AND IN THE NEW YEAR — A NEW THING

By Jill Roberts and Michael Canalé

 

My desk looks outside through a bank of windows and, now, a few days before the new year, it has the full view of a California rainstorm splashing against the panes and on the porch beside this room. The scene brings to mind Michael’s recent words about how the rain washes our world, leaving it clean. He goes on to put this concept into a theological dimension by adding that, “It is Jesus, the Lamb of God, who washes away the sins of this same world.” In so many ways, Jesus gives us a fresh, pristine start, another chance.

 

How like the new year, is the promise of a new beginning in Jesus. With this in mind, Michael and I are writing a New Year’s blog full of Scriptural guidance for how all of us may best approach this seasonal juncture, this crossroads’ opportunity to begin afresh on January 1, 2022.

 

Perhaps, no verses better set forth the path we should follow than Isaiah 43:18-19, NIV:

 

“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.”

 

Segueing to the New Testament, John the Baptist emphasized this passage when explaining whom he was:

 

“John replied in the words of Isaiah, ‘I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness,’ ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.”

(John 1:23) NIV

 

Both Isaiah and John the Baptist are speaking of a new spiritual day that was coming, one which was characterized by a barren wilderness setting, a spiritual desert into which hope would poured.

 

Paul conveys a similar thought in Philippians 3:13-14, NIV, when he states:

 

“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 striving toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

 

Isaiah, John the Baptist and Paul contemplated something new while at the spiritual crossroads in their journeys. Isaiah sees it from afar. All three put behind them the wilderness of the previous times, forgetting their ways and leaning into the washing away of the former, while fully embracing the future promise in Jesus.

 

Today, in the midst of our own physical badlands of Covid and the spiritual wilderness of trials and battles against an active and internecine enemy, Michael and I want to build on these wise words as a foundation for those of Jesus, the creator of wisdom and direction as we come into the new year. In doing so, let’s look at two passages of Scripture – the first covering WHAT he wants us to do in this season; the second encompassing HOW he wants us to accomplish this:

 

What Jesus wants us to remember is set forth so beautifully by him:

 

“A new command I give you; love one another..As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

(John 13:3435) NIV

 

As we so closely examined in the blog on 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13, the Love Chapter, love is everything. Having said this, what guidance does Jesus give us as we think about and plan how we can love better in the new year? One of the many ways in which he, The Teacher, helps us find our way, is recorded in Luke 5:33-39, as well as in Matthew and Mark. What is this lesson that is so important that all of the synoptic gospels tell it? It is about what Jesus said regarding the old and the new in our lives and, therefore, so timely for this blog. In these verses, Jesus is speaking of fasting, but then, as he so often does, he magnified the lesson to an even weightier paradigm:

 

“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 wine skins. Otherwise, the NEW wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wine skins will be ruined. No, NEW wine must be poured into NEW wine skins…(emphasis added).

(Luke 5:36-39) NIV

 

(In Bible times, wine was not kept in bottles but in goatskins. Because new wine expanded as it fermented, it was always put into new wine skins…”

(Life Application Bible footnote)

 

Jesus’ message is that the NEW Kingdom of God brought into our world by him, cannot be contained in the old way of religious legalism. With our “new command” to love, it is the same. The clear inference is that Jesus would be saying that a “fresh work of the Spirit” is essential as we embark on a new year, on a reborn season.

 

Interestingly, Dr. Luke adds one more sentence to this passage, one left out in its account in Matthew and Mark. He writes,

 

“And no one, after drinking old wine wants the new, for THEY say, ‘The old is better.”

(Luke 5:39) NIV

 

THEY are those who resist change that is needed in order to model Jesus and his love for everyone. Haven’t we all heard it said in our churches, traditions and even personally, “But we’ve always done it this way!” Yes, and sometimes that is the most Christlike way to do it, but where it is not, we’re in the arena of putting Jesus’ new wine into old wineskins. Bill Mounce in his blog, “Monday with Mounce,” writes,

 

“The old can have a fierce grip on people…But Jesus’ ways are new and they are better, and they will ALWAYS (emphasis added) be met with opposition…Never underestimate the power of someone saying, (the other side of the same coin), ‘but we’ve never done it that way.”

 

The old ways of doing things are always familiar, so comfortable. Isn’t it a fact that, given the choice, most of us will choose the trouble we know rather than venture into a change, even one with the potential to be an enormous life improvement?

 

Our hearts and habits can become so rigid. Under our own power, we often choose to use the old wineskins for the new wine of Jesus’ Kingdom. Alternatively, we believe we’ve gone far enough when we just patch these old wineskins in a compromise move that is equally fatal to the growth of a vital, fermenting Kingdom of the Heavens. We do this when God Himself was then and continues to say today that the old just cannot ultimately contain His Kingdom, short of putting it into the new wineskins, the ones Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount and in everything he said and did.

 

Paul writes that we are,

 

“…to be made new in the attitudes of your minds, and to put on the new self.”

(Ephesians 4:23-24) NIV

 

Now arriving is a New Year, a new way to approach life, friends and enemies, new ways to serve. Where we have been pouring Jesus’ new wine into the old wineskins of habit, attitudes and actions that are comfortable but not exemplifying our best, may we re-examine these ways.

 

As Michael says so well, “With the rain, God is cleaning the palette of the Earth.” We have a clean canvas before us in this new year, a new opportunity to paint our world with the stunning, celestial tones of the Kingdom. Yes, our world is a wilderness of trouble right now. It’s like a nighttime desert sky with little ambient light – the kind of night in which the stars are most visible and where we can manifest Him most unmistakably. To repeat what Isaiah said, “Behold, I am doing a NEW thing!” (emphasis added) John writes,

 

“He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything NEW. (emphasis added). Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

(Revelation 21:5) NIV

 

Michael and I have now written this down. We are both so blessed beyond measure by you, our readers. We send it out with our most heartfelt wishes for a New Year of every blessing, for peace in our hearts and for our times. May each of us contemplate and magnify these words – so completely trustworthy, so divinely true.