Pastoral Letter 110
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace and peace to you all.
We are almost at the end of the Lent Season, and next week we will celebrate Palm Sunday, followed by the Passion/Holy Week, with a service on Good Friday and then celebrate the glorious Easter Sunday. We are grateful to God that since February we have been able to come together to worship safely and have fellowship at Morning Tea. Our midweek programs, Time4U on Wednesdays and Movie/Pizza Night once a month on the first Tuesday of each month, are on since the beginning of March. If you wish, you can come and join the groups.
Last Sunday we welcomed the Feather and Trovato families at our Worship service when Julia (late Geoff and Shirley Feather’s granddaughter) and Stephen brought their second child Lydia Maxine for Baptism. We pray for the Trovato family and seek God’s blessing especially on the newly baptised Lydia.
Unfortunately, the weather didn’t let us have the Working Bee in the garden last Wednesday. We will reschedule and let you know the new date soon.
If you will not be able to join us on Sundays, you can worship with us at home. Please light a candle and have a small roll of bread and a cup of wine or juice for Communion.
Be safe and well, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love and let us know if any member of the congregation that you know of needs our help and prayers.
Here are some more prayer points for this week:
- Pray for all those who are again suffering because of the devastating floods.
- Pray for those who have lost loved ones, homes and property.
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.
- Pray for those members of our congregation who have caught with COVID for their quick recovery. Pray for Ned, who was hospitalised for a week, Stan, Ivy and Ian.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Best Regards,
Krikor
MESSAGE
New Beginnings
Isaiah 43:18-25
We like new things, something different, something better, than what we have. We are always excited with new things, respecting and keeping the old and the traditional. If things go wrong, not the way we want them to go, we like to restart and do it right. Having or getting new things usually needs restarting, like the software updates when we get on our computers, the device needs restarting to complete the installation.
This morning, in the book of Isaiah, God says: “I am doing a new thing!”
What is this new thing that God is doing?
How can anything related to religion be a new thing?
How can anything related to Christianity or Christian faith be a new thing?
Christianity is a religion that has been around for almost 2000 years; something from the past. Some people say that it is becoming more and more obsolete and outdated. But what does God mean, when he says: “I am doing a new thing”?
And what does this have to do with Jesus Christ and with the season of Lent?
In verse 18, God says: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” These words were meant to be words of comfort for people in captivity. God’s chosen people were going to be overrun by a foreign nation called Babylon. The Jews would be taken far away from their homeland. There they would recall and ponder about the “old days”:
“Remember when God rescued us from Egypt? Remember when God parted the Red Sea and defeated all the nations that stood in our way? He did all that for us. Those were the days!”
But God says: “Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” God was telling the people that while He did some amazing things for them in the past, they haven’t seen anything yet. He was going to rescue them again: “I am making a way in the desert, and streams in the wasteland.” God’s people were trapped in a country that was surrounded by the most barren, most deadly deserts in the world. Even if they escaped from their captors, they would never make it through the desert. But God was going to do the impossible. He was going to provide water for them as they journeyed back to the Promised Land. God says: “The wild animals honour me, and 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.” Even the wild animals would notice all the good things God was doing for his people. Not only would those animals praise God, but the people of Israel would praise God too, for all the amazing new things God was planning to do for his people.
This is the “new thing” that God eventually did for the Jews during that time in history. They were eventually released from captivity, survived that difficult trip through the desert, and returned to their homeland. What does this have to do with Christ? Can you see Christ in the words we have read this morning?
God says: “I am making a way in the desert.”
Jesus says: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
God says: “I am making streams in the wasteland.”
Jesus says: “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.”
Just as God was doing a new thing for Israel, rescuing them, right now God is doing a new thing for us – He’s rescuing us, rescuing us from this world, which is passing away. “Do you not perceive it?” God is asking us the same question this morning.
You know God always does good things for us every day and we don’t see it, we don’t realise it, we don’t notice it. Do you know that every morning when you open your eyes it is a new day, a new beginning, and a fresh start? There is always the possibility of not opening our eyes, as some don’t. Only by God’s grace can we have a new day.
God created a new way for us to get to heaven, a new way for us to be right with God, a new way for us to have the sure hope of eternal life. And that new way is Jesus Christ.
He is our oasis and refuge in the desert, our stream in the wasteland. Jesus is the new thing that God did for us. We should see and understand this as we journey once again in these few weeks of Lent. He is giving us another chance to start a new life with Christ.
Christianity is the only religion, which is based on the undeserved love of God, His grace. As we said last Sunday when we were looking to the parable of the Prodigal or Lost Son, the son accepting his sin and wrongdoing, returned to the father with a repentant heart. His father accepted him with open arms. He ran to him, hugged and kissed him warmly. This was a ‘costly demonstration of an unexpected love’. This prodigal and lost son had once again the grace to become his father’s son and enjoy his blessings.
The people of Israel didn’t deserve the things God was doing for them, as the father did in the parable. In the following verse, verse 21 we read: “Yet you have not called upon me, O Jacob, you have not wearied yourselves for me, O Israel.” The people of Israel weren’t praying to God. They weren’t worshiping Him with their lives. They weren’t offering to God any kind of sacrifices, as the next verses describes. The only thing they were giving to God was their sins: “But you have burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your offenses.” These people did not deserve to have God rescue them, to take them through the desert to the Promised Land. These people were paying no attention to God; they were sinning and thinking that everything was OK.
And so, it is with us. God gives to us this new way to heaven, all through Jesus Christ. It is a gift of grace that we don’t deserve. God is “doing a new thing” for us. It’s a “new beginning”.
New things happen, things change and hopefully for the better, as it was in the case of the people of Israel.
Jesus forgives our sins and makes us anew, as He did to a man called Saul, who became Paul. Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians about himself as a Jew: “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, persecuted the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless”. In other words, he was a perfect Jew, but something new happened to him. Jesus, the Lord, did something new for Paul. In my view the perfect Jew became a perfect “Christian” or follower and servant of Christ.
We see it in the changed lives of many people who have received God’s forgiveness and have been freed from captivity to sin. One such man was born to a godly mother who died when he was only a child. He was brought up by his sea captain father and taken to sea when he was just eleven. He grew up and earned a reputation for drinking and using foul language. He was involved in every sin imaginable and ended up trading in slaves. One day during a storm, when everything appeared hopeless, he desperately called out to God for forgiveness and deliverance. God answered his prayer and he emerged from that ship a completely different person. He later became the chaplain of the English parliament. His name was John Newton. His changed life led him to write an inspired song with the words ‘Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.’ God is doing a new thing. He forgave John Newton and freed him from captivity of sin to become a new person.
It was a new beginning for John Newton. Just like Newton we all are sinners who need God’s forgiveness.
Apostle Paul’s hope was that somehow, he could attain resurrection from the dead. He considered the gains in his life to be rubbish compared to gaining Christ. In other words, Paul was ready to forget what was behind him, and go towards what lies ahead. He pressed on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called him heavenward in Christ Jesus. This was totally new to what he used to know, believed and lived for as a Jew.
When we realise that Christ will someday raise us from the dead as He was raised, and when we believe that all this is a gift from God that we don’t have to earn, that is a new thing that will never get old. It will be a new beginning for us. Thanks be to God.
Amen!