Not Forsaken Not Forgotten

Read: Isaiah 49:14-16

Isaiah 49:14–16 KJV 1900

14 But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, And my Lord hath forgotten me. 15 Can a woman forget her sucking child, That she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, Yet will I not forget thee. 16 Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; Thy walls are continually before me.

Introduction:

Our passage is a conversation recorded by the Prophet Isaiah between Israel (called Zion) and God.

Zion (Israel) is feeling forsaken and forgotten by God. God reassures Israel that even though they are in a bad spot (waiting in exile) He has not forgotten them at all.

While this passage was written exclusively for the Jewish nation - I think there are spiritual principals we can draw from it.

There are three I want us to note tonight.

Wait on God’s Time -

Waiting on the Lord - Sometimes it seems things have to get to their worse possible place before God works.

And waiting isn’t something that comes natural or easy to us humans -

Chelsea Wald wrote in a recent article: Why Your Brain Hates Slowpokes,

Not long ago I diagnosed myself with the recently identified condition of sidewalk rage. It’s most pronounced when it comes to a certain friend who is a slow walker. Last month, as we sashayed our way to dinner, I found myself biting my tongue, thinking, I have to stop going places with her if I ever want to … get there!

Slowness rage is not confined to the sidewalk, of course.

Slow drivers,

slow Internet,

slow grocery lines—

they all drive us crazy.

Slow things drive us crazy because the fast pace of society has warped our sense of timing. Things that our great-great-grandparents would have found miraculously efficient now drive us around the bend. Patience is a virtue that’s been vanquished in the Twitter age.

Make no mistake: Society continues to pick up speed.

In his book, Social Acceleration, Hartmut Rosa informs us that the speed of human movement from pre-modern times to now has increased by a factor of 100. The speed of communications has skyrocketed by a factor of 10 million, and data transmission has soared by a factor of around 10 billion. A study found that even our walking speed has increased by 10 percent since the 1990s.

Waiting doesn’t come easy for us at all -

We may wait on God for

Answers to prayers

Guidance or revelation

Strength or encouragement

the fulfillment of God’s promises

Release from discipline - The last two are what the Israelites where doing - they were in a strange land and saying - God has abandoned and forgotten us.

Isaiah 49:14 KJV 1900

14 But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, And my Lord hath forgotten me.

Sometimes we have to wait on God who is waiting on us:

In his book entitled "A Gentle Thunder" Max Lucado says,

"Once there was a man who dared God to speak; Burn the bush like You did for Moses, God. And I will follow. Collapse the walls like you did for Joshua, God. And I will fight. Still the waves like you did on Galilee, God. And I will listen.

And so the man sat by a bush, near a wall, close to the sea and waited for God to speak.

And God heard the man, so God answered.

He sent fire, not for a bush, but for a church.

He brought down a wall, not of brick, but of sin.

He stilled a storm, not of the sea, but of a soul.

And God waited for the man to respond. And He waited….and waited.

But because the man was looking a bushes, not hearts;

bricks and not lives,

seas, and not souls, he decided that God had done nothing.

Finally the man looked to God and asked, Have You lost Your power?

And God looked at the man and replied, Have you lost your hearing?"

“He who waits on God never waits too long”

Chuck Wagner

We will have to learn to wait on God but we see also the principle of:

Knowing God Remembers -

While we are waiting and feeling forsaken and forgotten - You haven’t even left God’s thoughts or mind.

Listen to how God reassures Israel that he hasn’t forgotten them -

He asks a rhetorical question - Isa 49:15 - Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?

Can a mother of a newborn stop loving, caring, and nurturing her newborn baby?

While our answer may be a quick - “NO”

God says - “Yes they may forget”

That is a sad charge against humanity. but it is unfortunately true.

According to one source there are about 150 babies in the United States abandoned each year in creeks, along roadsides, and in trash cans.

Another source says that could be even higher as many as 1,400.

A mother and her newborn are pictures of the greatest attachment, love and care - and yet God says even that can be broken and dysfunctional.

I was nearly in tears the other day in research for this sermon as I read of story after story of babies found in dumpsters, recycle bins, ditches, fields, or even remains found in pickle jars and concrete.

Yes mother’s can forget their children - but God says,

Listen to this, “Yet will I not forget thee.”

I won’t forget thee because of my undying love for you.

While this promise was for Israel the principle applies to us as well -

A mother is more apt to neglect and abandon her child than God is to forsake or forget us.

In fact the next prinnciple is connected to this one -

We must 1. Wait on God and 2. Knowing God Remembers. and we also need to remember and know 3.

Realize God’s Love

Isaiah 49:16 KJV 1900

16 Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; Thy walls are continually before me.

I can’t forget you God says, because of my great love for you. My love is so great that I have inscribed your name on my hands. Everytime I lift my hand or look at them I see your name.

What is interesting about this - is the role reversal.

Typically a servant’s hand is marked for its owner - but here the Owner or Master marks his hand with the identification of the servants.

I can still remember the first day of first grade - A teacher wanted me to remember what bus I was to ride home. She was waiting when I got off the bus that morning and took my hand and wrote on the back of it in a permanant marker the number 2.

All that day and probably the rest of the week I could look at my hand and see the number 2

When I got out of school I seen why she did that. About 20 -25 yellow busses lined the sidewalk and they all looked the same. But all I had to do was look at my hand and see what bus I needed to get on.

But this was backwards - it would be like the bus driver putting “Curtis Gordon” on his hand and then picking me up from the classroom and walking me to my bus and taking me home.

God says I love you so much that you have left an indelible mark in my hand.

Of course we know that translates into New Testament language-

Charles Wesley put it best:

Arise, my soul, arise, shake off thy guilty fears,

The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears.

Before the throne my Surety stands;

My name is written on his hands.

Paul says it this way:

Romans 8:35 KJV 1900

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

He answers his own question

Romans 8:37–39 KJV 1900

37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after taking off from the Detroit airport, killing 155 people. One survived: a four-year-old from Tempe, Arizona, named Cecelia.

News accounts say when rescuers found Cecelia they did not believe she had been on the plane. Investigators first assumed Cecelia had been a passenger in one of the cars on the highway onto which the airliner crashed. But when the passenger register for the flight was checked, there was Cecelia’s name.

Cecelia survived because, even as the plane was falling, Cecelia’s mother, Paula Chican, unbuckled her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around Cecelia, and then would not let her go.

Nothing could separate that child from her mother’s love—neither tragedy nor disaster, neither the fall nor the flames that followed, neither height nor depth, neither life nor death.

Citation: Bryan Chapell, In the Grip of Grace (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992) © 2002 PreachingToday.com / Christianity Today, International

Tonight are you waiting on God for something - I want you to know He Has Not Forgotten - He Loves You - You are ON HIS MIND CONSTANTLY