Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five
“Don't be afraid, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my victorious right hand." Isaiah 41:10
Intro: God chooses us not because we deserve it but because God loves us and wants us. Just like His covenant with Abraham and Israel, we the people of the church today are God’s representatives in the world.
When Israel failed God and turned to idols and admired and loved other worldly things, God allowed them to suffer the consequences of their actions. God permitted Israel to be sent away into exile and captivity. This pattern is repeated many times throughout the Old Testament. God’s chosen people would forsaken Him. They would go through a period of oppression. They would come to their senses and repent. Then with greatness and power that only God would have He would deliver them from tyranny and raise them up to a place of peace and prosperity. This cycle or theme is repeated over and over again in the bible. This was not an act of punishment. This was not an act of affliction but an expression of “freewill” and the ultimate principle of love.
One of the most wonderful words in the bible is the word “repentance.” A lot of people don’t think of it as a beautiful word because one of the meanings of repentance is guilt. I don’t know anybody who thinks guilty is pretty word. But it is really God pouring out His love, grace, and mercy upon us. The Greek word “repentance” in Strong’s Concordance μετανοέω (met-an-o-eh'-o) means more than just guilty it has this beautiful meaning to “think differently or to reconsider as an afterthought, one changes their mind for the better.”
Kitchen Nightmares is a reality television show where Chef Gordon Ramsay is invited by the owners to spend a week with a failing restaurant in an attempt to revive the business. The first thing Ramsay does is order three or four items from the restaurant’s menu. Most often the food is terrible. It is overcooked. It is greasy. I have seen him take his hands and squeeze the greasy out of the food. He will ask, “Is this fresh sea food?” They will say, “Yes, it is fresh frozen and then thawed in the microwave.”
The restaurant owner and the restaurant’s cooks are shocked when Ramsay sends the food back. They are like, “we love our food.” They are shocked and offended that Ramsay has insulted their food. The restaurant is failing. The seats are empty. They are losing four or five thousand dollars per week but the owner and the cooks think they have the best food in town.
Sometimes it takes Ramsay going through the refrigerators, throwing out old freezer burned food, stale and molded bread, and rotten vegetables. How long has then be in there? Would you eat that? No! Then why would you serve that to your guest? Then Ramsay asks them to take the one test question, “How has that been working for you?”
There is finally a moment of illumination when they begin to think differently, they begin to reconsider on second thought maybe the food isn’t the greatest. There will be a stuff animal’s head on the wall and a gnome sitting by the counter, etc. Maybe the service and décor is not aesthetically pleasing, maybe the ambiance is not what they thought.
It is the same thing with people you meet every day. Their life is a wreck. Their finances are upside down. Their relationships are broken. When you ask them if they have been putting Jesus first in their life they are shocked, they are offended, and they may be insulted. But then you ask them to take one test question. Without Jesus, “How has that been working for you?”
There is no promise that the minute you repent and become a Christian that everything will turn into a bed of roses. But the bible does say, “Don't be afraid, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my victorious right hand." Isaiah 41:10 There is something
about knowing that God is with you “Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five.”
Yes, a change must take place! Jesus demands Lordship over everything in our life. If there is something in your life that you are not ready to give up then Jesus warns us that we will not be received into the Kingdom of Heaven. Don’t try to just do it part way because it will never work. The most miserable people I have ever met during my entire ministry are people who straddle the fence. The term means: no commitment to either position. There is no joy in hanging half way onto a new life and still being dragged along by your half way old life. Don’t say, I will give up some of my sins but I am going to hang on to some others parts of my past. Bill Engvall the comedian would say, “Here’s your sign.”
Finding peace with God is not only knowing that God is on the job Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five. It is also you making a commitment of Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five. You are no longer moving away from God you are moving toward God. You have made your decision. You have chosen your path. You have repented of your sins. You are not an outsider looking in. You are stepping out on faith.
Most people you talk to about their spiritual problems, who reject Christ and refuse to repent is not because of some theological doctrinal or even denominational problem they have. Most people who don’t repent of their sin it is because they don’t want the spiritual responsibility and they don’t want the commitment that goes along with it. Christian life has its demands. The sad truth is that many people are not willing to submit and surrender everything over to Christ.
Fanny Crosby was blind but she did not live her life in self pity. She wrote several of the great hymns which we still sing: I Am Thine, O Lord. Jesus Is Tenderly Calling. To God Be the Glory. Blessed Assurance. Rescue the Perishing.
When Fanny Crosby was old, somebody told her that, there was an operation that if she had been born today that as a newborn that it was likely an operation could have restored her sight. Instead of being bitter, she said, "I don’t know that I would change anything.” Fanny Crosby went on to say, “Do you know that the first thing I’m ever going to see is the face of Jesus?" (SOURCE: R. L. Russell, "Triumphing over Trials," Preaching Today, Tape No. 119.) I am encouraged by that kind of faith.
We all have our cross to bear. No matter how heavy we think our cross is we don’t have to look far to find somebody else whose cross is heavier. Some suffer more than others. There are disappointments, hardships, humiliations, trials, sorrows, sufferings and pains, but living by faith conquers these bad times.
Every day we are faced with a soul-searching decision. Do I serve God or do I give in to temptation. Do I step out on faith? The devil wants us to think that if we serve God then we are giving up so much. But none of us have ever been asked to give up as much as God did, when God gave his only begotten Son.
So we stand at a fork in the road, one is broad and sparkly, there are bright and colorful lights, and down this road is filled with power and luxury and comforts, filled with riches and things the world counts as pleasures. A road that is all too familiar. A road we know all too well because we have all gone down that road at least to some point. But it is a road that leads to endless destruction, known as hell.
