You have read it a hundred times and you have never once been in it.
Not deliberately. There is no moment where you decided to hold it at arm's length. It is that every time you come to it, some small mechanism in you converts it into a general statement, and the general statement is true and beautiful and about people.
About people. Not about a person, and certainly not about the one holding the book.
You noticed it properly last week. You were reading with the lamp on and the rain doing what it does, and you got to the line, and something in you said, quietly, in the way it always does: this is what God is like.
Which is correct. And it is also a way of not being in the sentence.
Because the sentence has a name in it. There is a place in that verse where a name goes, and it has never once been yours.
Let me say something before we go on.
I am not correcting you.
Reading a promise as a general truth is not a failure of anything. It is what careful people do with promises, and it comes from a proper reluctance to make Scripture about oneself, which is a good instinct that a great many people would benefit from having.
I am saying I noticed the mechanism. That is all.
Called thee by thy name
Here is the verse, and I want to read it slowly with you, because slowly is where it does its work.
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.Isaiah 43:1
Look at how many times a name appears.
O Jacob. O Israel. And then, in case there is any doubt about the mode of address, I have called thee by thy name, which is a sentence that says out loud that the naming is the point.
And then three words at the end that carry the whole thing. Thou art mine.
Not among mine. Not part of the group that is mine. Thou art mine, in the second person singular, which the older English is preserving on purpose because it does something the modern word cannot do, which is address one person and only one.
So I want to turn now and speak this over you, in that room with the lamp and the rain.
You are called by your name, and the naming is stated as the thing that happened. Not one day, not once you feel entitled to be in the sentence, not when it seems less presumptuous. Right now, with the book open on the low table and tea going cold, you are the one the singular is for, and the older English is preserving that singular so it cannot be read as a crowd. That is not my kindness. That is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who sets a written line down in a real person in a real room.
Now, about the crossing.
I want to say something that will matter here, because nobody in this room wants an emotional experience and one would be treated with suspicion.
There is nothing to work up. The crossing here is a reading. It is picking up the book, coming to the line, and putting your own name in the place where the name goes, out loud, once.
That is not presumption. Isaiah put a name in that verse twice and then said explicitly that he was calling by name, which means the verse is doing everything it can, short of leaving a blank, to make sure it is read this way.
And this next part is settled rather than pending, so hear it. You have a redemption that was addressed rather than announced. The word says I have called thee by thy name, which is a completed act aimed at one person, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real room on a real wet evening.
Put your name in the blank. It has never once belonged to anybody else.
So we are going to read it with your name in it.
Not once and dramatically. Once and quietly, tonight, with the lamp on and the rain going, and then we will see.
Your name where the name goes. The rest of the verse exactly as it stands.
If it feels like too much, that is what usually happens, and it is not a failure. Thirty years of the general will make the particular feel enormous.
So let this be said over you before you write. You are the one the singular in that verse is preserving, and the calling by name was completed rather than offered; Isaiah 43 was written long before this evening, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written and sets it down in a real room, on a real night, with the rain on the glass.
And no change of feeling is required to make this true. This is not about producing anything by a lamp. It is about a reader finally being in the sentence.
Declare this over yourself
Say these over your own name, out loud, in the first person. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that has been true through all the years of reading it in the general; the authority in these words is His, delegated to you and carried in His Name, and it is His Spirit who puts what is written into a real mouth. And however He answers about everything else, and He answers in His own way and His own manner, you are inside the promise the whole time He is doing it.
- Blank I have been leaving in that verse, you are not empty, and my own name is what belongs in you. Isaiah 43 says I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine, and the older English is holding the singular so it cannot be read as a crowd.
- Mechanism that turns every promise into a general statement about people, you are a good instinct gone too far, and I am putting you down in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit did not preserve a second person singular for thousands of years so that I could read it as a group.
- Lord, You created me and formed me and You called me by my name, and Your word ends that sentence with thou art mine. My own name is on this paper, and I am reading it into the place where the name goes.
Isaiah 43:1
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