If you or I put our faith in Jesus Christ then we are a new creation – in God’s sight, in God’s heart and in actuality, we become a new creation.

The Wonder of Creation

It is great to be with you again this week on Christianityworks and we are starting a new series on the program called “God is a God of New Beginnings”. Now I’m not sure how it works for you in your life but as we trundle through life we can end up feeling as through it’s the ‘same old, same old’. Now the humdrum of life – it’s a grind – we get up in the morning, we do the same thing, nothing ever changes and you get to a point in life where you ask yourself, ‘Well, what is the point? Why am I doing this, why are things always the same?” And on top of that so many people feel as though they are held back by their past or even the present.

You know, our past as a teenager, as a child, can affect our self-esteem. There are so many people walking around this planet who have low self-esteem because of what they went through in their lives when they were younger. Some people have been abused; others are held back by a character flaw. You know, maybe you have got anger or maybe you’ve got fear and they’re things that we can’t seem to explain inside of us, sometimes we are aware of them and sometimes we’re not.

I remember I was talking to a man once and he suffered from anger and it just seemed that he couldn’t do anything about it. Have you ever felt that? Were you feeling powerless to change that thing that’s robbing you of life? And then on top of that, sometimes we have bad relationships, you know, between a husband and wife – there’s strife and the tension and they’re just not getting on and they’re pulling further and further apart – or people at work who are undermining us. All those things on top of the humdrum of life end up feeling like a straight-jacket. It’s like we’re being robbed of the life that we think we should be living.

Does that all make sense to you or is it just me? I think this is something, as I talk to people; as I travel around and sit with them at barbeques and meet with them, this is something that comes through to me time and time again. And for me, this time of the year is a great time for discovering that God is a God of new beginnings. When we feel as though nothing is ever going to change, God is hatching a plan. When we feel that it’s going to be the same old, same old, same old, same old grind, for the rest of our days, God is planning a new thing, because God is the God of new beginnings.

Have a listen to this passage – if you have a Bible, grab one and open it at Ecclesiastes chapter 1. Ecclesiastes was written by King Solomon who is recognised, still today, as one of the wisest men that ever walked the planet and he begins this Book, Ecclesiastes, which is really a book of wisdom. It’s him as an older man sharing his wisdom of life with younger men, presumably his sons amongst them and he starts it off by saying this: “Meaningless, meaningless,” he cried, “utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless. What does a man gain from all his labour which he toils under the sun? Generations come, generations go but the earth remains for ever. The sun rises, the sun sets and it hurries back round to where it rises again. The wind blows to the south, the wind blows to the north and round and round it goes and ever returning on its course. All the streams flow into the sea yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, they return again. All things are wearisome. More than one can say, the eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There’s nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say: “Look there is something new.” It was there long ago; it was there before time began. There is no remembrance of men of old and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.”

Isn’t that a sad kind of commentary on life? And really what Solomon is saying is: ‘What’s the point; it’s just the same old, same old, over and over and over again. We all go through that and it’s really sad to me to see people’s lives slipping away under that yolk; under that burden; under that sense of everything is utterly meaningless. Trapped by our past, trapped by our circumstances; trapped by our relationships. Let me ask you a question – in your life, how is that playing itself out? In your life, here and now today, are you being robbed of the present and the future and if so, how are you being robbed? What are the things – are there things in your past – are there circumstances in relationships – is it money worries – is it the marriage – is it the kids – what are the things that are draining you of your life? What are the things that are taking away that life? You know, I lived the first thirty six years of my life that way – always waiting for the next thing; always saying: ’well, when I was a school I was waiting to leave school; when I was at university, I couldn’t wait till I graduated; when I was single I wanted to be married; when I had one good job I wanted the next promotion or the next move or the next job – never satisfied; never content; always trapped and trying to escape. Sometimes we blame the past, other times we blame the present but it’s always someone else’s fault or my circumstances fault. And ultimately, I believe we need to get to a point in life where we say: “Enough, that’s it! I want to live life – a life of purpose; a life of satisfaction.”

Can I tell you – today, I live life with a peace and contentment and a purpose. Look, I still look forward – I always will; it’s my nature; I’m someone who plans; I’m striving for the next thing, but here and now, today, I have joy, I have satisfaction, I have purpose, I have contentment. I’m going to enjoy today and today is maybe the day that we need to discover that God is a God of new beginnings; beginnings full of contentment; beginnings full of joy and peace. We’ll have a look at what that means next.

Born Again from Above

We are talking today on the program about the fact that God is a God of new beginnings and the greatest new beginning that we see in the Bible is in Genesis chapter 1. Have you got one? Open it up, have a look. “In the beginning God created,” what? Something utterly awesome – let’s have a read. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters and God said: “Let there be light” and there was light and God saw that the light was good and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness He called ‘night’. And there was evening and there was morning on the first day. And God said: “Let there be an expanse between the waters, to separate the water from the water“, so God made an expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it and it was so. God called the expanse ‘the sky’ and there was evening and there was morning, on the second day. And God said: “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let day ground appear,” and it was so. God called the dry ground ‘land’ and gathered the waters and He called them ‘seas’ and God saw that it was good.

Then God said: “Let the land produce vegetation – seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seeds in it according to their various kinds” and it was so, and the land produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their kind and trees bearing fruit, with a seed and God saw that it was good and there was evening and there was morning on the third day. And God said: “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night and let them serve as signs to mark out the seasons and the days and the years and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth” and it was so. Now God made two great lights – the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars and God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth – to govern the day and the night, to separate light from darkness, and God saw that it was really good. And there was evening and morning on the fourth day. And God said: “Let the water teem with living creatures and let the birds fly above the earth, across the expanse of the sky.” So God created creatures, creatures of the sea, every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kind and every winged bird according to it’s kind and God saw that it was good and God blessed them and said: “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water with the seas and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning on the fifth day.

And the Lord said: “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds – livestock and creatures and things that move on the ground, wild animals” and it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds and all the creatures that move along the ground and God saw that it was good. Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness let them rule of the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in His own image – in the image of God, God created them male and female, He created them. And God said to man: “Be fruitful and increase in number and then God said: “I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth, every tree that has fruit with seed in it, they’ll be yours and all the beasts of the earth, all the birds of the air, all the creatures that move on the ground, everything that has breath of life in it, I give you every green plant for food. And God saw all that He made and it was very good. Then there was evening and there was morning on the sixth day. “

God saw all these things, you know, before He started, there was nothing. We take a night and day, seasons, years, trees, birds, air – we take all that for granted. We take it for granted that there’s land and there’s water. We take it for granted there is darkness and light, but in the beginning there was just darkness and God created light. God took chaos and created order; not boring boxed-up order, no not that – variety, seasons, oceans, countries, teeming with life, crazy things that fly, things that swim, things that live on the ground. He put life into creation and on top of all of that; He put you and me there in His image. And then He gives us everything – He creates all of this and then He says: “Go for it, it’s yours!” I mean, it’s unreal!

