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Dec 29, 2024

Our God of the New

Passage: Isaiah 43:16-21

Preacher: John Repsold

Category: Hope

Keywords: vision, new, hope, gifts, fresh, repurposing

Summary:

As we come into a "New Year" in a few days, it's worth pausing to reflect on what God has to say about the new things He is doing and wants to do. This message looks at God's call to expect Him to bring new blessings while not being bound by past or present difficulties or failures.

Detail:

Our God of the New

Isaiah 43 & Luke 5

December 29, 2024

Fellowship Question:  Share something new you would love to have happen or see God do in your life in 2025.

INTRO: 

Did anyone here receive anything new this past week?  Even those of us who may not have gotten any new present, I’ll bet you had a few new meals?  New conversations?  Definitely new days?  Maybe new aches and pains?

I’m guessing some of us also bought something “used” or “old” gifts for someone this season…OR perhaps you received something “used” as a gift…maybe some antique furniture, a present wrapped in “repurposed” paper or box, maybe even a used car?

  • Years ago I gave Sandy a used desk—beautiful white oak with an engraved leather top…and a bit of wear and tear. But I gave it to her with a certificate of commitment to “restore it”…which I actually did…and she actually used for many years.
  • When our kids were younger, I also remember buying used roller blades for both the kids & me. Mine came with a medical and life insurance rider!  We got years of cul-de-sac street hockey as well as cuts and scrapes out of them.  Best investment ever! 

But for most things in life, it would appear to me that most of us have a bias for “new”, particularly if it’s in the form of a gift. We usually prefer new clothes to used, new cars to used, new sheets or dishes or shoes to old.

I think it is possible that our preference for giving “new” things to those we love is not just a reflection of our materialistic culture.  I think some of it may well be a reflection of our Heavenly Father.  You see, if you glance through the Bible and take a look at what God likes to give to his children, you will find that He, too, loves to give “new” things to his kids.  Consider just a few biblical statements about God giving “new” things.

 

O.T.

  • Throughout the Psalms, the Psalmists speak of singing new songs to God and of Him putting “new songs” in their mouths (33:3, 96:1, 98:1, 144:9; 40:3)
  • In fact, many of the prophets spoke of the new heavens and earth that are yet future for all of us. Isaiah 65:17, 66:22; Ezekiel 37:26; Joel 2:28-32; Daniel 12:2-3
  • Then there is the “new covenant” (Jer. 31:31) that the prophet Jeremiah foretold and which Jesus gave us (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25; 2 Cor. 2:12, 3:6).
  • Even in the midst of a horrible siege of Jerusalem in which starvation was rampant to the point of cannibalism, Jeremiah was able to proclaim that “God’s mercies are new every morning.” (Lam. 3:23)
  • Ezekiel prophesied about a “new heart and new spirit” God would place in his children, a reality we in the church age have been blessed to experience, (Ez. 11:19, 18:31).

N.T.--If you trace through the N.T. what "new" things God is doing, you cannot escape the reality that God is the god of new things. 

  • He is the God of a "new life" (Ac. 5:20) and a “new birth” (I Pt. 1:3).
  • the God of a "new way" of service (Rom 7:6),
  • the God who makes out of sinful people whole "new creations" where "all things become new" (2 Cor. 5:17) and where “what counts is a new creation” (Gal. 6:15).
  • Gives a “new commandment” to his disciples – love one another as he has loved us (Jn. 13:34)
  • We his people are called daily to “live a new life” (Rm. 6:4)…to “serve God in the new way of the Spirit, not in the old way of the written code.” (Rm. 7:6)
  • We his children are called to “put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24).
  • We are to be “made new in the attitudes of our mind”.
  • Paul speaks of Jesus as one who makes “one new man” out of the great division between Jews and non-Jews that existed prior to his coming (Eph. 2:15)
  • Again and again we are reminded that we have been given a “new covenant”… a new contractual agreement with God through Jesus Christ, not the Mosaic Law of old, (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25; 2 Cor. 2:12, 3:6).
  • And according to the book of Revelation, He is the God who give us even a "new name", for a "new heaven and earth", a new universe, a "new Jerusalem" or metropolis where there will be so many "new songs" that I imagine all the diversity of earthly music to date will sound like we've been just playing 'chop-sticks', (Rev. 2:17, 3:12, 5:9, 14:3, 21:1,2).
  • The last chapter of the Bible ends with God himself telling us that He is currently in the process of "making everything new" (Rev. 21:5).

It strikes me as strange then, thew we can be so enamored with “new” in the material realm but often suspicious of it when it comes to the spiritual or relational realm of our lives. 

  • Churches often seem to fight against change while God has clearly hard-wired life and culture to be in constant change.
  • Couples and parents seem to want their spouses and kids to not change so fast…or at all.
  • Friendships come and go while most of us just wish we could freeze-frame them at their best.