Then there is another road. This road is narrow. It is actually more difficult to travel. It is meant to be a one lane one way street. It is a road of humility. On this narrow road we will meet people who are our enemies and instead of drawing our sword we will be asked to love them, to do good to them. There will still be pain, and sorrows, but living by faith there will also be victories and triumphs and the final reward is eternal life in Heaven.
The Bible declares that repentance is an absolute necessity. Matthew 3:8 “Prove by the way you live that you have really turned from your sins and turned to God.” Mark 2:17 Jesus said, “Healthy people have no need for a physician, but I have not come to call the righteous but to call those who are sinners.” Luke 3:3 “Repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins.”
I knew an old preacher who didn’t have much education. He said it is not enough to just “pent” you have to “repent.” And let me tell you he preached the glory down for half an hour by just talking about the different between “penting” and “repenting.” He said, “You can't just do it once and You can’t just half do it.”
We are told time after time, verse after verse in the bible to repent, to turn away from sin, to turn to God. God doesn’t ask us to do something that is impossible. There is no sin too big for God to forgive. That is one of the devils first attacks. The devil will make you doubt the Word of God. The devil will make you think that God want hear you or that God want forgive you. Then the devil will put a question mark in your mind and ask do you really need to repent?
Then the devil will really start to play on your emotions. You don’t want people to think you are weak. Especially men, if you walk down to the altar and people see you cry they will think you are weak. Be a man, men don’t cry. And ladies the same trickery will come to you. The devil will say don’t get all emotional.
The most masterful sermons ever preached are not merely sermons that appeal to logic. They are not just sermons on apologetics or theosophy or existentialism, but a sermon that makes the audience feel.
What do you feel today? Do you feel love? Do you feel joy? Do you feel the grace? Do you feel the mercy? Do you feel the forgiveness? The bible teaches us that repentance doesn’t end with trusting in Christ as our Saviour. Repentance continues. Repentance grows. We may start out feeling weak at first, but then the more we repent the stronger we become. The more we pray the more we grow. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says “pray without ceasing.”’ Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five. So the more we pray the more we grow the more we worship the more we grow, the more we fellowship in the church the more faith itself is manifested. Until we become Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five. Matthew 6:11 “Give us this day our daily bread.” Luke 1:9 “take up your cross daily and follow me.” Acts 2:46 and the disciples “continued daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house.” Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five. The truth is God is at work all the time in your life.
If some of you knew how much work God really did to get us all together here in this place today…(Hello?) I mean I know some ladies who will spend two hours putting on makeup and doing their hair before they will leave the house. Men don’t you laugh. God had to pry the remote control out of your hand or you would still be home right now watching a ball game. God is always at work.
We learn how from every circumstance, every need, God never lets a pain go to waste, every wall, every confrontation. Not only in our own lives but in the lives of our family and friends around us. And in the way we handle problems in the church. We see that God does not forsaken us. He took a cross. Two pieces of wood and three nails. He took a borrowed tomb. And then he took me.
God took death and the power of bondage away from the devil. “And he gave Jesus the keys of hell and death.” Revelations 1:18
(You may substitute your own personal experience here.) One day I was thirsty, and nobody would give me even a sip of water to drink. And I was hungry and no one would give me even a bread crumb to eat. And I was cold and even though some people had two, three, four, five coats in their closet I was not offered any help. I was lost and bound in chains and prison to sin and nobody came to visit me. But then I met Jesus. Oh, I didn’t know it was Jesus at the time. I knew him as my bus driver whose name was Ted Delk. Ted pulled the bus off the road and a little over into the yard. My father and mother came and stood on the porch. I looked back and saw the bus driver following me and I saw my dad had that look on his face like I was about to be taught a valuable lesson, if you know what I mean. But instead Ted handed my mother a coat and said it was his youngest son’s coat. His son had out grown it. He thought it might be just the right size to fit me.
Again I met Jesus. And again I did not know it was Jesus at first. I knew her as Flossy Cox. She was a member of the first church I pastored. When she thought I needed encouragement she would call me. I would walk through the back yard of the parsonage to her house and she would hand me a pie or cake that was warm fresh out of the oven and say, I am praying for you pastor.
Again I met Jesus. And again I did not know it was Jesus. But somehow, not matter where I was or what it was that was happening in my life. There would be someone, who would do something, who would say something to encourage me, that would cause me to pause for a split second, and I would know that exciting, unmistakable, energy of the power and presence of God. And I would know Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five. That Christ loved me. That His Blood cleansed me. That His Holy Spirit justified me, and made me just as if I had never sinned. And God has been busy. Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five.
Here is the Good News the battle you have been fighting, the temptations you have been wrestling with, they have already been defeated. At some time or another everyone is gripped by fear. “Don't be afraid, for I am with you.” Isaiah 41:10 At some time or another every one of us will feel too weak to carry on. “I will strengthen you.” Isaiah 41:10 At some time or another everyone gets confused, wondering, searching which way to turn, who to trust. “Do not be dismayed, for I am your God.” Isaiah 41:10 We can be stressed out for whatever reason. “I will help you. I will uphold you with my victorious right hand." Isaiah 41:10
The answer and the truth are always the same. Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five. Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five. Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five. If you don’t get anything else out of this sermon. Go home today and write down, “Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five” and know that God is always watching over you. And that God wants you to trust and serve him “Twenty-four Seven Three Sixty Five” also. Amen.
