Psalm 119, we read these words, I considered my ways and turned my feet to thy testimonies. Just as often as we get into New Year, we go through an examination of our physical bodies to make sure that we're going to make it through the next Christmas season. Just as we like to find out how we're doing physically to see if there might be in fact some disease that we need to be concerned about.
So as we enter a new year, I think it's important for us to take another kind of examination of ourselves, a spiritual examination. The psalmist says, I considered my ways. And having done that, he said, I turned my feet according to thy word. Would you bow with me in prayer as we commit this time to the Lord.
Now Father, I pray this morning as we consider our ways, as we go through a New Year's examination of our own hearts, privately, quietly, internally, with you looking on, enable us to be honest, enable us to be repentant, and grant that having considered our ways, wherein we need to, we would turn our feet so that we might walk according to your word. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. The pagan roots of our Western civilization can be witnessed in a number of ways.
An example of that would be the terms that we use to describe the days of the week or the months of the year. January is no exception. January is named after a Roman god whose name was Janus. The Romans depicted Janus as having two faces. With one he looked backward. That face was one that was depicted as sad, sorrowful, even fearful. With the other face he looked forward, and with it he evidenced anticipation, hope, and confidence.
As we begin a New Year, perhaps there are some of us who are like Janus. We look to the last year with some disappointments, some sorrows, but we look ahead to the New Year with hope and anticipation for what it brings. It does no good really to look backward too long. We can learn from our past mistakes, we can correct ourselves, but I believe that God wants us to look forward, and even better than that, that God wants us to look upward.
As we think about the next year, and indeed what remains of our lives, whether it be measured in hours and days or years and decades, it is wise for us to remember that not all men are created equal with respect to opportunities or abilities. But there is one sense in which we are all created equal, and that is that each day we have approximately 24 hours. And each year that we live we have 365, or as in the case of a leap year like this, 366 days in that year.
In the sense of the time that comes to us while we're on the earth, we are indeed created equal. The difference then is how we use that time. It's wise for us to stop and to evaluate our lives, for lives are composed of precious stuff, time. How we use our time determines how we live our lives. That's why, for example, Haggai the prophet said three times to the people of Israel in that day, God says consider your ways. Consider your ways. Consider your ways.
The apostle Paul joins in the book of Galatians, the sixth chapter, the fourth verse, where he says let every man examine his own work. And likewise the prophet of old, Jeremiah, says in the book of Lamentations, let us examine and probe our ways and let us return to the Lord. Now indeed as we think about a New Year's examination there are a number of ways we could approach this. We could examine, for example, the relationship between ourselves and our families.
That is a critical relationship and it bears examination, but this morning we're not going to take the time to do that. We could examine the relationship between ourselves and the world in which we live, but this morning we're not going to take time to do that either. We could talk about the relationship between ourselves and our church, that too is an important area that needs examination occasionally, but we're not going to take time to do that.
We're going to go right to the very crux of it all, right to the heart of the whole examination. We're going to check out the vitals in our relationship to the Lord. Let's think this morning about that as we pause to take a New Year's examination. As we think about our relationship to the Lord, once more there are a number of ways that we might approach that. We're going to do one, two, or three areas depending upon how God leads in the time that we have available.
But first I'd like for us to think about this critical, essential, and basic area in our relationship to the Lord, and that is the area of our faith in the Lord. I remind you of what the writer of Hebrews said in the 11th chapter and the 6th verse when he tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. Now what is faith? That is one question that we need to talk about first. How would you define faith? Well there are a number of good definitions.
One of those is faith is trusting obedience. Notice that it takes it beyond a feeling that we have to the point of doing something. And that certainly is borne out in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, where by faith these great patriarchs of old did certain things. So faith is more than a feeling. Faith goes beyond that to an action. It is trusting obedience. Faith is an attitude of dependence or reliance upon the Lord that leads to action.
That is my doing what he tells me to do even though I may not be able to perceive or understand the results of it. I think of Noah in that regard, who did what God told him to do even though he could not see the end result of it. Yet God blessed him because of his faith. Abraham was told, go over to that country. He went, not knowing all that was involved, not having all of the answers, but trustingly he obeyed and did what God told him to do. Now of course we are saved by faith.
Believing faith is an obedient faith. There is an obedience to the gospel that is involved in our being saved. When we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we are doing what God tells us to do, what we are enabled by grace to do, to place our reliance upon the Lord for the salvation of our souls. And I am aware that in this congregation there may well be someone or some few here today who have not yet made that life transforming decision.
