Sermon: Resolved For Christ

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If you would open your Bibles to the Gospel according to Luke. Gospel according to Luke. Chapter 14, verse 25.

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Luke 14, verse 25. Hear now the word of the living and the true

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God. Now great crowds accompanied Him, and He turned and said to them,

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If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be

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My disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be

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My disciple. For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it.

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Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish.

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Or what king going out to encounter another king in war will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with 10 ,000 to meet him who comes against him with 20 ,000.

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And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

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So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be

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My disciple. Thus far is the reading of God's holy Word. Let's pray. Lord, bless,

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Lord, the proclamation of Your Word today. We pray, Lord, by Your Spirit that You'd bury these truths into our hearts and minds.

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Renew our minds. Lord, You know how weak we are at times.

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You know our frame. Lord, You know the great victories that You've accomplished in our lives.

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And You know even of our secret sins. And Lord, our pet sins, our respectable sins.

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We pray, God, that You'd be glorified in the life of us each individually and of our church body in this next year that You've given to us.

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Lord, You hold the universe in Your hands. You bring everything to its intended conclusion.

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And so we do pray and ask, God, that by Your Spirit You would heal us, challenge us, free us, cause us to rejoice in You, grant to us strength to be courageous and gracious and loving.

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We pray, God, that You would bless us as a church as we always ask to leave a legacy for Your Gospel in this world.

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In Jesus' name, Amen. So there's a part of me that was concerned.

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It's New Year's Day, and there's a part of me that was concerned that you do a message on resolved for Christ or a message on resolutions, it can be seen as faddish, right?

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Like you're just sort of going along with whatever's coming at you in the culture or whatever's coming at you in the season you're in.

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And you're sort of doing messages off of that. And I think that regularly we need to be given the whole counsel of God, go verse by verse through the

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Word of God, learn about God's Word comprehensively, all the New Testaments, go by verse by verse.

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But I think that one of the things that I was meditating upon is that God is sovereign and He's given to us this life and this breath and this day, this next year to live in.

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And as I was mentioning a few moments ago, we've buried members of our body over the last couple of years.

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People that we've loved that we just didn't even anticipate, sometimes didn't even see it coming. Sometimes it was in an instant and it was such a shock to us.

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We've buried members of our body. They're with the Lord now. And as I was saying, if we believe what

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God's Word says about His sovereignty and His will in this world, we know that God is the sovereign determiner of the length of our days.

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Jesus said, He said in calling us not to be anxious, that command, do not be anxious, do not be worried.

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He tells us why, because you have a heavenly Father. You can't change the color of your hair by your worry.

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You can't add an hour to your life by your worry. So Jesus is pointing us to the foundation of it all.

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God is sovereign. He determines your days, the hour you're in, the minute you're in, the second you're in.

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He determines if you're here or you're gone. There's not, Jesus says, a bird that falls from a branch apart from your

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Father's knowledge. And so here we are, another year that God has given to us.

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He hasn't taken you yet and you're here. And so I think I wanted to spend this moment as we launch into this next year of loving

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God and loving one another and serving Christ together, I wanted to launch talking about this idea of resolution, being resolved.

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And the reason I started with the text that I did today is just to spring into this discussion by saying that the

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Christian life begins with resolution, right? You have to resolve to love

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Jesus above all else. That's what Christ commands people to do.

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He calls people to come to Him in a way that, again, we constantly say within our church body that's so different than the message you commonly hear about Jesus today.

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I mean, maybe the reason so many people are deconstructing is because they never understood the gospel and the message of Christ in the first place.

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They didn't know what it really meant to come to Jesus. And so they're deconstructing from something that was never the gospel in the first place.

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They never understood Him. Jesus says something here that shrinks the movement down, but He's not willing to have people come to Him who don't truly know

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Him. So He challenges them to their core. Do you know what it means to come to me? You must actually hate.

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That is in terms of loving in comparison to everything else. He says you must hate mother, father, sister, brother, wife, even your own life.

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He's saying that it must be me above all else. And He says, and beyond that, it's not just those external relationships.

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You have to have me as supreme, but even in your own heart and mind, I must be supreme above even your own life.

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And so how does the Christian life begin? How does eternal life begin with Christ?

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It begins with resolve. It begins, of course, we know, with repentance and faith, turning away from where I was going and turning to Jesus and entrusting myself to Him and to Him alone.

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Salvation is there. It's justification, faith in Christ. God declares me righteous, and there's a repentance there, but it is a resolve.

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I have determined to come and die. The Christian life is about that.

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I've resolved to die, to die. I was, this week, it was, I don't know why I was coming up this week. So it just had this just sort of onslaught in my sort of like past stuff and just messages coming in of the pastor in China, who as this very moment is still suffering.

