Isaiah seems to be contradicting himself. He advises us that there is "no need to recall the past, no need to think about what was done before". Yet he himself has done precisely that: he has recalled the miracles of the Exodus. Beyond any superficial contradiction, there is a point to his reasoning. God never ceased to remind Israel that He was the God whom they learned to know through the Exodus experience. Israel had to keep recalling this fact in order to understand precisely who God was for them. The miracles of the Exodus, however, were not merely past events that Israel should recall from time to time. These events were in themselves a promise: in every age, God would be a God of the Exodus, a liberating God. God would continue the great work of liberation, not by simply repeating the miracles of the Exodus but by doing new deeds. In reality, God gathered up all the promises of the Old Testament in one great promise, the promise of the Messiah. This promise was fulfilled by the greatest new deed that God desired to do: the sending of His Son to be the Saviour of the world: the climax of all deeds.