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Gate of the Year – January 4, 2021

New Year 2021

At the dawn of a new year, it is customary for news commentators and talk show hosts to throw out their pearls of wisdom with respect to what we have to look forward to in the new year.

Many take time to look back and then look forward. However, so few take the time to look up.

If we have learned anything from the past ten months, it must be that the future is uncertain.

Over the past ten months, we have seen a dramatic shaking taking place in the Church. Many, who for decades attended religiously, have fallen away from the church and we may never see them again. However, others who did not formerly see the value in gathering together as a body of believers, have committed themselves wholeheartedly to the fellowship of likeminded followers of Jesus.  

Is it possible that God is pruning His church? (John 15). If God is indeed pruning His church, we need to be aware that how we spend our personal time is critical. What I am talking about is our personal walk with the Lord, our personal spiritual disciplines. The disciplines of prayer, reading the Bible, fasting, giving, serving and worship, to name a few.

Here is a good article on personal spiritual disciplines; “Spiritual Disciplines – Don Whitney”

The purpose of spiritual disciplines is godliness as we see from 1 Timothy 4:7and 8.

The purpose of the pruning by the Vinedresser is to produce fruit, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples”. John 15:7-8.

As we look ahead in 2021, we certainly don’t know what the future holds. However if we abide in Christ, we can be assured that our Heavenly Father will hold us.

At this time every year, I am drawn to read a short poem by Minnie Louise Haskins (1875-1957), called “God Knows”. I think that it is more meaningful this year. Will you join with me and place your uncompromising faith in the hand of God in 2021? I believe that we will see much fruit and growth in the Body of Christ.

God Knows

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.

God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.

Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.

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Sermon December 30, 2018 Redeeming the Time

Ephesians 5:11-21

The end of a year is a time of reflection and looking back, reminding ourselves of the good and bad times of the past year. But also, it is a time of looking forward and making resolutions. Sadly, the truth is, if you are waiting till the first of the year to start something new or to quit a bad habit, you probably won’t stick with your resolution. If something was important to you, you would not wait until the first of the year to do it.

Life is short, and life consists of millions of decisions as to how we spend our time. When faced with the end of our lives here on the earth, many people will regret the time wasted watching T.V. or the time spent on social media or being entertained. The vast majority of people will regret not spending time with loved ones or not taking a step of faith when God called you to serve Him. Many people will regret not taking the time to share the Gospel with a loved one or a neighbor. When we are faced with the reality of the brevity of life, what is really important stands out.

In Ephesians 5:11-21, Paul is pleading with the church to leave behind their lifestyle of sin, to let the light of God shine on their lives so that their sin is exposed, and they can begin walking in freedom. In verse 14 Paul paraphrases what could be a portion from Isaiah 60, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” I believe this is a call to the 21st century church. Wake up, because as the days are rushing by, it appears that the world is spinning out of control and it is likely that Jesus is coming soon. We as Christians need to wake up and begin to live out our God given calling, to take the Gospel message to a lost and dying world.

In verse 16, Paul writes, “making the best use of the time, because the days are evil”

Some translations say, “redeeming the time”. Redeeming, means to rescue something from loss or to pay a price to recover (reclaim) something from bondage. This is like having a lien on a property which will only be released when the loan is repaid. Slaves were redeemed by being set free because the purchase price for their freedom was paid, they were redeemed.

When it comes to time, so many of us are slaves to time, we are controlled and are in bondage by our wasteful use of time. Charles Hummel called this the “tyranny of the urgent”. We are under the tyrannical control of the urgent things in our life, when the truly important things get pushed to the side. Every-day is a treasure chest of opportunities, we get 24 hours to either redeem the true value or waste and squander the opportunities presented to us.

How do you value the time God has given you today?

The Bible calls Jesus our redeemer. Salvation is not only a certainty of eternal life in the presence of God. Jesus is the savior of our today and our tomorrow while here on the earth.

Jesus is called the redeemer because his perfect sacrifice pays the debt we humans owe because of our sin nature. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:20, that those who have repented and have made Jesus Lord over their lives are “bought with a price”.

Paul continues in verse 16, “redeem the time because the days are evil”, We don’t need a reminder to know that the days we are living in are evil, we simply turn on the evening news.

Paul encourages us to not sit idly by and let the darkness of this world dictate events, but rather we are to make a conscious choice to do good works and let the light of God shine through them. Jesus himself said in Matthew 5 that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Even if we are personally affected by the evil in this world, we are commanded to not respond in kind but instead overcome it by doing what is right and good.

How do we redeem the time? Paul lists a few practical examples in verses 17 to 21:

  • Verse 17: We must do the will of the Father as we hear from God and know what He wants us to do.
  • Verse 18: The Bible says, “do not get drunk with wine…”. Getting drunk is an escape from reality, and I suggest that anything we do to escape reality, whether it is playing video games, watching too many movies, abusing drugs – anything that removes us from the reality of life, is a problem. Rather we are to be filled with the Spirit of God so that we can see clearly the way things really are so that God can work in us and through us.
  • Verse 19: By addressing on another in Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, doesn’t mean that we walk around singing all the time, but rather, we meet together as believers, sharing what God is doing, praising God by sharing testimonies. We redeem the time by spending time in God’s word and in fellowship with other believers.
  • Verse 20: We redeem the time by being thankful for what God has done for us.
  • Verse 21: We redeem the time by serving one another. This doesn’t mean we become doormats, rather, we submit to one another by preferring one another, seeking the good of each other.