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We think somewhere in China, we don't know if he's died. I don't know exactly his status.

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I don't think anyone really knows where he's at to this day. I mean, I haven't heard anything, but Pastor Wang Yi in China, if you watch his messages, what a bold man.

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Some people would say from a human perspective, you are out of your mind to be in communist

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China and to literally be preaching while you're being recorded in Chinese that the leader of China is a wicked man who needs to repent and believe in Jesus Christ and that God will judge him if he doesn't repent and turn to Jesus Christ.

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That being said in communist China, would you do it? Would you do it?

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Would you go to China right now and proclaim in public that the communist party in China is wicked before God and that the leader of the communist party needs to repent and turn to Jesus Christ.

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Would you do that publicly? He did. He did. And it wasn't willy -nilly, it was consistent to the degree that when they finally had enough and they captured this pastor, this faithful man of God, the charges against him were that he was trying to subvert the authority of the state.

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Well, obviously, because the Christian message began with the proclamation that Jesus is what?

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Jesus is Lord. I mean, very early on under Caesar, under Rome, this powerful, powerful empire, the

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Christian church comes in and starts sort of changing how they saw savior and they're replacing the name of Jesus with it.

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Like, you know, we've talked about this before, right? I mean, there was no other name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved.

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They're saying that about Jesus. The apostles are saying that about Jesus, but what they were doing is taking something that was said about Caesar and they were saying, no, it's not

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Caesar, that's Jesus. So they were openly defying this huge deified state, they were taking massive risks, saying that Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth.

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He's the king of kings and Lord of lords. Here's the deal. Those early Christians that died those martyrs deaths, they understood this, what

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Jesus said here, that you're coming to him as everything, as supreme, as ultimate.

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And so the Christian life begins with repentance and faith, but a resolution, a unresolved,

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I know who I am, I know who he is, I believe in him, I trust in him.

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And so I think it's good for us to not simply have that moment as a Christian that, oh, I turned to Christ, I believed in him, and that's all done now.

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The Christian life is a life of sanctification. It's a life of constantly reassessing. It's looking at our heart, it's putting it before God, it's repenting, it's trusting, it's rejoicing.

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It's being freed daily from old sins and being made into the image of Christ daily in new ways, and I think oftentimes we stall in our walk with Jesus Christ in terms of our joy in him and our holiness when we get away from this clear point that the

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Christian life is really about constant resolution. It's about constantly looking at your heart, looking at your mind, repenting, giving it to God, saying,

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Lord, take this from me. Lord, free me from this. And we stall because honestly, we know that it's difficult to do so, right?

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If we confess, we're a mess, right? I mean, we could be mature in Jesus Christ, loving

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Jesus Christ, and we still have the respectable sins, the sins that we personally respect in ourselves, right?

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Husbands can be lovers of Jesus, mature and wise in many ways, but still have a really strong, quick temper with their family.

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They can be lazy. They can be undisciplined. They can be unloving to their families. You can have wives who love

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Jesus that are so hospitable, but honestly, if you were to look in the home when nobody else is looking, what the kids see and the husband sees is that wife is not doing what she's doing in the home joyfully before God.

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She's doing it with complaint and with mumbling and complaining and all those things. It's not rejoicing.

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It's not peaceable. You would see that that's sort of the respectable sin in our home. We just sort of accept those sorts of things.

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We can see those sorts of things, the respectable sins in our lives, and I want to just challenge us as believers to be resolved, to be holy, to be obedient to Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life.

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The Christian life begins with a resolution. Do you love Jesus above everything else? Are you willing to die?

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Have you taken up your cross to come to Jesus? Because here's the thing,

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I'll just say this last point on this. If that is not how you've understood coming to Christ, you didn't understand the gospel.

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Now, of course, we all grow in our understanding of the gospel, amen, yes? Like we deepen in our knowledge and our intimacy with God.

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We all grow in the glory of the gospel, seeing all the graciousness and the mercy. We never understood even a small portion of it when we first came to Jesus.

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But the truth of the matter is, Jesus is actually doing this at the start with people.

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Don't come to me unless you are coming to die. Don't come to me unless I am the ultimate in your life.

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Like Jesus is challenging people. We know that this is the sovereign gift of God to even be able to contemplate these things, of course, but he's challenging people very clearly saying, if you haven't counted the cost and fully understood the cost, then don't come.

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That's how Jesus challenges people. So have you understood the gospel in that way? Is Jesus ultimate for you or is he not?

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I can't tell you how many times as a pastor I've seen people who profess the faith in Jesus Christ in this very body.