What does that tell you about God? God is a creative God, God is a God who creates a universe teeming with life and variety and abundance – an expanse so great, we can’t even see it or comprehend it. Things so complex, our scientists really only scratch the surface in understanding it, but on top of that He gives it to us to use, to bless us. God is a God of new beginnings, radical, huge, intricate, wondrous, surprising, powerful – galaxies so vast and complex, why bother? Fish hidden in the deep that we haven’t even discovered yet, why bother?

I love to look at God’s creation. I watch the shows on TV about the galaxies and the animals and the volcano’s and the weather and all that stuff because it says to me, ‘God is a God of outrageously new beginnings’. ‘Well, Berni, what does that mean to me here and now?’ It not an unreasonable question, it’s a good question actually. Here we are in our circumstances, the things that trap us; the things that seem so huge and so powerful – that difficult relationship in a marriage, that difficult situation at work, that critical financial situation that seems so big and so powerful, a deep sense of fear or inadequacy that no one can ever change me. We make the same mistakes over and over again. I know I talk too much and bore people still, nothing changes me.

I was talking to a man the other day and he said: “I know that I have this problem but nothing ever changes,” and we think that those circumstances are so big, and so powerful and so immovable that we live our lives believing that nothing and nobody can ever or will ever change them, right? Wrong, because when we look at creation, what we know is that our God is a God of new beginnings – so powerful, so vast, so beautiful, and so abundant – that words just can’t describe them. What do we think? Do we think He can create all that but not help us? Wake up!

Paul writes in Second Corinthians 5:17: “If anyone is in Christ Jesus then they are a new creation. Old things have passed away and behold, all things are new.” Wow! I think we need to unpack that, don’t you?

Old Things Have Passed Away

Today we are starting a new series – a series that I’ve called: ‘God is a God of new beginnings.’ Second Corinthians 5:17 says this: “If anyone is in Christ Jesus then they are a new creation; old things have passed away and behold, all things are new.” New creation, what is that? Gee, where have we just read about creation, where have we seen that before? Radical, huge, intricate, wondrous, surprising, powerful, amazing – God’s creation, that’s why I love reading Genesis chapter 1. He’s done that, it’s happened and then Paul writes here in God’s Word: “If anyone is in Christ Jesus then they ARE a new creation. “ The same word again – God’s creation, something new, something wondrous and powerful and surprising.

“Old things have passed away.” Paul uses past tense here. All those things from the past – the bad habits, the low self-esteem, the fears, the hurts, the inadequacies – Paul says: ‘if you have placed your faith in Christ Jesus, those things have passed away. “Behold, all things are new.” ‘Behold’ means ‘look, wake up, look at this from a different perspective,’ everything is new; fresh, brand-spanking new, made by God, created in us and around us and for us, by God. “If anyone is found in Christ Jesus”; if you or I put our faith in Jesus Christ, then we are a new creation, in God’s sight, in God’s heart, and in actuality, we become a new creation. “Old things have passed away, and look, all things are new.”

How can that be, how’s that possible? We look at our circumstances and we go, ‘Berni, come on!’ Well, Nicodemus, religious leader of Jesus’ day, ask exactly that question. If you’ve got a Bible, go to John chapter 3, verses 1 to 21. “Now there was this man of the Pharisees, called Nicodemus, he was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He comes to Jesus at night and he says: “Rabbi, I know you are a teacher who’s come from God because no one could do the miracles that you do unless God was with him. And Jesus said, “Well, I’ll tell you the truth. No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again from above. Nicodemus said: “Come on, how can a man be born again when he is old, surely he can’t enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born again? And Jesus answered him: “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh but the Spirit gives birth to the Spirit. You shouldn‘t be surprised at my saying ’you have to be born again’. The wind blows wherever it passes; you hear its sound but you can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus still didn’t get it. He said: “How can that be?” “You’re Israel’s teacher and you don’t understand these things? I’ll tell you the truth. We speak of what we know and we testify of what we have seen, but still you people don’t accept our testimony. I’ve spoken to you of earthly things that you don’t believe, how are you ever going to believe me when I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone to heaven except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man (Jesus talking about Himself, calls Himself the ‘Son of Man’) the Son of Man will be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life, because God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but will have eternal life because God didn’t send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”

See, Nicodemus goes to Jesus and says: “I know you are from God, look at all the miracles.” And we can look at Jesus and know that He’s from God and we can look at God’s creation and know how wondrous and powerful God actually is. And Jesus says we have to be born again from above and Nic says: “It doesn’t seem possible and Jesus says in effect: “That’s because you are looking at all this from a human angle instead of God’s perspective. Come on, I’m open up heaven here for you”, says Jesus, “and just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness – which happened when Israel was in the wilderness in the exodus because they complained and God sent a plague of snakes – and God gave Moses a snake on a stick and said: “You hold this up and whoever looks at this won’t be poisoned by all these plagues of snakes that I’ve sent. Just like people were saved by looking at that snake, when people look at me and put their faith in me, they will be saved because I came not to condemn the world but to save it and when you put your faith in me you are born again. You are a new creation, old things have passed away and behold all things are new.” And you know something? If anyone is in Christ Jesus then they are a new creation. Why? Because God says so! And when God spoke He spoke creation into existence. He said: “Let there be light”, there was light. He said: “Let there be oceans and land,” and there was. “Let there be stars” and there were. “Let there be sun and the seasons and animals” and there were. When God speaks things happen.

You might say: “Well, that’s great. That was then but what about now? How do I lay hold of that in my life?” And the answer is ‘by faith’. Jesus said that ‘whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ The word ‘in’ is literally the word ‘into’ – whoever believes ‘into’ Jesus. So many people believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He’ll save them from their sins, and that therefore, they’ll have eternal life, but they don‘t believe ‘in’ Him, ‘into’ Him. I can look at a chair from a distance and say, ‘I believe that it will hold me’ but when I go and sit in the chair, I’m believing ‘into’ the chair. I’m actually believing with my body and with my life, that the chair will hold me. Today is a time for us to take a stand – to believe ‘into’ Jesus. If anyone is in Christ Jesus then they are a new creation. God says the old things have passed away, and behold all things are new.

Will you lay hold of that by faith today? ‘Oh, but, Berni, nothing will ever change. What’s the point?’ We can live life like Solomon – meaningless, meaningless, vanity, it’s all meaningless! If you want to go on living your life like that, go ahead! That’s entirely your choice. Me, I want to live a life that’s born again – the life that Jesus promised and radically put my faith in Him. There are things about me and things in my circumstances I cannot change and my choice is to take a radically step of faith – to look back and see all the things that He has changed. All the new beginnings in so many different parts of my life and so, you know the things that He hasn’t changed yet, I am believing Him for new beginnings in those things. Today, God wants to set you free, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, over time. God will give us new beginnings where we need new beginnings, because God is a God of new beginnings. Will you put your faith in Him?

