New Year Sunday · Isaiah 43:18-21 · Psalm 90 · Philippians 3:12-14 · Lamentations 3:22-23

New Year Sermon: New Mercies, Numbered Days

Every congregation that walks in on the first Sunday of the year is doing arithmetic in its head — what happened, what did not, what they are afraid will not change. The occasion pulls preachers toward four texts that each resist the resolution-speech in a different way: Isaiah's forgetting of the former things, the numbered days of Psalm 90, Paul's straining forward, and the daily mercies of Lamentations 3. The quiet demand on the preacher is to name the calendar honestly, without turning the sermon into either dread or a pep talk.

The text at a glance

Isaiah 43:18-21 speaks into exile, promising a new thing that will make a way in the wilderness — its command not to remember the former things is not amnesia but a redirection of attention toward what God is doing now.
Psalm 90 does almost the opposite work: it slows a congregation down to count its days, setting mortality and the brevity of a life plainly before God rather than before a five-year plan.
Philippians 3:12-14 is Paul's own testimony, not a technique — straining toward what lies ahead while admitting he has not yet arrived, which keeps striving from curdling into either despair or self-improvement.
Lamentations 3:22-23 is spoken from inside unrelieved loss, not before it, so mercies new every morning means mercy renewed in grief, not a fresh start that erases the year behind it.
Held together, the four texts ask a New Year sermon to hold time honestly — someone in the room is grieving the year that ended, someone is relieved it is over, and none of these passages let the sermon flatten that into uniform optimism.

Three ways a sermon can go

The new thing being made (Isaiah 43)

Preach the promise that God is doing something now that the congregation has not yet perceived, and ask what it would mean to actually watch for it. This costs specificity — 'a new thing' has to be tied to something the church can name in its own life, or it collapses into a generic fresh-start slogan.

Numbering the days (Psalm 90)

Preach the psalm's sober arithmetic — a life is short, under God's wrath and mercy both — and let it slow the room down before any talk of goals. This costs the festive mood of the day; the sermon has to earn its way from verses 7-11 to the psalm's own request in verse 12 rather than skipping there.

Mercy that does not wait for better news (Lamentations 3 and Philippians 3)

Preach renewal as something that happens inside an unfinished story — mercy new each morning while the losses of the past year are still real, and pressing on while admitting nothing is yet attained. This costs the temptation to resolve the tension too quickly into triumph.

Where sermons on this text commonly slip

Turning 'the former things' into new-year amnesia

Isaiah 43:18 is spoken to a specific exiled people about a specific coming deliverance, not a general instruction to stop thinking about the past. Preached loosely, it becomes 'let it go' self-help, detached from the God who names what he is actually about to do.

Quoting Lamentations 3:22-23 without its neighbors

The verse sits inside three chapters of siege, grief, and a writer who says God has walled him in. Lifted out as a bright new-year line, 'new every morning' can sound like nothing happened last year, which is exactly wrong for anyone in the room who lost something.

Using 'forgetting what lies behind' to skip unfinished business

Philippians 3:13-14 is Paul refusing to rest his standing before God on his own record, not a general license to avoid an apology, a grief, or a conflict still open from the past year. Preached the second way, it quietly excuses what still needs attention.

Five questions to ask afterwards

Did the sermon name what 'the former things' or 'last year' concretely referred to, or did it stay at the word 'past' without naming an event, loss, or pattern the congregation would recognize?
If Lamentations 3:22-23 was used, did the sermon at any point acknowledge the grief of the surrounding chapters, or did 'new every morning' appear with nothing said about what the mercy is amid?
Did the sermon ever connect Psalm 90:12's numbering of days to an actual decision or relationship, or was it used only as a rhetorical device to create urgency?
Did 'press on' or 'straining forward' get defined against anything specific Paul names himself leaving behind, or was it used as a generic motivational phrase detached from Philippians 3?
Count how many times the sermon used the words 'new year,' 'fresh start,' or 'resolution' — and check whether each instance tied back to one of the four texts or stood alone as calendar talk.

Keeping the application on the ground

A landed New Year application names one practice the listener will start or stop this week, not a general resolve to trust God more or let go of the past. Because these texts pull toward calendar-sized language — new beginnings, numbered days, forgetting what is behind — the sermon has to bring that scale down to something checkable by next Sunday.

Write down one specific thing from the past year to name before God this week, in prayer or on paper, instead of a general resolution to move on.
Pick one day this week and ask, using Psalm 90:12 as a prompt, what that day is actually for, then make one decision based on the answer.
Identify one person owed an apology or a word of forgiveness from the past year, and contact them before next Sunday.

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