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Maybe they were with us for three months or six months or a year, some with us for two or three years, and then after a period of time, sort of the romance wears off of being within a church body with loving

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Christians who love one another, who care for one another. The romance wears off, and then what they're left with is the reality of who they are in relation to Christ, and they realize, oh,

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I don't really believe in him. I'm not really a follower of Jesus Christ. I can tell you right now, just two faces pop up in my mind,

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I won't mention their names, of people that we were sure they were believers and they were in Christ because they were among us.

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They served alongside of us, and after a period of time, they finally came and said, I'm not a

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Christian. I don't really believe any of this. Like, I love this more than I love

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Jesus for sure. I mean, I had someone tell me just blunt, face -to -face, just no problems at all, honest, full integrity, and I appreciate it.

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They said, I love my physical relationship with women far more than I love

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Jesus, and I'm ready to confess that. It means more to me to be physically connected to my girlfriend than to have

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Jesus, and so I choose that relationship over Jesus, and I'm happy to do that.

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I've had people go back to very sinful lifestyles and just confess, yeah, I don't believe in Jesus like that, and so I think it's incumbent upon us to actually lay that down at the start.

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Is that how you came to know Christ? Were you resolved in that way to come and die? Is He ultimate for you, or is

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He something you're sort of adding to your life? Because that is not how we come to Christ. Repentance and faith in Jesus is coming to Him as Lord and Savior.

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Is He your Lord? Is He your Master? Is He everything to you? And if He is everything to you, and He's Master and He's Lord, then

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He's Lord over every aspect of our lives, every corner of our lives, every thought, everything.

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He owns us all. And I thought as we started this year off, it would be important for us to reflect on the fact that God is sovereign and He gave us this next year.

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Again, we don't know that He gave us tomorrow. We don't know that He gave us until next December. He could take any of us at any moment, and I can tell you, it's surprised me as a minister of the

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Gospel, it surprised me at how quickly we could lose one another. I mean, I can tell you, the people that we've lost over the years, some of them we knew was coming, there was sickness and those sorts of things.

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The people we've lost at times, it was in an instant. It was just in a moment. It surprised us, completely shocked us.

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Shocked us. And so none of us are promised tomorrow. However, I think it's important for us to reflect on the fact that God is sovereign.

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It says in Psalm 115, three, our God is in the heavens. He does all that He pleases. All right, so here you go.

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Your butts are in these seats. You're here right now. You're worshiping God together with other believers.

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You've been given this moment. You've got breath in your lungs. You've got provision. You've got food maybe in your pantry.

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You're gonna go out to eat together, to dinner together after this. You're gonna be provided for, cared for.

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You have a place to sleep tonight. All of that's from God. That's His gift to you.

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That's His grace to you. It's His love to you. His provision. He's given you this day.

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He's given you your gifts. He's given you your marriages. He's given you your children.

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He's given you your singleness. Whatever the case is, He's given it all to you.

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He's in the heavens. He does all that He pleases. In Job 42, two, it says,

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I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. In Isaiah 46, nine through 10, it says, remember the former things of old?

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For I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like Me. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying,

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My counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all My purpose. Daniel 4 .35,

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all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing. And He does according to His will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay

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His hand or say to Him, what have you done? Psalm 103 .19

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says, The Lord has established His throne in the heavens and His kingdom rules over all. We could do this all day.

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But my point in pointing to those texts is just simply this. God is sovereign. He's in control of all things.

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And here you are. A believer in Jesus Christ, in the worship of God. Together, God's called you together in this community to serve

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Him, to love Him, to glorify Him, to enjoy Him. Here we are. What are we going to do with it?

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What is God calling us to do and to be as His children?

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Because I think if we're all honest with each other, we can get jaded pretty quickly, pretty easily, right?

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We get really comfortable with sort of the way that we are. You know, like, for example, I think many of us can say, like,

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I came to Christ and He's changed my heart. I love God. I love His people. I love

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God's Word. He's freed me from my lips, right? I watched a podcast earlier this week of a guy who was a

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Navy SEAL with Dev Gru, SEAL Team 6. Just, I mean, just tier one, special forces guy, been in all kinds of combat.

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And he was doing a show where he's meeting up with this other famous Navy SEAL. And one of the things the other

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Navy SEAL said when he saw him, because they had done combat missions together, is one of the things that surprised him is that he's not hearing any four -letter words coming out of his mouth anymore.

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Because this Navy SEAL turned to Jesus Christ. And his life is all about Jesus now. And he preaches

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Christ. And this is like, this guy is like, let's be honest, he's a killer, right? Like, I mean, he's killed more people than, you know, smallpox kind of a thing like this.

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And he loves Jesus. And like, his mouth has changed now. And like, his life has changed now. And many of us have that experience.

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You can say, you know what? God's changed me. Like, I'm not the person I was before. I'm not going out. I'm not a drunkard anymore.

