He Will Not Forget

Photo by Ian Wetherill on Unsplash
​Mother’s Day is a mixed blessing for many. On the one hand, it is a wonderful occasion for families to show their appreciation for God’ precious gift to them. It’s a hard job, and setting aside time to honor and acknowledge such effort is a good and necessary thing to do. Mom’s deserve their honor, and today is a day of great blessing. 

However, this can be a hard day for many. Today is a reminder to many not of what they had but what they lost, or maybe never got to experience. Even for those who did get to experience both sides of motherhood, today can be tinged with guilt for past or maybe even current failures. 

The text that is before us today speaks to both of these categories and to the rest of us. Fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, regretful or rejoicing, we can all find comfort and encouragement from our text today. 

Isaiah is a prophet in Judah about 700 years before Christ was born. He was confronting sin and warning of coming judgment to the nation of Judah, the southern part of Israel. Israel (the northern kingdom) had experienced an exile about halfway through Isaiah’s time. Judah wouldn’t experience their final exile for another almost 150 years. Isaiah alternates throughout the book between statements of coming judgment and future restoration after that judgment. That future restoration happened in part through God’s working through secular politics. They at one point got to return to their land, but the major fulfillment of the nation’s hope was in the coming of Christ which Isaiah also predicts. This coming of Christ isn’t just said in the famous passages that we read at Christmas and Easter time. Christ also figures in with this chapter as well. 

We are going to look at two points this morning, God will never forget you and Jesus is the reminder.

God will never forget you 

This may seem like something of an obvious thing to say but it only feels like that because God has said so often that He will be with His people. We see this most famously in Psalm 23:4 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” But we see it in many other places as well such as in Isaiah 43:2 “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” Or also famously in Joshua 1:5 “No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you.” You may respond saying, “Well that was just for Joshua.” Not so because it is quoted for us in Hebrews 13:5 “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”” And most famously, these were the last recorded words of Jesus Himself in Matthew in Matthew 28:20 “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”” 

God has told us over and over again that He will be with us because life screams at us to the contrary. We are made to feel that we are abandoned, that we are doing this all by ourselves. It is particularly easy to feel that way as a mother feeling like you are the only one balancing everything, and it can be isolating. It can feel like you are doing this all by yourself, and that often makes us feel like God is far away. 

This is an emotion that Scripture is familiar with. The Psalms sometimes wonder where God is (Psalm 13:1 “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” ; Psalm 42:9 “I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”” ; Psalm 44:24 “Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?” ), so this shows that even some of the writers of Scripture have had a hard enough time with life to express this to the Lord. Thankfully, the Lord doesn’t react to this with anger but compassionately reminding us of what is true. 

And it is here in this chapter that we see a really unique way of God saying He won’t leave you or forget you. God always presents Himself in male terms. He is the Father, He is a He. However, there are a few rare places in Scripture where He compares Himself to a mother. And this is one of them. He responds to the City of Zion (another name for Jerusalem) saying that God has forgotten them. They have faced and will face hostile powers, so this statement from Zion would have been said any number of times in the city. 

God describes Himself as caring even more than a nursing mother. It would be difficult to come up with a better analogy for loving care than a nursing mom. If there is anyone who won’t forget a child it is a new mom. Even though she has never cared for a baby before, she is instantly and inescapably aware of that child’s needs. And heaven help you if you come between her and her child. We’ve even come up with a name for this phenomenon: MamaBear. You don’t mess with MamaBear because she has a compassion for her child that will go straight through you if need be. 

Yet God describes his love and care beyond even a nursing mother. He goes over the tragic reality that some mothers, indeed, don’t care about their children, but God isn’t like that. He simply will not forget you. He goes even further in the following verse and describes that you have been graven on His hands. This would be surprising, because usually it is the servant who has his master’s name on his hands (ESV commentary). God flips that around, so great is His compassion. 

