Just listen to what Psalms 119:1-6 says. Do you know anyone like that? I only know one. Jesus Christ. This year as we launch our reading through the Bible program, looking for Jesus from cover to cover, expect God to change your life through His Word.
When I was growing up, making New Year’s Resolutions was a given for just about everyone I knew. It was a time of beginning again, a time for setting our sights, a time for new hope for a new year. I remember eating hog jowl and black eyed peas as a symbol of looking for a prosperous year ahead. Today, I’m not sure just how healthy that meal was, but I am sure that setting a plan in place is very much a godly thing. God plans and purposes eternal matters and he made us in his image. We are creatures with the ability to look into the future and imagine and envision. We must use this gift to the glory of God.
In the late 1980’s Steven Covey wrote a best selling book entitled, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” It is the result of hundreds of hours of study and observation and interestingly enough, but not surprisingly, his discoveries of truth about life sound a lot like what you read in scripture. Covey says that before we can become mature, we must accept that we have the power to choose and that we are ultimately responsible for our choices. He uses the word “proactive” a lot. Does that sound a bit like Genesis 2-3 where God allowed Adam and Eve to face the liar and decide whose words they would trust? They were given a choice, but did not choose wisely. Think of the consequences of the power to choose! Next, Covey says, “We need to begin with the end in mind.” The point here is that unless Jesus returns in our life-time, we are all going to die. As the scripture in Psalms 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” And as Hebrews 9:27 reminds us, “It is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment.” And as Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 2 Cor. 5:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. 11 Knowing, therefore, the fear of the Lord, we persuade men…” As an application for beginning with the end in mind, Covey makes a wise suggestion: “Write your own funeral service.” In other words write down what you would like to have said about your life at your funeral. This helps you to get in touch with what is most important to you. It also helps you realize that whatever you live for now ends up being what you eventually died for.
Are you living for what you honestly believe is worth dying for? God gives us the time and opportunity to do just that! He gives us the instruction in his word that shows us how to live for what is truly worth dying for and he gives us strength through his Holy Spirit and the fellowship of other brothers and sisters in Christ to experience just such a life!
By the way, it’s not as complex as you think. As a Christian I know that living for what is worth dying for is as simple as walking with the Lord every day. Walking with God in Jesus Christ is worth dying for! Every day that I do this, I live a day that is worth dying for. What could be greater than serving Jesus? If you serve a brother or sister in his name, you serve the Lord himself! What could be greater than helping someone else get to heaven? If you confess your faith in Jesus Christ and walk with him, you will do just that! What could be more amazing than to speak to and hear from the creator of the universe himself? If you read the scriptures and pray you are doing just that!
Loving God and loving one another, walking in Christ according to his word, this is the greatest life that you can live, period, bar none, end of story.
Here we are on the last day of the year. 2006 is about to be filed away in the archives of time and history. 2007 is on the horizon. What will we do with the coming year? God has given us 31,536,000 seconds to spend this past year. How have we spent them? Would you die for what you lived for this past year? You gave a year of your life for whatever you did. This year ahead, some of us may not live to see end. If the Lord returns, none of us will.
Right now, today, there may be someone here who is not ready to meet the Lord. Maybe you are a Christian, but need to rededicate your life to Jesus Christ and resolve to walk with the Lord according to his word. You’ve been trying to walk it your way and you’ve tasted the fruit of sin and found out that it bites back, hard. Do you hear me? Are you listening to God? For the remainder of our time for this lesson, let me spread out before you God’s plan for your life, your future. It is all written for us to see in God’s word the Bible.
The Bible tells us plainly, Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God made everything you see and a lot you don’t see. He made you too. Genesis 1: 26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
God lets us know where we come from. And it’s a beautiful beginning! We are designed to be like God. Eph. 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.
2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
3 But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints;
4 neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.
5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
7 Therefore do not be partakers with them.
8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
God made us and calls us to be his children! But every one of us has turned away from him. Every one of us has sinned and become separated from God by our own choices!
God’s word says: Isaiah 53: 6 All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.
In the early pages of Genesis we read: 6: 5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
7 And the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them."
That is one of the saddest statements in scripture. Man, designed to be like God is so corrupted with evil that God is grieved with his creation and destroyed the earth in a flood, an event the likes of which we will never see again. By the way, do you know that everywhere you go there is evidence of a great flood. This very place, Signal Mountain, has water marks all over the cliffs. Out west, the dry desert mountains are all clearly water marked with lake beds from ancient flood waters, evidence of God’s wrath against sin. Even geologists make note that no matter where you go on this planet, there has been a lot of water laid material. Isn’t it amazing that the Genesis writer had such a knowledge of geology to suspect a world flood? Or did God do that and reveal it to man? What do you think? I believe God did it and revealed it and left us plenty of evidence for it.
Peter writes: 2 Peter 3: 3 Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts,
4 and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation."
5 For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water,
6 through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.
7 But the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
8 But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
11 Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,
12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, on account of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!
What God created, he tells us that he will also destroy. God will judge all sin. He must, if he is holy. He will, because he is indeed holy.
God’s word says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” But how can we fear him who we do not know or believe in? Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, was sent to us to show us plainly who God is and to call us to come to God through him.
Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is our Savior; he is our Lord! God has appointed a day in which to judge the living and the dead through Jesus, the Christ.
It is unbelief and sin that blind the hearts and minds of men and women from God. It is the word of God preached that has power to open the blind eyes to see the light of God’s truth and to come to Jesus Christ in faith and obedience and be saved.
Paul told the Corinthians 1 Cor. 1: 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
22 For indeed Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom;
23 but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness,
24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
And 2 Cor. 4: 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,
4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
5 For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake.
6 For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
God’s word says: Romans 10: 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. Jesus said the word of God is like seed sown in our hearts. If our hearts are good and honest, that seed grows up and bears much fruit. If our hearts are hard or shallow or full of worldly cares and worries, the word will not produce it’s fruit in us.
Do you believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God? Do you know him as your Lord and Savior? Do you realize that he gave his life for you to pay for your sins through his death? Jesus thought you were worth dying for. That’s why he came. That’s what he did. His death was for your life.
Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 28:19-20 to go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. The first thing the disciples did when the Holy Spirit came on them was to make disciples, baptize them, and teach them to obey Jesus’ commands. It’s all there in Acts 2. Faithful Christians have been doing that ever since.
