A Holy New Thing
Isaiah 43:14-21
February 19, 2006
This week our 5-year-old son Luke, Deb and I began to read The Horse and His Boy book #3 in the Chronicles of Narnia Series by C. S. Lewis.
After reading the 2nd chapter in this book, Luke had a disturbed and frightened look on his face. The reason for his look related to what he had just heard read to him. In chapter 2 of, the young boy Shasta, a little older thank Luke’s age, over hears his supposed father making a deal with a stranger. This deal would result in Shasta being sold to him for the rest of his life.
As I was reading the words myself for the 1st time - I was thinking how I might respond to Luke if indeed he was disturbed by the words we were reading. So when indeed he was - Deb and I both assured and reminded him of the fact and truth that he has heard dozens of times in his life.
"Son, there is nothing you can ever do to make us stop loving you."
"Luke, there is nothing you could ever do that would make us stop loving you."
My Son, we will never sell you, abandon you, give you to anyone. For there is nothing
you can ever do to make us stop loving you."
After a bit of convincing, some reassurance, some hugs and kisses, we had turned his frightened face into one with a measure of peace on it.
And Saints - Saints in the making - the same words are said to us by our God in our Bible. The truth of these words are lived out time and again by our God. Though there must have been times when God was tempted to discard us - never once did he, never once has he, and never will he - ever turn his back, sell us out, or abandon us. "Nothing you have done, or doing, or will do will ever stop our Almighty God from loving you."
One of the times we put God to the test in this area is recorded for us in the book of Isaiah. Before we look at our specific text. I’d like to read to you a bit of chapter 1, page 1059. Isaiah is a spokesman, the mouthpiece of God. God is going to use him to speak truth into the lives of his people. God is going to speak through Isaiah in order to cause his people to realize their wayward ways, their propensity toward rebellion. God is going to use Isaiah to worn the people of the consequences of such a life - upcoming imprisonment, death, destruction, separation and sorrow. This he doesn’t hide - in fact the 1st 39 chapters are called the Book of Judgement. But there is another side, the rest of the story found in the final chapters, chapters 40-66 called the messages of Hope and Comfort that demonstrate the truth that "There was nothing these people could do, to make our God stop loving them."
(The Message - Isaiah 1:2-ff)
"I had children and raised them well, and they turned on me. The ox knows who’s boss, the mule knows the hand that feeds him, but not Israel. My people don’t know up from down. Shame! Misguided God-dropouts, staggering under their guilt-baggage, Gang of miscreants, band of vandals-- My people have walked out on me, their God, turned their backs on the Holy of Israel, walked off and never looked back."
Saints - turn to your neighbor and say, "Not much has changed. You’re a sinner and I’m a sinner." Though these words were written around 2700 years not much has changed. We are a rebellious people. A hurting people, people who self-medicate, self-intoxicate, read self-help books, listen to tapes and watch gurus on TV to try to fix what is eternally true of us. We go to medical doctors seeking help with this sickness, with this illness and in doing so spend hundreds of dollars. Others go to the courts, to the Judicial System, to try to put an end to the lawlessness that pervades those that do spend hundreds trying to govern right behaviors.
There is a role for doctors and lawyers to help us with our physical ailments and to help pursue justice, but the root of our problem is sin. You and I are sinners. You and I fall short of the glory of God. But what is different about our God is that, though this sin separates us from Him, He will not let it separate Him from us.
"There is nothing we can do to make God stop loving us." Yes? Yes. Yes
Though there are 39 chapters of God naming our behavior as disgusting, disgraceful and a rampant disease running through his people, there are 26 chapters that speak hope to us in our situation.
Turning to Isaiah 43:14, page 1127, we read words that begin to describe the commitment of God to us. In these two paragraphs, God is doing all the talking. In his talking, his speech, his communication notice first:
His identification with us - verses 14-15
His historical actions - verses 16-17
His promised new actions - verses 18-19
His invitation/command that we identify with Him - 20-21
1st-God’s identification with us verses 14-15.
Note the pronouns
God identifies himself to you and me as:
Your Redeemer, the Holy One - v. 14
You’re Holy One - verse 15
Your King - verse 15
He demonstrates and tells of his love for these people who will be imprisoned and in
exile by stating that "for your sake" I will put your captors on the boats that took you captive.
God is fiercely loyal to his people.
God is fiercely loyal to you and me.
Here the good news - God identifies, acknowledges, claims us:
I am your Redeemer.
I am your Holy One.
I am your King.
When he should have abandoned us.
