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Sunday, 6 January 2008 – New Life Resolutions

So; did you make any New Year resolutions? I’m afraid new year’s resolutions stopped doing anything for me a little while ago. I’m not saying there wrong. I’m not even saying there not useful. I’m just saying that as far as I’m concerned - the whole idea just ran out of steam.

But for you - they might work - if you haven’t already broken them that is! When I was growing up we had an expressing in our home where we talked about ‘turning over a new leaf’ - the idea of course coming from the old- fashioned exercise book - where you left behind the ink blotted, scrawl-covered, and scratched out page - and started on a pristine new one.

And in one sense we’re here right at the heart of the Christian message. For it’s this ‘fresh start’ - ‘this clean new page’ - that Jesus gives us. He took the punishment for all the blots and blemishes of our pasts when he went to the cross - and proved the page had not just been turned this time - but made totally clean again - when He rose from the dead. In fact King David - after he blew it big time with Bathsheba and then compounded his sin with organising the death of her husband - wrote Psalm 51 - a psalm of contrition begging God to forgive him. In it he asks for his transgressions to be ‘blotted out’ - and the expression he uses doesn’t mean covering them over with snowpake! It’s one that would have been used in the market-place when some scribe made a mistake on parchment. He’d take out his penknife and scraped off the mistake to give himself a clean new surface to write on. So there’d be no page to turn back to see the mistakes you’d made - and no hidden mistakes to uncover. The record didn’t exist.

Or if you want to hear it in God’s own words - hear them through his prophet Isaiah - “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for my our sake, and remembers your sins no more.” And the thing that should jump out at you from that verse is - it’s God speaking - who can’t forget anything – yet saying He’s taken a positive decision to “remember no more”.

But there’s a problem. On the journey (earlier generations called it pilgrimage) of our lives - we all mess up the fresh start - the new beginning - blotting the clean book God has given us. This was recognized as a serious dilemma early on in Church history - so one particular sector of the Church developed a tradition telling penitent followers that if they did something to assuage their guilty feeling - that would be fine. Basically - God made you clean in the first place - but you’ve got to keep cleaning yourself up after that. And another idea around in the very early church was that if you were baptised as near your death as possible - that would solve the problem. Alternatively - try buying your way back to a clean sheet.

Well - is that the answer the Bible gives - for - as the Bible says - “working out our salvation with fear and trembling”?

Paul wrote his angriest letter we’ve got preserved for us, to a church in Galatia. You can actually feel him seething as he starts writing (or dictating) Galatians Ch.3. The detailed focus of his anger is slightly different - but the principle speaks straight into this question this morning.

“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? ” That’s the essences of the question. And Paul says to the Galatians “how stupid can you get”? These Christians were being lead astray by false teaching to add to the salvation God has already provided for them complete and free. You could call this - I mean the idea behind it in all it’s manifestations - one of the biggest scams in history.

We were saved by Grace - and we are kept hold of by God by Grace. Or as Ephesians ch.2 v.8 & 9 famously puts it - “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no-one can boast.” Or as the strap-line to one of Philip Yancey’s books puts it - “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us less.” And that doesn’t mean just when we first turn to Christ - it means all of our lives - because Christianity isn’t a philosophy you espouse - it’s a life-long relationship we enter into.

But sorry folks - this leaves us with another problem. It’s one that’s been there right back from the beginning. So much so - that Paul found it necessary to address it head-on in his letter to the Romans. He starts Ch.6 by saying, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ” And just so we get the message in this closely argued letter about salvation - he says in v.15 - “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” He then goes on to say - " Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?"

Which tells us that what we do does matter. But not as a way of obtaining our salvation from God. It matters as the means of enjoying this salvation relationship we’ve already entered into. One of the major phrases about what people want today is usually summed up as “quality of life”. This is the fundamental quality of life issue for Christians. Elsewhere Paul says we’ve been rescued from the Kingdom of Darkness and brought into the Kingdom of Light. So why are we still obeying Darkness’ dictator?

Two reasons. One - we still live with our fallen nature. The other - that the Dictator of the Kingdom of Darkness - the one Jesus defeated on the cross - wasn’t best pleased to see us given our eternal status of heirs of God and heirs of salvation. That’s putting it mildly. And he’s still a force to be reckon with - because we live at the moment is his continuing sphere of control. How God limits the Devil’s powers is not clear to us - but the fact He does is shown in the Bible. And it’s probably truer to say that God limits His own powers at this present time - because He’s set Himself a time to finally stamp out Darkness. And while we don’t know when that will be - He’s told us it is the next major event marker on His programme. Meanwhile - the Bible says that we live as strangers and aliens on the earth - and as citizens of another place. And we also live as ambassadors of our new kingdom.

