“Do not call to mind the former things, Or ponder things of the past. “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.”
Well, here we are, at the end of another year. And I mean really the end! Today is December 31st and we gather one more time to worship before crossing over into yet another new year.
And what a year it has been for us, here at C3. We’ve had one go off to college, another in his Senior year and making his own plans; and these are good things!
But not everything has been so good. We have folks with constant pain and discomfort that seemed worse this year than the past. A husband and dad and grandpa with cancer. Unemployment. Bad employment. Too much employment. Family stress. Rebellious children. Cares and burdens over health, finances, relationships, uncertain futures.
Are these things unique to our group? Of course not. In addition to the close, personal stuff though there is the daily news and the ever increasing speed of the downward spiral this old world is in.
To use another metaphor, the snowball is rolling and picking up both size and speed and I doubt there is a thinking man or woman left on the planet who thinks it can ever be controlled again. Not that it has ever really been in anyone’s control but God’s…we so easily deceive ourselves…
Bringing it down to the most personal level though; the simplest denominator, in short, we’re all tired. Am I right, or is it just me and a few others? I think I’m right.
We need a break from it all. We need a rest. Not just a vacation. Vacations are not what they are usually cracked up to be. They are a temporary, and usually expensive, respite from the day to day and when they are over we’re just thrown right back into the mire where, after we’ve rested from our vacation, the same old stuff awaits.
Writer Elbert Hubbard said, "No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one".
And it’s sort of like a gambling habit or an addiction to drugs or alcohol.
A person is removed from all things familiar and locked away for rehabilitation and he seems to do well. But as soon as he goes back home to the old routine and the old friends and nothing at all about his life has changed, he’s back to the addiction or the habit because the only thing that changed was that he was away for a while.
It’s the same with our lives. As Christians we sometimes look back, if we are wise, and we remember amazing things God has done in our lives. We remember our low estate and we praise Him that He picked us up and saved us and established us on the Rock of Ages.
Then we think about all the things He has done since that have gotten us through; given us victory; brought us to where we are;…
…so why are we still tired? Why are we physically and emotionally and spiritually run down?
Here is why, I think.
It’s because we think as those without hope. We begin our days calling to mind the former things and pondering things of the past. We wake and we immediately set our minds to work figuring out how to deal with life as we left it when we hit the pillow last night. We think of each day as simply a continuation of the last. As though we lay down and close our eyes and on the inside of our eyelids are the words, “To be continued…”
And we are not refreshed. And we are not renewed. And we are not encouraged, because we are not giving our undivided attention to the One who declares of Himself, “I, even I am the Lord; and there is no savior besides Me” (vs 11), and says, “Behold, I will do something new…”
NEWER THAN OLD VICTORIES
I want us to see today, this last day of the year, that we belong to the God of ‘new’. The reason I say it that way is because there is nothing in or of this world that is ever truly new unless it is of Him; comes from His hand.
That’s the negative way of putting it. The positive is that God is constantly doing something new, declaring something new, making something new. He Himself is perpetually new. What do I mean by that? Is that heresy? No! He exists perpetually in the ‘right now’, since He exists eternally and has no beginning or end. He is the Ancient of Days and He is Youngest of all.
There is nothing stagnant about God, nothing old fashioned. Whatever He has done in the latter days has little bearing on what He will do today or tomorrow, since the only thing that dictates His decrees and His actions is His own divine character and will.
Notice in verse 18 of our text that He says, “Do not call to mind the former things”.
Now He is not saying through the prophet that they shouldn’t dwell on some past misfortune. He has just been reminding them that as their Redeemer and Creator; as the Holy One of Israel, He brought down the mighty army of Egypt with their horses and their chariots into the depths of the sea and put them out like one would snuff a candle.
Really! Look at verse 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):”
He’s talking about the glory days of Israel when through His man, Moses, He brought Pharaoh to his knees, destroyed Egypt and delivered His children from slavery. He is telling them not to look back to those glory days for their encouragement or to wish that it could be that way again.
How often have we in the church fallen into this same trap? We hear sermons or watch videos that talk about the Great Revivals. We hear about the great preachers that God raised up during those times, whose voices rallied the people to the churches and to gatherings in the woods because no building would hold them. And we know that this was what we call the ‘outpouring’ of the Holy Spirit as though that precious third Person of the Trinity is liquid or something, when in truth the Holy Spirit of Christ brought about a miraculous awareness of God in the minds of men and then according to the Father’s plan regenerated and redeemed many so that there was great spiritual awakening and renewal around the world and the church thrived!
As far as our own Southern Baptist history is concerned, the Southern Baptists were thriving in the 60’s and 70’s, as I’m sure many others were due to the so-called ‘Jesus movement’. It wasn’t like the great revivals of an earlier century but the church in general enjoyed a very fruitful time in the late 60’s and through the 70’s.
