to return to your place in the text.To read endnotes, click on the the note number, then click on the
Are you glad 1998 is about over? It should have been a
pretty GOOD year with the market up, unemployment down, inflation
down. But we ended with bombshells over Baghdad and bombast in
Washington after spending months as unashamed voyeurs listening
to the Starr report and the impeachment hearings. America has
had better years than 1998.
Did you make any resolutions for `99? Lots of people do.
In an old "Nancy" comic strip, Nancy is sitting at a table
writing: "9. Be nicer to people; 10. Eat only healthy food; 11.
Share with friends." She is all the way down to #28 which is
"Stop being so pushy." She writes, "29. Cut down on sweets; 30.
Be less critical of others."
Sitting next to her is her friend Spike. Spike asks, "New
Year's Resolutions?"
Nancy replies, "It's that time of year again."
Spike says, "I'm impressed. These are really good goals.
But do you think you can keep all of them?"
Nancy replies, "Why should I?" as she hands them over.
"These are for YOU!"(1) Uh-huh.
Do you remember the Calvin & Hobbes cartoons that used to
run in the newspaper? In one that appeared at this time of year,
Hobbes, Calvin's stuffed tiger, asks, "Did you make any
resolutions for the New Year?"
Calvin comes unglued and shouts, "NO! I'm fine just the way
I am! Why should I change? In fact, I think it's high time the
world started to change to suit ME! I don't see why I should do
all the changing around here. If the New Year requires
resolutions, I say it's up to everybody else, not me! I don't
need to improve! Everyone ELSE does!" Calvin then takes a
breath and asks, "How about you? Did you make any resolutions?"
Hobbes has this flabbergasted look on his face and says,
"Well, I had resolved to be less offended by human nature, but I
think I blew it already."(2)
Any New Year's resolutions for you this year? Lots of
people make them. The top five resolutions are to get personal
finances in order, lose weight, stop smoking, become more
physically fit, and improve personal relationships. Some folks
even decide to attend church more faithfully. Good. But
statistics indicate that after only one week, almost a quarter of
us have bailed out on whatever it was that we had resolved to do;
after a month, almost half have given up; after two years, only
about one in five still hang in.(3) Hmm. There is an old Irish
toast that says, "May all your troubles in the coming year be as
short as your New Year's Resolutions."(4)
No doubt, the resolution failure rate is what keeps many
folks from making any at all. Half of us will not bother. But
even those of us who refuse to fool with an annual list
understand the appeal. There IS something about us that looks
forward to new beginnings, isn't there? The plaintive plea,
"Give me another chance, please, just one more chance," resonates
through our collective soul.
Suddenly, we hear this word from the book of Revelation:
"And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making
all things NEW." Everything new? That would be great news if it
were true, wouldn't it? Can God do that? Revelation says YES!
The Lord can give us a new world, with new delights, new comforts
and new hopes.
How does God do it? Well, let me put a question to you: How
would you EXPECT God to do it? Suppose I were to ask you what
you would need to have a really FINE '99. What would you say?
I suspect that most of our wishes would run fairly
predictably. More money, another job, shorter hours, a new
house, new neighbors, better health. We would heap together our
varied circumstances and say, in effect, that if only this were
changed or that were changed, undoubtedly, we would be happy.
Well, I cannot offer you any of those things. In some
instances, I REALLY wish I could...particularly those who would
wish for an end to physical pain. But even if I could make those
dreams come true for you...they would not be enough.
You see, the major question behind all these wishes is this:
Does your happiness reside in your circumstances or in yourself?
Important as circumstances are, I would insist that, in and of
themselves, they will never make us happy. We know better. Too
many times we have heard of folks who seemingly had it all -
money, power, position, health - who were so miserable that they
had to drown themselves in drink or drugs and, in some cases,
even took their own lives. But, in contrast, there are others we
know who are seriously lacking in some of these things we think
are so important but who are supremely happy.
Now, please do not think that I have no regard for
circumstances. Not true. But I would insist that they are not
PRIMARY. Happiness does not reside in circumstances, it resides
in US. When people wish us "Happy New Year," the best type of
thinking would NOT concern the externals of life, but the
INTERNALS. I cannot promise you that in 1999 there will be a new
set of circumstances for you. Indeed, I would anticipate for all
of us pretty much the same difficulties and disappointments, the
same drawbacks, even the same disasters we have always had...all
those things that are common to the human condition. No new year
has ever dawned that did not contain them. That, as they say, is
life. But in the name of the one who sits on the throne, the one
who says, "Look around...See, I am making all things NEW," I can
promise a life in which the dull routine will be transformed into
a fresh and vigorous and challenging experience for all who
submit to Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives.
The apostle Paul understood that. That is why he could
write, "If anyone is in Christ, that person is a NEW creation;
old things are passed away - behold, all things are become new."(5)
There is something else to be aware of here. People who are
changed by God's grace very often DO experience changes in their
circumstances. How many stories have you heard like this one(6) -
the story of the man who was convinced that the most beautiful
word in the English language was WHICH...w-h-i-c-h... WHICH.
