Nothing’s New Until God Does it each Day!
I was thinking this last week about these days leading up to our Passover which is Easter, and as the days are getting longer, so it seems are my thoughts drawn more and more to the splendors of just living. Now, I know for many that just seems like Pollyanna, and rose-colored glasses talk. So, today I wanted to share with you my family (who I can confide in “most of the time”), why I’m led to talk this way, and how I am led to believe in the majesty that is in this life. Especially when in and with our Lord.
My best guess, if we are to cut to the point, when all is said and done, it is how we look at our lives that make all the difference in how we receive the manifold blessings coming all day long from our Lord, God, Sovereign, Savoir, and provider of each and every thing we perceive in our version of reality; Jesus Christ!
That Solomon in all his wisdom, was but a blank of a person when it came to remembering who God is, and what we are not. Even, Solomon’s speculation on how nothing ever changes in the scheme of things, is in my opinion, all about worldly philosophy, and null on faith. Reading Solomon’s thoughts or negative musings, we have from, Ecclesiastes 1:9-10;
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
Well maybe… If you are locked into a world that only revolves around your selfish, unquenched, dehydrated of faith, although quenched with petty, uncommitted, woefully nocturnal sinfestedly obsessed desires, housed in that ungratefully inclined petting zoo of a soul we house in our natural habitat. Void of our Lord’s grace, through our own free will.
You see, Solomon had evolved into a negative unimpressed shell of a child of God. No longer seeing the beauty and majesty that God brings anew with each miracle of a day in our walk. Without the basic gratitude for what God is doing right now, we all can begin to see things as; “there is nothing new under the sun”… until there is! When our Lord provides it. Hence, today’s Message title; Nothing’s New Until, God Does it each Day!… And I would say, in His own unique and majestic way each and every time. Why? Because He chooses to do so…
When we are in tune with the Lord, living grateful lives dedicated to Him, we are available to the promptings of His Spirit to begin to understand what God is working in our lives. As in the Day of Isaiah, there are plenty of naysayers producing noise of the crowd, attempting to drown out the ongoing battle your God successfully wages with sin and Idolatry. Our understanding of this ongoing cosmic war, helps us understand today’s Call to Worship reading from Isaiah 43:15-21 a little more;
15 I am the Lord, your Holy One,
Israel’s Creator, your King.”
16 This is what the Lord says—
he who made a way through the sea,
a path through the mighty waters,
17 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:
Side Note; The same God that delivered Israel from the entire Egyptian Army at the Red Sea in the time of Moses, is there to guide and deliver, you and me! Now at verse 18;
18 “Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
Side Note Again; A key verse for me, that I hope you will take with you today, is to let go of the past. We are instructed to let the past be in the past by God. Yes, learn from what’s happened, but live in the moment, because our future is full of precious moments that our God is doing new things. We will notice them if we are living a life in and with our Lord and are available to His Spirit for discernment. Continuing now with the rest of verse 19 and more;
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
20 The wild animals honor me,
the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
21 the people I formed for myself
that they may proclaim my praise.
Once more; We were made to praise, glorify, and love Him… and just as our Lord made a highway across the Red Sea for Israel, He is able to water the wastelands of the wilderness, and quench the thirst in the desert that exists in our own hearts.
As in Isaiah’s day, our Lord is ready to lead you to places physical, mental, and spiritual, that you never dreamed possible of journeying to. That applies to the mystical religious side of life, and the every day run of the mill types of things we have done before, like coming to Church this morning.
I am reminded of how the Songs of Assent that were sung as the Children of Israel would in procession go up to the Temple Mount to worship God, and how many of them must have felt the specialness of the moment. That for some each time they participated in this national family event towards the Lord, it was like the first time all over again. We will do something akin to this next week when we have our Palm Sunday Event. Reading now Psalm 126, A song of ascents;
1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dreamed.
2 Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
A Comment in Passing; what is so sad about being a human being, is that by our very nature, we run the risk of taking the sublime, the majestic, and the remarkable actions of the Lord for granted. We must be about the business of remembering one of the important things in life in life, is to be grateful for our very lives.
When we get to a point that we are questioning or regretting ever being born, we have sunk indeed to a very, very, dark place, and are dabbling into things we don’t understand. That’s when we need the assistance of the ultimate Shepherd, to guide us back from the wolves of demise. Continuing with Psalm 126, we must remember what God has already done for us to help us in expectation of new things in our future, reading now from verse 3;
3 The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
4 Restore our fortunes, Lord,
like streams in the Negev.
