New, Part 1

As we begin 2021, I’m comforted by the fact that only our Lord and Saviour knows what the next 12 months will bring, but we can rest in the assurance that whatever may come, he’s going to be with us through it all. So with the word “New” foremost in our minds, I thought I’d take a look at a few places in the Bible where this 3-letter word is mentioned and see how we can apply the lessons we learn from scripture to our own lives as we look ahead into 2021.

Firstly, in John 13 verses 34 and 35, we find Jesus saying to his disciples: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.””

When Jesus used the word ‘Command’ here, I’m sure the disciples would have automatically thought about the ten commandments. They were Jews after all, and Jewish people tend to have a good understanding of old testament scriptures, especially the law of Moses. These disciples might have been so-called common old fishermen, but likely they would have still known and understood the ten commandments. Yet now Jesus was seemingly adding an eleventh commandment. I wonder how the Pharisees would have viewed this if they’d been listening in at the time. They probably would have been horrified. We all know about how rigid they were, and how they were blinded to the truth of who Jesus really was. No doubt they would have accused Jesus of blasphemy. Yet the disciples saw things differently.

In 2John chapter 1 verse 5. It says: “And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another.” John knew Jesus wasn’t contradicting the law of Moses. After all, he’d already said that he came to fulfil the law, not to destroy it. What the apostle understood was that by telling us to love one another, Jesus was simply summing up the majority of the commandments into one rule that everyone can understand. Those who love won’t steal, or murder, or commit adultery. Remember the time when Jesus was asked what the most important commandments were? He said they were to love the Lord our god with all our hearts and souls, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. So we see that when God creates something new, it is usually something that compliments what went before rather than contradicting or destroying it.

The fact is that our God is a living, moving, and creative God. He created the world we live in, and ever since he has continued to create. Every new baby that comes into this world is knit together by the hand of our loving Father. Our Lord is always doing something new. Yet we humans can become very set in our ways, and we do sometimes have a problem with new things.

I am reminded of an incident when I was at school in the 90s. I used a laptop computer running one particular word processing programme for writing my essays, and it and I got along famously. Yet change was in the air, and I didn’t like it. The old programme ran on a system called DOS, and as those of you who understand computers will know, the old DOS system was replaced by what we now call ‘Windows’ in the mid 90s. ‘Windows’ was introduced because it is easier for people to use. To run DOS programmes, you have to have a pretty high understanding of computers, but ‘Windows’ is much more intuitive. It has menus that clearly lay out your options, so even a learner finds it relatively straightforward to do basic word processing. Looking back, I think I was one of the only people who didn’t want to change to the new system. I understood Dos, and I could write my essays without having to worry about whether I was going to press the wrong key and lose all my work. ‘Windows’ seemed scarily different. I had to learn new commands, and I had all these silly menus to deal with. The way I saw it, it took me longer to work my way down a menu than just to simply press one key to save my work, another to spell-check it and so on. But I had to change because you simply couldn’t buy programmes for the old system anymore because no one was using it. So with much muttering and grumbling under my breath, I changed my computer. Yet I was amazed to discover that as I got used to ‘Window’s, I could do a lot more with it than I could ever do with the old system. With DOS, you either knew the commands or you didn’t, and if you didn’t, then there was no point trying things and hoping they’d work. With ‘Windows”, You could experiment more, because with the help of the menus you had a better idea of what you were trying.

Sometimes it’s like that with God. He calls us to try something new, and even though it seems frightening and baffling at first and we might be thinking: ‘But I preferred the old way. What’s the point in changing when I was happy with how things were before?’, if the changes, new ideas or new methods are truly of God and they’ve been tried and tested to ensure that they’re in-line with what’s written in his Word, then we’ll usually discover in time that things have improved. it’s true that God never changes. His word tells us he’s the same yesterday, today and forever, but the world around us is changing all the time, whether we like it or not. What was modern ten or twenty years ago is considered old-fashioned today, and the more time passes, the more quickly developments seem to occur. I believe that our Lord understands the modern world in which we live a lot better than some of his followers do. He might not necessarily like a lot of what’s going on, but he understands what makes people tick, and I believe that if we open ourselves up to the new and creative things he wants us to do, then he will show us exactly how we can reach the society in which we live with the gospel.

In Lamentations chapter 3 verses 22 and 23, we read: “Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

We serve a compassionate God, and his compassion for us never runs out. While pondering this, I decided to look up the word ‘Compassion’ in the thesaurus. I discovered that ‘Sympathy, empathy, concern, kindness, consideration and care’ are all words that can be used in place of compassion, and it said that the antonym of compassion is ‘Coldness’. Our God is compassionate, sympathetic, … and so many other things, but he is never cold.

Furthermore, the compassion the Lord has for us is renewed every morning. In contrast, We can sometimes get fed up with people when they try our patience, or they keep letting us down. There is a tendency toward losing our compassion toward them. We stop being as kind and thoughtful as we would otherwise have been, and we say things like: ‘Well, I gave them enough chances. I’m not gonna let them carry on using me as a doormat.’ Imagine if God did that to us! Imagine if one morning he looked down on me and said: ‘Sorry, Alex, but you’ve used up all your chances. I’ve forgiven and forgiven you, and yet you’ve carried on sinning, and what’s more, you never seem to learn from your mistakes. Sorry, but I can’t take anymore. You’re using up all my energy, and from now on I’m going to find someone more deserving to give it to.’ God doesn’t do that, because his compassions never fail. He renews them every morning, as soon as we open our eyes and start facing the new day. Even though he knows beforehand that we’re going to sin and need forgiveness, he is there waiting to be compassionate, sympathetic, kind and caring. So we can go into this new year with the assurance that we serve a compassionate God – that he is going to be with us every step of the way, and that his care for us will never run out, no matter what we do. Of course, we can’t use this as an excuse to do the things that we know won’t please him. He calls us to a holy life, but isn’t it comforting to know that his compassions never fail.