Your faith may still be resting in religion or resting in your good works or resting in something that you have done or have experienced in your past or something you hope to do in the future. Upon your good intentions, my friend, faith that saves is faith that is placed in a person who has already done it for you. The Lord Jesus Christ has died for your sins, has been raised from the dead, he has done all that needs to be done to bring you to God, to save your soul.
Now he commands you to believe on him, to trustingly obey him by placing your faith upon him alone for the salvation of your soul. If you have not done that, I would pray to God that you would do it today. But please understand that that is only the beginning of our relationship of faith in the Lord. For the life, the Christian life is a life of faith. Our service is a service of faith. Too often all of us who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ experience the acid of worry in our lives.
If there is anything that eats away at our spiritual energy, it is the acid of worry. Worry which really accomplishes nothing anyway, but worry which certainly is the end of faith. George Muller, the great man of faith said, the beginning of anxiety is the end of faith. And the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety. What is Muller saying? Those two cannot coexist in the same life. We cannot worry and claim to believe at the same time. The one cancels the other.
As you and I examine our lives today, are we a believing people or are we an anxious people? There is no man who has ever yet tested the resources of God fully. Or there have been some who have done amazing things. No man has gone yet to the extent of what God can do. You know we only actually test God and test faith when we attempt the humanly impossible. We are to be wise, we are to be careful analyzers of our situations.
But folks, faith goes beyond that analysis, that important initial analysis. Faith goes beyond that, it is not limited by that, but faith goes into that which cannot be seen, which cannot be known for sure. Faith causes us to step out into the seeming void where there is nothing beneath. When we step there we find a rock, and that rock is God himself.
God wants us to be good analyzers, good investigators, he wants us to be good preparers, but whether it be as a church family or it be in our work or it be as our home families, we need to learn what it is really to step out beyond what we see we can do and to trust God. For only then are we really expressing the kind of faith that pleases God. Without it we can't please him. A traveler crossed a frozen stream in trembling fear one day. Later a teamster drove across and whistled all the way.
Great faith and little faith alike were granted safe convoy. One had the pangs of needless fear, the other all the joy. Someone has said, little faith will take your soul to heaven, but great faith will bring heaven to your soul. I believe that in the year 1988 God wants us as a people to know greater faith. As you examine your faith in the Lord today, where is the extent of it? How far does it go? What are you really trusting God to do in your life?
We are great materialists and God has blessed us, I think we would say, with a lot of things. We don't have to trust God too often for material things because we have an abundance of resources. What can we do to free ourselves up from the encumbrance of things so that we really learn something about trusting God? Where in my life today, where in your life, can we see an area where God can provide for us beyond what we think we can do, beyond what we see or measure out that we can accomplish?
That's the area I want you to examine. That's the place I want to challenge you at today, to trust God for bigger things in your life. To trust God for greater things than you ever trusted Him before as you enter a new year. Don't plan on living on the resources that you have and limiting yourself and your experience with God with that. But in some area of your life, dare to trust God to provide. Believe Him for something that is beyond your capability.
It may be in the area of finances that you trust God, but it may be in some other area of doing something, being involved in a ministry that you just at this point can't see yourself doing. I don't know what realm it may be, but get beyond the comfort zone. That's the message.
Go to the point where you're stepping out on the void as God leads you, not foolishly, but as God leads you, and challenge Him and see if He won't pour out upon you a blessing that you've not experienced to this point, because God's blessings come to those who walk by faith. I want to challenge you to consider what God could do in your life, through your life in 1988. You may not need to share that with anyone.
You may want to share it or should share it with your life's partner or with a friend of yours. But I want to challenge you even right now while I'm talking to just jot down a note to yourself about this. What is it that you will trust God for in the next year? What is it that will stretch your faith? There are other ways in which our walk of faith is tested than in the areas that I've already suggested to us. The Apostle Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
He reminds us in verse 7 of this basic principle that so often we overlook. We know the rest of these wonderful verses in the first paragraph of 2 Corinthians 5 that tell us that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Praise God for that truth. But please let us not overlook the importance of verse 7 which says, we walk by faith, not by sight. That is an essential principle of the true Christian life.
One of the reasons that the Christian life becomes boring is that we haven't yet lived it. Because until we come to this principle and begin to experience it and to inject it into our daily lives, we haven't begun living what God calls the Christian life. We walk by faith, not by sight. Another realm, another example of how we need to walk by faith is in the realm of suffering. I don't know about you, but I have had enough reports on the news about mass murders to last me a long time.