You know, we can believe what the world says about us, we can believe what the devil says about us, we can believe what our inner voice says about us or we can stand on God’s Word and we can believe what God says about us.

Never Good Enough

It’s fantastic to be with you again today. We’re looking at the second message in the series that I’ve called: “God is a God of New Beginnings”, because we all have things in our life, the day to day humdrum, the pressures; just the stuff on life. Where sometimes we get to the end of our tethers and we think: “God, I just need a new beginning in this particular area of my life,” and the area that we’re looking at today is the breaking with the power of the past.

I remember being a child and I never felt, ever, that I was good enough. I mean, God blessed me, you know, I was pretty bright and talented with the piano and stuff, but I don’t know, I just never felt good enough. My oldest seemed so much smarter that me. I missed out on being a prefect at school and when I went to Duntroon, which is the officer training academy for the Australian Army – I’ve got short little legs and I couldn’t run as fast as the rest of them and you know, I had this sense that I wasn’t good enough and it made me strive even harder in life.

As a young adult I dealt with it by denying it. I became outwardly confident and aggressive and I stepped on people to prove that I was good enough. It wasn‘t really until I got into my mid thirties that I came to a point where I was prepared to confront this feeling of inadequacy; prepared to recognise and admit my own faults and weaknesses and you now, when you’re like that; when you are aggressive because you are covering up for your own sense of inadequacy – and goodness gracious, there are a lot of people who do that – it impacts on your relationships. You can never really get close to people.

I remember reading a book by a guy called Stephen Covey; it’s a business best seller called: “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” – bit of a mouthful, but it is a very good book. And chapter three was called: “Begin with the End in Mind”. It was like a mirror to my face. It took you to your own funeral, sitting in a pew and listening to the people as they got up to speak about you and it’s sort of said ‘what would you want them to say about you?’ And what would they actually say? And once I saw the gap between what I would like them to say and what I knew they were going to say, it was like God was holding a mirror up to my face, saying, “You’ve got some serious problems happening in your life, Berni.“

Now I’m a ‘baby boomer’ – I’m from the ‘me’ generation – you know, the advertising has told me all my life that I have to have it all now, no further payments until 2023, interest free, if it feels good just do it and the mantra of my generation is that to live life is to consume, and God forbid, that any of us should criticise that mantra – the howls of derision – you’re from the flat earth society. And yet at the same time, as a society we are obsessed with changing ourselves – with body piercing, with paying thousands of dollars to go and listen to international business gurus speaking or have face lifts, or body sculpture or… you know what I mean? You go into the airport book-lounge and it is plethora of self-help books.

Now does that strike you as something of a contradiction? On the one hand the advertising industry is saying you can have it all now, spend and you’ll be happy and yet as a society, we are spending fortunes on changing ourselves. My hunch is that my story is pretty typical of a lot of people’s lives. This nagging sense of inadequacy, of guilt – of ‘I’m a charlatan, I’m not good enough!’ In part we compare ourselves with other people. You know the ideal types that the advertising industries put up – the gorgeous women who have hour-glass figures and so you have women wandering around who don’t fit that hour-glass figure, thinking they’re not good enough; they’re not beautiful.

The notion that to be successful you have to drive either a Mercedes or a BMW and there are guys wandering around whose soul ambition in life is to own one of those cars, to reflect what the advertising industry tells us success is. And yet on the other hand, deep down somewhere, we know that we have weaknesses, whether we admit or not is another thing. It’s as though the past as a hold over us. You know all those things that happen in our childhood, those things that gave us our insecurities and our inadequacies and now we spend a fortune trying to cover them up. It holds us back and try as we might, we can’t get rid of the burden; we can’t get rid of the guilt, we have our lives constrained and the last place we’d want to come, as lot of us, is to Jesus. Ah, God? Give me a break! Full of rules and dos and don’ts – I have enough to deal with without having that religion mill-stone around my neck.

A guy by the name of Philip Yancy wrote a book: “What’s so Amazing about Grace”, and he talks about a prostitute – a woman who was down and out – and someone suggested, ‘why don’t you go to church? And she said, “Why would I go there? I already feel bad enough about myself as it is.” So here’s the human dilemma – this sense of guilt and inadequacy and insecurity which is bred from the past. The past has such a hold over so many people and that’s why they are all trying to change; that’s why they are spending thousand of dollars getting face-lifts done.

The problem is people are looking for the power to change. The power to be set free from the past – they just haven‘t found it.

The Power of Change

We’re talking today on the program about breaking with the power of the past and a man called Doctor Barry Chant; a man whom I respect enormously, has written a book by that name, called: “Breaking the Power of the Past”. And yes, as we look at our present and think about our past, there’s a sense that we need to change; where we need to re-appraise our attitudes and we need to change our life styles, but he says this in his book: “The most significant work though, is done through Christ Jesus, through Him we have hope and faith and confidence. Through Him inner change takes place and this is the miracle that human agencies are unable to achieve.”

You know, the amazing thing – you’ve got all these self-help books and self-help programs and all these fads that people follow after and chase after and spend money on – but at the end of the day they don’t deliver – at the end of the day reading a book on how to make lots of money and be successful doesn’t minister to that deep sense of hurt and inadequacy that so many of us have dwelling inside us because of the hurts of the past. And so we end up feeling guilty; we end up living this life on the outside that conforms with what people expect; that conforms with the advertising industries images of success, but on the inside we feel empty and poor and so people can see this gap and they get a sense of guilt – this sense that ‘I’m not good enough’, this sense that ‘I’m a charlatan and a fraud.

Again in his book, Barry Chant writes this: he say, “Guilt is a major human problem and one which occupies the attention of both psychologists and theologians. Doctor Gary Collins writes this: “Guilt has been described as the place where religion and psychology most often meet. Probably there is no other topic which is of equal interest to both theologians and professional counselors and perhaps no other issue so consistently pervades all of the problem areas discussed in this book. Talk with people who are depressed, lonely, struggling with marriage problems, homosexuality, alcohol, grieving, dealing with middle age, or facing almost any other problem and you will find people who experience guilt as part of their difficulties. One writer has even suggested that guilt in some way is involved in almost all psychological problems. A counsellor friend of mine claims that freedom from demonic problems is ninety nine percent forgiving and being forgiven.”

See, guilt is still today, is one of the major maladies in people’s lives. Is it true, can Jesus set us free from our nagging guilt, or is God just a whole bunch of rules? I mean, the church unfortunately, in its public rhetoric, often seems to be talking about rules and people not conforming to rules and morality and guilt and you have this well intentioned debate on social issues, but the church is speaking more about guilt than about grace. So if God is going to have an impact on our guilt, God can’t be a book of rules.

