Foundation For A Secure New Year

You who are a little rebellious always say, well, you know, I don't want to. But I'm going to doubly ask you to do that today because I want you to take your outline out of your notes and pass it down the row because we're not going to use that one. So, I mean, you can leave this one in there if you want to, but it would help us if you pass it out. Here's what happened. On Thursday, I was praying about this weekend and was just kind of strongly nudged by the Lord to go a different direction. The message that's on your outline there I'm going to do in two weeks. It's a very important message about future priorities as a church family that are very important that all of you need to know about. Part of me wants to do this message very badly, but I need the whole church to be here, at least the majority of the church, which is not the case today, as you well know. So I prayed and then worked Thursday and a lot yesterday to give you the message for today. So the answers are going to come with another outline. I want to thank Nancy Getman and Arlene and our church staff for helping us to do this on such short notice. And this is a word for today. I believe this is a word that the Lord wants us to receive for today that will be extremely relevant. So take one of these and let this be your outline for this morning. And I have to say, while you're doing that, I was heartened by the fact today that if you did wake up and didn't want to go to church, at least you couldn't watch television if you had cable because it was off. And that kind of minimized your choices. And I don't know if that's true now. And also while you're doing that, I want to say thanks to the folks who served us at the New Year's Eve dinner dance. It was awesome. How many of you got a chance to go to that? Wasn't it great? You did a great job. I want to thank you. It was about 280 of us for dinner and dance and just a lot of fun together. And then we prayed in the New Year. So you might want to note that for next year because it was sold out early. And this year, it was really awesome. Great time together, just fun, but also it was good to be with the people of God as well as we welcomed in the New Year. I want you to turn in your Bibles, if you have them, this one, to 2 Chronicles chapter 20, please. 2 Chronicles chapter 20. And if you don't know about where that might be, turn more toward the front of your Bible. Go to 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and then Chronicles. If you don't have your Bible, why don't you have your Bible? Well, Pastor Jay, you always put all the Scriptures on those outline sheets. Well, you should still have your Bible. It's a good idea to be able to note in your own Scripture what God is speaking to you. Now, this story in 2 Chronicles 20 is a long read. I'm not going to take the time to do that. We'll run out of time. I want to highlight it, though, because it's very important that you understand how this parallels where we are today. Are you ready? 2 Chronicles 20, are we ready? If you can't say the words, sort of mumble them through, and we'll be fine. Here we go. After this, the Moabites and Ammonites with some of the Millionites came to make war on Jehoshaphat. Some men came and told Jehoshaphat, A vast army is coming against you. Say that with me. A vast army is coming against you. One more time. A vast army is coming against you from Edom, from the other side of the sea. It is already in Hazaz on Tamar, that is, in Gedi. Alarmed, Jehoshaphat resolved to inquire of the Lord. Now, I want to pause right there and say, that's when most people inquire of the Lord. When they're really alarmed. Oftentimes, not before that. And he proclaimed a fast for all Judah. The people of Judah came together to seek help from the Lord. Indeed, they came from every town in Judah to seek him. And then we can read on. The Jehoshaphat stood up in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem at the temple of the Lord in the front of the new courtyard and said, and there was a long prayer. And he goes on to cry out to God for help. And we'll come back to that in just a moment. Friends, normally we begin the new year with a message about the direction, about the common vision, the common concerns, the values that we share, that make us a church. And I want to do that, as I said, not today, but in two weeks. And so, please, note in your mind and invite the people that you influence, whether it's a friend or someone in your small group or ministry, invite folks to be here in two weeks for sure to hear the message I want to bring about moving toward the new millennium. But it's important that all of us today get a hold of what I'm going to say because I believe this is the core issue for 1999. Would you agree with me that we're in for a year of big change? Would you agree with me that probably more than any other year in the 18 years that we've existed as a church, things are unsettled in our nation? If you think otherwise, then I implore you to really look at the information that's out there. Our leadership, our economic condition, our spiritual condition, our relationship with the rest of the world, all of it is putting us in a very precarious position. Notice I have not even mentioned Y2K yet. I want to begin today by focusing on what