A psychology professor at Yale University has listed the 12 most persuasive'' words in salesmanship. Third on his list is the word "new" as in "Buy it, it''s new." We like the word new, don't we? We like it in the cars we drive and the houses we live in and the clothes we wear. "Give me something new," may be the slogan of every American. And that is what our message is about today.
What a magnificent opportunity Christ has given us—the opportunity to make new starts and fresh beginnings.
The word "new" has lost some of its punch in our day and age. We owe that, in a large part, to manufacturers who have taken the same old products and repackaged them and put them back on the market. Either they or their advertisers have introduced them to us saying they are new and improved. But you buy them and use them and find they are the same old stuff; only the package has been changed.
Of course, businesses are not going to change their ways any time soon because they are on to something. They know that we as human beings have a yearning for novelty, for newness. And if we hear the word "new," off we trot to find out what it's about.
One of my favorite comic strips is Calvin and Hobbes. If you know anything about the cartoon, you know that Calvin is the little mischief maker. He is Dennis the Menace multiplied many times, and Hobbes is Calvin's little stuffed tiger. Hobbes only comes to life when nobody else is around except Calvin. They have some hilarious times together, they have some rugged times together, and the cartoonist uses their adventures to show us some of the foibles and some of the beauties of human life.
In one cartoon, you see the two of them, Calvin and Hobbes, walking along, and Calvin is talking about this matter of novelty and newness. He says, "I'm a great believer in the value of novelty. I say anything new is good by definition. It can shock, insult or offend me so long as it doesn't bore me. If you can't give me something new, then repackage the old so it looks new. Novelty is all that matters. I won't pay attention to it if it's not fresh and different." Sound familiar?
Hearing that, Hobbes says, "I see why timeless truths never sell." But Calvin doesn't hear him; he goes on with his imagination, his mental gymnastics, and he responds this way. He says, "Give me a good flash in the pan anytime." (1) The lust for newness. It's in us all. We want that which is new and improved in life.
But there is something we need to see. You will ultimately be disappointed if you put your hope in what the world calls new. But you will never be disappointed if you put your hope in what the Bible calls new. It is a newness that you can experience, that you can observe, that will last. Especially gratifying is that newness we find as Jesus Christ comes to live in our hearts and lives, as he gives us his new life and makes of us a new creation.
The Christian faith is about fresh starts and new beginnings. That is what the cross is all about. Jesus made that painful journey up the hill of Calvary, died on the cross and rose triumphantly over the grave in order that we might have fresh starts and new beginnings.
As a pastor, one of the greatest joys that I have is to sit down with someone who is at the end of their rope, someone whom life has treated badly, someone who finds that every direction they turn is a dead end, someone who feels that they are a failure in life and there is no hope, and say to them, "Dear one, with Jesus Christ there is always a fresh start and a new beginning."
Jesus said in Revelation 21, "Behold I make all things new." Jesus really wasn't talking about things. He was talking about you and me. You and I can be new persons as we put our faith in him as our Savior and as we turn to him daily for those renewing powers he pours into our souls.
"If any person be in Christ, he is a new creation," says the apostle Paul. "The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." Paul is talking about that fresh newness, that fresh vitality we discover in Christ.
The experiences of Abraham and Nicodemus, as we find them here in these passages, help us to understand this newness of life that Christ gives. As we turn back to the 12th chapter of Genesis, we read: "Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and from your kindred and from your father's house to the land which I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation." Now Abraham was an older man at that time, 75 years old. If he obeyed God, he would have to leave his home, his friends, the roots he had established. He would have to make a new beginning. He could have stayed where he was, but he would never have known the beauty of faith in God--he would never have known the things God can do through those who trust in Him.
