Don't Just Remember The Past, Look To The Future

4.3.22 Isaiah 43:16-21

16 This is what the LORD says, who makes a road through the sea and a path through mighty waters, 17 who brings out the chariot and the horses, the army and the strong warrior. They will all lie down together. They will not get up. They are extinguished. Like a wick they go out. 18 Do not remember the former things. Do not keep thinking about ancient things. 19 Watch, I am about to do a new thing. Now it will spring up. Don’t you know about it? Indeed I will make a road in the wilderness. In the wasteland I will make rivers. 20 The wild animals, the jackals and ostriches, will honor me, because I am providing water in the wilderness, rivers in a parched wasteland, water for my chosen people to drink. 21 This people that I formed for myself will declare my praise.

How is your memory? It’s pretty hit and miss with me, and usually it’s more miss than hit. When I need to remember something I usually can’t. But when the Arkansas Razorbacks made it to the sweet 16 this year? I somehow remembered that Todd Day and Sidney Moncrief, basketball players for the Milwaukee Bucks from YEARS ago, both played for Arkansas. What good is that?!?

If someone tells you to forget something, that isn’t easy to do either. That especially tends to happen with bad things we’ve done and guilt. Like ELO sang, “I can’t get it out of my head.” Paul, in today’s epistle reading from Romans, wanted to FORGET something that he used to take pride in, with all of his achievements and religious history. He said it was all a bunch of garbage. He would rather forget about it. Why? Everything he took pride in only took him away from grace.

What about with you and your spiritual past? You look back on your confirmation day. How hard was the questioning? How many did you get right? How strict was the pastor you had? You remember riding to church in the back of the station wagon. You think back to your Christmas programs. Is that going to matter to God when you die, if your faith is nothing but memories of confirmation? Do you want your God to be merely nostalgic? The legend of Sunday School stories? Nothing more? I hope not. God wants your faith to think of Him in the here and the now as well, that you are still actively engaging with Him in your everyday life. The past and the present are meant to come together into the future.

The Israelites had an AWESOME and PERSONAL history with God that was worth remembering. He made them into the nation that they were, calling Abraham from beyond the Tigris and the Euphrates, from worshiping other gods, and bringing him to the Promised Land to believe in the one true God. He kept them alive through a drought by bringing them to Egypt under the care of Joseph. But when the LORD called Moses in Exodus 6, He wanted Moses to know that this would be a DEFINING event that would truly REVEAL the LORD as Redeemer, the One who would free them from SLAVERY.

So after all of the plagues, God reserved this last splash as the finishing touch on His masterpiece. Isaiah says that God made “a road through the sea and a path through mighty waters. He brought “out the chariot and the horses, the army and the strong warrior.” Then when they were in the middle of the sea, Isaiah said that God snuffed them out like a wick. Think about that. When Marilyn Monroe died, John Elton compared her life to a candle in the wind and the rain. But these weren’t drug addicted movie stars who were snuffed out. This was a whole army of warriors who were driving the tanks of their day. Yet God was able to snuff them out like nothing more than blowing out a candle. Who could forget such a thing? It’s the stuff of legend.

But Isaiah commands them to forget about it. Do not remember the former things. Do not keep thinking about ancient things. In the Hebrew the word doesn’t mean to forget it forever. But at least to forget about it for a bit. Why? God’s going to do something BETTER! Watch, I am about to do a new thing. Now it will spring up. Don’t you know about it? Isaiah uses similar terminology in Isaiah 11:1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. We are now in the season of Spring, a time when plants come forth from the ground rather quickly. I noticed one plant in front of our house already trying to come out of the ground a couple days ago. That’s how Isaiah talks when he writes, “spring up” and “come up.”