New Years Service (Dec. 31 2023)

Well if you are hearing me talk, congratulation on surviving another year on the planet. This is becoming more and more a hostile place to exist. I was remembering this past week that living the Christian life is likened to living within a wartime mentality. There are so many allusions to this in the NT.

It is no small feat to make it through a year, so I say this with all sincerity. Good job. Good job making it here to this day, and to this worship gathering.

I know that life is hard. I know that life can be confusing, frustrating. It can be painstakingly slow at times. Yes there are very high heights, but there all also very low lows. This is what life is like here. If this has been your experience this past year, then what you have experienced is “normal.”

When you look at pictures of the globe, it looks so peaceful from a distance, but then as you zoom in and you see that the swirls of white are really storm clouds that produce gale force winds that bring rain, hail, lightning strikes and flood waters. And then once you reach the surface of the planet there are volcanos, earthquakes, land landslides. The creation itself is groaning.

And if we zoom in even more we can notice things are often difficult in our very homes, towns, schools and social settings.

Intrapersonal problems are swirling all about. Violence, name calling, social shunning, bullying, spouses giving cold shoulders to one another, kids disrespecting parents. Parents exasperating their kids. Crime. Injustice. Lazy workers. Overbearing unrealistic bosses. Families members that estranged and not speaking to one another. People breaking into cars and/or leaving cars up on blocks after catalectic coverters are stolen.

Also, I know so many people that are sick right now. Chest x rays. Breathing treatments. Special trips to urgent care clinics after days of sleepless nights. Fevers. Ear infections. Feeding tube infections. Broken down bodies. Hips and knees that need to be replaced. Cancer that was in remission that is now back. Crippling back pain. Tremors from Parkinsons. Dementia that is setting in. Strokes that have slurred speech and strokes that have inhibited movement.

We find it really easy to agree with the Apostle Paul when he tells the Corinthian believers that, “our outer self is wasting away.”

And yet, we can still zoom in even further. We can go all the way to our individual hearts and we can see that there are problems at our heart level as well.

It isn’t Houston we have a problem. Houston, the command center, is the problem. All of our ambitions, desires and emotions are all out of proportion and whack. All is not calm, all is not bright so often in our raging, darkened hearts.

So here we are at the end of a year and getting ready to cross over the threshold into a new one and we must wonder if anything will be any different with this next one.

If you are like me, on a yearly basis, you come to this day and even if you reflective for a just a moment, it is easy to recognize that life would probably work a little bit better for you if you changed a bit. If somehow you could be a bit different, things would be better for you. Most of the time we think that if everyone else around me just changed life would be better, but on this day, on New Year Eve, when seemingly the whole is world making “resolution” left and right, we tend to get a little more honest in our self reflection. Honesty is always the best policy.

So we come here and maybe you are itching to be different this next year in some area of your life.

Yes maybe you have tried before and have to some degree or another have “failed” time and time again. So what makes this year any different.

Well if you are a Christian here today, I have some very good, exceedingly encouraging news for you.

You were once dead in your trespasses and sins, but now you are alive in Christ Jesus.

You were once objects of God’s wrath and were His enemy, but now you have become the object of His loving affection and are called His friend and have been adopted into His family.

The old has passed away the new has come.

I say these things to remind of the exceedingly good news that you actually can change. Change is possible.

The essence of Christianity is that you don’t have to stay the same. In fact, if you are a Christian and actively walking with the Lord Jesus Christ and keeping in step with His Spirit, you can’t and won’t stay the same!

A fundamental change at the core of who you are has already happened, and that Gospel seed planted deep in your heart will continue to sprout and germinate and spread over every aspect of your life!

The essence of Christianity is about transformation and spiritual formation into the very image of the One human who walked the earth and never did anything wrong. He stewarded His humanity perfectly, and His is the image that we are being formed into. He is the mold that we are being pressed into!

That is Good New because if that is the essence of Christianity, then it means that God wants you to change too. And if God is for that, then who can be against it?

He who began a good work in you will continue to perfect it, so that leads me to believe that change is not only possible; change is actually expected.

Change is possible and expected.

2 Corinthians 7:1 (ESV)

1 Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.

So change is possible and expected. If we are allowed to wake up tomorrow in 2024, we will have been graciously been given another day on this earth by God, in order to “bring holiness to completion.”

The goal, purpose and reason for every 24 hour time period of our existence on earth is that you and I are progressively, incrementally changed from one degree of glory to another. Christianity is about being conformed into the image of Christ.

Romans 12:1–2 (ESV)

1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Many of you have probably realized this before, but just in case you have never been taught this, here is one Greek Word that will be easy and helpful for you to memorize.

