Building on a firm base

Transcript (Auto-generated)

Good morning church, how are we? It's great to start the year off on the first Sunday and the fourth, and we are in church, we've got communion, it's all happening. Some people still on holidays perhaps, some are here and still on holidays. Oh, folks. Well, surprise, the message is only one song in. Who was surprised by that? Oh, right, okay, who was expecting it? Only the worship team, thank you Dylan. Beware this year is going to be full of impromptu things that God is going to do, and we're excited by that. Are you excited for the year? Yeah, he's going to do great things, I'm sure. Well, folks, I've got on the board up there resolutions, determinations, declarations, decrees, privileges, I'm sorry, pledges and vows. All those words mean the same thing, I just went to a thesaurus, looked up resolutions, and I said, what other words are like resolutions? Who's made a new year's resolution? One game person, two game person, I see that hand, only a couple game people, we all learn our lesson, don't we, that resolution sometimes don'ts. God's going to challenge you today, I believe, to make a biblical resolution, to make a godly resolution in your life. There's going to be one, I pray, that you will take to heart and go, Lord, I'm not going to let you down. I'm going to see this right through to the end, let's pray, Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that you greet us afresh and anew each day. Lord, we thank you, Lord, that you find us right where we are, and Lord, and you speak to us, you show us, you guide us. Lord, for every person sitting here today in summer standing, Lord, we thank you for their presence, Lord, you call your people to worship for a reason, well, that's what we're designed to do. Father, let us worship fully with our heart and spirit. Father, we open your word today and learn, Lord, what you are teaching us today. Just help us, Lord, to discern that, Father, to put it into practice, or even let it be a challenge to us, Father, we might say, well, there's something I can tweak here, Lord, to glorify you, because, Lord, you're a good and gracious God. Father, we give you thanks and praise for who you are, amen. Well, if you have a look at the statistics from last year, so those going into 2025, there's a sheet, a board that's about to come up, and these are the biggest ones. So at the top of the list, those eat healthier, improve fitness, and the list goes on, lose weight, right the way down to quit drinking. Notice quit drinking doesn't get a whole lot of people doing it, so if you can't read it, I think I'll just use my back, yeah, it's 40%. So basically looking at about 2% of Australians want to curb their drinking, which is a bit of a worry. But you'll notice the other ones there are quite close together. Lumped in the middle are the ones work less and be sustainable, and so they want to do two of those things. So these are the resolutions that people put in practice. Now, because the borough statistics, borough statistics, are quite clear in their follow-up, this is what happened. In Australia, the stats show a high failure rate of New Year's resolutions. About 80, 90% abandon them within, you want to guess, first few weeks. Often mid-January, around the 12th or 19th, they actually got a date. So if you can get to the 20th, alright, you beat the stats. One reasons for failure include unrealistic goals, lack of a concrete plan, and return to work or routine, while popular resolutions focus heavily on health and fitness and weight loss with many Australians quitting fitness commitments within three months. What has it got to do with the Bible? The prayer for us as a leadership, as pastors for our church, family, and for those who are visiting with us, whether this is your first time with us, whether you know you've been here for a while, you're back with us again, is that you'll be able to build a firm base for the future. Not just for 2026, but 2026 is important, but a firm base for what's going to happen in what God is teaching us. One of the great stories of the Bible, one of the great accounts written and recorded, is that of Noah. And Noah, in his faithfulness, did several things. What's Noah most famous for? Anyone want to tell me what it is? Build in the ark, alright, and he persevered. He built the ark. Well let's have a read about Noah in Genesis 8, I'll start at 15, then God said to Noah, come out of the ark, and you and your wife and your sons and their wives, bring out every kind of living creature that is with you, birds, animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground, so they may multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number. Pretty standard, eh? Then we get to verse 18. When I've read this, you read this passage several times, when I read this it hit me right between the eyes, that Noah's resolution, that Noah's heart was for something more than just surviving the flood. It was this, in verse 18, so Noah came together with sons and daughters and wives, and all the animals and the creatures that moved along the ground and the birds, everything that moves on the land came out of the ark in one kind after another, verse 20, Noah built an altar to the Lord, and taking some of all the animals, had a burnt offering. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said to his heart, I will never flood the earth again. When we're starting something off, it's great to have a good foundation. It's great to have that basis in place. We can't start the year without saying, how can we honour God this year? What is something in my heart, Lord, that can contribute to your kingdom, but also to the life of the church? What is something going to change in me? And this is the basis for it. I find it astounding that after surviving in the flood all that time, we have a look at Noah's journey. He lived in the time, he says in scripture, he lived in a time of wickedness, much wickedness on the earth, the poor man. We don't know what that's like, do we? No. We don't know what this next point is about, though, for 500 years. He was 500 years-ish when he started to build the ark. He was 600 when he was finished and the deluge began. We read that in those previous verses. Then we have a look at Noah's response. His response to all those things were these. His faithfulness never went unnoticed. Verse 21, God smelt the aroma and it was pleasing to him. And he created an altar to worship God. It was pleasing to God. He obeyed the Lord, as the Lord had commanded. He said, you're going to build an ark. So if he's building an ark, this thing is not something you get in a Lego box on Christmas Eve and have it finished by Boxing Day. This is huge. It goes all the way through to New Year. It took him a long time to build this thing. But he was committed and he did as the Lord commanded, he was obeyed. For 335 days before his feet touched dry land, man, that's faith. Can you imagine if we said, okay, God, you're going to promise me this, okay, right. I'm going to engage in this situation with you. And then it was 335 days before God came good on his deliverance for you. How would you go? Would you give up on God? Would you say, ha, it's all over it, right? I'm leaving. God's no good to me. He's a person who just tells me these half-truths, 335 days. The asterisk is there because that's a Doug's maths. I went through scripture and that's what I found. But in everything else, it must have been so difficult to enjoy all this. One of the things I've learned about life at my age is that you do have times when it is tough going. When you're young and you're sort of under 25, life's easy peasy. When you start to get a few runs on the board, things start to happen. And one of the things that God calls us to do is to endure under all circumstances. See we have our understanding here for the year and for the year and beyond. So we have a goal which has been an intergenerational church. We have two commands and the first command is to growing in God. And that's your challenge today as we build this altar, as we build this thing of worship as a priority for the year is how is God going to grow you? How are you going to allow God to grow you in this next 12 months? What are the challenges of this place in your heart right now? It may be something as simple as coming forward and saying, I want to know more about Jesus. I want to ask you into my life. You kill that simple. I call it simple. You might think it's difficult. It might be something that's just getting your prayer life sorted so it actually is honouring God and not about just asking for stuff. So much that we can put before God. We're going to learn a bit more as we go on. I'm pretty excited about this topic. Am I speaking too fast? Okay. If you're watching at home, I'm speaking too fast, just write a little note to the people in the sound room and they'll let me know. But then we have what happens when the water is receding. I find this remarkable as we just pull this apart a little bit more. It says that God said, now it's time to disembark. God gave the direction. It to wait patiently for God to say, now is the time. We know as we read through the script, he sent out the dove and the dove went out and came back, went out and came back and then didn't come back. Noah obeyed, it said in verse 18 and 19. Did everything that God has said come out of the ark, bring everybody with you, unload the animals to get them all out here. Can you imagine how long that would have taken? It would have been exhausting doing that. Doing something for God and doing what is commanded. It would have been so exhausting. He would have been forgiven to say, oh, just let them run free. Open the gates and let them go. Put the lines at the back and get them to roar. I'm sure that'll clear a few of them out real quick. But he asked them all to come out. Noah came, his family, his sons and his daughters-in-law and they all came out of the ark. After all they endured, they had to take their time and do what God had said. What a great challenge for us. And then when they'd be forgiven, they were saying, the new world, new time, start afresh. How about we party? Let's have a time to celebrate. That's what we do on New Year's Eve, don't we? We celebrate. This is not to put you in your place and this is not to be judgmental. Just curious, who attended a New Year's Eve party this year? Put your hand up, please. Really? Put your hand up if you lasted till midnight. Oh, right, look at that. Oh, that's it. I love that idea. So you guys persevered through and you partied until you got through. That's pretty cool. So when we have a party, we also say to celebrate. I would have been thinking that Noah came out and would have said, let's thank you, Lord. Let's have a party, but he didn't. The first thing he did was build an altar because he wanted to worship God. He wanted to put God as a priority. He wanted to lay that foundation. He built the altar and made sacrifices and burnt offerings. In those days under the understanding is that when people wanted to honour God and wanted to repent from any sinfulness, they bought symbols of their sin and they burned it on the altar. The Bible tells us this was an offering of thanksgiving. It's an offering of saying, this is pretty cool. We thank you, Lord, for what you've done for us. We want to honour you. I want you to take careful note of something, though. They know it wasn't directed by God to do this. He did it as a response to God. As a response to all the hard aches done, the being 335 days in an ark full of smelly animals and everything else was going on. After putting up with that, his response was, let's