And it’s this living as Children of Light in a location under the control of the powers of darkness - and with our old nature as a ‘fifth column’ siding with the enemy - that’s the struggle. Struggle? Continual warfare more like it! And Paul wasn’t immune from it. He doesn’t write as someone looking in on the problem - he’s up to his neck in it himself. Still in Romans - and Ch.7 - he says - and it’s a longish quote:

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

"So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.”

Paul recognised that the new nature God has given him and his old nation were locked in moral combat - and it was he himself - body and soul - that was the battlefield.

Many many years ago I ran the mid-week children’s meeting that was the precursor to Razzmatazz. George Porter (who was here just before Christmas) sometimes came and spoke. One Friday night he told the kids a story. I don’t know if what the kids made of it. But it spoke to me! He put up a couple of cutout pictures of boxers fighting intently - and called one our ‘old self’ and the other our ‘new self’. He then asked - “Which one is going to win?” I’ll ask you that. I haven’t got the cutout figures - but use your imagination! “ Which one will win?” Answer: The one you feed the most.

Recently we’re we’ve had a number of Sunday mornings given over to talks on discipleship - covering prayer, Bible reading, fasting, etc. - so I’m not going to look this morning so much as to how to feed the new nature - as to how we starve the old one. Which isn’t so easy in one sense as each of us has a different personal history, and different things that pull us away from God. Or as one previous Elder in this church was wont to say - “As our faces differ, so do our needs”. So I’m going to touch on just a few things around in our current social culture as examples - and I’ll leave you and the Lord to draw up your own list of stuff that needs starving in you personally.

Well as this is the twenty-first century - lets start with an item of modern technology - the computer. Now I know not everybody has a computer - but many of all ages have - unless of course you’re really up to speed and have one of the latest mobile phones that can do virtually everything a computer can do and are asking “who needs a computer”!

Now computers are very useful friends - even if they do try your patience at times. Let’s forget for a minute that they can also become an obsession, sucking up money and time like a sponge to feed a craving for the newest and the latest. They’re not alone in that - and we’ll come back to that. But they can also be diabolically enemies - simply because of the doors you can open with them. And it isn’t just children in chat-rooms that are at risk. For a start - there are websites out there in the realms of pornography that are so perverted and deviant - calling them ‘diabolical’ isn’t an exaggeration. And they are only a click or two away. And even if after you’ve visited them you say “Shouldn’t have done that. Sorry God.” and are forgiven - your mind - your memory - hasn’t got the erase feature your computer has. And of course Satan - as any good military tactician - will exploit that to the full.

Incidently - we talk about ‘private’ sin and ‘public’ sin - and put this sort of behaviour in the ‘private’ pigeonhole. Not of course that anything’s private from God’s point of view. Go read Psalm 139. But it’s not so private from other people either. Did you know the world’s largest search engine on the internet - Google - has a record of every click made when using their software that goes back eighteen months, and they can track back where it was make? I don’t know what the policies are with the people we use to buy time on the internet. But we do know the police thrive on finding supposedly deleted histories of computer use.

But pornography isn’t the only temptation on the internet. I was watching some News-type programme the other day and a lady from an ordinary family background was saying how she’d clocked up a debt of £25,000 by gambling on the internet. I admit to being gob-smack by the amount. How can you run up that sort of debt without all the warning bells imaginably ringing in your head well before it gets to that level.

Well the answer is - both pornography and gambling can be as addictive as a substance drug. And some branches of the church and para-church organisations would go future - and talk about spirits of pornography or gambling or whatever being behind the drives that make the addictions. Now whether you want to go along with that level of detail or not - the general idea of a spiritual battle - not just involving our old nature and our new nature - but also unseen spiritual powers of darkness - is Biblical.

If we go to Ephesians 6:12 - we read these words - “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” We’ll come back in a minute to see how we need to respond to such a dire and serious warning by Paul.

