Blessed New Year
Notes
Transcript
Today, we put away our Christmas tree. Untiil next November. This is was interesting in that one of the kids favorites Christmas was Feliz Navidad, which ends with the Spanish, prospero ano y felicdad.
We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy new year!
What would make that a happy new year?
Was this past year a happy one? Was 2020 a happy new year? If you answered no.... then I think we need to re-evaluate what it is that makes us happy. The world says that 2020, was an awful year and that we should be happy to see the end of it. God says rejoice always, despite the circumstances. In health or sickness
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
This really sums up 2020 but it equally sums up 2021. Already I think it is off to a start different than what we would have thought just a few short weeks ago. What does 2021 hold? Who knows? It might be what we thought to be a typical year, or it could change and be more surprising then 2020. So how can we have a happy year in 2021? Lets ask the Lord that question.
When does the Lord talk about happiness?
If you have paid exceptional attention or perhaps if you had taken notes you might remember, in the first message of last year we talked about this as well.
We don’t know find the word happiness very often in scripture.
If did my count right, it only occurs 13 times. that is in English.
The Word in Hebrew occurs many more times. However it is translated differently.
Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon אֶ֫שֶׁר; אָשָׁר
אַשְׁרֵי
You know that name, Abraham’s 8th son. It is the word that is translated happy in our Old Testament. What does this word mean?
Happy
Content
Fortunate
Joyful
Blessed
The person who is Asher - is fortunate, happy and blessed.
So who does scripture say is Asher? Blessed or Happy
According to God who is Happy?
According to God who is Happy?
12 Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
12 O Lord of hosts,
blessed is the one who trusts in you!
1 Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord,
who walks in his ways!
1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the Lord!
2 Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart,
Trust the Lord
Trust the Lord
Trust the Lord - thats the message of the day for our new year. The person who trusts, rests, finds refuge in God will be happy, he is fortunate, he is blessed.
Trust is built on knowledge. Like a Foundation of a building. The floor, walls and roof rests on this. If you build somewhere where there isn’t a proper foundation you end up with series defects in building. The more you know God the more you trust him. The more your trust him the more blessed you will be. This is more than just an academic knowledge.
10 And those who know your name put their trust in you,
for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.
8 Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
for in you I trust.
Make me know the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Dangers to Trust: Knowing God inaccurately.
Dangers to Trust: Knowing God inaccurately.
This can become a major problem in a believer’s life.
Why?
We all have our ideas of who God is. Everyone has their own thinking. Even the Atheist, well according to Romans 1, there is actually any such thing as an Atheist. Every person has their own idea of God shaped by their lives, some of it is true, however some of it is inaccurate.
Your family growing up, impacts your view of God. Many times, how your parents treated you, rightly or wrongly, shapes your view of God. If you had Christlike parents then you may picture God to be compassionate and providing. Maybe you had parents who were disciplarians, then maybe you fear God’s punishment.
The true knowledge of God, what God is really like is confused, distorted and twisted. With the effect that when left to ourselves we really can’t know God for certain. This is exactly the world we live in today. A day of mass confusion. Who God is and what He is like is confused.
Confused by the sins of the others
Confused by the lies of the Devil and the World that he wants you desperately to believe.
Confused by own sin and experiences.
For instance,
I have had conversations a few times that go something like this. This bad thing happened to me. I think God is angry at me and He is punishing me because I did something wrong. I just know the other day I stole this thing from work and I know that God is going to get me back and punish me because of it.
God is never angry and never punishes the believer. Why? Because of the Gospel. It is not because you don’t deserve God’s punishment and anger. Because we do. We deserve to be punished, but this is the glorious thing about the gospel. Every time I lie, steal, or lust. Everytime I do not love my neighbor as I ought, I accrue God’s wrath and anger. But God took all that wrath and anger and poured it out on Jesus. God was wrath and anger was satisified on the Cross and so He is no longer angry at me. I don’t have to live in fear that God is watching and waiting to drop the hammer on me when I sin. He is not hunting me down because of my sin, rather he is loving caring for me, as a father.
So we all have this idea of who God is, some accurate and some inaccurate. The result is that no one has a clear and unhindered picture of who God is. No one, certainly not me, not you either. We all believe lies about God.
This is what leads to such conflict and confusion today. The world is believing such drasticaclly different ideas about God. So the thing we need most is an accurate knowledge of God. We are all grasping in the dark looking for the right way and no one knows for sure which way we are going until the sun, the light comes and shows us all what is true and what is false.
What is that light? The light is God’s word.
The World says that God punishes the Christian who does wrong and the Christian who remembers to read his bible and says lots of prayers and goes to church will always have good health and have lots of money and Jesus will protect from suffering.
However, none of that is in my Bible, yet we still believe. So when we do get ill or we struggle with money we doubt God, we don’t trust and we are not content.
God’s word through the power of the Spirit is the light that shines in the darkness and confusion of this world that opens our eyes to what God is like.
We need an accurage picture of God.
Two enemies endanger our trust and therefore our happy, blessed, content state in Christ.
Dangers to Trust: Knowing God Inadequately.
Dangers to Trust: Knowing God Inadequately.
Leaving Drayton..... found pet sitters online. They had profliles they told us alot about themselves…but I still didn’t know them.
If we have an ever increasing knowledge and experience of God we will have a stronger and deeper trust of Him. When the storms of 2021 come, and they certainly will, we can hold on the truths of God more tightly and won’t be pushed around.
Our joy, happiness, contentment, blessedness will evaporate when we begin to trust something else besides God.
We need to know more and more about God, every year. This builds our trust.
This is our greatest need to know God, that starts at salvation. Maybe that is you today, maybe you don’t know God at all. Your are watching this and you realize that there has never been a time when you have called out to Him to save you. Today can be that day. You must realize that you are sinner deserving the punishment of God, you sins are piled high and you are piling them higher and higher, you have turned away from God and went your own way. You must realize that there is nothing you can do, no work, no deed, nothing that you can do to remove that mountain of sins that separates you from God. However, that is exactly why Jesus came, he took the punishment for those sins. When you look to him and call out to Him for salvation. He will save you.
Then you and all of us can begin our daily walk with the Lord. When we come to His word, and learn more about who He is. We talk about it with Him through prayer and our knowledge increases bit by bit. Inch by Inch.
Have you planned to do that his year? How are you going to grow in knowing God this year? We don’t accidentally become more knowledgable about God anymore than we accidentally get a gym membership and lose that extra 10lbs. We have to plan.
So I am hoping and praying that you have a happy new year. Not by what the world says, Not that you tick a lot of boxes that the world says you have to have ticked in order to be happy.
But that you trust God becaue you know him more accurately and adequately.