History Remade
Opening Prayer
Loving Heavenly Father, I’ve seen You at work in the past and I want to see You at work today, too.
Read Isaiah 43:14-28
[14] This is what the LORD says- your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “For your sake I will send to Babylon and bring down as fugitives all the Babylonians, in the ships in which they took pride. [15] I am the LORD, your Holy One, Israel’s Creator, your King.” [16] This is what the LORD says- he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, [17] 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: [18] “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. [19] See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. [20] The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, [21] the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise. [22] “Yet you have not called on me, Jacob, you have not wearied yourselves for me, Israel. [23] You have not brought me sheep for burnt offerings, nor honored me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with grain offerings nor wearied you with demands for incense. [24] You have not bought any fragrant calamus for me, or lavished on me the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your offenses. [25] “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more. [26] Review the past for me, let us argue the matter together; state the case for your innocence. [27] Your first father sinned; those I sent to teach you rebelled against me. [28] So I disgraced the dignitaries of your temple; I consigned Jacob to destruction and Israel to scorn. Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
How have the Lord's people "imposed" on him (24)?What does it mean to “remember”? When God’s people “remember,” they draw together the significant pieces of their memory to make present the great acts of God. So when Jesus instructs his followers to break bread “in remembrance of me,” they are not just to look backwards, but to experience now the saving presence and work of Christ. Here, with evocative references to the Exodus–the greatest act of divine deliverance in their history–God tells his people that they are not to remember things of old (18). Instead, they are to look for a new act of God (19): he will use the Medes to rescue them from Babylon (14). This will come about not because they have been persistent in worship (22-24), but entirely because of God’s initiative (25-28). This deliverance is, of course, like the Exodus. In some ways it is the same action of God in a new time. But his people need to be called from remembering the past to seeing God’s action in present events. It is the same for us. The invitation of Scripture is for the work of God not to be a distant memory, but a present reality.
Apply
Recall the most significant ways in which you have seen God at work in and around you recently.
Closing prayer
“I stand in awe of Your deeds, O Lord. Repeat them in our day; in our time make them known” (Hab. 3:2).
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