This isn't really the place where you turn to your neighbor with a crooked grin and say great! … How 'bout your new Year?..... Grrrreat!

We all do that superficial type of banter but I'm far more interested, this morning in realities…

I'm not really asking whether you have started using a new perfume or determined to eat more Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. Those things are nice…but really don't have any eternal significance!

What is "new" about you, this year, that will make any difference 20 years from now… in your life or in the lives of those around you?

Remember; last week we defined the word "NEW"…these are the dictionary definitions we should be trying to apply to our lives in this New Year…

Webster: New =

I went on, last week, to explain that the Bible from Creation at the beginning… to the re-Creation of the New Heaven and New Earth at the end of Revelation…is filled with almost five hundred references using the word "New".

I then found that… More than one hundred of those "new" references are statements/ promises that are supposed to directly affect our present day lives.

How could the Bible promise you so much "newness"… and your life not be dramatically changing from what it used to be, toward this "grrreat" re-shaping that God seems to be promising to each one of us?

I did something this week that I have never done and discovered things that I never knew:

I took a Chronology of the Bible starting with Abraham in chapter 12 of Genesis clear up through the time when the New Testament was written. (I handed out a seven page handout on this in the 7'oclock Wednesday Evening Bible Study.)

Some might say… history??…history is boring…quick let me tune you out… Don't think history…think story!The Bible from Creation to Jesus Resurrection is an unfolding dramatic story. Like any story you might read or see on TV.

But if we were to line us up around these walls, and each take a turn re- telling the story of the Bible in 15 minutes…. Many people who have attended church for 20 years would struggle…. Where does Deborah the prophetess fit into the story?... What key role did she play?... What was so significant about King Saul?... Where and why did Jeremiah the prophet spout out the strong words that he said? How do his words weave into your life today?

On the full seven page handout (available in the foyer) I wanted to unfold the story of the Bible on a timeline… But more importantly for this series of sermons, I wanted to insert God's promises on "Newness" into the timeline, into the unfolding story of the Bible, and see how God's promises affected the lives of the people who heard them.

What I found…. was startling to me…and a little bit scary!

I've given you three condensed pages (in your bulletin) of this timeline and in the next few minutes, I think, I can give you a snapshot of 2/3rds of the Old Testament…what God promised them about "newness of life"… and how critically important it was for Jesus to arrive on this earth and die for all out sins… (If you helped me dig out part of this on Wednesday evening don't turn me off… You soon see new truth weaving into what I'm saying and what I'm going to show you, in the next few minutes is literally the hinge on which the entire Old Testament turns

We pick up, on this yellow sheet 1000 years before Jesus is born… David is now King of Israel. This is so shocking…. In the 4000 years of Bible history up to this point we counted up, about, 410 years, when mankind was positively tuned to God. The other 3600 years, mankind was running from God, worshipping idols, creating cities like Sodom and Gomorrah.

(YELLOW SHEETS)

Finally, we get to a sweet time in Bible history when David is King. He has a lot to say about God bringing a change into the world and turning around 4000 bad years of history. He and his son Solomon, teach the people well, write parts of our Bible… build the Israelites a wonderful new temple to worship God in.

But by the end of Solomon life.. He has rejected God in favor of idols made of stone… and all of Israel follows him into a tragic slide. On the middle of the first page you begin to see familiar prophets showing up, Joel, Amos, Hosea, books in your Old Testament Bible, where these prophets are warning Israel: "You are blowing it…God gave you the chance to tune your hearts to him and you have rejected him again! If we don't all repent… judgment is coming!

700 years before Jesus… Isaiah shows up… same message…"Watch out! our rejection of God has brought us to the point of deserved judgment. It's at the door…please… people of Israel…Repent! Unlike some of the lesser prophets Isaiah was politically potent.. He lived through the reign of three Kings… he had access right into the royal palaces… He specifically told them that a growing power to their northeast was going to take them down… Does anybody recognize this piece of real estate?... (western Iran)

… yet among the dire warnings… starts filtering some strange positive promises. I read some of these Isaiah passages at the end of the sermon last week: (seven on sheet)

Isaiah 43:19 For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.

Israel's response was to ignore Isaiah's prophesies, bad and good. Assyria swept in and wiped out ten of the twelve tribes of Israel.

100 years later, 600 years before Jesus would arrive… Jeremiah, the prophet, is giving the same message to the remaining two tribes. Just as Assyria wiped out Israel to our north…if we don't repent the new world power out of Babylon will wipe us out to.

They didn't repent and Babylon did, eventually, clean their clock but there is a huge axis point in the Bible here…

Jeremiah, also, has some positive words with powerful hidden meaning …

Jeremiah 31:22 How long will you wander, my way-ward daughter?... For the Lord will cause something new to happen-Israel will embrace her God.”

He then brings up something that is so huge it is literally the axis point where the Old Testament turns toward the New…

Jeremiah 31:31 “The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.

