[AI translation] So, on the threshold of a new year, the question may arise: where has the old one gone? Gone, most people would say. It has sunk into some bottomless, dark abyss that swallows everything. To which - because we don't know what it is - we have given a name, the past! Our human experience is that what is past is no more, it is over! And so the days slip by, both imperceptibly and into the past. All "today" rushes inexorably towards the past. And so one's whole life is slowly submerged and melted into the past! What a sad and inconsolable way of looking at life: to look around in this world and see everything swallowed up by the past! Everything, even the future, will one day become a thing of the past! Woe to those who see the future in this way! But it's not true! For the One who is the same yesterday and today and forever, who is beyond all that we call past, present and future, shows a very different direction to those who listen to Him. He is saying: today is not moving towards the past, but the other way round: it is hurrying towards the future! Today is moving into tomorrow, the old year into the new year, life is moving towards its end. The passing days and years are all preparing the future! Our outlook on life is one of looking to the future and preparing for it. What else can this new year that is beginning mean for us but that it brings us a few steps closer to that great future: the return of the Lord. It may be a difficult, difficult step, but we are getting closer! We are looking around this world as one that is maturing with the passing of time for that moment of majesty. When a glorious, mighty King appears in it, he will sit on his throne and deliver the shortest and greatest throne speech of all time, which will be, "Behold, I am making all things new" (Rev 21:5b) The year 1949 is also moving toward this great, universal renewal that the coming King has already proclaimed!"Behold, I will make all things new". A great declaration. An earthly king would hardly dare to venture such a programme announcement! Only one who is fully aware of his power over all! Not only can he do it, but he will do it! And to leave us in no doubt, after the great proclamation, He even commands the apostle John, who saw the heavenly apparitions, "Write, for these words are faithful and true." (Rev 21:5a) This is a throne descending from heaven, which the Bible elsewhere calls the throne of the King of kings and Lord of lords, the great white throne, or the judgment seat of Christ. But it is not the throne that is important, but the One who sits on it. His person is no longer unknown to the world. He is the One in whom God's fatherly love and grace were once made flesh here on earth. He lay at that time in the manger of the stable at Bethlehem. He is the One who crawled on His knees like a worm in the dust of Gethsemane's garden, and sweat bloody sweat for your sins and mine. He stood before Pilate with his back scourged and his face bloody, crowned with thorns, with a reed, in a purple robe, as a mocking king among the mockers. At Calvary's top, He hung on the curse-tree, abandoned by God and man! He died on the cross. And it is He whom God afterwards so extraordinarily exalted, raised from the dead, took to heaven, and there seated Him at His right hand. Soon He will be sitting on that great white throne from which He will deliver His throne speech, "Behold, I make all things new." What a majestic throne speech that is! So simple, and yet so great and round! No one and nothing is left out of it, you are in it as well as the vast world of the yet undiscovered solar systems!
Two worlds are spoken of in this throne speech: an old one that is passing away, preparing the way for the new one that is coming! The old world is a world of selfishness, sin, misery and death. The new world is a world of glory, holiness and complete redemption! And it is towards this new world that everything is already moving in this present world. Already in the Old Testament the prophet Isaiah prophesied about it, and in the New Testament the apostle Peter writes about it: 'But this one thing, beloved, let not this one thing be hid from you, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not delaying in the promise, as some count delay; but is longsuffering for us, not willing that some should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, when the heavens will pass away with a crackling sound, and the elements will be burned up, and the earth and the things that are in it will be burned up... But we look for new heavens and a new earth according to his promise, in which dwelleth righteousness" (2Pet 3:8-13). First another throne speech had to be delivered from the cross. Thus, "It is finished!", so that at the end of time he could say, "Behold, I make all things new". Only He can make all things new, because He alone has done all that was necessary!
