01-12-2025

“YOU ARE VALUABLE IN GOD’S EYES”

Text: Isaiah 43:1-7

Sunday January 12th, 2025 – Baptism of Our Lord

Trinity – Creston, Iowa

Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Our text for this Baptism of our Lord is from Isaiah 43:1-7

Let Us Pray: Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind as that we are of eternal value to you. You created us. You died for us and redeemed us and continue to come to us with your saving work. Amen.

Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:

Have you ever felt worthless? Insignificant. Incapable. Unlovable. Shrink-down-in-your-chair, bury-your-head-in-your-hands, unworthy-of-the-time-of-day kind of worthless. It is easy to feel and to see yourself as worthless, isn’t it?

You lose your job. You search and search to find another one. But it seems that no one wants to hire you. You have nothing to offer. Worthless.

You go on date after date, but you never really find “the one.” Or you ask and ask people to go on a date, but no one seems to say yes. Worthless.

You lose your spouse. You go through a messy separation or divorce. You feel that you have nothing to offer the opposite sex. You have no one to share your life with. Worthless.

You’re diagnosed with a debilitating illness: cancer, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis.

Or simply just old age, which renders you incapable of doing the things that you normally used to do: mowing your lawn, shoveling snow, working in your shop or garage, driving, reading, feeding yourself, going to the bathroom alone, talking, walking, or seeing clearly. You feel incapable. Yes, you feel worthless.

You hear those dreadful words ring in your mind and out of your loved one’s mouth, “I am extremely disappointed in you.” And you mentally kick yourself: “Why? Why did I do that? I know better. That was a stupid thing to do.

If I could just take it back. If I could just change that one sin, that one moment of weakness. That one word. That one night I lost my virginity, that one day I lost my temper, the one time where I lied, taking the Lord’s name in vain just to save my own skin and not get caught.

That one moment of pride and arrogance where I should have just bit my tongue and said nothing.” But you can’t. You can’t take it back.

And you don’t want the whole world to know what a failure you are. That you are not the student, citizen, employer, employee, friend, husband, wife, parent, grandparent, brother, sister, child, man, or woman that you know you should be.

You’re not even the one you know you could be. You don’t want everybody to know that you fail God, that you fail others, and that you fail even yourself. You feel worthless. Insignificant. Incapable. Unlovable. Shrink-down-in-your-chair, bury-your-head-in-your-hands, unworthy-of-the-time-of-day, “I-a-poor-miserable-sinner” (see LSB, p 184) kind of worthless.

This is the Southern Kingdom of Judah’s reality at the start of our Old Testament Reading this morning. They are nothing. They are worthless.

Even though the Lord led them through their forty-year wandering in the wilderness and into the Promised Land, even though they swore an oath saying, “All that you have commanded us we will do” (Josh 1:16), they have failed.

Time and time again, both the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom have turned their backs on God. They’ve built and worshiped golden calves. They’ve burned some of their firstborn children alive on the altars of Molech and Chemosh. They’ve even participated in temple prostitution as a form of worship to Baal and Asherah.

And despite all of God’s warning cries to them through the mouths of his prophets, Israel and Judah have reveled in their idolatry. Hence, in chapters 41 and 42, Isaiah refers to them as a “worm” (41:14) and a blind, deaf, disobedient servant (42:18–25).

In 586 BC, for their idolatrous sins, the Southern Kingdom of Judah will suffer the same fiery judgment of God at the hands of the Babylonians that the Northern Kingdom of Israel suffered in 722 BC at the hands of the Assyrians. Exile. Chains. Bondage.

Forced march away from Jerusalem. Burning. Destruction. Plundering. Guilt. Shame. Defeated sobs in the foreign land of Babylon as they are walking through the fire of God. Fury while enslaved to Babylon and receiving the just wages of generations of unrighteousness and unbelief. And to Babylon, the Judean exiles are nothing but useful tools of their economy.

The Southern Kingdom of Judah is worthless. Insignificant. Incapable. Unlovable. Shrink-down-in-their-chair, bury-their-heads-in-their-hands, unworthy-of-the-time-of-day, “I-a-poor-miserable-sinner” kind of worthless.

Yet it is to these worthless sinners, to Judah, to you, and to me that God speaks. Today, God speaks a blazing word of hope and comfort through the mouth of his prophet Isaiah. Notice how our Old Testament Reading begins. It begins with a radical shift in identity.

You may very well feel and see yourself as worthless. You have been a bunch of worthless sinners. “But now thus says the Lord,” you are valuable! “You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you” (vv 1, 4).

Valuable? Precious in God’s eyes? Honored and loved? What did Judah do to deserve this radical change in identity? Nothing! In and of themselves they are a bunch of worthless sinners. But there are two things that make Judah of infinite worth. The first is a matter of who owns them.

“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine’ ” (v 1).

The good news is that despite how Judah feels, or how they see themselves, despite their sin, God has graciously, of his own accord, called them by name, on the plains of Haran, at Bethel, at the foot of Mount Sinai, and now in Babylon. Even in their exile, Judah doesn’t belong to Babylon, Assyria, or Egypt. And they don’t belong to their sin. They belong to God. They are his treasured possession (Ex 19:5).

And what’s more, Judah’s value is also determined by the price that God willingly pays for them. In verse 4, God says, “I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.” And so he did. When God led Israel out of Egypt, he paid for them with the lives of some Egyptians. And when God led Judah out of Babylon, he paid for them with the lives of some Babylonians.

But the greatest payment that God would make for his people, for Israel and Judah, for you and for me, was when he “sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4–5). And there, at his baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus took your sin upon himself. He who knew no sin became sin for us so that on a hill outside of Jerusalem, the Father might give his only-begotten Son as ransom for you.

Jesus willingly and graciously loved you unto death, even death upon the cross. He paid for your sins in full. Not with gold or silver but with his holy, precious blood, innocent suffering, and bitter death.

You are free. It is finished. Jesus has done it all, and all that he did was for you. You are forgiven all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

There is no condemnation, no fiery judgment of God, for you who are in Christ Jesus. Do you see what kind of love the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called sons of God (cf 1 Jn 3:1)?

And so, you are! “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal 3:26–27). You were buried and raised with Christ in Baptism.

You don’t belong to sin, death, or even the devil any longer. They have no power over you. You belong to God. In Baptism, he who created you, who formed you and numbered the hairs on your head, marked you with his cross, covered you with the robe of his righteousness, and said to you, “You are mine.”

Don’t you see, dear saints of the living God? The Good News of the Gospel is that it doesn’t matter if you feel worthless.

It doesn’t matter if the world calls you worthless. It doesn’t matter what accusation the devil throws at you, or your life circumstances, the turbulent waters and the fiery trials that you endure in this vale of tears. It doesn’t matter if in your eyes you seem worthless. Because none of these things define who you truly are.

Despite All That Makes Us Feel Worthless, We Are Valuable in God’s Eyes Because of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection.

Your identity comes from God himself. He has given it to you. He has told you who you are. To him, “You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you,” now and forever. In Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Amen.