Sing a New Song
Download MP3My name is Caleb Chancey and it has been an absolute joy to serve as an elder here for the last six years. It's not good if I'm already crying because y'all y'all sounded so good. It was so wonderful. We're talking about singing today and y'all that was just, it is such a blessing to hear the church gather and sing. Amen.
Caleb Chancey:Today we're gonna be continuing our study in Isaiah beginning in chapter 42 verse nine. We're going to read nine and ten to begin. You can find it in your bulletin. Behold, the former things have come to pass and new things I now declare before they spring forth I tell you of them. Sing to the Lord a new song.
Caleb Chancey:His praise from the end of the earth. You go down to the sea and all that fills at the coastlands and their inhabitants. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Father, be with the one who preaches for his sins are many.
Caleb Chancey:Do the thing that only you can do Lord, which is to make these words hit their mark and change us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. I started writing songs in elementary school, which eventually led to my first band called Cup and Saucer. There was three of us.
Caleb Chancey:We never rehearsed. We never played. We never wrote a song but we called ourselves a band and that's what mattered. Some of my songs, that I've written, we actually sing here as a church. Some of the songs I've written I actually was able to sing over my dad as he passed away.
Caleb Chancey:Some of the songs I've written have been on the radio and two of my songs have been on MTV. Not the cool MTV of the nineties. I'm talking MTV two, Teen Mom two, the reality show. You probably remember the episode. It was the episode where Tenifer tells Jake that he needs to get a job to support their baby as she's trying to rush to earth science class and my voice breaks through.
Caleb Chancey:The voice memos on my phone are full of half baked song ideas and lyrics. The primary way that I actually process my life is through songs. And if you play music or even if you just listen to music or have enjoyed music, you actually know what I'm talking talking about. Music is a central part of the human experience. By all accounts, there has never been a human culture or society that has not incorporated some form of music from the mother who is soothing her baby by humming to the laborer in the field.
Caleb Chancey:We are a singing people. Our scriptures double down on this. The biggest book in our bible is a song book and it was quoted so much by Christ. It said that as Christ suffered he bled the Psalms. Every week we as as Christians gather around the world in caves and basements and living rooms and rooms like this and we do something that might seem strange but is so incredibly core in human.
Caleb Chancey:We sing. Today we're gonna continue meditating on chapter 42 of Isaiah. It was a chapter that was introduced last week by Connor. And I wanna give a little bit of an overview of the structure of Isaiah so far. Isaiah one through 39 are all about the prophecies about the children of God turning away from God and not trusting in Him and worshiping idols and the consequences of that.
Caleb Chancey:But in chapter 40, a shift happens. It goes from those horrors and pains to hope. As Bible scholar Tim Mackie puts it, this is Israel's covenant God speaking to his people who have endured a besieged capital city for almost two years. Horrific starvation and death in the city. A whole bunch of the population was taken captive, marched, displaced, all of that.
Caleb Chancey:So these chapters of Isaiah especially 40 through 55, they are like this very personal letter of comfort. In chapter 42, that comfort takes the form of two songs. Verses one through four introduces to the first servant song that we meditated on last week. And in this week we're concentrating on the second song that's found right in the middle of verses five through 17. And we're gonna call that today a new song.
Caleb Chancey:Today we're gonna look at why we desperately need to sing a new song to the Lord. And my hope is that our great God will press on our hearts that we need to sing a new song to remember who God is. We need to sing a new song to remember why we are here and we need to sing a new song to remember that our God has the final word. That's a three point sermon. So hopefully the original Indiana Jones and not kingdom of the crystal skull.
Caleb Chancey:Y'all got it. There's a couple of So let's look at verse five together. You'll find it in your bulletin. Thus says God the Lord who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk in it. I am the Lord.
Caleb Chancey:I have called you in righteousness. I will take you by the hand and keep you. I absolutely can't get enough of the book of Genesis. If there's any members of my home group here, they're gonna laugh because often at home group I sound like the guy in the book club who obviously didn't do the reading. And no matter what you say, they're like, oh yeah, totally.
Caleb Chancey:Yeah. You know, that reminds me of like page one, you know. When God declares himself in verse five, we get kind of this flyover of the first two chapters in Genesis, the creation story. This is the wonderfully powerful God, the creator. I love the description here that our God creates the heavens and stretched them out like his mighty hands were wrapped around the edges of the universe filling the night with light and spreading out every star and galaxy.