More than once mankind has tried to renew its own world. History is full of tremendous undertakings, human effort, ambition: all trying to create a new world to replace the old, obsolete one. Think of the building of the tower of Babel, the Assyrian-Babylonian and then the Medo-Persian powers of the Old Testament, the Greek and Roman empires of the New Testament: they came and they went, and the world always remained the same. Man can neither renew himself nor the world. Renewal does not come from below, but only from the One who has the power to renew, and who has already declared beforehand: 'Behold, I make all things new'. It can therefore only come from above, and will be fulfilled when Christ appears in His visible glory! No renewal is possible without Christ. This old world simply cannot produce something new. It was so wisely seen three thousand years ago by one, wise Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes: 'What was is the same as what is to come, and what has been is the same as what is to come; and there is nothing new under the sun. There is a thing which is said, Behold this, this is new; it was old for a hundred years which were before us. There is no remembrance of the former things; likewise of the last things that are to come, there shall be no remembrance for those that are to come after." (Eccl 1,9-11)
Is there really nothing new under the sun? Is this not an exaggeration? Do we not live in a world where we are always being surprised? Just think of the new inventions! If our forefathers were to come back and look around us in the atomic age, would they not find many new things that were unimaginable in their lifetimes? Our grandfathers travelled by horse-drawn carriage, and today's man is speeding across continents with a diesel engine or flying over them like a bird. Or how far have medical science, the principles of social justice, the way we interact internationally, and so on, advanced? Are these not new things compared to the old? Can it be said that there is nothing new under the sun? Yes, you may say so, for there is indeed nothing new! Christ alone will bring the real new! This world is not new compared to the millennia of old, it is just different from what it was. Only the outward manifestations of life have changed over the millennia, but life itself has not been renewed.
What is new? It means that it is essentially new, full, rich, overflowing, vast, alive! Pure, holy, glorious! Tell me, then: is this world new compared to the ages gone by? Has the essence of this world and of life in it changed? Has mankind become holier, purer, happier than it was a thousand ages ago? Surely nothing in this world is new! He who sits on that white, royal throne, He will indeed make all things new!
This great renewal had already appeared to the apostle John in a vision from heaven. He describes wonderful things. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and dwelleth with them; and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, their God. And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall mourning nor crying nor pain be any more, for the former things are passed away." (Revelation 21:1-4) That is, there was no longer anything to separate the nations and continents from one another that could cause a stormy wave. There will be no more tears, no more death, no more mourning, no more crying out, no more pain, for the first have passed away! What a happy, welcomed state! All is new, all is new! But the greatest newness will be that which is described in verse 3: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and dwelleth with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, their God." This will be the essence, the truly new! God will be here among us in His visible glory, as King among His people, as Father among His children! The prophecy will come true: God will be all in all! In the whole created world there will be only people who are wholly and unreservedly God's! What began in the beginning, in Paradise, will then reach its most glorious fulfilment!
Can we rejoice in this future? Only those can rejoice who know that they themselves will have a part in it! Who can know this? Those who have already experienced something of the reality of this sublime throne speech on earth! For the renewal we are on the way to fully unfolding begins here and now. Look, he says: "Behold, I make all things new". So, in the present tense! So the work of re-creation is already under way! Yes, it begins here, down here in this sin-ridden land. If it is to be essentially new in that new heaven and new earth that God dwells with men, then you can be renewed now! For fellowship with God is already possible for you through His present Holy Spirit! The human life that has come into contact with the Savior God has in fact already been made new! There a whole new, happy, holy, pure life is in the making. So says the Scripture, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Cor 5:17). I read somewhere that a man was once converted, and when he testified of his renewed life among his former cronies, they refused to believe him. They thought he was just showing off. Then the man said: Ask my wife and children at home, for you know what hell our family life was! Now I can only say that everything is simply new again! We are so happy! I myself am the most amazed, and those at home can tell you what God's grace has done in me!
Has this renewal already begun in you? If not, go to Jesus in silent prayer! He has forgiveness ready for you too. Try to listen in humility, in faith, first of all, to His throne speech from the cross, as He cried out for you, "It is finished!" Give Him thanks for it! And then you will be able to give thanks for the other throne speech, which will then surely come true in your life, "Behold, I make all things new". And then a new life, a new beginning, a new world will open up before you, a new future will beckon! Everything in you and around you will be new!
Would that we were on the threshold not only of another year, but of such a new year, and that in the new year many new lives would spring up in this church, in this country, and in the whole earth, to the glory of the King who is coming to make all things new! So be it!
Amen.
Date: 1 January 1949 (New Year).
Lesson
Jel 21,1-7