Encourages listeners to embrace the new year as a time for intentional growth and readiness, likening believers to a 'lump' that is processed and prepared by God. It uses the story of Elisha and the borrowed axe head to illustrate that all time is borrowed and comes with responsibility to God. The message offers practical suggestions for making the year different by changing what we do, how we act, where we go, and whom we help, emphasizing that a life lived for God is a life of reality and promise. Ultimately, the year is presented as blessed, bright with hope and confidence, and a divine opportunity for those who trust in God's sufficiency.
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Thank you. Now that leaves me no breath for preaching, so we'll have to have a short sermon. Let's turn to First Corinthians chapter five, shall we? First Corinthians chapter five, for just one portion of a verse. Verse seven. purge out, therefore, the old leaven that ye may be a new lump.
Now that doesn't sound like a compliment, does it? But we'll come to that in a moment or two. Now go back into the Old Testament, and let's turn to Second Kings chapter six, a very well-known story, and I hope we'll see some connection somewhere along the line. Second Kings, and chapter six, verse one. And the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha, Behold now, the place where we dwell with thee is too straight for us.
Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan. and take thence every man a beam, and let us make us a place there, where we may dwell. And he answered, Go ye. And one said, Be content, I pray thee, and go with thy servants. And he answered, I will go. So he went with them. And when they came to Jordan, they cut down wood. But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water, and he cried and said, Alas, master, for it was borrowed.
And the man of God said, Where fell it? And he showed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither, and the iron did swim. Therefore said he, take it up to thee, and he put out his hand and took it. Now I wondered how to start this message until I looked at my refrigerator this morning. And then it occurred to me, you can learn lots of things about people from their refrigerators.
You don't even have to go into ours. Right on the front there's a spongy pig, and on his stomach it says, we who indulge both. and then by way of contradiction, death before diet. Now I can assure you these are not my concerns. If I was to look at your refrigerator, I don't mean in it, I mean at it. There are many of you that I would know things about.
For some of you are grandmas. and on your refrigerator you have pieces torn out of painting books with all sorts of squiggles and incomprehensible nothings that you receive through the mail and very proudly put up on the door or the side of your refrigerator. It reminded me of a story I read in Reader's Digest not so long ago about a lady who was taking a watercolor painting class. And while her class was underway, behind a screen, separate, was an oil painting class.
And she heard an interesting conversation. The one lady said to her, the one lady said to the other one, What is that that you're painting? The reply was, I'm not quite sure. Well, said the first one, what are you going to do with it? She said, I'm going to send it to my grandchildren. There's a lady who had some squiggles, I think, on her refrigerator. Now, I've got something for your refrigerator door.
You will have to write it because I'm sure you won't be able to buy it any place. But this is it. God wants me to be a lump this year. Now you write that down and you put it on your refrigerator door and then maybe you'll remember the message of the morning. That's a new entity for your refrigerator. God wants me to be a lump this year. Now I read to you from First Corinthians chapter five, where the scripture says to cast out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump.
Now that's a very interesting word. We find it five times in the New Testament, Sometimes it's used of clay. Sometimes it is used of dough. But it is no ordinary lump. On each of these five occasions, it means a lump that has been pummeled and kneaded. K-N-E-A-D-E-D. Pummeled and kneaded. In other words, processed and prepared.
I didn't very often see my mother make bread, but when I did, I used to be amazed at the way she went about it and the vicious way that she attacked her dough before she was satisfied she could put it aside to rise. Now the thought here is, this word lump carries with it the idea of having gone through a process and because of that process being ready. Now that's why God wants you to be a lump this year. He wants you to be ready.
