Letting Go To Move Forward: Trusting God's Way

April 6, 2025 Sermon - “Letting Go to Move Forward: Trusting God's Way" - Isaiah 43:16-21

Today, we’re diving into this powerful passage from Isaiah 43:16-21 because, let’s face it, life can be challenging.

The journey from captivity to freedom is never easy. We all experience seasons where suffering surrounds us, and we carry the weight of painful memories—whether from the wrongs we've done or the wrongs done to us.

It can often feel like we're trudging through a valley of shadows, much like David describes in the 23rd Psalm.

We long for that moment when we start climbing out of the valley, when we can feel the upward shift. But instead, it often seems like the descent only continues, deeper into the darkness.

Have you ever felt that way? I know I have. So, what do we do when we’re stuck in that place? How do we keep moving forward? Let’s explore this together.

Today’s sermon is entitled: “Letting Go to Move Forward: Trusting God's Way", and in our passage today from Isaiah, God asks of you and me to do 4 things when we find ourselves in that valley, or even if we’re just having a difficult day.

It asks us to remember. It asks us to forget. It asks us to open our eyes and see, and then it asks us to make known what we see, to proclaim. Remember, Forget, See, Proclaim. Let’s look more closely at these 4 things.

Remember:

Isaiah 43:16 This is what the LORD says—he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters,17 who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:

In the OT the people of God have often lifted up bitter complaints about their current situation. Can you related? Over and over again in the Old Testament the people of God are called by God to instead remember the good things that He has done,

the ways in which He has acted with grace and compassion in the past, the miracles that He has done.

Repeatedly, you find the Old Testament prophets calling God’s chosen people to remember. You also find the writers of the psalms talking about or reminding themselves to remember.

Psalm 77:11 I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.

Psalm 105:5 Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,

Psalm 143:5 I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.

So remembering, recalling is really, really important. But what are remembering?

Are we rehearsing in our minds all the pain and injustice we have been through? Using that memory muscle to review and even relive a little the suffering we’ve been through?

In today’s Scripture passage, Isaiah is writing to the people of Israel, God’s people, who are living in exile in Babylon. They have been for some time.

Their faith and hope was at such a low point during their captivity in Babylon that they constantly needed assurance that things would eventually turn around for them.

Throughout the book of Isaiah these assurances are often repeated over and over again using different word pictures to describe God’s love for them.

So in chapter 43 of his book, Isaiah recalls what may be the single most important event in the history of God’s people in the Old Testament. God makes a promise to deliver them.

Let’s step back a bit. The people had been under the thumb of the Egyptians for around 400 years, oppressed as slaves, living in horrible conditions.

Then God made a promise that is recorded in Exodus: Exodus 3:7-9 …7 The LORD said, "I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. 8"So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. 9"Now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them.…

That was an incredible promise. One that wasn’t easy to believe. Those enslaved in Egypt didn’t even have a reference point for what freedom felt like. “Freedom. That word doesn’t mean anything to me. Can you please describe it?”

There was hope behind this promise, for sure, but it may well have hit people as empty, maybe even cruel. “It feels like a terrible tease” Nevertheless, God made this promise to deliver them.