New Beginning Sermon

When God Says: Watch What I Am Doing Now

Isaiah 43:18-21 And 2 Corinthians 5:17 (Csb)

Introduction

There is something in the human heart that longs for a fresh start. We feel it at the turn of a calendar year. We feel it after a long season of grief. We feel it when a relationship has been broken and we wonder whether anything whole can grow from the rubble. That longing is not weakness. It is not naivety. In fact, when you trace that longing carefully, you find that it is pointing toward something God has already promised.

The question this morning is not whether you want something new. The question is whether you trust the One who makes all things new. The Scriptures we are sitting with today give us two windows into the same great truth. Isaiah 43 opens a window into the heart of God speaking to a people in exile. Second Corinthians 5 opens a window into the heart of God speaking to a people in Christ. Together they tell us that God is not finished, that the past does not have the final word, and that what God creates, He calls His people to walk in.

Let us read the text.

Isaiah 43:18-21 says: "Do not remember the past events; pay no attention to things of old. Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, jackals and ostriches, because I provide water in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people. The people I formed for myself will declare my praise."

And 2 Corinthians 5:17 says: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!"

Part One: The God Who Does Not Forget But Still Moves Forward

To understand what Isaiah 43 is saying, we have to understand what it is not saying. God tells His people in verse 18, "Do not remember the past events; pay no attention to things of old." That sounds, at first, like God is asking them to have short memories. But that cannot be right, because the entire Old Testament is built on remembering. Israel was commanded to remember the Exodus. They were commanded to tell their children what God had done. The Psalms are full of deliberate, worshipful recollection.

So what does God mean here? He is not telling them to forget the Exodus. He is telling them not to be so anchored to the past that they miss what He is doing right now. The people of Israel in exile were in danger of two errors. One was despair, the belief that God had abandoned them and that the best days were permanently behind them. The other was nostalgia, the belief that God could only work the way He had worked before, and that if He was not parting a sea, He was not moving at all.

God corrects both errors with one sentence: "Look, I am about to do something new."

Notice the word "new" here. In the Hebrew context of this passage, new does not mean unrelated to what came before. It means fresh, unprecedented in its form, and alive with divine initiative. God is not erasing His covenant faithfulness. He is expressing it in a way the people have not yet seen. He will make a way in the wilderness. He will bring rivers in the desert. The very landscape that represents death and hopelessness will become the place where God demonstrates life and provision.

This is the character of God. He does not abandon His people in the hard places. He meets them there. He does not wait for conditions to improve before He acts. He acts and conditions change because He is present.

The application for us is immediate. Many people in this room are sitting in a wilderness of some kind. It may be a wilderness of grief, of financial pressure, of relational pain, of spiritual dryness. And the temptation in the wilderness is to conclude that God is absent. But Isaiah 43 says the wilderness is precisely where God makes a way. The road does not appear before God shows up. God shows up and then the road appears.

Part Two: The New Creation That Christ Makes

Now we move from Isaiah to Paul, and the movement is intentional. What God promised through the prophet, He accomplished through the Son.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come." The word "therefore" always signals that Paul is drawing a conclusion from something he has already argued. Just before this verse, Paul has been talking about the cross and resurrection of Jesus. He has said that Christ died for all so that those who live would no longer live for themselves but for Him who died and was raised on their behalf. The new creation is not simply a new attitude or a fresh perspective. It is the result of a death and a resurrection.

When a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ, something happens that is as real and as radical as creation itself. Paul uses the same language here that Genesis uses when God spoke the world into being. This is not self-improvement. This is not turning over a new leaf. This is God speaking life where there was death, light where there was darkness, order where there was chaos.

The old has passed away. That phrase carries enormous weight for people who have been carrying enormous shame. The old self, the self that was defined by sin and separation from God, that self does not simply get renovated. It passes away. It is gone. And the new has come. Present tense. Already arrived. Already real. Already yours if you are in Christ.

This is the gospel. Not that God helps good people become better, but that God makes dead people alive. Not that God assists your self-improvement project, but that God is the author of a new creation in you that you could not produce on your own.

Now here is where the two passages speak to each other. Isaiah says God will make a way in the wilderness. Paul says that way has been made through the cross of Jesus Christ. Isaiah says God will bring rivers in the desert. Paul says those rivers are the life of the Spirit poured into the hearts of those who belong to Christ. Isaiah says God is forming a people who will declare His praise. Paul says that people is the church, those who are in Christ, new creations walking in the new thing God has done.

Part Three: Called To Walk In What God Has Made

Understanding these texts is not the finish line. The finish line is faithful participation in what God has done and is doing.

Look again at Isaiah 43:20-21. God says He is providing water in the wilderness "to give drink to my chosen people. The people I formed for myself will declare my praise." There is a purpose embedded in the new thing God does. He does not create a new way simply to display His power. He creates a new way so that His people will be sustained, shaped, and sent out to declare who He is.

This means that the new beginning God gives is not a destination. It is a direction. It is not a place you arrive and then rest permanently. It is a path you walk, sustained by His provision, shaped by His presence, and oriented toward His praise.

What does that look like practically?

It means that the person who has been forgiven much lives with a deep awareness of grace. They do not treat their new beginning as something they earned or as something they deserve to coast on. They treat it as a gift that calls them to generosity, to honesty, to the kind of life that makes people ask what is different about them.

It means that the person who has been walking in spiritual dryness does not simply wait for feelings to return. They walk toward God in the wilderness, trusting that the river is coming even before they can see it. Faith is not the absence of uncertainty. Faith is movement toward God in the presence of uncertainty.

It means that the church, collectively, is a community of new creations. We are not a gathering of people who have it all together. We are a gathering of people who have been made new by the same grace, who are walking the same road, and who are called to declare the same praise. When we gather on Sunday mornings, we are not performing spiritual health for each other. We are reminding each other that the God of Isaiah 43 is still making ways in wildernesses, and the God of 2 Corinthians 5 is still making new creations out of broken people.

Conclusion: The Invitation

If you are here today and you have never placed your faith in Jesus Christ, I want you to hear this clearly. The new creation Paul describes is available to anyone. The text says "if anyone is in Christ." Not if anyone is good enough, not if anyone has cleaned up their life first, not if anyone has earned a hearing. Anyone. The door is open because Christ opened it on the cross and walked out of the grave on the other side.

To be in Christ means to trust Him. It means to turn from living for yourself and turn toward the One who died for you and rose again. It means to receive what you cannot manufacture: forgiveness, new life, and a place in the people God is forming for His praise.

And if you are a believer who has grown tired, who has been sitting in a long wilderness and wondering whether God is still moving, hear the word of the Lord from Isaiah: "Do you not see it?" He is asking you to look again. Not at the past, not at the impossibility of your circumstances, but at the God who makes rivers in deserts and roads in wildernesses.

He is not finished. He is not absent. He is not waiting for better conditions to begin. He has already begun. The question He puts to each of us this morning is simply this: Will you walk in it?

Sources Consulted

Oswalt, John N. The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40-66. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Eerdmans, 1998.

Motyer, J. Alec. The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary. InterVarsity Press, 1993.

Harris, Murray J. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2005.

Garland, David E. 2 Corinthians. New American Commentary. Broadman and Holman, 1999.

Beale, G. K. A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New. Baker Academic, 2011.