As I began to preach to you in the beginning of the year, I reminded you that you can begin the New Year however you choose. You can begin the New Year hopeless because of the past year or hopeful because of the power of God. You can begin expecting something better or look for something worse. You can do that because you have in your care the power of choices that you can make. Remember, choices are the hinges of our destiny.
Your future is not determined by your conditions, it's determined by your faith, your choices, and your efforts.
In the first sermon, I suggested that Job really taught us something in his own life story. The canvas of his life was filled with grief, pain, tears and conflict. Yet Job made a very powerful and personal choice in Job 10:12, he chose to Praise God anyway. I am learning that, in the face of fear, failure or friction, praise Him. He is still God and a good God even when life is not good.
You have to learn that, that is a spiritual discipline. You can not praise God according to the thermometer of your life, or the sunshine that is upon your life. You can not limit your praise and thanks to God in just those seasons, it has to be transcendent.
It has taken me these many years to understand the full meaning of the passage, I will bless the Lord at all times, and His praise shall continually be in my mouth. That is to say in good times or bad times, I will bless Him (praise Him), for what He has done and for what I am hoping He is going to do. And for preserving in times when life and all around me is perishing and problematic.
It’s not as easy to praise God when life is upside down and that all you can see and sense is a ball of confusion and the only thing you see is darkness. But Job did, thou have granted me life, favor, and the visitation of His spirit had kept him. Job decided to Praise God in spite of the happenings of his life. He did not praise Him for what had happened, he praises Him that in the midst of all that had happen, that he still had life. And having just the flicker of life can be the very spark that ignites hope, healing, and help.
In that second sermon in I Chronicles 4:9-10, I suggested that you begin the New Year with an increased Prayer Life (intentionally). Jabez really taught us that. Lord, bless me indeed! Jabez whose name meant pain refused to live his life by being known as pain. He refused to live what he was called, he refused to accept the negative label that he was named. While he was specific in asking God to enlarge his territory, he equally wanted God to make him better and not just bigger. I suggested that you might would ask God to bless you indeed with Peace, a peace that passes all understanding.
A peace that when the ground you are standing on is crumbling and cracking, God gives you stability even in a crumbling and shaking situation. Pray for peace, presence, and provision of God.
So this morning, I want to invite you to claim these promises that we hear God making through Isaiah to the people of God. It’s God’s declaration of His full and faithful ability to honor His word. This section of the book of Isaiah is a part of what is called the chapters of comfort. God gives the prophet words of comfort to the people for the days of pain, punishment, and pressure that will befall them for their sins. The chapter of comfort really begins in chapter 40, and it opens with those words. Comfort, comfort for my people. He encourages them in that chapter to be still and wait upon the Lord. In verse 31 we hear, they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and faint not.
Then He gets to chapter 43 and there He gives the Prophet the words of revival, renewal, and refreshment. In this New Year perhaps all you can do is to walk in the promises of God. And it’s the promises of God that keeps our head up when all the signs would indicate it should be bowed, it’s the promises of God that keeps us pushing down the right path when it seems that the wrong path is easier. It’s the promises of God that helps you to hang on and hang in when letting go appears to be the rational thing to do.
Look with me at the words that Gods says to the Prophet:
I. He Gives them a Reminder! vs.1
But now, this is what the Lord say, He who created you, O Jacob, He who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name, you are mine.
A. I am the God that Created you:
I did not make you to become nothing; I made you out of nothing that you can become something. Israel you were nonexistent, I formed you out of a covenant with Abraham. My position dictates my power.
The Apostle Paul made that same argument in his message to the Epicureans and Stoics on Mars Hill in Acts 17:24: The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands, as if He needs anything, because He Himself gives all men life and breath and every thing else.
So when the creature or the made is filled with uncertainty, fear, and a sense of desperation. Remember the Maker!! He is still in control! He still has his hands on the steering wheel of life; I have to learn to trust Him when chaos is more obvious than calmness, when hell is louder than heaven, when the negative is trying to dominate the positive. When the forces of evil are trying to triumph the forces of eternal.
B. I am the God that Cares for you.
I care so much for you, that I called you by my name. In that eastern culture when a deity placed their name on the person or the people, it was an indicator of a personal relationship, of a personal investment.
So often in our lives, we need this reminder: We are His by our relationship with Christ!
We are cared for because we have been bought with a price! Every once in a while we need this reminder.
1. We are sons and daughters of the Most High God.
2. We are children of the Heavenly King.
3. We are heirs and joint heirs to a kingdom.
(He Gives them a Reminder)
II. He Gifts them with Reassurances vs. 2
(New Living Translation)
When you pass through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
The reassurance is not that nothing will not happen to you! The reassurance is not that you want experience, encounter, and even be impacted by life’s trouble. But I want to reassure you that it wants to destroy you. The reassurance is not that life will not leave you sometimes wet, and the fires of life will not leave your garments with smell of smoke.
A. When you pass through the sea…
You will get wet. Wet with worries, wet with frustration, sometimes we end up caught in the rain of problems; we are soaked with the crisis and cares of life. But God said, I have decreed that it will not take you out! It might slow you down, it might alter your route, and it might even cause you to be stagnate. I will be there on the other side to dry you off, and give you a change of garments
B. When you pass through the fire...
You will feel the heat, the flames may singe you, and the heat may intimidate you. But I am God in spite of the intensity! In spite of the furnace, I am God. In spite of the flames of discouragement and disappointment, that are flickering and surrounding you. Take a look in the mirror of life, and see how I am keeping you from being consumed, keeping you from being destroyed by the fires of difficulties.
C. The reassurance is that I am:
1. Present even in the affliction of life.
2. Protective even in the face of that which seeks to destroy.
He Gives them a Reminder!
He Gifts them with Reassurance!
III. He Glories in His Record vs.16
vs. 16. He who made a way through the sea
He who drew out the chariots and the horses, and the arm never to rise again.
Sometimes I have to review His record; it’s His record that gives me help for my present and hope for my future. The record of God becomes the very thing that helps me to hold out, to hang on. Sometimes the rope of life gets short and slippery. But then the record comes up.
And the record He shows up just in time!
David: Psalm 40
I waited and I waited, and I kept on waiting upon the Lord, and He heard my cry:
1. He lifted me out of a slimy pit...out of the mud of life.
2. He set my feet on a rock and gave me a place to stand.
3. He put a new song in my mouth.
Psalm 46
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
Psalm 23
The Lord is my Shepherd, and I shall not want!
Psalm 27
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life of whom shall I be afraid.
If an army besieged me, my heart will not fear.
Gideon
32,000, 22,000, 12,000, 300! God can take just 300 and bring a victory!
Moses at the Red Sea
Joshua at Jericho
Look at the record in your life!
He brought you through:
Dangers, toils, snares
Trials, Testings
Misery and Mistakes
Faults and fears
Narrow and negatives places!
