The first reading is from John chapter 3 verses 1 to 16. Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, Rabbi, we know that you're a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the signs you were doing if God were not with him. Jesus replied, very truly I tell you no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.
How can someone be born when they are old? Nicodemus asked, surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born? Jesus answered, very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the spirit gives birth to spirit.
You should not be surprised by saying you must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear it sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit.
How can this be? Nicodemus asked. You are Israel's teacher said Jesus and you do not understand these things. Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen.
But still you people do not accept our testimony. I've spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe. And how will you believe? I speak of heavenly things.
No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven, the son of man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness so the son of man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Isaiah 42 verses 1 to 10.
Here is my servant whom I am up whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out or raise his voice in the streets. A bruise reed, he will not break and a smoldering whip he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice. He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his teaching the islands will put their hope. This is what God the Lord says, the creator of heavens who stretches them out who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to do its people and life to those who walk on it.
I the Lord have called you in righteousness. I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the gentiles. To open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
I am the Lord, that is my name. I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols. See the former things have taken place and new things I declare. Before they spring into being I announce them to you.
Sing to the Lord a new song. His praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea and all that is in it, new islands and all who live in them. To Corinthians chapter 5 verses 11 to 21. Since then we know what it is to feed the Lord.
Like we try to persuade others, what we are is plain to God and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again but giving you an opportunity to take pride in us so that you can answer those who take pride in what you are seeing rather than what is in the heart. If we are out of our mind, as some say, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you.
For Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died and he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new is here.
All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them and he was committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf.
Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sinned for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Please know our scripture. Let's pray and then explore this briefly together. Father, constrain us by your love, convict us, convict us by your Holy Spirit and work resurrection and newness into our lives for Jesus' sake. So our theme for 2026 is all things new, all things new.
It comes from Revelation 21 verse 5, amid a sea of suffering. Despite the suffering. Because of the suffering, you get this revelation from the risen Jesus. He was seated on God's throne, Jesus, risen from the dead, said, I am making everything new.
In the King James, behold, I make all things new. And he said, write this down for these words of trustworthy and true. Now this sentence here, this remarkable Jesus, risen from the dead, speaks through John in the apocalypse to suffering people. And he says, I'm making all things new.
Behold, I make all things new. The beholder is there in the Greek, by the way, and in the NIV translation here, it tries to capture the beholder with that exclamation point. But it's not enough. Behold, I make all things new.
It's both a remarkable promise about the future and a remarkable description about what he's doing right now. Jesus is the bringer of newness. Now, newness is a theme in the Bible and it doesn't mean novelty or what is novel. Rather, it means renewal and redemption and resurrection.
Crucially, Jesus doesn't say I'm making all new things as if you could be replaced, but rather, I'm making all things, including you, you. It starts about renewal rather than abandonment and why the resurrection is so crucial, so central. I think the risen Jesus is quoting the prophet Isaiah who said, see, the form of things, the old has already happened. The old form of things have taken place.
And the new things I declare, which is why you ought to sing a new song, a fresh response to a new act of God, through this prophetic figure in Isaiah, simply called the servant, which you can see back in verse 1 of Isaiah 42, read to us, written hundreds of years before Jesus, God says, through Isaiah the prophet, here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one, whom I delight, I will pour out my breath on him, my spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nation. So Isaiah 42 written before Jesus is named in the New Testament as Jesus Christ, who we're told in Revelation is making everything new. Now, what does all this mean? Well, it sounds huge.
Today is the first Sunday in February and we're back from the break, back from our summer series, combined 4 and 6 p.m. And so we've got two weeks introducing the theme for 2026 before Riven Dell and then before our lens series. Now, why newness? Well, I think it's because many of us feel tired and anxious and stuck like something's weighing us down.
And I think some of us feel the same about the world as we do about our own lives. Now, into that experience, not contradicting it, but speaking to it, the Bible speaks with a surprising confidence about renewal, newness, newness, not mere self-improvement and certainly not same old, same old, but rather of Jesus' work of making all things new. And this week, we go close to home, namely we start with you. In 2 Corinthians 5 verse 7, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.