Ready for what? Ready for anything that he may have for you to do this year. And only God knows what's on his program for you. But don't you imagine for a moment that there is not a very real, a very definite place on God's program for you in . Of course, if you are not saved, if you have never met the Lord Jesus, received him into your heart, and so being born again we cannot expect that the will of God is any concern of your heart or has any place in your life and yet God still wants you to be that kind of lump prepared and processed and ready and the beginning of the process for you is to come to the place this morning where you say, Lord, on this very first Sunday in a new year,
because when I think about these things, when I look at the lives of some of my friends and some of my family, when I observe Christians and I see that they have joy and peace and their lives are worthwhile, this is what I want today. And I believe what your word says, that in order to get started on this path of readiness, in order to find a place on your program, I want to let the Lord Jesus into my life and become my Savior so that I can give that life to you.
You can't give your life to God if you're unconverted. The Bible says they that are in the flesh, cannot please God. We're either in the flesh or we're in the spirit. Now that may sound ethereal and strange to you, but the thought is if we are still what the Bible calls the natural man, we've never had a supernatural conversion experience, then we can't please God. God doesn't want our lives until they have been cleansed. through the precious blood of the Lord Jesus that was shed upon the cross.
Maybe you should go home too and put that little reminder on your refrigerator door. God wants me to be a lump this year. That is to be processed and prepared and ready. I read to you a story here about a man who lost an axe head. Of course, that's only part of the story. If you will read it very carefully again, you will find it begins with a vague discontent. The place where we dwell is too straight for us.
This is the language of the sons of the prophets. I don't know whether you realize it, but discontent is not always negative. The old Negro man was asked if he knew what the status quo was. He said the status quo is the mess we is in. That's the status quo. And that's the reason why sometimes... The Spirit of God makes us discontented with the status quo because he wants us to get out of the mess. Now the Prophet didn't scold these men.
He didn't say, you have to be content with what you have. He said, you go and build another place if that's what you want to do. One of them said, sir, would you come with us? And the Prophet said, I surely will. And so off they go, down to the river, and there they chop away. They cut down wood. In other words, the project began. Now I want this story to illustrate the year in the first place today.
The year is beginning. There is something refreshing about new beginnings. I see my grandchildren sometimes and they will take a sheet of paper and they will scribble a little on it and then they don't like that. They roll it up and they throw it in the waste paper basket. Then they take another one and they start to draw again or write and they make a mistake and they roll it up. When I went to school, it was so long ago that I had to make sure I didn't make any mistakes because there was no new page until I had completely finished the old one.
Now, because I'm not perfect, and that may surprise some of you, there were some pages that I wanted very badly to get rid of, but my teacher said no, right to the bottom of the page, and then... It was always a happy experience for me to take a new page, a brand new page, all the blots and the smears of the page before I could now put aside and forget. The poet said the future lies before you like a drift of driven snow.
Be careful how you tread it, for every print will show. We have a new year, and the year is just beginning. I think, in fact, I want to make some suggestions to you. I don't have any sermon for you this morning, just a few suggestions. There might be four things you would like to ask yourself at the beginning of this new year. Number one is this, what can I do that will be different this year? Number two, how can I act that will be different this year?
Number three, where can I go that will be different this year? And number four, whom can I help that will be different this year? Now think about those four things and I'm just going to rush through them. What can I do that will be different this year? Well, you can keep your New Year's resolution from last year or the year before or the year before that and begin to exercise. Or maybe go on that diet that you did seventeen times last year, starting all over, maybe it's going to make a difference.
Maybe it isn't. But you know, it would be a good idea if every one of us made up our minds this year that we were going to read a little more. Especially if we have the right kind of reading, good reading. Do you know what that will do? It'll make us turn a little knob more readily and a little more often so we don't waste quite as much time with the boob tube. I really think that might be something different that would be very profitable this year.
Some of us have forgotten how to read. Some of us start a book and never finish it. Isn't that right? unless it's a novel. But how, however, we need to read, especially as we get older we need to read, because we need to keep our minds alert. We need to continue to foster our thought processes so that we give God something to work on when he speaks to us, so that he can put things into a refresh. and helped mine. I don't think television helps very much that way, and I'm not condemning it.