When he should have denied knowing us.
God draws near - I am yours . . .
I am yours . . .
"There is nothing you can do, to make me stop loving you."
Secondly - verses 16-17, God tells of his historical actions. See if you can recall this Bible story. (read).
What story is it? The crossing of the Red Sea when Charleton Heston, I mean Moses raises his staff and through the water dry land appears. A path is made where there was no path. A way is made where there was no way.
Think back Saints, we’ve been doing this lately. There are moments in your lives when God made a way where there was no way. God made a path where you saw no path. God gave you hope where there was no hope. But here is the deal, we aren’t
to live there.
to live in these things.
to put down an anchor there recalling the good old days, yester-years.
Instead #3- verses 18-19, God invites us into the new, the future.
Read 18-19, "Forget the former things, do not dwell in the past. See I am doing a new
thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?"
God identifies himself with us to begin with - verse 14-15.
He has a recall a past action of his - v. 16-17. But here he invites to not dwell there, but to realize he is, continues to be at work.
"I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it?"
You and I have been around people who say "Well we’ve never done it that way before." They are locked in the past.
Or how about: "I don’t know if that is possible. I’ve never seen it done before." Certain people, certain people of faith have set perameters or boundaries or limits on what God can do. They believe that God can only do what He has already done and God says to us in the Hebrew - Hogwash - "Forget the former things, do not dwell in the past. I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up, do you not perceive it?
Saints, I don’t know about you, but I am thrilled that my God says he is up to something.
Saints, I am given hope, when my thoughts, actions, and history condemn me, when my God tells me, I’m doing a new thing. Some of you can’t get out of the past. As a retired person said to me this week. "All I’ve got right now is the past." Some of you are churning over past decisions, past sins and you have been in pause mode or in neutral. In stead of being on the spiritual journey, you’ve been in a pit stop, a time out, in a rest area.
(Turn to your neighbor and say, "don’t dwell on the past, God is doing a new thing.")
And then he gives an example, verse 19b-20.
Here is the new thing, God will put water where there is dry and. Before he put land where there was water, now the opposite is going to happen. He will put oasis, watering spouts, refilling stations where before it was dry and arid. It is the new thing.
There would be water on the journey.
There would be refreshment into the future.
Why? Because there is the 4th thing, verses 20 and 21.
God invites us, people prone to sin and rebellion, to identify ourselves with Him.
20b "because I provide . . .
to give drink to my people,
my chosen
the people I formed for myself
that they may proclaim my praise."
Notice the pronouns at the end.
my people.
my chosen.
formed for myself.
proclaim my praise.
Friends - our past doesn’t need to be the last word.
Our present doesn’t have to be our continuing behavior.
You and I have been invited by the Almighty God
to forget the former things, to not dwell in the past.
to see the new things God is doing. To see it springing up - do you perceive it?
Saints - I desire my primary identity to be that of Son, a Son of God.
I desire my primary shaping of myself and my family to happen as we look for
God in the now, the present - in our lives. The stories of my parents and grandparents of God’s great ways are inspiring but I desire to have some myself.
I desire to let the words of the man Isaiah (name means "The Lord Saves") to be those that frees me from myself- absorbed, past constricting world - to one where he my Almighty God; leads me and my family as He has over all the generations. And when tough times come and I begin to doubt who I am to my God or if I begin to believe that my failings are reasons for him to abandon me, may I remind myself and may you be reminded "That nothing you can do can make God stop loving you." Amen.
Prayer
Give me an open ear, O God, that I may hear Your voice calling me to high endeavor. Too often have I been deaf to the appeals You have addressed to me, but now give me courage to answer, Here am I, send me. And when any one of Your children cries out in need, give me then an open ear to hear in that cry Your call to service.
Give me an open mind, O God, a mind ready to receive and to welcome such new light of knowledge as it is Your will to reveal to me. Let not the past ever be so dear to me as to set a limit to the future. Give me courage to change my mind, when that is needed.
Give me open eyes, O God, eyes quick to discover Your indwelling in the world which You have made. Let all lovely things fill me with gladness and let them uplift my mind to Your everlasting loveliness. Forgive all my past blindness to the grandeur and glory of nature, to the charm of little children and to the sublimities of human story.
Give me open hands, O God, hands ready to share with all who are in want the blessings with which You have enriched my life. Deliver me from all meanness and miserliness. Let me hold my money in stewardship and all my worldly goods in trust for You to whom now be all honor and glory. Amen.
By John Bailie: A Diary of Private Prayer, Day 14
