Sermon
January 4, 2025.
Lanier Christian Church – David Simpson
Make Room for the New
Leviticus 26:9-13
9 “‘I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. 10 You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. 11 I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. 12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.
Do any of you ever clean out your closets? What about your kitchen cabinets? What about your office? Now, when you clean, do you ever remove everything in that closet, cabinet or office and get rid of it and replace it with all new things? Stores do it quite often. Just this past week I was in a store and all of the Christmas items were on sale, trying to get rid of them to make room for the new items coming in for the Spring. They were getting rid of the old and making room for the new.
But, what about us? Few of us do that kind of radical cleaning and decluttering. Many of us hold on to things of the past. I have coats that are older than some of you here today. However, I want you to know that I have gotten rid of all my “leisure suits” and “Eisenhower jackets” and “Izod shirts” and socks with holes in them!
When it comes to our refrigerator we are much more attentive to getting rid of the old and bringing in the new. We dispose of outdated milk and eggs and meats and poultry and salad dressings and other products. We do this because outdated food may spoil and cause sickness if we consume it.
But imagine having to empty your refrigerator and your kitchen cabinets because a whole new supply of food had been left at your door? Imagine having to empty your closets because a whole new wardrobe had been donated to you by a generous benefactor? Imagine having to remove all of your old furniture because new sofas and chairs and tables were waiting for you at your front door?
That’s exactly what God did for His people. They left the old of Egypt. They left the slavery of Egypt. They left the confining sinful world of Egypt and were given new hope, new land, new lives and a new purpose. But the blessings were not there unless the obedience took place.
1. God gave his people a purpose…to prepare the way for the new.
In the Old Testament book of Leviticus, God is intentionally laying out “guidelines for living” for his chosen people. These people, the Jewish people…the children of Israel, would eventually bring about the promised Messiah. They had been in Egypt serving as slaves for at least four hundred years and now they are free. And the point of all these rules and procedures and laws found in Leviticus is for one purpose. God is carving out a distinct culture for his people, far different than their pagan neighbors. A new way to live, a way that would be devoted to God; to live a life that would honor Him, and to prepare the way for the coming Messiah, who would offer new life.
The people of God needed a makeover. He wanted them to stand out, to be an example to the world of how to live, including the priorities of faith and healthy living and caring for neighbors and loving your family. But primarily he wanted the Jewish people to bring about his greatest gift, the gift of a Savior to replace the old and broken.
2. God replaced the old and made room for the new by giving us Jesus. He came for ALL people.
The New Testament reveals the gift of Jesus, who makes many of the laws of Leviticus obsolete. We have an Old Testament and a New Testament. The NEW replaced the OLD…and it was by God’s design. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law and the prophecies and the substitute sacrifice for our sins. And the blessings of Jesus are eternal, not temporary; spiritual like peace, joy, love and hope – and not always physical, like food and homes and land. Yet, the principles are often the same. For instance, 1 Peter 2:9 reminds the Christian that we are unique and special. He says:
SL#8
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
As a follower of Jesus Christ, you are God’s special possession! He calls us to live our lives in such a way as to reflect the blessings we have received of being transferred from the slavery of sinful darkness to the freedom of His wonderful light. To throw out the old way of living in darkness and follow the new way of wonderful light.
And one of the ways we show that we belong to the Savior is by reflecting the new – to show that his blessings are new every morning.
In Leviticus, chapter 26, God reveals to the children of Israel how he would bless them if they obeyed his commands. He gets specific.
3. God wants us to move out the old to make room for the new.
As long as they listened to him and followed his commands, they would have plenty of food, live in safety, experience peace and be supplied with abundant rain for the fields. If his people disobeyed, well, there would be a whole lot of unpleasantries for them to deal with! In the list of blessings, I was especially impressed with verse 10:
“You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new.”
Move out the old to make room for the new. This sermon was created on my laptop computer. For many years, I wrote my devotions and sermons out by hand, then typed them using a manual typewriter. I always thought that the typewriter was a great invention, a blessing, …why I even upgraded to an electric typewriter…but the computer is light years of blessings ahead of the typewriter! I am glad that I moved out the old and made room for the new!
When we live under the umbrella of God’s will and choose His way over our own, there is amazing blessing. His supply is so great that we cannot hold it all! The harvest of blessing is so abundant that you have to move out the old, even the old blessings, to make room for the new.
The apostle Paul reminded every Christian of the significance of making room for the new when he said in 2 Corinthians 5:17,
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come; The old has gone, the new is here!”
Moving out the old to make room for the new is a good resolution for this new year. Yes, of course we ought to rid ourselves of old habits, old and tired excuses, old burdens and clutter, but we also need to allow the Lord’s Holy Spirit to refresh our outlook and perspective as we enter this new year. Stop for a moment and realize the blessings of God in this very day. He is always making things new!
We have been given a new day.
We have been given new opportunities.
We have been given a fresh start.
