The Former Things

During this time of year, I am seeing “retrospectives” all over the place. The top 10 news stories of the year. The top 10 disasters of the year. Top 10 sports stories of the year. Facebook even gave its users their “year in review.” On New Year, many of us make resolutions about what we hope to do during the next year, things we hope to accomplish, how we plan to get healthy, how we plan to be better people. But before we get to the new year, we often spend some time looking back.

There are many times when God tells his people to remember. In fact, the word “remember” is found over 166 times in the Bible. In Deuteronomy 4:9, God tells his people Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you shall live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. In Genesis, after the flood, God provides a rainbow so that Noah will always remember the covenant God made with him. In the book of Numbers, the people of God were required to have tassels on their garments, so every time they looked at the tassels, they would remember God’s commands. God commanded the Passover as a remembrance of His deliverance of His people out of Egypt. Samuel set up a stone, calling it Ebenezer, which means “stone of help” as a constant memorial of how God helped them.

Remembering who God is and what God has done is a good thing. Consider God’s words from Isaiah 46:8-10: “Remember this, fix it in mind, take it to heart, you rebels. Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.

Or how about Psalm 77:10-12: Then I thought, “To this I will appeal: the years of the right hand of the Most High.” I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.

There is a reason why I try to ask every week for how you’ve seen God at work – because the Bible tells us to focus on these things. It can be such a good and healthy thing to look back, but it is a sad thing when we get stuck in the past and refuse to acknowledge the present or the future. Even our Christmas celebration has one foot in the past and another in the present – as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, we do so in acknowledging what his birth, life, death, and resurrection mean to us today.

In the midst of troubled times, Isaiah prophesied to the people of God. I love Isaiah 43 – maybe you need a pick-me-up this morning, and if that’s what you need, listen to verses 1-3: But now, this is what the Lord says – he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

As I was writing this message, I thought someone might need to remember this. That your identity is that you are redeemed by God and you belong to him because he loves you. Verse 4 even says that you are precious in [God’s] sight.

With that context, listen to Isaiah 43, starting in verse 16. This is what the Lord says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, 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:

Isaiah wants to remind us of which God he is talking about: this isn’t a weak and inactive God, this is the God who delivered his people from Egyptian slavery and destroyed the armies of Egypt. God’s credibility is not in question – they know who God is and what God has done.

So God goes on to tell them this (in verse 18): “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. Honestly, this seems strange. Isaiah is always hearkening back to the past, reminding the people of God what God has done for them. So why would God all of a sudden tell them to pick up a nasty case of amnesia? Why would God, just after reminding them of who he was and what he had done, tell them to forget?

In the New International Commentary on the Old Testament (The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40-66), John Oswalt poses that same question: “Surely Isaiah, one of the prophets who most stresses Israel’s past, could not mean that God’s redemptive acts and all the revelation connected with them should be forgotten…”

So why would God want us to forget? John Oswalt again:

We humans are inveterate idolaters. We turn everything into a fetish if we are allowed to. So for Israel, the glorious, saving events of the past with all their details had become a straitjacket into which every other act of God was forced.

He is saying that, probably unintentionally, Israel came to the conclusion that when God works, God always works the same way, always doing the same thing. After all, God never changes, so why would his methods?

We recognize that methods must change, even though the message does not change. Sometimes we lose sight of the message, but it has always been a message of for God so loved the world… all of it… and a message of being blessed to be a blessing. But the methods change. John Wesley realized that preaching in churches wasn’t reaching the lost, so he went to where the lost people were, preaching in fields and mines. Charles Wesley took the tunes to popular songs and re-wrote the lyrics as powerful Christian hymns.

There are some who complain about technology in worship, yet you love the technology that allows the organ to play and you need me to use a microphone. And you will gladly use a cell phone and most of this country uses computers. Not allowing a church to use technology just because it’s new to you is utter hypocrisy.

As the Creator, God doesn’t need to do things the same way twice. Read through the Bible and check out all the ways God speaks. God speaks to Abram in a dream. God sends an angel to wrestle with Jacob. God speaks to Moses in a burning bush. God even speaks to Balaam through a donkey! And God created us in His image as creative beings as well, so we ought to be able to adapt different methods to reach people today!

Listen to what God says through Isaiah in Isaiah 43:19- 21:  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.  The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert 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.

God is forever doing a new thing. We cannot simply expect for God to move the way God moved last time. When I go to conferences, one thing I used to see all the time was the attitude of “God moved this way in our context, so you should do the same thing and expect God to move in the same way.” Fine, except what works in Chicago might not work in Columbus. What works in California might not work in Wellston. And maybe, just maybe, God might want to work in a completely unique way so that nobody can say, “If you just use the same program, you will get the same results.”

When the church growth movement was born, some of the pioneers started documenting what they were implementing. They wrote down their organizational structures, their programming, what kinds of sermons they were preaching, the kinds of outreach they were doing. Among these pioneers, it was understood that a deep grasp of the Bible was vitally important and that prayer was what drove the entire movement. They understood that fact so well that they didn’t write it down. Of course we are praying! These were men and women dedicated to prayer. But when later generations started following what they had written, they neglected prayer. They strayed from the Word. They followed the program and the structure to a “T” and some got results.

The problem is that it is God who is doing a new thing, and we tend to try to put God in a box. We look back and remember the good without the bad, we talk about the good ole days when God might have some good new days in store for us, but we aren’t listening or looking.

Do not so concentrate on what God has done for you in the past that you cannot see the new things he will do for you!

Isaiah 43 takes a very sad turn. God is doing a new thing, but God’s people don’t perceive it. It’s like John 1:9-11: The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

In verses 22-28, God accuses his people of not calling on him, of not bringing proper sacrifices, of burdening him with sins and offenses. I wonder how guilty we are of the same offenses. I know from statistics and from doing a little math that we aren’t all tithing – giving 10% of our income straight to God. And the only ones who will get indignant about the pastor talking about money are the ones who aren’t tithing – c’mon, you know it’s true. We all sin, and many of us try to justify ourselves – to “make up” for our sins by doing good deeds or by inflicting our own penance upon ourselves. But that’s not pleasing to God.

So what do we do about all this?

The first thing we have to do is pray. I understand that back before I came here, David Pollinger tried to start a prayer group to pray for the church and the community, and it mostly just ended up being David, Robin, and the Hermans. If we are not praying for our community and for our church, then we are never going to see God at work.

Who are you praying for? Do you have a list? Is it completely filled with physical needs, or are you praying for financial needs and emotional needs? Are you praying for people who have spiritual needs? How about those who don’t know Jesus? If you aren’t praying for them, who is? This is the world’s greatest need, and if we’re not praying for them, we are saying we don’t care if they end up in Hell.

How are you praying for the community? Do any of you walk? How about a prayer walk around your neighborhood? Are you praying for the children of our community? (pray for teachers/administrators/school workers)

And how are you praying for this church? Are you willing to pray that God will do something that only God can take credit for? If we are willing to pray this, then we must also be willing to get out of the way and let God work. Stop requiring everything to be tied to what we’ve always done, because God just may be doing a new thing.