Sermon Starters: God-Given Resolutions

Brookside Wesleyan Church, Wellsville, NY
January 2, 2022

Text: Micah 6:6-8

Prayer

Intro: New Year's Resolutions

• Did you make any? Have you already broken any? The person who resolved to get to start getting to work on time and overslept the first day.
• 27% break their resolutions by the first week of January.
• Most exercise resolutions are through by January 12.
• 41% don't last more than a month
• Over half have stopped by six months.
• 80% of resolutions fail by end of year.
• What if we let the Lord make our new year's resolutions? What would he set for us?

1. God wants us to do justice. (mishpat)

• Harry Potter 5, getting expelled from Hogwarts... "Justice"
• We don't always agree about what justice would be -- e.g., discussions about whether certain people should be acquitted or not?
• What is justice like for God in the prophets?
• In Micah 6:11 -- "wicked scales" -- people who cheat other people out of greed
• In Micah 3:1 -- abuse of power by leaders, those who take bribes and thus favor the rich and powerful
• Captain America -- "I don't want to kill anyone. I just don't like bullies."
• Chickens in the yard -- We have too many roosters. Our head rooster takes care of the hens.
• Zechariah 7:9-10 -- "Thus says the LORD of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy each to his brother do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart."
• That's what biblical justice looks like.

2. God wants us to love mercy. (hesed)

• Hesed is perhaps the richest of all Hebrew words. It is one of the most frequent descriptions of God's nature in the Old Testament. 
• Jonah 4:2 -- "Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity."
• The story of Jonah and Nineveh -- his actions and attitudes are the opposite of hesed. God wants to see Nineveh restored, even though he knows the path they are on.  

3. God wants us to walk humbly with him as our God.

• Pride in the Bible is putting ourselves in the place of authority that belongs to God.
• "The nail that sticks up is the first to get hit."
• Putting ourselves in the driver's seat -- planning to build bigger barns.
• Illustration -- "Easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission."
• Did you consult God on that project of yours?
• We are free to be servants of God.

Conclusion

• God's resolutions have more teeth than yours and mine -- we can't just throw them away when we miss a day.
• But that's not the way to think about them. God's resolutions are for our good. God's resolutions are about shaping us, not grading us.