Jesus Is the New Thing

Morning, church! If this is your first week back this year, we’ve been in a series called New Beginnings, about how God is doing a new thing in our personal lives and in our church community.

I started the series by saying that the work of God is not a monument to be protected but a movement to be followed. Last week Davison talked about how we can look back and learn from the past, but we’re not called to stay there, because God is doing a new thing and calling us forward.

We’ve spent two weeks on two verses, Isaiah 43:18–19, and now I have the honour of preaching on them again. It’s a bit of a challenge being the third sermon on the same two verses. How do I say something new while building on what’s been said? But hey, God’s doing a new thing, right? So I’m praying God gives you a fresh perspective on what he might be doing in you and among you.

You probably know these verses by now, so let’s read them together as a church family:

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

God, thank you that you’re doing a new thing. You’re not content to keep things the way they used to be. You’re creative, and you call us forward into new and exciting things. We believe the same God who did great things in the past will do even greater things as we move into the purposes you have for us and your church. Speak through your word again. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Where are the streams?

Over the last few weeks we’ve seen that this verse speaks to Israel in exile. In the children’s story we heard about Daniel, an exile in Babylon, living in a society that wasn’t familiar to him. This promise would have been powerful for Daniel and the people around him. It gave them hope that exile wasn’t the end and that one day there’d be a homecoming.

Between Babylon and home in Judah lay a bleak desert. With hindsight we know Israel did return home. The promise was fulfilled, and they went back to Judah and lived there again.

But on that journey home, the Bible never mentions some of what this verse describes. We never read of streams appearing in the wasteland as Israel returns from Babylon.

So did God get it wrong? Did the prophecy fail? What is it actually referring to?

A little theology class

To answer that, we need to know how to read prophecies in books like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, what we call classical prophecy. So welcome to a mini theology and ministry class this morning. Just a little bit!

Jon Paulien offers several principles for interpreting Bible prophecy. Three of them are relevant here.

1. God is creative. He uses patterns from the past, but he doesn’t just hit replay on history. He brings about fulfilments in new ways. He isn’t limited to the ways of the past, and he’s in the business of exceeding expectations. So you can’t always take prophecies at face value. God isn’t a manual to follow. He’s a person to follow and trust.

2. Fulfilments are clearer after they happen. We have the benefit of hindsight to see how prophecies came to pass, and we often only fully understand them once they’ve been fulfilled.

3. God spiritualises history. I think this is the most important principle here. God takes literal places, events, things and people from the past and gives them new meaning.

Babylon, for example, is a literal place, but in the New Testament, especially Revelation, it becomes spiritualised and no longer represents a physical location but a particular group. Literal Israel in the Old Testament carries into the New Testament as a spiritual Israel. The same happens with the lamb, with kings and with priests. God brings new meaning to the things of the past. That’s part of what makes the Bible such a literary masterpiece: it weaves themes and ideas together and builds on them to create new meaning.

So classical prophecies often have a partial fulfilment and then a complete fulfilment later on.

Jesus is the stream and the way

So what are these verses in Isaiah about? Israel coming home from Babylon? Yes, partially. But I don’t think that’s all. There’s a deeper meaning.

The whole Bible is one overarching story that points to Jesus. From Genesis to Revelation, Jesus is the central figure. And if Jesus is the focal point of the Bible, I believe he’s the ultimate fulfilment of this prophecy. Jesus is the new thing Isaiah is talking about.

Jesus steps onto the scene and says to the woman at the well, “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). He is the stream in the wilderness.

Isaiah says God is “making a way in the wilderness,” and Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Jesus is the way.

He’s the fulfilment of this prophecy. God isn’t just doing a new thing. In Jesus, God is the new thing. Jesus is everything this prophecy points to.

Ancient truth, new packaging

We see that in how Jesus lived and taught the kingdom of heaven. He was a master at packaging ancient truths in new ways.

That’s something I try to follow. One of the hardest parts of preaching regularly is capturing the ancient truths of the Bible in a fresh way. That’s what I spend hours on when I prepare: how can I take a truth I’ve heard for a long time and package it so it’s fresh, both for me and for you? I believe God’s word deserves to be communicated in new ways. It’s so vast that it doesn’t need to be restricted to the ways it was communicated in the past.

