Resolution Keeper

Good morning. I’m Pastor Ben, and it’s my privilege to share from God’s Word with you this morning. A special welcome to anyone that’s a guest here this morning.

We’re glad that you’re joining us. If I haven’t had a chance to meet you, I’ll be in the West Lobby following the service. Would love to connect with you.

I’ll also welcome those that are joining us online, and especially First Lutheran and Algonac as they’re streaming this in as well. And congratulations, you all know that today’s Sunday. I feel like between Christmas and New Years, does anybody else get thrown off and start to wonder what day it is? You all did it.

Congratulations. We’re glad that you’re joining us. And this is an interesting time of year, isn’t it? Between Christmas and New Years, this is a time that can often lead to reflection, you know, on the year past.

You know, how’d last year go? What were the highs and the lows? What went well? What didn’t go well? And then begin to forecast a little bit to what do you want 2026 to look like? It’s not something that’s, I think, unique to us. All people do this at different times, and God’s Word actually has something to say about it as well. In Psalm 90, verse 12, it says this, And the best use doesn’t mean cram in more and try to be more productive, but we’re going to see what does the best use look like? How do we number our days? How do we live with a heart of wisdom? And so if you’re in that mode right now of kind of looking back or looking ahead, how many of you made some kind of resolution like this last year? That you told yourself, this is the year I’m going to get healthy.

This is the year I’m going to have more family time. You know what? We’re going to unplug. I’m going to turn the phone off.

I’m going to be present with the family. I’m going to not spend so much time at work. I’m going to be there.

Or you’re going to get your finances in order. We’re going to save something. We have a goal in mind.

We’re going to get that all squared away. Or you know what? This is the year I’m going to get serious about God. Anyone out there making any resolutions like that last year? Resolution people out there? You guys all have perfect lives.

Okay, maybe I’m preaching to two people this morning. Maybe you’re not resolution makers, but what I find interesting, all of us goals, all of us make assessments, and maybe it doesn’t just happen in January, right? But what I find interesting about a lot of the different goals, a lot of different resolutions that we make, when we assess and we see, you know what? There’s some type of deficit in my life. I’m not really performing as well as I could in a certain area.

I want to do a little bit better. It’s not usually an information problem. It’s an execution problem, isn’t it? We know, but we don’t do it.

We know what helps our health, don’t we? A pop quiz. Okay, if you had like a kale salad in front of you, or a box of Krispy Kremes, which one’s healthier? Binge watching Netflix or going for a walk? Does anyone know which one’s healthier? Right? Do we know? We know what to do, don’t we? What about your relationships? Ignoring them, treating them like your servants, or serving them, loving them. Do we know how to love our families well? Do we know how to balance our finances? Maybe there’s different tricks and tips and things about that, but you spend less than you take in, you know, in case anyone didn’t know, and then that kind of helps that out.

What about this last one? Feeding on God’s Word matters. Spending time with God, but we don’t do it. We live in a time where we have more access to God’s Word than any other generation before, right? Like, all of you have a Bible on your phone right now.

If any of you have a phone, or if you need a Bible, we have Bibles for you. That there was a time that this wasn’t freely available. That before even the printing press, even 500 years ago, that you would have to go to a church, you’d have to go to a library, that you just have to memorize what scripture was spoken to you.

But all of us have the entire Bible, and you can listen to it in NIV, NLT, ESV. You can read, you can actually have it. Did you know it? You can have it read it to you, but yeah, you can have it in Snoop Dogg’s voice read it to you.

Okay, so you’ll all be trying that out later. Maybe that’s the New Year’s resolution. I’m gonna listen to the whole Bible read by Snoop Dogg.

We know, we know it’s valuable, don’t we, to spend time in God’s Word, but do we do it? Do we do it as often as we should? Looking back on this last year, maybe it was scripture, maybe it was something else. Was there an area where you clearly knew what to do, and you still didn’t do it? I’m not in the habit of making New Year’s resolutions. Every now and again, though, we’ll set different goals, and in a different season of life, before kiddos and all that, my wife and I, we’re trying to be really healthy.

We’re doing all sorts of exercise, and we did something called a Whole 30. It was popular back at that time, and it is a diet, extreme elimination type diet that you do for, how many days do you think? 30. You guys are really sharp this morning.