Caleb Chancey:This power inspires awe. Legendary reader and actor, Levar Burton, who was training to be a priest before he answered the call to acting says this, there is an experience that we all have when we've been standing under the night sky gazing in the sense of majesty that we experience in that moment by just noticing the heavens. How sparkling and infinite they are. Creating us an awareness that doesn't go away. The verbs in these verses created, stretched, spread, gives are words of generous abundance.
Caleb Chancey:They shift between past tense and present tense. Yes. Our god created the universe, but our god also gives breath and spirit now. This is a god who has done mighty deeds and is doing mighty deeds. Not the God of the deist who thinks that God is the great clockmaker who just winds up the clock at the beginning and lets it go running down its course.
Caleb Chancey:And our God is not like an idol. He's not passive like a piece of stone or metal that his children too often turn to and worship. In verse eight, God says, I am the Lord. That is my name. My glory I give to no other.
Caleb Chancey:My praise I don't give to a carved idol. Idols are a major theme in Isaiah and we're actually gonna talk about them in-depth in a later sermon. But for now, know this God's hatred of idols is rooted in His deep love for us and His glory. It breaks God's heart when we turn from an active and living God to a piece of stone or metal that can absolutely do nothing for us. My favorite story about God dealing with an idol comes from first Samuel.
Caleb Chancey:The Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant, aka the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. And they take it back with them and put it in their temple, aka the original Temple Of Doom. And they set it next to their idol, Dagon, which Objective E is a cool name for an idol because it's like dragon but without the r. And so they sit the ark next to Dagon. They go to bed and they wake up and they come back.
Caleb Chancey:And they find the statue of Dagon on its face in front of the ark. So they pick it up and they're like, that probably won't happen again. Foreshadowing it does. The next day, they come back and Dagon is again laying face down except his face isn't there because his head's been cut off and his hands have been cut off. I think this story is objectively hilarious.
Caleb Chancey:You know how it like Christmas, people put like reindeer on their lawns and then during the night high school students will come and like rearrange the reindeer. It's like that but with the angels of heaven. It's like one of them is like, hey, put him down on his face again. The other one's like, no. No.
Caleb Chancey:No. Chop off his hands. And the other one's like, no. Cut off his head. And it's and Michael's like, do it all.
Caleb Chancey:They're coming. Our God is not a passive idol. Our God is active and mighty. And our God is not distant. But instead he is near us close enough that we can hear our names called or as these verses say, have our hand held by him.
Caleb Chancey:Paul uses this language in verse six in acts when he goes to Athens and he is surrounded by idols and he's telling the Athenians what our God is like. He says, God is actually not far from each one of us for in him we live and move and have our being. Is this the God that we sing to each week? The God who created our world and is near to us as a mother is to the baby in her womb that lives and moves and has their being? Or do we forget and think of God as distant, as passive as an idol in a far off land?
Caleb Chancey:And may God move our hearts to sing a new song and make even old songs new to us Because we are prone to forget who God says he is. And when we forget, we'll start substituting in who we think God is. And that eventually just becomes an idol that will crush us. We forget who God is, so we need to sing a new song to remind us. And we also need to sing a new song because we need to remember why we are even here.
Caleb Chancey:Read with me again in verse six. I am the Lord. I've called you in righteousness. I will take you by the hand and keep you. I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
Caleb Chancey:Behold, the former things have come to pass and new things I now declare. Before they spring forth, I tell you of them. Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth. Why has God called us and kept us here in this broken world? If the goal of our salvation is just to someday leave this world behind and spend eternity in heaven, why not just whisk us away in a chariot right after conversion?
Caleb Chancey:Maybe he's left us here to be the wagging finger of God that proves everyone wrong. Maybe we're supposed to spend our days describing the subtle flavor profile of the tree of knowledge to other each other. Are we called to be people in that put others in their place online in the comment section like some grand last crusade? Call me crazy y'all, but I don't think so. Just like our God created the universe and spread out each star and galaxy, God has called his people and spread them out as lights in a dark world.
Caleb Chancey:Light as these verses say that it's meant to illuminate the eyes of the blind and bring hope to the prisoners that sit in darkness. In short, y'all, we are called to be a blessing to the world. Like the river that flowed out of Eden that split off to water the world. Our presence in others lives is meant to be refreshing and point them towards the well that won't run dry. These verses are actually directly referencing the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12.
