Isaiah 43:14-28 - God's healing and forgiveness causes us to worship and serve Him.

We forget. We forget what we once knew so strongly, what we once knew so well. We forget, so we need constant reminders. We forget, so we keep scrapbooks, albums of pictures that will draw us back to what we once knew so well. We forget, so we repeat the same stories over and over again when we get together with our families. You know, we’re around the table with Grandpa and Grandma and the story about Mom or Dad getting in trouble, or the hilarious story about something they did, that story gets told for the thousand and first time. We need this, because we forget.

Sometimes, and this becomes tragic, sometimes, we forget why we married the person we married. We forget why we fell in love with them. We forget why we thought it was a good idea, years ago, to commit our lives to this person, why we willingly said that we would be faithful and honoring, for better or for worse. We forget, so we have to be reminded. So we go out on dates, even though we’re married. We look for what we lost. And we remember why. We remember who the other person was. We remember why we wanted to spend our entire lives with them. We remember why we missed them when they were gone. When we took the time, gave a good, hard look, we remembered. We remembered.

God would like to remind us of something as well. There was a time, hopefully for each one of us, when Jesus was the most important person in our life. Was it when we professed our faith and joined the church as adults? Was it when we took more responsibility in the church and realized how much we wanted to serve Jesus? Did it just click one day, someone said something in a new way and the gospel just made sense? Somewhere, at some time, we, who are Christians, knew so strongly that we wanted to commit our lives to Jesus. We knew Him so really, we knew Him so tangibly. He was everything to us. Communion, like this morning, was deeply meaningful. Reading His word filled a hole. Praying time was precious time. We knew. We knew Jesus, and we knew why we wanted to serve Him.

And then we forgot. And so God gives us a reminder. He reminds us of who He is. He reminds us of why we loved Him so much. He reminds us of why we committed our lives to Him. Verse 14:

This is what the LORD says— your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:

Remember? He’s your Redeemer. You and I were sold into slavery, and we liked it. We liked the burden that came with sin, we craved the pain, we asked for the hurt. As crazy as it sounds, for a time, we liked being slaves. And then there comes a time, for every person, when we’ve been hurt long enough, when the burden and the pain have gotten too heavy, and we want out. We want freedom from sin, we want release from the pain. We have to, we have to get rid of the burden.

And we can’t. We’re slaves. We don’t have a choice, anymore. Sin has us all wrapped up. The habits, the thoughts, we can’t stop them. We keep saying the words that cause us and others pain, and we know it causes them pain, we know it causes us pain, but we say them anyway, because we’re slaves. We think thoughts, and we let those thoughts linger because we like the thoughts, as sinful as they are. We know they’re damaging to the relationships around us, we know they hurt our marriage, we know they leave scars, and lead to more sin. But we can’t get them out of our heads. Because we’re slaves.

And then our Lord, our Redeemer steps in and He buys us out of slavery. He pays the price to free us from the sin that controls us. It was an awful, terrible price. It was the price of His own life. It took the eternal suffering of the Son of God to buy us out of sin, but He paid it anyway. That’s our God. That’s our Redeemer.

And sin didn’t give us up willingly. And we didn’t always want to be bought. But God miraculously broke the power and strength of sin, and made it possible for us to get out. Using the image of the Israelites going through the Red Sea, 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:

When we’ve been beat up by our own anger, by our own temptations, when the burden has hurt for so long, what a relief it is when God destroys the sin. He crushes the sin, demolishes the temptation, actually makes the thoughts repulsive to us rather than tempting. He destroys the power of sin, and it lays there:

never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:

Remember the promise God made to Adam and Eve, when they sold themselves into sin? Remember He told Satan, that serpent, in Genesis 3:15:

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Well, one day God came crushing. Jesus hung on that cross for six awful hours, crushing the head of Satan, taking away His power. Romans 6:22:

now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is who our God is. This is what He’s done. This is why we love Him with all of our hearts and souls and minds and strength. This is why we’ve been singing to Him this evening. We’re free! The burden is gone. Sin and temptation have no more power over us. Verse 18:

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

Don’t go back to the sin. Don’t fall back into slavery. Don’t go near the temptation, because even though it’s crushed, even though it’s lost its power, if we want, it can become powerful again. We can bring it back to life again. We can become trapped again.

