Sermon Tone Analysis

Push Back and Press On

New Hope Baptist Church

9:30 a.m.

New Year’s Eve 2006

 

Text:  Philippians 3:12-14

 

*Introduction*:

There are many good old movies out during the holiday seasons, and at Christmas, one of my favorites is the original, 1951 Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” with Alastair Sim playing Ebenezer Scrooge.

A simple review would suggest that it’s a story about an old grouch who has forgotten the joys of life and makes it his business to dampen the spirits of all those around him, especially at Christmas time.

On a particular Christmas he is visited by three spirits:  the ghost of Christmas past; the ghost of Christmas present; and the ghost of Christmas future.

He is brought face to face with how his life, or lack of it, evolved from some major disappointments in his past, and how those things from his past has dictated how he thinks about and lives life.

I want that movie or aspects of it to be the catalyst for our message this morning.

Here we are, New Year’s Eve, 2006.

We are almost at a place from where we can look over into 2007, yet not quite.

Some of us may be in a position similar to Moses and not know it.

Remember, God allowed him to look over into the Promised Land, but he was not allowed to enter.

Yet, here we are.

What will we do with these last few hours of 2006?

Some folk have already made plans for a night of partying and celebration, and feel a little ill at ease with my mentioning it.

Some will stay home and dodge bullets, or perhaps spend the last few hours alone with that special someone.

Others will fill journals with plans and resolutions for the New Year.

For some, it will be a night like any other; a meal, a movie, a book, and loneliness.

Still others will do like many businesses and organizations, they will take inventory.

They will make a list of things they intended to accomplish or to complete in 2006 and determine how much they left undone, what they did incorrectly, what they regret doing, and everything that others did to them.

From our text today, Paul is going to tell us how to complete a proper inventory, how to respond to the leftovers of our past lives and how to forge a future.

It involves almost simultaneous actions of pushing and pressing.

You have to push back and press on.

Notice I said to push back.

It may night be always easy.

Sometimes, you have to shove, sometimes you may have to force, persuade and ram a thing, but the thing is that *you have to do it*.

No one can do it for you.

There are three things that Paul suggests that you must do as you take inventory of your lives and consider the possibilities of your futures.

You must be *delivered from your past*; *devoted to a present purpose*; and *determined to have a better future*.

*Delivered from your past:*

Unfortunately, some people get stuck or stop, when they think about what they didn’t do, what they half did; what they did wrong; or what others did to them.

The past; Stuck in the past can stall or stunt your progression into a better future.

The past where there is no hope; no light at the end of the tunnel.

When you spend too much time in the past, you become accustomed to seeing backwards.

Let me explain:  Behavioral scientists have discovered that we usually see things that we are prepared to see, and that this is all centered in a network of nerve cells called the “Reticular Activating System.”

Everybody here today has a “Reticular Activating System.”

It works like this:  Once something has been brought to your attention and you have been prepared to see it, you will see it virtually everywhere you go.

E.g.; a new car.

When you decide about a new car you begin to see them almost everywhere.

This happens in other areas of our lives too.

We see what we are prepared to see.

If we are prepared to see doom and gloom in the New Year that’s what we’ll see.

If, on the other hand, we have prepared ourselves to see sunshine and opportunities, then that is what we are going to see.

If we see ourselves as failures, if we see ourselves as weak and sickly, unworthy and limited; if we see ourselves as doomed by our pasts and products of our failures, chances are pretty good that that’s what we’ll be.

Sometimes people get stuck in the past by their own doing; sometimes because of devastating experiences, and sometimes they are stuck in the past because other people won’t *let* them forget and move on.

I propose that it makes no difference whether your past was pleasant or difficult; marked by laughter and ease or devastation and shame, the past, if visited too often or for too long, can hinder your future.

Paul had as much if not more than most people to regret.

By his own testimony in the Book of Acts, Paul describes his actions against the early believers:  he says:  “…many of the saints I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them.

And I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them to foreign cities”.

As a Christian and chief contributor to the writings of the New Testament, Paul had a lot to push back or forget.

Most persons in my age category and older struggle to *remember* what we too easily forget.

But please keep in mind that in Bible terminology, “to forget” does not mean “to fail to remember.”

Apart from senility, hypnosis, or a brain malfunction, no mature person can forget what has happened in the past.

We may wish that we could erase certain bad memories, but we cannot.

In a report to the Smithsonian Institute, Dr. Wilber Penfield of the Montreal Neurological Institute said, “Your brain contains a permanent record of your past that is like a single, continuous strip of moving film…the film library records your whole waking life from childhood on.

You can relive those scenes from your past, one at a time; [feeling] exactly the same emotions you did during the original experience.”

In the Bible “To forget”, means “no longer to be influenced by or affected by.”

When God promises, “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb.

10:17), He is not suggesting that He will conveniently have a bad memory!

This is impossible with God.

What God is saying is, “I will no longer hold their sins against them.

Their sins can no longer affect their standing with Me or influence My attitude toward them.”

*Isn’t that good news*?

In the same manner, you must not allow your past to hold you hostage.

Your pasts, no matter how daunting, should not dictate or shape or influence your future.

The story of your life has not been ruined, not by your sin or anyone else’s.

God’s good plan for your life is not buried under the mistakes of the past.

God has a plan for your life, a good plan, a wise plan, a loving plan, a sovereign plan, and that plan is still in effect.

You haven’t missed it.

He is working out that plan in your life right now, today.

I think we need to be reminded that none of us can avoid regrets.

All of us have made bad choices.

All of us have disobeyed God.

All of us have the taint of sin in our lives.

All of us are influenced by Satan’s attacks.

The important thing is to deal with our past, ask God’s forgiveness and move on with our lives as we seek to serve the Lord Jesus.*

*It’s not just *our* past failures we must forget, but the past failures and hurts of others towards us.

Most of us have probably been hurt by others in our past.

We want to pretend that we are big and have forgiven and forgotten; but until you learn to come to the place in your life where you’re not affected or influenced by it, you have not really forgotten anything from the past.

I believe I’m right because there are people in the church, sitting in pews and refusing to participate further, stewing over something somebody said or did fifty years ago to hurt their feelings.

Get over it!

Push it back and press on!

All have sinned and come short!

In the Bible we see many saints who failed.

- After asking the Israelites “How long will you falter between two opinions and defeating the prophets of Baal, Elijah ran from Jezzebel.

\\ - After coming off of the ark Noah got drunk.

\\ - After founding the Israelite nation Abraham lied.

\\ - After being chosen as the king of Israel David committed adultery.

\\ - After building the temple in Jerusalem Solomon married foreign wives.

\\ - After accepting the call of discipleship Peter denied the Lord.

All of us have failed; all of us have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.

But when it comes to *dealing* with our pasts, we often try and coven it up, alter it, excuse it or allow it to ruin us.

When we are afflicted with disease in our bodies, we want to call out to God and put Him in remembrance of some promise in scripture.

When we are laid off at work, we quote popular Scripture to ease our plight.

Whenever calamity hits us, we speak up and out.

But when it comes to being more effective in our Christian race and work for the Lord, we sit in church, with pristine attitudes and pious smiles and Satan throws past actions in our faces, and we coward.

When we run into someone from the past who knows some of the things we have managed to hide, we take a back seat.