Isaiah 43:1-5a
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
January 12, 2025
To those who have in the raging wildfires lost a loved one or their dream home or their modest home full of happy memories, to those who’ve been wounded to the core by the betrayal of someone in whom they’ve poured their life, to struggling parents agonizing over their mistakes in raising the next generation, to lonely elderly folks bent over under the crushing weight of feeling worthless and forgotten, to all hurting and anxious people, God wants to say what He first said to His first people in today’s scripture: “When you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” How’s that so? “I am,” God says, “with you”. I’ve “redeemed you”, “called you by name”, made you “mine”, held you “precious in my sight”. I’ve “loved you”.
In his book Hope is Contagious, pastor and former NFL player Ken Hutcherson shared about his long, and ultimately losing battle against leukemia. At one point, he read in the paper about a little boy in a Chicago ghetto who was shot and permanently disabled in a drive-by shooting. Everyone in the neighborhood, including the boy’s mother, knew the shooter; but no one would identify him. A local educator was quoted to say, “That’s what happens when people lose hope. You don’t think things will get better. So, you just give up.”
Hutcherson acknowledged the truth of that remark, and then celebrated the hope God offers by His ever-available presence. Hope is, Hutcherson exulted, “readily within our grasp…whether you’re on some inner-city street or sitting at your kitchen table, no tragedy can dim the hope that comes from knowing that God will walk with you through the fire and that his presence will give you peace.”
Today’s scripture brings hope to God’s first people after they’d, by their own fault, brought upon themselves tragic suffering. They’d been faithless to God and wicked to neighbor; and, to teach them a lesson, God had allowed the Babylonians to drag them off as their slaves into exile 1,000 miles away.
“But now,” today’s scripture begins, God was about to change things. For “now” God was employing a Persian king named Cyrus to liberate them, return them home, enable them to rebuild their nation and move them to renew their commitment to their great God.
God had engulfed them in the fire of painful adversity to bring them to their senses and to refine their character. But as with that dry desert bush out of which God first addressed Moses, that desiccated shrub God kept from burning despite its staying ablaze, God was working a severe miracle of grace to bless his people.
To exercise grace is to enact a kindness that disregards all the reasons one has to let people suffer the full consequences of their bad decisions. Grace is love working the wonders of its generosity despite all that would appear to render generosity out of the question.
The gratuitous goodness of grace does not, however, imply immunity from difficulty, danger or pain. It does not always make our circumstances less challenging, but it always makes us more capable of enduring them and turning them to good effect. It does not always remove adversity, but it always grants us the strength to make adversity serve us well.
When Elisa Morgan told her 11-year-old daughter Eva that a teenage girl they knew had a disease that was making all her hair fall out, likely never to grow back, Eva immediately prayed, “O God, please hold Amy’s hair to her head.” When six weeks later, Elisa told Eva that Amy’s hair was continuing to fall out, Eva immediately prayed a different prayer: “O God, if You won’t hold Amy’s hair to her head, hold her to Your heart!” Though God often does not move the mountain we’d like, God never fails to move into our greatest place of need and move us toward a deeper level of intimacy with Him and a higher level of sanctity by Him. Though God may not protect us from the fire of trouble and trial, God prevents the fire from burning us up. He provides His companionship, and His presence sees us through and inspires us to improve our character and conduct – even if we’ve previously been unresponsive to His overtures of love and proven ourselves unworthy of such kindness.
Hector Tobar’s book, Deep Down Dark, tells the story of the 33 Chilean miners trapped 2000 feet underground for over three months back in 2010.
When the miners began to despair of rescue, a Christian miner named Don Jose Henriquez quietly asserted, “God is the only way out of this.” Because they had nowhere else to turn and because, when Henriquez spoke of God or to God, his authenticity suggested God’s reality, the others looked to Him for spiritual guidance. At one point, Henriquez led them in a prayer, saying, “Lord, have mercy on us. We know we’re not the best men. Victor Segovia drinks too much. Victor Zamora is too quick to anger. Pedro Cortez has abandoned his wife and young daughter…Grant us Your grace anyway, if only because we are sinners and weak…There’s nothing we can do without Your help. Take charge of us and this situation.”
That God did.
And that God always will for those who turn to Him. While we never know what tomorrow will bring, we can know this gracious, merciful God who brings tomorrow. That God will never forsake us whom He holds precious in His sight. That God will go to any lengths and any depths to save us. That God, though He lets us walk through fire and be engulfed in flames, will never let them consume us if we have just let Him make us His own. He will love us and be with us no matter how long the fire burns.
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