But lets go on for a minute and see what other desires and drives we might need to starve out in our old human nature. How much TV do you watch? What do you watch? How do you watch? What criteria do you judge what you watch by? What thoughts does your mind feed on as you sit in front of the box - and what do you do if you realise something you’re watching isn’t good? Sorry for so many questions, but they’re all ones that can be used to starve your old nature of its food. Through the TV - what thought patterns are we developing week by week that have nothing to do with a Christian lifestyle? Dr Neil Anderson in a book called ‘Higher Ground’ says, “Frisk every thought at the door of your mind”. Do we frisk every thought - or allow them to walk in and take up residence hardly noticed. So if you’re a Soap fan - ask yourself - what world-view is being projected by the script-writers and why - and would Jesus sit beside you and accept and enjoy it? Just for starters.

Moving on. Have you heard the phrase “shopping therapy”? It wasn’t around for the majority until we became so generally affluent that we don’t now know how to use our increased disposable income. Although I’m not even sure if that’s true now. With shopping on plastic you don’t even need to have the money to dispose of - just the feeling shopping will make you feel better! It mainly feeds the demand of ‘wanting’ rather than ‘needing’. This in turn is often driven by what used to be called ‘keeping up with the Jones’ - or for youngsters - ‘street cred’. It’s also part of a modern cult that worships ‘the latest’ - and ‘the new’ - going back to my comment when I was talking about computers. But not just computers - home gadgetry of any sort. And of course of course un-necessarily clothes. And along the way a nice young advertising lady tells you it’s all because - “You’re worth it”.

Just picking up on the use of money - if you really want to spend - ask the Lord what He’d like you to spend on. Swap from ‘feeding’ your old nature to feeding the new one while benefiting some needy good work in the process.

And it’s also Biblical. In the verse following those we read about being saved by grace in Ephesians Ch.2 - it says - “ we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” So while you may be neither free or skilled to go to some other part of the world to help leprosy sufferers or AIDS victims - you can financially support The Leprosy Mission or an organisation like Tear Fund working in those fields. And I don’t mean with loose change.

Well - just a few life issues to start you thinking about your own lifestyle this new year - and - I hope - start you thinking about what might need to be changed. Draw up a list and talk to God about it. And listen to what He says.

But I guess many of us - like me - have been here before - sung such hymns as “Take my life and let it be, consecrated Lord to Thee” - and failed somewhere along the way to keep going - ending up maybe thinking - ‘it just isn’t doable’. Well - sinless perfection isn’t doable - but growing closer and closer to the image that God wants us to be - that of His Son - must be - or He wouldn’t have given us so may instructions in the Bible taking us in that direction. John Stott at 86 preached his last sermon at Keswick last Summer. His subject was ‘incarnating Christ’ - and he talked about God still being in the business of transforming His people into the image of His Son. And as a loving Father, God wouldn’t expect it of us if it wasn’t doable

But there are three aspects to the ‘doing’ we need to understand as we move on in our Christian journey from this morning. And the first is - motivation.

Last Thursday I was watching the News - and they had the ‘Slimmer of the Year’ on, together with the slimming guru who’s organisation had helped the winning lady. Something the slimming guru said made me grab a pen and jot it down. “You’ve got to want it yourself. No-one can tell you to do it”.

So - what is our motivation? Come on - let’s do this one together? What is your motivation for living the Christian life in the way God wants? [A loving response to a loving God. Or as John says in 1 John 4:19 - “We love because he first loved us”.]

Of course some of us have a problem with believing that God really loves us. That might be because your model of 'Fatherhood' isn’t one were the description ‘loving’ easily springs to mind. Maybe more that of a stern master. Can I just say - been there - got the T shirt. But I also want to say that as recently as last Summer - while out walking alone around a lake in Sussex - I told God I’d stop looking at Him with my own understanding of ‘Father’ - and start accepting Him as ‘Father’ on His own terms. It’s a start. And I may be at a totally different place on my pilgrimage than you are on yours. But remember - it’s the direction we’re travelling in that matters.

The second thing we need - is the power to succeed. We certainly haven’t got it in our own strength. But we have got lots of instructions with coupled promises from God. So James writes in his very practical guide to living the Christian life - “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” There we have an instruction with a promise. Great. Except that like me you might have tried to put it in practise and failed. I don’t know about you - but there are usually one of two reasons I fail.

