New Things – New Methods

Pray with me this morning, Father, we just want to take a breath and just tell you how

thankful we are.

Lord, despite all that goes on out in the world and in our lives and the situations and circumstances

that we deal with, God, we are very thankful that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us

enough to overlook and forgive the many, many sins that we've committed against you.

And Lord, as we come here this morning, if we've came for any other reason other than

bringing glory and honor to the name of Jesus Christ, I pray that you would just check our

hearts right now in this moment and help us to realize that we exist to glorify Jesus Christ.

Lord, I know that life is hard.

I know that there are many people in this room who are going through struggles physically,

spiritually, emotionally.

Lord, there are issues, there are circumstances that are so difficult that are just overwhelming.

And while we acknowledge we need your hand to be in our lives and to guide us and direct

us, Lord, we come before you in these moments to lift the name of Jesus high.

And Lord, we believe that as we lift the name of Jesus, that you'll take care of the rest.

Lord, if we fulfill our purpose of bringing you praise and honor and glory, that you'll

deal with the rest.

So God, I pray this morning that if there is a weight, a burden, something on us that

we cannot carry, that God, we would not try to carry it, but Lord, we would just praise

you and we would glorify you, and that we would just trust in you to do what we can

do, to think about a God who speaks and the wind and the waves obey your voice.

Lord, anything that you do, anything that you want can be done.

So we humble ourselves before you today.

As always, we pray for our brothers and sisters who aren't able to be here, for the ones

who are bound in their homes, for the ones who are traveling, for the ones who are still

receiving healthcare, Lord, we pray for all these people.

And we ask that your Holy Spirit would be with them this morning as we ask for you to

be with us right now.

Father, we give this time to you, this is yours, we are your people, this is your church,

and I pray that all that we do this morning will be pleasing and honoring to you.

Will we love you, we thank you, and we ask all this in the precious and holy name of

Jesus Christ.

And all his people said, amen, you may be seated.

It's great to see you guys again this morning.

As you know, we have been talking about this amazing and perfect and unchanging God who

loves to do new things.

So we've talked about how God makes us into new creations.

He likes to take us, even though we were made beautifully and wonderfully made, that we kind

of messed it up with sin.

And so God takes us and he makes us into new creations for the specific purpose of bringing

glory and honor to him.

Last week we talked about how God loves to forge new paths.

He loves to create new ways for his people to move forward.

While we benefit from all of these things and all of those paths, he creates those new

paths so that one day we will be able to bring glory and honor to him.

And as we talk today, we're going to be talking about how God uses new methods, which is

quite interesting because when you read the Bible and you go through and you talk about

all of the wonderful things that God has done from Genesis all the way through the New

Testament and even leading into Revelation, everything that God does, everything that

he is doing, it's new.

He does new, wonderful, amazing things, and we're just going to track through this a

little bit today.

So our focus passage is going to be in Hebrews chapter one, verses one through four.

If you're not familiar with the book of Hebrews, this is a great passage.

It's a very interesting book because it's one of the only books in all the Bible that

we don't know who wrote it.

There's a lot of speculations.

There's a lot of assumptions and theories, but we really just don't know who authored

it. But it's a wonderful book, very inspired passage of scripture.

I mean, it was so obviously inspired that they were willing to canonize it as part

of scripture without knowing who the actual author was.

But in the book of Hebrews, it's written to Jewish people who had professed Jesus

Christ as Lord and Savior.

So they had received salvation.

They had placed their faith in Jesus Christ and acknowledged him as the Messiah.

But as time progressed in the early church, persecution was real and it was heavy.

And a lot of these Jewish people who had professed faith in Jesus Christ, they

actually experienced more persecution initially than anyone else because the Jewish

people were very intent on making sure that the Messiah was who they thought that

he should be.

And so you have the majority of people who rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

We forget that a lot of times, but in the beginning, the majority of people

rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

There were a few who did.

And what happened is, is that these Jewish people began to ostracize and they began

to to go against and basically boycott the Jewish people who had professed Jesus

as the Messiah.

They they they they no longer associated with them.

They wouldn't sell them anything.

They wouldn't buy anything from them.

It was they were just basically outcast from their families.

