Sermon 1-13-08

Old Testament – Jeremiah 29:11-13 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Epistle – Philippians 3:7-11 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ-the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Gospel – Luke 24:44-48 (The words of Jesus spoken right after He rose from the dead. Jesus had completed the plan; He rose from the dead and explained to His followers the mission between now and His second coming.)He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

Sermon

Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions? Maybe a good New Year’s Resolution to make is resolve to test the smoke alarms in your house several times a year. Not only is it a safety issue but I think it really clarifies some things we need to remember about God. When you test the smoke alarm it gives off a blaring obnoxious sound that scares the living daylights out of you if you don’t know what’s coming. So before you test the smoke alarm, unless you’re a real mean person, you normally give the other people in your house a warning. A couple of years ago when I was testing our smoke alarms, I warned Jimmy that I was going to test them and when I did he knew it was coming and didn’t even flinch; it didn’t shake him up one bit. On the other hand I said to Hunter, our dog, “Hunter, I’m going to test the smoke alarms.” And as you know, he didn’t understand what I was saying so when I tested the smoke alarm it took him by surprise and he proceeded to have an accident on the floor! I think this is one of the things we need to understand and it’s one of the reasons to test your smoke alarms; to remind us that if we know what’s coming, we won’t be taken by surprise.

How do we know what’s coming in life so things don’t take us by surprise? We simply look in our Bible. God tells us what He is going to do, what is coming, what His mission is, and what He wants to accomplish in your life and my life in the coming year and every year until we die and go to heaven. Today we want to look at God’s New Year’s Resolutions for 2008 so that when things start happening next month, three months from now, or six months from now, you can understand what is happening in your life and you won’t be taken by surprise.

God’s plan has not changed and we just read His plan in Luke 24. God’s ultimate plan, His First New Year’s Resolution for you, is that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in Christ’s name. If we’re not on-line with God’s plan, life is going to seem disjointed because God will be moving in one direction and we will be moving in the other; we’re not blending with God and things seem disconnected. God called you to Christ, God gave you the Holy Spirit, God brought you to faith so that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in Christ’s name and Luke 24:48 says “You are witnesses to this” You are either actively engaged in doing it or you are a support person for someone who is doing it, or as is the case with most of us, you’re doing a combination of both. Now that we know the plan, we know what God is going to do in the coming year and we know He’s going to use you to do it. No matter where you are, the neighborhood you’re in, the job you’re in, the social circle you’re in, the organization you’re in, God has put you there so that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in His name.

When I talked to people over the last couple of weeks and ask them what great Bible passages they liked regarding God’s promises, by and large the one that came up most frequently is Jeremiah 29:11. God’s Second New Year’s Resolution is one of my favorite passages. He tells us in Jeremiah 29:11 “I alone know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and to not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” On almost a weekly basis people come into my office and say, “I don’t understand what God is doing. Where’s the prosperity that God promises me in Jeremiah 29:11?” We need to answer that by doing some research on the Hebrew word for ”prosperity” The word translated “prosperity” in the NIV is the Hebrew word shalom, a greeting. We say “Hi, how are you?” and people speaking Hebrew say “Shalom”. The definition of shalom is “peace and well-being”. In fact, if you look in the King James Version of the Bible, shalom is not translated as “prosper”, it is translated as “peace”. In other translation of the Bible shalom is translated “to give you a sense of well-being”. All those thoughts are contained in the definition of shalom. So ultimately, God wants to shalom you and that may or may not mean financial prosperity. But understand that God wants to give you a sense of peace and well-being. He wants to shalom you in this coming year and He’s been doing it for thousands of years.

What does it mean that “God wants to shalom you”? We may think that God wants to make life stress-free, happy, comfortable and eliminate any problems. But thinking back to the sermon from last week, that is not God’s top priority! God’s top priority is that you get to know Him and He is going to do some things so that you will see His power and you will get to know Him better and you will have shalom; a sense of peace, well-being, and prosperity. He going to do some things that shake us up; and so we don’t imitate my dog, Hunter, and have an accident on the floor, we’re going to let you know what those things are so that you are prepared.

