Let's read together from the book of Isaiah.
Our subject tonight is God is doing a
new thing.
Isaiah chapter 43, commencing to read at verse
14.
Isaiah 43, verse 14.
This is what the Lord says, your Redeemer,
the Holy One of Israel, for your sake
I will send to Babylon and bring down
as fugitives all the Babylonians in the ships
in which they took pride.
I am the Lord, your Holy One, Israel's
Creator, your King.
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.
And then to the 104th Psalm.
Psalm 104.
Our God is a creator, isn't he?
At the beginning of time we're told that
God created for six days, and then on
the seventh day he rested from his work.
But those six days were not the sum
and total of God's creative activity.
And here in Psalm 104, you have a
magnificent, majestic tribute to the overall creatorial work
and power of Almighty God.
I want you to look first at verses
five to nine, and notice the past tense
in this section.
For example, verse five, he set the earth
on its foundations.
Or verse seven, at your rebuke the waters
fled.
Or verse nine, you set a boundary, and
so on.
But in the rest of the psalm, it's
the present tense which predominates.
Look, for example, at verse 10, he makes
springs pour water into the ravines.
Or verse 14, he makes grass grow for
the cattle.
But it's the 30th verse that I want
us to think about for a few minutes
this evening.
Here, the psalmist is speaking of the many
living creatures which God makes.
And he writes, when you send your spirit,
they are created, and you renew the face
of the earth.
So by this majestic, creatorial power, God is
constantly renewing the face of our earth.
Now sometimes, this is done in a most
dramatic way.
Think back to the days of the flood.
By that flood, the earth was stripped of
almost all of its life.
And yet that majestic, creative power of God
so quickly and fully filled the desolate world.
And we see something similar every year, don't
we?
The miraculous process is already well on its
way again this year.
Through the winter months, the earth, as the
old hymn puts it, seems worn and old.
But then spring comes and new life bursts
forth.
Of course, we take it for granted.
But this is our God once again renewing
the face of the earth.
And the scriptures tell us that in the
future, we will see again in a dramatic
way this renewing work of the Almighty.
The first chapter of Hebrews states that although
our God is constantly renewing the heavens and
the earth, they are still gradually growing old.
And in verse 11 of Hebrews 1, the
writer says, they will perish.
One day, the heavens and this earth will
perish.
He goes on to say, they're going to
wear out.
And just like a garment, they'll be rolled
up.
They're too old for any further use.
Not even Charlie in O.M. would accept
them.
The world is going to be rolled up
just like an old garment, no further use
for it.
And God's eternal son, says the writer, is
going to roll up the heavens and the
earth.
And the writer says, they will be changed.
Now, Peter writes about this in 2 Peter
3 and verse 13.
He says, in keeping with God's promise, we
are looking forward, and I hope you are
too, to a new heaven and a new
earth, the home of righteousness.
So the God who renewed the face of
the earth so dramatically after the flood is
going to do it again one day.
Through his eternal son, he's going to roll
up the present heavens and earth.
And he's going to remake, he's going to
give us a new heaven and a new
earth.
Now, the marvelous thing is that the apostle
John has already seen those days, the days
of the new heaven and the new earth.
He saw them by revelation.
And the wonderful thing is, he wrote down
a description of what he saw.
Let me read it to you from Revelation
21.
It certainly makes thrilling reading.
I've only got time to read the first
five verses to you.
This is what John saw by revelation.
I saw a new heaven and a new
earth, for the first heaven and the first
earth had passed away and there was no
longer any sea.
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem,
coming down from out of heaven, from God,
prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her
husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the
throne saying, now the dwelling of God is
with men and he will live with them.
They will be his people and God himself
will be with them.
He'll be their God.
He'll wipe away every tear from their eyes.
There's going to be no more death, mourning,
crying, or pain because the old order of
things has passed away.
And he who was seated on the throne
said, I am making everything new.
Now, doesn't the adrenaline begin to rise a
little as you hear those words?
The book of Revelation isn't some kind of
religious science fiction book.
The eternal God was able to take John
out of the normal restrictions of time.
And he was able to show him right
there and then on the island of Patmos,
what one day will certainly be your experience
and mine.
Now, I want to ask you a question.
And I'm going to ask you the question
again and again in the next 30 minutes.
This is the question.
Do you have a sense of expectancy in
your heart as you hear about this work
of God?
Do you expect that our creator God will
actually do this for you and for me
one day?
That's the area that I want to challenge
us all in tonight.
What do we expect from our creator God?
Our God who loves to make things new.
Our God who loves to renew and loves
to refresh.
And so my first point, if you're taking
notes, would be this.
Expect new things from God in your life
and in your ministry because that is the
very nature of God.
He's a God of renewal.
He's a God of creation.
But then secondly, I would encourage you to
expect new things, not only because of his
nature, but because of his promise.
