New Year’s 2007 Sermon: New Life Resolution
This is a copy of the first sermon I ever preached. I preached it at my home church of Mountain Rest Baptist on December 31, 2006 and was fortunate to have many supportive friends show up to watch.
Good Morning! And Happy New Year…although technically, it’s not the new year yet. Which reminds me, if you are like me and made yourself a short list of things to accomplish in 2006…now would be a good time to start working on that list.
So, I’ve been thinking about New Years a lot lately. Here we’ve just finished Christmas, and Thanksgiving shortly before that, and yet somehow we find the need for another holiday. Growing up, my family never really paid much attention to New Years in general. It wasn’t until I was thirteen in Alaska that we stayed up as a family and watched the ball drop for the year 2000. And the only reason we did it then was because with the difference in Time Zones, it happened at eight o’clock at night.
So, I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about New Years that makes it worth celebrating, because somehow I doubt that people really get that excited by the fact that for the next month we’re all going to be writing the wrong year on our checks. So, I started looking into it and here’s what I’ve come up with. For some people, New Years is just an excuse to stay up late and party with their friends. For others, it’s a just a time when you can sleep in and not have to worry about work in the morning. But for some, new years is so much more than that. It is an opportunity, a time to examine the past, study the present, and redirect the future.
In other words, it’s a time to look back over the last year, see where you’ve been, what you’ve accomplished…what you’ve done right…what you’ve done wrong…what you could have done better and what you should have done better. After examining the past, you then look at where you are now and compare it to where you should be, or where you had hoped that you would be at the beginning of the year. Lastly, you plan out the next year. You look ahead and decide where you want to see yourself at the end of the year and then set little goals for yourself…things to achieve throughout the year…things commonly known as, “New Years Resolutions.”
So, how does this relate to the Christian life? Turn with me, if you would please, to Acts chapter 8. Now Stephen, a follower of Christ, had just given a most powerful speech to the Sanhedrin, who were the religious leaders of the time, and because of it, he was stoned to death. This is where we are first introduced to the man called Saul.
Starting with the first verse of Chapter 8 this is immediately after Stephen’s death:
1 Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death. And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. 2 Some devout men buried Stephen, and made loud lamentation over him. 3 But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison.
So here we have the man named Saul, a religious leader who was so zealous about his Jewish faith that he supported the death and imprisonment of those who threatened it, namely the Christians of the time. Let’s skip ahead now to chapter 9, starting with verse 1:
1 Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, 2 and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way [The name given to the Christians of that time], both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
So, here Saul had decided that cleansing Jerusalem of these “Christian heretics” was not enough, so what does he do? He gets special written permission to go out to the town of Damascus and bring the Christians from that region back in chains. Let’s continue:
3 As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; 4 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” 5 And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” And He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, 6 but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.” 7 The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. 9 And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
Can you blame him? Here he was capturing and killing these followers of Christ when all of a sudden, he has a personal encounter with God. For three days, while he was stricken with blindness, Saul neither ate nor drank. So what did he do during this time? Well, we don’t really know for sure. He could have been wallowing in self pity and feeling sorry himself for having to suffer through blindness, but somehow I doubt it. I can’t help but feel that blindness was the least of his worries. He had found out that everything he believed in, everything he lived for, everything he did…was completely and utterly wrong.
You know what I think he was doing during those three days? I believe that he was examining his past (where he came from and all the wrong things that he had done), studying his present situation (the encounter with God and the sins that he now realized that he bared), and redirecting his future (changing the direction of his life and the things that he was most passionate about). No, I am not saying that Saul made a New Years Resolution. He did not make a New Years Resolution. He made a New Life Resolution. He recognized where he was wrong, saw where he was, and decided where he needed to be. Let us skip ahead to verse 17 of the 9th chapter of Acts. Three days have passed since Saul met God and went blind, and now God sent the man Ananias to come and pray with him:
17 So Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized; 19 and he took food and was strengthened. 20 and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” 21 All those hearing him continued to be amazed, and were saying, “Is this not he who in Jerusalem destroyed those who called on this name, and who had come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?”
Yes, he was the same man, but at the same time, he wasn’t. He was a New man, with a new way of looking at life, new motivation, and a new direction. Saul, destroyer of the Christians, became Paul, apostle of Christ and author of a large portion of the New Testament. This is what I mean by a New Life Resolution. It’s a decision, not about how you spend the next year, but rather about how you will live out the rest of your life. The bible is full of people like Saul who underwent one of these life-changing moments. Zacchaeus, the tax collector and thief, gave half of his possessions to the poor after he met Jesus. Jacob, the liar and deciever, became Israel, the father of Jewish race, after an encounter with God in a dream. Moses, the murderer and fugitive, became the rescuer of the Jews and the writer of the law after talking with God in a fiery bush. Gideon, the cautious and peaceful man, became Gideon mighty warrior of the Lord after an encounter with an angel. And the list goes on.
