The New Thing
W. R. Huntington, D. D. Isaiah 43:19 Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness… This doing a new thing is the very achievement which many voices of high authority are assuring us, just now, is impossible with God. The power that carries on the universe, they tell us, never does a "new thing." What seems to us the new is only the old revealing itself in an unexpected way. Continuity is the law that governs all things. It is the language of those whose symbol of deity is an interrogation mark, or the sign for an unknown quantity, or a fetter, as they may happen to prefer. It is a phase of thought by no means modern, although sometimes imagined to be such. It never found more telling expression anywhere than at the lips of one who flourished a thousand years before Christ, more or less, and who put it thus: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new?" I suggest that we take up the ancient challenge. I will mention some of the ways in which Christ may be said to have broken in upon the monotony and uniformity of human life and thought with something new. He brought us — I. A NEW LIKENESS OF GOD. II. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. III. A NEW HOPE. (W. R. Huntington, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. WEB: Behold, I will do a new thing. It springs forth now. Don't you know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.