Caleb Chancey:And I will make you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. Now this is the part this is the part of this sermon that can sound super preachy. And I want to be very very clear here. The point of our meditation today on this text is not for us to go out this door and say, okay, I'm gonna do it.
Caleb Chancey:I'm gonna go and be a blessing. I'm gonna try real hard. This is actually one of the greatest temptations as Christians. We read verses like these and we replace what God says He will do with our own efforts. God's promise to Abraham says, I will make you a great nation.
Caleb Chancey:I will bless you. I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I love how God phrases this. God does not make a promise so we can be a good blessing or that we might be a blessing, but we will be a blessing. God will bring about blessing through his people.
Caleb Chancey:That's not a question. And strangely enough, it's not even ultimately up to us. It's up to God. Frederick, Beakner is becoming a favorite author of mine says this, the final secret I think is this. The final secret is the words you shall love the Lord your God become in the end less a command than a promise.
Caleb Chancey:God is the one who makes us lights. God is the one who places us in the world. God will bless the world through his people. God is the one declaring and doing new things. Now in everyday life, this may not seem to be like a big deal.
Caleb Chancey:I mean does it does it really matter who starts this new thing as long as as long as the new thing gets done. But it is a tremendous difference. It's the difference between a life of worry and exhaustion trying to make something new happen ourselves versus a life of freedom. Is this you? Is this us?
Caleb Chancey:When we have the overwhelming feeling that something needs to change in our lives, are we too quick to try to make that happen for ourselves? Instead of asking God, Lord, I know your mercies are new every morning. Show me. When he shows us what are we supposed to do, we still have this need, this feeling to do something. What are we supposed to do?
Caleb Chancey:These verses tell us, our job is to respond. Our job is to respond to what God is doing. We sing. Yes. It we are doing something then, but it doesn't feel like toil.
Caleb Chancey:It's an abreaction. It's an unconscious deep need to respond. Like going to a concert and cheering and clapping without thinking or going to an improv show and laughing without trying. Our job is to witness what God is doing. Talk about it.
Caleb Chancey:Write about it. Sing about it. But we're not meant to sing alone. Let's look at verse 10. Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth.
Caleb Chancey:You who go down to the sea and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants. Let the desert and its cities lift up their voice, the villages that Qadar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of Salah sing for joy. Let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory to the Lord and declare his praises in the coastlands.
Caleb Chancey:Twelve years ago, the famed cellist Yo Yo Ma gave a lecture at the Kennedy Center. If you wanna know one of my love languages, it's one and a half plus hour decades old YouTube videos lectures. Send them my way. This Yo Yo Ma lecture centered on why it is of the utmost importance for a society to bring together seemingly completely different art forms and what we benefit from bringing those art forms together. And he finds an analogy that I think is so perfect in ecology or the study of environments.
Caleb Chancey:He says in ecology, the point where two ecosystems that are radically different meet like a like a forest in the Sahara, that point is called the edge effect. And in that transition zone, when those two radically different environments meet, you will find the greatest diversity of life as well as the greatest number of new life forms. Why would God bring together people from every vocation, political view, nation, and time period to be one family. Because when the diversity of our stories written and motivated by our loving father, when those stories meet, the edge effect happens and new life bursts from the soil. And if you wanna know how to write this new song that we're supposed to sing, Gather the stories of his people, place them next to one another, and ask God to show you something new.
Caleb Chancey:This is why sharing our testimony and hearing others share their testimony is so important. This is why we have songwriter nights. I don't know if y'all knew this, but we have songwriter nights here at Redeemer. We sit together and we tell each other what God is doing in our own lives and our hearts burst. When we hear a new story of redemption, it meets our hearts and the hands of the Lord wraps around the edges and stretches them out, and new stars and galaxies of praise spring forth.
Caleb Chancey:And if you compound all of the stories of the redeemed from past, present, and future and put all of them next to one another, times eternity, you have created an infinite songbook of new songs. Church, we will never run out of songs to sing. We sing a new song to remember who God is. He's mighty and near. We sing a new song to remember why we are here, which is to be a blessing and to sing with our family.
Caleb Chancey:And we sing a new song to remember that our God has the final word. Let's look at verse 13. The Lord goes out like a mighty man. Like a man of war, he stirs up his zeal. He cries out.
Caleb Chancey:He shouts aloud. He shows himself mighty against his foes. For a long time, I have held my peace. I have kept still and restrained myself. But now, I will cry out like a woman in labor.