In 2 Corinthians 5:17 it states: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
Every Christian makes a New Life Resolution, whether you call it that or not, and they do so, I believe, in three steps. First, there’s an encounter with God. Now, this doesn’t always involve a bright lights and blindness. It could be something as simple as a little tug in your heart that says it’s time to pray. Second, there’s a decision. It is the decision to allow Jesus Christ into your heart, and to become an active participant in your life. Third is the follow through. This last step is probably the hardest and it is the one we seem the most reluctant to do. We had an encounter with God. We gave him our hearts and souls. Now, we must follow through and live our lives for him according to his good and perfect will. And trust me, it isn’t easy. But the least we can do is try. So, how good do we have to be? How good is good enough? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spelled it out quite clearly. In verse 48 of the 5th chapter of the book of Matthew he says:
48 “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Well, at least he’s not asking for much. J I know what you’re thinking, “I can’t be perfect. Nobody’s perfect.” And to that I would have to agree with you, but that doesn’t give you an excuse not to try. I remember when I was twelve years old and I came upon this verse; I asked my mother that night, “If Jesus tells us to be perfect, why do people in churches always say that you can’t be perfect?” “Because you can’t,” she replied. “Well how can we know if no one ever tries?” And so I set out that very night to do everything in my power to be perfect. And you know what? I lasted about 8 hours. Seriously! I did! …of course, I was asleep the whole time. But my point remains. Jesus Christ told us to be perfect and yet most of us don’t make the slightest effort to do so. That’s just wrong.
When I think of all that Jesus Christ went through for the sake of sinners like me and you…He became a man…walked among us…lived among us…taught among us…He was ridiculed…He was mocked…He was tortured…He was nailed to a cross. And for what?! So that you and I, pathetic in comparison, might have eternal life. He took our punishment, so that we don’t have to! The least we can do is try to obey him. Sure, we don’t have to, for we know that it is by grace we have been saved; it’s not by our actions. All I’m saying is that we should want to. We owe him that much, don’t you think?
{SKIP AHEAD IF YOU ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME}
Now, before I close, I just wanted to tell you one last story that is a good deal more recent than the one of Saul, though just as true. It involves a boy named Ben. From the outside, Ben seemed like a very good kid, with good parents, but from the inside, it was a whole other story. Ben’s father had made the decision to accept Christ as a young adult, but he didn’t go to church or read his bible, and so didn’t grow much in his faith. Ben’s mother grew up in a household that proclaimed Christianity, but due to some bad experiences, she rejected the Lord and became very independent, accepting only the things she could do for herself. Growing up in this environment, Ben somehow managed to became one of the most wicked and mischievous boys imaginable. He would lie. He would cheat. He would steal. He would swindle. He would manipulate. He was even abusive, both physically and verbally. And yet somehow he would get away with it all. Imagine a classroom where the worst bully is also the teacher’s pet, and you have an image of what Ben was like. He never got caught doing anything wrong, except for some minor lies. His own parents had no idea what he was capable of. It was almost as if, in every sinful, wicked, and heartless act…he had a natural talent. And he was just getting worse and worse. It got to the point where Ben would sin for the sake of sinning. He would lie, even when he had nothing to cover up. He would cheat on a test, though he already knew the answers. He would steal things he didn’t want, just because they made someone else happy, he got pleasure through witnessing their pain. Remember, we are not talking about a rebellious teenager who was going through a “phase,” for you see Ben, by this time, was only 8 years old. This was no phase. This was his life. That is the monster that Ben had become…and no one suspected a thing.
So what happened to Ben? Well, his mother had an encounter with God, through a terrible illness that nearly took her life. She got saved, recovered, and started to take the family to church. His father started growing in his faith and Ben started learning about God in Sunday School. One day, on the way home from church, Ben felt the tug at his heart and he made the decision to accept the Lord. A couple years later, he started to get serious about his faith and follow through. Within just a couple of years, he was a completely different person. Hardly even recognizable…especially to himself. He was…in every sense…a new person.
That story I just told you was entirely true, 100%. Well, except for one minor detail. No one ever referred to him as Ben. For you see, Ben, or Bennett rather, was his middle name: Matthew…Bennett…Wisner. That boy was me. I stand before you today scared. Frightened of what I might have become had I continued down that downward spiral and not had my encounter with God when I did…in the back seat of a Toyota. I’ve heard it said that people don’t change. That’s a lie. People can change, but only with God’s help. Because, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
{CONCLUSION}
So now, I ask you. Which step are you on? Have you examined your past, and seen where you’ve failed? Have you studied your present and observed that you need help? Are you ready to redirect your future? …You know what the biggest problem with New Years Resolutions is? They can be extremely difficult to stick with. Even more so with a New Life Resolution. You can not just change who you are on your own. Such an action is impossible, but with God all things are possible. So, have you had your encounter with God? If not, then I should hope and pray that you feel his tug at your heart right now. Have you made the decision to accept him into your life and into your heart? If not, than there is no better opportunity than now…There is no greater time than the present. And if you have already done all of these things, then I ask you, have you been following through? Have you been living your life for him, not because you need to, but because you want to? This final step you will spend the rest of you life on, but it is through this obedience to Christ that you are able to turn your life around, because he helps you every step of the way.