And so this made life very hard for these early Christians who were Jewish because

they were being cast out and pushed aside from their families.

And as it made life very hard, what happened was is that this persecution

caused many of them to denounce Jesus as the Messiah, as Lord and Savior.

And they returned back to the Old Testament laws in the way of doing things.

And we know that there's no salvation in anyone or anything other than Jesus Christ.

He is the only one through whom which we are saved.

And so if we deny faith in Christ, which is the only thing that saves us.

We don't have salvation.

And so this is what the author of Hebrews is communicating to these Jewish people.

And in Hebrews chapter one, verses one to four, we're just going to talk a little bit

about this because the author does this great job of just kind of tracking back

through of all the wonderful things that God did, all the wonderful different things

that God did, and then how he used Jesus to kind of fulfill all these things.

But we're just going to read these first four verses.

Read with me Hebrews one, verses one to four.

As we talk about Jesus Christ being God's son.

So it says, long ago, God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets.

And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his son.

God promised everything to the son as an inheritance and through the son, he created the universe.

The son radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God.

And he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command.

Notice this, that even as the author of Hebrews is talking about Jesus, what did Jesus do?

He brought glory and honor to God.

He radiated God's glory.

And he sustained everything by the mighty power of God's command.

Continuing on, it says, when he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.

This shows that the son is far greater than the angels, just as the name of God gave, just as the name God gave him is greater than their names.

And so you see in this passage, the author is making this very strong case that Jesus, in fact, is the Messiah.

Everything that he did was done to fulfill the law, fulfill everything that God had been doing up to this point.

Although it was quite different than they had experienced or realized.

So point number one this morning, as we talk about God working and moving and using new methods to bring about his will

and to fulfill his plan, we have to realize and know how God has moved in the past.

This is so important for us as believers to understand who our God is.

You know, one of the things that we forget a lot of times is that the fact that Jesus Christ, who is God's son, who is God,

came in the flesh and taught the people of Israel, Jesus revealed more of what we know about God than the people of Israel ever knew about God before.

He revealed God to us in such a clear and beautiful way, which was so different than people had ever experienced before.

And we get most of our knowledge about God from Christ, from New Testament scripture, which is very unique.

We don't think about that a lot, but he revealed who God was.

God wants us to know. God has given us his word.

He has given us scripture to know all the things that he has done from the very beginning,

leading up to what's coming to the end. He wants you to know.

God does not try to hide anything from us. I think that's one of the things we forget a lot of times.

We feel like God's just like little ninja, and he's trying to be incognito, and he don't want you to see and know what he's doing.

He's just trying to pull all these little magic tricks behind your back so you don't know what's going on.

God works and moves, and he is very willing to reveal himself to people who want to see what he's doing.

So if you want to see what God's doing, if you want to be in tune with his will,

he will very much reveal it to you, but you have to seek it.

He's not just going to show it to everybody, because our relationship with him is based

completely off of faith, of believing, of seeking him. We got to remember that.

It's imperative as Christians that we know and understand as much about God,

and all the things that God has done in the past leading up to now,

so that we understand what God wants to do now and lead into the future.

And there's a few reasons. One of the first reasons is if we're familiar with God's movements,

we can give him credit where credit's due. If we're familiar with God's movements,

we can give him credit where credit is due. We've said it over and over again, we breathe,

we exist. Your purpose in life is to glorify God. You are not created to be a YouTuber

or a video gamer or a professional athlete or a music artist or whatever, a doctor.

That's not what God created you for. God gave you life. He gave you breath

to bring glory and honor to him. That's why you can achieve all the goals in the world.

You can make all the money in the world. You can get all the fame in the world,

and you'll never be happy and satisfied because you won't fulfill your purpose.

Your purpose, your reason for existing is to glorify and bring honor and glory to God.

