sermon for 10 January 2010

Matthew 6.24-34

My dear wife more than once this Christmas break
tried to rouse me by asking about my plans for the new year.
I found it hard to reply, because I have to confess
I don’t have a great plan for 2010.
It’s the kind of question that makes me freeze
like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

It’s not that I have no plans at all.
I hope to go to Brazil in April with Robson and Emma.
The Trinity Bangor team have a plan
to be in Cork for the last week of July.
There is a very interesting conference
for the Presbyterian Church in Coleraine in August
which I hope a few of us may attend
The Board of Mission in Ireland of our church have a plan
‘Awake to Jesus’ to encourage personal bible reading;
the materials for that will be with us very soon.
An overall aim for 2010
is to prepare us for the anniversary year of 2011 for Trinity Church.

But there is a danger in planning for the future
if it makes us forget our responsibilities today.
‘This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.’

Many of us love history.
It’s good to celebrate the past as we hope to in 2011
and to learn from it, but we cannot live in the past.
Many of us love to make our plans, to be focused and not a drifter.
It’s good to look forward and have hopes and dreams
but ‘tomorrow never comes’,
this is the day right now that should concern us.

Some people live off a past religious / spiritual experience:
they made a commitment to Jesus, they got ‘born again’
they were baptised in the Spirit or however you may describe it
but that was then, the big question is, ‘What about now?”
Where are you with God now?

Some people live in the future.
They are going to make big decisions, next year, next month, next week,
but not today.
They know they need to commit personally to Jesus.
They know there is something to be changed in their lives.
They know they need to face their addiction and seek help,
they know they need to be more serious about bible reading and prayer
but not now, not yet.
They pray with Augustine of long ago.
‘Lord, make me chaste and pure, but not yet.’

But today is the only day we have.
And without denying the importance of yesterday and tomorrow
God wants us
to live in each day, meet him in it and make something of it.
God wants us to do what he wants, humbly, trustingly, thankfully
Go want us to submit to his will without pride, without worry.
Those are the two main blockages to us doing what God wants:
pride and worry.

James 4.13-16 p 1215 speaks to our pride.

13 Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money."

14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

15 Instead, you ought to say, "
If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

16 As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.

As some wise person said:
,‘Want to know how to make God laugh? Tell him your plans?’

As we sang ‘we are a moment, you are for ever’
Our lives are like a puff of mist.
How sad when we think we are in charge!
How sad when we take pride in
ourselves or our family or some aspect of our lives.

Recently I met a retired minister
whose daughter has attained a high position in public life in N Ireland.
Somebody said to him: ‘You must be so proud of her’
but very graciously and gently but firmly he replied,
‘Not proud, just humbly thankful’

Is that not the default position of the Christian believer?
Isn’t that the way we should instinctively react in every situation?
‘Not proud, just humbly thankful’
As we review our lives and as we do make plans for the future
we need that attitude of being humbly thankful.
It’s the best place to be as we seek to serve God.

Earlier in that chapter James gives this advice for our battle against the devil and our own sinful desires.
Quoting the book of Proverbs he says:
"God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." [Prov. 3:34]
And then he says
‘Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

The devil majors in pride and he loves it when we get proud
when we want to control our lives and say ‘my will not God’s be done’.
But when we humble ourselves, when we say ‘your will Lord not mine’
he has no answer and no power over us.
It is those who are submitted to God who can resist the devil.
When we try to do it by ourselves, we will fall.

Please do not come to the Lord’s Table today in pride.
‘Look at me Lord, am I not great? Haven’t I done well
or done more good than bad or better than those people?’
God opposes the proud.
You might indeed take the bread and wine -
only you and the Lord know what is in your heart -
but you cannot receive the peace of Christ
unless you are humbly thankful and submissive to God
nor can you live in contentment today or any day.

As well as pride the other main blockage to us doing what God wants is worry.
Probably more of us in church are guilty of worry than of pride
although the two things have a common root.
A proud person thinks he or she can cope and so doesn’t trust God.
A worried person thinks he or she can’t cope and even so doesn’t trust God.

The basic issue is, are we worshipping and trusting God as first in our lives
or is our worry actually a warning signal that we are not trusting God.
Has something else, money, health, happiness, the approval of others
got first place and we are desperately holding on to that?

Here we look at what Jesus said in Matthew 6.24-34 p 971

24 "No one can serve two masters.
Either he will hate the one and love the other,
or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and Money.

It’s the question of submission and service again.
Whom are we serving? To whom do we submit?
Who or what really takes up our thoughts and desires?
Jesus challenges his disciples here as to how far they/we really trust in
the provision of our Heavenly Father

The heavenly Father feeds the birds, will he not much more feed you?
The heavenly Father has beautiful clothes for the flowers,
will he not also much more clothe you?
So Jesus challenges, why worry?
I should confess that if they gave out degrees in worry
I would have held a doctorate in it long ago
or if there was an X Factor for anxiety I would be up there with Jedward.
But a worried Christian is a contradiction:
a Christlike life is a humble, thankful, trusting life,
These words of Jesus do not forbid us taking out an insurance policy
they are not a charter for avoiding hard work
they are not to be taken as an excuse for laziness and refusing to plan ahead
but they do test and challenge what is first in our lives.
Is it God’s kingdom and his righteousness? Or our own needs and security?

Please don’t come to the Lord’s table worried.
Please don’t go into 2010, with all its challenges and difficulties, worried.
When we eat and drink in remembrance of Christ’s death
we remember that we did nothing and can do nothing for our salvation
we receive by faith with thanksgiving.
If you are humbly trustingly thankful to God for forgiveness and new life
as you receive the bread and wine
why can’t you trust him for everyday things also?
Many people offer a quiet prayer of thanksgiving at the Lord’s table
something like ‘Thank you Jesus for dying for me‘.
Why not also say something like
Thank you Jesus that you can sort out the thing that really burdens me.
You will provide, you will restore I don‘t need to worry.’ ?
‘He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all -
how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?’ [Romans 8.34]

So by all means make your plans for 2010,
how you will use your time, spend your money, have a holiday
but make your plans before God
not with pride or worry but with humble thanks.
Say to him, ‘Lord, this is your time, your money,
the work or rest that you give me.
What is pleasing to you? Let me delight to do your will.