Paul, for example, assures us in 2 Corinthians
3 and verse 18 that a process is
going on continually in our lives as the
children of God.
Here's his description of that process.
We are being transformed into Christ's likeness with
ever increasing glory.
Or as some of the modern translations have
it, we're being transformed from one degree of
splendor to another.
Paul also assured the Philippians that he was
confident that God who had begun a good
work in us will carry it on to
completion until the day of Jesus Christ.
Now these verses refer to a continual process
of change in our lives.
And the biblical illustrations of the Christian life
underline that continual process of change.
For example, we're described in the Bible as
plants in the Lord's field, constantly reaching upwards
for the light.
We're told that we're born into the family
of God and in that family there are
babes, there are little children, there are young
men and women, and there are fathers in
Christ.
We're described as pilgrims or warriors or wrestlers
and so on.
All of those descriptions are active descriptions.
They are talking of progress and of change.
And when you look at the exhortations which
we have in the Bible, it's exactly the
same.
We're told to grow in grace and in
the knowledge of Christ.
We're told to add to our faith.
We're told to go on to know the
Lord and so on.
All of these things remind me of the
epitaph of a Swiss mountain guy.
High up on one of the Alpine hills,
I'm told, there's this simple epitaph, he died
climbing.
He died climbing.
And you know the Bible says that should
be true of me.
It says it should be true of you
as well.
There must be this continual process of change
from one degree of splendor to the next
until we see the risen Christ face to
face.
Now my question is this, is that happening
in my life?
Is that happening in your life?
Continual change.
How many of you were here last year?
Raise your hand.
Well that's quite interesting, more than I expected.
Very good to look back for one year.
Just do a little spiritual check.
Think back to where you were in your
walk with the Lord 12 months ago.
Think back to your spiritual desire and capacity
then and ask yourself, has that God promised
continual process of change from one degree of
glory to the next actually been happening in
your life and in mine?
Or look at it in another way.
Imagine that I called on you right now
to come up onto this platform and give
a testimony of what God has done in
your life.
I wonder how recent the experiences you would
relate to us would be.
Would they be today's experience?
Have you noticed, have you recognized the God
who is always creating, always moving on?
Have you recognized his activity in your life
today?
Do you recognize it this week?
Or do you have to go back a
year?
Or do you in fact have to go
back to your conversion to really relate an
experience with the God of creation, the God
of renewal in your own life?
Well what's the alternative to this continual process?
Quite simply, stagnation or regression.
And it's so easy to slip, isn't it,
into routine Christianity.
I think some of you may well be
here this weekend because you know your faith
has become no more than a routine matter,
and yet you know there should be more.
And to you particularly, I believe God wants
to say this weekend, I want to do
a new thing in your life.
I want to begin the next part of
that process of transformation into the likeness of
our risen Savior.
It's also possible to slip into merely the
routine in our Christian ministry and leadership.
What we are doing today, we were doing
yesterday in our Christian unions and in our
churches and in our youth fellowships, and we'll
be doing now and forever, world without end.
Amen.
I believe God wants to send many of
us back from this weekend with a new
sense of expectancy ringing in our hearts of
what our Creator God can and will do.
He wants to send us back with the
desire not just to crank the machine of
our ministry, but he wants to send us
back looking for God to intervene, looking for
God to work in a new way.
And so I go back, as I promised,
to my challenge.
Is this your expectation?
Is it my expectation when I think of
God?
Do I see him as a God who
loves to do new things?
The God who is constantly creating?
The God who desires that constant process to
continue in my life, changing me from one
degree of glory to the next?
Well, if that's your expectation, I want you
now to look with me at our text
for this weekend.
You've seen it blazoned over the brochure that
you're sent, and it's found in Isaiah chapter
43.
We read it there in verses 18 and
19, and I'd like you to turn again
to that text.
Isaiah 43, 18 and 19.
These words, do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing.
Now, the children of Israel were in exile
in Babylon, and they'd been there for many,
many years.
Faith and hope were at a very, very
low ebb in the nation.
They wondered if their situation would ever change.
And I'm sure all kinds of questions were
arising in their minds.
Could God really deliver them?
And if he could, had he chosen not
to?
Had he deserted them?
I wonder if you ever find yourself asking
similar questions in your own life.
Maybe you've longed for change in your life
for some time.
And yet, though you've had some good days,
some memorable experiences, nothing really seems to change
for you.
Well, I want you to look with me
at how God deals with Israel in the
depression of their exile.
Think of them, they've been there for years,
and they're wondering, will it ever change?
Let's see how God deals with them.
First, look at how God introduces himself to
Israel.
Look at verse 14.
This is what the Lord says, your Redeemer.
There's the first part of his introduction.
I am the Lord, your Redeemer.
It's so easy, isn't it, to forget the
Lordship of God, particularly in times of difficulty.
