One of my favorite things that happens at the end of every new year beginning of the next year is people start making lists. You know, like the top five movies of 2019 or top, I saw a guy on YouTube's like my top 100 books of the year. I was like, man, you've got a top 100? Like that's not a cumulative list.
Like what do you do with your time? There's all that kind of stuff. But the first thing really, and like people are going to start making those lists. And the first like major like cultural like phone phenomena that over 2019 was Marie Kondo.
You remember her? We've already blown past that several ways. I don't know if you, she had a television show on Netflix and it came out on January 1st, 2019. Those of you all who are like Marie Who?
Some Marie Kondo is this Japanese woman who was a minimalist and she had kind of your typical like makeover reality show where she came into people's houses and helped them clean their clutter. And she had a specific style of decluttering that's and she's been kind of a thing for a while in that circle, but she hit mainstream with this show on Netflix that she called it Con Marie. And the whole thing was you sort your stuff based off of does it spark joy. I got like through three episodes.
I told Mary, I'm not paying attention to this anymore. I'm not going to do it. Not not not my style, not my speed. I mean, I have way too many camouflage hats and cowboy boots to listen to this woman.
But I was laughing because one of the things that she said, you kind of saw take Facebook and people made some memes out of it and stuff. She said, you should have no more than 10 books. You remember that? I've got a problem.
I've got an image up here that's happened earlier this year. John Steele, who goes to church here, asked today, can I come in your office and count your books and he left me a sign on the shelf. So there are 573 books on the shelf, not including the box of toad's or books. And you know, there's probably over 600 now.
That was like six months ago. Five months ago. Clearly me and Marie Kondo have very different philosophies of how we live life. This show, I mean, it was brilliant marketing.
It starts on the first of the year. It captured the fact that people were looking for new things. We always kind of think of January 1st as resets anyway. I mean, people are wanting to do new things at this time of the year.
And this show just completely capitalize on that. In scripture, we have this thing that it shows up across all of scripture. It's called a new song. It happens six or seven times in the book of Psalms.
It shows up in the prophecy of Isaiah a little bit and also shows up a couple of times in the book of Revelation to sing a new song. And new song is interesting because it's contrasted with the old way of doing things, the old songs, the things that it did not bring life, the things that were not worth celebrating. But it's about a dynamic life. It's about a life that's lived with an ever moving and ever present perpetual renewal of the Holy Spirit.
It's about us seeing this a constant thing, a constant way that God is renewing us. The Psalms, the last six or seven, eight months, I've just fallen in love with reading the Psalms. I've read the Psalms and for years, I've had conversations with people and they're saying they're having a lot of trouble going on in life, especially in conflict with someone, a bunch. If they're in a situation of life to where they really kind of need rescue and redemption and there's bad stuff happening directed by another person, I'll just start praying the Psalms.
It will equalize things more than you realize, just for praying the Psalms. The last six, seven, eight months, I've just loved the Psalms in a new way, in a fun way, but in many ways, because the Psalms are about time. The Psalms are about change. The Psalms are a way that our heart can find some rest because we realize that other people that live before us are going through some of the same things that we're going through right now.
Since Psalms is timeless in many ways, NT writes says that the Psalms invite us to stand at the intersection of the different layers of time. The Psalms invite us to stand at the intersection of different layers of time. It's just what we are going through others have gone through. In many ways, the issues of the world is just in a cycle.
The experience that humans are going through has been the exact same experience as humans have always gone through. So to hear and use these words is just this powerful thing. And the Psalms is just kind of funny because halfway through the Old Testament, in the middle of a story of people, this relationship with God and everything is just going to start. Everything is just going south.
In the book of Nehemiah, it ends with the God's people coming back from exile. They get a chance to rebuild the temple. Every single thing they thought they were going to get to do. And the total stories of the older folks are crying because it just can't hold a candle to the whole temple.
Then you have the book of Job, which is the book of Job. But at the middle of this story, it's kind of a downer trajectory and it's about to kick back in with the prophets, which is going to tell the exact same story. In a different way, you find the Psalms. It opens up with blessed is the man who does not sit in the council of the wicked.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. He's like a tree planted by streams of living water, which yields its fruit and season. And all that he does, he prospers.
