Going with the flow, embracing change
Isaiah 43:16-21
God’s changelessness is a powerful and important doctrine in our faith.
God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? (Numbers 23:19 NIV)
God’s supernatural stability gives us security. We trust Him because He will not change His mind about loving us or about His standard of justice or mercy. God’s righteousness 3400 years ago when He described it to Moses will be the same next year when congress sits to make laws.
But God is like the water of a river in many ways. The water of the Mississippi does not fundamentally change, it is H2O full minerals. It flows out of the same sources and has all the power it ever had.
However, the land around it changes. It collects silt from the river and run off from the highlands and creates natural blockages in the river bed that redirects the flow. This creates the Mississippi delta.
A natural dam is created, new land is formed and the power of the river cuts through the lowlands, creates a new way to the sea. The water didn’t change, the land it flows through did.
God does not change, but He is constantly working with people and the contrast in the book of Numbers tells us the nature of change. God doesn’t change, people do. When people change, God creates a new way to work with them. Because God does not change, but the first thing He did in the world’s history that He has never stopped doing is creating. He never changes, but He never stops creating new things.
Isaiah is a prophet in a time of transition. God had seen sinful abuses among His people, so He changed their politics. He split the kingdom and commanded the Northern kingdom to follow Him. They did not. So he changed things again, and sent the Northern Kingdom into exile and promised the Southern Kingdom more of the same if they did not fly right.
Isaiah pointed ahead to a time that exile would be the order of the day. God was changing where people lived and how they worshiped in order to get their attention back on Him. Then He promises that things are going to change again.
This is what the LORD says
he who made a way through the sea,
a path through the mighty waters,
who drew out the chariots and horses,
the army and reinforcements together,
and they lay there, never to rise again,
extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:
"Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.
The wild animals honor me,
the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the desert
and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
the people I formed for myself
that they may proclaim my praise.
(Isaiah 43:16-21 NIV)
Look at the ironic switch. God says,
• In order to save My people from their enemies, I created a dry path through the Red Sea
• Now in order to save My people from spiritual thirst, I am going to do the exact opposite, I am going to create a stream in the desert
Our first inclination is to see that first line of what God says and think in extremes. What are the former things? Is God talking to Israel about the Exodus? He identifies Himself as the God who split the Red Sea. Is He saying forget that?
Not exactly. Throughout the Bible, God identifies Himself as the God who brought Israel out of Egypt.
However, He is using the word "forget" here as a figure of speech. He is emphasizing the importance of what He is about to do by putting it in perspective.
What He is saying is this,
What I am about to do is so great, and so important and so impressive that what I have done in the past pales in comparison. If you persist in holding too tightly to the greatness of what I did in the past, you will miss the greatness of what I am going to do in times to come.
Isaiah is telling the people who are about to go into exile that God has marvelous things planned that will make the splitting of the Red Sea look like child’s play.
This is how God works. He is not content to do one great thing and stop. He continues to outdo Himself.
How many ways did God change things, even when it comes to worshiping Him?
In the earliest centuries, people sacrificed to Him on their own. They built their own altars out of stone or earth and they sacrificed whatever they felt like bringing, though there does seem to have been a distinction between clean and unclean animals.
When Moses came along, he built the Tabernacle, a mobile tent that housed a central place for sacrifice with many rules and rituals governing the practice.
After they settled the tabernacle was dismantled and the furnishings split up. The Ark of the Covenant was in Shiloh or Tirzah and the altar was somewhere up North. David brought the ark to Jerusalem. People sacrificed on the hilltops or "high places."
Solomon built the Temple and many Tabernacle practices were resumed. Eventually it became unthinkable to sacrifice legitimately anywhere else.
Then the people went into exile and whole new frameworks for worship had to be developed. They were away from the Temple, and eventually it was destroyed. There wasn’t much else they could do.
When they came back to Jerusalem they built another Temple. It was not identical to the original, in fact it was much less elaborate, but it was functional.
In 70 AD the Temple was destroyed again, this time permanently. Synagogues became much more important to Jews worshiping God. Many Christian churches met in synagogues at least for awhile.
Jesus predicted that this change would take place. Worship, he said, would not depend on geography or architecture as much as it would be personal and internal. The covenant He introduced was meant to make the whole law something that grew in the heart more than something imposed from the outside. These ideas were revolutionary, and in many ways unsettling. We are still unsettled by them.
Sacrifices became obsolete. Jesus’ death on the cross made sacrifice unnecessary and even wrong in many ways. Now, not only was the Temple gone, but one of its primary purposes was no longer necessary.
Belief in God spread more to the Gentiles. Now, other laws became issues. Controversies about food and circumcision were raised. What should be practiced and what was contrary to appropriate practice?
As the church spread further from Judah, other practices entered and the holy days we now celebrate were formed. Persecution was the order of the day.
Then the church was approved by the government and became very rich and popular. Now the church could do anything and not be harassed. It grew very powerful and free.
The larger church structure split between Catholic and Orthodox, then Catholic and Protestant, then Protestant and Protestant. Different practices became common in different places, separated by hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles.
Now there are so many kinds of Protestant it is hard to keep up. We don’t even agree with all the different kinds of Mennonite. It would be arrogance to say we are the only ones doing things right.
God caused many of these changes for His purposes.
• The places we worship
• The songs we sing
• The languages we preach and pray in
• The concerns we preach and pray about
• The portions of scripture we emphasize
All these things change.
I had an intense and very serious conversation about drinking blood with a man from Africa. They will not do it. Leviticus speaks specifically against it.