μεταμορφόω

Sounds a lot like the English word, “metamorphosis.” Think of a caterpillar, curling up into a cocoon; then eventually emerging from the cocoon as a beautiful butterfly. A transformation has taken place. A metamorphosis has manifested itself. A creature that used to crawl, now has the ability and responsibility to fly!

And inward change has taken place that has effected everything on the outside as well. That is the Christian life. Transformation and renewal on a day by day basis.

Day in and day out for the entire duration of our pilgrim walk here on earth we are to change; this is Christianity.

So here is the message that I am hoping will ring in my ears and all of our ears as we head into 2024. I have been mulling this over for a few weeks now and this is what I sense the Lord saying to me in my personal life, “Nothing will change, if you don’t.” This is what the Lord has been saying to me.

And to make it personal.

Nothing will change if I don’t.

Nothing will change if I don’t. It is such an empowering sentence because it places the burden of responsibility entirely on us and it is not dependent upon any one else to do there part!

Nothing will change if I don’t.

Do you all remember the definition of insanity. “Doing the same thing over again and again and expecting different result.”

By that definition, I did something insane this last week.

We have had a crazy couple of weeks with various illnesses present within each family member of our household. It has been rough. Lots of sickness, and sleepless nights and trips to the doctor, urgent care center, x rays facilities and pharmacies! I was joking with someone this past week that our Christmas presents to our kids was copays for doctor visits and prescription drugs and chest x rays.

So it has been intense lately and in the midst of all that nerve wracking drama and uneasiness, the other night our refrigerator started beeping at us.

I think my wife said, “You got to be kidding me.”

In the midst of a cascading chorus of coughs, our refrigerator was indicating to us that something wasn’t right with it either!

Come on man!

Now, it happened shortly after I opened and closed it and I accidently leave the door open a lot, but not that night, I really did shut it. But Suz did ask me, “What did you do?” I said, “I opened it, and I closed it.”

So I opened it and closed it again thinking that maybe something was just off with the system and then I stepped back and crossed my arms and waited for a few seconds and then the silence was pierced with an annoying beeping!

So with exasperation, I opened it, and closed it. Stepped back and waited for a few seconds and then guess what…beep, beep, beep.

“You got to be kidding me.”

We opened it up and moved things around a bit; then closed it and then confidently stepped back and I put my hands on my hips and waited to be greeted with silence. However, after a few precious moment of an absence of noise; beep, beep, beep.

We did this at least 5 or 6 times. We did the same thing over and over again and we kept getting the same result. We were insane! We did get it stop, we turned the beep mode off!

We silenced it and said we will get to it a different day. (It is working now so I don’t know what we did…maybe God just healed our refrigerator to show us that He can heal our bodies as well).

We find ourselves here on the last day of this year and on the cusp of a new one and our warning sensors might be beeping at us. Hey there is a problem. There is a problem. Beep beep. Hey pay attention to me, something isn’t right. But if we have no plans to do anything different, we are insane.

……showed up at church on the last day of the year and my pastor called me insane.

Or we might not really want to invest the time or energy into fixing that which is wrong, and we just try to turn the sensors off so to speak. We might try to numb our conscious with all sorts of stuff come the new year, but it won’t fix the problem.

Just ignoring things and doing nothing and crossing your fingers while hoping for better results after not changing anything isn’t going to cut it.

So what will cut it? What will fix our problems at our motivation level so that we can actually change this year?

So many of us have legitimate desires to make progress in our lives. Like we, look over the landscape of our lives and say…ya I would like to be different here here and there. We agree that if these “things” (whatever they are) changed for the better that would be categorically good. Let’s collectively think for a moment.

Think about your marriage. Think about your parenting. Or your walk with God. Maybe you want to control your emotions and not be given over to anger, or continual sadness. Or maybe we have grown accustomed to constantly living defeated and trapped in despair and throw a daily pity party for ourselves that we invite everyone else to and we are miserable to be around.

Maybe we want to change from our incessant tendency to always shift the blame for our actions to everyone else.

We want to advance in or physical heath and be on a healthy, consistent diet and exercise regimen that will allows us to feel more comfortable in our own skin. We don’t do this for vain reasons, but for godly ones. We are embodied souls, so taking care of our bodies is really really important. Maybe even step number one.

Better student, employee, employer, neighbor, classmate, teammate, sibling, grandparent, Awana leader (we need more of you), life group participant, etc.

There are so many areas in our lives that we want to grow in. So how are we going to do that?

In order to change, we need to have a proper response to grace.

Titus 2:11–14 (ESV)

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

A proper response to God’s revealed grace is the means by which we are changed from one degree of glory to another.

