Sharing the Hope of Salvation

Aaron Anderson | The Voice of Zion April 2025 - The Sabbath Word 2 Article --

Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no saviour. I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God. –  Isaiah 43:10–12

The English word witness comes from the Old English witnes, meaning “attestation of fact, event, or statement.” It is related to the verb wit, meaning “to know.” In many languages, the term for witness includes elements of seeing, knowing, and testifying. The theme for this Sunday’s Old Testament text points to God’s chosen people as being witnesses of the resurrected Christ, which was yet to come and is described in Isaiah’s prophetical book.

In our text the children of Israel were once again being gently called by our loving Father. They had found themselves in a dark place. They were under Babylonian captivity. God had allowed them to be conquered and taken away from their beloved homeland, because of their disobedience and unfaithfulness. This was a wake-up call to many of the children of Israel. We recall how the Psalmist described their feelings during this time in Psalms 137, verses 1–4: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” 

The unbelieving people in Babylon worshipped many different gods. God reminded the children of Israel through the prophet how He is the only one, true God. Only He has the power to save. This was in stark contrast to the powerless idols of the Babylonians. Despite the Israelites’ sins and even unbelief, God still loved them. Through the prophet, He called them back to Him. In this calling He gave them a duty to be witnesses of Him. 

Today, Christian believers are charged with the same duty as the children of Israel so many years ago. While we have not witnessed the miracles of the Old Testament nor have we seen Jesus in the flesh, through faith and by the power of the Holy Spirit we have witnessed His resurrection. How have we witnessed His resurrection? It is through the heavenly love of our Father that we have experienced when a fellow believer has preached unto us the freeing words of the gospel. As Juhani Uljas writes in “The Treasure Hidden in a Field,” “When the spear of the Roman soldier pierced the side of Christ, the holy atoning blood that flowed from it extinguished God’s anger and fulfilled the demands of His righteousness. Christ’s blood did not flow to dry on the rock of Golgotha and merely be a historic fact within our reach. God preserved its sermon of atonement, so that the purity and forgiveness that it provides would be therein offered to the penitent sinner” (LLC, 2003). When we believe our sins forgiven our light can shine brightly into this ever-darkening world. The unbelievers around us notice and might even ask of us: what is different about you?

When we are witnesses of our resurrected Lord and Savior, it is important that our memory remains clear on that of which we are called to testify. This is done by “holding the mystery of faith in a pure conscience” (1 Tim. 3:9). Our conscience can only remain pure through believing the preached gospel. Luther emphasized the proclaiming of the gospel as a means of sustaining faith. He wrote, “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.” The confidence of the gospel equips believers to boldly testify of what God has done in our lives - how He has redeemed us - just as Israel was called to testify of God’s grace so many years ago.

The power of witnessing, or our testimony, lies not in us but in the message we proclaim. The gospel itself, through the power of the Holy Spirit, carries the power to awaken faith; it is not the words by themselves but God’s Spirit that works through the proclamation of forgiveness. God will work through our testimony, no matter how weak or inadequate we may feel. Jesus teaches us in Luke 12, verses 11 and 12, “And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.”

The message in our text reminds us that it is God who saves, declares, and shows—we are simply called to testify of His works.

Dear child of God, be of good cheer! We are encouraged to trust in God’s power and faithfulness as we bear witness to His grace in our lives. Let us join the Psalmist in declaring, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord” (Ps. 118:17). As witnesses of the resurrected Christ through faith, we have the joyful privilege of sharing with the world the hope and salvation found in Him.