Paul tells us in Romans 4 that Abram hoped against hope. He hoped against hope that God's promises would come true. He put his faith and his trust in God. Had he not done that, then he would not have experienced the newness of life, the new direction, the new beginning of life that the Lord gave to him. But he put his faith in the Lord. Genesis tells us, "So Abram went as the Lord had told him." His life took off in a new direction, and God blessed him and he became a blessing to the world.
Faith, is hoping against hope that what God says is true. What Abraham found we find too. God never lies. God always keeps his promises. God is the faithful one--even if the fulfillment of God's promises may take many generations.
Jesus rebuked the religious leaders of his day for not believing in him, and he reached back to Abraham, the father of the faith. He said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it, and he was glad." He was simply saying that Abraham's ultimate faith was in him, in Jesus Christ, and in that new life that he was to bring.
You may be here today in search of a new beginning, a fresh start in your life. There's a dissatisfaction in your soul that you have not been able to fill. There's a thirst for wonder and joy that somehow seems to have escaped you. Something is missing in your heart and in your life that with all of your work you have not been able to find or to create for yourself. I can assure you today on the basis of the authority of the word of God, that if you will put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ you will find a new beginning for yourself, a new direction in life that will satisfy the thirst of your soul, that will give you joy and peace and purpose such as you've never known before. I assure you that on the authority of the Word of God.
Novelist Frederick Buechner was twenty-seven years old and living alone in New York City, trying to write a book. On impulse one Sunday morning he, a non-churchgoer, decided to go to church. The preacher spoke on the topic of crowning Christ in your heart. Jesus refused the crown of Satan in the wilderness, the preacher said, but accepts the crown of his people when we confess him. The preacher went on for quite some time with words that sounded nice but didn't stick.
But then he said something that Buechner never forgot. I'll let him tell you:
"And then with his head bobbing up and down so that his glasses tittered, he said in his old sandy voice, the voice of an old nurse, that the coronation of Jesus took place among confession and tears and, as God is my witness, great laughter, he said. Jesus is crowned among confession and tears and great laughter, and at that phrase great laughter, for reasons I have never satisfactorily understood," says Buechner, "the great wall of China crumbled and Atlantis rose up out of the sea, and on Madison Avenue, at 73rd Street, tears leapt from my eyes as though I had been struck in the face." (2)
Frederick Buechner suddenly knew the newness of life that is available to everyone who puts his or her faith in Jesus Christ. The same sort of thing happened to the Apostle Paul, that man who considered himself the chief of sinners, the lowest of the low, the blasphemer of God and Jesus Christ, the persecutor, the murderer of Christians. But Christ touched his life. He went from being a persecutor to being an Apostle.
It happened to that notorious hatchet man of the Watergate era, Charles Colson. Surely you remember Chuck Colson--a man filled with ability but with little or no character and no ethics. This man, out of the stress and the strain and the failure of the experience of Watergate, found Christ as his Savior and his Lord. His life was transformed and he had character poured into his life through the Holy Spirit. He became a man who thirsted after God and acted on his faith by helping those who were in prison as he had been before. He organized and today administers the largest and most effective evangelistic Christian ministry organization to prisoners that we have in the United States and in the world, as far I know. This man had a new beginning in Christ and his life took on a new direction. Christ does that in people's lives.
It happened to a woman named Virginia Doramus. You need to know that Virginia has experienced more pain and more suffering than perhaps a score of people would suffer in a lifetime. She was sexually abused when she was 5 years of age and then when she got to college she was severely injured in an accident. She's had a seizure disorder that's led to six concussions in her short lifetime. For 19 years she lived with pain in her spine before she obtained relief through a spinal fusion. She was diagnosed with a neuromuscular disorder, but the doctors could not determine how to treat it. It's such that it leaves her with fatigue, nausea and vomiting, skin rashes and a low-grade fever. Once that low-grade fever lasted for over a year. It confines her to bed for days at a time, and when she is able to be up and about she has to make her way in a wheel chair and on arm-brace crutches. She once was a victim of gang violence. She suffered one way and another all through her life. But her life took a change for the better. She had a new beginning, and would you be surprised if I told you the reason for that was Jesus Christ? He reached down and touched her and transformed her, gave her a new beginning, made a new person out of her, and set her life in a different direction.
