Bible Studies

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The Scriptures
Isaiah 43:16-21 – New Roads Through the Wilderness

Key Verses: (NCV)

• 16: “This is what the Lord says. He is the one who made a road through the sea and a path through rough waters.” – Isaiah is helping his people remember their past so that they can be reassured about their future.
  
  
• 18: “The Lord says, ‘Forget what happened before, and do not think about the past.’” – The prophet warns against holding on to the past or ‘the good ‘ole days.’ Things cannot be as they once were.
  
  
• 19: “Look at the new thing I am going to do.” – A change from the norm, a paradigm shift, is about to occur. Old ways of looking at new things will not work. Forget the Exile, forget your time in the Promised Land, and forget the Exodus from Egypt. None of these events will have a bearing on the future.
  
  
• 19b: “I will make a road in the desert and rivers in the dry land.” – The new promise sounds consistent with their memories of the past. God will be there, leading them through the wilderness, taking care of their needs and assuring their safety.
  
  
• 21: “The people I made will sing songs to praise Me.” – One of our primary purposes in life – to worship God.
  

Points to Contemplate:

• Do you remember? The Israelites are in Exile. The Babylonians have destroyed their homes and have enslaved or killed their families. Despair has settled into their hearts and hope is lost. Have you ever experienced these feelings? Have you felt abandoned by God? Isaiah calls you to think back and remember those times in your life where you saw and felt God. Recall the times that God “made a road through the sea and a path through (the) rough waters” of your life. Through this process of remembering, are you able to reconnect with God? Can you feel His love? Do you regain hope?
  
  
• Can you forget? Isaiah, after calling us to remember what God has done, now says to forget the past. Is he being inconsistent? How can we, on the one hand, remember how God has led us through the wilderness and on the other, forget the “former things?” Is Isaiah telling us to remember what God has done but to forget what we have done? Is he telling us to drop the baggage of past wrongs and failings and, instead, focus only on God? Can you forget?
  
  
• What “new thing” is God going to do for you? Will He solve your problems? Make your pain go away? Will He fix the wrongs that you have done? Will He punish those who have wronged you? Is your faith and love of God built out of the failures of your past? Or is it out of the promise of a glorious future? Can you set aside the binding and confining elements of your past and gaze into the freedom of a new future with God? Do you accept that nothing is as it once was? That there are no limitations to the possibilities that exist in a life focused on God? Can you discover the “new thing” that God has in store for you?
  
  
• Do you sing songs of praise to your Creator? Does your passion for Christ boil up inside you until you cannot contain it any further? When you think about the new future that God is creating within you, is there anything to do but sing? When you take inventory of everything God has done to reveal His love for you, are you still simply engaging your mind through a series of intellectual beliefs and concepts, or has His compassion for you entered your heart? Has your belief turned into faith? Have your thoughts turned into song?
  

Promises of the Gospel:

One of God’s wonders is His capacity to break up old patterns of reality and permit us to begin anew. Isaiah calls Israel to an understanding of her mission, her purpose. They are called to make a break between the past and the future. Their lives are to be transformed. When we allow our past to die, we are transformed into our future replacing the memories of pain, suffering, and abuse with the awareness of God's generous love and forgiveness. When this occurs, our hearts burst with joy and mouths with song.

FUMC Devotionals

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