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My heart has changed. My love for others, my graciousness, my peace has changed. And that's true.

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But let's be honest, there are certain aspects of our life as believers that maybe we've just sort of said,

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I got it. I'm just going to accept the fact that this is just the way that I'm going to be with everything else.

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I'll still deal with the porn and the lust. I'll still be the person who has outbursts of wrath.

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I'm still going to gossip. I'm still going to live with bitterness, right? I'm just going to be like that.

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I'm going to be the kind of person that complains all the time. But I love Jesus. And it's just sort of, that's just my makeup.

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These are going to be my pet sins, my secret sins. And we just get comfortable rather than simply repenting of those things, giving them to God, saying,

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God, remove these from me, Lord. Cause me to rejoice in you, to hate my sins. Free me from these things.

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We'd rather say like, Lord, I'm glad you've taken away this stuff, but I'd really like to keep this bucket over here, right?

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I want to keep this. My respectable sins, my pet sins as a wife, as a husband, as a child, as a brother.

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And so I think we need to consider what God is calling us to do and to be. He's the

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Sovereign. He's given us this life. This is the day that He's made. And I want to talk about this term, the resolution to glorify

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Christ in terms of spiritual goals, not so much resolution in a faddish sense, but repentance and rejoicing.

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That kind of resolution. What do I, at the start of this year, need to repent of?

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Give to God. Once and for all, be freed from, be healed from. What do I need to give to Christ?

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Jesus said in John 14, 15, here's a foundation for it.

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If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I was tempted at the beginning of the service today to have that as our reading.

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Like just that. Like hear now the word of the living and true God. John 14, 15.

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If you love Me, you'll keep My commandments. That is a constantly challenging word from Jesus Christ.

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If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. Now Jesus knows our frame.

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He knows that He's saving sinners, but He tells His people in principle, this is how it works.

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You come to Me and it's all or nothing. You come to Me to die and rise again.

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You come to Me and you have to count the cost. And Jesus just says with just so much honesty,

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He's not a manipulator. He's not a car salesman. He just simply says, if you love Me, you'll keep

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My commandments. Which is to say, if somebody doesn't love

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Jesus, they don't really love Him, they don't know Him and love Him, they will not keep

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His commandments. There'll be a burden to them. The commandments of Jesus are a burden to the person that doesn't truly know

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Him. And I can tell you right now, I'm looking at faces right now of people who have been with us in this church body since the beginning.

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There are people who were among us, serving with us, that were with us.

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I mean, we thought they were believers. I can think of one woman right now was with us in the very, very beginning of our church plants.

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She's now living as a man. How? How? Because if you don't love

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Jesus, His commandments will be a burden to you. And eventually it's going to show, right?

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You can only play hypocrite for so long. You can only wear a mask for so long.

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Eventually it's going to wear off. And the cracks are going to start to be seen. And so Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

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Let me give you another one in terms of resolution, a spiritual resolution before God. Another one is in Hebrews chapter 12.

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Hebrews chapter 12. And I think as a young man,

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I think it was actually a message that Pastor James gave I was listening to.

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And it was on this, or he was speaking about this.

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Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14. And it knocked me down. I thought to myself, man, this is so different than what

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I was raised in in terms of like this sort of modern dispensational, pre -millennial, pray the magic prayer, come to Jesus sort of a thing.

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No lordship of Christ, none of that stuff. And this is a really challenging verse I think I was first presented with from Pastor James.

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Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14. It says this, ready? Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the

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Lord. You see, we tend to think today because we have this version of the gospel that is not full and complete and with all of the beauty really and power that we actually have with God.

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We tend to think just about like just grace and just love.

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And you know, you sort of like come to Jesus, you punch your ticket and you leave and you never really receive any power or any presence or none of those things really come.

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And it's sort of a, it's a dead religion, right? Sort of it's just, it's my profession only.

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Sure, I believe in Jesus, punch my ticket and then nothing can happen whatsoever. That's not the gospel. That's not what happens.

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It's clear in scripture that when God actually saves somebody, He dwells them,

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He empowers them, He causes them to observe His statutes. He writes His law within them.

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He causes, they're new now, they're alive. They're not dead anymore. And so don't be deceived.

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The writer of Hebrews is telling you, this is a once for all sacrifice. He's able to perfect forever those who draw near to God through Him.

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He is a better prophet and priest and King, He's all these things. And He says very clearly near the end of this,

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He says, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the

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Lord. If you are not a person who has set apart, who is sanctified, has been being sanctified, you won't see

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God, you won't know God. You don't know God. Christians live lives because of God's grace and because of the presence of His Spirit that are lives that are marked by holiness.