A similar dramatic change took place in a young woman's life in 1968 in Czechoslovakia. Soviet troops were trying to brutally suppress a freedom uprising. This young woman, a reporter, got caught in a crossfire. Caught in that crossfire, she had a coming of age, if you will, a coming to self, and in that experience she put her faith fully in Jesus Christ. She said that she learned she would do anything to live, and she said she learned that she wanted her life to count for more than her own selfish desires. This was how she stated her new commitment: "I want to spend my life living for Jesus Christ and helping other people."
This woman, who also has known more than her share of troubles, has organized a volunteer organization to help feed and care for the homeless and the hungry. She takes into her own home those who are desperate, who cannot care for themselves, and she cares for them until they can get to the point of caring for themselves. You ask her what made the difference in her life, and she'll say, "that day when I turned my life over to Jesus Christ and he transformed me and made me a new person and set my life in a new direction." (3)
The same Jesus can give you a new direction, if you'll put your faith and trust in him. He can give you a new direction in your marriage, a new direction in your relationship with your neighbors, a new direction for your life's goals. Perhaps you are one of those people who are eddying about with little purpose wondering what's it all about in the end anyway and if life is worth living. You may be asking, "Is it worth going on, is it worth living with this cynical spirit that I have, is it worth living with the suspicion that's in my heart, is it worth living the way I am?" Jesus Christ can touch you and transform you and make a difference in your life. I encourage you today to trust in him and begin anew with his grace and his help.
Faith in Christ gives you a fresh start, a new direction. That is what happened to a man named Nicodemus. One night Nicodemus sought out Jesus, as we read in John 3. Nicodemus had a deep, gnawing need in his soul that nothing had been able to satisfy. All of his good works, all of his religious practices, all of his leadership in the Jewish faith had not done for him what he needed to have done. He had yearning within. He was an important man, a teacher, ruler of the Jews. If anyone should have known about God, he should have known about God; if anyone should have known the way to life and peace and true purpose and happiness, it should have been Nicodemus. But he didn't know what he needed to know because, you see, he hadn't found the Savior yet.
So he comes to Jesus at night and says, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one could perform the miraculous signs that you're doing, unless God were with him." Jesus—who knows what's in every person's heart, what's in your heart and in mine and knows what we need most of all--cut directly to the heart of the matter. He said to Nicodemus: "I tell you the truth. Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
That seemed like a bit of nonsense to Nicodemus. Whoever heard of anything like that? Born again, indeed! How could that be? What was Jesus talking about? He was talking about a gift that only he can give to any of us, the gift of new life and of new direction. He was talking about making of us a new creation, as his love, his power, his spirit work within us. That alone could make the difference in Nicodemus and that alone can make a difference for us. Faith in Christ gives us a fresh start, a new direction. Faith in Christ also gives us a new standing with God.
Paul, in Romans 4, says, "Abraham believed in God; it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Abraham's faith led God to look upon Abraham in a new and different way; no longer did he stand before God as a sinner condemned and unclean. He stood before God now, as one covered over by the blood of Christ and as one who was now without sin as God saw him. All of us, Paul tells us, stand under the unrelenting condemnation of God until we put our lives in the hands of Christ. The Bible declares, "none is righteous, no not one, no one seeks for God, no one." No one seeks for God. If we were truly honest in our souls before we became believers, we'd know that we really did not seek for God as God wants us to. The Bible goes on to say, "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who will believe."