We have been given amazing grace.
We have been blessed with tender mercies.
We have been given the promise of his presence.
We have been given the encouragement of hope.
We have been promised a future home where the brokenness of the old is replaced with the perfection of the new.
We have been given the comfort of a listening Father because of the blessing of prayer.
We have been blessed with a family of brothers and sisters in Christ who care.
We have been blessed with the beauty of this world including the sunrise and sunset, the mountains and valleys, the birds and flowers, the wind and waves.
We have been given a human body that can create, reason, love, cry, smile and laugh.
The list of blessings from God’s creative hand is endless, is it not? And all of this is just what is in store for us TODAY.
In order to make room for all of these blessings, we must rid ourselves of the old, even the blessings of yesterday. For instance:
We’ve been given a new day. Yesterday died last night. We can’t relive it no matter how great or challenging it may have been.
We’ve been given a new day of grace. The mistakes and sins of the past can be forgiven if offered to Him.
We’ve been given a new day of conversation with our heavenly Father through prayer. He’s ready to listen, if we’ll simply talk.
We have been given new opportunities to show love, encourage the downtrodden, and reach out in kindness through words and deeds to all we meet.
We’ve been given new hope. If you have a hard time seeing that, then think of it this way, each day brings us one step closer to the wonders of heaven that God has prepared for His children.
Again, the list goes on and on. The blessings of newness await when God is in control. New attitudes, new perspectives, new opportunities, new victories, new friendships, new hope and more.
We need to move out the old, to make room for the new! It’s time to clean house! No more eating last year’s harvest! There is an abundance of new on our plates today! His supply is never ending! We should feast on His goodness every day because nothing is stale with God.
There is a meal kit company called “Hello Fresh” that will ship to your front door a complete meal for you to prepare for your family which includes all fresh ingredients. All you have to do is make room in your refrigerator for everything. And, you might have to get rid of some things to make room. Well, God basically says to us, “Hello, my child, I have fresh blessings for you today!” But, we need to make room and unclutter our lives from those things that prevent us from experiencing God’s richest of blessings.
Note that the blessings of Jesus are out of His grace. We don’t deserve them. We haven’t earned them. He freely gives if we respond with the gift of our hearts and lives. And yet, the blessings of hope and peace and joy and patience and love and more.. require that we make room.
Roy Bennett is quoted as saying: “If you want to make room for something new, you must let go of something old that no longer serves you.”
We must rid ourselves of the clutter of sin. We must rid ourselves of pining for the glories of the past, what might have been. We must rid ourselves of aimless wandering. We must rid ourselves of wasted opportunities. We must rid ourselves of destructive attitudes. We must rid ourselves of faithless behaviors. We must rid ourselves of selfish agendas.
God wants to make room for the new! He wants to give you the light of a new life to replace the darkness of sin.
He wants to give you new perspective to overcome the burden of the past. He wants to give you new opportunities to replace those we wasted.
He wants to give you a new heart and lasting joy to replace the negative and destructive attitudes that burden us.
He wants to give you an unselfish perspective to replace the selfish agendas that have left us without purpose.
He wants to give you a fresh faith to replace any faithless tendencies you may have held onto.
God wants us to make room for the new! And when we do, here is the great result that will occur if we faithfully obey. It’s in Leviticus 26:
12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.
Translate that for us as Christians today and the principle is still the same. God wants to dwell among us. He wants to work within us through His Holy Spirit. He wants to reflect His mercy, grace and love to all we meet. We are no longer slaves to sin. He set us free when Jesus died for our sins. He broke the bars of the prison of sin and gave us a living hope…a hope that is renewed every…single…day, so that we can walk every day with our heads held high, living in His fresh grace that is new every morning!
And when you and I go about every day confidently walking with heads held high knowing that God is in control, realizing how blessed we really are as a child of God – and we get rid of those things that block his provision and burden us with guilt, and clutter our lives….then we will we will have room for the newness of today’s blessings and promises.
Conclusion:
Louise Smith was born in Barnesville, GA in 1916. She went as a spectator to her first NASCAR race at the Daytona Beach Road Course in 1949. She could not stand watching the races, so she entered her family’s shiny new Ford Coupe in the race and wrecked it. The race was the first race to feature three female drivers (Ethel Mobley and Sara Christian). Louise Smith raced from 1949 to 1956. She won 38 races in her career with various cars. She became a car owner for numerous drivers in 1971. She became the first woman inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1999. She is in the Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame. She died in 2006 at age 89.
Why do I tell you her story? Because she is best known for giving us this quote:
“You can’t reach for anything new if your hands are still full of yesterday’s junk.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to make some room in my life. God wants to pour into me and he wants to pour his purpose and grace into you. But, we have to make room. Yield to him today and let him have your life. It’ll be the best decision or resolution you will ever make!
If you lean on the everlasting arms you’ll be in the right position to make the most of this new year. Let’s sing…
