December 26, 2021 Sermon Isaiah 43:16-21, Jeremiah 29:10-14, Philippians 3:10-14
“Remember, Forget, Trust, Press Onward!”
I hope you are having a meaningful Christmas, where you find yourself drawing near to God or longing to draw near to God.
And here’s the thing about the meaning of the incarnation of Christ, about the love of God so scandalously expressed in His coming to this planet to be one of us. It is overwhelmingly beautiful. And I mean overwhelming.
When we take it in, when we let it in, when we take it personally as God intends us to take it, it can’t help but stir something in us. The message of the gospel, and of its component parts, including the nativity should stir something in us. It can and does transform people by the Holy Spirit as they, as we take it in.
Today we’re going to look at the 3 passages that were read earlier today, because they can help us understand what has happened in our lives, in our world, up to now, and they can help us know what to expect in 2022.
Isaiah 43:16-21 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: 18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 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, to give drink to my people, my chosen, 21 the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.
Isaiah is speaking these words to the people of God who had experienced oppression for 400 years at the hands of the Egyptians. They cried out to God in the midst of their slavery to that nation, and God heard their cry.
Isaiah is reminding the people of the way that God delivered the people from oppression - that He caused them to go out from Egypt and then, quite spectacularly, he delivered them through the parting of the Red Sea.
Now in the moment as that was happening, Pharaoh's army fully expected to crush God’s people who they assumed were pinned between that vast army and the treacherous waters of the sea.
God instead, get this, miraculously parted the sea, enabled the people to walk through the sea bed effectively on dry land, and then as the Egyptian army followed them into the waters, those soldiers and chariots and horses were swept away by those same waters, released from their miraculous suspension by God.
So the army laid there in the aftermath, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick. Isaiah is reminding the people that this is how God delivered them before. This is how God demonstrated his power and his love for his people. He saved them from destruction, and turned the evil intent of Pharaoh back on himself. This is the One who speaks. And what does God say?
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past”. See, here is where knowing the fuller story of the people of God comes in handy. You see, after the great deliverance that God gave His people, after this miraculous saving of their lives, the people messed up.
They forgot. They forgot the God who delivered them. Not a future generation. Not people like us who look back on the narrative of the miracle, who need to choose whether or not we believe the story.
But the very ones who experience this miracle, this extraordinary grace of God...they forgot, in very short order, and began instead to worship something they made with their own hands. They exchanged their miracle for literally nothing.
And sadly, as Isaiah is writing, he’s remembering the initial forgetting that the ones delivered from bondage. He’s remembering how that forgetting of God and chasing after false idols - that became a common practice of God’s people. It became normal to reject the God who delivered them.
I find that so sad...for them. But if I pause and think just for a moment, I realize that that same quality of forgetting is in me. God’s chosen people - arguably the best of humanity - rejected him in their daily lives. They minimized. They turned away. And, sadly, that impulse is one that I have to daily reject as I take up my cross, deny myself and follow Jesus. I think that’s why Jesus said:
Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me
So to the chosen people of God, and to us, Isaiah says:
18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 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, to give drink to my people, my chosen, 21 the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.
The people in Isaiah’s day were regretting the errors of their ways. They were in a state of kind of stewing in their own foul juices, the direct result of having turned from God. They, as part of a generation long after that first generation that was delivered from Egypt, were in a state of mourning all of their wasted time and wasted lives.
And with characteristic grace and forgiveness and winsomeness, God says through the prophet: ‘Forget about it. Don’t be stuck on the stupid from your past. Don’t wallow in regret for the wasted years. Don’t let your mind be locked and frozen by deep and relentless embarrassment and shame from what you’ve done’.
‘Something so much better is coming. I’m up to something awesome. It’s already happening - can you see it? All the corroded waste and dusty, dried up hopeless mess that feels like normal life to you. That’s over. I’m pouring life into you. I made you for a reason, formed you for myself, so that your life...you (name people present) may proclaim my praise.
So that’s the first Scripture. Don’t be stuck. Don’t choose to remain stuck. Let new life come. Let the change that God wants to happen in your life happen. If you choose to change, you are choosing to not remain the same. If you choose to not change, you are making the choice for things to stay as they are in your life.
Whatever you don’t change about your life, you're choosing that thing. Don’t be that guy that doesn’t change something that you CAN change. If you don’t choose to change it, you choose to live in it. That’s not God’s way. That’s not the way of the gospel.
The second Scripture is this: Jeremiah 29:10-14
10 This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 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.[a] I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
Reading the Old Testament, when you bear your heart to God, is so much like reading your autobiography. That’s why I consider the Bible to be the book of my people. I see myself in all of their ups and downs, and more importantly I see God pursuing them relentlessly.