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That's not perfection. We are being sanctified. If you say you have no sin, you're a liar, right?

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He loves sinners, not the righteous. We're not saying that in the Christian life you live a life of perfection.

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Not at all. It's His grace that saves you. His grace that empowers you. But the point is, is that believers who know

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Jesus keep His commandments. They live lives that are holy.

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They look holy. So that's what I'm gonna challenge us with today.

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A resolution in terms of living in such a way that you keep Christ's commandments. Why? Because you love

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Him. Living in such a way that you are living a holy life in 2023. Gosh, it's crazy that we're saying that.

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Life goes by so fast. Man, it goes by so fast. It's amazing, 2023.

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To live a life of holiness without which no one will see

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God. So I just wanted to point to four things that I, maybe

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I'm just speaking to myself. Now I know these are spiritual disciplines and things that we need to focus on as Christians all the time.

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But there are four specific things I think we should focus on in terms of loving Jesus and keeping

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His commandments and living a holy life as believers, as a church body. And so four things.

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I just wanted to talk about the word, idolatry, the body, the body of Christ, our body.

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And the fourth thing is the world and our responsibility to the world. So just four things quickly.

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I'm not gonna spend a ton of time. I'm just gonna challenge you with these. Go to the verses later. Bury your hearts in them.

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First thing is the word. How much time do you spend in the word? Where do you find your satisfaction?

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Where do you find your peace? You know, maybe the reason we're so broken and so joyless is that we've been finding so much satisfaction in other things.

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We try to feed our souls and our hearts and our minds. We try to receive pleasure and joy in things that ultimately can't give us pleasure and joy.

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Maybe the times that we're anxious or lonely or depressed or sad or angry or whatever, maybe the reason that we're not actually getting any freedom from those things and experiencing

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God's peace is because we're not even listening to him in the first place, right? I feel depressed and anxious and so what do

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I do? I turn the TV on and sort of just drown out the noise by watching the same show

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I've watched 10 ,000 times as though that's gonna make me happy. Or maybe I feel anxious and I feel fearful or I'm ashamed and I feel condemned or whatever the case may be,

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I feel like there's darkness and I'm not even going to listen to God. I'm not going to his word,

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I'm going elsewhere. I'm going to some other idol to be satisfied by it rather than God. You see, here's what needs to be said.

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There's a difference between the lack of discipline to go to the

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Word of God, to be fed the Word of God and the person who isn't really interested in hearing from him in the first place.

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There's a difference. There's a difference. But I think you should ask yourself that question.

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First, Jesus said in Matthew 4, 4, he's quoting from Deuteronomy 8, verse 3, you know the famous scene where Satan is trying to tempt

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Jesus in the trial of Jesus in the wilderness and Jesus says, man shall not live by what?

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By the Word of God. But by, there you go, everywhere that proceeds from the mouth of God.

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So here's Jesus now showing us what the image of God is supposed to actually be like in God's world.

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He's the perfect image of God. He's the perfect man. He is man and God, truly God, truly man.

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But that's how we're supposed to be. Even when his flesh is failing and he's hungry and he's starving in the wilderness, when

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Satan tempts him with his temptation to test God, Jesus says, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

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Psalm 119, 11 says what? Thy word have I treasured up in my heart that I may not sin against you.

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We could do this for days, just a full message on all the verses that say that the

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Word of God is supposed to reside within us. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you.

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Let it be in you, treasured up in your hearts. I mean, everything we're doing the last couple of months in the book of Proverbs, what's the constant word in the book of Proverbs about God's wisdom and his knowledge and understanding?

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What's it say to all of us? It says, incline your, what? Incline your heart. Listen, like don't lose focus.

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Focus on this wisdom. Focus on God's understanding. Focus on his knowledge. Don't lose sight of this.

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Stay on this path. The call is constantly beckoning us. Stay focused.

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Stay on the path. Put this in you. Treasure it up within you. See it more valuable than gold and silver.

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But we don't really live like that. Like we wonder why we're not wise people. It's because we don't really live like that is true.

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We're not living in such a way that we're feeding on God's Word and feeding on God's wisdom. And so we feel at times like we're lost and we're in despair.

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Sometimes, I'll just say this quickly. Sometimes counseling my brothers and sisters as a pastor is so embarrassingly simple.

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Like I'm looking at some of your faces right now. I won't point you out. But you know what I'm saying.

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We've had times where you guys are in my office and you're broken and I'm grieving with you and I'm praying with you and I'm listening to you share.

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And there's times where I just sort of lead you down to answering the question yourself, right?

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You say I feel despair, I feel confusion, I feel anxiousness. And it's sort of, it's embarrassing.

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I don't know why you pay me. I just go, and what does Jesus say about that? Oh, I know what

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He says. He says, here's His promise. And this is His Word. It's so simple.

