You Are My Witnesses!
Introduction
Is 43:8-12
Last week we learned that as God’s people we know the one living God and Savior. We have seen and experienced God. We know that there is no other God, no other Savior, and no other Lord. And because we know there is no other, we cannot help but speak about, and tell the world about him. We, who know God, are called to make God known. God’s people, we, bear witness to the living God. As he told Israel, and as Jesus told his disciples, God tells us — You are my witnesses!
We are not all called and gifted to be evangelists and missionaries. But we are all called to be faithful witnesses to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to be willing to speak up for him when opportunities arise. When Jesus told his disciples that you will be my witnesses, he did not begin a new idea or practice. Jesus told them to continue a calling, a ministry, and a lifestyle, that was already part of the mission of God’s people.
1. God has a problem
To bear witness to the living God was Israel’s calling. God’s mission was to make himself known to the nations through Israel. God chose and called Israel to be his servant (Is 41:8-10). They were to be a light to the nations (Is 42:6; 49;6). But there was a problem. The servant of YHWH was blind and deaf! Isaiah 42:18-20—“Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one in covenant with me, blind like the servant of the Lord? You have seen many things, but you pay no attention; your ears are open, but you do not listen.”
God had a double problem here. Not only was his servant blind and deaf, but they were in exile. During those days people believed that the gods of bigger and powerful nations were bigger and more powerful than the gods of the nations they defeated (Wright). So here was Israel defeated, captured, and in exile. Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. Thus, YHWH, the God of Israel, was defeated. He was a weak God. Perhaps He was no more.
Is that not what the world believes and tells us today? God is dead. God is a figment of the imagination. God is only for the weak. We no longer need God. Human achievements have overtaken God, overwhelmed God, overruled God. The human mind, science, money, human politics, human power, are bigger and more powerful than God. God is dead and done for!
Not at all is Isaiah’s clear answer. YHWH is the only sovereign living God. And he is still in control as he always has been. The gods of the nations are nothing. They have no actual power, only illusions of power, because they are created by human beings.
The same today. Who gives human beings the brain power and physical energy to achieve what they have achieved? People think they are in charge. Human leaders think they are powerful. But these are all illusions of power. Yes, with our God-given talents, skills, and energy, humankind has achieved much. However, even with all these achievements, poverty, suffering, illness, wars, and evil continue. Like the gods of the nations, human achievements, and human leaders, are ultimately powerless to save humankind.
The only hope for the nations, for the world, for us, is God. Only God can save because he is the only sovereign living God and Savior. He promised to save in Is 43:1-7. How can Israel, we know that he will? In Is 43:8-12 God unmasks the gods of the nations and the world, and proves that only YHWH is God and Savior.
2. You are my witnesses!
In these verses God calls all the nations and their gods together for a global, universal, international court. The court must decide — Which god is real? Which god is right? Only the one that can predict the future, interpret the past, and explain the present. God challenges them — “Which of the gods foretold this, and proclaimed to us the former things?” (Is 43:9) See also Isaiah 41:21-23 — “Present your case,” says the LORD. “Set forth your arguments,” says Jacob’s King. “Tell us, you idols, what is going to happen. Tell us what the former things were, so that we may consider them and know their final outcome. Or declare to us the things to come, tell us what the future holds, so we may know that you are gods. Do something, whether good or bad, so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear.”
God invites the gods to bring their witnesses — the nations (v9). But they have nothing to say because their gods “are less than nothing, and their works are utterly worthless” (41:24).
So who will speak for YHWH? YHWH turns to his people whom he has just described as blind and deaf in verse 8. To them YHWH turns and say, “You are my witnesses!” (v10).
What a shock! What irony! Israel had been exiled because they disobeyed God’s covenant laws. Their courts of law became a playground for lying witnesses (Wright). Amos 5:10 — “There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court and detest the one who tells the truth.” Is 29:21 — “those who with a word make someone out to be guilty, who ensnare the defender in court and with false testimony deprive the innocent of justice.”
Blind, deaf, lying witnesses? These are the witnesses YHWH calls to bear witness for Him? How can he do this? The next words explain this.
3. You are my servant!
“You are my servant whom I have chosen.” In Abraham God chose Israel as his servant to be a blessing to the nations. That original calling remains. God called Israel to be his servants so that they should be his witnesses. We are God’s servants today. We are chosen and called in order to be witnessing servants of the living God in a world of competing idols
Witnessing must be done in the spirit of servanthood. Witnessing to YHWH is not done by yielding human, worldly, or imperial power. Witness to God and his kingdom is given by the gentle, loving servant who is described in Isaiah 42:2-3. Witnessing is done in countercultural, radical ways, like washing the feet of others, and loving our enemies. Witnessing is done following Jesus’ example of servanthood. He is the ultimate Servant and supreme Witness of the living God.