We are going to look at a story today from Johns Gospel. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it. We are going to Johns Gospel chapter 8, verses 1 to 6 and this is the story of a woman caught in adultery. A woman caught, literally in the cot with a man who wasn’t her husband. Let me read it to you – John chapter 8, beginning at verse 1. “Jesus went to the Mount of Olives and at dawn, He appeared again in the Temple courts where all the people gathered around Him and He sat down to teach them, but the teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law of Moses, we are commanded to stone such a woman, now what do you say? They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing Him but Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with His finger. When they kept questioning Him, He straightened up and said to them: “If any of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again, He stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away, one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there. And Jesus straightened up again and asks her: “Woman, where are they, has no one condemned you?” “No one, Sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” It’s a great story.

Here’s this woman who is caught in bed with a man who is not her husband. Now in today’s day and age we would go: “Well, it’s just the way it goes, that’s what happens – it’s a life style choice.” But in the first century it was a much bigger deal than that, because under Jewish law, someone caught in the act of adultery, should have been stoned to death. This was God’s law; it was the punishment for adultery. It sounds brutal – that was the law and that’s what happened for many centuries.

But by the first century, they didn’t do that so much any more, in particular because the Romans now occupied Israel; Jerusalem, where this happened and you couldn’t kill anyone without the Roman Governor actually passing the sentence of death. So the reason they asked Jesus this question was, whichever way He answered, He was damned. If He said, “Yes, stone her,” He was flouting Roman law, they could have gone to the Roman Governor – they could have had Him locked up. If He said: “No, don’t stone her,” He was flouting God’s law and therefore He couldn’t possibly be the Son of God. So that’s why they asked Him the question – they decided to trap Him.

And there is another dimension to this – if Jesus says He is the Son of God, well, a righteous God is going to stone the woman because that’s what God’s law says, but Jesus was talking about grace, so how can you be a God of grace and forgive at the same time? So they were trying to trap Him; so the woman was really just a stage prop. Put yourself in her shoes for a moment. What a scary place to be; what a frightening place to be! And Jesus strikes at the heart of the problem and that’s this – doing wrong and carrying guilt around inside is the universal problem. Look what He says in verse 8: “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again He stoops down on the ground and writes. At this, those who heard began to go away, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left.”

What stopped this angry mob of Middle Eastern men from stoning that woman? The knowledge of their guilt and Jesus protected her by putting Himself squarely between the angry mob of judgement and the woman and that is grace. That is a foretaste of what Jesus did on the cross for you and me. In fact by doing this sort of stuff, that’s why the religious leaders got angry with Him and that’s why they had Him crucified. But on the cross Jesus puts Himself between us and the law of God. The punishment that we should receive was borne by Christ Jesus on the cross for you and for me. And then He says: “I didn’t come to condemn the world but to save it.” Look what He says to the woman: “Is there no one to condemn you?” “No one, sir”. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared, “Now go and leave your life of sin.”

I am the Righteousness of God

This story of the woman caught in adultery, is one that always moves me because to tell you the truth, sometimes I think, where would I have been if I had been there in that whole story? And my hunch is, you know, I probably would have been in the angry mob. The woman deserves some punishment, I mean, I know that today ‘adultery’ is an old fashioned word and sleeping with people is a lifestyle choice, but when you break the promise of marriage, it’s a terrible thing – people are hurt, you know, its just an awful betrayal and that’s what this woman had done. You see, she stood there condemned in the courts of the temple in front of the Son of God. Her past was condemning her; she should have been condemned; she should have been punished.

And that’s why we suffer guilt – when we look back at our past and all the stupid things we’ve done; all the mistakes we’ve made; all the people we’ve hurt. In a sense we know inside, what we deserve and that’s why we look at God and say, “Well, I’m not going to God, because He’s just going to read the riot act to me, He just going to punish me.” And that’s what was happening here to the woman. Put yourself in her shoes – the fear, the shame – she could have been stoned to death and she is standing in front of all these people. Her sin exposed and what does God do? God looks at the angry mob and God looks at the woman and God the Son, Jesus Christ, places Himself fairly and squarely in between the angry mob of condemnation and this woman who deserved condemnation and punishment and He points to each one of them and He says: “So, exactly how are you any different? And it’s that guilt and that shame, as the Son of God shines His light and His truth into those angry men’s hearts that causes them one by one, to go away from the oldest to the youngest. And then Jesus looks at this woman and says – what? Does He say, “You know something, you deserved a good stoning?” He just looks at her and says: “Where are all the people who want to condemn you? She says, “Well, Sir, they’re all gone.” And then those beautiful words, those words so sweet and so wondrous and so blessed – “Then neither do I condemn you.” Jesus once said: “You want to know what God looks like, look at me, because I am the exact image of God.

Here is a God who wouldn’t condemn her – here is a God who was prepared to forgive her – here is a God who was so passionate about her future and setting her free from her past sin that He was prepared to die on the cross for her as He did for you and for me. And it is that forgiveness, the cross of Christ that sets us free from the past.

Second Corinthians 5:17 says: “If any one is in Christ Jesus then they are a new creation. The old things have passed away and behold, all things are new.” If you are someone who goes to church, you will have heard this next saying a million times: ‘Nothing you can do can make God love you more and nothing you can do can make God love you any less’. You hear that so often it looses its impact and I’d make an observation here- there are plenty of people who believe in Jesus who still carry around the guilt like that woman did. But our guilt was judged and paid for in full when Jesus was beaten and spat upon and nailed to the cross and breathed His last breath, He cried out: “It is finished.” At that point my sin, all my guilt, all my failures of the past were taken away and if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, at that point all your sin, all your guilt, all your failures of the past were taken away. That’s grace – that’s why God doesn’t condemn – He loves us so much that Jesus paid that price for us. If any one is in Christ, then he or she is a new creation, present tense. The old things have passed away, and look, all things are new. Look, open your eyes wake up! All things are new – the past no longer has power over you.

You know, we can believe what the world says about us, we can believe what the devil says about us, we can believe what our inner voice says about us or we can stand on God’s Word and we can believe what God says about us. And God says this: “If you believe in my Son, if you accept what He did for you on that cross, then you are a new creation, you are the righteousness of God. All that old stuff has no power over you, it has passed away and look, look at yourself in the mirror afresh, look at yourself in the mirror of God’s Word afresh – all things are new.

When we have a self image we believe what other say about us, when we have a faith image we believe what God says about us. God has dealt with your guilt and your inadequacy and your sin just as He has with mine – once and for all. Let Him lift that burden from you today. In faith say these words: I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Go on say them with me: I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. You are free from your past. Come on, get up and start believing what God has to say about you rather than what the devil has to say about you. That angry mob has no power over you or me. Why? Because Jesus put Himself between us and the condemnation because Jesus paid the price and forgiveness from God is the thing that breaks the power of the past in our lives. Can’t change the past but God has take its power away – the power of the past to ruin our life. God is a God of new beginnings!

Some of the most painful and difficult things in our lives equip us later, with a gentleness and an understanding that God will use for His glory. He doesn’t waste anything!