We have all been sickened and shocked at what has taken place in Kansas City, in Iowa, Texas, New Hampshire, other places. The question can come to our minds as we ponder these shocking kinds of circumstances when even innocent children are slain by their parents. We say, where is God in all of this? Has that thought ever crossed your mind or is it just me? Why does God allow these kinds of things?
When we hear about a shipload of people who are on their way to a holiday and because of the carelessness of a captain or perhaps two captains, the ferry collides with a tanker, there's a great explosion and three, four, or five thousand people go to a watery grave. Why do mass kinds of things happen like that where thousands of people are innocently taken to their deaths? We have examples of that even in the Bible. Did you know that?
In the book of Job, the book begins with an introduction to Job's wealth to his family and I remind you that he had seven sons and three daughters. And in one great calamity, all ten children died. He lost everybody in one calamity. I cannot imagine losing one child. You probably can't either although some of you have experienced that heartache. I don't know how you've stood it but by the grace of God, I don't believe you could. But Job lost ten children in one whack.
Where is God in all of that? The nation of Israel, this is some time later now, another example. The nation of Israel was disobedient, spiritual adulterous. God had sent prophet after prophet to warn them to correct them. There would in some cases be a temporary repentance and then they would return to their false idols in their idolatrous, wicked ways. And finally God announced the Chaldeans are going to come and judge. They're going to come and destroy the nation of Israel.
And the prophet Habakkuk wrestles with that. He says, God how can you do that? How can you use a more wicked nation than our own to judge us, to bring judgment? And his ultimate answer is, God is in his holy temple and all the earth keeps silent before him. That's basically where Job ended up too.
After seeking to justify himself on a number of occasions through the book, he concludes by total repentance of his self-righteousness and submission of himself to a sovereign God who can well do what he desires to do. Where does suffering come from? Well essentially it comes from human sin. And God in his sovereignty often allows the innate inward wickedness of the human heart to produce its worst and he doesn't stop it. We've seen examples of that in our news in the last few days.
It doesn't mean that God isn't in control, God is very much in control, but he is simple allowing the wickedness of the human heart to be exposed so that all of us can see it in its ugliness. How do we know that? Because we walk by faith and not by sight. We walk by faith. It may be this morning that you need a fresh infusion of faith as you look about you in the world and you see a lot of unjust things going on.
There are people who are being oppressed this morning, others who are being imprisoned without having committed a crime, tortured and put to death in regimes that are hardline and cruel. Let me assure you that God is still in his holy temple as he was in the days of Habakkuk. And we must learn to be quiet before God and be submissive to what God sovereignly allows to take place in human history. For sometimes it is beyond our understanding and our explanation.
We live by faith, not by explanations. There's another worry that often troubles the people of God with regards to faith. It troubled David. And that is the issue of why wicked people prosper, but often godly people don't. Have you ever wondered about that? Why is it that that student who cheats in order to get decent grades gets by with it and you as a Christian work your very best, you work your hardest, you're not able to get those kinds of grades.
Consequently that person gets the scholarship, that person gets the advantage or the recognition and he cheats. What about the person at work that you know to be dishonest or lazy? But that person gets the promotion somehow in the organization. That's just because he or she is willing to socialize and pay the kind of social price that's often necessary for promotion. You've not been willing to compromise your convictions.
Consequently you're held back, you're given a lateral move and the other person gets the promotion is kicked upstairs. Have you ever wondered why it is that ungodly people often prosper? Have you ever envied them? Have you ever asked yourself the question, I wonder if it's really worth it to serve god. I mean I suffer, I pay my price, I try to be honest and right, I try to do what pleases god and look what I get for it. Have those thoughts ever crossed your mind?
You're a rare individual if they haven't. Look in Psalm 37, what David said. He says do not fret, now there is a ten dollar word for you. Do not fret because of evildoers. In fact three times he says that again in verse seven, again in verse eight, do not fret. That word means to be filled with rage, to be angry or to put it in the vernacular of our day it means don't get burned up. That's literally what it means, don't get burned up because of evildoers. Be not envious toward wrongdoers, why?
Why David, why shouldn't I? For they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb. He says that they will not go on forever. Yeah but it's happened for five years. For this person all of his life has been this way and has had nothing but easy street. But it won't last forever. What should we do? Well in a positive vein he says trust in the Lord. There's your faith.
Are you today envious because there are people around you who are unrighteous, who are wicked, who are making all the money, getting all the attention, getting the grades, passing the tests and you're struggling for every bit of encouragement you can get. Trust in the Lord. Let your reliance be upon him, not upon what you can see but upon him. And when he says and do good, let that be your practice.