If we know what God's done, if we know what God is doing, then we can give the proper credit

and honor and glory to him. We give the credit where the credit is due. Second thing is,

is that if we're familiar with God's methods and movements,

we will see the incredible diversity of those methods. Now, we're going to talk about that

a little bit more here in a second, but everything that God has done from Genesis

all the way through Revelation is amazingly powerful, awesome, incredible, and absolutely

unique. God very rarely duplicates anything that he's done before, and we're going to see that

in a second. It's very diverse. He works and moves in different ways, in different times,

in different people, and everything that we see, people generally have a very difficult time

of accepting it and understanding it while it's going on. We're going to talk about that

some more here in a second. But it's important to know that while God does very different things,

there are some small consistencies and signatures of God in the midst of all those things that

we can identify that will help us know maybe what God's doing right now, so that we can

be a part of it, and what God will do in the future, so that we can be a part of it.

The third thing is that it prepares us to be receptive of God's methods and movements,

both in the present and in the future. How many of you want to be here tomorrow?

Not at church, alive. How many of you want to be alive tomorrow?

I don't want to do this many funerals.

I hope you want to be alive tomorrow. I hope you want to be alive next week,

next month, next year. And to know that your purpose for existing, for being here one more day,

being here one more week, being here one more month, one more year, is to glorify and honor God.

And if we want to do that and do that well, we need to know what God is currently doing in this

moment. And we need to kind of have an idea and maybe an understanding and an open mind about

what God is going to do tomorrow and next week, next month, next year. That's difficult. I don't

know about y'all. I'm not a fortune teller. I can't see the future. And so we have to constantly

seek the face of God to kind of be in tune with that, to know what God is wanting to do.

So let's look at some major differences in how God has moved in the past throughout scripture.

Let's do that real quick. One of the first things I notice in the Bible is,

is the flood, the great flood of Noah. How many times did God do that?

Thankfully, right? I mean, this past year, this past fall when Helene hit,

there was a lot of rain, a lot of wind. It was pretty devastating. It was quite amazing at the

power of God in that storm, which is microscopic compared to what he did in the great flood that

we see in Genesis six. And God only did that one time, thankfully. And he promised that he would

never do it again. This amazing, mighty, powerful act of God one time. And he said,

I'll never do it again. And in this, what's amazing is, is that as we work and move in

our world today and you're dealing with apologetics and this idea of defending our faith and

defending the reliability and the truthfulness of God's word, is that we see that the evidence of

a global flood is one of the key indicators that scientists and geologists are continuing to see

and know and understand. It reveals more and more and more that there was a global flood

and that God's word is true. It's one of the biggest things that people doubted as being this

myth, this impossible thing that could never happen. And yet we're seeing more and more

evidence of it every single day as people study and they do research. It's an amazing thing one

time. Another thing is the calling of Abraham. Genesis 12, this basically like sets the stage

for scripture to lead into the rest of the Bible as a calling of one man. Never again

did God reach out to one man and call him and say, I'm going to restore and save the entire world

through you and your descendants. Never happened again. Third thing was the Exodus and Moses.

We talked about this last week and the week before. This is the pinnacle of the people

of Israel. This is like the most amazing time of their lives. God worked and moved among them

with the 10 plagues. He brought them out of Egypt. He calls the Egyptians to just give them

their wealth as they were leaving. He parted the Red Sea. He guided them through the wilderness.

All this wonderful stuff and he never did any of it twice.

The 10 plagues happened once. The partying of the Red Sea happened once. It's never happened again.

He led them for a season through the wilderness and a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of

fire by night. He never has done that again. What God does is very different and very appropriate

and very specific for a time and for a people, but very rarely does he ever duplicate anything.

You look at the time of the judges and the kings and the prophets.

These are three very different times. God used very different people to lead the nation of Israel

and yet you read scripture and there's a very distinct time of the judges and then it comes

to an end with the book of Samuel and Samuel ushers in this time of the kings and then the

time of the kings comes and then as the kings is coming to an end, the prophets come about

and God speaks in powerful ways through all of these prophets, but it stops and then he

doesn't use those anymore and he goes to different things. Then he goes to the exile as he punishes

the people of Israel. Then he sends the people back to Jerusalem and he rebuilds Jerusalem and

he rebuilds the temple. How amazing is it that although there are people, God's people back in

Israel now and in Jerusalem, they have not been able to rebuild the temple. It's amazing that

what God sets up and what he allows to happen in one time, but then in another, it doesn't happen.