5 Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.
Each time we get to experience the majesty of the Lord, and we are really there in the room with God, and not just sleepwalking through life, again… Well, it’s like a birth of a brand-new day, unique, and marvelous. We are in tune with our Lord, and we are available to the miracles of common place that He makes spectacular.
If you are struggling, and have been feeling abandoned from the good things in life, that you are feeling distance from the Lord and everyone else, take heart. If you are struggling to get through the next hour let alone through the day because of all of those things that are trying to enslave you, hold firm. If you have retreated to that dark place of brooding, a place that at first was your stronghold, but now is more like a prison…
That deep, dark, place. You now where, and I know where you go…More importantly, your Savior of salvation knows where you are, and you are not alone. He makes trips in and out of that desolation that wasteland that makes up your hurting soul, and provides refreshment, and hope, if you will only call on Him, and then walk with Him.
This takes me back for a third time to today’s Call to Worship, recalling once again from Isaiah 43:20-21;
20 The wild animals honor me,
the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
21 the people I formed for myself
that they may proclaim my praise.
And when God does it, and He does it all the time, …it’s like being saved for the very first time, … brand new, unique and special to you, and you and Him alone!… That’s where Solomon missed the mark, when he wrote there is nothing new under the sun. I think because Solomon was in that dark place I just mentioned and in the forest it’s sometimes hard to see the individual trees (to include the tree of life), or the way out provided by your Savoir! But the path is there non-the -less…
But when we begin to believe we are smarter than God, when we become jaded know-it-alls, ungrateful, or down right cynical about the Lord’s beauty right before our eyes, we run the risk of using our intelligence in such a warped way that we become the greep (which is Russian for flu), yes, the very greep, foolishness, and acrid sludge, we were trying to rise above. I think that’s what happened to Solomon, proving it can happen to the powerful and religious in life. Especially the “religious”! Even someone close to God so to speak.
In today’s Message Reading, we have examples set of what life can be like when we are in the Spirit of the Lord, or pathetically trying to dominate over God. Reading again from, John 12:1-8;
12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. 3 Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
Side Bar; When we are in the Spirit of the Lord, we see things from a much purer point of view. We are able to see things for what they are and are not moved to think like the world thinks.
Mary is consumed by being in the presence of her sovereign Lord that restored her brother (Lazarus) to life from the grave. She is moved to love God with all she is and has (where have we heard that before?). This moves Mary to a most audacious of actions, using a very expensive ointment (Nard), and then a clean up on isle 4 with her hair! Giving God all she has and is!
That does not mean that you or Mary don’t come off as obnoxious or even melodramatic to other people, for we do! It also means that in the here and now we need to be aware of how others may be interpreting our actions so that we might be able to explain to people outside looking in, what it is that has made us so joyfully different from a world jaded and believing that: “there is nothing new under the sun”. Until there is, and it’s provided by the Lord, and His Holy Spirit!
Continuing now at verse 4;
4 But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, 5 “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” 6 He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.
Side Note Again; You see when Satan wants to sound Biblical, he is very good at manipulating scripture for his own ends. So are we when we cherry pick scripture to criticize, lord over, or manipulate other people that we are debating and competing with. Cuz there’s nothing new under the sun, until there is!
Judas is not a Jewish problem, or a Devil problem, he is a people problem, and we go down that very same road when it becomes all about my hopes, my needs, my wants, fears and dreams… Instead of what God wants for us! That’s where loving God with all we have, and loving others as ourselves, ultimately holds those selfish desires in check.
Judas like me, is missing the mark when we are more concerned with showing off, being magisterial, and looking smartly devout, instead of searching deep within ourselves for the mercy, love, charity, and grace to offer others in our service to Him. I wonder, just how many people we have corrected out of this church, by trying to act holier than thou art? Finishing now with verses 7-8; 7 “Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. 8 You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
Yes, we will always have the poor with us. Poor financially, poor in spirit, and poor in faith, continue in our world to this day. And we are to love them in healthy ways that do not contribute to whatever it is making those people poor in their own way. When we are in the Spirit of our precious Lord, we will be led to show grace to the poor among us including ourselves, in our Faithwalk towards Him who has created and sustains all, and that is new each day!
Amen!
Benediction; Isaiah 43:20-21
20 The wild animals honor me,
the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
21 the people I formed for myself
that they may proclaim my praise.
And Numbers 6:24-26
24 “‘“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”’