God and His message are unchanging, but He leads in fresh ways requiring us to be willing to change and follow His new direction
The story that comes out from this week’s set Bible readings is how God is always doing a new thing. That’s according to the Revised Common Lectionary, used by a cross-section of churches and chapels, and it emerges from the verse-by-verse study of the Bible passages in The Living Word study for April 3.
We will meet this first in the Old Testament from Isaiah 43, where we will see how earlier moves of God create an expectation for what God is doing among His people now. In John’s gospel we have a story about a dinner to honour Jesus at the house of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, and how Mary did something unexpected to show her extraordinary devotion to Jesus. Then, writing to the church he founded at Philippi, Paul explains how his credentials as a scholar of Judaism were a hindrance to finding personal faith in Jesus, and were something he had to lay down in order to experience the new spiritual life. The shift from relying on his Jewish upbringing, study and knowledge, to trusting the Lord in a personal relationship, was a completely new thing for Paul.
First, we set the scene with some verses from Psalm 126 which speak of the Lord doing great things for His people, who experience the joy of the Lord as fortunes are restored and disappointments are turned around.
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.”
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.
Psalm 126
The OT Bible reading is a prophecy about the Lord’s intention to do a new thing. It refers back to the time of the Exodus, when the Lord miraculously rolled back the water and provided away through the Red Sea for the Israelites, then cutting off the pursuing Egyptian army when the water returned. This sets the context of this key saying, “Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past: see I am doing a new thing.” Let’s read the whole passage in Isaiah 43:
16-17 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:
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? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
20-21 “The wild animals honour 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, the people I formed for Myself that they may proclaim My praise.
Isaiah 43:16-21
This was a prophecy spoken a long way ahead of time to those whose rebellion against God would lead to them being taken into exile. After a generation or two, their successors would be able to return and come into a new, restored relationship with the Lord. Like many of Isaiah’s prophecies it speaks to across a number of different periods. Clearly, when the Lord sent Jesus His Son, God incarnate, to show us what He is like in human form, this was doing a very new thing. When Jesus spoke about the new way of salvation — believing in Him and being reborn spiritually — this was a new thing. The idea that salvation through Jesus was for all people, Gentiles as well as Jews, was a new thing. As the church came into being after Pentecost, its spread and growth in other lands and nations was a new thing. And throughout the history of salvation, from the ancient times right up to recent church history, God has continued to draw our attention to these words, reminding us again and again, as if to ask why we do not recognise the new thing He is doing.
Where do we find it difficult? We tend to put God in a container of our own knowledge and experience. Whatever fits with that knowledge and experience, we can accept. What does not fit with our experience, we find more difficult. In management speak we are encouraged to “think out of the box”. God was coaching us to do exactly that, long before anyone thought up the phrase. Because God is Spirit, He is not constrained by human boundaries — not our timing, our logic nor our prejudices. And so, in every age — we could say every hundred years or so — He has stirred things up spiritually, set out a new direction, challenged us to see it and follow it, and so showed Himself to be continually ahead of every changing social context.
The next part of our story comes from John’s gospel in chapter 12, and it is set shortly before Jesus entered Jerusalem, ultimately to be condemned to death on a Roman cross. Here He is being honoured at an invited dinner hosted by his good friends Lazarus, Martha and Mary. There would have been other guests from the Bethany area as well. In this divided and sexist first century society, men were the guests and women were expected to serve them but otherwise play little part in the hospitality. However, Lazarus, Martha and Mary were close friends of Jesus, made particularly close by Lazarus having been raised from the dead. John chapter 11 tells how he had been taken ill and died while Jesus was away and by the time He returned, Lazarus had been buried for some days. Jesus entered this scene of loss and desolation by doing an unexpected, new thing: praising God. He followed this by declaration prayer as He commanded Lazarus to come out of the cave-like tomb. It was a miraculous resurrection. The dinner with guests at Bethany was held shortly afterwards — recounted here in John’s gospel.
1 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’ honour. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with Him.
3 Then Mary took about half a litre 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.
4-5 But one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray Him, objected, “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.
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.”
John 12:1-8
This bringing together of what is known and experienced physically, what is felt emotionally, and how we can live above that spiritually, leads into the final passage from the Bible. Here the church-planter, Paul, reflects on his own experience, to help the Followers of the Way in Philippi to be more free to press on in their own personal discipleship. Paul was a Pharisee-trained scholar of the Scriptures and he had impeccable Jewish credentials. His background could open doors at the highest levels of Jewish society. Yet his reflection is, that he counts it all as rubbish, something that must be shed and put down, in order to take hold of what is of far greater worth: a personal relationship with Jesus. Let’s hear this in his own words:
4b-6 If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ…
9 …and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.
10-11 I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
13-14 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:4b-14
There’s nothing wrong with having a well-trained and active mind. Similarly knowing the scriptures is a great strength, not a fault. The question is, where do we put our reliance? How do we see our identity? What guides us — is it the knowledge and experience we have accrued, or is it a sensitivity to the ‘now’ nudge of the Holy Spirit?
Do we find our identity in the position we hold and what we know — or is it about trusting a Person, finding our new identity by submitting out lives to the One who gave up His life for us?
Paul’s teaching is that the biggest obstacle to our faith and growth is us — our pride and inflexibility. We must get to the point of willingly giving God everything — and that doesn’t leave any room for our imagined qualifications.
Just when we think we’ve got God worked out, He will startle us by doing something different, or challenge us by showing us something we hadn’t seen before.
He causes revival in the most unlikely places, as Isaiah reminds us. He is no respecter of our conventions about people — men and women, rich or poor, entitled or not. God cuts across all those man-made distinctions. He cares little for our man-made attainments. As always, He looks on the heart — hearts turned to Him, hearts that belong to Him, hearts that will meet His desire for an authentic and mutually trusting relationship.
Then we will be ready for the new thing He will do — quite possibly together with us.
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