The Present Sufferings

It’s fabulous to be with you again today and we are working through a series called: “God is a God of New Beginnings”. Because we all come to a point in our lives when we need breakthroughs – in relationships, in work – you know when it’s the same old, same old, it’s never going to change. We just can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel and then maybe we think we can and it’s probably a train, you know – life’s like that sometimes, amen? And people end up living under a burden, under a yolk. It’s like being in slavery, holding us back, pushing us down and I believe it’s not the life that God wants us to live.
And that’s why God is a God of new beginnings.

I was talking to someone recently about a situation in her life and through tears, she sobbed: “I can’t ever see it getting any better.” That sort of hopelessness; that sort of despair is something we don’t easily talk about. You know, it’s something we cover up and we carry it around inside and it eats away at us and we feel that, we all go through that from time to time.

You know, towards the end of last year – we had a huge year in our ministry – it was a time of growth, but what people don’t see is the long hours and the hard work and there is some pressure associated with that, you know, and I was feeling very tired towards the end of last year. As good as it was, it was one of the hardest years that I’d ever had. My body, my mind, my spirit – I was just plain tired and exhausted and one Sunday afternoon it felt like it all came crashing down on me. I felt so oppressed, so down, so burnt out. I tell you that because sometimes we look at other people and go, ’Well, that’s a super Christian, you know, that guy must be on the radio and they must have everything sorted out. No! This sort of stuff happens to all of us from time to time and that’s why we are working through a series called: “God is a God of New Beginnings.”

Now, that can be a bit hard to swallow when we feel like that. You hear a message and God’s Word touches you and we think, ‘Yes! Yes! I believe.’ You know, last week we looked at Genesis chapters 1 and 2 and how creative God is when He does new beginning and I encourage you, if you haven’t read through Genesis 1 and 2 lately, read through those passages again and instead of skinning over them look at the awesomeness of what God did. Amazing creation – I love that bit in Genesis chapter 1 – there’s this throw-away line where Moses, who wrote Genesis, says: “And then God also created the stars”. Also created the stars!! Trillions of them, galaxies more that we can count.

And then in Second Corinthians 5:17 God says: “If you are in Christ Jesus you are a new creation. All the old things have passed away and behold all things are new.” And we go, ‘Yea, I love that message. I’m going to believe God for a new beginning in my life. I’m going to believe God for a break-through in this area, or for the financial trouble that I’m having or the trouble I’m having in my marriage or the trouble I’m having at work – I’m going to believe God for a good break-through and a new beginning. I heard Berni on the radio and he said I should, yes. Amen.’

And then, nothing seems to change, in fact sometimes things actually take a turn for the worse. And so we go, ‘Ah, that was a flop, wasn’t it?’ Or, “God is obviously not in this, God is obviously not a God of new beginnings.’ That’s what we do, right? But I have to tell you, those things are just birth pangs of something good.

We’re going to have to look in the Bible now and if you’ve got one, open it up. It’s at Romans chapter 8, verses 18 to 30. Paul is writing about our future glory – one day when we are with the Lord and comparing that to our present day’s circumstances in life. Have a listen – he says: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed for the creation was subject to frustration, not by its own choice but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth, right up to this present time. Not only so but we ourselves who have the first fruits of God’s Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies, for in this hope we are saved. But hope that is seen isn’t hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have, but if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. We don’t know what to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that works cannot express and He who searches our hearts, knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”

Paul here is talking about the greatest break-through of all – our future glory – the time when we come into the presence of God. And he says look, this present suffering that we are going through, verses the future glory, there’s no comparison. Keep the end in mind, but right now, we are going through birth-pangs. God is going to do something good, God is birthing an eternal future for us but right now, it’s like a woman in labour pains and we know that the whole creation is groaning as in the pains of child-birth.

And it’s the nature of hope that you are in the middle of that and you put your hope and your trust in God. If you could see it, if you had it in your hands, it wouldn’t be hope. And God’s using all this stuff. ‘In all things God works for the good of those who love Him.’ Now think about it – the greatest blessing of eternity, that day when we stand before the Lord in glory – no more pain or suffering of sickness or tears. That great new beginning has birth-pangs – it’s just the way things are and here’s Paul, he’s encouraging, laying out the reality – keep going. And the same is true in the blessings and the new beginnings here in this present life.

You know, I was saved, I went to Bible College, I got the call to preach the Gospel – I’m ready for a new beginning – God, let’s go and do it. I’m ready now …. And I waited and I waited and I waited and it took eight years. God has a word in season for someone today – don’t pull over, don’t stop just because of the birth-pangs. Yes, there are delays sometimes. Yes, there’s suffering sometimes but ‘all things work together’. Do they, really, how? We are going to explore that next.

A Sure Sign

We talking today about dealing with the birth-pangs of life. God is a God of new beginnings but it is so often the case that when God is birthing something new in our lives, there are birth-pangs; labour pains along the way. You know, even good changes are stressful – marriage – I mean the whole event. I remember when Jacqui and I were married, I tell you, I got in that car to go off on our honeymoon and we were exhausted. It was stressful!

And then once you’re married, adjusting to one another – there’s change, there are tensions – she does things this way, he does things that way. Jacqui, bless her, started thinking she could go out and buy my clothes for me and I’m thinking, what?? Having kids is a huge adjustment and our twenty six year old and twenty four year old boys, they are wonderful young men, but as anyone who has had kids knows, there are plenty of birth-pangs alone the way – tensions and strains and hurts. At work, when we get a new job and we’re learning things and it’s stressful or we get promoted and we feel uncertain, and the hardest sort of change is when we have to change our attitudes and our behaviours.

When we have to sacrifice something we want in order for that good, new thing that God is doing to work in our lives. No matter what the change is, how much we want it, how desperate we are for it, there are always, always labour pains and we live sometimes in circumstances of people we don’t like and money situations and difficulties and grind and emptiness. ‘Aw, I used to enjoy my job but then the people and the politics – what do I do? Do I stay or do I go? ‘

I had a call from a woman who listens to this program and she is bringing up a teenager and she called us. She is so difficult, this teenager, driving her completely nuts and the woman is saying, “God, what are you doing?” The marriage, the mortgage, the credit card, the workload, the situations, do we go through, and then some joker like me comes on the radio and says God is a God of new beginnings. Well, it’s not just me, its God’s Word. God’s Word says this: “If anyone is in Christ Jesus, they are a new creation, old things have passed away and, behold, all things are new.”

That’s a powerful, powerful thing to know; that we can believe for God to work in our lives to create new beginnings. Sometimes it’s a new job, other times we stay in the job but God gives us a new heart, or some grace, or some favour, or He deals with someone who is being difficult or He opens doors that have been closed or helps us to work through frustrations, but during all of those things there are going to be birth pangs. We saw earlier, that the whole creation is groaning. You know, maybe you are going through difficult relationship in your marriage and you believe that God is a God of new beginnings, you read God’s Word.

You know, Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her.” And so husbands you speak God’s Word over your marriage and you pray for your wife and you think, ’Right, I’m believing God, I’m claiming God’s victory through His Word, right, in about five minutes God’s going to make it all better.’ Five minutes, ten minutes, a day, a week, a month, a year, and often things are getting worse before they get better. God what’s going on, where are you, what are you doing? Oh well, that was a flop – God isn‘t the God of new beginnings.

