September 6
September 6
We should daily celebrate the gospel’s offer of fresh starts and new beginnings.
The gospel message of fresh starts and new beginnings is our hope after we cross God’s moral boundaries and pay the consequences for our disobedience. It is what we wish for when our marriage is in a place we never thought it would be. It is the cry of parents whose children have wandered away from the faith. It is the hope of a pastor whose church seems to be stuck. It is what we hope for when conflict shatters our family. It is what we pray for after we once again give in to temptation. And it is what we hope for when we ask for forgiveness from someone we’ve wronged. We all have moments when we long for fresh starts and new beginnings. Sometimes the damage seems too great. Sometimes the valley seems so long and so dark that it seems it will never end. Discouragement and hopelessness come over us like a cloud. The enemy whispers in our ears, “Where is your God now?” And we are tempted to give up.
In order to give us hope and to silence the enemy’s attacks, God sprinkles his word with encouraging accounts of fresh starts and new beginnings. One of those accounts is in Ezekiel 40–42. Fourteen years after the unthinkable happened—the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, which stood as the moral and spiritual center of Jerusalem—God gives Ezekiel a vision of the rebuilding of the temple. As long as Jerusalem had still existed, and as long as the temple had stood, God’s people had hope. But now the temple is gone and the children of God are in captivity. It looks as though all is lost; God has forsaken his people and Israel is no more. This must be the end.
But fourteen years into this disaster, God comes to Ezekiel with a detailed vision of the rebuilding of his temple. There is a glorious promise embedded in this vision. It is the promise of a fresh start and a new beginning for God’s people. They will be granted this fresh start not because they have worked their way back into God’s favor, but because God is patient, loving, and full of mercy. He finds pleasure in granting his children forgiveness. He loves to make broken things new again. God is not about to let the rebellion of Israel destroy the redeeming plan that he set in place before the foundations of the world were laid.
The cross of Jesus Christ and the empty tomb stand as symbols to us that God will do what is necessary so that sin and judgment will not be the final chapter for us. In grace he comes to us with forgiveness, he reconciles us to himself, and then he works to make us new again. As you look at broken things in your life, remember that your Lord is the Lord of fresh starts and new beginnings. Because of his grace, what seems irreparably damaged can be restored and live anew.