New Years (2012-2013) – audio

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Many people have told me that time passes more quickly as you get older.

I don’t know if it’s true for everyone, but from where I sit I think they’re right.

Can you believe 2012 is gone?

It’s been an eventful year. The presidential race occupied our attention for much of the year. We were intrigued by the London Olympic Games, horrified by shootings in Aurora and Newtown, and now we’re preoccupied by talk of heading over the nebulous but scary “fiscal cliff.”

What’s happened in your world in 2012?

Did you welcome a child into your life? Send one to college?

Get a new job? Change careers?

Perhaps you went through a divorce or lost someone you love.

The way Paul closes Philippians seems quite appropriate as we end one year and begin another.

Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit (Philippians 4:21-23).

In the 1,950 years since Paul dictated this letter from a Roman jail, the world has changed in many ways. Nations have risen and fallen. Wars have been fought, and millions of people have lived and died.

But in so many ways, things are still the same.

We look at a world that’s not too different from the one Paul saw from his imprisonment. People are laughing and crying and dreaming and living and dying.

And what the world needs now—what we need now—is the same thing they needed.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ”

We still live in a fallen world, and we’re a fallen people, but the hope Paul extended to the church at Philippi is the same hope God extends to us today.

He offers us hope through his grace, which is how Paul finished the letter.

And I think that’s a pretty good way to end a year:

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

But, there’s just something neat about new.

The smell of a new car, the look and feel of a new gadget, the cuteness of a new puppy.

Many of us get excited about a new year.

There’s optimism in the air, isn’t there? Yep, I messed up last year, but this year’s gonna be different.

It’s a beautiful new slate, clean start, fresh beginning.

New me for the new year, as they say.

God likes new things too, something Paul celebrates here:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17).

God gives newness, but it’s not tied to the calendar, of course.

And it has nothing to do with weight loss or gym memberships or quickly-made-but-easily-forgotten resolutions.

He gives newness in Christ.

In fact, he recreates us in Christ, which is incredible.

All those sins?

Gone.

The guilt, hopelessness, living only for self?

A thing of the past.

God gives you a new identity with a new hope, a new outlook, and a new future.

Maybe that’s just what you need

Maybe you got sidetracked last year, got your priorities out of whack, became a little self-serving.

Now’s a good time to change that.

God’s not bound by our calendars, of course, but there’s no better time than today to ask God to give you a fresh start.

If you’re not a follower of Christ, trust in him as God’s Son and connect to his crucifixion in baptism.

Maybe you obeyed the gospel long ago, but today what you need more than anything is for him to be your Lord and Savior once again.

Ask him.

He’ll make you new, completely new, beautifully new.

In Christ, “the new has come.”