God’s mission and the mission of God’s people do not depend on how great or how good we are. God accomplishes his mission through us in spite of our weaknesses and failures. Like Israel we are unqualified, incompetent, powerless. We are blind, deaf, and lying witnesses. But here is the miracle of God’s grace and love. Here is the mystery of God working in radically counter-cultural ways, turning the world and its ways upside down. We don’t have to be perfect to bear witness to God. We have this treasure, this knowledge, this witness, of the one living God, in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God, and not from us (2 Cor 4:7). God says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore we will boast all the more gladly about our weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on us. For Christ’s sake, we should delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when we are weak, then we are strong. (2 Cor 12:9-10)
God is calling every one of us to be his witnesses and servants. There are no excuses. God uses us as we are with our imperfections, flaws, and weaknesses. The Holy Spirit is just waiting for you to say yes, and to allow Him to empower you to be his witnessing servant.
4. I Am He
What was the content and purpose of Israel’s witness? There were two purposes. Restoring trust in God, and, establishing the truth about God. Verse 10 again — “You are my witnesses and my servant … so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.”
Israel, the witnesses themselves, need to be convinced. They failed to acknowledge God. They forgot what they knew. Israel failed to trust God. They placed their trust in other things.
But now God is doing a new thing. God is pushing the restart button to reboot the mission of his people. He recalls Israel to their original mission of being witnesses. And as they bear witness they themselves will be restored to understand and recognize their God, to put their trust in Him.
We learn here an important lesson about the power of testimony. The power of bearing witness “lies not only in what it does in the hearts of those who hear it, but also in what it does for the faith of the one who gives it. The task of convincing others reinforces the convictions of the witness” (Wright). Our faith, knowledge and love for Jesus grow weak when we are keeping Him for ourselves; when we become comfortable in our churchy activities; when we visit Jesus in church only on Sundays, and the rest of the week we leave him at home or in church. Do you need a restart in your relationship with God? Then go out, bear witness to Jesus Christ in word and in deed. When you share Jesus with others, your passion for him will be rekindled. When you see someone’s life changed because of Jesus, you will experience incredible joy, and your own faith and love for God will be restored and grow stronger.
The second purpose of Israel’s witness was to establish three key truths about God. The first truth is that YHWH alone is the transcendent, eternal God. Verse 10 — “I am he.” Verse 12, “I am God.” Verse 13 — “from ancient days I am he.” YHWH is eternal. There was no god before him, and there will be no god after him. YHWH alone is unformed. All the other gods, all the idols of this world, are formed, created, constructed by humans. They are things, creations, that have no power, and will pass away.
The second truth is that YHWH alone is in sovereign control of history. Only YHWH can foretell the future, and proclaim the former things (v9). Verse 12 — “I have revealed and saved and proclaimed—I, and not some foreign god among you.” In the NLT this verse reads, “First I predicted your rescue, then I saved you and proclaimed it to the world.” “Only the God who is actually in control of events from the beginning to the end can claim such a mastery of history. This story is God’s story because it is the story he is writing. The author, God, controls the story.” (Wright)
The third truth is that YHWH alone is Savior. Verse 11 — “I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior.” Verse 12 — I have revealed and saved and proclaimed—I, and not some foreign god among you. Verse 13 — Yes, and from ancient days I am he. No one can deliver out of my hand. When I act, who can reverse it?” YHWH already proved his saving power in past history. His saving power can be trusted for the future. We must refuse to trust the powers and idols of this world for salvation and life. God alone can save, has saved, will save. There is no other Savior.
How will the nations come to know the living, revealing, saving God, the one who is their creator, sovereign lord and judge, their savior? “You are my witnesses,” says God. God says this to a community of spiritually blind and deaf people in exile. God entrusts these truths to human witnesses, witnesses who proved to be unworthy and unfaithful. God says to us today, You are my witnesses! — we, a community who like Israel are flawed, unworthy, weak, and unfaithful. Only the miraculous, life-giving and transforming power of God’s Spirit could give such people, could give us, any hope of being God’s chosen servant and witness. And that is what God promised he will do, and that is what He did in Jesus Christ.
Next week we will look at how Jesus calls us to be his witnesses.