The old is gone, the new is here. So Christianity can't be about a new liquor paint on my otherwise moral life. It's got to be about being given a new life. So it's going to be about resurrection.
It's going to be about being reconciled to God and reworked by His Spirit, like being born from above or in a second time. You are something new. A Christian often says sometimes they're just forgiven. That's true, but it's insufficient to say so.
You are in Christ. Something more. Next week, we lift our eyes up again because the power of resurrection spills beyond you and into all creation. So this Sunday, you and next Sunday, all things new.
I do hope you'll join us for both Sundays. So three questions just mapping it out. What is the old that Paul is talking about? What is the new?
And how do I find myself renewed? Especially if I'm old, like I am, or tired, stuck. So firstly, what is the old? Well, in the Bible and in Paul, the old or formless things is shorthand for a world opposed to God, the old and stuck and tired.
Paul puts it another way when he talks about the way of the flesh, former things. You could say the way I've seen the world and the devil, of abuse and injustice and control. That world is attended by decay and ultimately death, and it is old. It's as old as Adam.
I'm going to talk about this image from a moment. It's a late sixteenth century panel of the Garden of Eden. It's in the Met in New York City. When we were living there, we loved seeing, going through the Met, now I want to go back and find this artwork.
What did you do? Upon this image, and indeed the images that are invoked in the Garden of Eden, without debating about Adam and Eve and how the world began. What's upon the images that are there? In particular, the fruit attached to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as attached to the nourishing sap, and as detached.
Just stay with me here. The fruit attached to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents leaving right and wrong to God. It's only God you determined right from wrong. I don't determine it.
You determine it. The fruit attached to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is letting God be God. When attached, it means trusting God and not self and taking humanly's word and not the serpent. When attached, it means true worship of the living God and walking with God in the call of the day.
And access to the tree of life, it represents the way things should be, the fruit attached. Adam and Eve detached the fruit from the tree and eight, they consumed it, gobbled it up. When detached, it represents me deciding what is right from wrong. And you deciding what is right from wrong and you and I disagreeing about what is right and wrong and therefore it becomes an exercising power.
Surely that's what is on the internet every day, people eating from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As an image, when detached, it means trusting self and distrusting God. Where God hands you over to self, Romans 1, which is why they hid from God, they're alienated and hid from each other, making fig leaves for coverings. Such a profound picture of the way things are, not the way they began, but the way they are.
I am master of my own fate. I am captain of my soul. This is the old way. God has been tried and tested and found wanting by life, by despots everywhere from a linear, by all of humanity in one way or another, fighting about what they believe is right and wrong.
Led to death in the case of Adam, it lead to the Hebrews being oppressed by Pharaoh and then pressing others and going to exile for their sin, Paul sums it up by saying, as in Adam will die, as in the earth man will die. These are the old, the former things Paul talks about. So not simply our past mistakes or bad habits or regrets. It's too easy to say that way, but rather the old way of being human apart from God.
And this detachment of the fruit from the tree always has a current expression, always. And I think it's old because it's boringly time, even as it's destructively hurtful. And I wonder whether there will be a generation of young people who say to generation X, my name is Paul, you failed us, you gave us everybody fighting about what's right and wrong, individualism. But you didn't give us God, you didn't give us the miracle of life.
It's important to say the context of two Corinthians 5, Paul saying to the Corinthian church, you're tempted by the old. The city they live in was impressive people, flashy leaders and grand, rhetoricians and they thought of Paul as a hack, Paul saying you're drinking deeply of your age. Verse 12, they take pride in what is seen, the flashy, rather than what is in the heart. Paul says, in verses 10 and 11, it's the context of our text today, he knows what it is to fear the Lord and he knows what it is to fear the love of Christ.
