Isaiah 43:16–21 (ESV)

¹⁶Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters,
¹⁷who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise,
            they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
¹⁸“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.
¹⁹Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
             I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
²⁰The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches,
             for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,
²¹the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.”

The old saying goes, “There is nothing new under the sun.”  This means we can say sin is inclusive. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  Since no one is excluded from sin, there is no escaping death.  So, when it comes to sin and death, there is nothing new in this old world.

In our text, God announces: “Behold, I am doing a new thing” (19).  He is the Creator, the “Maker of heaven and earth,” and He is the One who brought “all things visible and invisible” into existence by His mighty Word.  He knows all about new things because everything He made in the beginning was shiny new.  The Lord continues to exercise His dominion, sustaining everything on what is now “this old earth.”

Isaiah points to Israel’s exodus from bondage in Egypt in verses 16 and 17.  However, that was a “thing of old” and God’s deliverance is not confined just to Israel’s past, God is “doing a new thing” (19).  God’s new thing is even greater than Israel’s exodus from Egypt; it is Christ Jesus.  His coming will bring deliverance from the bondage of sin and the captivity of death.  

Another exciting part of God’s new thing is electing a people for Himself.  By a gracious miracle, God elected you through His Son.  Jesus Christ “has redeemed [you], a lost  and condemned person, purchased and won [you] from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that [you] may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity” (Luther’s Small Catechism).

In Holy Baptism, God called you and made you His own.  This side of paradise we are still walking through the deep and threatening waters of this chaotic life.  Like all of creation, we groan together in the pains of sin, hoping to “be set free from its bondage of corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”  But “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.” (cf. Romans 8:18-30).  So in faith we wait for the compilation of the “new thing” God is doing by imitating what Saint Paul says to do in Philippians 3:13-14, “forgetting what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead.  [Pressing] on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  

825 North 1^st West

Cheyenne Wells, CO, 80810-0728

Sunday Service begins at 9:00AM