To me, it is not an issue. I won’t do it. The closest I get to it is the juiciness of the steak I eat. Polish duck blood soup or English blood pudding are not appealing to me. Maybe you are different.
But in his culture, they actually pop a hole in a bull’s throat, catch the blood, and drink it. It is one of the primary sources of protein for their diet. The church has taken a stand against the practice. It is something they teach new disciples.
Because from time to time and place to place, people change. Priorities change, and God notices. He does not change, but He does change other things in order to draw people to Himself.
If we don’t look for God’s hand in change we are prone to respect too much the way we do things. If we reject a change God initiates for the sake of tradition, we are worshiping our traditions.
How to embrace change
Value the past
The God who brought Israel up out of Egypt never wanted them to dwell in that past, but to see Him as a God who could deal with anything. Remembering the past reminds us of His presence and His power.
The past forms our values. We must understand those values to move ahead. Looking back we learn who we are then we can move ahead with integrity.
We have spent many weeks looking back and understanding who we are by recognizing how far we’ve come. We are not ready for change if we don’t even notice what we are doing now, how it is related to God’s plan and whether or not it is dispensable.
Don’t be married to an image
We all think that there were "good old days" or a "golden age." There never was. There were things that worked and things that didn’t. There were people who worked and people who didn’t. There was good timing and bad timing.
You started coming to this church with an image of what this church is like.
Your image is wrong.
We always begin with an ideal. It takes time to see below the surface. This church has problems that you don’t know about, and they will show up some day and disappoint you.
You may think you remember a time when this church had it right and things have gone down hill since then.
Here is the truth. Since that time you discovered things about this church you didn’t know. Nobody has it right. I am not the perfect pastor and neither was Tim Schultz, or Marlin Sharp or John Miller. All of us are leaders doing the best we can personally and here at the church with what God has given us.
• There was a time the church had more kids
• You also had more chaos
• There was a time the church had more programs
• You also had more younger adults to run them
There were times we had less of an ethnic mix and variety in taste. There were times when the community had more preconceived ideas about you.
The congregation used to be a different group with different idiosyncrasies and bad ideas.
• No church is perfect
• Not today in this place or another place
• And not yesterday either
Only by overcoming our illusions of the past and accepting who we actually are now, can we move realistically into the future.
Look at things realistically
We aren’t in the 50s and 60s anymore. Technology and philosophy has moved on, and the population has grown and changed. God will teach us things we need to know to love the world as it is now, not as it was back then.
When the Israelites were confronted with an Army and the Red Sea God did one thing. When they were exiled, He did something else. Looking back at the Red Sea would not change their situation today, except to give them faith that God would come through in a way appropriate to their current challenges. The Jews in Mesopotamia did not need God to split the Red Sea, they needed something else, and God came through. He could have split the Red Sea and they may never have noticed. Or if they did, it would be impressive, but not important.
God wants us to get to know the people around us better and better by genuinely loving our neighbors. As we understand them better, we can see better what we should do to reach them for Jesus. What worked in the past will not continue to work.
Think creatively
God is creative and He wants us to be like Him. In Moses’ day He inspired laws, in David’s day, songs, in Hezekiah’s day, prophets. Different times in the Bible represent different kinds of creative writing.
We can become so overwhelmed by all we have tried that we think we have tried it all ... we have not. New faces come on the front of new heads. In those heads are minds that will suggest new ideas.
Be generous about ideas
I am a nay sayer. I shoot things down very fast. I am so analytical that I will sometimes jump down a path of reasoning quickly and not listen to what a person is thinking. It may be very different from my assumption.
If we are fast to criticize or to assume we understand a person’s idea, we don’t listen. It may sound like something we’ve tried before, but it may not be. It may be essentially different in an important way.
The DNA of Relationships seminar that we attended recently said something crucial. "Listen first. Seek to understand." We should be silent or ask questions to understand well the ideas presented by others.
Take risks
Some ideas may seem out of whack. I’m sure the believing Pharisees who knew Paul thought he was out of whack. Paul was telling people to not be circumcised and to eat meat offered to idols and to ignore the blood of sheep and bulls. Scandalous.
Yes! some ideas will be scandalous, but in matters of righteousness we must judge between our own tendencies toward legalism and the freedom we have in Christ. Is this new thing really wrong, or is it our tradition to think of it as wrong without actually thinking and praying about it.
God Promised to protect us. We have seen Him do it in our personal lives when our motives were mixed. How much more will He watch over us when our motive is love for Him and for others.
Record your ideas
Occasionally while you are in God’s word, when you are praying or interacting with others, you will be struck with an idea of how people might be reached with the gospel. Write it in your Flood Plain Notebook and begin evaluating it. Watch how Scriptures you read in the future interact with the idea and critique it. Challenge it to see if you still think it will work in a few weeks. Adjust it to fit our situation better. Run it by a wise leader or two and let them help you refine it.
The coming weeks will bring forums
As a congregation you will be asked for facts about you and your opinions about church function, the way we do it now and ways we might do it in the future.
Sometimes it may be a simple question in a service to which you are asked to actively respond. We may have congregational meetings to examine where we are compared to where God wants us.
In the process ideas for change will surface from various places:
• From your church leadership
• From the Natural Church Development team
• From discussions you have together
As these ideas surface, some will be explored and some will be abandoned. It is the nature of things. But above all, we will be listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit as He speaks through different people. And we will be seeking to embrace Him.
No matter how He wants to change things.