I have one in my den and I have one in my bedroom. So I'm not condemning TV because I would only be condemning myself. But we all of us maybe watch just a little too much, and what happens, we begin to stagnate. we begin to get conditioned by the worldly things that make up television. It might be a good idea to say, here's one thing I can do that'll be different this year. That is, I'm going to read more, and most of all, I'm going to read the Word of God more, and I'm going to pray more.
Now this business of praying... I don't know whether you ever feel that somehow your praying is a very iffy kind of business. Somehow you say to yourself in your more sane moments, I don't really think I accomplish very much by praying. Do you know one of the things that you might do this year that's a little different is organize your praying? Do you have a written prayer list? Some people have never had one in all of their Christian lives. Now, Mrs. Thompson has a little brochure that would help you to get your prayer life organized, and it even has a place where you can say thank you when the prayers you prayed three months ago and recorded here were specifically answered.
I think that disorganized praying is to a large extent. ineffective praying. Maybe this is something you can do a little different this year. Maybe you ought to have a little prayer time with somebody else. Maybe when you pray, it would help you to pray audibly. even when you are alone. Do you know that people have gotten converted through hearing somebody else pray for them, which they wouldn't have done if they prayed silently? I'm just making suggestions. We've got to help these spiritual habits to the best of our ability, and maybe somewhere along the line, this can help.
How can I act? that will be a little different this year. Well, if I want to know how I can act to be different, I need to ask myself, how self-sufficient am I? How self-occupied am I? How self-centered am I? Because if you can only come up with the answers to those three questions, You can then say, I'm going to change this, I'm going to change that, and I'm going to change the other. Because it's a very sad thing. When we descend into the depth of self-pity and get occupied with ourselves, then the room closes in on us and we become very introspective.
And that is not helpful. We need to think about others more than we think about ourselves. Now that's very unnatural, and it's not easy to do. But maybe that is something, as far as action is concerned, that you can bring into your life that will be different this year. You men who live around the park, and you like a cup of coffee, talk to Edith. There are men in the care center that you could just go and pick one of them up and say, come and have coffee with me, and he gets away from four walls.
And that is a wonderful change for him. Some of you ladies, you never drink coffee, but I'll tell you what, up at the Keystone Inn they have ice cream. Maybe you can go down to the care center and pick up a lady there, talk to Edith about it, and say, come and have ice cream with me up the road. And she gets away from four bare walls. There are things that we can do. There are ways that we can act that are different for this year. Where can I go that will be different this year? Have you noticed that when we ask ourselves, where can we go?
We always end up at an eating place. Most often it's the holiday house in Palacca. Now I've got some new places for you to go. One of them is a nursing home on Wednesday. Oh, I don't like a nursing home. Well, that's good because it's time you got to realize just what it's like to be in a nursing home and how necessary it is that these folk be ministered to by the Lord's people. And we make it convenient for you because we go every Wednesday meeting at three o'clock by the dining room and we are driven from door to door.
You don't even have to drive your own car. Really and truly, those of us who try to go regularly, we find that work does more for us than it does for them. There are times when we stand there when the tears run down our cheeks. I don't know how long it's been since you cried over the needs of other people. I've seen Bill Yancey stand there with the tears running down his cheeks. I really have. I've seen others doing it too and I've stood there myself like that. I grumbled that I had no shoes until I met a man who what? had no feet.
Where can I go that will be different this year? There's always some of our family in the hospital. Maybe you never visited somebody in the hospital that you could read with them and pray with them. That would be different for you. And that's a ministry that is tremendously valuable. What about those that are lonely? Maybe you could go and spend a little time with this one and that one and the other one. This is very practical. Because people do get lonely. Even at Park of the Palms they get lonely. But we get sort of wrapped up in our own lives and we're not even aware of the loneliness of others.
Who can I help that will be different this year? Take a good look at the circle that you move in. Now when I go to the holiday house, who do I go with? When I go to Sleibos, who do I go with? When I go up to the Keystone Inn, who do I go with? Is it always the same people? Hey, here's something you can change. Some of those folk who don't get included so very often, some of the strangers, those that seem to be strangers and they shouldn't be strangers.