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This is the Word of God. It's what actually heals. But here's the issue.

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If I'm not in the Word of God, if I'm not treasuring it up in my heart, if I don't know what

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God says about Himself and this world and His promises to me, I have nothing to draw from.

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I will be starving. I will be weak. It'll be like a famine spiritually in my life if I don't take the

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Word of God and put it into my heart and my minds. The truth is, is that we prize other things, all of us, regularly over God and His Word.

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That's the truth. That's the truth. It's not that we don't have time. It's not that we don't have time.

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It's that we're treasuring other things. We'd rather be fed from other things. And Jesus says, you shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

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He's the Creator. You're the creature. You were meant to live hearing His voice, delighting in His voice.

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It's your vocation. It's what you were made for. You were made to glorify God and to what?

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Enjoy Him forever. You and I need His voice. He's given us the spiritual food.

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How many times have you been in a bad and broken place as a believer, and you go to His Word, and you get filled, and it's the most delightful experience you've ever experienced.

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You feel joy. You feel peace. You say, oh God, now I see. Thank you, God. And you go refreshed from that moment like when you're hearing from your father, and the next thing you know, two months later, it's like you forget it ever happens.

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You stop going to His Word. You stop going to be filled. I think we need to resolve in terms of repenting of our sin, rejoicing over the forgiveness and salvation we have in Christ.

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We need to resolve to feed this year on the Word of God regularly, constantly, to hide

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His Word in your hearts. Yeah, I think the problem too is because we have this faddish sort of resolution thing where like, you know,

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I'm gonna join a gym, and I'm gonna do keto, I'm gonna do keto, and I'm gonna do this thing, whatever. And then you fail like two weeks in, so you just figure like, maybe

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I'm just not good at resolutions. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about those kinds of resolutions, those kinds of failures.

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I'm talking about you as a believer, as a child of God, resolving to actually pursue holiness and obedience in all these ways, pursue what

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God says is true and lovely and beautiful, because He will bless that. No matter how much you face plant,

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He's going to bless it. If you're in His Word, even when you fail, you're gonna be full, understand?

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We need to be fed, we need to be in His Word constantly. Don't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds in the mouth of God.

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Some of you guys are like, I don't do bread anyways, just keto, baby, right? Next, idolatry.

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To repent and to rejoice over our salvation and to resolve to put our idols to death this year.

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Can I challenge you on something? It's, oh man, it's such a burden. And listen, let's be honest,

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I've said this before, it's not a challenge that past generations in all of humanity had to deal with.

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This is like a new thing for us to face down that no one has ever had to deal with like this in human history.

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It's new for all of us. Did you know that the average person, this is just the average, some of you guys are excelling.

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The average person spends two and a half hours a day on social media.

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Now I have to say this because people are gonna go bananas, like the Christian life is about balance, right? They fall off cliffs, right?

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I'm gonna address something that becomes idolatry, okay? It doesn't mean that I'm saying the tool is bad.

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The tool can be used in a way that glorifies God. You can use the internet in ways that glorify

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Christ. Absolutely, amen and hallelujah, but that's not what we're talking about here, okay?

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Let's talk Turkey. Two and a half hours a day on average people spend on social media.

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Now what's that usually look like? And you know all the studies, you know the studies, like what these companies do is they actually build these in such a way as you're getting a hit.

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You're getting a dopamine hit, right? They build the platform in such a way that this is on purpose.

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They built it in such a way that it keeps you hooked for their advertiser because the longer you're on, the more money they're making.

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So they build it in such a way as they keep you hooked. So this becomes natural. You're sitting at a dinner table with family and friends and everybody's doing this and no longer talking to each other.

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Huh? Huh, what, did someone say something? Confess it, we're all guilty, amen, yes?

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Don't, if anyone says they're not guilty, I think you're lying. Because this is a new thing.

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It's a new thing that hooks us in, it's idolatrous because it's something that becomes ultimate in your life above everything else.

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Here it is, two and a half hours a day on average is what people spend on social media. Two and a half hours a day times seven days a week is 17 and a half hours a week on social media.

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17 and a half hours a week on social media. Approximately 52 .1429

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weeks in a year. That means that every year, two and a half hours on social media, two and a half hours a day on social media a year equates to 910 hours a year.

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910 hours a year, if you didn't know, is about 38 days.

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So two and a half hours a day on social media equals 38 days a year.

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That's about one month and one week of your life, I'll say it again, that's about one month, some of you guys are checking my math right now, okay?

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Now, I didn't excel in math, but I'm sure I got this right. Okay, okay, that's one month, and this is just the average, one month and one week a year of my life and yours at two and a half hours a day is this, huh?

