Old age creeps into our lives, sometimes stealing our memories from us. Now, we may joke about it, but the humor soon dies away, forgotten as the forgetfulness increases. How frustrating not to remember the past or someone’s name. How distressing for the events in your life to fade away and disappear. How heart-breaking for the others, who live in the sadness of a loved one even forgetting them.
How ironic. The Prophet Isaiah tells us this morning to forget: forget the past and no longer live there. Focus on what God is preparing for you—but sometimes the unknown of what lies ahead may fill you with anxiety. To this, Isaiah is loud and clear: Don’t worry about what is to come! “Forget those earlier events, don’t live in the past. Look! I am doing something new!” What a magnificent promise. Our gracious and merciful God WILL deliver us into the future!
Treasure God’s future blessing for you! Otherwise, how can the joy of God fill your heart, how could you yearn for the future awaiting you? You can only cherish God’s eternity for you if you have His perspective on the past. What is the proper perspective? Forgetfulness: “Forget those earlier events.”
How strange for Isaiah to speak in such a way. For God tells us, even commands us, to remember. So, what’s going on? We are to do both. We are to remember what God wants us to remember and forget what He wants us to forget!
When God gave His Law, He commanded His people to remember it. He even commanded His people teach it to their children. God also wanted the Israelites, every year, to remember their miraculous rescue from their slavery in Egypt. Passover was God’s way for His people to remember who He was.
Good memories also fill our minds, bringing us much joy. Who wants to forget his baptism? In baptism, God the Holy Spirit joined you to Christ! Who wants the heart-warming love of parents, the care of friends and teachers, to disappear from his life? Yes, many are the fond memories worth remembering!
Other memories, however, we would sooner forget, those festering in our minds like a cancerous blight. What sin causes you to burn with shame, even more so if others knew? Like the Israelites of long ago, you also rebelled against God. You grumbled about His blessings. You threw a dark shadow over the good He gave you.
In our sin, we walk in our selfish ways. Our sinful cravings bring hurt and harm to others. A hard and stony heart does not repent, refusing to tell others: “I’m sorry.” When barnacles of pride attach your heart, when selfishness makes it deaf to others, your heart cannot admit its wayward ways.
You may wish to forget those past failures. You may want some of the hurtful words to disappear from your memories—but repentance does involve remembering your sins. How else can you call those sins what they are: acts of rebellion, disobeying God and what He wants for you?
But repentance doesn’t stop there—if it did, how sad life would be! For repentance also forgets those sins—after you repent of them, and God delivers His forgiveness to you. God wants you to remember His beautiful, Gospel promises, such as: “the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
Isaiah tells us to forget the past in this way: stop living in the failures of the past. Don’t let the failings of others control you. When people disappoint you, why let that consume you? Stop focusing on how you even disillusion yourself.
Past regrets or failures, which fill your mind, keep you from recognizing the blessings and opportunities before you in the present. Why remember what God wants you to forget? That will only blind you to the future, a future bright with hope, a joy-filled eternity spent with Him.
Put your past into proper perspective—that’s when you’re ready for the future, which God will give you. God is doing something new! God will deliver you into the future. The Apostle Paul said the same in our reading from Philippians. “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I strive toward my goal—the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
Now, you might think: How can Paul, who wanted to know and preach nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, tell us to forgot what was behind him? Jesus Christ and Him crucified are events from the past. Did Paul want us to get amnesia when it came to Christ? God forbid!
If we no longer recall Christ’s sacrifice, we lose the meaning of His death. Forgetting our Lord’s sacrifice also means we’ve forgotten His grace. His grace enables us to anticipate the future, which His death and resurrection guarantee.
Christ died for all! Even more, if we forget His life-giving death, we live, unaware of God’s forgiveness. Not living in God’s forgiveness causes us to remain stuck in the past, still saddled with unforgiven sin. We’re not “forgetting what is behind.” “Forget those earlier events, don’t live in the past. Look! I am doing something new!”
So, God told His people to forget the past. Why? He was carrying out His plan of salvation for them. All those earlier events, as beautiful as some of them were, couldn’t compare with the glory of what God would reveal to them in the future.
Isaiah reminded the Israelites: God will deliver you from your exile in Babylon. A remnant of His people would return from their foreign captivity to the land God promised to them long ago.
Now, their trip back home didn’t have the fireworks of a pillar of fire during the night. The miracle of manna didn’t show up each morning to feed them on their journey. But God was still doing His work, leading them back through the wilderness to something new. God didn’t want His people to let the past preoccupy them at the expense of what the future would bring them.
“Forget those earlier events, don’t live in the past. Look! I am doing something new!” God’s new work among them would be like streams of water flowing into the dry, parched desert. Flowers would grow and blossom after a long drought. God wanted His people to rise from death and become alive to what He would do for them.
In Isaiah’s day, God was pulling His people forward. They had a future filled with hope! The promised Messiah would come, and He would put into place His New Covenant. For that to happen, God’s people needed to return to the land where the Messiah would be born. Their future had a Savior to be in Bethlehem of Judea. He would be THE sacrifice for sins. No longer would priests need to spill the blood of animals.
Jesus would seal His New Covenant, His Supper, the day after He gave it to His Apostles, by sacrificing His body and blood on the cross. For in His Son, God was doing something new. Jesus later affirmed His New Covenant when He rose from the dead, revealing His triumph over sin and death. Jesus even attached His promise to that event: “Whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
To make eternal life possible, to deliver His future, rich with blessing, God sent His Spirit to create and strengthen faith. God gives us this eternal life “through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit”—baptism (Titus 3:5).
We rejoice with the Apostle Peter, who writes: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope because Christ Jesus rose from the dead. You now have an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade—kept in heaven for you.” (1 Peter 1:3-4).
Christ’s death and resurrection free us from our sins and point us to what is new, which God is doing in our lives. St. Paul echoes the same truth:
Christ died for all, so those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the One, who died and rose for them. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. What is old is no more, the new is here! [2 Corinthians 5:15, 17].
What is old is no more. The future promise of God’s mercy and grace awaits us. So, lean forward to the future awaiting you! God even gives us a sneak peek of that in the book of Revelation, where He is doing something new. The Apostle John got a glimpse of the heavenly Jerusalem. For a sliver of time, he experienced the eternity awaiting us, most of it before our Lord’s return on the Last Day, some after.
In heaven, before our Lord’s return, all the pain, heartache, and disappointment of this life will be gone. The old is gone; the new is here. After our Lord’s return, John no longer finds the saints bowing before the Lord in worship (Rev 4:10, 5:14, 7:11, 11:1, 11:16, 15:4, 19:4, 19:10). St. John writes: “They [the saints of God] will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:3-5). In the new heaven and earth, God even gives us an eternity where we will rule with Him. The old is gone; the new is here.
So, “forget those earlier events, don’t live in the past. Look! [God is] doing something new!” Praise God! By His grace, you can forget your past sins and press on to what will be. In His lavish grace, God will deliver you into that future, into eternity! Amen.