So 30 days, 30 days, no legumes, no grains, no sugar, no preservatives, no alcohol, no fun whatsoever. For 30 days, you just have to be miserable. You can’t go out to eat because you have to have it cooked in certain oils.

It is an extreme elimination thing, and we were going through it, and you’re supposed to go for 30 days, but I remember it was somewhere in the like 22 days or so that we’re into this, and you know, my wife and I are in on it together. We’re doing it together. We’re cooking together.

It’s been going great, and then all of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue to me, my wife comes to me sobbing that she needed chocolate, and then to put me in this weird space as a husband, so I had a couple of choices in front of me. So am I the enabler that gives her chocolate so she stops crying, but then when the chocolate’s gone, I’ll be in the crosshairs because why in the world did I give her the chocolate? Or am I the mean guy that says, hey, we’re doing the whole 30. We’re not doing it.

I don’t even remember how I responded. I probably just walked away and just like, you know what? This is your call. You know, we didn’t make it the whole 30 days, but we knew exactly what to do.

We knew what we were supposed to eliminate, but it came down to this point where we’re like, you know what? It’s just not worth it. It’s just not worth continuing forward with it. We’re going to look at a couple of different texts this morning.

The first one I want to look at is in the Old Testament, and what’s interesting about this text is actually the king that we’re going to be taking a look at didn’t have the correct information. It wasn’t just a matter of execution. He actually didn’t have the information.

So in the book of Second Kings, we’re going to be looking at King Josiah, and he did not have a great dad, and he really didn’t have a great grandpa. See, his grandpa was the king Manasseh, who was the worst king in Judah. He brought in a bunch of idol worship that there was tons of idolatry going on.

There was tons of bloodshed. There was worship to idols taking place where it should have been taking place for God, and there’s actually a scripture that says that he sacrificed one of his children to a false god. So that’s grandpa.

Dear old dad did not fall far from the tree, but he had a very short-lived kingship. He only was king, I think, for about two years before he was assassinated. So then at the age of eight years old, Josiah becomes king.

I have an eight-year-old. The idea of an eight-year-old ruling a kingdom, that’s a bizarre thought. But so he has grandpa, he has dear old dad that were horrible, horrible kings, did not show him the way of God, did not show him how to be a good king, did not show him God’s word, and so he’s starting with a deficit.

But then all of a sudden, a unique thing happens. They’re doing some spring cleaning. They’re cleaning up the temple, and here’s what happens.

We’ll pick up in Kings 22, starting in verse 8. And Hilkiah the high priest said to Saphon the secretary, just quick note there, many of you know we have our fourth one that we’re expecting. I’m thinking Hilkiah. I would try to run it by my wife.

I don’t know if she’s going to take on it. Saphon’s not bad either. Hilkiah the high priest said to Saphon the secretary, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.

That is to say, they found a scroll that was either the entire Torah, the five, first five books of the Bible that Moses wrote, or it could have the very least been the book of Deuteronomy. This is so bizarre. I mean, even just that first verse there, that hey, we were in the house of God.

We were in the temple, and guess what? We found the Bible. What an interesting thing. But that will tell you what disarray that this kingdom was at this point.

Because surely all of us have experienced something lost in your house, right? You could lose your keys. You could lose this or that. In my house, you know, it is like DEFCON 4 whenever library books are due, right? You have to flip everything over and find it and make sure that you’re not paying for those books that you can just simply return them.

This is not some simple toy. This isn’t a remote. This isn’t a set of eyeglasses.

This is the word of the living God to the people at the time that God has chosen in God’s temple, and they didn’t know where it was. They stumbled across it. So Hilkiah, the high priest, he gave it to Saphon, and they read it, and they decide, you know what? We have to go give this.

And at the end of this, it says, and Saphon, the secretary, told the king, Hilkiah, the high priest, has given me this book. Look what we found. Look it.

We found God’s word, and Saphon read it before the king. And up into this point, he’s no longer eight years old. He’s in his 30s at this point.