Two weeks ago, I stood in the bathroom
with my son.
He'd been complaining of a sore leg, and
we'd been to the doctor, and he'd given
him some painkillers and told him to have
a bath.
So he got in the bath, and he
got out, and he was dressing, and he
called me, and he said, look, Dad, look
at my leg.
And almost before my eyes, I'm sure I'm
exaggerating, because you tend to exaggerate these things,
but in a very short time, his leg
just went to about one and a half
times its normal size, a blood clot caught
in a main artery in the leg.
And I rushed him to hospital myself.
And you can imagine the panic, the fear,
both in him and in myself.
And as I was driving that car, I
had to remind myself of the Lordship of
God.
He is the sovereign.
He is the Lord.
He is in control.
Now, the first time the Israelites had heard
this thrilling title, the Lord, was when they
were slaves in Egypt.
Hundreds of years of slavery were behind them.
And once again, I'm sure they were asking,
will it ever change?
And God appeared to Moses.
You read about it in Exodus 6.
You don't need to turn to it.
This is verse 2.
God said to Moses, I am the Lord.
I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob as God
Almighty, as El Shaddai.
But by my name, the Lord, I did
not make myself known to them.
This was the first time they had recognized
God as the Lord.
Now, the significance of the title is seen
three chapters earlier.
God is calling Moses to the task of
being the deliverer of his people.
And he's not very keen.
He's got a lot of doubts and he's
got a lot of questions.
One of them isn't at all unreasonable.
Verse 13 of chapter 3, what if the
people ask the name of the God who
sent me?
Not an unreasonable question.
You're going to a nation which is in
opposition to your own nation, and you're saying
to the people of the nation, God has
sent me.
What if they ask the name of the
God who has sent me?
And then in one of the most magnificent
moments of Israel's history, God says to Moses,
say to the Israelites, I am has sent
me to you.
God goes on in verse 15 to say
to the Israelites, say, the Lord, the God
of your fathers has sent me.
And this is the name which I am
to be known by forever.
The name which I am to be remembered
by from generation to generation.
And so this title, the Lord, had come
to mean two things in particular to the
Israelites.
It spoke to them of God's eternity, the
eternal I am, and it spoke of God's
covenant from one generation to another.
This is the name by which I am
to be known.
Now those were two very important things to
remind Israel of in this time of exile.
The exile may have been long, but he
is the eternal God.
He is the Lord.
A day with him is like a thousand
years.
And he's the God who parted the Red
Sea.
He's the God who brought about that release
from Egypt.
He's the eternal one, and his power is
not diminished by time.
But he's not just the Lord.
He reveals a little more in verse 14.
I am the Lord, your Redeemer.
Redemption, you see, is God's business.
Delivering people from all forms of slavery is
God's divine prerogative, and it is his gracious
work.
But there's even more still in verse 14.
I'm the Lord, your Redeemer.
I'm the Holy One of Israel.
Now we've seen that he's unchanging, he's eternal,
but he's also the Holy One.
He's morally totally consistent and true.
His word can be trusted.
It will never be changed.
His promises are sure.
Every word of them will be made good.
You know, as Isaiah brought these words of
prophecy to Israel, I can imagine the hearts
of the people leaping within them as they
remembered the many promises of God.
Maybe their minds went right back to that
promise to Abraham to make them a great
nation, and that all the nations of the
world would be blessed through them.
Well, it was hardly that way as they
languished in exile, was it?
No one could argue that at that time
all the nations on earth were being blessed
through Israel, and yet their God was the
Holy One.
His word was true, and you almost sense
the light beginning to dawn in Israel.
God must be going to do a new
thing.
He is committed by his promise.
He will not leave us as we are.
But there's more.
He's not just the Lord, the Redeemer, the
Holy One of Israel, because in verse 16
he continues his introduction.
He's Israel's creator.
God made Israel, didn't he?
Remember his words to Abraham, I will make
you into a great nation.
Could not the God who made them deliver
them?
Could he not remake them into a great
nation once again?
Haven't we just recognized that that's his constant
activity, renewing, remaking.
That's what God's about.
And then finally, as God introduces himself to
Israel, he says, I am your king, your
king.
There in verse 16, he has chosen to
own them as his people, chosen to preside
amongst them.
Babylon might appear to have authority over Israel,
but their king still controls, and Babylon's authority
is only by his permission.
What an introduction to a depressed, exiled nation,
probably asking themselves, can anything ever change?
And God says, I'm the Lord.
I'm eternal, and I'm in covenant relationship with
you.
I'm the Holy One.
You can trust every word of my promise.
And I'm your creator.
I made you, can't I remake you into
a great nation?
And am I not your king?
Have I not chosen you to be my
people and to preside amongst you?
Must have been thrilling for them to hear
this.
But I hope it's equally thrilling to you
tonight, because this is our God.