The silent years, around 400 years between the last writings of the Old Testament

and the angel of the Lord visiting Zachariah in the temple telling him that John the Baptist is

going to be born because the Messiah is about to come. It was the first time in 400 years

that they had received a message from the Lord. That silence right before the storm before the

most amazing thing happens and it's never happened again, but then Jesus comes. God sends his Savior

into the world. His Messiah has happened once. Pentecost comes and the Holy Spirit comes and

while you may have felt the Holy Spirit move and work in your life at times and you may have

been part of services or in a place and you've seen the Spirit of God move, but never again has

it happened like it did on the day of Pentecost. Very unique, very specific, had a purpose for that

time with those people. Same thing with the birth of the church. The way the church was

birthed into existence was very unique in that moment and what we have at church today is very

different than what it was even 50 years ago and what we do today will be very different

than what church will do 50 years from now. It's all different and it's not bad because what

God does and how God moves is right and it's perfect and it's appropriate for the time and

it's good for the people and it's important for us as followers of Christ to see how differently

God works and moves throughout time with different people in different places using amazing

situations and circumstances but all leading to the same place, leading to the same goal

and that's one of the things we need to be aware of. So point number two,

I want you to see this morning how Christ was a drastic method. You know we forget this a lot

of times but one of the most fascinating things about the gospels for me is how difficult it

was for most people who saw Jesus, who heard Jesus, who saw the miracles to trust and believe

that he was the Messiah. Very few people accepted Jesus as the Messiah after they saw him and

heard him. The religious leaders who should have known what they were looking for more than anyone

else denied him the most and the people, the normal people who loved him and flocked to him

and came to him and was healed by him, even most of them rejected him as well. Now if you were

here was they not we were getting some overlap in this because we were talking about a lot of things

from Mark chapter 2 but in John 12 verse 37 John records but despite all of the miraculous

Mark 2 · chapter mention John 12:37

signs Jesus had done most of the people still did not believe in him. How amazing is it

that for God's own people to see his one and only son the Messiah, to see him person to person,

face to face, hear his voice, see the miracles, experience everything and most people still did

not believe in him. What makes us think that we as people who claim to know God

would truly know and be in tune with what God's doing in this moment if the people saw Jesus

face to face and heard him with their own ears and saw him with their own eyes and still refused

to accept God's method in that moment in that time. I want to say that again

if Jesus who was God was so difficult for people to accept and believe then

why would we think that any method God used for his will would be easy for us to accept now?

The truth is is that we all claim to be followers of Christ, we all claim to be God's children

but we need to be

clear about the simple fact that we are human beings. His ways are higher than our ways,

his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, there are things that God does and things that God

sees that we can never imagine and because of that we have to be really careful.

You look back at Noah's flood when Noah was building that arc

I guarantee you at least one person walked by and said what you doing there Noah?

It's a nice boat you got. How many people repented? How many people got on the boat with Noah

besides his family whom God appointed before he told him to begin building an arc? Zero.

Nobody believed, nobody repented and his God is guiding Israel through the wilderness

and his presence is literally among them like they saw his presence in cloud and in fire and they

saw him descend on the mountain and they were so terrified that they refused to even speak with him

they sent Moses up the mountain because he said nope we don't want no part of that that's too

much for us. Moses you go up there and you talk to him like we're scared. You know how many of those

people who got to experience the very presence of God got to cross through the threshold and go

to the promised land? Two and Moses was not one of them. Israel fell into sin constantly.

Do you know how many times they ever listened to the prophets?

Less than a handful of times. You know what they did to most of the prophets?

They killed them. I forget which prophet it was but it may have been Isaiah or Elijah I can't

remember but he's up on the mountain he's talking with God and he's done he's like God I'm ready to

they've killed all the other prophets I'm the only one left

and all the people who claim that they're God's children killed all the people who are delivering

his messages. What makes us think that we would know God's voice if we heard it with our own ears?