When his friends questioned him, he said this:
One autumn evening, six months after I was
converted, I said to my wife, "Let's go out for a
walk." She went upstairs to put her hat and coat on
and while she was there I called out, "Bring my
overcoat down with you." And do you know what she
said? She said, "WHICH?" WHICH! I couldn't answer
for a moment. I was staggered by the word WHICH. I
actually had TWO. Which leads to one more note: the change that Christ can
make in people extends beyond individuals - it includes families,
businesses, churches, communities...and even has the potential to
affect entire nations.
Standing in this Methodist pulpit I think of the revivals
under the preaching of John Wesley in eighteenth-century England.
Wesley came on the scene in a time of tremendous social upheaval.
The industrial revolution had totally disrupted centuries of
tradition with the result that people were in an ugly mood. All
around Europe, bloody revolutions were breaking out...but not in
England. Historians credit that "Great Awakening" in Great
Britain, the change in people's lives, with saving that nation
from the same fate that befell her neighbors.
I think of the countless thousands who have been ministered
to in mission outposts around the world, thousands who have been
taught to read and write, thousands who have been healed of
disease, thousands who have been brought into a saving knowledge
of Jesus Christ because of the work of dedicated missionaries who
themselves were changed by the power of the gospel. The result
is that right now on the continent of Africa, in nations where
the name of Jesus was utterly unknown less than two hundred years
ago, the church is growing faster today than anywhere else in the
world.
I think of those in our own nation who are being provided
with food and shelter this very day because Christian people,
people who have experienced a change from the selfISH to the
selfLESS by the power of Jesus Christ in their lives, are willing
to share with those in need. This is the power the Lord who
says, "See, I am making all things NEW!
The good news I have for you at the end of 1998 and the
beginning of '99 is that we serve a God of new beginnings. The
Bible is full of them:
Do you understand the implications of that? It means that
this God who makes things NEW is more concerned about your future
than your past. Hear it again: this God who makes things new is
more concerned about your future than your past. Hear it one
more time: this God who makes things new is more concerned about
your future than your past. Yes, your past may well be the pits,
a record of one failure after another, one broken resolution
after another, but that does not matter...not to this God, the
one whom we come to know in a very personal way in Jesus Christ.
After all, this is the God who says, SEE, I AM MAKING ALL THINGS
NEW.
A moment ago, we mentioned those distinguished theologians,
Calvin & Hobbes, whose insights, sadly, no longer grace our
morning papers. In the very last comic strip before their
untimely demise, Calvin says, "...a brand new year! A fresh,
clean start! A day full of possibilities! It's a magical world,
Hobbes, ole buddy..."(7)
Indeed! It IS a magical world. It is MY world and YOUR
world. It is OUR world. It is GOD'S world, the God who says,
SEE, I AM MAKING ALL THINGS NEW. And we will have a FINE '99!
Amen!
1. Dynamic Illustrations, Jan/Feb/1994 2. Quoted in Dynamic Illustrations, Jan/Feb 1996 from Parables, Etc. 3. Dawn DeCwikiel-Kane, "Readers find resolutions easy to make, easy to break,"
Greensboro News & Record, 1/2/98, D1 4. Joyful Noiseletter, 1-93, p. 2 5. II Corinthians 5:17 6. W. E. Sangster, Sangster's Special Day Sermons, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1960), pp. 40-41 7. Dynamic Illustrations, Jan/Feb/Mar 98
I was a drunk. All my money went into the bar.
Every Saturday, I soaked until I was nearly spent up,
and then I rolled home and flung the remaining few
dollars in my wife's lap. With a spate of obscene
language I told her to stop sniveling and to be
thankful for what she got. Through all the years I was
a slave to drink, I never had any really smart clothes.
I hated myself and most decent people despised me.
Then I met God and was gloriously changed...I cut the
drink out entirely. I dropped the filthy talk and gave
my wife her proper week's money and began to buy little
extras for the home. As the months went by, I even
began to gather a wardrobe.
That poor, malodorous rag-bag who had been a pillar of the
pubs had two overcoats. You see the point - he was changed, and
by God's grace, circumstances changed with him. Those
circumstances about which we sometimes complain so bitterly might
very well be changed once we ourselves have been changed by the
one who makes EVERYTHING NEW!
SEE, I AM MAKING ALL THINGS NEW.
SEE, I AM MAKING ALL THINGS NEW.
SEE, I AM MAKING ALL THINGS NEW.
SEE, I AM MAKING ALL THINGS NEW.
Finally, at the end of history, things will not really END
at all. As our lesson has it, we find "a new heaven and a new
earth." No more tears, no more pain, no more death. "See, I am
making all things new...I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
beginning and the end." Over and over, in the midst of our
sinfulness, in the midst of our wandering, in the midst of our
fear, in the midst of our failure, this God of who makes things
new begins again and again with us.
SEE, I AM MAKING ALL THINGS NEW.
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