Today is the first time we gather for worship in 2014. It’s a new day. We face an opportunity to approach our lives in a fresh way. And our encouragement and our challenge to do this comes from the Scripture that [person] just read. Are you up for some encouragement with which to face the New Year? Are you up for a challenge?
Our passage from Isaiah asks of you and me 4 things. 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:
Over and over again in the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, the people of God are called by God to 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. 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 …7The 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. The hope behind this promise may well have hit people as empty, maybe even cruel. Nevertheless, God made this promise to deliver them.
God’s promises are true. And Isaiah wants us to know that, and to remember God’s faithfulness to fulfill His promises. So he says: 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:
God promised to deliver His people. He did. It took time. But His promise was in His Word and the fulfillment of the promise is remembered here by Isaiah. We remember not only the promise, but, as Isaiah does here, the key moment when the promise was fulfilled, against all odds.
How do you feel about the promises of God? When you read in Jeremiah 29 the principle of how God works among His people: Jeremiah 29: 11 “For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and will bring you back from captivity”.
That’s a particular promise from God to His people Israel at a particular time in history, but it is also, very importantly, a principle of how God works.
When you hear this, when it is brought to memory, do you let in in? Do you allow your plans to be subject to God’s plans. Do you take encouragement, do you REMEMBER that God is faithful and that all His intentions toward you are for blessing and not harm?
How do you feel about the promises of God? It may be that a good prayer going into this new year is: “God, help me to be much more open to your promises. Help me to remember them. Help me to believe them.
“Help me to live in the hope of your promises: Your love, your desire to bring healing, your plans for me and my family and my community, which are plans for good and not evil”.
Forget
18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
So the first step of being renewed and refreshed spiritually is to remember God’s promises. Think back in your own life about how God has been good to you, how He has met your needs when you’ve come to Him in faith believing. You will be encouraged as you remember.
So we’re called to live in remembrance. But we’re also called to forget. What does God want us to forget?
He wants us to forget the things that ultimately make it hard or impossible to really face the future with confidence and strength and a living faith.
While we remember God’s faithfulness and our encouraged, it is quite a different thing when we consider our mistakes of the past.
When we dwell on our sins that God has forgiven us for we can quite effectively drag ourselves down.
Sometimes we still live with the consequences of our sins, and those consequences themselves can be a daily reminder of our sins. But again, we’re called to remember God and His good work in our lives.
So rather than letting the consequences of our sins remind us of our past failings, we can chose in faith to let them instead be a constant reminder of how God has forgiven us of those things, He does not hold them against us because we have confessed them and they are all under the blood of Jesus Christ.
The prophet Micah says: Micah 7:18 “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. 19 You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea”.
God has thrown our sins into the depths of the sea. No fishing allowed! He calls us to forget those things. He calls us to dwell on His goodness, and not to dwell on our past.
He wants us to learn from our mistakes. We all have trip hazards. Trip hazards - the weaknesses we have, the addictions we’re drawn to, the areas of our lives where we’re vulnerable and inclined to enter into sin when we’re feeling weak and our resolve is poor.
When you walk down the street and see a trip hazard, lately a broken tree branch from the frozen rain that shut down the city, you exercise special caution.
You don’t walk headlong into a known hazard. Spiritually, we need to take care so that we don’t keep doing things that sabotage God’s good work of healing and redemption in our lives. Amen?
See
19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. 20 The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland...”
God is doing a new thing in your life. He is doing a new thing among us. He is doing a new thing at The Yonge Street Mission. And the new thing is not a superficial thing.
It is not a bandaid fix on a deep problem. It’s not a solution that doesn’t understand the deepest level of the problem or challenge that we face. It’s God’s solution, not man’s.
And God wants us to know that He is up to something. He wants us to discern, to observe, to listen, to that anticipate, to behold that God is moving.
So…we remember God’s faithful love and actions in the past, we choose to not dwell on where we have dropped the ball, and then we are ready to see the new thing that God is doing. He is making a way in the wilderness.
You know, there’s a difference between being in downtown Toronto, and being in the wilderness. There’s a difference between being lost in downtown Toronto and being lost in the wilderness. What might that difference be?
Well, downtown, if you h’aint a clue where you are, you can always ask someone who looks less lost than you do. There’s streets, and landmarks. There’s the CN tower that can be seen from space let alone anywhere with a clear line of sight in this city.
Have you ever been lost in the wilderness? The wilderness is wild. There are few landmarks that stay the same. Particularly in the middle east, where Isaiah was writing, the wilderness is a lot of desert.