The prophets often start out sounding really sad and severe and they talk about God’s deep, deep love, but where it’s expressed as deep sorrow, deep anger, deep longing for a restoration of the relationship that He created His people for.
So here, well into the book of Jeremiah, after a whole lot of the heavy stuff I’ve just described, after God has caused his people to go into exile specifically because of their relentless wickedness and evil and their radical rejection of His love...after all that heaviness, you have this delightful passage. Now it’s a passage that’s directed and initially spoken to God’s people at a certain time in history.
Some of the blow back that you might have heard related to how often this passage is quoted by Christians, is that we’re forgetting that this was something God said at a specific time to a specific people. The implication is that it’s wrong to take the promises contained in this passage personally and apply them to our lives.
But of course, this passage is about the heart of God, it’s about what He’s like toward people. It’s all about His nature and character, far more than about a limited historical moment. And He caused this to be recorded in His Word.
And so this should be taken as His word to you. He has good plans and intentions for you. His desire is that you prosper, not, of course, that harm come to you. His plan is that you receive hope and the promise of a positive future. And with that hope and anticipation of a good future from His hand, that will cause you to call on Him. Go to Him. Pray to Him.
Talk to Him. Share your self with Him. And when you do that, you can do it with the full confidence that he is hearing you. The Maker of heaven and earth is listening. To YOU! So seek Him...seek Him who has such a plan for you. Seek Him, who wants to give you hope.
And here’s the huge promise. When you seek Him, for real seek Him the best you know how...He will be found by you. He won’t be hiding. He never hides. This is all too serious to play games. You’ll find Him when you look for Him with a seeking heart.
And that’s what matters. To seek the Lord, to find Him, and to then, grasping His hand with your hand, walk with Him. Will you walk with the God who loves you? He has no interest in your continued suffering. He doesn’t want you to be outside looking in.
He wants you inside, close to the fire, close to the hearth, close to the heart of the God who loves you with a love that nothing can separate you from.
The Apostle Paul wrote of His inspired conviction in this matter:
Romans 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our third passage kind of puts this all together. Paul, as someone who had literally met the risen Christ face to face, who knew Him profoundly; Paul who himself had been a vessel of tremendous encouragement to so many believers, and who had discipled so many himself. He says this:
Philippians 3:10-14 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
What does your heart do with this?
Paul talks about intentionally forgetting about what is behind, leaving his baggage behind. And instead straining toward what is ahead, setting his sights firmly on the future. His biggest life desire is to love God and to be used by God to bring the blessing of the Gospel to many.
But he seems convinced that in order to move forward in his life, he really needs to leave the past behind. He's not talking about everything in this past, obviously. He's talking about his lapses, his sins, the things that he has done but he regrets. The things that have left a stain on his conscience.
Is this not true of us as well? We know that if we stay stuck in our regret for our past mistakes, it's like a rut or a hole that is really, really hard to climb out of.
Focussing on our mistakes makes even thinking about the future, or making plans, close to impossible, because all our energy gets focused on the things we regret. And regret consumes our joy. Regret zaps our energy.
Paul obviously regretted some stuff he had done. And some of what he had done was very serious. But he had clearly gone to God to ask forgiveness. And then beyond that, he had received and accepted God's forgiveness for his actions. That’s what we need to do too.
We need to first, like Paul, come to God in faith, confessing our sins and turning from them. and we need to trust in Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. That’s the biggest most important thing we need to do if we really want to move forward in life. Then, we need to go to God every time we feel we mess up, asking for His forgiveness.
And you know what? He gives his forgiveness to us, freely. God wants to forgive us and he wants us to know that we are forgiven, so that we can be future-focussed. Because the future is where hope lives.
Like Paul, we can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, choose to forget the things that are behind us, and then, and this is the most important thing, put all of our energies into what’s ahead of us.
So may we remember the power of the God who loves us, to deliver us from evil.
May you leave behind the bad parts from your past, enabled by His power to no longer practice those things.
May you know deep inside that His plan is for your blessing. MAy we work with Him and not against Him.
May we choose to seek His strength at work in us to change those things in our lives that hold us back, that cause us to live in a little causality loop where forward motion just isn’t possible. God wants so much for us, He wants us to live in the glorious liberty of the children of God.
May we forget what is behind and press onward, seeking to live by His grace in a much, much better way.
May we seek to love God and love people. That’s how to live in a joyful way, and it’s the way to truly make a positive difference in the world. Love God, love people. Never stop doing either. Can we do that as we move into this new year? Amen.