The Apostle Paul goes back to the example of Abraham in Genesis and to his own experience which put him in the right standing before God, and continues with, "But the words it was reckoned to him were not written for him alone, but for us also. It was written, it will be reckoned to us who believe in him that raised from the dead Jesus our Lord who was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification." He is saying that those words were written not just for Abraham in his time, and not just for Paul in his time, but for us in our time and for every generation. We can be put in that right standing with God if we'll have the faith that Abraham had, that faith that looked forward to Christ and the new life that he would bring.
If your life is not centered in God through Jesus Christ, then your life is centered in yourself, in your passions, in your desires. It's centered in your goals, it's centered in the idols that you make the center of your life, it's centered in your sins, and as the scripture says, "Anyone who is not centered in Jesus Christ is one who is dead in his trespasses and sins," and there is no hope for you. If you live under the wrath of God, then you live with dissatisfaction and unfulfillment; you are not what God intended for you to be, and there is inevitably a sense of lack in your heart in life, because God is not in the center, and you're not living His plan and His purpose for you. You need a radical new beginning, you need the assurance of sins forgiven, you need the freedom from God's wrath, that new standing with Him, that only the Lord Christ makes possible.
A Christian dentist was sitting on a plane, and he began talking to the woman who was seated next to him. This was a man who knew and loved the Lord intimately. He was the type of person who bubbled over with his faith. He was living the normal Christian life, if you will, a warmhearted love for the Lord that shows, that radiates love and concern for others, that exalts Christ in all circumstances. He was that kind of person living a normal Christian life.
[E. Stanley Jones, that great Methodist missionary, said that so many of us as Christians live such a subnormal Christian life that if we ever got up to the New Testament normal then people would think we were abnormal. And they do. They do, if you live up to the normal level of Christian life. But this man really was living on that level.]
He began to talk to this woman about his joy and peace in the Lord. At first she was offended, but his love began to show through and the gospel truths began to get hold of her mind and her heart. As they talked together, it wasn't long before she opened her heart to Christ and asked him to come in. She found forgiveness for her sins, and she found a new freedom, and she found that joy that he was talking about becoming a reality within her. A peace settled upon her spirit and oh, how she thanked him for it! They exchanged names on the plane.
After the man had been home a few days, he received a letter from this woman. In it she told him that while they were on that plane she had a small bomb in her bag and she had fully intended to blow the plane up and blow herself up with it. She went on to tell the story behind it. She said that her husband had died a few months before she made this trip, a vacation trip, and she had grown to hate God and others and herself. Everybody around her could sense that bitterness and that hatred because it had spilled over into every area of her life. Then she made that vacation trip.
She said to the man in the letter: "Oh how I thank God that you saved me from committing that horrible crime. When I arrived back at home and went to work, the first day on the job I was there for a few hours, and then the boss called me into his office. He opened his desk drawer and he took out a letter. He said,
This is a letter of dismissal. I was going to fire you when you got back from your trip. Your bitterness had so destroyed the harmony and the peace in this workplace that we just couldn't have it any longer. We were going to get rid of you. I was going to fire you. But, in just these few hours you've been back I've seen the joy and the peace in your heart, the love now that's replaced that bitter, spiteful attitude, and I've seen how kind you've been to your co-workers. I know a change has come about in you. What has happened?''
"I told him: Jesus Christ has come into my heart. He's made me a new person. And that's the difference you see.''
"My boss, himself a Christian, realized what had taken place in my life, and he took that letter and he tore it up and the two of us rejoiced in the new life that God has given to me!"
Faith in Christ gives us a new start and a new standing in relation to God. Jesus called this new direction "eternal life" in the third chapter of John. He took his listeners back to the earliest days of the people of Israel. He talked about incidents where the people had been so rebellious against God and had so mocked the ways of God that a scourge of poisonous serpents had been unleashed, and they were biting the people and they were dying. And the people were brought to their senses and they repented and they called out to God for help, for salvation. Moses instructed them to form a brass serpent and put it on a pole and hold it up high so that as the people looked at that serpent on the pole they would put their faith in the work of God and be spared. Then Jesus said, "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."
