I grew up during an interesting era of American Christianity. I lived in the southern U.S. and attended a couple of different Southern Baptist churches throughout my upbringing.* In our Vacation Bible Schools and Sunday school classes, we were taught Old Testament stories with felt boards and puppet shows, always emphasizing moralisms and character traits in heroes like Moses, Samson, and David. The emphasis was always on patterning your life after their right decisions. Never mind the resistance to obedience (Moses), the womanizing (Samson), or the adultery/murder combo (David). Turn in your Bibles quickly past the salacious parts to the pages where we can learn something real about our lives. Or, alternatively, something scary about God.

The God of the Old Testament was severe in my childhood. A felt board with two-dimensional cutouts couldn’t adequately capture the fear of a thunderous cloud of smoke on Mt. Sinai or the bans to drive out and eliminate all the pagans in Canaan. In faith that only a child can manage, I imagined God sent Jesus in the New Testament to soften His image. To tell us He wasn’t quite as mean as we made Him out to be.

But it was a gross oversight to view God’s actions in the Old Testament as motivated by some kind of uncontrollable rage. I don’t know what happened to American church history before I was born, but we took a wrong turn somewhere, and it’s taken a generation to find the map again. When you read the redemptive story as it’s meant to be read—looking at the steadfast nature of God and His covenants with His people—rather than through a lens of how you’d have done things differently, you see God as you should see Him. Holy, holy, holy. Creator. Faithful, true, everlasting, joyful, righteous, happy, loving, steadfast. And—what I missed in my felt board childhood—oriented towards His people rather than away from them.

I’ve been on a long hike through the book of Isaiah. And I do mean, a hike. Up peaks of brilliant luminary revelations about God’s character and power and down steep grades into chasmic valleys of rebellion and desperation of God’s people to worship anyone or anything but their one true God.

Over and over, God tells His people to repent for judgment is coming. It’s so clear what’s coming: catastrophic defeat of Israel and then Judah, Jerusalem razed, the temple destroyed, a few exiles carried off to pagan Babylon. Repent! But they don’t. Return! But they won’t. And so God tells them in minute detail what will happen. He tells them again and again and again. But He also tells them to hold on to hope because even in the land of their consequences, He will not abandon them. He promises them that He will bring them home, restore them, and it won’t quite be alright until He sends a new King who will reign forever and gather all the people of God from the four corners of the earth to a yet-to-be-realized version of Eden no one could imagine.

I’m your God, though you’ve abandoned Me. I’m your Maker, though you’ve denied me. I’m your Redeemer, though your false gods hold your heart.

God tells the stories of His works to jog their soporific memories. Slavery and plagues and a split sea and fire by night—remember what has the Lord done for you! But, of course, no judgment has come to pass as Isaiah speaks the words of the Lord to the people of the Lord. Living in luxury and injustice, they are totally fine. No need to worry, folks. Isaiah says a lot of things but look around at how fine everything is. He could walk around naked with a rope around his neck for all they cared. (And he did. They still didn’t care.)

So you wade through the judgments of the ill-fated Israelites and you know the dam of God’s righteous wrath is about to burst wide open. Surely He will turn His back on these stiff-necked covenant-breakers for good. And yet.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

He says things like this:

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.
     and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned,
     and the flames shall not consume you.
For I am the LORD your God,
     the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
                                                     -Isaiah 43:2-3a

I’ve seen these verses splashed on coffee mugs, Instagram posts, and t-shirts with loopy, pink script. They’re beautiful verses that seem to say God will always be with us no matter what.

And that is true.

But dig deeper into Isaiah 43 and you’ll find that these verses come on the heels of indictments about Israel’s failure to repent and return to the Lord. Here, God has promised that judgment is coming. Babylon is coming. Death is coming for many, and exile to those who escape it. A generation will live as foreigners in the land they have so much feared.

And yet, when they walk through the waters of judgment, God will be with them. When they pass through the purifying fires of correction and consequence, He will not abandon them. This is the God of the universe sitting with His people in the land of their punishments. Though they have abandoned Him, His covenant, and His laws, He will never abandon them. “Fear not,” He says again and again. “You are mine. I have redeemed you.”

Will He hold back judgment? Not for long. He will keep His word.
But will He hate them, wipe them from the earth, turn His back on them for good?

No, because He is the God who plants redemption in man’s rebellion. We may break our promises to Him, but He never breaks His promises to us. And that should tell us something about the God we think is mean and vindictive in the Old Testament. His heart is for His people. Even in their consequences, even in their judgment, even in their punishment—He is with them.

And you see this play out later in the redemptive story with Daniel and his friends, with the promised one, Cyrus the Great, being raised up to send them all back home to rebuild. And much later, with the Savior coming in a little town to a young woman’s womb when the people of God were afraid He’d forgotten them altogether. The people of God would feel the fires of refined faith. They would nearly drown in the waters of judgment. But God would be with them, even as they walked the path of punishment.

______

On this side of the redemptive story, we aren’t punished by God if we’ve believed in Jesus for forgiveness of our sins. All our condemnation was swallowed down by Jesus at the cross. There’s none left for us. But that doesn’t mean we will escape consequences for our words and deeds in this life. The things we say and do have a ripple effect, sending out waves of ramifications that weigh on other people, changing the contours of our lives and theirs. If you do A and the consequence is B, don’t expect the Lord to swoop in and rescue you from B simply because He’s forgiven you. Consequences teach us not to repeat actions, and consequences are often tools God uses to discipline us towards obedience. Some consequences reach farther than we thought our sin would reach, and it can seem—even rightfully seem—as though God has abandoned us to our just desserts.

But, the picture of God’s attitude towards people who break promises and laws and words is one of both justice and love. It isn’t hard for Him to be all of His attributes perfectly without denigrating one at the exaltation of another. He can love you even as you walk through the fires of your consequences. He can be with you as you float on a sea of regrets. Maybe you’re living without a relationship you loved because your selfishness pushed things to their breaking point. God is with you in your consequence. Maybe you’re bored and anxious because you’ve eliminated the shows, books, and scrolling habits that contributed to your pornography habit. God is with you in your consequence. Perhaps you are working a lot of hours to pay down the overspending that’s ruled your life. God is with you in your consequence.

He may not pluck you from the ripple of ramifications. It’s likely better for you to learn from the consequences than to escape them, but take heart from Isaiah 43. The Lord is your survival through your consequences because He is with you in them. Just like the Lord tipped the chins of His people to look farther in the distance for a guaranteed restoration, so also He turns our gaze to the coming days when all our sin and sorrows will cease to exist because the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 is Jesus Christ the Righteous of 1 John 2, and He is advocating for you now and until you’re with Him face to face. 

The Lord may not pluck you from the ripple of ramifications, but He is your survival through your consequences because He is with you in them. Share on X

*For the record, I’m still in a Southern Baptist church.
Photo by Masjid MABA on Unsplash