imagine a judge who is unjust. A judge who allows those convicted of serious crimes to go free without imposing the just penalty required by the law would rightly be regarded as a despicable person and an unjust judge. But to give another illustration, suppose you received a speeding ticket. You were going, say, 30 or 40 miles over the posted speed limit. Perhaps it was a 25-mile-per-hour zone, and you were driving 30 or 40 miles over the limit. And not only that, it was in a school zone. That would be a serious offense.
Suppose you appear before the judge, and this judge gets up from the bench, takes out his wallet, and pays your fine. A judge who pays your fine demonstrates both grace and justice. By paying your debt, he shows himself to be gracious while also fulfilling the just demands of the law. You deserve the fine. You deserve to pay it. The debt must be paid. The judge pays it on your behalf.
That is what Jesus did for us on the cross, in a much more glorious sense. He did not merely pay for our speeding ticket. He paid the penalty, brothers and sisters, for our sin. And again, the seriousness of our sin debt is the reason why the substitutionary atonement of Christ is absolutely essential. At the cross, both the justice and the grace of God were gloriously displayed. And that is what enables the Lord to say what He does in the last part of this verse.
He says, I will not remember your sins. This kind of language has caused many to struggle and wonder what the Lord means. The Lord says, I will not remember your sins. How could we say that God is forgetful? Does God suffer from memory challenges? No, friends, this is again what theologians call anthropomorphic language. The Lord speaks in human terms so that we might understand Him.
When He says, I will not remember your sins, this does not mean that God suffers from forgetfulness or has memory problems. After all, God, by definition, is omniscient. Children, what does omniscient mean? It means all-knowing—omni meaning all, and science meaning knowledge—so all-knowing. Therefore, by His divine nature, He is incapable of forgetting in the cognitive sense.
However, by using this anthropomorphic language—attributing human traits to God, in this case, the trait of forgetfulness—the Lord is saying that in forgiving our sins, He chooses not to bring them to mind or count them against us in the heavenly courtroom.
What happens if someone, say your spouse, sins against you and genuinely repents and asks for forgiveness, and you say, yes, I forgive you? But then two weeks later, you bring up what your spouse did. You say, Remember when you did that to me? I thought that was forgiven. Yes, but it’s not forgotten. Let me tell you something: in that situation, you have not truly forgiven your spouse. You are bringing up the past and using it against them, even though they have genuinely repented. Beloved.
What this means is that God chooses not to bring to mind our sins or count them against us in the courtroom of heaven. That is the meaning of the statement, “I will not remember your sins.” They are no longer an issue with the Lord. Yes, the Lord is and always will be aware of our sins, each and every one of them, down to the minutest detail. The Lord knows our sins more thoroughly than we know our own sins. He knows us more completely than we know ourselves. Yet because He does so, not by His ignorance, but by His perfect, inexhaustible knowledge, His omniscience, and because He has graciously chosen to blot them out by the blood of Jesus Christ, they no longer condemn us. They are no longer an issue for us. It is as if God has forgotten about them altogether.
Through this language, Isaiah is expressing essentially the same idea as is expressed elsewhere in Scripture. Consider, for example, how King David expresses the Lord’s forgiveness in Psalm 32, verses 1 and 2.
Psalm 32, verses 1 and 2: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.”
What does this forgiveness and covering involve? Look at verse 2. Then skip ahead to Psalm 51, verses 1 and 2.
David’s famous prayer of repentance. After he had gone with Bathsheba: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your steadfast love. According to Your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, what a comfort it is to know that the blood of Jesus Christ so thoroughly blots out our transgressions that it is as if God, our gracious Heavenly Father, has forgotten about them altogether.
Now, the devil is called the accuser of the brethren. He wants you to remember those past sins that you have repented of. He wants to bring them up and make you feel guilty. He wants to drag you down. He wants to make you ineffective in your service for the Lord as you focus on your past. Do not focus on your past.
If you are in Christ, if you have, by the grace of God, truly repented and trusted Christ alone for your salvation, God, your loving Father, has blotted out those transgressions. He has cast them into a sea of forgetfulness. He has removed them as far as the east is from the west, and cannot be farther than that. He has dealt with it. He has forgotten. He sees that it is no longer an issue.
God will not bring up those sins and place them before you again. He will never say, “You know, I told you I forgave you, but they still trouble me when I think about them.” No. Do not feel bad that you are still struggling with sin, just as you did in the past. The Lord does not keep a record of past wrongs.