Don’t go back, the Lord says. See, verse 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.

It’s a new life, He offers. It’s a life of nourishment. It’s life where our thirsts are quenched. Psalm 37:4:

Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Our desires switch. We don’t even what sinful things anymore. We want Godly things, and God fills those desires. Jesus said, in John 4:14:

whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

He delivers us from a dying life, and instead provides a living life, a full life, an abundant life. That’s why we’ve loved Him. That’s why we believed. That’s why we worship.

Except, we forget. Verse 22:

“Yet you have not called upon me, O Jacob, you have not wearied yourselves for me, O Israel.

What happened? How did we lose it? How do we forget? How did we change from being so excited about the Lord, to having to force ourselves to spend time with Him, to simply ignoring Him altogether? We have to force ourselves to pick up His book. Prayer time drags. We run out of things to tell Him. We do our time with Him from 9:30-10:30 and 6-7 on Sundays, but it’s so hard to remember Him in between. Our relationship with Him went from rewarding to required. How did this happen? What went wrong? We forgot. We forgot who He is. We forgot why we love Him.

And when we forgot, something else happened. Not only did we leave our Lord, but we went back to the sin that had caused so much pain and suffering. In answer to His goodness, we reply with evil. And God asks, “What happened? Not only do you not want to worship Me, not only do you not love me with your whole being, but, verse 24:

But you have burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your offenses.

We went back. We forgot who our God is, and when we forgot, the sin and misery started to look good to us again. We forgot His peace, and we thought that our temper was the way to solve our problems, to make people do what we wanted them to do, so that we would be happy. We forgot His abundance, and we thought that by filling our stomachs with food, or our livers with alcohol, or our time with play and recreation, that then we would find happiness and fulfillment. We forgot His care, and we thought that worrying about our future and our children and our nation and our community and our church would actually make things better, like the headaches we gave ourselves would really make a difference

We forgot the goodness of God, and so we traded Him for the pain of evil. And there we were, back under the burden, just asking for the pain. And then the Lord went back to work again. He did what He always does. He began to remind us again of why we loved Him in the first place. He reminded us of His unfailing love for that sparks such a love for Him. He does what He does. He forgives. Verse 25:

“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.

He remembers our sins no more. We don’t remember Him, and He doesn’t remember our sins. That’s why we love Him so much. His willingness, His readiness, His eagerness to forgive is why we came to Him in the first place, and it’s the reason we come back. His power, His persistence to free us from our slavery is why we run away, again, from our sin, and back into the purity of His presence. He willingly allowed nails to be slammed through His hands, pounded through His feet, a spear shoved into His heart, knowing that we would still forget Him at times. But He did it anyway, because He wanted us free from our sin and rescued from our pain.

That’s our God. That’s our Father. That’s our Savior. That’s our God. Remember Him? So where are we? Where are you? Where am I in our relationship with Him? He asks, in verse 26:

Review the past for me, let us argue the matter together;

Are we remembering why we love Him so much? Are we at the spot where no one and nothing is more important than Jesus in our lives, where time spent with Him is the most precious time we have? It’s a great place to be, isn’t it? This is where we want to stay. We’d like to spend an eternity loving our Lord, spending time with Him.

Or have we forgotten? Are we heading back to the sin? Do we miss how it makes us feel? Have we forgotten what God has given to us? Do we trade His peace for our pleasure, His holiness for our temporary happiness? Our happiness won’t last long. Our pleasure will turn to pain. Slavery to sin will begin to hurt again, and we’ll want out.

And maybe that’s where we are right now. We can remember the joy of time with the Lord, but it seems so far away right now, and so impossible to regain. We just don’t know how to get there. We just can’t seem to beat the sin.

But remember who your Lord is. Remember what He does. Remember why you loved Him in the first place. Remember His persistence to free us from whatever has us. Remember His power that will annihilate any temptation. Remember, remember, remember our Lord.