This word of compassion, as one scholar points out, gives us two great concepts of God’s approach to us. For one, it is often used of parents to children and so solidifies the concept of God’s fatherhood towards us. It also speaks to the how unconditional God’s choice is of us. He has compassion on whom He has compassion. It isn’t because we deserve it, but because He gives it to us (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament). 

Jesus is the reminder

Now, maybe you’re here today and still in verse 14. You know theologically that the Lord hasn’t forgotten you, but boy does it sure feel like it. You’ve been dealing with a pain, or you’ve been watching someone you love in pain. Maybe you’re in the middle of the early years of parenting and things just aren’t changing for the better. You feel alone in the same trenches year after year. 
What do we do in those sorts of situations? 

Sometimes those emotions can’t be helped. Psalm 88 is unique in its lamenting in that it doesn’t have a “happy ending.” The writer is sad at the start, and despite his prayer, is still sad at the end. Sometimes God purposes to bring us through things where we can’t rely on emotions to get us through it. We don’t “feel” secure; we don’t “feel” remembered, yet sometimes God is teaching us to cling to what we know. Even when we feel verse 14 of our passage, verse 15 is still true. 

Though hear me when I say that we don’t try to help our emotions. So if you are in verse 14 still, let’s take a look at the first few verses of our passage. We are called to rejoice always, it isn’t meant to be obeyed by pretending. God gives us truth to cling to, to make our hearts sing once again. 

Here in verse 1, we are hearing the Servant speaking. Spoiler alert, this is Jesus. In verse 3 He is called “Israel” but that is meant to be a reference to the True Israel Jesus Himself. The reason to think that is that the Israel of verse 3 is supposed to bring back the “Jacob” (another word for Israel, as we saw in Genesis) of verse 5. God isn’t calling Israel to save itself. He is sending a servant (ESV Commentary) to save. 

The comfort for us comes in verse 6. The Servant isn’t out to just save one ethnic people group, namely the Jews. In the second half of verse 6, The Servant is going to be a light for the nations all the way to the end of the earth. That means you and me! God isn’t just paying attention to you because you happen to be a member of creation but because the Lord Jesus has pursued after you. 
That means if you are listening to me right now, God’s light is shining on you. He is illuminating the way to salvation. And that is quite literally the solve for all of your problems. I’m not saying that means God will make your life easy here, that would be such a small promise. Why would we complain about the next 80 years being hard, when He is going to make all the rest of eternity bliss? What problem will you have there? There will be no pain, no sorrow, no aging, no threats. 

And look with me, if your heart can take it, at verse 18. Isaiah tells Zion to look up and see a “they” gathering. Who are these people? The previous verse was talking about destroyers, but they have been sent away by the end of the verse. Then he goes on to talk about how how they will be ornaments somehow, and then we get this odd interruption in verse 19 where he starts to go one way, and then cuts himself off to revisit the good news of who these people are. By the time we get to verse 20, we find the answer is children. The nation, though grieving the loss of citizens through invasions gets the chance to see future generations return. This reminds us of the comfort of those who have lost children will receive them again in heaven, but this verse in particular is referring to the spiritual children of the future. 

Even if you weren’t able to have any children yourself, if you have been going out and discipling others, bringing them to Christ, this one is for you. Look at verses 22-23: “Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and raise my signal to the peoples; and they shall bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.”” 
The future worshipers of Christ whom through your personal efforts, your mission’s dollars, and most importantly your prayers will one day assemble in heaven riding the shoulders of kings. There are no bereaved mothers in heaven. They will all have children. This is the promise of the nations, and is the promise for you. 

And the only way we get there is through the mercy of Christ. In heaven, all of your hardships, your heartaches, even your broken relationships will be healed in heaven. How that will play out exactly, I don’t know, but I do know that Christ bought that healing with his stripes. Those sins that you look on with shame, Christ covers. That abortion you had is covered by the blood of Christ. Those words you can’t take back will be erased from memory. God has already sent our sin as far away as the East is from the West, and poetically remembers it no more. 
God hasn’t forgotten you. How could He? He has compassion on you that goes beyond a nursing mother, and bought you with the blood of His Son.