First - I don’t actually want to resist the devil! So I become the ‘double minded man’ Peter talks about - unstable - and of course - not able to resist the devil because at heart I don’t want to. A bit like standing on one leg on the edge of a precipice on a windy day and saying “I really don’t want to fall over”. It comes back to what we want and how much we want it.

The other reason is that I’m trying to play King Canute - trying to resist a power I have no hope of controlling in my own strength. And the answer to that - and I’ve said this before here but it’s worth repeating - is that I short changed you with that quote of James 4:7. What it actually says is -“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

First we need to submit to God - affirming His Lordship over our lives. As it were - trooping His colours through our mind before we resist the devil - then resist the devil - and - he will flee - not from you as an individual - but as you in Christ - and Christ in you.

Or if you want it from another letter in the NT - let’s go back to Ephesians Ch.6 from where we’ve already seen that we are warring against spiritual forces - and where Paul exalts us to - “put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” Here, resisting the devil and his forces is via the imagery of a Roman soldier. But that isn’t were he starts. He starts at verse 10 with - “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.” Actually - when he says be strong in the Lord - most commentators and some translations put it as ‘in your union with the Lord’.

Some years ago I had an engineering welding sample that illustrated this It was a test piece that had been machined and polished to show the joint between the two pieces of metal in section. On it you couldn’t see where one piece of steel ended and the other piece began. That’s how God would like to see our lives looking - where you can’t see where his life ends and ours begins. And that way we’re never resisting Satan on our own.

And finally - the third thing we need is plain shear determination. Tenacity. Bottle. The guts to just ‘do it’ - and not expect God to do it all for us almost without effort on our part. Temptation isn’t called temptation for nothing.

Jesus said the route you are going to have to walk as your Christian life is narrow - and hard to find. You want the broad road - it’s over there - but it leads to destruction. But He also said time and again in the Gospels - and still says to us today - “Come, follow Me”. We do not travel this road alone.

Eugene Peterson who produced ‘The Message’ paraphrase of the Bible - has also written a book on discipleship entitled, ‘A Long Obedience in the Same Direction’. That’s the road we walk - and are to walk day after day - hour after hour - with dogged persistence. Perseverance.

I was wondering how I could illustrate perseverance - and I came up with a picture [Show picture of sequin fish]. Nice isn’t it. It’s made up of sequins - each one of them held onto the cloth-covered polystyrene base by a small half inch long pin. Like a dress-making pin - but shorter. So you put the sequin carefully in position half covering the one before - find it’s centre with the pin - and then fix it in place. But - you might say to me - well it’s a bit fiddly - but how’s that a good illustration of perseverance? Here’s how [Show Jackie holding picture].

Jackie Hall is a member of this church. She’s been disabled for a long time. But a little while ago she had a left side stroke and lost the use of her left arm. Before that - her right hand worked less well that her left because of arthritis. In fact - she only has the use of the middle three fingers on her right hand - and they’re curled. And she has less sensation in then than you have in yours. It took her nine months, one day a week at her day centre, to produce this picture. It’s all her own work. That’s why this is a good illustration of perseverance. And the end product is a beautiful picture [picture of fish again]. And it’s a beautiful picture God wants to produce of our lives too. But he wont do it on his own - only with our co-operation.

Time to close this service off. Let me do so with a challenge from the OT.

We first come across Joshua as one of Moses’ assistants and watch him grow into becoming Moses’ successor. We then see him lead God’s people into the promised land and capture much of it. It’s now approaching the end of Joshua’s life. So Joshua calls all the people together to make a parting speech. He recites for them how God’s looked after them in spite of the way they have tried His patience - and he does this as a prophetic utterance from God himself. He then challenges them - with these words:

“Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshipped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fore-fathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

You know what really surprises me. These people - or these people’s families - because all those who left Egypt over twenty died in the desert - had been dragging around with them for 46 or so years the burdensome weight of various images of idiolatry - while professing outward faith in the one true God. How do I know? Well after Joshua’s made his challenge and they’d responded - we find this in Joshua 24:23 -

“Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the LORD.”

And some of these ‘foreign gods’ had been in there families for more that four hundred years if they were their forefathers from beyond the River.

So I close with those challenging words of Joshua - “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve”. And - if you chose to respond with Joshua’s words - “But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” - remember - this implies that you’re going to need to empty the box-room of your life of all the stuff which isn’t compatible with that declaration.

This isn’t a new year’s resolution. This is a new life resolution.

Granville Richards