And how often in the past 20 or 30 years have we been guilty of looking backwards and praying, ‘Oh, Lord, bring revival like that again!’
We’ve even sung about it. “Hallelujah! Thine the glory, Hallelujah! Amen; Hallelujah! Thine the glory, revive us again.” –W. Mackay
What’s to revive? Are we Christians? Are we born again believers in Christ? Do we have His life in us by the indwelling Holy Spirit? Then we shouldn’t need reviving, what we probably need more than anything is a swift kick in the pants!
God said through the prophet, to His people in exile hoping for restoration, “Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past”
Why? Because when He fulfilled His promise and restored them to their nation it wasn’t going to be like the exodus. It wasn’t going to be like before. Don’t look for signs of God repeating Himself, Christian, or you’ll miss Him when He moves.
“Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it?”
It’s going to be a surprise because God likes to surprise us I think, and I also think we aren’t very difficult to surprise; mainly because we’re never on watch like we should be. Too busy groaning, or whining, or sleeping, or looking back and wishing the glory days hadn’t faded.
Ed Stetzer, author of “Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age”, wrote an article for SBC Life magazine titled, “Finding New Life for Struggling Churches”. In that article he made this astute observation:
“Dead and dying churches should concern us all. Millions of Southern Baptists attend churches that demonstrate little concern for the lost around them. Billions of dollars of church property sit idle and unused. This fact makes church revitalization also a stewardship issue. God has provided many stagnant churches with people, resources, and buildings. God has also given them a calling. They must be more than museums of past glory days.” Finding New Life for Struggling Churches – Ed Stetzer, Ph.D. “SBC Life, Feb 2004
And let me just drop a little bomb right here; the Southern Baptists aren’t the only ones with the problem. I’m sure Pastors and leaders of any other denomination would concur that Stetzer’s comments apply to their church also.
Are you tired, Christian? Close to burnout? Feeling exhausted, not only physically but mentally and spiritually? Don’t look back. The answer is not there because you belong to the God of New.
With Him the glory days are right now. Don’t miss them.
NEWER THAN HIS OLD WORKS
Because of their idolatry and their deliberate ignorance of God and neglect of His worship the nation had been taken into captivity by the Assyrians and enslaved by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
The prophet Jeremiah had predicted that they would be in captivity for seventy years, which they were. So if you mull this over you will realize that the only ones who had any memory of Jerusalem and their former home in the land God had given to their fathers would have been the very old.
A generation had died off and with the exception of the elderly Daniel and others like him who had gone into exile as very young people, most had been born and grown up in captivity.
So for all these years these people have sat at the knees of their elders and heard the account of the deliverance of their ancestors out of slavery to Egypt and the plagues and the final downfall of Pharaoh.
They had been weaned on the great stories of the conquest of Canaan and the rise of the kings; of Saul and David and Solomon.
They also would have been told of the dividing of the kingdoms after Solomon’s death and the evil of the subsequent kings of Israel and Judah. And the prophets God had sent to warn the people over and over again, and finally the proclamations from those same prophets that judgment was about to fall on God’s people and that was how they ended up where they were.
So for hope and encouragement during their trying times they would have dreamed of those glory days of the Exodus and the battles that were won by God’s hand, and they would have been hoping and probably praying often that God would do His mighty works again and deliver them from their captivity and lead them back to the land He had once given their fathers.
But God said, “Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it?”
He had just said not to look backward or dwell on the old stories. Purge your thoughts of those things, He was telling them, don’t expect things to be done in the same way. He was going to do something new, and it was going to happen suddenly, and it would be in their face. They wouldn’t be able to miss it!
And did it happen suddenly? If you read Daniel chapter 5 you will find that it did, and it happened in a way they never would have dreamed. For not only did God destroy their captors in a moment, He used godless men to do it and even inspired those same godless men to set His people free and send them back to their homeland.
Belshazzar, grandson of Nebuchadnezzar and now king of Babylon, was holding a feast for a thousand of his nobles, and even drinking wine at this party from the vessels that his grandfather had seized from the temple in Jerusalem.
While thus defiling these vessels that once had been used in worship, Belshazzar and his nobles and their wives also openly praised the gods of gold and silver and bronze and iron and wood and stone.
Now I ask you, does this sound like a group of people worrying about tomorrow? Do you get the impression that they were concerned that their behavior might bring dire consequences? Or do you think maybe they saw themselves as the movers and the shakers and the rulers over their society and their own destiny and they could pretty much do as they pleased with impunity?
Well, while they were drinking and making merry and praising their demon gods, the Medes under Darius and the Persians under Cyrus, who had formed an alliance, were damming up the river that flowed under the wall of Babylon to provide water for the heavily fortified city. And when the river bed was virtually dried up these armies used it to pass under the wall and enter the city.
Meanwhile, back at the party, King Belshazzar lowers his goblet from his wine-reddened nose and against a far wall he sees a large, disembodied hand writing some graffiti there.
