Isaiah 43:18-19
Isaiah lived most of his life in Jerusalem. During his days,
Judah was still a fairly strong nation. Isaiah ministered many years after the
glory days of David and Solomon when Israel was at its greatest. During Isaiah’s
lifetime, he saw the decline of Judah and the rise of Assyria as the dominant
power in that part of the world.
This historical context is important to Isaiah’s message. He
speaks of the judgment of Israel as a certainty when it has not yet happened.
For example, Isaiah speaks of both the Babylonian captivity and Israel's
dispersion among the nations before either of these things happened. Isaiah’s
name means “The Lord Says,” and his voice is one of the earliest to clearly
spell out the coming judgments on Israel and Judah. He warns of the consequences
of their apostasy and tells of the glories of the coming millennial kingdom.
During Isaiah’s times, the nation of Judah looked back on the
glory days of King David and King Solomon and recalled the strength and
prosperity of those days. For this reason, the politics of the nation were
shaped by a desire to regain what they had lost and were continuing to lose.
They were trying to recapture the past.
Many of us have experiences that we would like to relive and many
of us try to recapture the past. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about this
tendency titled “Glory Days.”
C. S. Lewis wrote about this tendency in his “Letters to Malcolm”
saying”
I am beginning to feel
that we need a preliminary act of submission not only towards possible future
afflictions but also towards possible future blessings. I know it sounds
fantastic; but think it over. It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily,
reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some
other good. Do you know what I mean? On every level of our life—in our
religious experience, in our gastronomic, erotic, aesthetic, and social
experience—we are always harking back to some occasion which seemed to us to
reach perfection, setting that up as a norm, and depreciating all other
occasions by comparison. But these other occasions, I now suspect, are often
full of their own new blessing, if only we would lay ourselves open to it. God
shows us a new facet of the glory, and we refuse to look at it because we’re
still looking for the old one. And of course we don’t get that. You can’t, at
the twentieth reading, get again the experience of reading Lycidas for
the first time. But what you do get can be in its own way as good.[1]
God addressed Israel’s looking back with longing on days gone by.
He says:
Remember not the former things, nor
consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs
forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers
in the desert. (Isaiah 43:18-19 ESV)
Out of context, the command not to remember the former things
seems strange.
God established days of remembrance. The celebration of the
Passover is designed for remembrance. There are some things that we should
never forget. We celebrate communion regularly because Jesus told us to
remember Him.
We must remember God’s faithfulness, but we must realize that His
next work will be new. God never changes. He says He never changes. Hebrews
13:8 tells us:
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and
today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8 ESV)
However, although God never changes, He is always doing something
new. Every day is a new day. Each sunrise brings a new day. No two snowflakes
are ever the same. Even identical twins differ from each other. God could part
the Red Sea every day if He wanted, but He already did that and it is not
necessary or needed anymore. However, He will do yet greater things, but the
delivery of Israel from Egypt by parting the Red Sea was a unique historical
event that will not be repeated.
In Isaiah, God is telling Israel not to hold on to the past. He
is also saying that the glory to come will be greater than the glory of the
past.
As we look forward to the future, whether it’s at the beginning
of each new day or whether it’s at the beginning of a new year, we must
remember this about God. He is doing something new.
We must be like Paul who says:
Brothers, I do not consider that I
have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and
straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize
of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14 ESV)
Paul describes himself as forgetting what lies behind and
straining forward to what lies ahead.
When God says, “Remember not the former things,” He means we have
to leave the past behind and look forward to what lies ahead. We are never
going back there (wherever “there” might be). In addition, God has great plans
for the future.
Individually, we can have confidence as we look forward to the
future because of what God has done in the past. We know He is faithful. We
know He is with us. We know He sustains us. Therefore, we know He will
continue. But, we cannot focus on getting back what we feel we have lost or
recovering what is past. We must focus on the goal of the upward call of God.
As a church, we must do the same thing. We can be confident that
God is doing great things, because of the past. But, we cannot expect the
things He will do will be like those of the past.
For each believer in Jesus Christ, there is a moment of rebirth.
We were born again. As a result of this rebirth, we are new creatures. 2
Corinthians 5:17 tells us:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he
is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2
Corinthians 5:17 ESV)
Rebirth is a new beginning. And, as I often repeat, we are
confident that what God has started He will continue until it is completed. He
is working to form Christ in us and He will be successful.
A problem enters in when we do not get the future that we want.
We learn quickly in life that we do not know what the future holds, and, even
though we know we cannot control the future, we try to control it. We try to
impose our will on the future. Jesus knew this tendency and tried to address
our worry and fear saying:
Therefore do not be anxious about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is
its own trouble. (Matthew 6:34 ESV)
Jesus said this in the context of teaching that we are to seek
first God’s kingdom and trust God for what the future holds.
This is not to say that we are not to plan and prepare for the
future. That would be foolish; but we are not to worry or be anxious because
the future is in God’s hands.
In Isaiah, as God speaks of not looking back He says:
Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it
springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and
rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19 ESV)
I want us to see both the words “Behold” and “now it springs
forth.” He questions them and us. “Do you not perceive it?” He expects that we
should be able to perceive what He is doing.
This makes me think of Jesus speaking to the woman at the well in
John 4. In that account, Jesus was weary from the journey through Samaria so He
and His disciples stopped to rest by the well of a Samaritan town. He then sent
His disciples into town to get food. The Jews avoided the Samaritans at all
costs so it was unusual for them to even be traveling through Samaria, but
while the disciples were gone, a woman of the town came out to the well to get
water. So, Jesus spoke with her.
When His disciples came back they were wondering what on earth He
was doing speaking to a person who was both a Samaritan and a woman, but they
did not ask. However, when the woman left and Jesus did not want food, He
explained to them that His food was to do the will of the Father. Then He says:
Do you not say, 'There are yet four
months, then comes the harvest'? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see
that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving
wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may
rejoice together. (John 4:35-36 ESV)
I share this story because the disciples could not perceive or
understand what Jesus was doing. But it was so simple. He was doing the work of
the Father. He was harvesting souls for the kingdom of God.
In your life and in mine, God has told us what He is doing.
Romans 8:29 puts it succinctly.
For those whom he foreknew he also
predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be
the firstborn among many brothers. (Romans 8:29 ESV)
According to this, He is conforming us to the image of His Son.
In addition, Jesus set an example of what He wanted us to be
doing when He sat and visited with the Samaritan woman. He made it clear what
we are to be doing when He told us to go and make disciples.
He wants us to be part of the harvest. He wants us to press on
toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
This year God will be doing new things. Some of the changes will
be difficult. Some of the changes will be really exciting. But, everything will
be new. By the Fall, our youth group will be new as some will graduate and
others join in. By the Fall, our children’s ministry will be new as each child
will move ahead a year in school. Each Sunday our worship experience will be
new as different songs, singers, musicians and messages are presented.
In our personal lives and in our church, we can live with the
anticipation that God is doing a new thing and it will be even better than the
past.
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