A Movement, Not a Monument

With the new year upon us, change is in the air. I’ve just read out the nominating committee report, and new leaders are stepping into positions, which is exciting. Change is happening in our individual lives and across the church.

Davison and I felt a great way to start the year would be a series called New Beginnings. I’m opening it today, Davison will share next week, and I’ll share the following week. Our hope and prayer is that you’ll see God doing a new thing, that God is up to something in our church and in your life.

I’m passionate about this. Change, innovation, thinking differently and being open to what’s new are where I thrive. So if I get passionate, please understand my heart. I think it’s the voice God has given me to share.

We’ll centre the series on two verses you’ve probably heard before, and over three weeks we’ll slowly unpack them:

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

— Isaiah 43:18–19

Father in heaven, thank you that you’re up to something. You’re doing a new thing. May we be part of it. Speak through your word and through me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

The table, again

In one of my first sermons here I told you about the table in my family home. Does anyone remember it? For those who weren’t there: about a decade ago our kitchen bench had bar stools that stopped being functional, so we got rid of them and put a white fold-out table in front of the bench instead.

My family is here today, so you can ask them for interior design advice later! I asked Mum for permission to show you this photo. That’s me last night, memorising this sermon at the table. It’s multifunctional. I’ve written many sermons at that table. I’ve eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner there and played board games on it. It’s not the most aesthetic thing, but it’s become a normal part of our household.

Last year we tried taking it away for about a week, and the house just felt off. After a week the table came back. We Asians may not be great at aesthetics, but we know function and what’s practical.

The truth is I don’t think about that table at all, except when I need a sermon illustration. When it first arrived we thought, “This is a bit weird, a bit funky.” Over time it became normal and we stopped noticing it.

Andy Stanley puts it this way: “Time in erodes awareness of.” The longer you’re in an environment, the less you notice its flaws and dysfunctions. That leads to complacency and a lack of improvement. We lost all awareness that our table might not be the best look because it had simply become part of the house. Chances are there’s something like that in your house too.

Ellen White said something similar: “The methods and means by which we reach certain ends are not always the same. The missionary must use reason and judgment… Changes for the better must be made.”

As we step into a new year, I believe God is calling us to be open to change, open to the fact that he wants to do a new thing. God has done amazing things in the past, and the same God who did amazing things in the past is doing even greater things in the future.

Here’s what I want to land today: the work of God is not a monument to be protected, but a movement to be followed.

Streams in the wilderness

God gave this promise to Israel while they were captives in Babylon: “See, I am doing a new thing.”

Between Babylon and home in Judah lay a harsh wilderness. You couldn’t cross it directly. You had to take detours around it. So when Israel heard, “I will make streams in the wilderness,” they were reminded that God could do something great, and they were reminded of their past.

The wilderness is significant in Israel’s story. It’s a liminal place, the in-between, between their present situation and their future reality. It’s a place of uncertainty and the unknown. In the Exodus it stood between slavery and freedom. God brought them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and into the wilderness, where they spent years before entering the promised land.

The wilderness is hard because it’s uncertain. In the wilderness Israel kept saying to Moses, “Take us back! It was better in Egypt!” When you’re in the wilderness, slavery in Egypt can look better than the promised land ahead.

Maybe some of you are in a wilderness right now, a place of the unknown where you can’t see what’s ahead. God isn’t calling you back to Egypt. He’s calling you forward into the promised land, reminding you again and again that he’s doing a new thing. Unless we see the opportunity ahead, we’ll stay stuck in the comfort of the past.

I want to encourage us as a church to be open to future possibilities.

Blockbuster and Netflix

There’s a story about two companies, Blockbuster and Netflix. Netflix went to Blockbuster and offered to sell itself for $50 million. Blockbuster said, “No way. We don’t believe in your subscription model. We make so much money from late fees on returned movies.” They turned it down, even though that’s where the trends were heading.

Today one of those companies is bankrupt and the other is thriving.

God says to us as a church, “See, I’m doing a new thing. Forget the former things.” The old was good, and it had its time and place. But God is about to do a new thing, and it’s springing up.

The bronze snake

One of the key stories of God working in the wilderness is the bronze snake. I could preach it many ways, but today I’ll take an angle you might not have seen.

Israel was in the wilderness, and God was giving them manna, quail and water from the rock. They complained yet again, and God had had enough. Venomous snakes came among them, and people got sick and died. They cried out to Moses, “We’re sorry!” and Moses interceded as usual. God gave a solution:

The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

— Numbers 21:8–9

The snake on the pole became a symbol of God’s healing and deliverance. Anyone bitten could look up and live.

If you stopped reading there, you’d think that was the end of the bronze snake. But there’s an Easter egg later in the story. The bronze snake reappears in Kings, and this time it’s not good news. Israel had kept the snake, protected it, admired it and worshipped it. Here’s how we know:

He [Hezekiah] removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it.