Jesus came this drastic incredible in so many ways at the beginning of Mark it's talking about

how he spoke with boldness how it was powerful and the people loved it was so different it was

fresh it was new and they flocked to him like he spoke with boldness he spoke with authority

he did things they'd never seen before and yet in chapter two there are people who come in and

asking him Jesus why are you and your disciples not fasting and praying like John the Baptist and

his disciples and the other religious leaders and their disciples because Jesus came and Jesus was

going to people's homes notorious sinners they were having these parties inviting all their

sinful friends Jesus was drinking wine with them he wasn't getting drunk but he was drinking

he was eating food and remember that there was times where people accused him of being a glutton and a

drunkard the religious leaders couldn't stand the fact that they were doing all these things and

yet Jesus was doing something totally different they had a really hard time understanding

what's going on with this guy even John the Baptist who identified him did behold the lamb

of God the man that I'm not worthy to untie the straps of his sandals

we see in the gospel of Matthew that was actually his disciples that went and asked Jesus

why don't you fast and pray like we do

and even when John the Baptist is in prison he sends his own disciples to Jesus to say

are you the messiah he had identified him as the lamb of God and yet towards the end

when he's sitting in prison he knows that his life is coming to an end he's like okay

are you really the one is this worth me rotting in this prison and dying for

are you really the one even in that moment he was finding it hard to believe and accept

because Jesus was doing things that no one understood no one no one could see why no

one could understand how God would operate and move so differently in this moment

and yet the one that everyone rejected is the one that we claim to believe in

so this morning

don't be surprised if you find yourself at times in life where you're questioning man

I don't know whether or not this is right I don't know whether or not this is wrong

I mean I see this and I see this but there's things about it that don't feel right there's

things about it that feel wrong and I don't really know what to do because we're humans

and I promise you this morning that if you don't think that the people who saw Jesus with their

eyes and heard him with their own ears had a difficult time discerning the method of God

in that moment in that time don't think for one second that we're going to have it all figured

out in our day and our time because everything that you see in scripture even with Jesus

the people who claim to know God the most were the ones who struggled

with accepting his methods more than anyone else

so point number three prayerfully consider all and I say this carefully and I'm not telling you

this morning that you need to be willing to accept every single little thing that comes across your

plate if you love Jesus if you're reading his word there are going to be very specific things

that are already laid out and determined in his word you know that somebody puts that on your plate

it's poison you can go ahead and kick it some things you don't have to pray and wonder about

you can go ahead and push that off to the side and throw it away

but if there's things that you're like uh I don't know

I don't know how I feel about that

yeah everything about me it looks gross reach down and smell it a little bit you ever done that

one of the things that I've learned in the 21 years that I've served in church

is that I don't know as much as I like to think I do

there's been many times that I have accepted and supported things that I thought were right

that I thought were of the Lord that I come to find out later that were not

very useful or were just wrong in general and I didn't realize it at the time

there were things that I rejected in the past that I see now that were actually probably of

the Lord and I rejected him because I didn't see it or I didn't feel it in the moment

and I've had to repent of things like that and I think as followers we need to be very careful

as we approach serving the Lord and honoring him and bringing glory and honored his name and

serving in the church and ministering to one another as believers that we have to be very

careful and prayerfully consider many things as we walk through this sinful world

because as people we can be blinded with human eyes with human expectations with human thoughts

and one of the things we talked about last week is having this understanding of who we

think God is and then taking that box and putting God in it and saying well he can't

operate outside of my box of understanding and that's not the God that we serve he'll never

fit in a box he's so much greater so much higher than we are and as we talk about this we have to

prayerfully consider everything in john chapter seven verses 12 through 13 the gospel of john

does an amazing job of kind of giving us it's very different and realistic insight into what's

going on it says there was a lot of grumbling about him that's Jesus a lot of grumblings about

Jesus among the crowds some argued he's a good man but others said he's nothing but a fraud who

deceives the people can you imagine how confused and misled someone must have been to see Jesus

and all the things that he did things that we would do anything to be able to see with our own

eyes and hear with our own ears and they called him a fraud and a deceiver and in verse 13 it says

but no one had the courage to speak favorably about him in public

for they were afraid of getting in trouble with the jewish leaders you know we think about Jesus

moving through this world like he was just like it was just apple pie and honey man like he just

he just glided you know he walked on water he got to do all this cool stuff he was he was famous he

had all these people chasing after him and yet everywhere Jesus went everything he did he had

people opposing him he had religious leaders who were constantly grilling him and checking him