But those families and marriages, churches and friendships that seem to be most dynamic and strong are not those which never change.  Instead, they are those who have a stable center keel of values that help guide everyone through the constant and sometimes violent storms of change.  Relationships that never change are not to be envied.  It is those who are constantly growing, becoming fresh again, renewed, challenged in new ways – those are the relationships that should be our models.

Here we stand today upon the threshold of NEW year.  We here today are the generations who have experienced more new things in the last 100 years than our forefathers in the previous 5,000.  As the people of God, people of The Book, we of all people should expect that God is going to do some new, even radical, things this year.    

ILL:  The danger is that we will be like people who first experienced human flight.  I’m not talking about the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk.  I’m talking about people on June 4, 1783 and the market square of a French village of Annonay, not far from Paris.  There, a smoky bonfire on a raised platform was fed by wet straw and old wool rages. Tethered above, straining its lines, was a huge taffeta bag 33 feet in diameter. In the presence of "a respectable assembly and a great many other people," and accompanied by great cheering, the balloon was cut from its moorings and set free to rise majestically into the noon sky.

Six thousand feet into the air it went—the first public ascent of a balloon, the first step in the history of human flight. But when it came to earth several miles away in a field, it was promptly attacked by pitchfork-waving peasants and torn to pieces as an instrument of evil!

Why is it that we demonize that which is “new” because we simply do not understand it.  We often fossilize that with which we are comfortable?

Growth is essentially the willingness to change, to experience new things.  That may require a distaste for ruts, which Laurence J. Peters, has described as “simply a grave with the ends knocked out.”  (BTW, he was a WSU-educated Vancouver, B.C. native who went on to become a Canadian educator.  He also coined the “Peter Principle” that says “employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.”)

ILL:  Too often, we, the children of THE most creative Being in existence, are more like the man who once bought a new radio, brought it home, placed it on the counter, plugged it in, turned it to his favorite station… and then pulled all the knobs off! He only wanted to hear what he knew he already liked!

I hope I haven’t done that with God… or my loved ones… or the church… or my own life.  Every day there is a whole “band-width” of new things God wants to work out in and through us.

As a former professor of mine was fond of saying, too many of God’s people experience a “hardening of the categories” because of past pain or present pressures.  But the God who makes all things new, is not bound by those things.  He is only limited by the level of our willingness to trust Him for new experiences and walk by faith with him when he brings them along.

So, let’s take a look at one O.T. passage which speaks of God’s involvement in and plan for new things in our lives as His children.  Then we’ll look at one O.T. practice that can help us experience God’s ever-new plans for us in life.

Go to Isaiah 43:16-21.  To a people who had experienced the disciplining hand of the Lord by being kicked out of Israel and taken into captivity by (my wife’s ancestors) the dreaded Assyrians, Isaiah reminds them that God did in the past things that had never been done before in delivering them from Egypt AND he will do in their future things that seemed equally impossible to them at the moment. 

16 Thus says the Lord,

Who makes a way through the sea
And a path through the mighty waters,
17 Who brings forth the chariot and the horse,
The army and the mighty man
(They will lie down together and not rise again;
They have been quenched and extinguished like a wick):
18 “Do not call to mind the former things,
Or ponder things of the past.
19 “Behold, I will do something new,
Now it will spring forth;
Will you not be aware of it?
I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
Rivers in the desert.
20 “The beasts of the field will glorify Me,
The jackals and the ostriches,
Because I have given waters in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert,
To give drink to My chosen people.
21 “The people whom I formed for Myself
Will declare My praise.

This is really good news!  Even to His children who are under His heavy hand of discipline, God promises new, humanly impossible yet glorious things…in the middle of the desert, of all places. 

            "Forget the former things [and] do not dwell on the past,” is not an "anti-history" statement.  There are many times and things God calls us to “remember” and not forget.  God often calls his people to remember His deeds on their behalf in the past as well as their own sins of the past that can help us shape a better, holier future. 

            But when we seem particularly weighed down by our failures that may have contributed to some of our present heaviness or fatigue, God has a different word for us: “Don’t fixate on the failings; don’t rehearse the regrets of days gone by.  Look instead at what I, God, have promised to do for you and in you, impossible as it may seem to you right now.”

Can we ask the question, “Why forget the past and not dwell on it?”  Let me suggest a few reasons. 

  1. Looking to the past for how God wants to work in the present puts our trust in past experiences rather than a fresh move of God.

ILL:   How did God lead the people across the Red Sea?  (Moses stretched out his hands and God divided the sea.  Ex. 14) 

How did God lead the people across the Jordan into the promised land?  (Flood stage, Ark of the Covenant and priests went into the river and the water was piled up quite a ways back upstream.)