I believe is the most important issue for you and your family. How many heads of households are here? How many heads of households? Single parents? Fathers? Household leaders? Single individuals? You've got to hear what I'm going to say today if you're going to lead your family. We're in a predicament, Roman numeral I. Just like Jehoshaphat of old was in a predicament, so are we. He's about to be attacked by three armies. They're not given a number. We know it's in the hundreds of thousands. It's called a vast army. A vast army. It's a predicament so great that he knows that he can't strategize his way out of it. He can only go and inquire of God for help. If it wasn't a God thing, he had no way out. And I want to mention to you that I believe in 1999, as we enter this new year, we're in a serious predicament. It's not an external army that we face, friends. It's an internal one. It's an internal one. We as a nation, would you agree, are slipping into a moral crisis. We have lost our compass as a nation. We're finding it difficult to differentiate between right and wrong, and we are so tolerant that there are no absolutes. Forgive me if this offends any of you who might read this as a political statement. It is not. But when the man who leads our nation and who has confessed to the immorality that he has done and has led this nation through a year of salacious, rather repulsive court proceedings and all the rest, when that man is named, according to USA Today's report on a recent Gallup poll, the most admired man in America, I want to submit to you there is something wrong with our nation. I want to know who the other choices were. And if it wasn't so sad, it would be funny. We've lost our moral compass. And those of you who are younger, my sons here and some students and so, I want to tell you it's different than it was 30 years ago. We're in a leadership crisis. I want to remind you as a congregation, if you're not praying right now for a nation's leadership, you should be. Our president has been formally impeached, and even though there's a certain amount of downplaying about what's going to happen and all the rest, I want you to know we've not been in this circumstance for 130 years as a nation. And I'm not so certain it's going to be resolved as quickly as everyone says it's going to be, and I'm not so certain that there's not going to be a deep scar on our nation as a result of this circumstance. Jonathan Alter, who writes for Newsweek Magazine as an editor, says this, 1998 will go down in history as the worst year in history for the presidency, the Congress, the judicial system, and the Constitution of the United States. That's a perspective that some of us need to let sink into our hearts just a little bit. Yet in most of America, the honest response is, who cares? I mean, honestly speaking, friends, do we really care all that much? Or is it more important, you know, who wins the playoff game today? Or whether or not you get the right size for the Christmas exchange that you haven't made yet. I'm not so sure we understand the gravity of our circumstance. We're also about to be thrust, I believe, into a very serious economic crisis. If you're filling in blanks, I'm just listing them off here. Moral, leadership, economic, and spiritual. I'm going to talk more about the economic situation in two weeks, but let me just say about that and about the spiritual, they're all related, friends, they're related. God has been merciful and gracious to us as a nation, but I'm not sure that these aren't four vast armies that are about to encroach upon us. And I must say, along with Jehoshaphat, I don't know what to do. Verse 12, Lord, I have no power to face these armies, but my eyes are upon you. Now the most common response, when you see things like this happening, when moral leadership is eroding, when the economy that we have all kind of enjoyed and sort of beefed up on over the last few years is precariously dangling in a worldwide scale, when the spiritual barometer in the nation is perceptibly going down year after year, I just want to say to you, the most common response is what we saw in the Bible. There's fear in the people. They're alarmed. And I want you to know, I've talked with lots of people who are afraid about what's going to happen in the year ahead. Fear that at the very least, corruption and moral compromise will prevail and people will be forced to say, where's justice in our land? Fear that perhaps we'll slip all the way into a totally secular culture, not unlike what we find in Europe and the Eastern Bloc countries and so on. Fear that individually we may not be able to fulfill our responsibilities, let alone our dreams. And fear that at its worst, as some have been writing, we may be facing the collapse of civilization as we know it. That's a pretty hefty statement, but I've read it in a lot of different places. And I still haven't talked about the Y2K problem. It's interesting. If you watch the reports as I did as we turned the clock on the New Year, most of the reports were not about the past, not about 1998. Those were normally the things that they spent a lot of time sort of rehearsing all of our victories. And so this year I was surprised at how many of those were rather negative and rather short. In fact, most of the reports I watched were more looking ahead and asking questions about the future. 