In the middle of just a story going bad, scripture stops and it worships for 150 chapters. And it begins telling the exact same story again. The Psalms are about time. And the Psalms put to words just the multitudes of emotions that we find in life.
And so I want us to just talk about that new song this morning. I want to talk about this one of the places where this is talked about and just think about how we begin new things together. And then we're going to close this time, not just by celebrating communion, but by beginning our year as God's people have begun that year for a long, long time and just celebrate on something together. Psalm 40 verses one through five, it'll be up on the scriptures, on the screens behind me.
But listen to these words, this is what it says. I waited patiently for the Lord to help me. He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and my air.
He set my feet on solid ground and he steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. And many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the Lord.
Oh, the joys of those who trust in the Lord who have no confidence in the proud and those who worship idols. So Lord, my God, you have performed many wonders for us. Your plans are to numerous to do numerous to list and you have no equal. If I try to recite all your wonderful deeds, I will never come to the end of them.
This is what happens. This is a story about the backside of faithless. We're used to situations where you're kind of on the front side of it, where you need to help. But the story is on the back side.
This is a person who's giving thanks. These are words from a person who has learned how to trust. So what do we do when we want new things or when we need new things in life? Like when we realize that we're in a situation where we need new things to happen, how do we handle that?
Now think about the first of the year. We're going to make lists. We're going to plan. We're going to set goals.
We're going to prioritize things. You know, we might be the person who gets like five new planners every January until you find the perfect one. You might make a vision board. I mean, all these things, but ultimately we're going to try, right?
We're going to try. We're going to step forward with our best foot and do everything we can. And what's so funny is that scripture tells us so many times that all this is for not to take in a very extreme way in verse four, what this song tells us is that that's actually idolatry. But what do we put our trust in?
That's not God. Like I said, that's an extreme way. But we see this person celebrating the goodness of God. It's like they've learned their lesson at some point in time and realize their own planning was not able to move forward.
No patience is the first thing we learned. Verse one said, I waited patiently for the Lord. Like literally that translation is I waited waiting like the same word repeats itself twice. I was patient patiently.
Like patience is a thing. But the activity of being patient in our lives is active in our formation. Our form is active in our formation individually how we relate to who God is. But it's also active in our formation is God's people.
How are we allowing him to do things in ways that we cannot see and that we cannot understand. I'll tell you a funny story about being here, a funny story about patience that affects every single person in this room. Do you know that if we would have finished all of our building loan paperwork and we wanted to in June versus when we actually finished it in November, you know, our interest rate dropped three times in six months. Those five months, I think I did the math, those five months are worth almost $30,000.
That's patience right there. Patience is a lot more than a great goes on a rose of song y'all. Okay. You know, biblical patience means that we wait for God to do his best work.
You know, it teaches us behaviors that can't be instant. I think the hot word for people who are big in a personal growth just pay attention to the hot words going to be habit now and habits. Like that's kind of overtaking things. You know how long the typical New Year's resolution lasts 12 days, 12 days.
It takes over 20 days to form a new habit. You know, patience teaches us behaviors that can't be instant. Biblical patience also means that we are binding together the truth of God and that we are stepping forward with uprightness and integrity while we wait. We know things are happening.
A lot of times when I'm trying to be patient, I'm just like, okay, don't grumble, don't grumble, it will be worth it. Does anybody else do that? Is anybody not patient whatsoever at all? Is anybody like gummed up stuff pretty good because they're in too much of a hurry?
You know, it's like, you know, we think patience is like, I've never thought of patience being a very positive thing. We see in the description, no, patience. Like, patience is where the magic happens. It's almost the writer of the Psalm is saying that it's the waiting that turns into something.
Now, some of you might have said, well, Chad, this sounds easy. Okay, patience to be patient. I've heard this before. I've been coming to church here about patience.
My spouse has been telling me by my parents. Everybody tells me to be patient. I don't need to come to church to hear this. It'll last week, I told you all, we were kind of wrapping up that year of preaching in the gospel.