When sin is forgiven, it is no longer an issue. This is not to say that the ongoing struggle with sin, or those patterns, do not need to be addressed in sanctification and in counseling situations. But brothers and sisters, with respect to God in the courtroom of heaven, our sins have been nailed to the cross. The record of debt has been nailed to the cross of Jesus, buried in His tomb, cast into a sea of forgetfulness. Those sins are no longer an issue with your heavenly Father. Why are they an issue for you?
Whose voice are you listening to? The voice of the accuser of the brethren? Or are you listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking gospel comfort to you in the Scriptures, saying, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” Do you trust him? Do you rest in his grace and his power and his ability to blot out all of your transgressions?
We also see here, brothers and sisters, the total absence of merit in God’s people. God reminds his people that they had rebelled, that their history was characterized by this kind of unrepentant sin. But nevertheless, he is still going to blot out their transgressions. He is still going to bring them to a point of forgiveness, but he wants them to understand this is not because of anything worthy in them. He says in verse 20, “Put me in remembrance; let us argue together. Set forth your case, that you may be proved right.”
This language of setting forth a case is again a legal setting. A courtroom setting is being depicted, where Yahweh, the Lord, summons his people to make their case that they are worthy of his favor. Some among his professed people still believed that they were good enough. The Lord says, “Very well, prove it. Let us come to court. Let us examine this.”
But then the Lord sets forth his case against his faithless people, reminding them of that sinful rebellion, reminding them that sinful rebellion has characterized his people ever since the covenant nation began to be formed in patriarchal times with the patriarch Abraham. I believe that is who your first father refers to. I do not think it is a reference to Adam, because he is speaking here about the beginning of the covenant nation, not the beginning of the human race. The Lord says, “Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me.” Again, the Lord is not bringing this up to use it against them. He is reminding his self-righteous people, the self-righteous among his people who are trusting in themselves, that it is not by your works, and it is not by your merits.
They needed to be reminded of this so that they might trust him. Then he can fully blot out their sins and cast them into a sea of forgetfulness in this legal setting. The Lord is stripping his people of all grounds for self-righteousness and all grounds for boasting in their own supposed worthiness, so that they might be humbled and realize that it is only by his grace that they have a right standing with their God. Dr. Young comments as follows: “If they can cause God to remember any merit upon their part, they are to judge with him.” In other words, they are to submit to a trial in which the case may be considered. The challenge is a strong way of emphasizing that the Israelites are without merit and have no justification for their conduct. It would then seem to be implied that if the Israelites cannot justify themselves, they should submit to the righteousness of God, so freely offered to them when he blots out their transgressions.
Beloved, the reason we can have no merit in ourselves before God is because God’s law requires perfect obedience—perfect personal and entire obedience—to borrow language from our confessional standards. That is what is required. If you wish to enter heaven, if you wish to justify yourself before God by your own merits or worthiness, then you must render to the Lord perfect personal and entire obedience throughout your entire life, from beginning to end, without ever failing. For God is a perfectly righteous God.
Heaven is a perfect place, and we need a perfect righteousness to enter it. It is not sufficient to have the slate wiped clean, to have our sins forgiven and blotted out. We need a perfect righteousness to serve as our title to heaven, and we do not possess this in ourselves. But, brothers and sisters, the gospel is this: what we lack, Christ provides to all who trust in Him.
Have you trusted in Him for your salvation, or are you trusting in the law and in your own works? Remember what we are told in the Scriptures about those who rely on the works of the law. In Galatians chapter 3, verses 10 to 14, the apostle Paul writes this about those who would rely on the law for right standing with God: For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them.”
In other words, God does not grade on a curve. He does not lower His standard to meet your best behavior. He continues, “Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for ‘the righteous shall live by faith,’ but the law is not of faith. Rather, ‘the one who does them shall live by them.'”
And here is the glorious good news: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree,” so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. It is all or nothing. And that is why, praise God, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.
As James reminds us in James 2, verse 10, which also ought to be a familiar passage to many of you, we are told this: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” The law is a unit. If one commandment is broken, there is a sense in which all are broken. God’s law, His moral law, is a unit. And that is why we need Christ. That is why we cannot earn a right standing with God. Are you trusting in Christ for a right standing with God and for the forgiveness of your sins?
