Salvation In The New Year #1

As we entered the new year a couple of weeks ago, a question popped into my mind which I had never considered.  Does the word of God put any emphasis upon the New Year?  I know the type of things our society is concerned about this time of the year.  Everybody’s making their New Year’s resolutions which tend to center around being healthier physically or obtaining some financial goal.  But, is there any significance to New Year’s Day in the scripture?  I must say, I’ve been surprised to discover the incidents in the Bible which occurred on the first day of the first month!  These events instruct us concerning what the Lord would have our minds to be fixed upon as we start another year, so let’s consider the first of them.

Did you know that it was the first day of the first month when the flood waters dried up and Noah saw the new world?  Well, if you did, why didn’t you tell me?!! 🙂 Just listen to Gen 8:13: “And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry.”  There was a new beginning, a whole new world!  The old had been done away with and everything was new.  Sound familiar?  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2Co 5:17) This experience of Noah points to the new birth, salvation in Jesus Christ.  God had washed away all the filthiness of that old creation.  Noah and his family had been sheltered from the wrath of God being safe in the ark.  Their salvation was complete and the flood was no more on the first day of the first month!  On this day, it was clear they had been spared from the wrath of God, and they were safe.

Isn’t that what happened to you when the Lord saved you?  What a relief!  On that day, we were assured that we were forgiven, safe in the arms of Christ.  No more did future destruction loom over my head.  I was delivered!  Life was now an entirely new experience.  The world looked completely different.  I can remember as a young man sitting in church and daydreaming, thinking the service would never end; but, how my perspective changed when God gave me life!  All of a sudden, attending church wasn’t a labor.  It was a joy!  Hearing the gospel preached thrilled my soul!  And sin was no longer the attraction it had been before.  It was a grief, not a delight.  I hated to find it in me, and I ran from it instead of to it.  Everything was made new.

In our day, many deny the flood.  Even some professing Christians believe it to have been localized instead of worldwide.  But the word of God is clear.  God destroyed the world that then was, and on that New Year’s Day, Noah beheld a world that no man had ever seen.  We are warned in 2Pe 3:3-4 that “scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.'”  These individuals deny that Christ will return, claiming the world will continue as it always has.  But the next verses tell us that, in order to think that way, they must “willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.” (v. 5, 6)  Man may deny the global flood, but that doesn’t eliminate the truth which that event declares.  After continually warning mankind of the coming judgment, God destroyed that wicked ancient world, delivering only those who believed His word and entered the ark.  In like manner, the present heavens and earth are destined to pass away.  For thousands of years, God in His great mercy has sent His minister’s to warn of this destruction.  Only those safe in Jesus Christ, our heavenly Ark, will be delivered to enjoy “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (v. 13) May the New Year be a year of drawing closer to our Deliverer, rejoicing in His salvation!

Jamie

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