I hope nobody ever comes to the park and feels like a stranger. I hope I pray that nobody ever comes to live at the park and doesn't feel a part of the family. I would be most crushed if somebody said, oh, that man's a Baptist, he doesn't belong to the brethren, as though that made him any worse. You know what that does? It makes you worse. It makes you worse. We've got to love one another and we've got to care for the needs of one another and we've got to look for places where people have needs and try to help.
I took too long on that point. The year is beginning. My what wonderful opportunities. what tremendous things can happen this year. Here's the second thing about the year. The year is bright. You say, just a minute. Just a minute. His brother Miller sitting here. He said this Christmas, the Lord took away my wife. How can this be a bright year? I was with her sixty-one years. Now I've got to live this year without her. In spite of that, It's a bright year.
Some of our company have had dread diagnoses during this past year. How can this be a bright year? Of course it's a bright year. Because it's bright with promise. That's the first thing. God's awareness, he says, I know. And those moments when nobody else sees, those hours about which nobody else knows, those awful questionings and perplexities that come, God knows every one of them.
He's aware. He says, I know. And then it's right because of God's presence. We were singing it in our hymn. He says, I am with me. There is never a moment, and especially in those times of need, when the Lord Jesus is not closer than hands and feet, closer than any other person, the year is bright with promise because of God's sufficiency. He says, I will be a husband to the widow.
I'll be a wife to the widower. I'll be a father to the parentless. God knows what the need is and his promise is this. I'm sufficient. If you will lean upon me, if you will trust me this year in spite of all the circumstances, is certainly going to be a bright year. Bright with promise, bright with reality. All the way around you there are people living artificial lives. The life of the world is synthetic.
There was a word during the war that we learned over in Britain and used to say often, ersatz, ersatz. Sounds familiar to you? It's just something in place of the real thing. Now that's what the world has. Everything it has is in place of the real thing because the world is very artificial. But this year is bright because it's bright with reality. What you have is real. Who you have is real. You've got Christ. You've got already eternal life.
while you have as your very own the God of the impossible. It's a year that is bright with promise and bright with reality, bright with confidence, because you know that God never breaks His word, never, never, never goes back on a promise. And you know that God has a plan for your life. You know that every day that you raise your head from your pillow, There's a purpose in that day in which God has included you. And even pain has its objective.
The year is bright with confidence, and it's bright with hope, because who knows, we may not get the next Sunday before there's a shout, and the heaven has split. And the Lord Jesus comes back and catches away his own. You know, this is another reason why, if you're not saved, you ought to get saved and get saved in a hurry. Because there is absolutely no prophecy in the Word of God that would prevent the Lord Jesus Christ from coming back again today and catching away his own. And once they're gone, with them goes your opportunity of ever being saved, ever finding your place in heaven.
That's why the Bible says so very, very clearly. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. Yes, the year is bright. It's bright with promise. It's bright with reality. It's bright with confidence. And it's bright with hope. But here's the third thing. The year is borrowed. And that's where we go to the ax here. All of our time is loaned to us. Ye are not your own. You are bought with a price the precious blood of Christ.
But do you know, I have been living in my seventieth year, but I am not yet out of my sixties. But June the third is my seventieth birthday. That's the day upon which I really begin living in a more solemn way on borrowed time. And I'm looking into the faces of people who've been living on that kind of borrowed time for a long time. We talk about living on borrowed time. But when you borrow a thing, that means that brings up the matter of indebtedness.
You borrow something, you're indebted to the person who lent it to you. I wonder if you thank God at the beginning of every day for a day that really isn't yours. Borrowed. We should be grateful, oh, how grateful we should be. Do you know what the Bible says? God hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. If he had done that, we'd all be in hell already, and we would have been there a long time.