1998 on the whole was not a good year, other than in our economy. And that has in and of itself caused most of our people to be lulled to sleep to think that things are just fine. It was not a good year, except for here. And I say that with all gratitude toward God and I'm sure many other places like ours. This 1998 was a wonderful year for our church. God gave us great increase. He sharpened our focus toward young people, children, students, young adults. In 1999, listen, if you've got kids, you want to be here because this is going to be an exciting place in the year ahead. God's doing great things in our students and kids. God established the North Way Cafe. And I want to underscore, read that brochure, look at those courses, look at the quality of teachers and instructors that are there and the kinds of things you can learn from. We had over 500 adults take that last fall. We had the largest attendance in our church history during the Christmas Eve presentation, over 5,600 people came to five services. And we had 700 decisions for Christ that we recorded in 1998. Isn't that great? You can at least say, praise the Lord for that. 700 decisions that we recorded in 1998. Now, we're all those people. Well, clearly they're not all here. And that's something we're going to be addressing as we move forward into the new year. And I want to say this one last thing. Even though we're a little underneath our goals, and you can read the goals there in the bulletin about our giving, and that needs to be of concern to some of you. Last year was still the best year of our giving ever as a church. We were up nearly 20% from the year before. And why that's important is not so we have money. It's important because it says your heart, your heart is here. Because the Bible says where your treasure is, your heart is. And you are demonstrating by putting your treasure, by putting your tithes and your offerings in this church, that this is where your heart is. That's a great encouragement to us. And so I went to report that 1998 was a great year for us. But nonetheless, people are afraid of what's going to happen in the year ahead. I had one young woman in her mid-twenties come up to me at the New Year's Eve gathering and say, Pastor Jay, you know, I was watching the news. I'm scared. I don't know what's going to happen in the year ahead. And we talked for a little bit. I said, you don't need to be afraid. If you're taking notes, put that in there. The response we must all resist is fear. Try to put that one up, Donna. You must resist fear. Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army, for the battle is not yours, but God's. And so what is the answer to our predicament? Well, very, very quickly, friends, here it is. It's been the answer all through the centuries. The same answer that I'm going to give you right now is what the people of God have held on to over and over again when things were more dark, more despairing, and more desperate than they are even today. It's the answer that each one of us have to own in our own hearts because if it doesn't start with you, it won't happen with us. And that answer is, the answer to our predicament is His presence. Write that down, His presence. Throughout Scripture, all the way back in the beginning, God's presence is what assured God's people that God's will would be worked out in God's time. Take you back to Moses. How many of you have seen The Prince of Egypt? Good movie, huh? Moses goes through the Red Sea, and now he's leading the people of Israel into the Promised Land, and they are giving him a hard time. We're like that, aren't we? And Moses turns to the Lord in Exodus 33, and I quoted it there, and he says, God, if your presence doesn't go with us, I'm not going. That's just what he said. And I bet he said it just like that. He said, if your presence doesn't go with us, I'm not going. The King James puts all the flowers in it. If thou's presence does not go with me, I goeth not, or whatever. He's just saying, I'm not going if you're not going. And I want you to know, as we go into 99.9, if the presence of God doesn't go with us, I don't want to go. There's too many things on the horizon that will cause us to be overwhelmed without the presence of the Lord. Over and over again, we read about Joshua. Be strong and courageous, for I will never fail you nor forsake you, he says to him. To Gideon, you know, remember, he appears to Gideon, who's hiding down in this little well. He looks down and, Hail, mighty warrior, he says. What made Gideon a mighty warrior? The presence of the Lord. And I could go on and talk about Isaiah and Jeremiah and David and all the rest. They all became mighty in the things of God because of the presence of God. And friends, we operate on the principle that unless the presence of God goes with us, we don't make it. If God's favor is on us, then we can do anything. If His presence is with us, I'm not afraid to go anywhere. I've told this story many times before, but for those of you who are new, it's part of our folklore. It's a good thing to remember as a church as we go into a new year. I want to take you back to 1985, 14 years ago. This Sunday, remember? How many remember this Sunday in 1985, the first Sunday of the new year? How many of you