Isaiah 63: 7 - 9
(Bible quotes are from the New English Bible, unless otherwise noted)
V7.
I will recount the Lord’s acts of unfailing love
and the Lord’s praises as High God,
all that the Lord has done for us
and his great goodness to the house of Israel,
all that he has done for them in his tenderness
and by his many acts of love.
NLT. I will tell of the Lord’s unfailing love.  I will praise the Lord for all he has done.  I will rejoice in his great goodness to Israel, which he has granted according to his mercy and love.
NIV.
I will tell of the kindness of the Lord,
the deeds for which he is to be praised,
according to all the Lord has done for us –
yes, the many good things he has done
for the house of Israel,
according to his compassion and many kindnesses.

Isaiah remembers all that God has done for his people of Israel - which they seem to have forgotten in their exile.  There are times when we are ‘down’ and tend to wallow in our ‘misfortunes’ and forget God’s goodness to us.  These are times when we need to be reminded to take our thoughts away from our troubles and focus on God - to get a positive attitude.

Here we have a reminder of what God is like: kind, tender, loving, compassionate, merciful.

V 8.
He said, ‘Surely they are my people,
my sons who will not play me false’;
And he became their deliverer in all their troubles.
NLT. He said, " They are my very own people.  Surely they will not be false again." And he became their Saviour.

NIV.
He said, "Surely they are my people,
sons who will not be false to me";
and so he became their Saviour.

In putting these words of loving trust into the mouth of God, Isaiah must have hoped to touch the conscience of the people and make them aware of their unfaithfulness toward their God.

The truth was that the people were not true to God, yet he still was willing to save them.  Jesus died on the cross to become our Saviour, even before we put our trust in him, and even though we are not faithful to him.  His sacrifice is made because of his great love, not because we deserve it. Paul wrote (Romans 5: 8. NLT) But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

New Bible Commentary note, p. 668. In the metaphor of a father’s hopes for his children, he picks up the opening theme of the book  (Isaiah 1: 2, 4. NLT.  Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! This is what the Lord says: "The children I raised and cared for have turned against me. … Oh, what a sinful nation they are! They are loaded down with a burden of guilt.  They are evil and corrupt children who have turned away from the Lord.  They have despised the Holy One of Israel, cutting themselves off from his help), and in v9 he draws freely on the book of Exodus (Exodus 3: 7, 33:14, 19: 4.)

V 9.
It was no envoy, no angel, but he himself that delivered them;
he himself ransomed them by his love and pity,
lifted them up and carried them
through all the years gone by.
NLT.  In all their suffering he also suffered, and he personally rescued them.  In his love and mercy he redeemed them.  He lifted them up  and carried them through all the years.

NIV.
In all their distress he too was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.

Isaiah makes the point that everyone tends to forget - that God loves us so much that he shares our joys and our sorrows. When we are sad, so is he.  When we suffer, he feels that suffering just as much, if not more, than we do. God felt the suffering of the Israelites so deeply that he intervened time and time again to help them.

Ultimately, when the time was right, God performed the ultimate intervention - by coming to earth in the person of Jesus to live with humans and to die in our place. Such is the quality of the love that God has for his creation, as especially for those he created in his own likeness - human beings.

John 3: 16 also reminds us: God loved the world so much that he gave his only
son, that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life.