The Gospel Means Letting Go

Scripture: Isaiah 43:14-28

Introduction

• The Gospel means “good news” and the good news is: “forgiveness is achievable.”
• That means you don’t have to go around thinking you are doomed to despair anymore.
• Your forgiveness was purchased on the cross by Jesus Christ.
• So, tell me then: “why don’t you forgive yourself?”
• We all make mistakes: past, present, and future.
• We all sin and fall short of the grace of God yet His grace is sufficient, and His forgiveness is complete. In Psalm 103:11-12 David says:

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

• God’s plan for each of us is perfect. From 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.”

• These future plans cannot happen if we continue to hang onto the past.
• Our tendency is to forever beat ourselves up about what we’ve done and who we’ve been.
• But, we are a new creation in Christ and we don’t need to carry those burdens anymore.
• Reminiscing about the past and remembering the good things is a great thing to do.
• Wednesday night’s remembrance of bygone days of Biltmore VBS was a great time.
• Letting the baggage from the past keep dragging us down is not a great thing to do.
• Let’s review what God says through the prophet Isaiah.

1. God’s authority to make things right

• The first thing we should establish is that God has all authority to make things right.
• It is entirely His prerogative to either punish us for what we’ve done or forgive us.
• He holds all the cards. He has all the power.
• He is the LORD, the Holy One, Israel’s Creator and King.
• Indeed, in this passage of Isaiah, God has punished the people of Israel with exile in Babylon after the temple was destroyed and Jerusalem plundered.
• In His own words, God calls Himself their redeemer even though He has punished them.
• He chooses when they will be punished and when He will glorify them as His people.
• They will spend 70 years in exile under Babylonian authority.
• God used the Babylonians to carry out His punishment of the Hebrew people.
• BUT … they went to far and God was not pleased and now He will punish them.
• He begins by reminding them through Isaiah that it was HE who rescued them from Egypt. He said it was 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

• This is the kind of power He has if He chooses to use it and He is getting ready to do it again.
• He tells them: “For your sake I will send to Babylon and bring down as fugitives all the Babylonians.”
• In Matthew Henry’s commentary, he emphasizes God’s claim as their savior:

For the encouragement of our faith and hope, it is good for us often to remember what God has done formerly for his people against his and their enemies. Think particularly what he did at the Red Sea, how he made it, 1. A road to his people, a straight way, a near way, nay, a refuge to them, into which they fled and were safe the waters being a wall unto them. 2. A grave to his enemies.  The chariot and horse were drawn out by him who is Lord of all hosts, on purpose that they might fall together.

2. Forget the past

• Yes, God is poised to give them an entirely new start and we know He will use the Assyrians to accomplish that but lets not get ahead of ourselves.
• Before God rescues them, He wants them to do one very important thing in verse 18:

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.

• Long before God sent Jesus Christ into the world to save us, He is showing us forgiveness.
• Forgiveness won’t work if we continue to hang onto the things that are being forgiven.
• God’s intent here is clearly to start over and make things new going forward.
• He says: “See, I am doing a new thing!”
• That’s what He wants us to take away from this message: He’s doing something new.
• They couldn’t fully comprehend what He meant by this when Isaiah told them …
• And quite frankly, we can’t fully comprehend it now, ourselves.
• That’s because we look at it through our limited minds and our “science.”
• God is above and beyond all that – He has no limits and CAN make everything new.
• Seventy years in bitter captivity by a hostile foreign government feeling hopeless …
• And GOD CAN make all that new and restore everything and fix everything.
• God is making a new thing, and we know what is to come: Jesus Christ.
• He describes it as “making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
• Furthermore, because of this new way, wild animals will honor him, even the jackals and the owls, because He provided water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to His chosen people, the people He formed for Himself that they may proclaim His praise.
• And now, we are those people because we believe in Jesus and call ourselves Christians.
• There is a new path for us and a whole new life: now and forevermore.
• First, we need to do a bit of demolition.
• We need to break down the walls of fear and mistrust and self-consciousness.
• God can’t do a new thing if we keep all the old baggage piled up in the way.
• I know it isn’t easy, but as we can see here, all things are possible through God.
• And God is telling us to do it and He wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t possible.
• These are not my words – they are the words of Almighty God:

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past

• Easier said than done right?
• You just don’t know the things I’m dealing with: addiction, chronic pain, depression, marital issues, job setbacks, financial struggles, loss of loved ones.
• I don’t know everything you are dealing with, but GOD DOES.
• And GOD SAYS: “Let it go; I’ll take care of it!!”
• Can any of you do a better job fixing things than God can?? I know I can’t.

3. Where do we go wrong?

• Here’s where we go wrong – God lays it right out for us in verse 22:

“Yet you have not called on me, Jacob, you have not wearied yourselves for me”

• God is prepared to give all that He has promised here, yet we turn away from Him;
• Jeremiah’s prophecy was a way for God to give encouragement to the exiled Jews.
• Verses 12 – 14 from chapter 29 open the door to that hope when He says:

“Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.”

• He is boldly inviting, pleading and practically begging people to turn to Him.
• Yet, for some reason, we just don’t do it.
• We have very short memories. That’s why we have to come back here each week and start over.
• We need church because we need a strong reminder of Who God is and What He can do.
• Israel basically ignored God and turned to secular means and idols instead.
• As God reminds them, they didn’t bother to bring Him any tributes or offerings.
• Yet they had plenty to offer to idols of the world.
• We are in a real pickle today in our world.
• More and more we turn to our own idols and sin against God.
• We get completely caught up in worldly solutions and forget about God.
• In verses 26-28, God invites us to show how we can do it on our own:

Review the past for me, let us argue the matter together; state the case for your innocence

• We really don’t have much to say for ourselves: “our first father sinned; those God sent to teach us about Him also rebelled against Him.”
• God was fed up with their behavior and He said:

So I disgraced the dignitaries of your temple; I consigned Jacob to destruction and Israel to scorn.

• This world gets more treacherous and dangerous by the minute.
• How much different are we than the Hebrew people?
• Are we turning to God?
• There is only one who can save it: Jesus Christ.
• God said in verse 25: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.”
• The key to all our troubles is to turn to the Gospel; forget the former things; and do not dwell on the past