            How did Jesus get his disciples from one side of the Sea of Galilee to the other?  (Spoke, calmed the waters, walked on the water, moved the boat miraculously from mid-lake to shore's edge.) 

            Even when God does similar miracles, they usually have some measure of uniqueness. 

  1. Looking back can produce a comparison mentality that may limit our joy and appreciation for what God is doing in the present.

ILL:  remember the establishing of the second Temple in Ezra 3?  There was a mixture of weeping and shouting for joy.  The weepers were the priests who remembered the grandeur of Solomon’s Temple compared with the humble beginnings of the replacement temple.  The shouters (joy) were those who had never known the old Temple.  They were just SO happy to see what God had allowed them to have in a new foundation. 

            We’re all subject to SMS—"Selective Memory Syndrome“. We have an amazing capacity to forget the failures and embellish the victories.  ILL:  The older I get, the more rosy appear my teen years in church compared to the general state of the church today.  Doing that will rob me of fresh wonder at the new things God is doing today that He wasn’t doing then…because God is always doing new things.  He promised to!

  1. Fixating on the past trades the unchanging past for the possibilities of a dynamic present and future. God only pours as much "new wine" into our lives as we’re willing to allow Him to create “new wineskins.”  When we demand that God use the "old wineskins" of our limited life history, it is going to leave us with baggy, half-filled wineskins that will have difficulty adjusting to even a smaller portion of "new wine" God wants to pour out in this new day.
  2. Hanging on to the past will produce people who walk more by sight and less by faith. And “without faith it is impossible to please God.”  Faith demands a measure of uncertainty about how or when something will happen.  It also demands a greater level of conviction about the truthfulness of God and His dedication to fulfill His word in our generation and lives. 

Looking to the past for how we expect God to work in the present will eventually lead to a diminished future!

GOD IS THE GOD OF NEW THINGS!  As Is. 43:19 says,

"Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?"  It is very possible to miss God move right under our noses... because we are content to use the old pathways, the old trails of ministry, the old roads of relationship and the old pools of water dug by our spiritual forefathers. 

            All the while, God says "I am making a way in the [your?] desert and streams in the [your?] wasteland."

This year, 2025, the completion of the first ¼ of this century, God is making and will make a way for you and me through the deserts.  Those deserts may be of dry marriages…or cold, dark deserts of death that some of us may experience with loved ones.  God will make a way through the confusion of career losses, job changes, unemployment.  He will make a road for you to walk on in the deserts of severe illness, chronic pain, academic failures, friendship and familial pain.  God has new ways prepared for us through old and new deserts of life.  Look up.  Look forward.  Don’t keep looking back.  I’ve run into too many trees and obstacles doing that!  God is making that WAY for each of us in those DESERTS that are a part of life.  Our call is to be spiritually awake enough to see them.

            HOW do we do that?  Let me suggest a practice God gifted to the Israelites early on in their national spiritual journey.  When they used it as it was intended to be used, it blessed them with joy and fresh experiences with God.  When it became simply a routine, a religious ritual, a rite they saw as a requirement rather than privilege, it lost its blessing. 

In the O.T., life with God was designed to have a certain order about it.  There were daily routines, weekly routines (Sabbaths), monthly routines (New Moon celebrations), annual seasonal routines (Passover, Feasts like Tabernacles, Pentecost, First Fruits, Unleavened Bread, Atonement).  There were even spiritual routines ever 7 years (Sabbath years for canceling debts).  Let’s just look at the “New Moons” festivals. 

New Moons

            The passing of months for God’s people was much more than just a the flipping of a calendar to the next picture-page.  The beginning of each "new moon" was to be a national holiday, actually a "religious holiday" in modern-day thinking.  But it was much more than just another "day off" for a "3-day weekend".

There are some clear clues in the O.T. as to why "New Moon" days were important and special.

  1. 1. They were meant to be “spiritual parties” – times of rejoicing. In Numbers 10:10-- Also at your times of rejoicing—your appointed festivals and New Moon feasts—you are to sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, and they will be a memorial for you before your God. I am the Lord your God.”

Every month there was to be a call to a "time of rejoicing."  Life as God's chosen ones was to be punctuated by spiritual parties!  However, unlike most of the New Year's Eve parties that will happen this week, these celebrations had a powerful spiritual purpose and content.   Like most parties, they included food and drink... the best the people had.  But they centered around one's relationship with the Living God, YHWH.  They involved “sacrifices” that the people gave to God but got to enjoy with one another.  Yes, it cost them BUT it also provided regular, potentially enjoyable feasts to experience together. 

  1. New Moons were to be times of seeking God’s will.

2 Kings 4:23 contains the story of the Shunammite woman who was very wealthy. Was so wealthy that when the prophet Elisha went to Shunem to visit, she did a remodeling job on the house and added a "prophets apartment" on the roof.... after consulting her husband, of course!  Because of her goodness to God's man, Elisha prophesied that even in her old age, this childless woman would have a son the following year. 

