A Banner Year

2012 was a fantastic year for me. In fact, I could say that it was a banner year. If you don’t know what that means, it means that I had the best year of my life until now. I had spent, like I do most of my last days in any given year in intensive prayer. Those prayers however were, for the first time this year transformed into something more of a thanksgiving offering than prayer requests. In my quiet time a few months ago I came upon this verse: Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Till now the Lord has helped us.” – 1 Samuel 7:12.   What I didn’t explain to the kids this morning was that human nature so easily forgets that we can’t presume anything about what God will or will not do for us. However, when we are repentant and therefore dependent on Him—which is to have trust and confidence, then we find ourselves in the midst of triumphant blessing—a place where we can raise our banners in victory and say, “Our God has saved us.” The rock that Samuel placed was not just a rock. Its signified a victory, a new plateau in a life of faith. It was a sign for all people of what actually happened and that what happened was not at all expected. I look back on my life and I see time and time again where God has helped me:

• When I was only little, scared of storms.
• When I was just a kid and frightened of growing up.
• When I was a teenager, worried about what people would think.
• When I was at university, excited to step out into a whole new world.

And today I remember, I remember how God has been with me, all along and I know he will continue to help me.

• When I’m scared of the storms raging all around me.
• When I’m frightened of what God has put out before me and the change he is working in me.
• When I worry about what others think of what I do or what I say.
• As I step out to do the amazing things he gives me to do.
• As he teaches me wonderful things in the trials and triumphs.
• When it all seems so much and I’m overwhelmed by the emotional business of life.

