New

New

The word “new” has been on our minds this past week.

The word ‘new’ occurs over 200 times in the Bible.

I want to talk to you about three new things from the Bible:

The new life

The new person

The new way

1. The new life

Luke 5:36-38 gives us these words from Jesus:

He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.”

Jesus tells a story to illustrate how absurd it would be to try to patch up the old covenant with the new one.  And the new life 

Jesus gives us is not a patch or add-on to enhance our lives.

Mixing law-based living with the grace based salvation through Christ is, in a word, wrong. Galatians 5:4 says that,

“You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.”

Luke 5:37

“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.”

Wineskins that carried wine in first-century Judea were made of animal hides.  These were flexible when new but would get dry and inflexible later.  The process was to pour new wine into new wineskins and wineskin would be able to expand with the fermenting wine.  On the other hand, if you were to pour new wine, still in the fermenting process, into old hardened wineskins, when the wine expanded it would burst the wineskins.

We can learn from these illustrations that the old and new covenants are completely incompatable.  For the Christian, Jew or Gentile; the old covenant is obsolete. 

At his last supper, Luke (22:19-20) records Jesus doing these things and saying this: 

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

And the writer of Hebrews says this:

By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. 

(Hebrews 8:13)

Being a Christian is not a self-improvement program but a new life.  

We all know about remodeling, when you add a room to your house, add an apartment over the garage, build out a back patio, or front porch. For the Jews who first heard these words, Jesus was saying that what he came to bring is not an 'add-on' to the Mosaic Law, the Old Covenant; but a whole new ball-game. And for us today, these words  about the new garment and new wine mean that becoming a Christian is a whole new life and not an add-on.

When we become Christians we surrender all and give everything to Christ. He is not an addition or an add-on.  He gets to take the wheel and hold the keys. He gets to be King of everything in our life. 

Being born again means that we live a whole new life.

2. The new person

2nd Corinthians 5:17 says this:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

To be in Christ means we have been born again and begun a whole new life. 

Becoming a Christian does not mean we just get a ticket to heaven. 

Becoming a Christian means that we are now new persons.

The new person shares Christ’s life.  Galatians 2:20 says, 

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Ephesians 4:21-24 says this:

if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former way of life, you are to rid yourselves of the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. (NASB)

Romans 12:2 says:

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (NASB)

Being transformed by the renewing of our minds means that we learn to think a new way.  New people think in a new way.

3. The new way

Isaiah 43:18-19 says this:

“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 wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

In the context here in Isaiah 43, God is telling Israel, His people, that He is going to deliver them out of Babylon and reminds them that this is the same God that earlier brought them out of Egypt.

But then He says to forget, to stop dwelling on what I did in the past and get ready for what I am about to do.

When God says here, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past”, he is talking about the good things, even the great things he has done for us in the past.  

We have been taught, or told the stories of the things God has done in the past. 

How God works with people is beautifully illustrated by the events of the past.  But, God does not want us bound to the past.  

God was greatly revealed in the past in wonderful ways, 

but God is always more than the past revealed.

“Forget the former things”

Dwelling on the past, the amazing things God did in the past, is not good for us.  Why would that be and why would God say that?  Maybe because by dwelling on the past we not only miss out on the wonderful things God is doing right now, today; but we also are not expecting or ready for God to do even greater things than he did in the past.

“See, I am doing a new thing”

God calls our attention to something new He is doing in our present circumstances.

“Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”

God always does something new whether we are living a care-free life or when we are in the midst of suffering.

This new thing God is doing springs from His initiative. 

His grace. We didn't earn it but we can position ourselves to 

receive it. If we don’t pay attention, we can miss it.

“I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

God is always willing to make a way where we see no way.

We can not dwell on the past in nostalgia if we want to see the new thing God is doing which is a way through the wilderness.