It also brings up the matter of responsibility. Here's a man who borrowed an axe, and he is swinging it with wanton disregard. He's swinging the axe and he's letting the chips fly where they may. A man who swung without thought. There are people with borrowed lives who live them just like that, without a thought, without thinking. And yet because they are borrowed, there's a big responsibility as to how we handle them.
It also brings up the matter of answerability. Why do you think this man cried out, alas, master, for it was borrowed? Because he was going to have to see the owner and say, I spoiled your axe. I lost your axe, said, here's the handle. He didn't want that to happen. Do you realize that your life, your borrowed life, is something for which you are going to give a specific and definite account to God for. We cannot, if we are not saved, live for ourselves and for the world and for sin and get away with it.
And if we are believers, we cannot live for ourselves and our own way and get away with it. There is coming a day of answerability. a day when God will say, now, I want to know how you handled that borrowed life. The year is borrowed. Here's the last thing. The year will be blessed. God is such a wonderful God, such a giving God, such a gracious God, that this is going to be a blessed year.
It really is. Now there are many kinds of blessings. Would you like to count some of them? What about the measure of health and strength you have as you sit in that seat? What about the salvation that you're enjoying? What about these lovely surroundings where you make your home? So we could go on. The hymn writer exhorted us, Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. Don't count sheep when you can't sleep. Start counting your blessings, and you'll fall asleep before you run out of blessing. There's a revised version to that old song.
Count your blessings, name them two by two. Count your blessings, name them four by four. Count your blessings, name them by the score. And it will surprise you, there are millions more. Many kinds of blessings. But the problem is that we do not sufficiently critically examine our lives so that we can see the areas, countless numbers of them, in which God has wonderfully blessed us. Many kind of blessings. There are different measures of blessings. Blessing. There are trickles of blessings. There are showers of blessing.
There are deluges of blessing. According to your faith, be it unto you, the word of God says. If you are prepared to trust God, the sky is the limit as far as blessing is concerned. Our trust in God, first of all, is precious to Him. We grandparents, we like it so much when our grandchildren just sidle up to us and push a hand in our hands and we grasp that little hand and it gives us a warm feeling because we know they trust us. God's like that.
Our trust in God is precious to Him. It's also comforting to us. When you trust God, if you trust, you do not worry. Can you think of living a life without a speck or spot of worry in it? When you trust God, you don't worry. Of course, if you worry, then you're not trusting God, and you have to make the choice according to your faith. But it's not only precious to God and comforting to us, it's vital to others. if we are going to be a blessing as well as receive blessing then we have got to trust God and walk in close communion with God we sing sometimes make me a blessing there's only one way it can happen and that's by your cultivating and my cultivating an exquisite nearness to the Lord Jesus so that totally unbeknownst to us as he pours the blessing into our lives, our lives fill, and other people get the overflow.
One last thing. Blessing sometimes comes in disguise. And those are the times when we Christians ask why. And we ask it with a tear, or we ask it with a sob, or maybe we ask it resentfully as though God hasn't a right to deal with us, how He chooses. The fact is, everything God allows into your life if you're a Christian, everything God sends or brings into your life if you're a Christian has as its end result His blessing. It cannot be otherwise.
It's just that sometimes we are so human we don't see through the disguise. My time has gone. Let's pray, shall we? Our Father, indeed, this year is beginning. And because we all of us want in the bottom of our hearts this to be the best year that we've ever known in our lives. The best year for thee. Because if it's the best year for thee, it'll be the best year for us in spite of all of the circumstances, whatever they may be.
We ask, O Lord, that something might have been said that thy Holy Spirit can lay hold on. and burn in upon our hearts so that we cannot get away from it. And Lord, if there's someone here who needs to know the Lord Jesus in a personal way, and they know that they need to know Him, and maybe they've been putting it off, Lord, make this a wonderful Lord's Day for them. The very first day, Lord's Day of eighty-seven, as it becomes the day of conversion.
For then, bless every heart bowed before thee, we pray, in Jesus' name.