Jesus was a master communicator. People were amazed “because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law” (Mark 1:22). The guards sent to arrest him came back saying, “No one ever spoke the way this man does” (John 7:46). In the Sermon on the Mount, his manifesto for the kingdom, he says again and again, “You have heard that it was said… but I tell you…” He communicated truths that had existed since eternity in a way that was captivating, new and refreshing.

Some hearts weren’t ready

The way of Jesus was refreshing to many. But some hearts weren’t ready for it.

The Pharisees were so close to their religion that they missed its essence. They questioned Jesus’ every motive. They couldn’t understand why he did what he did or said what he said, why he ate with tax collectors and sinners, or why his disciples didn’t fast the way they did. Jesus was constantly in conversation with them about the new thing he was bringing, and they couldn’t get their heads around it. So he told them a parable:

He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

— Luke 5:36–39

Two illustrations, one point. The first is easy for us to grasp: you don’t cut up a new garment to patch an old one. You’d ruin the new one, and the patch wouldn’t match the old one anyway. Keep them separate.

The second is a bit harder for modern minds. Wine was stored in skins. As the wine fermented, the skin stretched to its full capacity, and once stretched it became brittle. Pour new, still-fermenting wine into an old skin and it would rupture. It had lost its elasticity.

Jesus is challenging the Pharisees: You’re like old wineskins. You can’t take in the new wine I’m bringing, the wine so many people are finding refreshing, because your hearts have become brittle and callous. They’ve lost their elasticity.

I think many of our hearts can become like old wineskins too. We’ve seen things of old and become so comfortable there that when Jesus says, “I’m doing a new thing, in fact I am the new thing,” we can’t receive it. Our hearts have lost their elasticity.

Jesus says clearly that the new thing he’s bringing can’t be contained by old, outdated systems and traditions. They may have had their place once, but now they’re obsolete.

The torch and the morning

When you’re in the dark, some things are really useful. You need a torch. You pull out your phone, turn on the light and use it to find your way.

But when morning comes, you don’t need the torch anymore. There was nothing wrong with it. It served its purpose in the dark. But once day has dawned, there’s a different way to live.

Jesus is that morning. He has stepped onto the scene, and he is the new thing.

Open hearts, not a detailed plan

Here’s the thing, though. While Jesus is doing a new thing, he isn’t always specific about what it is. He simply invites our hearts to be open and receptive to what he’s doing in our world and our church. If he gave us detailed instructions, we’d trust the plan rather than the God who gave it.

So we need to recalibrate our expectations and assumptions and be open to what God is doing in our lives, our church and our world.

Maybe you’re holding on to old thought patterns and ways of thinking that served their purpose once. Now God is saying, “In 2026 I want to do a new thing in your life. Will you let go of the things that served their purpose but are holding you back? I’m going to do something greater.”

The Pharisees expected God to work the same way he always had. They were waiting for God to part the Red Sea when God wanted to bring a stream in the wilderness. God doesn’t work the same way twice. He’s endlessly creative, doing new things again and again, because he’s infinite and beyond anything we can imagine or dream.

And he’s doing a new thing in our church. As we’ve said these past weeks, leadership is changing. New elders and new leaders are stepping in, including younger leaders who will do things differently. That’s not because the old way was wrong. New leadership simply brings new methods, and through it God is going to do a new and greater thing. Will you recalibrate your mind?

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

— 2 Corinthians 5:17

Following Jesus means embracing the new thing he is doing. Are you open to it? Are you open to God being up to something better and bigger in your life than you thought?

Everyone expected Jesus to be a military or political figure who would conquer Rome. He exceeded their expectations. He turned their ideas about the kingdom of God upside down, and he challenges our expectations today. He’s in the business of challenging and shifting us, and through it he makes us more mature disciples.

One goal for this year

You can have many goals this year, but may your one goal be to know Jesus in fresh, new ways. I can tell you that you’ve only scratched the surface of knowing him. The Jesus we know is infinite, beyond our expectations, with more depth to his name than we’ve begun to grasp.

So will you step into the journey of following Jesus and learning more and more about who he is?

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?

The question is: are you ready?