To give you this sense of shalom, this sense of well-being and peace, God will create schemes to people turn to Him. It would be nice if people would turn to Him when everything is going well; if God would give you that new boat, that new house, a new job and a bigger paycheck and we would say, “God has blessed me. I have to make a commitment to turn to God, to really get to know him better and just worship and praise Him.” But that doesn’t happen all the time. God supplies that route, but we are by nature sinful beings and we want to rebel against God. That’s who we are, it’s one of the effects of having fallen into sin, so God create schemes so that we are forced to turn to Him, so that we have no other option but to turn to Him, so that the only way out of our predicament is to turn to Him as we see in 2 Samuel 14:14, the Bible passage we talk about all the time. And sometimes the schemes He creates are not about you at all, they’re about someone in your life that you need to testify to. God may create schemes in your life and back you into a corner where you see Christ as the only way out so that you have a testimony for someone who doubts God’s existence. When that happens, don’t let it shake you up. It’s one of God’s New Year’s Resolutions; it’s the way He’s trying to shalom people. A popular bumper sticker is “Know Christ, know peace. No Christ, no peace.” So to bring you peace, to shalom you, to bring you a sense of well-being, God has to bring Christ into your life.

Another way God will shalom us, to give us this sense of peace and well-being, is to send afflictions into our lives so we will read our Bibles and apply His Word. Psalm 119:67 says “Before I was afflicted I went astray but now I obey your word.” The psalmist is saying “Now I’m getting into my Bible, now I’m reading it, now I understand what you have to say. But that never would have happened I had not been afflicted.” And verse 71 says, “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.” God will do that - so don’t let it shake you up.

And God will give us this sense of shalom by regulating our income so that we don’t drift from Him or dishonor Him. Proverbs 30:8, 9 “Keep falsehoods and lies from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and dishonor God.” In other words, the writer of Proverbs by inspiration of the Holy Spirit says “Give us only what we need to live on today.” God is telling us that He will regulate our income so that we don’t disown God, so that we don’t forget Him and so that we don’t dishonor Him. And with twenty years in ministry, I’ve seen that so many times. God always gives us the amount of money we need at that particular time to keep us trusting in Him. As an example, consider Israel when they were in the wilderness; would a million dollars have done the Israelites any good? Money was worthless to them. Food and water was important to the Israelites and God regulated their food and water all the time, they could only gather enough manna for one day. God regulated the Israelites food and water to keep them relying on Him and so they didn’t dishonor Him.

God regulates our incomes today. As you learn to honor God with your money and use your money to follow God’s First Resolution, that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in Christ’s name, it’s amazing how much more money God gives you. When I was at my Church in New York I saw a lot of people who had fairly decent jobs but were just squeaking by – and these were boom years - who came to Christ and who God trained to tithe. There were probably a half a dozen people who became millionaires in the seven years I was there. It’s interesting, God gave them millions because their first and foremost goal became spreading repentance and forgiveness of sins in Christ’s name, that’s how they used their money. Sure, they had nice houses, nice cars and nice vacations, but their first goal was spreading repentance and forgiveness of sins in Christ’s name. As they learned that principle and started doing it, God opened up the floodgates of heaven and poured out so much blessing they didn’t have room for it. Now I’m not saying that if you’re actively engaged in spreading the Gospel that God is going to make you a millionaire because, again, He controls and regulates for various purposes. But I am saying that God uses money to spread the message of repentance and forgiveness of sins preached in Christ’s name and so that we know God wants to shalom us and will not harm us, His first and second New Year’s Resolutions.