But finally, we read in the final verse of this passage the utter destruction of the faithless among God’s professed people. The utter destruction of the faithless among God’s professed people. There is a tension in this passage. Verse 25: The Lord, through Isaiah, has given this wonderful declaration of His gracious gospel promise—to blot out our transgressions for His own sake, to remember our sins no more. But not everyone among the professed people of God actually believes this good news.
And so we are told this in verse 28: “Therefore, I will profane the princes of the sanctuary and deliver Jacob to utter destruction and Israel to reviling.” Again, this is a prediction of the exile and the effects of the exile on the faithless among God’s people.
But who are these princes of the sanctuary? This is likely a reference to the leading priests, the supreme spiritual leaders of the theocracy who oversaw the temple and its sacrificial system. Such as the high priest and his associates. The Lord would profane them, which probably refers to their exile into Babylon. This would prevent them from carrying out their sacred priestly duties in the Jerusalem temple. As Kyle and Delitzsch explain, the profanation meant that they were ruthlessly taken away to a foreign land, which was the exile, where their official duties were necessarily suspended. The princes among God’s people, the princes of the sanctuary, those who oversaw the religious life of Israel in the Jerusalem temple, would not be able to carry on their functions once the temple was destroyed by the Babylonians and they were taken into exile.
Then there is this language: the Lord will bring Jacob to utter destruction. The Hebrew term translated as destruction here is particularly strong. It is the word harem. This word implies that they were to be given over to God for the purpose of total destruction. This is what the Israelites were commanded to do to the Canaanites. The Canaanites were to be put under the ban, the harem. They were to be given over to total destruction.
And so were also Israelite cities whose inhabitants decided to go after other gods. For example, if you look at Deuteronomy 13, verses 12 to 15, it says this: Moses says to the Israelites, “If you hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you to dwell there, that certain worthless fellows have gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods, which you have not known,’ then you shall inquire and make search and ask diligently. And behold, if it be true and certain that such an abomination has been done among you, you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, devoting it to destruction. All who are in it, and its cattle, with the edge of the sword, you shall gather all its spoil into the midst of its open square, and burn the city and all its spoil with fire as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God.
It shall be a heap forever. It shall not be built again.” In other words, the unrepentant faithless among God’s professed people would receive the same judgment that God meted out upon the pagan inhabitants of the promised land who were conquered by the Israelites.
So what do we learn as we close this, our study of this portion of God’s word? A number of applications I would make. First of all, friends, passages like this one remind us of the biblical truth expressed by the Apostle Paul in Romans 9, verse 6: “Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.” Not everyone who is a baptized church member who bears the name Christian is truly in Christ, who truly knows the Lord. Not everyone who bears the name of the God of Israel is actually a redeemed child of God. This reminds us as well that the sphere of the covenant in its external administration is broader than the sphere of divine election.
God graciously provides for the redemption, forgiveness, and blotting out of sins of his elect faithful, his elect people, who are faithless and devoid of merit, though they are so, while giving over the rest to the consequences of their own freely chosen sin. God does nothing unfair to those whom he passes over in his grace.
He is simply leaving them to their own freely chosen ways and their own freely chosen sin. This reminds us that there are ultimately only two ways to follow in life. There is the way of utter destruction for those who remain unrepentant in their sin and in their self-righteousness. And there is the way of the Lord’s sovereign, unmerited forgiveness, secured through the saving work of Jesus, the promised Messiah. This way is experienced through God-given faith and repentance.
Jesus said, “The broad road leads to destruction, and the narrow road leads to life.” What is the narrow road? Jesus himself. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Which pathway are you traveling? Are you in Christ or outside of Christ? Are you resting in his gracious, free blotting out of your sins, or are you trying to secure your standing with God by your own attempts at obeying God’s law, your own merits, and worthiness? Christ is the only way. Travel his way. Travel the narrow path. Trust Jesus Christ.
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, God, for your mercy toward us, that you blot out our transgressions for your own name’s sake, because of the blood of Jesus, the suffering servant Messiah who died for our sins and rose again for our justification, so that we might have the gift of eternal life. Give us grace, O Lord, to take these truths to heart and to act accordingly, to live lives of grateful obedience, not to earn your favor, but because you have graciously favored us in Christ. We pray all these things in his glorious name. And all of God’s people said, “Amen.” We close our time by rising and let’s sing together number 32, “How blessed is he whose trespasses are forgiven.”