There are many ways we can redeem the time in our lives, but the bottom line is that we were bought with a price, we were redeemed by Jesus to live our lives for Him. If you are a Christian, a follower of Jesus, and you have breath in your lungs, God has a purpose for you in 2019. It will take some sacrifice, it will take some rearranging of priorities, but you will not regret a single moment that is redeemed for the Lord.

By putting God first, 2019 be a year of significance.  Psalm 1:1-2

 

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Sermon – Starting Over part 1 – January 8 2017

startingover-image1

Beginning the year well.

Every day is an opportunity to start over.

We all have our stories of starting over, maybe it has been after a bankruptcy, the loss of a spouse, a divorce or some other life change. Starting over has a certain appeal to it, leaving behind the past and beginning again. Starting over is not simply a reboot, as when you hit the reboot button on your computer, because after you reboot your computer it may start-up again and work well for a time, but the reality is that the problem caused by the virus or the spyware is still there, and your computer is going to crash again sooner or later.

The same principle applies to our lives, there is no point in simply trying to hit the reset button in our lives if we don’t address the root cause of the problem, the deep down issues that are causing our pain and the lack of victory in our Christian walk.

The writer of Hebrews uses a number of metaphors in chapter 12 pointing to the fact that the Christian life is a race, it is not a life of ease, rather it requires discipline. And the first discipline we have is the discipline of repentance and turning away from sin (Heb 12:1). Confession of sin is a discipline that needs to be done on a regular basis. As the writer to the Hebrews says, sin so easily entangles, and we get the picture that sin is like a creeping vine that wraps around a person’s legs and prevents them from walking and eventually chokes the life out of them. At the outset of the new year, have you spent time, confessing your sins, repenting and recommitting your life to following Jesus?

So as we throw off the sin, verse 1 continues; “And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,”. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 9, the Christian life is not a meandering in the forest, or a life of ease, it is a race that requires strict discipline. The reason is that there are eternal consequences for your daily life. The decisions you make today about how you spend your time, your money, the people you talk to, the places you go, all of these have eternal consequences.

So how do we run this race? Verse 2 starts with the crucial phrase for every Christian; “fixing our eyes on Jesus”. There is simply no other way to live the Christian life. A great picture we have in the Bible is when Peter walked on the water to Jesus. The moment Peter took his eyes off of Jesus, he began to sink. Taking your eyes off of Jesus is the moment your faith begins to waiver. Who or what are you looking to in life? Where is your faith? Jesus is the only security that we can trust for 2017 and beyond.

Verse 3 goes on; “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”  Jesus is not someone who is aloof and unfamiliar with our suffering and difficulties. The ESV version of the Bible says, “don’t become fainthearted”. In the last year did you feel weary or fainthearted? It is something that we all struggle with at one time or another, but the Bible says that the reason we grow weary and fainthearted is because we take our eyes off of Jesus, we begin to look at the storm clouds on the horizon. We get fainthearted when we look at the uncertain future for our children, we see the number of murders in our city, we look at the unstable financial markets, we get fainthearted because we take our eyes off of Jesus.

Going back to verse 2 again we read; “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith “. Jesus is not only our guide he is also the perfecter of faith. It is all about faith; believing that the blood of Jesus covers our sins, believing that Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us, believing that all our earthly struggles are temporary because this is not our home.

But then Hebrews 12 goes on to talk about discipline (Hebrews 12:5-6). We need to have a clear understanding of the difference between discipline and punishment, there is so much confusion between these two words in the church today.

Punishment is a consequence of sin, whereas Discipline is preventative. If you study your Bible, everytime God punishes someone, there is an eternal consequence for sin. But discipline is a training or a correction in order to fulfill the promise of a better future. Discipline has nothing to do with retribution and everything to do with redemption.

If you have made Jesus Christ Lord of your life, you will experience the discipline of the Lord, simply because he loves you so much that he does not want you to struggle with the same sins day after day, week after week and year after year.

Then there is the fruit of this discipline (see Hebrews 12:11).  Do you want to have peace in your life this year? Allow yourself to be under the discipline of God, don’t resist the corrections that God brings into your life. He is your perfect Heavenly Father and he will only do things in your life that will be for your good. (see also; Jeremiah 29:11, Luke 12:7, Romans 8:28).

 Not only are we disciplined by God, but we are also taught to discipline ourselves. We need to practice disciplines in order to run the race God has planned for us. Over the next few weeks we will be looking at some of these spiritual disciplines that will help us in the running the Christian race in 2017.

Are you ready to commit to run the race that God has for us, throwing off all that hinders you in your personal life?