Caleb Chancey:I will gasp and pant. I will lay waste mountains and hills and dry up their vegetation. I will turn the rivers into islands and dry up the pools. This is comfort to Israel whose enemy has had their boot on Israel's neck for years. The enemy will not have the last word.
Caleb Chancey:The Lord has held his peace, but now he is coming to rescue his people. Nothing in his path will stop him. Good or bad, mountain or river, nothing will stop him from rescuing his people. My dad was a mountain of a man. And one of his biggest struggles in his life was giving and receiving grace.
Caleb Chancey:He would harden his heart over and over again. A few months before he passed, I remember he called me and during the call he just said, I'm just so tired of sinning. I cannot wait to not sin anymore. I want to be free. The last few days of his life, that mountain was laid waste.
Caleb Chancey:His ability to talk was taken away. He was unable to move more than a finger. And the man who had struggled his entire life with receiving and resting in grace had his ability to fight taken away. For three days, all he could do is receive and rest and grace. Newness poured in.
Caleb Chancey:He's reconciled with my sister who he hadn't talked to in years. He was powerless to stop this newness. And we all knew he didn't want to. We sang over him lyrics to Isle of Lucy, which was his favorite show. And in that moment, that song became a hymn.
Caleb Chancey:And I was able to sing over him a song that he always loved that I wrote. Christ is in your story woven in the silence using every broken vessel for his will beside every heartbeat over every longing shines a seat of light the dark cannot overtake. To paraphrase Christian, Stephen Colbert, what seeming punishments of God are not actually gifts. Verse 16. And I will lead the blind in the way that they do not know.
Caleb Chancey:In paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light. The rough places into level ground. These are the things I do. I do not forsake them.
Caleb Chancey:There are moments, seasons, years in our lives where we feel God lets in so much tragedy, confusion, and pain. It's like we're wandering around blind in a wasteland. The comforts we knew, the things we had the most pride in, the self identity we staked our very life on seems to go away. Our abilities, our health, our work, our sobriety, our relationships, good and bad, feel wiped away. God says it's during those times, those hard times, He will lead us.
Caleb Chancey:But where is the spirit taking us? Where do these unknown paths lead? In second Kings six, the Syrians are coming to kill the prophet Elisha. Elisha's prophecies are so spot on. The Syrians can't carry out any attacks towards Israel.
Caleb Chancey:He knows exactly what's coming. So Elisha is actually watching the Syrians come to kill him. I don't know what they thought their plan was. They knew he could see them coming. Sounds pretty stupid.
Caleb Chancey:But he's looking out and he's seeing the Syrians coming and he prays the Lord and he says, Lord, strike them blind. And he strikes them blind. And he goes down and he says this to them. This is not the way and this is not the city. Follow me and I will show you to the man whom you seek.
Caleb Chancey:The Syrians unknowingly follow Elisha and when God restores their sight they are surrounded by Israel. And the king of Israel gets really excited and he says, shall I strike them down? Shall I strike them down? Elisha says, no. Set bread and water before them.
Caleb Chancey:They may eat and drink. So the king lays a great feast before them and the Syrians eat and drink and leave and never raid Israel again. Are you on an unknown path? Have you wondered where the spirit is taking you? He is taking us by the hand and saying, follow me.
Caleb Chancey:I will bring you to the man you seek. When our eyes are opened, there stands Christ at the feast. The word and the final word. The word that became flesh. The word that was forsaken for us so we would never be forsaken.
Caleb Chancey:The word that cries out, it is finished because indeed it is. The word that takes verse eight when God says that he gives his glory to no other and praise the father saying, the glory that you have given me, I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one. This is the God who we worship. This is the God who we live and move and have our being in. This is the God mighty and near.
Caleb Chancey:This is the God who gives us a family, who gives us His very glory. This is the God who is worthy of every new song. Let's pray together. Father, Your love for us is great. We thank you for the time we get to gather together as family.
Caleb Chancey:Father, look out as you pass by when you were on this earth, you passed by and saw people and you said, I his heart your heart was moved because they were abused and helpless. And you looked at your disciples and you said, the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few. Pray earnestly the Lord would send out laborers. Lord, may we pray that we would not desire to be the owners of the field, but faithful laborers responding to the harvest you have put in front of us. That we would not try to manufacture our own works, but father that we could see yours.
Caleb Chancey:We delight in it. Pray this in Christ's name. Amen.