Well, have a listen to this Scripture – first Peter chapter 5; verse 6 to 11 explains it a bit more. It says: ‘Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time and cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares. Be self-controlled and alert because your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, stand firm in your faith because you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering and the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered for a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong and firm and steadfast.”

When God is up to something good, I’ve got to tell you, the devil is going to try to destroy it. If you are praying for someone in a relationship, you know the devil is going to attack that person and often things are going to get worse. I’ve learned something – when I’m believing God for a breakthrough, when I’m praying for something and I see things getting worse – you know what I say, “Halleluiah!” – The birth pangs are here. Praise God, the devil’s upset, this is a sure sign that God is up to something good.

“But Berni, it’s hard, you know. It’s hard in my marriage; it’s hard at work; it’s hard feeling lonely.” Of course it is – we are living in a Spiritual battlefield. The moment we put our faith in God’s Word, the moment we put our faith in Jesus, the moment we believe that God is doing something good, the moment we believe that God is a God of new beginnings, the devil is going to sit up and take notice of us. He is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. You believe that God is a God of new beginnings, and you’re putting a target on your chest and he is going to aim at that target. But God is a God of new beginnings; God is a God of grace.

God Works All Things for Good

Well, God is the God of new beginnings and He is up to something good in our lives. Can I just encourage you not to be ignorant of the wiles of the devil? It is hard, isn’t? You believe God for good ……God is so good, you know God is so powerful, God has so much that He wants to bless us with and give to us and when we are in a difficult situation, we kind of believe as much as we can and it’s never perfect – our faith, it’s never complete – our faith. It’s always stretched, it’s always challenged. We are believing God that God is going to do something wonderful in our marriage or God’s going to do something wonderful and heal that person with cancer or God’s going to do something wonderful in our kids or God’s going to do something wonderful for us in our jobs.

And the devil just comes and attacks us, time and time and time again. We believe God for something good, things get worse and we give up. Can I tell you? That is the devil’s pattern – that is the plan of the devil to undermine our faith. He is so delighted when we believe God for something good and then he attacks us and things get worse and we give up. There’s a party in hell when that happens! So we need to be aware of what the devil is up to; we shouldn’t be ignorant because when those birth pangs are hitting, when it’s hard, when we are being discouraged, then it is time to go to God and give thanks.

We were looking before at Romans chapter 8, we were talking about those birth-pangs and sometimes it is so hard; it is so confusing, we don’t even know how to pray. Have you ever had that? Well, God’s even thought of that. Let’s pick it up again in chapter 8 of Romans, verse 26. “In the same way the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses.” We don’t even know what we should pray for. I get confused like that sometimes on the battlefield. You know the devil is whacking you over the head so often you get a bit punch drunk, but then “the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit of God intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.”

See, God’s got it covered – when we don’t even know what to pray, the Holy Spirit’s got it covered. We go to God and we just share what we can and when we don’t know the Holy Spirit will pray for us. Something we may never see. Perhaps we may pray in the Spirit if we have the gift of tongues but the important thing is that God is in that place with us. God is making sure that His will is being done. And then Paul goes on to write: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose,” even the bad things, even the attacks of the devil.

Do you know that God created the devil and the devil can only attack a follower of Jesus Christ when God gives him permission? If you don’t believe that, go and read Job, chapter 1 in the Old Testament. It’s a story of Job who was a righteous man, a man who prayed, who honoured God, who obeyed God’s law, who helped the poor and the needy and the devil went to God and had to beg God to be allowed to attack Job and God gave the devil certain limited permissions. You know when you and I have our faith in God there is a hedge of protection up against us and the devil can only breach that hedge of protection when God gives him permission or when we do something stupid and we hack a hole in the hedge. And when the devil attacks us, it hurts and it hurts even more when we’re believing God for something good.

“But we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” You know even those attacks; even those failures; even those hurts, God is going to use for His good and His purpose. It’s hard to understand at the time; it’s hard to see at the time but He makes use of every difficulty, every hurt, and every pain for good. Some of the most painful and difficult things in our lives, equip us later with a gentleness and a wisdom and an understanding that God will use for His glory – He doesn’t waste anything.

We’ve a man in our church who is a recovering alcoholic – he has been dry for many years. His name is Bill and he has been through some shocking things and some tough things and our church is in a position where we often have alcoholics come in. Who do you think is the person that ministers to them? Who do you think is the one that helps them? Who do you think is the one that takes them to the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings? When we are traveling through the pain and the hurt we can’t see what God’s going to do with that, but we can put our faith in Him and know that He is going to work all things together for good for those who love Him and trust Him. Amen?

God is a God of new beginnings. God is a God who has plans for you and for me that we can’t even begin to imagine. And yes, sometimes He needs to polish us, He needs to put some sandpaper to us, He needs to rub off the rough edges and He does that during those times of adversity. God uses those things to shape us. You know, when I came to faith eleven years ago and I was in Bible College a few months later and I knew that God was calling me to do what I am doing now. I was ready to go, I was like, ‘God I’m ready to go,’ but I had a lot of things to travel through – God had to rub some rough edges off me, God had to get me in a place of obedience and submission and wisdom and that was only going to happen through traveling through some difficult times.

And God has used those things of difficulty in me – I wouldn’t be much good to you if I hadn’t been through those. It hurts at the time – it’s never fun at the time, but God is a God of new beginnings and that’s what God is doing through His Word today – equipping you with the wisdom and the faith that you need. Let’s have a look at First Peter 5:6 again: “Resist the devil, stand firm in your faith because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.”

You know how it feels like you’re the only one? You know how it feels like everyone else has got a great life, but I’m going through this suffering? No! The Bible actually says that what we are going through everyone else is going through as well. “And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered for a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong and firm and steadfast.” Is that a great promise or what? “And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered for a while, will Himself restore you and make your strong and firm and steadfast.”

See, these birth-pangs; these attacks from the devil, when God is doing something good and something new and the birth-pangs are coming and they’re coming so fast and so hard and so painfully, that we think that we are never, ever going to get through it, it’s ok, because when God’s done with that, He knows that He has to make us strong, make us firm, restore us. God’s good; God is a God of new beginnings. There are going to be birth-pangs and the important thing to take away from today, is the awareness of what’s going on. Once we know what’s going on; once we know that there are going to be birth-pangs when God is birthing something good; once we know that the devil is attacking, we can go to God, we can stand on His Word, we can pray in faith, and I have to tell you, traveling through those hard times is so much better and so much easier and God uses that to grow our faith and we come out the other side of that and we look back and we see all that God has done and we shout, “Halleluiah”, because God IS a God of new beginnings.

When God’s doing something great in our lives, He shines that out for His glory so that He can love and touch and bless other people around us. God wants you to sing a new song today.