King Josiah has had not heard this word, and what he has seen and what he has endured from the kingdom that his grandfather and his father had established is a bunch of idol worship. And when he hears the book of the law, when he hears God’s word, he tears his robes. It’s not a very familiar thing for us, but for him in that culture, tearing his robes is a sign of deep grief and repentance.

When he hears how things should be, and he sees the contrast with how they are, he doesn’t just go, well, you know what? That’s what that scroll says. Let’s go ahead and take a look at some other things. He doesn’t sit in judgment, I would say, over God’s word, but rather he sits under God’s word.

And as he stands under, sits under God’s word, he sees that he is a far, far cry from the standard that God had set up. He then sends a few of his men to go talk to a prophet. The prophet then speaks back to him these words of God.

For the king of Judah who sent you to inquire the Lord, this is the prophet speaking, thus says to you, say to him, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, regarding the word that you have heard, because your heart was penitent, because you were contrite, because you had a repentant heart, and you humbled yourself before the Lord, when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they should be a desolation and a curse. That’s what God has spoken. God’s people are so far from him that he wants nothing to do with them.

Yet you have torn your clothes and wept before me, and I have heard you, declares the Lord, therefore I will gather you to your fathers. That is to say, you are going to die and you’re going to be with your fathers, and they shall be gathered to the grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see the disaster that I will bring upon this place. So this is the word that he hears.

He hears God’s law. He sees how far they are from it. And then he hears this, you know what, all these people are going to go to exile.

They’re going to be sent away, but you, because of your response, you know, you’re going to die and you’re going to stay here. You don’t have to see all that is going to go on because of his repentance. What’s really interesting, though, is it doesn’t stop there.

He knows what is to come for him, and he knows what is to come for his people, yet he still leads a massive reform within the kingdom. If you go into Kings 23, you see that it just goes through each segment of that chapter where he is going through. He’s removing idols, because there are literally idols in the temple of God.

There are idols in these high places. There are called prostitutes. There are all sorts of terrible things going on.

He cleanses the temple. He detains all the false priests and all these people that were practicing magic and occult practices. He restores proper worship of God, and he also then renews or reestablishes the covenant, and he keeps the Passover, because the Passover hasn’t been celebrated for years.

He does all this knowing full well that exile is still to come, but he still needed a reform. He still was cut to the heart of what God had called him to do. What I find interesting as we look at this is that reforms and resolutions, they aren’t enough.

You can clean up your habits. You can organize your schedule. You can organize your closet.

You can organize that one junk drawer in your house. You can get your routines in order, and it still will not fix what is most deeply wrong with you. It didn’t stop him from trying to fix it, but it still will not fix what is most deeply wrong with you, that we can have everything looking good on the outside, and that’s what we often try to do.

What are these areas that are frontward facing, that other people see, that I can clean up? And to bring it home for us, I have a few questions for you this morning. If you think about your resolutions, your goals, the ways that you assess your own life, and that you try to plan accordingly, think of it this way. If you kept every resolution or every goal that you set for yourself, whose life would mainly get better? Would it be your life or your neighbor’s life? Said another way, if every prayer that you prayed this last year, 2025, was answered, whose life would be better? Your life or your neighbor’s life? If every resolution that you set out to do, would God be more glorified in your life and the way that you live it, or would you just feel more impressive and more in control of your own life? Because I believe, oftentimes, that we set goals forth that may be good, but if we actually get to the heart of it, what we’re ultimately trying to do is to try to grab control or try to compare ourselves to others, and hey, if I obtain this goal, then I’m going to be doing a little bit better than the Joneses, and then I’m going to feel a little bit better about myself.

I’ve assessed myself, and as long as I’m doing better than them, then I’m okay. I mentioned we’re going to be bouncing around a little bit, and so we were in the Old Testament. We’re going to jump to the New Testament, because this really gets to the heart of it.

Paul, writing to the church in Rome, sets everything up. He shares the gospel with them. He shares that you’re justified by faith, not by works.

He establishes all of that, and then even after that, as he moves forward in his letter to them, you come upon this chapter, Romans chapter 7, is a unique chapter here. We’re going to pick up in the middle of it. It says this, the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold under sin.

What he’s telling us is that there is a spiritual battle. There is a battle between your flesh and between the spirit, and it still rages forward, and then he continues forward and explains what does this battle feel like. In verse 18, for I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh.

