Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Ask people: What are your hopes and goals for 2020?

Share some of my own.

Reflection

The Bible’s focus on Newness

But why are we as a culture so obsessed with the new?

Are we afraid of the old?

Do we think old means bad?

Why are we as a church called “Renew?”

Is this just a form of consumerism, like our society where we despise perfectly good old stuff and will rush out to buy new stuff?

Let’s quickly look at the thread of “new” throughout the Bible, and try to get a handle on a healthy understanding of the relationship between the old and the new.

The Bible starts with God’s promise of deliverance through Eve’s “seed” (a new person) in

This promise is culminated in the New Covenant that Jeremiah prophecies about in

This covenant is finally realised when Jesus comes.

Jesus makes this clear to his disciples when sharing his last supper with them, as we have remembered today in communion:

Jesus emphasizes just how incompatible the new covenant is with our old ways of life with the parables of new clothing and wineskins:

The New Covenant won’t fit into old religious practices!

And that’s still true—the ancient human religious practices of trying to earn our way to God via various sacrifices (Jesus is specifically addressing fasting in this passage in Matthew) no longer work.

In fact, they never have!

Jesus explains that, rather than trying to earn our way to God—the old religious approach—we must be born anew by the Holy Spirit:

We reflect this teaching of Jesus in our own Christian practices, with Baptism expressing our newness of life, as Paul explains in

In fact, Christ’s work on the cross, dying for us and rising again to new life, is so powerful that, when we claim it as our own by faith in him, it completely renews us.

Paul explains our new state as being a “new creation.”

Of course, while we are a new creation, we have not yet completed our renewal.

The completely renewed creation is yet to come, and when it does, God will make all things new

But why new?

So, from that brief tour, you can see that the Bible has a very strong theme of newness running through it, can’t you?

But why is it so obsessed with newness?

Any ideas?

That’s right, because the old has been corrupted: the promise of the new seed that would destroy Satan in Gen 3 is given in the context of the fall, when Adam and Eve rebelled against God and messed up the whole world.

The promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah is given in the context of

And Paul’s ideas of the new creation stand as a solution to his understanding of the old creation taken from the Old Testament, when he writes in

Paul understands that the old has been irrevocably corrupted, and so the only solution is to completely renew it.

A good illustration of this need for complete renewal is from the Bible itself, one of the Old Testament laws, on contaminated clothing.

You see, mildew or mould sinks its hyphae, the tiny little threads, deep into a porous material like cloth or leather, so if a discolouration really is mould or mildew (that is, the spot grows), the only thing to do is to burn the piece and start with a new one.

Every human being is like that cloth.

The mould of sin has sunk its hyphae deep into our hearts.

Our hearts cannot be cleaned except by destruction!

Thank God that the destruction is poured out on Jesus, on the cross, so that our hearts can die and be remade as new hearts by the power of Jesus blood!

We don’t need to be discarded and replaced if we accept the power of Jesus’ blood to wash us clean from sin.

And we await the completion of that destruction and renewal at the end of time.

Contrast culture’s old/new with Christianity’s old/new

So, let’s go back to our thoughts about how our culture here in Australia thinks about old and new.

I would suggest that in our culture, the difference between old and new is simply based on novelty.

New things are not necessarily better than the old, they are just different.

In our culture’s constant search for answers to our fears, failures, pains, yearnings, and hopes, we desperately try new thing after new thing.

But for Christians we have recognised the corruption and wickedness of our old self, and we understand the purity, beauty and goodness of God’s new creation.

We are not merely seeking novelty—throwing away our boring, old clothes to buy the latest fashions—we are discarding our rotten food to buy fresh, new, healthy food.

Our name, Renew, reminds us that God has made a way to bring new life to the walking dead!

New plans

So now, with that understanding of God’s new: replacing the corrupted old with the purified new, I would like you to spend a few minutes talking about your hopes and goals for the year with your neighbours.