— 2 Kings 18:4

King Hezekiah was bold enough to smash it. The snake that was simply a symbol of God’s deliverance had become something Israel worshipped, admired and protected. It had become an idol.

Shrines to our methods

That’s what idolatry really is: turning the symbols that point us to God into God himself.

The first of the Ten Commandments is about who we worship. The second is about how we worship. We often think of idolatry as having our priorities out of order, putting something else first. But that’s really the first commandment. The second is about how we worship and how God is represented.

God dislikes idolatry because he doesn’t want to be confined to a box. He transcends everything, so he won’t be reduced to wood, stone or metal. And the things that most easily become idols are often God’s own gifts. They come from him, but we begin to protect them, admire them, and then worship them in his place.

We laugh at Israel for worshipping a bronze snake. But don’t we do the same? We build shrines to our strategies, our methods and our traditions instead of trusting our Saviour. It’s so easy. We assume the way God worked for us is the way he’ll always work. We assume the way he worked in our story is the story everyone else should have. We assume the way he did things in our church in the past is the way he’ll do them in the future.

But God isn’t confined to one method or one way of doing things. He transcends all our methods, strategies and efforts. He’s greater. And he’s the one who says, “I am doing a new thing.” He initiates it.

A new thing among us

I believe God has done amazing things in our church. Throughout our church’s history he has shown up again and again, changed lives and raised up initiatives that have deeply impacted people. People have been reached through this church.

I also believe the same God who did great things then will do greater things going forward, and that he’s doing a new thing now. New people are stepping into leadership. New elders are stepping into eldership. Younger people are stepping up.

And if younger and new people are stepping up, things will probably look a bit different from how they’ve looked before. But the God who did great things through the leaders of the past will do great things through the leaders of the future. The past wasn’t bad. The past was good. But there’s a reason it’s the past. God is doing a new thing.

Not long ago at a pastors’ professional development day, Professor Philip Hughes spoke about the future religious landscape in Australia. We asked him what he’d advise the Adventist church, and he gave two options.

First, keep doing what we’re doing and do it really well, especially with children and families, because that slows the rate of secularisation. It works, but it’s a slow, status-quo process.

Second, the more radical option: recognise that the world has changed, and rethink how we live and share our faith in this new world while holding on to what really matters. Acknowledge what was good in the past, but also ask what we might need to let go of as a church, and what new thing God is calling us into.

I’m a big believer that as a church we’re called to be not a prophetic museum but a prophetic movement. We’re not meant to be protectors of the past but explorers of the future. God really is doing a new thing. Are we ready for it, or will we keep living by the status quo of how things have always been?

God shouldn’t be boxed in by our past experiences, methods and strategies. Change doesn’t mean abandoning faith. Change means stewarding faith. It means trusting the God of the future, not just the God of the past.

Weet-Bix and Up&Go

What’s this? Everyone knows. It’s Weet-Bix. For Sanitarium it was the top-selling cereal, a household staple with record sales. It was doing extremely well.

Sanitarium could have just kept making Weet-Bix. Instead they thought differently. They asked, “Can we create the competition that might put us out of business? What market can’t Weet-Bix reach? Who could we reach with something else?” That’s how liquid breakfast came about: Up&Go. Today Up&Go’s annual sales exceed Weet-Bix’s.

There was nothing wrong with Weet-Bix, and it’s still very successful. But imagine the opportunity they’d have missed if they’d stayed with the status quo. People don’t really sit down for breakfast as much anymore. They want something to drink in the car. I’ve drunk plenty of Up&Gos while running late to meetings.

What if we’re missing our Up&Go because we’re content with the status quo of Weet-Bix? What if God is calling us to new ways and new ideas? The truth hasn’t changed, but how we package it might need to. I believe we need to contextualise the truth for a world that has changed.

Jesus, the God of new things

Jesus is a God of new things. When he stepped onto the scene, he was so refreshing. People saw a spirituality that wasn’t bound by the rules and religion the Pharisees had built. There was freedom in how he taught and lived. It was radical. He showed a new way of living and being, and that’s what made him attractive. He turned society’s expectations upside down, lived completely outside the box, and challenged the status quo.

I believe Jesus calls us as a church to live the same way: to embrace change openly, knowing God isn’t done. He’s up to something new and great, and we get to be part of it.

Are we willing to change? I know change is hard, because it changes us, and sometimes it means losing things. But God is calling us forward, not to stay in the past but to join the new thing he’s doing in the world.

Because the work of God is not a monument to be protected. It’s a movement to be followed.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, we need you. When you call us forward, we step out in faith, unsure what the road to the promised land looks like, but staying faithful in the wilderness. In the wilderness, may we not build shrines to how you’ve worked in the past, or get so caught up in it that we miss how you’re working now and in the future.

Thank you for calling us into the new thing, to trust the movement of your Holy Spirit. As we step forward with you, teach us, show us and reveal more of yourself to us as change happens around us and in us. As we step into this new year, may we be open to the change you’re bringing to our lives and our church. In Jesus’ name, amen.