            The boy, as prophesied, was born and grew up.  But, as best we can tell, in his youth, while working in the field, he had some sort of brain hemorrhage or tumor which killed him. 

            His mother, a woman utterly convinced of the power of God, calls for her husband to get a servant and donkey so she can go to Elisha, now living in another town.  Her husband's question betrays a lot about how New Moon days were viewed. "Why go to him today?" he asked.  "It's not the New Moon or the Sabbath."  (vs. 23).

What is he revealing?  God's spokesman and new-month celebrations went together like peas in a pod.  New Moons were to be days of seeking God, of asking direction of God's wise-men and of going after God's word from the mouth of His spokesmen.

APP:  I can't help but wonder how different our lives would look if we were to treat the beginning of each month that way.  We are a culture which, for the most part, has the "festivities" portion of holidays well in hand.  It is the seeking after God and listening to His voice that is virtually non-existent in our holiday hustle and hassle. 

  1. New Moons were to be days of spiritual reflection and rest. Amos 8:5--In speaking against the materialism and loss of heart for God in the day of the prophet Amos, God says,

            “Here this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?”

Clearly, New Moons were "No Business/No Sale" Days in the Jewish calendar.  They were therefore "No Shopping" days too. 

            But these enterprising Hebrew merchants could hardly wait to make more money.  They had lost interest in New Moon holidays and had come to view them simply as another religious impediment to making more money.  Doing business was where their heart was…and it was not doing business with God.

What's wrong with this picture?

I have to wonder.... 

  • I wonder if, in our "freedom", we haven't actually become slaves to another master?
  • I wonder if in making all days equal, we haven't lost many days that were very special?
  • I wonder who really was living more by faith -- those who had to trust God to make up the difference in income, work efficiency and “lost business” by observing special spiritual renewal days every month... or those of us today who have difficulty trusting God to cover the bases one day a week…or month…or a couple of weeks of the year for rest?

Our God is the God who set the stars and the moon in their place, determined the clockwork of the heavens and called His people to celebrate regularly and frequently their relationship with Him in the unfolding of "New Moons"... new months... and new seasons.

            Besides the elements of rejoicing, seeking after God and His counsel, and resting from work, New Moon festivals were days of offering spiritual sacrifices, of spiritual self-examination, of repentance and of renewal. 

As we approach our nearest cultural equivalent in America to a "New Moon" festival... that of New Year's Day... may I challenge you to something "new" which somewhere along the line of church life became "old hat" and got lost?

            New Years, as new months... and even new weeks... are designed by God to be opportunities for "soul-refreshment", “soul-recalibration.”  It is time that we who truly claim to "walk by faith" reclaim some of the greatest benefits to really doing so:

  • Benefits of inventory of past days. (What has God been working on in me recently?  How am I responding?  Who am I helping grow? What has God been teaching me?  How is God answering my prayers?  Not answering them?  How am I growing in my experiential knowledge of Jesus?)
  • Benefits of festive interaction with God's people. (When and where do I really share my heart with my family?  My home with God's people?  My time with lost sinners?  My monthly paycheck or SS benefits t) have a meal with someone else?)
  • Benefits of quiet communion with God about the week, month or year to come... seeking His heart on the agendas, the projects, the raising of our kids, the reaching of our friends and the lost for Christ. (Praying over the upcoming week for the family, kids, work, church, outreach, etc.)

I don't know where the idea of "New Year's Resolutions" got started, but I've got a hunch that it may have had its roots in a day when God's people took the passing of time as God-given opportunities for a look back, a renewal of the present and spiritual, prayerful dreaming for the future.  If the "New Moon" celebrations were just a "shadow" of a living faith in Christ (Col. 2:16), imagine what special days offered up to God like that could mean to the believer and the church who have found the "reality.. in Christ"?

APP:  What one thing could you do consistently in this new year that would open you up to new things god has for you?

  • Make this New Year’s Eve a time of doing what we’ve just talked about.
    • 24-hours of Prayer at Gathering House.
    • Quiet time of reflection and prayer alone.
    • Share a special, spiritual meal with family or a friend.
  • Monthly “New Moon Celebration”:
    • The 3rd Sunday of the month when we have a Fellowship meal? Plan to stay/come.  Plan to engage with others about meaningful spiritual matters in your life. 
    • Take the first Sunday of each month to look back, look forward and listen to God. Journal it so you have a record.
  • Invite someone to your home once/month if you don’t already…or take someone out to eat once/month if you don’t already.
  • Weekly sabbath this year? Not just a day to watch football (though that might be good for some of you).  A day for spiritual recalibration, reflection, renewal. 

If every one of us added just one of these options to our lives…with a hungry heart for God…not as some religious duty, imagine how much richer and deeper this NEW Year could be!