worship God. This year in 2026, it is our heart, it's my heart, that we worship God as a first response. We take the time not to react as a humanity, but to just put ourselves back a step and respond to God and say, Lord, we want to thank you for what you've done. We're going to do that in a moment when we gather round the table. Not just yet, not just yet. It was an act of worship before anything else. Years ago, it was to challenge people, particularly the young people in church, about what you do together in your time. I used to say to them, some of you might remember this if you're still here. Do you guys ever pray together just randomly? They sort of look at your funny. What do you mean? Well, if you're out on a day trip somewhere, up at the falls up behind Malaney, or you're down the beach, do you ever just gather round and pray and say, oh, sometimes they're not all the time, Doug? And I said, why not? And they sort of looked at me and said, oh, I don't know. When I first became a Christian, there was three fellas. I was 19, I became 18 when I became a Christian. There were three fellas who absolutely astounded me with their priority in life. They all played football in the local rugby league club. They're all blokey blokes. They had cars that did great burnouts on wet grass. They had all these other things. The thing that got to me most when my Christian walk was this big was that someone would say, man, I'm having a struggle today. Oh, I just had a bad attitude this morning. Let's pray. And they stopped and pray. I remember walking to church one day. The woman I was going to marry was already in church. I didn't know, well, I wanted to marry her, but she didn't know I wanted to marry her. She was in church, and I wanted to get in there and sit beside her before someone else took the seat. We were walking to church one day, and these guys were walking in, and one said, just stop and pray. And they prayed in the doorway of the church. What a challenge. It sat me right on my back of my heels and went, wow. So when we make God a priority, it doesn't matter when he prompts us, we act and obey. It doesn't take a deluge. It doesn't take a flood. It doesn't take all the storms in life. But 2026, my heart for you, we will respond by praying at the drop of a hat, that you respond in worship, that you respond in such a way that you can only give glory to God. You see, built an altar because that was what the culture was talking about at the time. And there's a whole lot of theories about what the writers of commentaries say. One of them said this, is that from this redemptive work of social grace, the blessings of common grace were known. You see, worship in the word in Scripture, particularly in the Greek, word worship means to serve or render worship too. It means to put somebody up on high. So when Noah was worshiping God with the altar, he was lifting him up. He was saying, you are my God. You get where I'm coming from now? It's going to be an interesting year, because God's going to do some great stuff. So there was worship before anything else. Anything else happened? There was worship. I love that. It was Noah's priority. It was Noah's model for his family. It was certainly unprovoked and directed action against God. Didn't say this was the rules. The rules say should do this. That is why today the sermon is one song in, because there is no rule for sermoning. And where it is, that's why the communion is in the middle of the sermon. It's not at the end of the service, and the sermon's not one song before the end of the service. It's about understanding what God is saying to our hearts. He was celebrating because the world was transformed. Would it be great if our world was transformed? Transformed by the Spirit of God. People coming to know Jesus as Lord and Saviour, because no church would be big enough. We'd be in home churches all over the panic, all over the place. It was a new season, and his heart was, let's begin with worship. I might ask the stewards to come out, please, for serving communion. You guys want to come out and have a seat? Do what you need to do to get your heart and mind ready? Because worship was before, during, and after. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 5.17, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, and the new has come. Everyone in Christ is a new creation. The old is gone, and the new has come. So the new things that are happening, God is there waiting. New things happening in your life, God is ready to talk to you about it. The new decisions you make, God is ready to challenge you about those, and walk with you through them. Exodus 13, 34, 13 gives us a focus of our priorities every day. Do not worship any other God for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. How are you going so far? Going okay. When we do things every day, when we ask God every day, Lord, show them as teachers that have been you. There's a little prayer that I say, not as often as I'd like, but it's, Lord, when I wake up, Lord, how can I honour you today? Those few simple words, when we pray those words, we ask God to walk with us in every aspect of our day. God, how can I honour you today? What do you want to do, Lord, in my life? I know I've got work, I've got to get the kids to school, I know there's all this pressures that are happening, and I've got to make sure it's my time to buy morning tea for the church office, and I know that half the church office is on diets now, so I can't go buy cream buns anymore. I could buy cream bun for one, maybe two, I know, only half of us are on diet. But it means, I suppose, is, Lord, how can I honour you today? What is something, Lord, you want to change in me? If we're going to worship God before, during and after, we have to be able to discern distractions. This is a tough one to get ahead around