and questioning him on every single thing that he did in three years of his ministry

and then you have all these people who are following him around even his own disciples

who got the greatest explanations the behind the scenes footage everything

firsthand and they still struggled to believe that he was who he said he was

we're not as good at identifying God and his plans or his methods as we would like to think that we

are James chapter one verse five says if you need wisdom ask our generous God and he will give it to

you he will not rebuke you for asking i think it's important that as we follow Christ as we say God

i want to be a part of your plans i want to serve you i want to live for you i want to do this

that we are very adamant about God show me teach me help me to see where you're moving help me to

be a part of your plan i don't need to go and start something brand new or do something that

i want to do i just want to do what you want me to do i want to be where you want me to be

i want to be a part of what it is that you're doing show me teach me guide me and if we ask

him he won't rebuke us and i think a lot of it has to do with the attitude of our hearts

whenever we approach God and ask him about things you know many times the religious leaders approached

Jesus because they were trying to trap him they were trying to catch him and trick him into saying

something so they could condemn him and Jesus always like he gave it right back to him

but then whenever the disciples in mark two come up and they say Jesus why don't you fast and

pray like we do Jesus didn't get mad at him he didn't fuss at him he didn't chastise them

for not understanding why he gave them a wonderful explanation as to this is why i don't fast and

pray and why my disciples aren't fasting and praying right now but one day i'm going to be

taken away from them and then they'll fast and pray with you and you see it from acts all the

way through the rest of the new testament the disciples and the church they are fasting and

praying regularly because the time had come for them to do so there's always a rhyme and a reason

and in acts chapter five verses 38 through 39 as Peter and the other apostles are arrested and

they're being questioned before the Sanhedrin and they give these bold amazing responses even

though they're not educated even though they're not trained men the spirit is moving in them

and the religious leaders send them out so they can talk among themselves and there's this very wise

Pharisee named Gamaliel who gives this response to the rest of the religious leaders

and he says so my advice is leave these men alone let them go if they are planning and doing

these things merely on their own it will soon be overthrown but if it is from God

you will not be able to overthrow them you may even find yourselves fighting against God

one of the worst things that we could ever do is claim that we belong to Jesus Christ

and find ourselves fighting and resisting his plans and his methods his purpose and his goals

if what we're supposed to be doing is bringing glory and honor to his name we need to be a part

of that and not fighting against it and what we find is God uses all these different methods

and moves and all these wonderful and amazing different ways all throughout scripture is that

there are always people who claim to belong to God who find themselves fighting against him

every step of the way and it's always God's people who fight against him more than anyone

else in the world that's what we have to be aware of that's what we need to be afraid of

and last point point number four is God's methods lead to the same thing

as we said us being new creations it leads to glorifying Jesus Christ

God's paths while they all may be different for each individual person and God creates a new path

for your life and calls you to go down a new path at different times of your life they all lead

to the same place to the glorification of Jesus Christ in our lives and in eternity

and when you look at God's methods everything that he's done from creation to the flood to the call

of Abraham to the exodus to crossing into the promised land from the judges from the kings

from the prophets 400 years of silence to the coming of Jesus to the Holy Spirit to the church

it all leads to eternity with Jesus Christ it all leads to the same exact place

and this morning you may find yourself we may find ourselves looking back and saying man I wish

God would do that again I wish God would move this way again I wish God would speak that way

again and it's not a bad thing to maybe desire that but it would be very harmful for us to

neglect the idea that God is here and now and he is moving our passage last week said

I'm about to do a new thing see I've already begun do you not see it

God's methods are already happening around us the question is whether or not we care enough

to ask God to open up our eyes and to see it so that you and I can be a part of it let's pray

together father God thank you for the opportunity to be in your house today to serve you

to honor you in the call on the name of Jesus I pray that in our lives and every aspect that

we would seek you for wisdom and understanding that we would ask you to open up our hearts

and minds and Lord we would be willing to be humble and submissive to whatever your will

and your way is for us to move forward help us all to just simply be a part of what it is

that you want to do and to be satisfied in that knowing that one day we'll get to spend eternity

with you because it's all leading to you will we love you we thank you we ask all this in Jesus name

amen