GIVE HIM ALL YOU’VE GOT!
Starting Fresh
Isaiah 43:14-21
Any number of us here today would have resolved for 2005 to GIVE HIM (the Lord Jesus Christ) ALL WE’VE GOT! Resolutions were made. Maybe a Bible verse was adopted as the theme for the year. We may have resolved to get more in touch with God and serve more intentionally. But then, day seven of January 2005 crept in and the devotional intent of every-day-unbroken-devotional-time fell away after missing day six; faithful church attendance never happened any more than last year and defeat set in. The resolution to mend broken relationships and heal old wounds never happened and so 2005 has been another year of strained relationships and broken promises.
Don’t give in to despair! “Starting Fresh” is an opportunity today, this first day of 2006, to wipe the slate clean! We can begin again! We can resolve, once more, to change those bad habits and that wasteful focus and replace them with new priorities and behaviours.
I think the means to success in any meaningful resolution is to first understand the root of that desire and the source of its accomplishment. For example, my resolution to lose weight (there’s that ugly six letter word) can never be achieved by continuing to consume chocolate and never having an exercise plan. When I understand metabolism, fat content and inches versus pounds, I may actually lose more inches than weight but still achieve a healthy body! “Starting
Fresh” therefore is not only an effort to recommit to valued priorities but going deeper to understanding how to get there.
The challenge to all of us today for 2006 is to GIVE HIM ALL YOU’VE GOT! That challenge begins here and now, with “Starting Fresh”. If we will give God all we’ve got, we must dig deeper than surface promises and resolutions that only survive in proportion to the power of the human will. If we are to succeed in resolutions and commitments we must begin by recognizing that they are founded and rooted in a person – that person is Jesus Christ!
To GIVE HIM ALL YOU’VE GOT, there are three things that we need to latch onto, three things that we must grasp. These are critical to “Starting Fresh” and staying alive.
First, you must realise
1. The LORD is Your Hope
If we will achieve anything of significant and lasting value, it begins with knowing God. (Verses 14-15) (SLIDE)
NLT of verse 14: "The LORD your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, says…"
The opening phrase is an important one. It is a reminder that if we are to start fresh; if we are to overcome the Babylonian forces in our lives, we must recognize the only Source by which this can be achieved and realised – it is through the Person of God through as revealed for us in His Son, Jesus Christ.
Charlie’s Angels – One of the most fascinating features to the storyline is that we never know who Charlie is. Never seeing his face, we are drawn into the mystery of his voice.
"The LORD" is a significant address. The Hebrew rendering is YAHWEH. Giving His name is a reminder that we are not following an unknown deity or intelligent being that cannot be named. He is YAHWEH! He is not removed from us, as Bette Midler suggests “watching us from a distance”. As we’ve been reminded during December, “God is with us” – Emmanuel! He will be named and known by those who wish to know him!
It would not have been uncommon in Biblical times, for people to attach any number of names that described or captured the image of their deity. It would be appropriate therefore to hear Isaiah attach multiple titles to Yahweh – “Redeemer, Holy One of Israel…the LORD, Israel’s Creator, your King.” (Vs. 14-15)
I am amazed at the number of people who will quickly label someone as a friend. You mention a name and the person will respond with, “Oh yes, I know them. We’re good friends.” Yet, the conversation would reveal that they interacted with them half-a-dozen times over the last few years. That is not true friendship, my friends. C.S. Lewis says of true friendship, “True friendship is rare on earth. It means identifying with someone in thought, heart, and spirit. The whole experience of life is designed to enable us to enter in to this closest relationship with Jesus Christ. We receive His blessings and know His Word, but do we really know Him?” These were his comments regarding Jesus’ words to Philip in John 14:9, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?”
Does your heart resonate with the desires, thoughts and spirit of Jesus Christ? Do you want what he wants? Do you even know what he wants? Does your spirit and soul thirst for the things that Jesus thirsts for? Have you been so long with Jesus and yet you have not known him?
As we further consider our text we notice it has a literal ring to it in one sense. The promise of God for deliverance from Babylonian forces may have been very true for God’s people, Israel, in the sense of returning home from exile as slaves and workers in Babylon.
In relation to us however, those forces are not physical but spiritual, but are just as real. It is as Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:12, “For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms.”
What are the Babylonian forces in your life? What are those things, priorities or behaviours in your life that cause you to live in despair or never knowing the fullness of God at work in your living? If there is any hope of victory; any resolution to know the power of God; any aspiration to be fully alive and on fire with the Spirit of Jehovah, you must resolve to know Him. You must decide that Jesus’ words are true in John 15:5, "Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” We cannot breathe without his blessing; we cannot awaken every day without his anointing; we cannot be successful unless he blesses it so.
God desires to be personal and to be real to you personally. It is in this relationship with Him that we find strength to defeat the Babylonian forces in our lives. It is only in relationship with him that we can realise the experience of “Starting Fresh”.