This life he's talking about is his own life, the life that nourishes our soul, the life that provides expectancy and joy and hope in us.
It's what we call a Eureka experience. When the early California gold prospectors came across a likely vein of gold, they'd shout, "Eureka! I've found it." Eureka refers to a wonderful surprise, an unexpected blessing.
In that wonderful children's series called Winnie the Pooh, we find Pooh Bear, the little fellow who loves to eat so much, and his pal Piglet walking along in the cool of the evening. Piglet looks up at Pooh Bear and he says to him, "When you wake up in the morning, what's the first thing you say to yourself?
And Pooh replies, "What's for breakfast? What's the first thing you say?"
And Piglet answers, "I say, wonder what exciting thing is going to happen today?"
Those who have the life of Jesus Christ pulsating in them have a strange wonder and excitement that this world cannot give nor take away, because it comes from the source of life and joy and excitement itself, from Christ. Those who have that energy look forward to their days, to those Eureka experiences, that God has in store for those who trust in His Son.
This new beginning of life on a different plane comes only to those who want it badly enough to come to God in the only way possible.
Jesus said, "I am the way, I'm the truth and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me." That's the only way. The only way we can come to Him. The gospel tells us, "But to as many as received him, who believed in his name, gave he power to become the children of God."
New beginnings are for those who become serious with God, and as long as we're content to play church or play at church, to worship our play and our recreation and to play at our worship and our faith, we'll never find those new beginnings. We will not find God leading in life, we will not find that expectancy and that joy in living. We won't find that treasure that God has for those who truly seek Him and follow after Him to serve Him.
But when we're ready to really hear the Spirit's call, when we're ready to accept his offer and cast ourselves completely upon him, holding nothing back, then we'll find that new beginnings are possible. In fact, we'll find that they're necessary, inevitable, and according to his promise.
Being religious is not enough, going to church is not enough, paying our offering, giving our tithe is not enough, for the only offering that God truly will receive is the offering of ourselves to Him as we confess our sins, put our complete trust in His saving grace, allow Him to cleanse us from our defilement and give us a life--abundant, joyous, and filled with hope.
Isn't it about time, my friends, that you make a new beginning in your lives? Whether you're 25, 45, 55, or 75, this could be the Eureka evening when you discover all that God in Christ has for you. That priceless treasure he has in store for you could be yours if you would just cast yourself into his hands and allow him to have control of your life.
He said, "behold I make all things new." You may be here today with the knowledge that you desperately need a new beginning.
You're tired of yourself; you're tired of the way you've been living; you're tired of the way you've been treating others; you're tired of that tendency you have of being critical and unhappy and sitting in judgment on others; you're tired of the mockery that you've made of the Gospel or of the Savior and you're tired because your life just doesn't have the purpose and the joy and peace that you desire.
I plead with you now to hear the offer of the Savior, to hear him when he says, "Behold I make all things new. Yes, your life I can make new if you'll give me permission to take control of it, to cleanse it, to shape it according to my purposes and to fill it with the beauty, the joy and the glory of living that only I can give to you."
You may already consider yourself a Christian; you've been a member of this church, baptized, you may have served as a Sunday School teacher, a deacon or you've had other positions of responsibility in the church and you've done that, you've done your duty. And yet you know there's something still lacking. That keen expectancy as you get up in the morning is not there. That excitement for living that the scriptures speak of and that we see in the lives of those who truly love the Lord is not there. I say to you: it's not too late to make a fresh start with Christ.
Maybe you've lost that spiritual excitement because of a sin that has made you feel separated from God. Don't be afraid to confess it. Allow God to cleanse you of it and fill you once again with His joy and His great expectancy. It's only when we consciously and knowingly give ourselves to our Lord, Jesus Christ, give him control of our lives in every way, that he can give us real joy and peace. We can have a fresh start and a new standing in God's eyes--truly a Eureka experience. Amen.