sometimes. In Romans 1.25, Paul writes, They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised. The thought I had when I came to this point was that how many times do we hear about all these people in the world who preach the gospel or say to preach the gospel or have an ulterior motive? How many popular authors out there are sold in Christian bookstores but aren't really living a lifestyle that's honouring of God? It's a challenge for us to know what that is, to discern the distractions, discern the things that alienate us from God's intention for us, discern what is saying, God, is this really what you're saying, or is this some teaching that someone else has developed and it sounds really good? But it's not based on the word of God really. Dissern distractions. We have an unshakable kingdom in Hebrews 12.28. Therefore, since we have received the kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful so that through worshiping God, acceptably with reverence and awe, put him in the priority he is in his life. Make sure that he has this way of connecting with you where you say, Lord, I just need you to speak to me how I understand it. Because I've got these preconceived notions of yours and I don't want them to be there. I want you to speak through the truth to me in all these circumstances. And the time is now. John 23, 24. A time is coming and has come when true worshipers will worship the Father in the spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. Folks, we're going to have communion now and I believe the word of God is kaka, and there it goes. Not being disrespectful, that was a code word that someone in the sound room decided that was appropriate. Before we take you in, we're going to read this past the scripture to you that is only reserved for funerals. You'll understand why when you hear it, but it has this deep meaning for us in it. It's from John 14, verse one to four. You do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. My Father's house has many rooms. If they were not so, I would have told you that I am going, not going there, to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will return. And I'll come back and take you with me so that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place I'm going. As we take him in today, Jesus said when he was sitting with the disciples, do this in remembrance of me. In 1 Corinthians 11, he said, do this until I come again. The promise is there that Jesus, because he died on the cross and ascended the Father, is going to come again. He's gone to prepare a place for us. That is why we celebrate communion. I call this worship at the table, because we're worshiping God. It's almost like the altar, I suppose, in some way is some loose connection to what Noah did. But as you take the elements today, just spend some time saying, Lord, thank you for what you did on the cross for me. Lord, I really appreciate that. Lord, if there's any way in me that's not right, please deal with me right now. It says in Corinthians, not to take it in an unworthy manner. And so my heart for you today, as you take communion, you'll do business with God. If you feel it needs to pass by, let it pass by. No one's going to judge you. And folks, I just ask you to just sit and think about the Lord as I pray. And as the elements are handed out in a moment, what God has done for you. How can we worship and honour him as our first response in 2026? Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that as we gather around the table today, Lord, our mind goes back in history to the time when you sat with your disciples. Father, you took the bread and you broke it and said, this is the covenant of my body broken for you. Well, we know you died on the cross for us. Father, you took the cup at the end of the meal and you gave thanks. And Lord, you poured it out and said, this is my blood which I spilled for you. Well, there are symbols for us today. Father, we look forward to the time that you come again. Lord, we want to follow through on that promise and what it means Lord, to grow in God with you. And Father, as we participate today, just speak to our hearts, we pray. Lord, you're good and gracious, God, accept us right where we are. Lord, if we need to confess in prayer, Father, just we know you'll receive that confession and restore us and rightfulness. We give you thanks for who you are and your name, amen. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. Father, please. Romans 12, 1 and 2 says, Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is true and proper worship. Father, we give you thanks and praise, you Lord, for who you are. Thank you, Lord, for your son, Jesus, who came as an offering for us, Lord, to take away our sin. Thank you, Lord, it gives us an opportunity, Lord, to be in relationship with you, heavenly Father. Father, that's what we remember today. Father, we thank you for that. Which is, if you thanks and praise in your name, amen. Let's drink together. In sports training, when I was teaching athletes to run and jump, Mackinlay Dayes is a PE teacher. At the time, the studies show that it takes nine weeks to take an incorrect behaviour or movement of the body and correct it so that it's more efficient. So we would look at every aspect of the athlete. I would watch how they ran. I would watch how their arms moved with their heads sat. I would watch how their foot struck the ground. It's called foot strike, toe strike. I'd watch the kick up at the back, how high the heel come up towards the buttocks. I'd watch for knee drive. And piece by piece, we would go through and change that over. And it took a lot of discipline. It took hard work. It took focus to take those little things and just tweak them a little bit, bit by bit, until they became proficient. There was one young lady I was blessed to work with. Went from