There’s a basic lack of things that you need to survive - things like water, food, shelter. And there’s an abundance of things that you need to not be there in order to survive - things like predators, harsh winds, the sun beating down.
God says: “ I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland”. He makes a way where there is no way. He carves a path through despair, through the driest experiences that we can ever go through.
He uses the rough landscape of our lives. the valleys and the dales of our experiences to be the spiritual geography through which He makes crooked ways straight.
Not only does He do that, but He sends streams into the dry lands, the places that aren’t good for anything. And what happens, always, when water flows into dry places? Life happens. Nourishment grows. Where maybe there was only death and destruction, only darkness and dread, God creates newness, He makes life to happen.
Jesus said: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:37-39)
So the primary way that God works in our lives is through the Holy Spirit. Do you hear that? What He sends us is what we need the most. And it’s never stuff, it’s never things, it’s never just one answer to one problem at a time.
God makes a way in the wilderness and He makes streams in the wasteland by giving us Himself. In prayer, no matter what we may ask for, what we may think we need, what is ACTUALLY needed is God. More of God’s joy, more awareness on our part of His glory and His love. The best gift that God gives is always, always Himself.
God sends us His Holy Spirit and fills us afresh with a powerful sense of His love.
The Holy Spirit leads us to repentance as well. He convicts us of our sin, makes us aware of where we have offended God, builds in us a passionate desire to honour God rather than offend Him, and that’s an amazing gift as well.
Sometimes our sin beats down on us worse than the scorching sun. Sometimes the guilt we carry for the things we do or have done is enough to squeeze every last ounce of joy out of us. But God the Holy Spirit leads us to repentance.
He gives us courage to do this. We shouldn’t take that lightly. Many refuse to repent and turn to God. The ability you have to go to God in humble confession is a beautiful and special gift. Use it well and often to keep short accounts with God.
This is critical. That’s because our role all of this is not to be super successful evangelists, not to be spiritual giants. our role is to be faithful.
When we keep short accounts of our sins with God, when we come to Him to say sorry for our sins, He forgives us. He cleans the slate. He purifies our hearts and lives through the blood of Jesus Christ.
Our part is to be faithful, and to be faithful means to keep growing in our trust of Jesus, to be passionately in love with God, and to listen when He says: “Be holy as I am holy”. He has set that standard for us, as impossible as it feels for us to attain.
But our holiness comes through the blood of Jesus and the grace of God. God doesn’t want us to be distracted by our failures, whether that means being lost in our sin, or whether it means living with stifling regret for the things we’ve done. We wants you free, dear sister and brother. Amen?
Proclaim
So we remember God’s faithfulness in all His ways. We forget about the former things and make the conscious, daily choice to not dwell on the past. We live with our eyes open so that we can see what God is doing in us and around us by His Holy Spirit.
You know, our lives will stand for something. We will each be remembered for something. Our passage todays finishes with this: 20 The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.
We were formed to proclaim God’s praise. Our ultimate purpose is to, as an old Christian catechism or teaching tool says, glorify God and enjoy Him forever. There’s something intensely personal and private about our faith in Jesus.
We can journey closely with Him and know that He is with us every second or every day. We can walk with Him and talk with Him and experience limitless benefits from knowing Jesus personally. It’s awesome, truly!
But ultimately, there’s a bigger picture. A much bigger picture. That bigger picture is God’s Kingdom, the main topic that Jesus spoke on during His earthly ministry.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if your life was remembered for bringing praise and glory to God?
Wouldn’t it be superb if people found the courage to draw nearer to God, or to come outright to Jesus Christ as a result of the fact that you are alive?
The fact that you choose to always remember God’s goodness, that you live the life of a person forgiven by God, free of condemnation? That you see what God is doing and that you enter in to it, not withholding yourself from full engagement in God’s purpose of blessing the nations?
May this be true of us. May our lives be a light on a hill, a voice in the desert crying out: “I have found water...the spring of eternal life! I have found bread! Jesus Christ, the bread of heaven sent down to earth!
May we speak it, may we proclaim God’s praises, and so show ourselves for what we are: a people, chosen by God, formed for His glory, a people made alive spiritually through the new birth by faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
May we remember - God’s faithfulness and beauty. May we forget and not dwell in the past.
May we see the glorious things that God is doing in our lives and that He intends to do through us.
And may we proclaim the praises of the One who came to deliver us, and to bring us into communion with the living God. Amen
