The God of New Beginnings

We should trust God with our future because he is the .

• On our inability to see the future:

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” – Søren Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals

1. We should trust God because he and our future.

• On the feeling among the exiles:

“We will not go far wrong in assuming that a feeling of dull despair spread among most of those who were deported and among those who remained behind in the ruins. They felt that they had been struck by an inexplicable blow of fate which put in question everything that had been handed down to them by priests, temple prophets and court theologians as the foundation [of their belief in God.] Where was the [LORD] enthroned in [Jerusalem], who was ruling the world with the help of his anointed? Had he not tangibly demonstrated his impotence in the face of the Babylonian gods, as the enemies triumphed? Had not his promises, oaths and commitments been shown up as deception? Was he concerned about his people at all, or was Israel at an end?” – Rainer Albertz, History of Israelite Religion

• On God’s eternity: Revelation 1:8, 16; Genesis 1:1; Job 36:26; Psalm 102:27; Psalm 90:2-4
• On our future: Revelation 21:1-6

2. We should trust God because he our future.

• On God’s providence:

“Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures and so rules them that . . . all things, in fact, come to us, not by chance but from his fatherly hand.” – Heidelberg Catechism

“For who has ever been so concerned and curious as to find out how much hair he has on his head? There is no one. God, however, knows the number. Indeed, nothing is too small in us or in any other creature, not to be ordered by the all-knowing and all-powerful providence of God.” – Ulrich Zwingli, On Providence

3. We should trust God because he for the future.

• On the nature of prophecy:

“Prophets see future events on a flat tableau [sort of a two-dimensional image], like a sequence of ascending peaks that from the viewpoint of a remote observer blend together in a generic way into the final and highest mountain without discerning the valleys between the peaks.” – Bruce Waltke, Old Testament Theology

• On Israel as the servant: Isaiah 41:8-9; 44:1-2, 21, 26; 48:20
• On the fulfillment of Isaiah 42:1-7 in Jesus:  Matthew 3:16, 12:15-21