So he lives in this space, he needs to look at me for a moment. And he knows what it is to live in the fear of, appropriate fear of the Lord, our people for the darkness of Christ, so I can't just take him for granted. But he's also constrained by the love of Christ, uphill by his powerful hand. And Paul knows what it is to live in this space.
Because if you live in this space, you're all about grace and you just let people do what they want, including yourself, change the God post. If you live only in this space, you live with an inappropriate fear of God, you'll run. Once he lives in this space, he's constrained by the love of Christ. He finds he has to persuade others and to do so in a way that makes him look out of his mind, he says, just a little bit nuts, unlike the Greek rhetoricians and the super apostles.
He says, he's happy to be out of his mind, for God's sake. I prefer to be seen as mad and obedient to God, than all very reasonable, but acting for your sake, because I want you to like me. Paul says, I'm a new creation, I belong to another. I'm in Christ.
And the old lives life curved in on self. Aladdin is from Augustine, curved in on self. Paul says that those who live, if Christ has died, and therefore we've all died, those who live, should no longer live for themselves. But what he doesn't mean, lives selfishly.
He means the fruit, the touch, and the truth, and all the good and evil. So you could have your fruit, you could actually detach yourself from God and live a selfless life. You could detach the fruit from God and live a super spiritual life. You could be the smartest person in any room in which you walk, you could be the world's greatest philanthropist.
You'd be selfless and live for yourself, according to Paul. We no longer have a life defined by inappropriate human fear, performance, anxiety, control of others, power, struggles. That's a life shaped by the world rather than God. The Corinthians were tempted, it's old, it's unable to give new life, however polished it remains tired, anxious and stuck.
So, secondly, what is the new? Well Paul writes it right there in 2 Corinthians 5. If you're in Christ, you're the new creation. The old, gone, new, already here.
In the Greek, it's if anyone is in Christ, new creation. It's even simpler than that. In the Greek, in the original language, if anyone in Christ, new creation. No matter how you feel, you have been if in Christ, renewed, given a new start.
You are what Jesus called, born from above or born the second time. You know, it's Nick and then he couldn't understand. You heard that in the first reading. I get it.
How can you crawl back into your mother's womb? It can't happen. But Jesus is saying, and Paul is saying, something amazing has happened to you and is happening to you. It's a gift from outside of you, but it's a transformation from the inside out.
It's not just a renovation of one's moral house, but a knockdown rebuild of you and not in the tired old ways, but in God's new way, the way of love. Paul writes all this is from God. It's all a gift from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ. God made him who had no sin, Jesus, to become sin, to great swap, so that in him we might become the righteous of God, a new creation, new.
I don't know if you realize this, but there are some things that are dead without another thing. A light is dead without another thing called electricity that goes into the bowl. A candle is dead without fire touching the wick, might smell nice, but it doesn't function as a candle. A plant is dead without sunlight.
You can put the seed in the ground, but it needs something outside of itself. It needs sunlight. The life that you have, the new life in Christ, comes from elsewhere. It comes from the Messiah.
As in Adam or die, so in Christ, all we made alive, all this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ. That's the biblical vision of the new. No one, a little bit like the light the candle in the plant, needs an external source of to make it work. No one can be alive the first time without a mother.
You all had a mother. You cannot be alive without a mother. Jesus said, flesh gives birth to flesh and some of you know that experience. But no one can be alive in Christ, resurrected, renewed a new creation without God.
The spirit is birth to spirit. So you are new creation, if in Christ. Not a refurbished version of the old self, not a better managed life, not more spirituality, but something fundamentally new. There's a word for this.
It's called regeneration. You, new, is then you reconciled the God in Christ, no one can be defined by Adam, but defined in Christ, by resurrection. And so if the old life is curved in on self, even if you're a philanthropist, still what you want to do, the new life is animated from outside of self and curved upwards to God in worship and outwards to others in acts of sacrificial service. And that new creation, this ball is already here.
The future has broken in, not finished, but truly begun. The future has been created by the world, and you are proof. So my final question is, how do I find myself renewed? And that simple answer is, find yourself in Christ, located there in Him, rather than in the world where He was old.
