The New Is Coming

The New is Coming

Isaiah 65:17-25

You know, Terri and I have gotten so sick and tired of all the things we were seeing and hearing coming through our television that we cancelled our expensive satellite subscription and purchased much cheaper subscriptions to Hulu and Amazon. All the new programs we were seeing on TV began to include story lines and characters that promoted foul language, sexual deviancies, immoral viewpoints, and perverted lifestyles, and we simply didn’t want to see any of that stuff in our home.

And all the news outlets, well good grief, all of them are prompted to say the same things regardless of what channel they’re working for. ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, it didn’t matter, someone, somewhere, was pulling all the chains and pushing all the buttons so that everyone said the same things, over and over. They weren’t news outlets anymore, they were someone’s propaganda machine, and were and still are promoting that person’s or that groups anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-God agenda.

So, we turned them off. We didn’t want to see or hear them anymore. We decided that with Hulu and Amazon (and of course, there are a lot others channels now) at least we could control what came through our TV and into our house and into our minds. We started watching the older shows again. Shows we knew that had a wholesome bent. But you know, I didn’t stop with the TV shows from just a few years ago, I started watching some of the shows I grew up watching as a kid. TV shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, Petticoat Junction and even some older ones like the Dick Van Dyke Show, Ozzie and Harriet, the Andy Griffith Show, and others like those. I don’t care if they were black and white because I grew up watching black and white. What I care about is the content. They were funny, decent, and they taught good moral values and respect. They are far better than anything we see on TV over the last 2 decades.

But something I’ve noticed since watching all these older TV shows that I watched when I was a kid is that more and more I wish our world would go back to those days. The good ole’ days when no one was confused about what sex they were. The good ole’ days when kids said yes sir and no sir and generally showed respect toward others. The good ole’ days when the police was such a respected institution that you taught your kids to find a policeman if they needed help. The good ole’ days when my mom and dad were still alive, vibrant, and had the answers to my questions and a solution for whatever I needed. I still intensely miss them.

There is something in each of us that from time to time, makes us want to go back to the way things used to be. We reminisce and wish we could go back home. Have you ever noticed that as a race we tend to think that way back when was far better than right now. Our tendency is to think our golden age was in the past. Our heroes lived a long time ago.

Even ancient people like Plato looked upon the past with longing. For example, he spoke of a beautiful island continent beyond the Pillars of Hercules and the gates of Gibraltar. It was an ancient civilization of noble people, and it was filled with great beauty, glorious technology, peace, and triumph. But it sank into the bottom of the sea and was never seen again. Plato had a view of a past that was great but now long gone.

As men, our greatest dreams were fulfilled long ago. Our golden age was yesterday, but what we find in the Bible is just the opposite of that. Whenever the prophet speaks or the preacher preaches, the word of the Lord always points us forward toward a more glorious future. The great age that is yet to come, and the people we meet in the scripture lived their lives in undying hope and everlasting optimism of either getting there, or attaining to it one day.

Genesis closes with the death of Joseph, and it tells us that he made his brothers promise to take his bones back to his home in the Promised Land because Gen 50:24 …God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land of which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." There is a great day coming for the people of God! He is going to visit His people.

Moses, faced with the decision of God that he would die alone in Moab, and He would never set foot again in the Promised Land. He said to his people that Deu 18:15 The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear, God has a greater prophet, a great Hero who is still to come!