I kind of told you all that I miss the Old Testament a little bit. That was kind of my Landing zone. And one of the reasons I love the Old Testament so much is like the Hebrew language is just beautiful. It's a poet's language.
It's in it's, we can't handle a level of literal translation. If Hebrew because it would make us blush a little bit too much. It would also make us, like kind of, or jaw drops a little bit. But I can first, first two, he lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud, and the My literal reading of that says he pulled me out of the rolling pit out of the pit of noise It speaks to abyss that speaks to chaos to speaks to just the complete ancient Near East language of curse and of doom and of bad things It's like if you're a lord of the rings person This is like Mount Mariah and like all the lava that's going on inside of that like this is a bad place No, I think about okay It's out of the mud like I get stuck in gumbo mud all the time you click in full drive You have to get out anymore my cubs like it's on a button and you can get out of it pretty quick and easy like This is much more than that I think at the pit of noise like think of all of the things that are going on in our heads that drive us away from patients That might be forming us into something Think about the things that are just speaking at the back of our minds the things that confuse us the things that distract us There's things that seek to command our attention to the point of death and that's what he pulls us out of He pulls us out of a false narrative that has been train wrecking us for our whole life And he does this constantly because you know we rather our life is constantly moving Think about this new song what are the qualities of that means at the end of this verse 3 we see he has given me a new song to sing Like I said earlier, this isn't a prayer This is a testimony This is about someone who says look at what God has done for me look at what God has done through me look at what God has done in spite of me Look at what God has done and through patience We're ushered into this truer faith and in a truer life realization You know far too often we train wreck our own spiritual development because we simply think God is done with us Singing this new song means that we're testifying the fact that God is ever moving and ever present in our life We're saying he is always doing things for me.
He's always doing things through me. He's always doing things around me He's always doing things in spite of me, but that's what he does He's ever been doing lamentations verse 3 22 to 23 before we read this when he's put this in context This book is written by Jeremiah after Nebuchadnezzar has come and burned down Jerusalem People are eating each other The bad stuff is going on while he's singing this song and this is what Jeremiah says The faithful love of the Lord never ends his mercy's never sees greatest his faithfulness his mercies begin a fresh each morning In the middle of that he's saying that Does that make sense to anybody else? In the middle probably one of the worst situations that humanity can imagine This is what Jeremiah is saying. He's your mercies are new every single morning prophet Isaiah A little while before this he says this for i'm about to do something new see i've already begun Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland God is always doing new things among us that he can absolutely cut through whatever we are in the middle of Giving us the clarity of where he is the clarity of him being alongside of us And him doing everything possible for us to see a path through things This is one of my favorite images across scripture They just kind of cuts through everything that a new song is a response by God's people to God's revelation and an experience of a new act of deliverance We have new songs to sing in new ways In short we trust for this newness and for the restarts that we seek And the only thing that we find this almost says that to understand this is that we the only thing we need to do is to be patient To lean not on our own understanding and to be waiting for the faithfulness of God And we stand firm on these words of others they've gone before us This is echoes of faithfulness that we find in scripture But also the echoes of faithfulness that we have among us as its people here in this room right now And among the relationships that we have with people And the response that we have the ways that we begin engaging this in our life is this the first thing is we trust for the newness that we seek And we believe Jesus is actively forming us as we wait That if we're being patient right now, we're able to be patient because we know he is doing things with our patients He might not this waiting might not happen because we've not earned something yet Or instead maybe this waiting is happening because he is forming us to fully understand what he's going to bring us to next He's not holding us back. He's building us up inside this patience Second thing is we remind ourselves towards the hope we believe in I've shared this with y'all the way out several times in the last couple of months But you know earlier this year I just started writing down where I saw God's faithfulness at work and just leaving on a piece of paper in my Bible so I can see it every morning and y'all that will completely Change and shift the way you think and operate when you literally have that in front of you all the time This idea of you being alone or God not doing things can quickly get eradicated when you're writing that stuff down and you begin looking and Anticipating for that to happen and the last thing is that we just walk through this as an expectant people We expect for God to be doing these things It's about our life as Christians is not an if but when What is the next thing we're gonna see?