the third in the country to the fourth in the country, sorry, and fouling out all the time to being the national long jump champion. A runner that went from being fourth and fifth to being the national champion for their age. Because we just looked at how it worked and God does that with our life. He looks at the little tiny things in our life and he says, I want to tweak this here and I tweak that there. I'm not sure if that's what Noah had in mind when he built the altar. He wasn't trying to win athletes over or make people out to be good at their sport or whatever it is they do. But godly discipline enables godly habits to form. And that's an important thing. And the question I have for you today, the challenge I have for you is what's going to change for you now? What is God saying in your heart? I need to tweak this now. I need to take this little bit of inefficiency and turn it into efficiency. As you consider that, consider also how that happens. It doesn't come from sometimes reading a book. Sometimes it just comes simply from God's Word. And we read God's Word for inspiration and not satisfaction. So we're going to worship before, during and after. We need to read God's Word for inspiration, not satisfaction. We don't read it and go, I'm doing that right. Thank you Jesus with a Paul Hagan headwobble. But we read it for inspiration. Lord, how can you inspire us today? Lord, it was something we can turn around. Avoid demanding from God. This is a biggie. Well, we want it on our terms and conditions. We wanted him to sign the contract. I want to do it this way, Lord. Just bless me while I do it, will you? Lord, we want to do this as a church. Just bless us as we go. Lord, before we even do anything, Father, we just want to do it this way. Can I challenge you? And you're going to get a few of these coming from the pastors over the next several months. But what it means to actually seek his will first, before your thought takes over God's thought. Seek him first, not as our eyes see fit. So what's going to change for you? Perhaps that's something that can change for you. Pray his will, not my will be done. We all have this yearning to things to be a certain way. It should be done this way. Perhaps that's not God's will. But when we humbly build that altar before him, before we say, Lord, we're going to worship you and lift your name on high, what are you saying to our hearts and minds? And lastly, scripture first. Prayer, then go back to scripture. That is how God communicates. You notice up on the screen, we've got a symbol for transformation and we've got the symbol for inform. We inform through God's word and transform through his spirit. Through his word and spirit. Part of our values of our church. They're not just there to placate somebody for a corporate image. They're there to say, this is what we value as believers in Jesus Christ. As a church, we want these things to be part of our life. I encourage you to grab hold of those. So the church has walked on a God. What does that look like for us as we bring the message to a place? Prioritise his word. You might want to do something like read a Bible in a year. You might want to change that in your life. Don't make it a resolution. Just make it a discipline. Discipline, godly discipline builds godly habits. You might say, I'm going to read the Bible in a year. I'm going to listen to a podcast. I'm going to listen to the auditory Bible. I'm going to put things into place where it says, I'm going to create a daily journal of my prayers for God. Not write down your thoughts or your feelings, but actually write down as prayers for God. That's a bit of a challenge. Make sure you discern distractions. You've got to discern those distractions. Make sure you understand, Lord, is this distracting from what you want me to do? Or is this something I am allowing other people to tell me to do? And lastly, seek his revelation and his will. There's going to be some challenges coming out in the first term. What that looks like for us as a church is to seek his revelation, his will, for us as a body of Christ, as a living body of Christ, his hands and feet in this area. What's going to change for you? Is anything going to change? For the remainder of the service, and Dylan's going to lead us through that, Pastor Dylan, we're going to sing some songs about worship. I'm going to ask you to reflect upon what God has said in your heart today. So worship team, if you'd like to come up, reflect upon what God's saying in your heart today. And if God is doing business with you today, can I ask you to let somebody know that he's impacted your life today? Just a simple word. Just, I need to change this. God has told me that. I really believe this word. Can you keep me accountable? I believe Dylan spoke about that several weeks ago about accountability to each other. As we pray, as we worship in song, I pray that God will continue to work in you today and for the rest of the week, for the rest of the year. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that you called us to you by name. Father, thank you, Lord, that we call upon your name, we are saved. Well, thank you that when Noah sat, Lord, at that altar, Lord, and he did the offering, his father, his first response was to honour you for all that had happened and all that will happen. Lord, we want to honour you today and keep honouring you, Lord. Help us, Lord, to worship you in spirit and truth. Father, help us to be truth with ourselves. But, Lord, you are God of grace and mercy. Father, I pray for those who you've talked to today. Father, they've been prompted by your spirit. Lord, let enable them to respond. Let Father respond to you, the loving God, not to the pastors or not to me or anyone else, but, Lord, to you, responding to you, Jesus. We give you thanks for who you are. Your name, amen.