Was God doing something new?
And the king’s hip joints went slack and his knees knocked together, and he called in all his conjurers and diviners and ordered them to tell him what this meant but they could not.
Why couldn’t they? Because God was doing something new. And when God does something new only His people who are called by His name and have the revelation of His Spirit can comprehend. All others are left to stand with knees knocking and wish they had skipped the party.
So at the advice of the queen Belshazzar…
Oh, wait a minute. Do you know what the name Belshazzar means? It is a prayer. It is a prayer to Baal to protect the king. It literally means “Bel, protect the king”. Boy. Talk about building on sinking sand…
…anyway, at the advice of the queen he calls in old Daniel, tries to bribe him with baubles and a promotion, which Daniel rejects but is happy to translate anyway, and Daniel takes full advantage of the opportunity to parade all the king’s sins past his ears before getting to the point.
Finally he does though, and he translates the writing on the wall to mean that God has assessed the situation and it was time to divide Belshazzar’s kingdom between the Medes and the Persians.
Party, over.
Well, as I said, you can read that account in Daniel 5 and if you keep reading you will see some amazing things there. In brief, shortly after Cyrus, under the influence of the Spirit of God in whose hands the hearts of kings are (Prov 21:1), issues a decree to let the Jews go back to their homeland and not long after that sends Nehemiah home to rebuild the walls; which you can read about in the book of Nehemiah.
Christians, God does new things and He does surprising things. Men in their arrogance will continue to deny Him. They will scoff at His preachers and minimize His warnings and assume that because they are healthy and wealthy and all is well in their world that everything will remain the same.
But I want you to remember today that Babylon, the ancient city first built by Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, was at the time of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar the most powerful and well-fortified city in the world. It fell in a night and in a way they never dreamed could happen.
Are we stronger? Are we more secure? Are we more powerful and are we indestructible?
“For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While they are saying, ‘Peace and safety!’ then destruction will come upon them suddenly like birth pangs upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” 1 Thess 5:2-3
Friends this is why it is ridiculous for us to make our charts and our powerpoint slides and our timelines and try to predict how God is going to do what He is going to do.
The funny thing is, He tells us (Isa 42:9), but we are still surprised every time!
And I’m talking about believers! How much less can those who do not know Him and choose to remain His enemies have any idea what is going to suddenly come crashing down on their heads?
The thing we need to know, Christians, and the way to be prepared when He moves, is that for His own He makes roadways in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. You may not sense Him moving now and you may feel trapped in your circumstances and you may be weary and tired and wondering ‘how long?’, but He hasn’t forgotten His promises to you. He is the God who remembers and He is the God of new.
When He assesses the situation and deems it time to act on your behalf, He will make a way and He will provide your every need.
NEW EVERY DAY
Now that’s the broader picture. But let’s narrow it down to where the rubber meets the road.
Lamentations 3:21-23
“This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. 22 The LORD’S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, or His compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”
This takes us back to the beginning. God, unchanging and timeless, continuously and perpetually makes things new. His creation testifies to this,...
“For behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. 12 ‘The flowers have already appeared in the land; the time has arrived for pruning the vines, and the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land. 13 ‘The fig tree has ripened its figs, and the vines in blossom have given forth their fragrance…’ ” SS 2:11-13
…the way of salvation testifies to this,…
“…if any man is in Christ he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” 2 Cor 5:17
…His written word testifies to this.
‘Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’ Jer 33:3
Friends and family, this you need to hear and understand today. If you are one who has believed from your heart in Jesus Christ as the One who shed His blood and died to pay the penalty for your sins and then rose bodily from the dead on the third day just as He said that He would, and you now have Christ in you, the hope of glory, then for you every single day is a brand new beginning.
Do not dwell on the past. Do not dwell on the sins of your past or the guilt of things confessed and purged by the flow of forgiveness that was procured and provided at the cross of Calvary.
When you find yourself in remorse over yesterday or dread of tomorrow just remind yourself who is the accuser of the brethren and remind yourself of who your Advocate is, who stands before the Throne declaring you to the Father. Because with Him your relationship is perpetually new.
Your sins are put away as far as East from West and the God of New delights in you.
When you sit and meditate on His Word and think about what He is doing in your life and what He may do tomorrow just remind yourself of the times you’ve expected Him to do things a certain way and how He surprised you. Because He is the God of New and He delights in surprises.
And remind yourself as you go that He has promised never to leave you or forsake you; and wherever it is He leads He will make a roadway in the wilderness and rivers in the desert places; and wherever He leads the end of the journey for each of us… is home.
“Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me. 7 ‘Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it; Yes, let him recount it to Me in order, from the time that I established the ancient nation. And let them declare to them the things that are coming and the events that are going to take place. 8 ‘Do not tremble and do not be afraid; have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, or is there any other Rock? I know of none.’ ” Isa 44:6-8