A Bad Smell

It is great to be with you again today and this is the last in a four part series called: “God is a God of New Beginnings.” We all have that grind and that humdrum in our lives. We all come across problems; we all have struggles – you know things in relationships, hurts from the past. I was talking to a man just recently and he is an incredibly gifted entertainer and artist and he is in the later years of his life now and the world seems to have passed him by. He is living with a regret from the past and I said to him, ‘You need a new beginning’, and God is a God of new beginnings.

Right at the beginning of this series, three weeks ago, we looked at Genesis chapter 1 and the incredible extravagance of God in His creation where He created this massive, complex, huge universe and the world teeming with life and diversity. If you haven’t done it recently, go and do it, read Genesis 1 and 2 and just look at how awesome God’s creation is. And this is the God of new beginnings – He’s so creative; He’s so amazing. And so many people today are just existing – living in circumstances, sometimes of their own making, other times it’s just life and God wants to bring new beginnings in those lives today, into your life. Amen?

We can go through life and grumble and complain – ‘Aw, my life’s terrible’, ‘Oh, I’m getting old’, ‘Aw, my husband this, or my wife that, or my boss this, or my job that’. Yes, life is tough sometimes, but you know what happens, we can get so used to the smell of that dung heap, we can get so comfortable, whinging and complaining and just living in that place. Time and time again I have seen God reach out to people through His Word, or through other people, with a solution, with a new beginning, with hope, with promise, with blessing and that person is so busy whinging and complaining they’ve become a perpetual victim. Are you with me?

It is so easy to get into that place; it is so easy to get so comfortable with the discomfort, if you know what I mean? That’s when God comes along with a promise of a new beginning, when God puts some guy like me on the radio and puts us together in the same place at the same time, talking about a new beginning, we can shake our heads and go, ‘Oh, no, that’s not for me. Aw, no, no, no that’s not for me,’ and we continue on our merry way, whinging and complaining about the lot we have in life. Listen to me, this is a word in due season – God is a God of new beginnings. Are you with me? ‘Aw, I have to work so hard, I’m so busy.’ Well get a revelation – God is a God of new beginnings and He wants to reach out to some people today but when He gives us a gift, a new start, we actually have to lay hold of it; we actually have to grab it and say, ‘God, I’ll take it.’

Grab a Bible, come with me to Psalm number 40 and it says this, in the first four verses of Psalm 40: “I waited patiently for the Lord, He turned to me and He heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit; out of the mud and the mire, He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth; a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who doesn’t look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods.”

When we cry out to God – ‘Oh, God save me, I’m in the miry clay, I’m in the pit, God save me,’ and then He comes along, you hear His Word preached but then do nothing about it. He reaches out to lift us out of the slimy pit but we don’t take His hand. And challenge – God wants to give some people some new beginnings but we have to respond; we have to listen to His Word; we have to believe His Word. Now you might be thinking, ‘Berni, stop kicking me while I’m down.’ I passionately believe; I know that God is trying to get your attention today. We can get so wrapped up in ourselves we forget to respond when He comes to get us. Is that you today? God wants to put a new song in your mouth – a song of praise. “I waited patiently for the Lord, He turned to me and He heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth; a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.” God wants to put a new song in your mouth – a song of praise.

Now, singing is a funny thing. Most of us will have a little song in the shower, you know, have a bit of a hum or maybe even something more robust than that. We wouldn’t want anyone else to hear us – oh, no, that would be embarrassing. People go to church and they sing just loud enough so that the person next to them can’t hear them. You know? My prayer today as always, when I was preparing this message, was to say, ‘Lord what do you want to say to people today.? What is your Word in season today from this Psalm?’ And He said this to me, ‘Tell them that I want them to sing a new song that I’ll put in they hearts at the top of their lungs.’

God is a God of new beginnings – God wants to put a new song on our hearts and on our lips and He wants us to sing them at the top of our voices!

Take His Hand

I want to go back to Psalm 40 and read it again because it is such a powerful Scripture for me. Let’s have another listen. “I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who doesn’t look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false idols.”

I love that bit ‘wait patiently’. You know, when I talk about ‘patience’ when I’m preaching at churches or to groups of people, you rarely get a ‘halleluiah’. You know, no one wants to learn patience – because there’s only one way of learning patience and that’s being ‘patient’. When we are going through some relationship, some circumstance of adversity, our own private prison, God is calling us to wait patiently and believe. God hears the cry of His people. Sometimes it takes Him a little while and we need to, in the middle of that, get to the point where we are standing on His Word, where we believe in Him. Sometimes He allows it to take some time because that’s the place where our faith grows. Self-pity doesn’t move God; chasing after other things doesn’t move God, whinging doesn’t move God. ‘I waited patiently for the Lord’, speaks of a quiet confidence in God.

Have you ever been asked – I’m going to ask you now – to make a decision that no matter what, you will stand alone in the midst of this earth for the sake of Jesus Christ? If God has called you in your difficult place – maybe you are in a difficult marriage, maybe you in a difficult job and you feel God is saying, ’Just stay in that job’. Maybe you are in a tough place; will you stand alone in the midst of this earth for the sake of Jesus Christ and wait patiently for the Lord? And when we go to Him and we say, ’Lord, that is my decision’ and we just put a quiet, confident faith in Him, that is music to God’s ears. Will you take that decision in you circumstance of adversity today?

There’s something going on in my life right now and it’s hard, but I’m going to stand there. ’I waited patiently for the Lord and He turned to me and heard my cry.’ You know, in my life right now, in the ministry that I’m involved in, Christianityworks, we have been going fifty years here in Australia as the ministry of Back to the Bible. I’m telling you this because there’s a point to this story and my predecessors; the CEO and directors of the ministry have never managed to get our funding sorted out – never applied the basic principles of growing the hearts of people who have been blessed by this ministry over the years to give and to support and to bless other people.

And three years ago when I took over this ministry it was virtually an empty shell – we weren’t on radio anywhere, we had a couple of hundred faithful people supporting the ministry but you can’t run a ministry on a couple of hundred people supporting, so it was easy to look at all that in the natural, in the days when I wanted to throw what Joyce Meyer calls ‘my own pity party’, you know – you sit there and say, ‘what have I done, why have I got into this?’ Well, the answer was, God called me to. God knew the circumstances, God called me to this and its easy some days to go, ‘Well, you know, um we may not have enough money to keep going, should we be doing this?’

But God gave me a Scripture and that is the Scripture which is my call on my life and its Joshua chapter 1 verses 1 to 9. I’ll read you some little bits out of it. Moses has just died, Joshua has just taken over, he’s about to lead God’s people into the Promised Land, it’s going to be tough, they’ve got a lot of wars to fight and battles to fight and God says to Joshua: “Now proceed across the Jordan, you and all this people into this land that I am giving them, the Israelites. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given you. No one shall be able to stand against you all the days of your life for you shall put this people in possession of the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them, only be strong and very courageous.” The call on my life is to put you in possession of the Promised Land, the life of peace and joy and power that Jesus Christ died and rose again to give you, by sharing God’s Word with you, by opening the Bible and doing what we are doing right now. So when all of this happened we really had no finances but I had a call on my life and there were two choices – you sit in the pit and complain, ‘Oh, God, we haven’t got any money,’ or you go and do it believing in the Word of God; believing that God has called you to do it.

