Fear thou not; for I am with thee

Do you have the address for this quote without doing a bible search? Book, chapter and verse?

I would be surprised if 1 in 100 could point to the exact address. Would it surprise you that it is used only once in all of scripture? It is used only once as quoted in all of scripture using the KJV.

How about the speaker? Who said it? Is your instinct to say Jesus? It wasn’t. If your instinct was to say Jesus, you are not alone.

Isaiah 41:10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

Jesus said “It is I, be not afraid.”

So what is the big deal? What does it matter? Isn’t Jesus saying the same thing in a different way? Taken out of context it matters because that is exactly how Satan deceives. Satan plays on our fallibility. He did it to Eve in an obvious manner to those who have read and know the Word. Now that we are knowledgeable of who Jesus Christ is, and the Holy Spirit is given, Satan has to be just a little more subtle. And subtle he is, crafty with words, for he too knows the scriptures.

Do I expect you to know every line of scripture chapter and verse? No, I do not and few do. The issue is not that we can pull up the address of any particular verse, it is that our trust is in Him and not ourselves. When it comes to important issues, we need backup, something more reliable than our human memory.

Our electronic bibles are great for getting us to the correct address via a simple search. Once there, we still need to appropriate the Word in context and apply it correctly to combat Satan’s attack.

Ephesians 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

That weapon is meant to combat Satan and you must be trained up in its use.

Isaiah 39:17a For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head;

Paul’s narrative in Ephesians 6 is said to have been inspired by pondering upon the guards of his house arrest. I must admit that it is very likely but I also know that Paul was a student of the Old Testament under Gamaliel, reference Acts 22. Being a student who exceeded above his contemporaries, Paul, then Saul, would have known this passage in Isaiah.

He would have also known the rest of that passage.

Isaiah 39:17b and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak.

So the rest of the contextual scriptures did not fit this new narrative for Ephesians 6 but perhaps it was that moment when Paul looked at his Roman guard, that the sight of the helmet inspired him in remembrance of Isaiah 39:17.

But I wonder if in some part, Paul might have also seen a little bit of his former life as Saul in these passages from Isaiah? Saul’s actions prior to his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus were definitely riddled with vengeance and zeal against Christ’s early church. Reading in Isaiah 59 I can see a possibility of Saul seeing himself in those scriptures and taking it upon himself to be the arm of the Lord.

Therein lies the danger in the narrative, taking it upon yourself to be something you are not, because you see no one else doing it and you judge that something has to be done. Saul did and his actions built distrust in the early church when he came to serve the Lord in his conversion. Saul stayed away for fourteen years and so damaging was his actions as Saul that he was still feared when he returned to Jerusalem.

Paul proved his conversion to be true and he went on to be that intercessor spoken of in Isaiah after he came to know the truth. Paul’s narrative changed from Isaiah 59 to Ephesians 6 only because he met Christ and came to know The Truth, The Life and The Way.

Has your narrative changed?