Precious In God's Sight

When I was trying to learn all I can about just what it means when God said we are precious in his sight, I looked up other places in the Old Testament where the same Hebrew word, translated “precious” here, is used. It’s used of precious stones, maybe diamonds or rubies, things that are just hard to get and very beautiful to look at. And, in 1 Kings 7:9, the word is used to describe the massive foundation stones used in building Solomon’s palace, “ costly stones, cut according to measure, sawed with saws, back and front.” Think about a huge stone, maybe 5 feet deep, 8 feet long, 3 or 4 feet high, cut by hand out of a quarry, dragged by hand across miles of countryside without anything close to what we would consider a decent road, shaped so that the front and back were smooth and the sides shaped so that it would fit perfectly with the other stones brought together. This was before the days of power tools or dynamite and it took an incredible amount of work to prepare one of those stones. Every one that made it, that got fitted perfectly into the building had a huge investment in it and must have been worth an awful lot.

Is there anyone here this morning in whom God has not already made an incredible investment to make you what you are today? He is building this church with a great deal of care, molding each and every one of us very, very carefully, chipping away at our rough spots, the parts that stick out and keep the other stones from fitting close to us. It’s a huge job. He has invested an awful lot in us. And that makes us even more precious.

And often times when he is chipping away at our rough spots and those tests and adversities start to fly fast and thick we can feel like he’s mad at us or has abandoned us, but no, he’s loving us and teaching us. He’s molding us. And we often look back at the darkest times of our lives and look at the lessons we learned there and the growth we experienced and, looking back we wouldn’t wish it has been any other way because those lessons, his wise forming, was so valuable. Time shows us that God’s wisdom and love are always there if we will accept them.

The first verse goes on, “Do not fear, I have redeemed you.” That’s another reason that God loves us. He has redeemed us. And here we need to give some background. These words of Isaiah are not addressed to wonderful children of God who are hanging out in the temple all day, studying God’s word and obeying it wholeheartedly. He’s writing this to a nation of Israel that had squandered God’s gift of the temple and now it had been destroyed. When things had gotten tough they had turned their backs on God, making alliances with pagan kings, serving pagan gods. And as they set off on their own in defiance of the god who created them and had formed them. They were invaded. Jerusalem was destroyed. Most of the people were forced to migrate into exile in faraway lands. You can read about it in the Old Testament in Second Kings and Second Chronicles.

These words of God’s love in Isaiah 43 weren’t spoken in a time when God’s people made it easy to love them. They had disobeyed terribly. They had lost their freedom and their land.