For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is is what I keep doing. That we can know.

We know what to do. We know how to love our families well. We know how to balance things.

We know how to eat well. We know how to open our Bibles. We know how to read our Bibles.

We know how to spend time in prayer. We know how to get to church on Sunday. We know how to do these things, yet we don’t do them.

That we can have the desire, that this new spirit that’s alive in each of us as baptized believers, that we have it, but it also says that you have the desire, but you don’t have the ability. This is not what bad Christians feel like, by the way. This is what honest Christians feel like, and if you don’t feel like this, we’ll see in just a second.

So he goes on and he says, so I find it to be the law that when I want to do what is right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, because God’s law is good in my inner being, but I see my members. Another law that is waging war against the law of my mind and makes me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

That there is this ongoing battle, an ongoing struggle, knowing God’s word, having this renewed spirit, having the Holy Spirit work within you and convict you and point out your sin, yet at the same time still having this flesh that we’re tied to. And then he cries out, Paul cries out, here this super apostle wrote the majority of the New Testament, transformed in an extraordinary way, and yet he still is speaking of his own personal battle after his conversion. And he cries out in this way, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Wretched man, like I said earlier, this is not what bad Christians feel like, this is what honest Christians feel like.

And so if we’re going to do a time of reflection and a time of forecasting, a time of reflection would be good and right for us to then ask, how often have you felt wretched man that I am? When have you assessed your own life in your own walk with God and you have seen yourself so short from his perfect standard that you have felt yourself cry out in this way? Because what I would present to you is if you’ve not felt this way, if you’ve not felt the sting of the law of God’s perfect perfection and your inability to reach his perfect standard, is that then you are living under some other law that’s not his, that’s yours and self-imposed, that you’ve come up with your own rules of what self-righteousness looks like. But when we look perfectly into God’s law, and we don’t have to look at the whole Torah like Josiah did, I would just argue, just pick up the Ten Commandments, start with number one, thou shall have no other gods before me. Look at 2025, how many other times in 2025 have you put something else ahead of God? How many times have you put yourself ahead of him? How many times have you put your family ahead of him? One theologian puts it this way, that our hearts are idle factories, that we could even have good goals that we set forward.

You could even have a good goal, I’m going to read the Bible and the Satan, what he will do with that and what your sinful flesh will do with that. Look at me, I read the whole Bible in two months. Thank God that I’m not like these other people who don’t read their Bibles.

Oh thank God that I have all this stuff in order. And then you can see in an instant, wretched man that you are, puffed up in pride, thinking that you’re better than others. Because looking into God’s law, just like Josiah did, and just like Paul is experiencing, should lead to one thing, repentance.

It should cut us to the heart. And that’s just the first commandment. Walk down the line if you don’t feel it yet.

You walk down the line. Have you lusted? Have you had hatred? Have you coveted? Have you envied others? Or are you living by your own standard and not God’s? Because if you look at God’s perfect law and you don’t feel that sting of guilt and shame that leads to godly repentance, then you’re not looking to the same law that I’m looking at. This is the proper response.

And then the second thing he says here, who will deliver me from this body of death? Some scholars say that at this time, there were some cultures that if you murdered someone, that you would then have their corpse tied to you. And that you would have to drag their corpse around until you yourself died. Who will deliver me from this body of death? You still have this old atom, this old sinful nature that each of us are dragging around.

And that we will drag around until we die. To bring it home for us, ask yourself this question. Where do I need to stop pretending like I can fix myself? Before I move into 2026, is there an area where, you know what, I was thinking I was gonna, you know, make some goals.

I was gonna set some things out. I really wanted to accomplish this and that. And hear me.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with goals. I think there are good and godly goals. There are ways that God can use goals as he teaches you to number your days.

But when they take his place, when a goal and accomplishing the goal sits on his throne in your heart instead of him, it has now become a sin. And it now has become an idol that you need to cleanse from the temple of your heart. Just like Josiah cleansed them from the temple quite literally.

The good news is this. That Romans doesn’t just have seven chapters in it. Romans 7 is followed by Romans 8, which many would argue is one of the greatest chapters in all of scripture.