Let me explain something very important… This was something God had been working on since Adam and Eve. He made a covenant with them to fill and subdue the earth. He made a covenant with Noah…He made a huge covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and, through them, to all the children of Israel.

Understand something…a covenant is all about relationship! Somebody makes a covenant with somebody else. In order for a covenant to work I have to make a covenant with you… and you must return 100% of your side of the covenant back to me. (like the covenant of marriage)… If either side falls down on their responsibilities to the other… you end up with a one sided covenant… which is the same as no covenant at all.

This is what was going on in the Old Testament…. God was having no trouble keeping his side of the bargain. Israel couldn't keep their side of the bargain 100 years in a row. We're now, on our sheets, at 4400 years of Bible history and we're still at 410 years of Israel being semi-tuned to God's voice.

Something had to change… there needed to be a huge turning point if God's people were ever going to lock in to the frequency that their Creator, covenant- partner was on… and connect with him in a true two sided relationship.

See… their rules for living…. The Ten Commandments and the whole rest of the Law was coming at them from outside them… and while they tried to keep God's rules for living, their sinful nature just kept pulling them toward sinning. Some would get it right for a while… the whole nation would occasionally revive for a few brief years… but then the temptation to sin would come on strong and next thing you know… the nation would be head over heals in idol worship, going to pagan shrines to "worship" with temple prostitutes…. At times God's written word would virtually disappear, out of the lives of His chosen people, for decades at a time.

God says through Jeremiah…I've got to turn around centuries of spiritual failure! The job won't be done by adding more rules… they aren't obeying the rules I've already given them. It's not doing any good to send prophets to warn them… they are simply ignoring the prophets and doing what they want…

In order to really grab their attention, I'm going to have to do something dramatically different with my covenant. I'm going to have to re-shape the covenant into something entirely new…

Jeremiah 31:31 “The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.

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Here's the way the New covenant would differ form the Old:

Jeremiah 31:33 “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

In order for my people to enjoy a covenant relationship with me, they are going to have to learn to daily walk in step with my eternal truths.

"If they can't walk in my truth from the outside in…. then I'm going to have to get inside them and change them from the inside out!"

"I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts"

My New Covenant is going to literally provide a way to insert the power of God inside of men and women… Once that happens… it will provide the possibility for radical life change in the lives of all mankind!

Israel heard Jeremiahs prophetic words and said… That's nice Jeremiah… did you forget to take your medication today? And while Jeremiah is still trying to get God's message through… the rest of the rebellious Children of Israel are taken captive into Babylon (modern day Iraq)

As Jerusalem is tumbling down…a third great prophet also catches a vision of a coming change and is desperately trying to explain it to Israel's deafened ears.

You need to understand something here… When this new covenant finally shows up ( and it's more than just saying, Jesus came….way, way more) This new covenant is the one that is going to be made available to each of us personally…

You already know from the Old Testament that it is going to involve God getting inside you and changing you from the inside out! You already know, from these few verses that the power to change is going to come from God, inserting himself inside of mankind and

Once the New Covenant arrives… if will be absurd for anybody who embraces it to say; "I can't change… I'm forced to live in my sin… I can resist anything but temptation". That's was the attitude of the people under the Old Covenant.

Those living under the New Covenant are going to receive:

Not everyone on earth… everyone who receives the New Covenant! I wish I could tell you that Israel, at that point, opened their hearts to this promised new gift. They didn't!

On that last page you have wonderful parts of the Bible story. The Israelites return from exile, the rebuilding of the temple, the wonderful story of Esther the queen, Ezra and Nehemiah finishing and dedicating the new walls of Jerusalem. Happy days are there again!!!

All those stirring events take place in just 95 years…. and just 7 years later Malachi is delivering his four oracles of judgment in the last book in the Old Testament and for the next four hundred years God and Scripture go silent… they weren't good years for the children of Israel.

The only thing they had going for them is that in the back of their minds they remembered what Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel had promised. Somewhere along the line a New Covenant was going to replace the Old…

When Jesus arrives, in the first pages of the New Testament (latin for covenant)… you probably know that or you wouldn't be sitting in a Christian church. When Jesus came he came to die for our sins but you also need to know that brought in with him in the New covenant. I'm not sure that we have a grasp on what that means!!

If we think that our Christian life is supposed to be us trying to follow the rules in the Bible …we haven't yet really caught on to what this New Covenant we are being offered is all about.

What I want to show you…this next two weeks… is what the Bible clearly says your spiritual privileges are… if you are a believer living under the New Covenant. When Jesus, at the last supper:

Luke 22:20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant….. in my blood,……. which is poured out for you.

What He is saying there is huge… much bigger than you simply saying, "I accept Jesus as my Savior". What he is promising there will not only assure you of eternal life… it will radically change your present life as well!