Well, I chose the latter and three years on these programs are going to air on three hundred and fifty stations in eighty countries and hundreds of thousands of people are listening every day and it just keeps growing. God’s provided along the way and we are still not where we need to be financially, but you know something, ‘We waited patiently and He turned to me and He heard my cry.’ This is real life stuff – I’m being direct and honest with you.

Life has its adversities! When you’re stepping out in faith, it’s hard some days, its stressful some days, you know, it’s completely overwhelming some days but I made a decision. I had a choice to sit in the pit and have a pity party and waste my life or believe the call on my life and to go and play my part in leading you into the Promised Land and I chose the latter and day by day this is what He does, “He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.” Every morning I pray; every morning I lay my cares on Him; every morning I go, “Lord, today, I don’t know where it’s coming from but I’m trusting in you and to tell you the truth, some mornings I don‘t feel like doing that but I checked the dictionary recently and faith comes before feelings. Do you get it?

When God is our security; when God is our refuge; when we put our trust in Him, our total dependence, when we get to the point where we say, “God this is your work, this is your ministry.” What He is doing in your heart today is His work, it’s not mine – He has to provide, not me. Day by day we learn that we are not in the miry clay and in the pit but we have our feet on solid ground. What about you, what about your pit, what about what your life looks like, have you made a decision to stand completely alone in the midst of this earth for the sake of Jesus Christ and trust in His word?

Sing that New Song

We’re looking at that beautiful Psalm, Psalm 40 today and we are just going to read those first four verses again. I love them; they’re such a powerful Scripture and they really minister into our hearts. Let’s have another read: “I waited patiently for the Lord, He turned to me and He heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit; out of the mud and the mire and He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth; a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who doesn’t look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods.”

Earlier in this program I said to you that God wants you to sing a new song, a song that He puts in your heart. You know, when He starts doing something new in us, we have to respond and there will be days when it seems like everything is against us. There will be days when it seems like God has disappeared. There will be days when we don’t feel like responding. Then, you know, if we go to God and say, ‘God, my marriage is a mess, you know, my husband or my wife, it’s just not working. God, I’m going to believe in you for a new beginning.’

You know the very first thing that is going to happen is God is going to start putting His finger on bits of your life. God’s going to start putting His finger and His light on things that you’re doing. We always want to change the other guy don’t we? Well, God starts with us and it gets uncomfortable some days; it gets a bit squirmy some days and the other thing that is going to happen, the devil is going to start attacking. We looked at that last week. You don’t think the devil is going to give you a free reign when he knows God is doing something good?

First Peter chapter 5 verse 9 says: “Resist the devil, stand firm in your faith because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered for a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong and firm and steadfast.”

God wants to do a new work in you because it will put a new song on your lips; a song of praise and as scary as that is sometimes, God doing new stuff – the devil attacking us – it gets hard, we have to change – God stretches us. It’s uncomfortable out of the pit – you know when you’ve been squashed into that pit, squashed into the world’s mould, getting up out of the pit, we’ve got to stretch; God stretches us. You know, when you’re cramped up and it hurts to stretch a little bit and maybe when we get out of the pit, maybe God’s light is just a bit brighter than we’d like it to be, but once we get used to that, He puts a new song in our mouths; a hymn of praise, to our God.

‘Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.’ See, it’s not only a blessing to us, but other people see it and, man, ‘I want what he’s got,’ ‘I want what she’s got.’ God never wastes a thing! When God is doing something great in our lives, He shines that out for His glory so that He can love and touch and bless other people around us who see His glory at work in us. God wants you to sing a new song today; a hymn of praise to our God and to do that He’s going to lead you out of whatever your pit is; whatever your slimy pit and your mud and your mire is, today God wants to deliver you from that. It won’t happen overnight, it’ll take days and weeks and months and maybe even years, but God is a God of new beginnings and He never wastes a thing. When other people see where you’ve been and where you’ve come to and the praise you’re giving to God, they are going to want what you’ve got.

I’ve lived many, many years of my life in adversity. I went through some terrible things, some pain and a breakdown of a marriage and all sorts of horrible things – that was eleven years ago and in the middle of that, I gave my life to Christ. People saw the mess that I had made of my life – I’m really smart, I’m really clever, I was very well off – but I still made a mess of my life, I still dug myself into a pit and my cry to God was pretty uncertain, I have to tell you. It wasn’t some eloquent, faith filled prayer. It was just a real simple: “God if you are out there, now is a good time.” I didn’t even know whether God was out there and He’s still straightening me out after all my years in the pit. You know, it takes a little bit of time to straighten people out. But now other people look at me and say, ‘Man, look at what God did in Berni’s life?’ ‘Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust. He doesn’t look to the proud; he doesn’t turn aside to false gods.’

You know when things are going bad, when we are having difficult times, we want to pick up the phone, and we want to call our friends before we talk to God. We want to chase after the world’s self-help programs before we talk to God. ‘Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust.’ It’s irrational sometimes to trust God, when we pray and things get worse it doesn’t make sense to our human mind to continue to trust in God, but that’s exactly what He calls us to do – to put our trust in Him. Not on the proud, not on all the people around us who are following all sorts of other gods and idols and stuff but on God because God is a God of new beginnings who wants to put a new song on you lips and in your heart and I have to tell you, as someone who has been delivered from the pit by God, there is no better feeling than to look back on it all and go, ‘WOW, look at what God did for me,’ and I praise God continually because He has just so blessed me – from a life that was a mess to a life that glorifies Him and a life where I’m still being straightened out, where He is still working on me and where He is still putting His finger on the bits that He wants to work on in my life.

God is a God of new beginnings! What pit are you in right now? ‘I waited patiently for the Lord and He turned to me and He heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit of mud and mire and He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand and He put a new song in my mouth and a hymn of praise to our God.’ When you are singing those hymns of praises – some of you know what I’m talking about – when you’re singing those hymns of praises because God has delivered you from the pit; it is the most awesome sort of praise. When we put our trust completely in Him, we are blessed. When we believe Him against all hope, God is over the moon at that and He comes and He responds to our faith with His goodness and with His power and with His grace and with His newness in ways that only He can; in ways that we could never have imagined.

‘If anyone is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation, old things have passed away and behold, everything is new.’ God’s heart today is to put His praise on your lips, to put a new song in your mouth and in your heart, to deliver you from the pit and our part isn’t to strive, our part isn’t to try and claw our way out of the pit, our part is to wait patiently for the Lord and He will turn and will hear my cry and He will lift me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire and set my feet on a rock and give me a firm place to stand.

That is God’s promise for you today. Your God, the God who sent Jesus to die and rise again for you, your God is a God of new beginnings.