were here? About five of you, good. Well, that's true. That's probably true. I'll tell you what it was like. It was like it was today, but colder. And we stood in a little Catholic church down in Perrysville Avenue. And it was freezing cold. Now, do you remember? And everybody was there with their down jackets and their overcoats on because we couldn't get the heat on. We were in this little Catholic church, about 300 of us or so. We had to leave the building we'd been renting down there at the Bradley House. That was our temporary home. And we were in the midst of a huge transition. And I didn't know if we were going to make it. I mean, it was literally a defining moment for our church. And it was cold. And it never got above 50 degrees, kind of like in here today, you know, if you're sitting over here. And it was so bitter cold. And yet we praised the Lord. And we didn't know what was going to happen. Four months later, I opened the paper on Easter Sunday of 1985 after our service. And there was our building, a picture of it, the same building we tried to buy from the owner who was unwilling to sell it just a little while ago, prior to that, in the fall of 1984. We offered him over a million dollars in a package deal for the building, and he wouldn't sell. And we prayed. And during the four months of 1985, his businesses and investments all went south. He became desperate. He had to sell it by auction. And I remember driving up to the building saying, Wow, this is awesome. And there's a lot of people there to bid on the building. And one guy drove up in a Rolls Royce convertible. You know how intimidating that is? You know, when you're driving a Chevette or something like that, and he pulls up. And I mean, I knew that there were people there with money. My good friend Bill James was there. He's here today. And we just kind of wondered, What in the world is going to happen today? And I won't go into all the details of the story. I've told it before. But in the end, we bought the building for substantially less than we'd offered just six months before. And then Bill reminded me later that he kind of talked to some of the people who were there, one of whom had a lot of money and wanted to make that sort of his office, corporate headquarter thing. And he said, You know, I don't know why this was. He said, But I found that I just couldn't open my mouth when the bidding came. What was that? You know what that was? That was the presence of the Lord. That was God having His way against all odds. We had no right. Honestly, folks, we might still be meeting in the little St. Teresa's Catholic Church in Perrysville. But that was God's provision. With God's presence, we can do anything. Now, the key issue is how do we get there? The key issue for you today is to know that the only way you discover God's presence is by pursuing it with all your heart. And that's what you've got to hear me say today. Listen, heads of households, dads, moms, listen to me. With all of your heart today, you've got to resolve that you're going to seek the presence of the Lord in 1999. This cannot be a back-burner, business-as-usual issue. I am fully aware that some of you think, You know, I've heard this kind of thing before, Pastor Jay, and I know I shoulda, coulda, woulda, but I haven't yet. And I want to say to you, you need to know God's presence this year, unlike any other year of your life. Look at 2 Chronicles 15 too. Similar circumstance. The prophet says to King Asa and all of Judah, The Lord is with you when you're with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you. If you forsake Him, He will forsake you. If you seek Him with all of your heart, this is not sort of a, you know, comfortable, as-you're-sort-of-feeling-like-led-to-do-it, now-and-then, I'll-get-before-the-Lord-and-pray. We're talking about earnestly seeking the Lord on a regular basis in your life. Or number three, you need to make it your priority. You need to make it your priority. Because if you do not, things will happen that will shake your life, and you won't know where to turn. And when it does happen, you'll find yourself desperate for the presence of the Lord and wonder how to get there. Just like I saw this past Monday. How many of you were here for the funeral service that we had this past Monday? Thank you for coming. There were 500 people. About what we have in this service today. 500 people here for that funeral service. For the youngster that was killed in the automobile accident. So sad. But I saw people coming, hungry to find something, an answer, to make sense of that tragic loss. And we held out hope. We held out promise. For those of you who weren't here, there was an 18-year-old boy at Pine Ridson High School was driving, left school, and hit a patch of material on the road and flipped his car over and was killed instantly. People were hungry. They wanted to find something. They wanted to find some answers. They wanted some hope. Really what they wanted was the presence of the Lord. And we need to make that pursuit our priority. I just want to close by asking you this question. Are you too busy to find time for God? Are you too busy to be alone with God on a regular basis to hear what He's telling you to do as you enter into this new year? Are you too busy to make time for God? Because nothing