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 desert and streams in the wasteland Isaiah 43:16-19
This portion of scripture is very special to me. I have it underlined in my Bible with a date written in the margin, “8-84”. If anyone else would open my Bible and see this date and the portion of scripture underlined, it would mean nothing to them. But when I open my Bible to Isaiah 43:16-21 it reminds me of a day when God spoke to me in a life changing moment when I really needed to hear from Him.
I was not looking to hear from God that day when I opened my Bible, nor did I realize I needed to hear from Him. I was so depressed and so enveloped about my dismal situation, hearing from God did not really matter to me.
When I opened my Bible to this portion of scripture, I was not playing a game of Bible roulette, turning the pages of my Bible, desperately looking for a verse to apply to my situation. This was the first time I ever had read these verses, but God knew exactly what I needed to hear and receive from Him. He knew I needed to understand and see the situation from His perspective. He applied these verses to me personally. Even though this portion of scripture was written thousands of years ago, He used them to speak to my need and my circumstances on the morning of August, 1984.
When Isaiah wrote this portion of scripture it was approximately 708 B.C. God spoke through him to comfort the Jewish remnant in Babylon, after almost 70 difficult years of captivity, God through the prophet Isaiah assured them that He was with them and would take them safely home.
As you can clearly see, the context of these Old Testament promises in Isaiah 43:16-21 were made to specific people, at a specific time, for a specific purpose, they were not originally written to me. But that day, God choose to speak to me in my situation through His Word which He originally intended for someone else in their difficult situation.
When we are confronting challenging and desperate situations, many times there is a tendency to only dwell only on the good things God has done for us in the past. “God I remember what you did then, why can’t you do something like that now in this situation?” We might think that our situation is so bleak and we could very easily think that “today is the worst day of my life and tomorrow doesn’t really matter.” When our focus is only on the past and we are allowing our emotions to be influenced by the reality of the difficult present situation, we can easily forget who God is in our lives. We also probably will not notice what God is doing now and what He promises in His word what He will do in the future.
Why in verse 18 does God tell us to “Forget the former things”, when in verse 16 and 17 God reminds us of the miraculous things He did in the past which is found in Exodus 13:17 to 14:31? The answer to the question is found in the second half of verse 18, “do not dwell on the past.” God never wants us to forget about who He is and marvelous things He did in our past, such as with the Israelites in the exodus from Egypt. However, He does not want us to dwell on our good life experiences and comfortable situations of the past. We need to look at our current and future situation recognizing who God is and seeing it from God’s viewpoint. When we are dwelling on the past, our hearts and emotions will not recognize and be excited about what God is doing now, which is the pathway that will lead us to what He will be doing our lives in the future.
In verse 19 it mentions “the desert” and “the wasteland”, that was a perfect description of how I felt about my situation and my life at that moment. I incorrectly felt that that there was nothing good about my current situation and there was no promise of a future. But there was more about that verse that God wanted me to realize than the reality of “the desert” and “the wasteland” I was experiencing. I needed to see my current situation from His perspective, which I was not doing.
The reason I felt that my life was in a “desert” and in a “wasteland” was because I had believed in the lie of the devil by focusing on the physical reality of the situation and was blinded to any hope in God and to who He is and was doing.
God asked me the very same question of verse 19 that He asked the Jewish remnant in Babylon thousands of years ago, 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. I was not recognizing who God was in my current situation and not seeing what God was doing for me, which was already in progress. “See, I am doing…!”, “I am making…”. As with the Israelites, God did not tell me what the “new thing” was or what direction He was going to take me by the “way” He was leading me, I had to trust Him.
Solomon in Proverbs 3:5-6, spoke about the importance of trusting in God and not on what I understand to be my unpleasant reality. 5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. I could not trust “in the Lord with all your (my) heart”, because my heart was dwelling on the past. My only understanding of the situation was “the desert” and “the wasteland” I saw. The only thing I acknowledged was how bad I felt about the present situation but not who God is.
As I began to trust God the eyes of my heart were opened. It was then I finally saw my situation from God’s perspective, “See, I am doing a new thing!”, which allowed me to put my hope in who God is, not what I expected Him to do for me.
It was not until about four months had passed, traveling on the “way” that God had prepared for me to travel that I arrived to the to the place where I began to experience that “new thing” He had for me.
A wonderful fact about our relationship with God is that there are spiritual truths from scripture that God specifically teaches us for a particular moment of our life. As we mature in our relationship with God we also grow in the knowledge of His word and in our experience of who God is in our life. As a result, we continually discover new and wonderful things about God that we never saw in a particular verse or portion or scripture before.
Now more than thirty years later, reading theses verses and looking back at that moment of what God taught me from His word, it is easy to recognize the spiritual principles I learned over three decades ago. But also, there are other spiritual truths that I have learned since then about who God is and my relationship with Him.
Pastor John