When he says dwell in the land, now to ancient Israel in David's day that had a particular meaning because to them from Abraham's time and on they've been given the land. So he says dwell in the land. But to us today we don't have Palestine to think about. What is it saying to us? Our application is saying to us dwell in what God has provided for you.
The word dwell means to settle down, to live in it or be content with what God has provided for you and cultivate, notice he doesn't say corn or wheat, he says cultivate faithfulness. Actually the word cultivate here means to associate with, make friends with or keep company with faithfulness. You see that's the thing that counts folks. It's not whether we get the kick upstairs or we get the extra bonus or the plus at the end of the letter grade. That's not the important thing.
The important thing is that we associate ourselves with faithfulness. That's what pleases God. He says delight yourself in the Lord, make him your joy. Trust also in him and he will do it. What is he saying here? He says God will take care of it. If you see an injustice, if you see something that is oppressive, listen God will take care of that in his own way at his own time. Leave it to him. Make it your joy to delight in him. He says he will bring forth your righteousness as the light.
It may be that no one sees the kind of person you really are. God is going to bring forth your righteousness like the morning sun rising. And he says your judgment as the noon day. Now he's got the full sun shining, beaming down and he says that's going to expose your judgment. The word judgment there means what your claim is, what you're entitled to. Say I've never gotten what I deserve. I've never gotten what I'm entitled to.
When we ask that kind of question or we're thinking those kinds of thoughts, we need to examine our hearts to see what our motive is, don't we? For in the end what are we really entitled to? But David says that God has a way of bringing about what you're entitled to. Your judgment will be brought forth just like the noon day sun. And when he says in verse 7, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. It seems to me that those two verbs, rest and wait, are beautiful synonyms for faith.
What does it mean to have faith in the Lord? To walk by faith, it means to rest, to be quietly submissive. We sang this morning blessed quietness. My friend it's that kind of quietness of spirit that shows faith. And then he says wait patiently, patient waiting is another synonym for faith. Do not fret. Do not fret he says, evil doers will be cut off, verse 9, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land.
Now again they had a particular meaning to the Jewish people, to us today there is a spiritual application. God will take care of our needs. We can go ahead through the rest of the psalm in light of what we've said here by way of introducing it. And we can see that David is saying to us, examine your faith my friend. Don't be envious of the wicked who seem to prosper. Their end is coming. But wait in the Lord. Wait patiently on the Lord. Trust in him.
Rest in the Lord. And God will vindicate you. God will say that you get what you deserve, but learn to walk by faith. Well we didn't get very far this morning in our examination. I hardly got your tongue examined here. You know the doctor looks at the tongue and then he goes to the ears and all the rest. We just hardly got started this morning. But I think we've touched on an area of life where all of us, including me, where all of us need to do some examination. Our faith in the Lord.
Where is that faith? What are we trusting God to do in us and through us in 1988? What is beyond our resources so that we're not measuring ourselves by what we see but we're measuring what we can do but what God is able to do in us? God isn't looking for great ability but great what? Right availability. You see suffering around you that you can't explain that bothers you? Maybe you're passing through some of that persecution yourself. It's tough. It's tough. Walk by faith.
Don't look at the things that are seen but the things that are not seen. Those are the things that count because those are eternal things. You find yourself a little jealous this morning of that neighbor or that fellow worker or that student that you sit next to in the classroom. Don't be jealous of their prosperity in their wickedness. God will see that you get what you deserve in your time. Walk by faith my friend. Let this be a year when all of us learn more about the walk of faith.
Annie Johnson Flint wrote a poem entitled My Resolution. Undoubtedly it was written at the New Year. For she said, I won't look back. God knows the fruitless efforts. I'll leave them all with him who blots the record and mercifully forgives and then forgets. I won't look back. I won't look forward. God sees all the future, the road that short or long will lead me home. And he will face with me its every trial and bear with me the burdens that may come. I won't look forward.
But I will look up into the face of Jesus. For there my heart can rest. My fears are stilled. And there is joy and love and light for darkness and perfect peace and every hope fulfilled. I will look up. Let's bow together. Will you look up this morning? Let's talk to the Lord for a minute. Where has his word challenged you today? Lord, thanks for speaking to us. Thank you for challenging us in this important area of our lives.
These kinds of examinations, as you know, are not very pleasant to us in our humanness. But thank you for forcing us into them. For thereby we're able to see where we are to some extent. And we're able to confess our shortcomings, our sins, and start fresh. Lord, I pray this morning that every one of us who names the name of Christ will learn more about the walk of faith in 1988. May this be, in some respect for all of us, a new beginning in our walk with you.
And like this poem we just read, may our faith look up to you. In Jesus' name, amen.