Some people enjoy hiking and camping out in the backwoods or mountains. They pack what they need into a backpack and off they go. Experienced hikers know that they do not want to carry extra baggage in their packs, as it will only needlessly weigh them down. The same can be said for those who prefer to travel with a suitcase on a plane. Don’t pack useless things one would never need, especially since some airlines have a weight limit for baggage. This is good advice for us as we go through life. As we open up our Bibles to our passage from the prophet Isaiah, I would like to mainly focus on verses 18 and 19.
Many people, myself definitely included, have been carrying around baggage from the past, throughout our lives, that weighs us down. We have this large, invisible backpack that we carry, and it is filled with all sorts of things, some good, but a lot that is not good. The bad things could include bad habits that we have, memories of negative events of our past that we refuse to give to God and let go of, unforgiveness, bitterness, etc. The good things could include when we accepted Jesus as our Savior, the wonderful children we’ve raised, the good we’ve done to help others, etc. In verse 18, the Lord tells us to forget the bad of the past. Don’t carry it around anymore. Just like the hiker goes through his backpack and throws out what he doesn’t need that is weighing him down. The Apostle Paul said the same thing in Philippians 3:13-14. He had plenty in his past that could have weighed him down if he had let it, such as persecuting Christians, and cursing the Name of the Lord Jesus. However, when he accepted Jesus as his Savior, he knew to give his past and its mistakes to God, and then empty them out of his “invisible backpack”. Don’t dwell on the past. All it does is tire us and weigh us down.
Sometimes in an action/thriller movie we see the main character running down an alley, trying to escape from the “bad guys”, and he runs into a dead end. We wonder how he will escape. There are times in our own life where we seem to be trapped in a dead end, with no way of escape. The things that are chasing us might be financial troubles, bad health, relationships that are estranged, and many other problems, and we have no way out. Isaiah tells us in verse 19 that we need to seek the Lord. He has promised us that He will make a road in the wilderness. A wilderness or a desert is no place to get lost in. One can quickly die of thirst with the merciless sun beating down. One can get bit by a poisonous snake or meet up with some other dangerous animal. However, if you find a road or a pathway out, you’re in luck. God said He would make that road for us.
Verse 19 also says that God will do a new thing for us. At the time of Isaiah the prophet, around 740 BC - 686 BC, people worshipped many false gods. They believed that some of the gods wanted or demanded human sacrifices. At times even some of the Jewish people fell into that hideous practice. However, Yahweh, the one true God, did something totally new, which the followers of the false gods had never heard of before. Yahweh became a man, one who would live and then die as a sacrifice for our sins, rising to life again on the third day. He became the sacrifice that we needed! The past miracles would be nothing compared to what God would do for His people in the future. Their deliverance in the past would be like nothing in comparison to the deliverance in the future.
We have the advantage over Isaiah, in that he could only look forward, knowing that God was promising to do something great and new for His people. We know that the Lord Jesus came to be our substitutionary sacrifice. Let us praise Him for that new, unheard of before depth of love and mercy He has offered us, praise Him for making a way for us in the wilderness, and for taking our past with its sins and mistakes.
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