A New Year of Reaignment
Rev. Louis W. Ellerbrook
The Christian New Year • Sermon • Submitted
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Happy New Year!!!
Quick recap of where we have been..
Time
How do we bring the real story of God into our real lives I real time?
How does Ultimate time enter into important time and make its way into urgent time?
From Canon to Calendar to Clock
Advent – beginning of the Christian Year
But this impacts the rest of the year and the rest of our lives
Start with the Second Advent, the Second Coming, the End
Now we begin turning our eyes to the First Coming of Jesus
Christmas Christ –mas
Not yet Christmas – Hallmark usually has 25 Days of Christmas movies
This year they showed Christmas Movies every Sat & Sun and several days the week of Thanksgiving, starting back on Oct 24th
Radio station – when is it appropriate to take down Christmas decorations
Wake Up – or REPENT
Romans 13:11 – 12
11 And do this, understanding the present time: The hour (urgent time) has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now (important time) than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here (Ultimate Time). So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light[1]
Just a few decades after Jesus’ resurrection, people were falling asleep
Good News
World Turned Upside-down
Life Transformations
When we lose touch with this story in our real lives and real time the calendar becomes an adventure in missing the point, and we begin to waste minutes, hours, days
Entire seasons of our lives can be a wilderness wandering
Repentance
John the Baptist
What does he have to do with Christmas?
A Camel hair robe wearing, wild honey and locust eating, grizzly Adams of a man
A Fire and Brimstone preacher
What does this guy have to do with Baby Jesus, with Christmas?
Living out Isaiah’s words
John the Baptist is a picture of Repentance/Awakening
Repent – metanoia
Make a 180 degree turn
To cease going one direction, turn all the way around and go in the opposite direction
Repentance is often seen as a negative thing, as behavior modification
Stop it, Quit, Don’t
This is part of its meaning, a better meaning for repentance is
Start, Do this, Go in a different direction
DO you see a difference?
We are to return to the Lord with all our heart, it may be broken but we bring it to the one who can put it back together
If we are not turning TO any turnig we do is mere behavior modification that will not last
We have to be awakened to a higher vision
Nobeler calling
A fuller sense of what life is really about
Repentance
1) Truth – Confessing Truth
2) Renunciation – a renouncing of what is false
a. Vs announce
b. People can take their lives in destructive directions b/c they have believed a lie about themselves
i. Conditional love
ii. High perfomers or people pleasers
iii. Super High Achievers – lowest pits of addicitions
iv. Leads to so many areas of brokenness
v. Distorted sense of identity b/c of the belief in a lie
c. Break/Renounce in the name of Jesus
3) Return to the Lord with all your heart
a. Too often we only give God a part but he wants all of us
Repentance is not about behavior modification, not about believing and behaving, but about BEHOLDING AND BECOMING
Be transformed with the renewing of your mind
Being transformed from one degree of glory to the next
John the Baptist – bear fruit worthy of repentance
Repentance has to be anchored in something more than behavior modification
1,2,3
Different year, no New Year’s Resolution
But a New Year’s Repentence
Hosea 10:12
12 Sow righteousness for yourselves, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes
and showers his righteousness on you. [2]
Hardpan – not top soil
Water can’t come up through the ground
It’s fallow, dead, not fertile, it has been so pressed and compacted over so many years
Repentance – to bear fruit worthy of
Fruit is the end of a process
Breaking up the ground
Sowing NEW seeds
1,2,3
Where do we need to repent during these Holy Days?
OCome Holy Spirit search my heart. Show me the fallow ground in my life, show my the hardness in my heart. And begin to do the work of breaking the hard pan of my life so that I through time I will be ready for a harvest of good fruit
We need GOd to help us repent, to walk with us through this process
We need others close in our lives
People we can talk about the real stuff of our lives
For many of us the reason we are stuck in our lives is that we have unplowed areas of our lives and we don’t have the kinds of relationships, a small circle who have access to each others lives, who know each other and LOVE EACH OTHER COMPLETELY
Acquaintances
Friends
BANDS?
Advent – a season of getting in touch with ULTIMATE THINGS
Matthew 6:33
33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.[3]
Repentance – Realignment
Realign around the truth
Confess
Renounce
Return
We need to be aligned – work harder to go where we need to go
Seek 1st
City Slickers
Curly – leading the cattle drive
One Thing – you stick to that and nothing ele mattes
Everyone needs to find their one thing, no Seek 1st
Align our lives around the kingdom of God
Repent – Realign, Advent change and new
[1] The New International Version. (2011). (Ro 13:11–12). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[2] The New International Version. (2011). (Ho 10:12). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[3] The New International Version. (2011). (Mt 6:33). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.