He has entered into this covenant relationship with
us.
And I ask you again, what do you
expect from him?
What do you think such a God might
do in your life and in your ministry
this weekend?
Well, after introducing himself to Israel, he reminds
them of how they've experienced his greatness and
his power in the past.
Look very briefly at verses 16 and 17.
He reminds them of God's intervention of the
Red Sea, how he saved Israel and destroyed
the Egyptians.
It's a good thing, isn't it, to look
back.
A good thing to be reminded of the
remarkable interventions of God in history and in
our own lives.
Such memories can be an enormous encouragement and
a great stimulus in the present.
But that brings us to our text.
While it's a good thing to look back,
according to verse 18, it is not a
good thing to dwell on the past.
Things ain't what they used to be can
so easily become the cry of many Christians.
We remember the good old days and we
question whether things can ever be as they
are when we first met with God, or
when our Christian union was really going forward,
or when that church that we're a member
of was just beginning to grow and just
beginning to emerge.
They were great days.
We think back and that's good, it's good
to be encouraged by that, but to dwell
on such things, according to Isaiah, is wrong.
There's a very interesting couple of verses in
Jeremiah chapter 16.
Again, don't turn to them, just let me
read them to you.
14 and 15 of Jeremiah 16.
The days are coming, declares the Lord, when
men will no longer say, as surely as
the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up
out of Egypt, but they will say, as
surely as the Lord lives, who brought the
Israelites up out of the land of the
north, and out of all the countries where
he had banished them.
That must have been a great thing for
Israel to hear.
God is saying, you Israelites, you're always talking
about the great things which I did when
I brought you up out of Egypt.
You're always dwelling on that.
You're always talking about that, but there's a
day coming when you won't talk about that
any longer, because I am about to do
such great things amongst you, that those are
the things you'll be talking about tomorrow.
You know, there's a great danger, even in
a movement like OM, to dwell on the
past.
It's great to hear the stories of the
early days of OM.
I wasn't around, I'm far too young, but
if you talk to Peter Conlon or Nigel
Lee, they were around right at the very
beginning of OM.
Incredible things which took place in the early
days, and incredible is the word, I'm glad
I wasn't around, really.
But it is amazing to hear of the
things God did in getting OM started.
But are we just going to become a
movement whose history is an encouragement to others?
Or are we expecting, in OM, great things
today?
How about you?
Is your life history just going to be
an encouragement to others?
Are you expecting God to do something fresh,
new today?
Because we can ask the question about our
own lives, we can ask the question about
our own ministry.
You'll all have heard of the late David
Watson.
When he went to York, he went originally
to a church called St. Cuthbert's.
And I heard of great things which were
happening at St. Cuthbert's, and I'm a member
of a church in Carlisle, and I've been
longing for great things to happen there for
many years.
And I was getting married, and I was
choosing a place to go on my honeymoon,
and I suggested to my wife that the
Yorkshire Dales, fairly near York, were beautiful, and
she agreed.
And so we went to the Yorkshire Dales,
fairly near York, and on the Saturday I
suggested, let's go and see what's happening at
St. Cuthbert's.
We've heard these stories, now let's go and
check it out.
Is there some secret that we can introduce
in Carlisle, and we'll see great things there
as well?
And we went about 6.10, and we
just got in on the back row, and
there were a couple of old ladies on
the row just in front of us.
You know, as the service went through, it
was very, very normal.
I remember David preaching a five-point sermon.
It was the five Ps, you know, peace,
power.
It was very, very normal and usual.
The only abnormal thing in the whole of
the service were these two old ladies in
the row in front.
About 6.20, I'll never forget it, always
remembered it, one old lady turned to the
next, she said, I wonder what God's gonna
do tonight.
I wonder what God's going to do tonight.
I have never felt in any meeting such
a sense of expectancy of God.
You know, if God hadn't worked that night,
and he did, but if he hadn't, those
old ladies would have gone home confused and
disappointed.
The blessings of last week were not adequate.
They were expecting God to move that night.
I ask you again, are you expecting something
from God this weekend?
Are you looking for it?
Are you listening for it?
If not, I don't really think you've understood
God, because his very nature is to do
new things.
He's the creator God, consistently creating, constantly renewing,
and he has promised to bring to completion
that constant process which should be going in
your life from one degree of glory to
the next.
So don't dwell on the past.
Good to be encouraged by it, but don't
dwell on the past.
Look to your Lord, your Redeemer, your King,
your Creator, the Holy One who has made
promises to you.
His miracles did not cease at the Red
Sea.
They did not cease last year.
The days are coming when men will no
longer say, as surely as the Lord lives
who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,
I wonder if they will no longer be
saying that because of what he's going to
do in your life, or in my life,
this weekend in Aston University.
Are you expecting it?
Are you looking for it?
Our Creator God is going to do a
new thing.