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This, but it gets worse. That means about a month and a week of your year in 2022 was spent doing this, if you're at two and a half hours a day.

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That means that you only really lived and really interacted as a human being for about, what, 11 months last year.

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The rest was simply doing this. And that's, watch, a month and a week with no sleep.

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Imagine doing that, imagine doing social media all day, every day for one month and one week with no stopping, no sleeping.

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It's just straight through, no break. A month and a week. That means, ready? If you started this pattern of two and a half hours a day on social media at 20 years old, and let's be honest, it starts younger than that.

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At 20 years old, if you started two and a half hours a day at 20 and you lived to your 80, that'd be 60 years, which would mean that five entire years of your existence on this earth was on a device doing this at just two and a half hours a day.

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That means that five years of your entire life were wasted in front of a screen. Does that challenge you?

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Does it challenge you? It challenges me because I know that we live in a culture and a time where that's just acceptable, that we just give up our lives like that.

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And so I think the challenge to us as believers is to say this year, where are your idols? Is it in your pocket?

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Is it in your hands? Is it in your mind? Is it somewhere you're going?

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Is it to some person that you're going? Where are your idols this year?

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Is it a device? The call to Christians, and at least Colossians 3, is that you've been raised up with Jesus Christ.

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You're seated with him in the heavenly places. And so because you've been raised up with Jesus, therefore put these things to death.

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Put them to death, mortify them, kill them. Christians have to be living lives of resolve to mortify all these things that distract us from the glory of Jesus Christ.

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Intimacy with God, glorifying God, loving God, enjoying God, delighting in God. Put it to death.

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Where are your idols? Where are my idols? Take a moment. I don't want to just breeze past this.

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Take a moment and personally consider. Don't yell it out. Consider what the Lord has been constantly convicting you of and challenging you of as a believer.

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You belong to him. You know what he works on your heart and mind with. You know what you regularly repent of and you want to be free from.

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What are the idols that are in the way of loving Jesus, enjoying

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God, pursuing holiness? Is it stuff? Is it a substance?

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Is it something you're going to in place of God that only he can really satisfy? Where are your idols?

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And next, the body. This year to resolve as a body together, as a local church, to resolve to live obediently, to put sins to death.

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If you would go quickly to Ephesians chapter four. Ephesians chapter four.

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Ephesians chapter four, 17. Ephesians is amazing.

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Just the first two chapters, so filled with just powerful grace that is untouchable in terms of man -made religion.

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It is just amazing, the love of God, the sovereignty of God, him taking people who were dead and rebellious and raising them to life, him doing all the work within them.

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It's so amazing. It's incredible, it's filling. But in Ephesians chapter four, as he gets into dealing with the church now, the church body, in Ephesians 4, 17, it says this.

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Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.

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They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.

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They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

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But that is not the way you learn Christ. Assuming that you have heard about him and you were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus to put off your old self.

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There's that resolution. Which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

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There it is again. Jesus says it, Paul says it, Peter says it. It's just constantly that theme of there has been a new life created and there's repentance and faith and you come to Christ and you've resolved.

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You're not the old person anymore. You're a new man. You're a new woman. You're a new creation in Jesus Christ.

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That's how this works. If you thought it was some other way, I apologize. That's not the gospel.

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You come to Christ and he is ultimate and it is all of you and you're a new man and you're a new woman.

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And Paul says, so don't walk like them anymore. You're new. And now he speaks to the church.

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Verse 25, Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

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Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

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Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

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Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

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And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

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Be kind to one another. Tenderhearted. Forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you.

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Let me tell you something. This is just being transparent from the heart.

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There has been over all the years of ministry at Apologia Church, so much amazing fruit.

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So many glorious moments of just God using us and blessing us.

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And it's just been incredible. I've seen things happen here in the midst of this church body that just have been astonishing in terms of the love of God and caring for one another.

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I've seen so much sacrifice for people that it's only a God thing. It's totally divine.

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But I can tell you that over all of the years that we've been a church plant, the enemy has tried repeatedly to sow seeds of discord within our body by bringing conflict and division and pride and slander and gossip.

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Whether it's trying to stir up women against one another. That's happened. Trying to live in such a way where people are trying to burden one another with their own passions or desires.

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We had somebody once that was kind of going house to house telling people they should get rid of their television set because they were of the devil sort of a thing.

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And people try to bring conflict, like all kinds of stuff. We've had to do church discipline.

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We've had people try to sow discord and slander. And I can tell you that I'm 44 years old.

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I'll be 45 this year. I've been hurt a lot in my life and I'm sure you guys have too.

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If you get to this age, you've been hurt a lot. But I can tell you there is no greater hurt

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I've ever experienced than hurt that comes from professing Christians. That's a fact.