See, until now, the LORD helped us, each and every single one of us. And I get these bursts of creativity that I usually don’t get, but I said, “God, why is it so hard for us to pray repentantly and have our people pray with us?” Secondly, I said, “God, why can’t I remember how God has helped us?” I attribute the second to really bad memory. The first, is our unwillingness to feel vulnerable. That brings us to something new. I know not that many people actually utilize the redemption website. I don’t really advertise outside of the quiet times, which get 95% of the hits anyways, but now I programmed another area into the website that, in its simplest form is just a message board. Creatively speaking, it is a vehicle to capture prayer requests and peoples responses to those prayer requests; and likewise, for people to share their successes—their Ebenezer moments with the body of Christ. I know this is no different than facebook, but it is more intimate, it’s just for us. So if you never seen it before, check out the nyredemption.com website. You can download podcasts and see pictures and view a few videos; but if you check in every day, you’ll find a brand new quiet time to help you read the scripture because reading scripture changes your life. But you’ll also find a whole bunch of new web content moving into the site like streaming videos—that’s right, we’re going to rebroadcast Sunday worship services. We did this a few years ago but the technology wasn’t there yet. I think we have the technology now to do a fantastic job. But that’s not the point of this sermon to sell you a bunch of stuff. This afternoon, for our last Sunday together before 2013, I want us to look at our lives through two lenses from the Bible that we’re going to read. Through those two lenses that we read, I want us to take account of whether or not it was a banner year and then decide what we will do in honor of that in 2013 to make the next year a banner year. This first lens is the traditional look of what a banner year can be described as. Luke 12:13-21. Someone in the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you? And he said to them, Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. And he told them a parable, saying, The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, “What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?” And he said, “I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. “But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. When we read this passage, it is simple: this guy had a banner year. He had so much that year that he decided to tear down his existing barns and build bigger ones and then retire early to enjoy his life. This is the American dream. This is why so many people play the lotto. This is why we have bubbles in our financial system. This is also the reason we have crashes in our economy. We want for ourselves more than we need. Moreover, we want a place to put all that stuff we don’t need. We see very clearly here that the priorities of this guy were misguided—I mean that is the punch line: “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” Trust me; this is not a sermon on giving more to church or about being generous. This is simply a lens by which we need to take account of ourselves when we are experiencing good times. It’s easy to experience material success. There was a period in my life where my income dwarfed my previous year’s income and I’m going to tell you, it was good. I gave God thanks all the time; I gave a lot of offerings to God. But I did just like this rich guy—I wanted to tear down my barns, that is, I wanted to make that income and do with it stupid things (aka, relax, eat, drink and be merry). That was the wrong attitude. At some point, I valued this status then I did the God who got me there. I took my banner years and forgot God. I didn’t invest it in the right places. I made my banner the only thing and made God, who gave me those things nothing. Richness toward God is not giving offering to Him. He doesn’t need money. Richness toward God is the depth of your relationship with God. I know this from experience but if you’re too involved in one relationship, other relationships tend to fade to black. God wants us to love Him whole heartedly and likewise in love with Him means loving His people. I didn’t love His people. Usually when we have materially banner years (that is a great year, if you don’t know) we tend to have relationally frail years in that same time period. Jesus tells this parable to two guys who wanted to ruin their relationship over something that doesn’t last. Let’s forget about sharing and what not. This has nothing to do with that. Jesus is implying that a materially banner year, which are the only ones we celebrate in a capitalistic society, may not necessarily mean anything. Now, let’s flip the lens. 1 Kings 17:8-16. Then the word of the Lord came to him, Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you. So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink. And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.    And she said, as the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die. And Elijah said to her, do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.” And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah. If you don’t know what’s going on, I’ll explain it to you. Elijah went to a city in Sidon in the midst of a three year drought that he prophesized to King Ahab and his number one enemy Jezebel. You may have heard of her. Well anyways, Jezebel, the Queen of Israel, who was also a nasty woman that could only be compared to in history to the likes of Marie Antoinette and Bloody Mary. Long story short, Elijah was Israel’s number one enemy against the state. So what did he do? He went over to Sidon, the homeland of the queen of Israel and therefore she being nobility in that country also, he hid there—in the home of his enemy. Yeah, it’s irony, but most true stories are. Okay, moving on. It is clear from verse 8 that the widow was poor and ready to eat the last of her food with her son and die of starvation because there was nothing. She was gathering sticks in desperation. Let me make it more clear for you what picture is being painted here: she didn’t even have a fuel for a fire, so she was picking up scraps on the streets of the city to make something. You know how dire this is when you have nothing. She was obviously not having a banner year. She was having just the opposite. Yet, it was her desperation and her obedience and her willingness to put God first that made her horrible year a banner year. She didn’t have a banner year because she saved it. She had a banner year in spending her oil. The widow invested into the life of Elijah, who she didn’t know from her left hand, but this is love. When we invest in the lives of other people in the name of God, so richly that despite what’s going on in our lives, we can do that, that God provides miraculously and curiously. When I was seven years old my parents went bankrupt—their business failed and they had more debt than you can imagine. It wasn’t as if they were bad business people, it was that the economy tanked and as the economy tanks, so do service industries. Anyways, one day after school in the winter time we came home to an apartment with no power. My parents couldn’t pay the electric bill and they shut off the electricity. Downstairs from our apartment lived a large family in an even smaller apartment—they were really poor too. I remember it clearly. But what ended up happening was that my folks had evangelized to this Hindu family and they converted to Christianity and gave their lives to Jesus. This family ran a series of extension cords, I remember this, to our house and unplugged their lights so that we could have light and heat. That was a banner year for my folks and for that family. God did something that year. For us in 2011 and 2012, our church had a banner year. We did things. We shared things. We had banner years. But now is time to set up our stone and say, “Till now the Lord has helped us.”  More than that, I want us to, in 2013, to be stewards for God and give God everything. I want us to give God everything and see that we raise God’s banner high every single year of our lives. I want to tell you that in 2013 that this is it. We will have an unprecedented year. We’re going to be rich in God. We’re going to give everything away to God and we will see how God provides. People’s lives will be changed. People will experience God in a way that we can’t imagine. I want us to pray right now. How is this our banner year? Can we make a banner year in 2013? Let’s pray.