God’s grace has alway been and will alway be is the causative agent. If there is any change that takes place in our lives, we will give credit to where credit is due, and it is all due God’s glorious grace. Grace is the causative agent.

Look at what God’s grace has done and what it is capable of doing!

God’s grace appeared, redeemed and purified us.

Titus 2:11 (ESV)

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,

This is amazing. What we see here is some sort of reverse personification. Personification is when you attribute a personal nature or human characteristics to something that is nonhuman. It is when you try to take something that is abstract and representation in human form.

“The wind was howling the other day.”

“The last piece of pie was calling my name.”

You take something abstract, sprinkle a little human characteristic on it and walla, that which is abstract becomes more known.

Well here what you see hear is the reverse of that. Paul is going to grab this very known person, Jesus Christ and liken Him to the somewhat abstract concept of GRACE.

This should floor us. Jesus is the EMBODIMENT OF GOD’s GRACE.

When you look at Jesus what you are really seeing is Grace in Action.

Jesus, the Mediator is also the merciful gracious Lord. The word Paul uses is the word...χάρις

Grace is an unmerited kindness shown. A favorable attitude expressed towards someone or something.

God’s kindness and favorable attitude are expressed to us when you put your eyes on the person and work of Jesus Christ!

Grace is the free work of God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, even though we don’t deserve it.

God is teeming and overflowing with Grace and He isn’t hoarding it up for Himself…He wants to lavish you with it so He sent Jesus in the fullness of time to do for you what you could never in a million years or even in one millisecond do for yourself…that is live uprightly before God. You and I can’t do that…we need grace and thankfully Paul tells us that “Grace” has “appeared.” It “epiphanied.” This is what we just took a whole month to celebrate as we made our way through the advent season.

This word, “epiphanied” points to a specific point in time when Jesus took on flesh and dwelt among us as John tells us.

John 1:14 (ESV)

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus is full of GRACE. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s Grace. Grace in human form.

The grace of God did not evolve in history; it came at just the right time when Jesus was born and it continued to mature over the course of His life and found its fullest expression when He took our place on a cross that we deserved to die on.

Grace is the free work of God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, even though we don’t deserve it. It brings salvation and it redeems us and purifies us.

Titus 2:14 (ESV)

14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Jesus gave Himself willingly in obedience to His Father’s plan. That plan included a horrific death. A death that we deserved to die. You and I deserved eternal conscience punishment that is an eternal separation from all that we were created to joyfully experience.

Dantes Inferno - “Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.”

This is where we were supposed to end up, but the grace of God showed up and took our already purchased ticket stub to enter an eternity in hell and He tore it up as the body of Jesus was ripped and torn on our behalf and then He places a “redemption” ticket in our hands, turns us around and shows us a promised land where there is fullness of joy with pleasure flowing a the right and of the Father.

He gave Himself for us in order to “redeem” us and “purify” us.

And in light of that redemption and purification, we are transformed at the heart level. At the level where our motivations reside, we have been changed. Look at what it says,

“Who are zealous for good works.”

The application of the tangible grace of God changes us at the causal core…all of a sudden we don’t just feel an obligation to change things about our lives, but we actually become zealous to do so.

Actually changing is a proper response to God’s grace.

We want to join God in the purifying process for His glory. We no longer belong to ourselves, we belong to Him. We are a people of His own possession. And since we no longer belong to ourselves, we get zealous about doing that which we were purified for and purchased to do.

God’s grace trains us to say “no” to the wrongs things and “yes to the right things.

Titus 2:12 (ESV)

12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,

God’s grace teaches us to say no to bad things, and yes to good things. God’s grace isn’t just to get us into the age to come, it is to work its causative and transformative power in “this present age.”

Your life, if it has encountered the grace of God, should and will look different, year after year as time goes by. It teaches us to say no to bad things and yes to good things and actually desire the good over the bad. It makes us zealous for good works.

Grace has brought us safe thus far and grace will lead us home! And when we have been there 10,000 years bright shining as the sun we will have no less day to sing of God’s glorious grace and His praise then when we first begun.

Benediction

This Christian life is not a wind sprint of massive expressions of faith followed by long periods of inactivity.

It is as Eugene Peterson says, a “long obedience in the same direction.”

Repentance is a realization that what God wants from us and what we want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things and thinking the same old things.

God’s grace allows us to change. We need a proper response to God’s grace.

Kids read your bibles and pray every day (grow, grow, grow).

Kids…we are all kids.

Galatians 6:9 ESV

9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

What blessings can you think God for as you survived another year in a hostile world?

How have you changed over course of the last year?

How are you sensing the Lord wanting you to change this next year?

Who in your life can help hold you accountable to that change? Will you ask them to help you remember?