will be more important than you knowing what the Lord is saying to you in the year ahead. Look at your outline. Paul writes there, he says to you, you realize, don't you, that you are the temple of God. And God is present in you. Turn to someone and say, you're God's temple. And you're a good-looking one, too. Tell them, you're God's temple. Not made of bricks and stone and cement and steel, but God's temple in the heart. And that temple is a place where the Spirit of God dwells, and God's presence is with you if you'll pursue, if you'll open to Him. That's why we bring worship. That's why we bring an offering of ourselves and say, Lord, let your presence in me be released in me. Let your rule, your kingdom can rule in me. And you can show me where to go and where to invest and where to put my time and talents and energies and resources and where to go when I'm afraid. Because look what the Bible says, the next verse, where God's love is, there is no fear. Because God's perfect love drives out fear. If you want to be free from fear in the new year, come to God and give Him your ear. And when that happens, something will change in you. That's why Jesus made it a priority to be with His Father. This is such a humbling verse to me. Let's put it up, please, Donna. Mark 135, it's not on your outline, but it says that early in the morning, while it was still dark, kind of like today, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place where He prayed. Paul the Apostle frequently says, you know, I'm thankful for the change I experienced in prison because it's given me an opportunity to write to you. And that's where the epistles were written that we read in our Bibles. How many of you saw Jim Baker recently on national television saying, you know, I hated jail, I hated the whole thing except for one thing, it forced me to spend time alone with God. That never have to be the case for any of us, but praise God that He'll meet us even in a situation like that. Let me end with this. We will enter this new year and face every circumstance either by design or by default. You might want to write that down. By design or by default. You will either react and respond to circumstance and opportunities and situations and negativity and adversity by just default because you don't have a plan, or you can design your direction by the anointing of the Holy Spirit for the year ahead. Please, church. How many of you had a Christmas or New Year's Eve party? Let me see your hand. Did you plan what you were going to have at the party? Did you think about what food you'd have? Did you think about who was coming? Did you write up invitations? Did you get the house clean? Hear my heart in this. Listen. Is it possible that there are a few of you here who spent more time planning a New Year's or Christmas gathering in your home than you have planning your entire year of your walk with God? Could you give God an hour just to sit down and make up a plan? Put some goals on a sheet of paper and say, Lord, you know, by your grace, I'll spend 20 minutes a day in prayer and 10 minutes reading my Bible. Or whatever it is. But put something in on paper and say, This is my goal. Listen, every athlete in this room, every business person in this room who's worth their salt will tell you, if you're going to get somewhere, you need some goals. It's the same with God. All a goal is is a dream with a deadline on it. And tell God, Lord, if I could have my dream, it would be to spend an hour with you and worship in prayer every day. Oh, you'll never do that. You know something? If some of you would set out to do that, you'd be amazed how God would clear your schedule to give you that time. I just want to say, what's going to be on your platter? Did you put up that last statistic? Only 5% of believers will take the time to set any goals for the new year. 5%. Are you among them? How many of you want to be the 5%-er? You want to be somebody that's going to say, You know what? I'm not just going to kind of waddle into this. I'm going to have a goal. My heart's going to be hard after God, and I'm going to know His presence. Friends, I don't know what this new year's going to hold. I'm going to talk about it in two weeks, what I think's going to be taking place. But let me just say this. Without the presence of the Lord, I don't want to go up there. But with the presence of God, I'll go anywhere. Our predicament, His presence, my priority to be with Him. Let's stand together. Lord, these are sobering days when many of us know that, but for Your grace, we will not stand. We ask You right now, Lord, I pray especially for every head of a household. If you happen to be the head of a household, would you lift your hand right now? Father, I pray in Jesus' name for these men and women that You would anoint them, Lord, with Your Spirit, that You'd give them strong conviction today to lead strong in their families, that they would take time with their spouses and with their children. Lord, if they're single adults, that they would make time before You. To experience Your presence, Lord. To become a person of prayer and the Word in this new year. Lord, to give a fresh start to the things of God as we enter to this year. Help us, Lord, to establish our homes as a place of Your presence. In Jesus' name. Come and fill our homes.