There are many ways to gage to what extent I know Him and He knows me. I believe one of those ways is captured in the quote that was on the screen before I started this sermon. Let’s go back to it. It is C. S. Lewis suggesting, “If we have never had the experience of taking our casual, religious shoes off our casual, religious feet – getting rid of all the excessive informality with which we approach God – it is questionable whether we have ever stood in His presence.”
“Starting Fresh” not only realises that the LORD is Your Hope. It also recognizes:
2. The LORD is Your Victory
(Verses 16-19)
In these verses, we are reminded of God’s unquestionable deliverance of Israel from Egyptian slavery and bondage. You’ll find the story in Exodus 14. It was God, not the mighty Pharaoh, who called the army of Egypt to pursue Israel in the parted waters of the Red Sea. It was God who controlled nature so that the Sea receded for the deliverance of his people and became the demise of the Egyptian Army, as the same waters advanced upon them, so that they were drowned and snuffed out. It was God who provided food and water in a parched desert. It was God who saw to it that his peoples’ shoes never wore out in that forty-year desert wandering to the Promised Land. Yet, God promised that he would do something even greater than this. We are instructed not to look at this historical account as the defining moment of God’s intervention for his people, because something greater would come that would make this story pale in comparison.
What could that be? What could God do that would be greater than even this? Is it not the Salvation he has provided through Jesus Christ? This is the “new thing” of which Isaiah spoke, more than 700 years before it came to be! To quote Editor, Professor and Theologian, W. T. Purkiser, “The central theme is the grace and mercy of God in providing a plan of salvation; and the great events of the birth, ministry, and death of Christ, the preaching of the gospel, and the final victory of faith in the revelation of the “New Jerusalem” are presented as if they were occurring before the eyes of the prophet.” What Isaiah saw more than 700 years before transpiring is what we experience personally when we acknowledge Jesus Christ to be our Redeemer! It is what we experience daily when we come to Jesus Christ in repentance and remorse for disobedience and sin, and find mercy and grace waiting, yes, longing, to embrace and redeem!
Here is the moment of revelation for us. If God can make a promise 700 plus years before it was brought to fruition, and never failed in bringing it to pass, which He has not, then is anything to difficult for God today? NO! Whatever Babylon you are facing, God can do greater things for you! He waits to perform on your behalf and give you a revelation of himself and an experience of his personal power in your life that even you will be lost for words to explain or fully understand!
How often people lament for “the good ‘ole days.” We want what use to be, to have things the way they were. God says we are not to focus on “the good ‘ole days” of victory. Listen to verses 18 and 19 from The Message:
18"Forget about what’s happened;
don’t keep going over old history.
19Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new.
It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?
God tells us we are to realise that the victories of the past do not satisfy for the realities of the present. The LORD wishes that we have our own experience of His work in our lives and communities. He desires with the Psalmist in 34:8 that we “taste and see that the LORD is good. Oh, the joys of those who trust in him! God does not desire that what we know of him is based on what we have heard from others or read in the Bible or through someone else’s story. He wants us to experience him for ourselves, for when we know what the power of God can do because of what we have experienced first-hand, absolutely nothing is too difficult to face or overcome.
“Starting Fresh” not only realises that The LORD is Your Hope and that The LORD is Your Victory but also knows:
3. The LORD is Your Providence
(Verses 20-21)
John N. Oswalt, professor of Biblical studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, in Wilmore, Kentucky gives us a marvelous insight into these verses. He writes, “The desert-dwelling animals would have little cause to praise God if he turned the deserts into meadows, effectively destroying their homes. But in figure the animals are reacting just as thirsty humans would. The point is that God is master of the cosmos and can do with it exactly as he wishes to achieve his purposes. The gods have neither an overriding purpose nor the power to alter the natural order to achieve that purpose if they had one. But God, true God, can turn wet to dry, or dry to wet, for the sake of his chosen people.”
What this means for us friends is this. God will not hesitate to manipulate even nature itself for the sake of His chosen people! He will do whatever He sees fit to do, for our sakes, for our redemption. Absolutely everything is under His control for the good of His people whom He has called by His name! Take that truth with you as you walk in to 2006!
God is saying in these verses, “I will make springs in the desert, so that my chosen people can be refreshed.” (NLT) God will act on our behalf in this year because He called us and knows us by name!
WRAP
If you will know the experience of “Starting Fresh” in 2006, you will know it by first of all recognizing that The LORD is Your Hope – you need to know the LORD personally, experientially.
If “Starting Fresh” is to be a reality for you in this year, you must recognize that anything achieved, small or great, can only come as you realise The LORD is Your Victory.
The greatest victory to “Starting Fresh” and “Staying Fresh” is the experience of constantly being refreshed by the LORD’s presence in your life. And with this experience, realising all the time that God is acting on your behalf in every moment of every day! It is to know The Lord is Your Providence!
