Our passage from Isaiah 43 has been a favorite of mine for over 22 years, since my friend and colleague Gretchen Bretz preached on it at my installation service in Colorado, and I look forward to diving into it with you this morning; but before we do that, I want to make sure we all have the context clearly in view. This is part of a sixteen-chapter section of this book, chapters 40-55, which is commonly referred to as “Second Isaiah.” I could go into a lot of background, but I’ll just say this: there is an arc to these chapters into which our passage fits.
For one thing, the imagery here is part of a crescendo which has been building since chapter 40. The language of preparing a way and leading the people of God in a new way begins in 40:3-5, where the cry goes out among the host of heaven to prepare a way for the Lord. We see it again in 42:16—to use Phil Keaggy’s paraphrase from the song “Things I Will Do” on his 1976 album Love Broke Thru,
I will lead the blind
By the way they do not know;
In paths they do not know I will guide them.
I will make darkness into light before them
And rugged places into plains.These are the things I will do . . .
And I will not leave them undone.
—and yet again in 43:2. Related to this is the language of bringing water, and thus life, in the wasteland; this first appears in 41:18-20, while 42:15 gives us the ironic inversion: “I will lay waste to the hills and dry out all that grows on them; I will turn the rivers to desert and dry up the lakes.” In 44:3, the Lord promises, “I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground.”
This imagery is woven through and supports an extended polemic against idolatry: in 40:18-20, 41:1-7 and 21-29, 42:16-20, and continuing to a long prose indictment of idols and idol-worshipers in 44:9-20. All of this builds to the announcement of Cyrus as God’s chosen deliverer—his anointed one, his meshiach—in 44:28-45:1. Now, as I say this, it might not be obvious to you; what do blind and deaf people have to do with idols? There’s a scriptural principle underlying Isaiah’s language which isn’t explicitly articulated here but is set forth in Psalms 115 and 135. Here’s 115:4-8:
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat.
Recognize that language in Isaiah 43? And in verse 8, the psalmist drives the point home:
Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.
Worshiping idols makes you as blind and deaf as they are.
This is building through these chapters of Isaiah. God hauls the gods of the nations into court again and again, pointing to all he has done and challenging them to match his record; he also declares he will do a new thing and dares them to equal him. And then in verse 18, we get an extraordinary command. The ESV reads, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.” The NIV puts it this way: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” Going back for chapters, the Lord and his prophet have been challenging the people to go back and remember all God has done, and compare that to the track record of the idols they keep worshiping instead. And now the prophet says, “Nah—forget that”? Are we supposed to remember all God has done for us, or not?