God forgives our sins so that we have this sense of shalom and know that God will not harm us. God daily forgives our sins so that we can be at peace. That’s important to know because as He starts regulating our income, as He sends affliction, as things start happening in our lives, we always start saying “What does God have against me? What have I done wrong? Why is God doing this to me?” That’s why you need to know that Christ paid for your sins and God is at peace with you. God is not out to harm or punish you for your sins, it’s all about spreading the Gospel. He punished His own Son on the Cross. God wants people to turn to him and that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in Christ’s name. To do that, when that time of affliction and testing comes, in the eyes of the unbelievers around you, you have to make sure that you’re not complaining about how bad God is treating you. You have to know that He is not there to harm you, that He has a sense of peace with you and He’s looking to shalom you and other people.

A great, great example of this is what happened to Tim and Rita Nickel, our missionaries. They are doing as much mission work here in Keene with what’s going on in their lives as they are in Turkey. If you haven’t heard, a couple of weeks ago Tim and Rita’s apartment was robbed. Someone broke in and took all their things, all their money and made a mess of the place. It was a nightmare; none of us wants that to happen. Tim and Rita could have said, “What does God have against us? Here we’re in Turkey, we’re serving Him and He let this happen. God must have forgotten about us!” But they know God is not out to harm them and God wants to shalom people. What they did was pray, “God, help us learn what you want us to learn from this.” You have to remember that when affliction or difficulty comes or when your income gets regulated, ask God what He wants you to learn. They knew that God was a peace with them, that He was not punishing them and that His mission is to spread repentance and forgiveness of sins. Remember, the answer is always found in God’s Word and, as they were attending a Bible Study, someone read Matthew 24:42-44 about Christ’s Second Coming and equated it with being robbed. Verse 43 says “But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into.” Rita wrote in her e-mail, “What went through my mind was ‘if only, if only we had been home that Saturday afternoon we wouldn’t have gotten robbed. If only we had better locks on the door we wouldn’t have gotten robbed. If only we had better bars on the window we wouldn’t have gotten robbed. If only we had been expecting it, it wouldn’t have happened. If only, if only, if only.” But then she said “The light went on! God is giving me a testimony! As I preach repentance and forgiveness of sins in Christ’s name, I have a testimony. I can go to the people and say, ‘I was robbed. If I had known the thief was coming, I would have been there to protect my things. But you know, Someone is coming, Christ is coming, so be prepared, confess your sins, look to Jesus as your Savior from sin and you will be ready. You don’t want Him to come and for you to be saying ‘If only I would have paid attention to that missionary, if only I had looked at my Bible and found Jesus as Savior, if only I had confessed my sins and looked at Jesus as Savior, I’d be OK!’” She had a testimony. God allowed their house to be broken into because He’s out to shalom people.

God’s Third New Year’s Resolution is that we would decrease and Christ would increase in our lives. Referring to John the Baptist, Jesus says in Luke 7:28 “There is no one greater than John.” Jesus said this because John the Baptist was carrying out God’s first New Year’s Resolution, he was pointing to Christ. In John 1:29, John the Baptist said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” And in John 3:30 he said “Christ must become greater, I must become less.” This year, God wants to put the thoughts in your head that you must decrease and Christ must increase.

I’d like to introduce you to a new member of our congregation; his name is Sty Rofoam. Sty is your typical average Christian; he knows Jesus as Savior and believes he will go to heaven because Jesus died and paid for his sins. But looking at Sty we can tell exactly what he is thinking and where his focus is. Everything coming out of his head is “ME!” God’s New Year Resolution for Sty and for us is that “ME!” would decrease and CHRIST would increase in our lives. God will allow afflictions and difficulties to occur in our lives so that so that we are forced to turn to Him, will get to know Him better and Christ will increase in our lives. To bring peace and well-being into your life, to shalom you, God wants to bring Christ into your life. And when Christ is our main focus, when Christ increases in our lives and we decrease, we know that God is not out to harm us, He wants to shalom us, and we will have a sense of peace, well-being, and prosperity.

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