Isaiah 43:1-4 But now thus said the LORD that created you, O Jacob, and he that formed you, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed you… I. THE PERSON. "I — thee — thou — Mine." How this sentence tingles with personality! If one person can call another person, those two persons are alike. Those two persons have a common life interest. Personality in God is substantially similar to personality in man. II. THE NAME. Would it be an untrue fancy to suppose that we each have a name before God? When you look at your little sleeping child to-night, you will, perhaps, not only think of the name that everybody knows him by, but you will murmur over him some little special name that you have given him — you hardly know how, but that gives to you the very sense of the essence of the true life sleeping there. Remember that something just like that is in the heart of your God's feeling for you. Science generalises, love particularises. Then, with this loving name, comes possession. There is a strange, yearning intensity in that language, "Thou art Mine." The mystery and rapture of life are in that strange sense of possession which comes through love, as though the loved one had become a part of ourselves to be dissevered from us nevermore. "Thou art Mine," says our God — Mine to carry, to nurture, to protect — My very own, never to part from Me for evermore. III. THE CALL OF THE NAME. It would be very much to know that God even thought of us by our name in this personal and special way; but the text asserts that this power of God finds expression; that life is filled not only with a thought of us on the part of God, but with an expression of that thought; so that there is something vocalised, something articulate in life, which comes to us, if we can really understand that it is God calling us by this name we have. 1. The very first awakening feeling in childhood is a personal call. When you first really prayed as a little child and thought what you were doing, what a sense of individuality there was. You were yourself then, and nobody else. It was God speaking to you, and calling you by your name. 2. Then another period which comes, usually s little later, when God's call is addressed to us, is in our first assumption of responsibility. I think some of the most solitary times a man ever has are when he has just assumed a serious responsibility. Now, in that solitude, if a man listens, he can hear his God calling to him, speaking his name right then and there. How tenderly, how warmly, how encouragingly! And the reason is, because God loves the thing that that responsibility will give you. He loves the thing that will make for you, and that is character; that is manhood. 3. Then, again, in a moment of danger, a man may hear God calling his name; because danger, like duty, particularises. Supposing we see a man in danger; we ask, Who is he? What is his name? And if the man does not realise the peril he is in, you call to him by the name that will cut through the air, and strike on his ear, and arouse his individual attention. Suppose moral danger comes and God sees the danger coming, and He calls out to you by that name He knows you by. If you could hear that call, would it not cause you to repel the evil? as though the Voice said, "I remember you; you are Mine. Your name is known to Me. I am your heavenly Friend, and I call on you now to do your duty, to repel the evil." 4. He speaks our name when we are in trouble. 5. There are certain other experiences of life darker than duty or danger or sorrow. We name them by that strong, common monosyllable, sin. These moral experiences that cut into the soul within us — sin, the sting and stab of remorse, repentance, reformation — all are experiences of an arena in which God calls a man by his name. (A. J. Lyman, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. |
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