Isaiah 43:19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Perception is our reality. We see, feel, taste, hear, and with experience we use our senses to determine our own personal realities. All this happens in the world we live in but not in the heavenly realm. We do not see things as God sees them.

• Isaiah 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
• Isaiah 55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

This is an invitation to look to God for a new way of seeing things, spiritual things, a new reality, something that can be perceived in a new way, this new thing God is doing.

Isaiah 55:11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

In Isaiah 43:19 God hints at how to perceive this new thing by saying He will make a way in the wilderness. That is a clear indication that it will not spring forth in the city, behind protective walls, in the courts of kings nor in the temples of men.

Isaiah 40:3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Matthew 3:3 For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

Jesus tells us that John the Baptist is the Forerunner Spirit, sent to herald in a new way.

John 1:29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

Behold, look upon, perceive that God has just provided a way to take away sin from the world.

Put yourselves in the place of those who heard John that day. They had a history of sacrifices for their own personal sins in which they had to return to the temple with their sin offering yearly.

How is it one man could take away the sin of the world? What could that mean to them and their own personal efforts to make sacrifices for their personal sins. How could this work for everyone?

Leviticus 26:3 “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them,

This is a dependent promise. What is promised for obedience?

4 then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.

He promised to control nature in a manner that would bless them.

Leviticus 26:14 “But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments,”

Dependent promises have promises for disobedience.

16 then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.

Disobedience becomes personal, not afflicting mankind by withholding the blessing of nature but by attacking mankind in a personal physical manner. There is one more implied punishment by invoking the enemy clause. Whatever shield of protection that was given would be removed.

These promises and declarations of punishments are repeated over and over again in the old testament. God kept promising and Israel kept disobeying. Obviously dependent promises were not enough to keep His children from sinning.

Romans 3:20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Think of God’s laws as being a mirror in which we get to see what we are in relationship to a just and holy God. In the new testament the word justified is brought into context. Being justified in God’s sight is now what is paramount in this relationship. Obedience takes second place.

Obedience doesn’t change the face in the mirror.

So what does change the way we see ourselves?

Ezekiel 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Isaiah 43:19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.