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Because you expect it from unbelievers. They don't know Jesus.

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They don't love Him, so they don't keep His commandments. But there is no greater hurt than the hurt that comes from a professing

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Christian. Now I'm saying that essentially in two ways.

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The enemy will use discord within the body of Christ. He will use discord and he will bring conflict to try to divide the body of Christ.

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And how will he do so? By exposing a weakness. By exploiting somebody's sin.

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They love to gossip. They love to slander. And so you're a perfect tool for the enemy to sow it within the body of Christ.

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And so I think what's important for us as a church body is to recognize that the enemy does that.

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We should be ready for that. We should look forward to that. That the enemy is gonna try to sow discord.

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He's gonna try to cause us to live in such a way that we're being prideful, or that there's malice or there's bitterness.

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He will use that. So we need to live in such a way as a body that we are ready to put that to death constantly.

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And when we are as a body living together, we have our eyes open for it to encourage one another, to have a culture within ourselves that lives like this.

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Ephesians chapter two. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

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Be kind to one another. Tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you.

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Being prepared to live like that within the body of Christ, to forgive. You know,

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I said a moment ago, I said there's no greater hurt I've ever experienced than the hurt that I've experienced from professing

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Christians. Now that's a hard thing to say because you're talking about the body of Christ. By the way,

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I wanna also add that there are no greater people on this earth than Christians. But the pain that comes, it's hard to manage.

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And you'll be tempted to say, and this is what I'm gonna end on with this point, you'll be tempted to say, that pain hurts so bad, so I will flee away from the body of Christ.

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It's sort of, you'll move away from the body of Christ, you move away from believers because of the pain. And I wanna say the

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Bible itself is telling you in the very New Testament that we love from God, be ready to forgive one another.

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Why do you think Paul has to tell us through divine inspiration to forgive one another as God and Christ forgave you?

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Is it because throughout the history of the church, there's no longer gonna be a need for forgiving other Christians? The anticipation is you are gonna be hurt.

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You are gonna be sinned against. You are gonna be wounded. How will you live? Will you live in such a way that you carry that bitterness secretly?

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Where you don't really forgive as you've been forgiven? So people can say like, how could

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I possibly forgive this person for what they've done to me? Well, just look upwards.

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Ask the same question because he forgives you every day. Amen? So the call is be in the word.

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The call is to put our idols to death. The call is to love the body and to live with the body as God calls us to here.

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What should we be marked by as believers here at Apologia Church? We should be marked by tenderhearted behavior towards one another.

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We should be marked by forgiveness towards one another. You can hear my nose ready to explode here, huh?

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Lastly, and I'll just say this quickly because it's kind of a theme of ours in our church body, the world, our duty to the world.

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God uses his people, his church, as the means to transform the world because we carry the message of life.

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Now, it's funny. I almost don't need to even challenge Apologia Church to be bold and to be humble, to go out there and to lay your lives down and to sacrifice for the world and speak the truth.

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I want to challenge you as a church body and challenge myself to be ready this year to lay your life down for the lost, to preach the truth, to preach it in love, to preach the gospel.

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We have it in so many ways. I'm looking at some of your faces right now. You guys are out on the streets Friday nights and Saturday nights, and throughout the week you're at campus or you're at an abortion mill.

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You are sacrificing for others. You're doing so much. And so I want to just praise

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God for you. I am humbled constantly to see how God uses you and the amazing gifts that exist within his body.

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But I'm going to challenge you in 2023 to remember that God uses his people to transform the world.

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And the gospel is the power of God for salvation. If we don't bring it to the world, they don't hear the message of life.

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They don't come to life. So I'm going to challenge you to think about who could you reach for Christ this year in your circle, in the place that he's brought you, in your family, in your community.

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How could you be used by Christ to preach his supremacy, his excellencies, and his gospel?

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Who can you pray for this year and actively work on in terms of pointing to Christ and giving the word of God?

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Who's in your life? Are you actively praying for those people? Are you believing that God is actually mighty to save?

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Let's live that way, brothers and sisters. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that you bless us with strength, encouragement, discipline, joy this year as we serve you in our families, as individuals, as a church.

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We pray that you, Lord, would heal us. Even now,

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Lord, I pray that you speak to each of us in our hearts and minds about what we need to repent of, turn from, to resolve to turn away from.

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What idols, what's in the way of our intimacy, our fellowship, our worship of you.

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I pray, Lord, that you'd give us a strong desire and hunger for your word as a church body.

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I pray, God, that you would bless us as a body to be identified by our love for one another, being tenderhearted, not being bitter, being forgiving as we've been forgiven.

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Help us, Lord, to continue to be a witness to the world for your gospel, to the end of your glory in your kingdom.