And you do that by faith in Jesus Christ. But it's a lifelong process of God work within us by His Spirit to awaken us to this newness. And so, Paul says to the Corinthians, basically, do you reconcile the God, act like you are and you act like a new, be as you are. That's why Paul and Paul and Paul and Corinthians will be reconciled to God in verse 20, not that they're not Christian, but they're slipping into the old and tired ways of seeking the impressive what it's seen.
So start the new life of living in the way of Christ. Paul says in the Corinthians correspondence, you can speak in the tongues of men and angels, but if you don't have love, if you're not touched by this newness, you are nothing. He says, stop being captivated by heroes as in their case and stop being constrained or compelled by the love of Christ, stop being out of your mind, for God's sake. I think when you all happens as Christ's love takes hold of us firmly and the more firmly it takes hold of us rather than inappropriate fear or performance or even shame guiding us.
I can't be right. You are right with God. And I think if you live this way, you get new eyes. So I need you to look at this verse.
Paul writes, given this, we now, from now on, we regard or see no one from a worldly or flecic one of you. You look at your boss or a co-worker or a slack or a spouse who's trouble or a child who's difficult and you used to respond with your gun. That annoys me. That's wrong.
Why can't they change? Not that those things are necessarily wrong, but here Paul says, we have a whole new way of looking. He said even we regard Christ in this way. We had a gut reaction to Christ, but we do so no longer.
We had a gut reaction where we said Christ is a loser. The Roman machine rolled over him. He died. How weak is that?
But there we say, weakness is strength. We no longer regard Jesus Christ as irrelevant or a loser, but rather a lifesaver and a game changer. We look at everyone differently. Everyone.
And we live differently. He died for all that those who currently live should no longer live themselves to attach fruit, but rather for him who died for them and was raised against, that being returned to the plans and purposes of God. The Father always wanted us to worship the eternal Son. So we see everyone differently now and not according to the gut, not according to self, but we see them through the loving, gracious, strong, beautiful filter of Jesus Christ.
It's a whole new lens to look on the world. I think the more you press into this, the more you find it's true, even tired, even stuck and I've been stuck in my life. And even as you age, by the way, it's important to say, Paul will later say, you know, though, outwardly, no earlier, it says, though outwardly we are wasting away. I feel that way by the way.
I'm of the age where I'm, you know, lots of people who are younger than me and fresh are exciting and lots of people who are older than me who are doing it tough in ways. I'm not, but I've got that appointment with the GP told me to have with the physiotherapist like two months ago. And, you know, I'm hurting, but I just, I'm wasting away. We all are.
But Paul says, though, outwardly we are wasting away. Even as it hurts as we get older, yet we find this. Yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. Because our troubles, which compared to the eternal glory, might seem light and momentary.
That light and momentary troubles are achieving for us internal glory that far outweighs more. And so I believe even as we get older, even I hope even on my deathbed that I find that new desires emerge, new hope appears, new freedom to live, not for myself, not to be who I am according to my desires, but who I am according to Christ's desires, who I truly am. So everything is new for you. You can live life with hope.
Let it rebuke the despair. You can live life with sacrificial service. Let it rebuke the selfishness. You can live like life like Christ, not like self.
That's not easy in a complicated world. These new eyes change families and marriages and workplaces and churches. But you knew is at the end of the story. After all, he who has said it on the throne said, I'm making everything, not just you.
I'm making everything new. But we have to wait till next week to discover what that means. Let me pray. Father Jesus said, no one, unless one's born from above, I cannot say the kingdom of God.
And so we say what Jesus says, we claim it for ourselves, we say what Paul says, we claim it for ourselves, that we are born from above, we are a new creation. We're part of something new that you're doing in the world and have been doing for thousands of years. And we pray that we might stay in the space of that newness, of faith in Christ, as being reconciled to him, of seeing the world the way he sees the world. We pray this Father for Jesus' sake.
Amen.