And it begins this way. There is therefore now, say this with me, no condemnation. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

For the law of the spirit has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. Do you see it? You cannot do it.

You have the desire. You don’t have the ability. You can do all the reform.

You can cleanse the temple. Guess what? Exile is still going to happen. You can clean up your life all you want.

You can’t do it. But by sending his son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. That all of your resolutions, all of your goals, all of your aspirations that you fall short and then I fall short and as well are accomplished in Christ.

That you don’t love your family as well as you should. You don’t read your bible as much as you should. You don’t pray as much as you should.

Yet Christ came to be perfectly righteous in all the ways that we fall short. And more than that, he didn’t become righteous for us that we might be able to follow his example, but he was so righteous that he was willing to endure the cross, take on our sin and our shame and die in our place because what we ultimately deserve because the pride and idolatry of our own hearts is separation from God. Yet Christ took that upon himself and then later in Romans, Paul asks these amazing questions.

What shall we say then if God is for us, which he is, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things? That God before he laid the foundation of the world, he knew your 2025 and he knew your 2026. He knew your shortcomings.

He knew your weakness. He knew your inability. He knew the aspirations that you would set forth in January and fall short in February.

He knew all of those things and he still chose to send his son to die in your place. That if you’re looking for assurance and confidence as you look back on a year or as you look forward to a year, you really look back 2,000 years to a cross into an empty tomb knowing that God loved you enough to send his son and then as this chapter crescendos at the end he says, for I’m sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present or things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Your failure to keep your resolutions, your failures to follow God as you ought cannot separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

And as you move into a new year, I pray that this would be on your mind that your hope for a new year is not that you will finally keep your promises to God. Yes, 2026 is going to be different. No, it will be the same, but that God has kept all of his promises for you in Christ and all of his promises in Christ are yes and amen.

That just like Josiah, that if we do an honest assessment, we’ll see that we fall short. And just like Paul, an honest assessment, an honest Christian, we fall short. Yet we get to look to Romans 8, that he is faithful, that he is sure, that he is steady, and more than that, that it’s already done.

Jesus has something to say about this as well, and I believe that this is a helpful verse for us as we look forward to this next year. Jesus said, come to me, all who are labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Not I will give you a list to do, not that I will tell you how to be a little bit better, give you rest.

Take my yoke upon me, learn from me, for I’m gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your soul. Who would like rest for their soul today? Right here too, right? We can become weary, especially in a season like December, that we are all spinning our wheels, we’re running all sorts of different directions, we’re celebrating Christmas, we’re spending time with family, there’s so much going on, and there’s this physical tired, there’s an emotional tired, but then there’s also this spiritual tired of striving, and trying to be enough, and trying to do enough, and try to look like we’re enough, yet what Jesus is telling us, that all who come to him, they’re not given a to-do list, they’re not given chores, what they are given is rest, and rest for your soul. My prayer for you, as you head into 2026, as it is for myself, is that you would look to set up resolutions to rest, more than resolutions to do.

Resolutions to repent, instead of resolutions to puff up. So as you end this year, and you step into the next, don’t trust your resolve. As you’ve seen clearly laid out from scripture, you cannot trust yourself.

Rest in God’s resolve. Your resolutions may fail, your resolutions will fail. His resolve to save you never will.

And so in just a moment, we’re going to sing a new song, one that I’ve been singing over the last couple of weeks, it’s called, He Will Hold Me Fast. And you’ve seen this chorus again, and again, and again, that He will hold you fast. Even has this line here, that when I fear my faith, even my faith in Christ, if I fear that will fail, He, the one who began a good work in me, will bring it to completion.

The one who’s gifted me this faith, is firmly holding me in the palm of my hand. And recognize this, that your 2025 and your 2026 happen in the same place, in the palm of His hand. So despite whatever is thrown at you by the world, or whatever transpires even in your own heart over the course this next year, I pray that you continue to return to this place of rest, knowing full well that you are in your Savior’s loving hands.

And that because of that, you can have rest. Amen? At this time, I invite you to pray with me. Gracious Heavenly Father, God, we thank you for your word.

God, we thank you for the reminder through your word too, that far too often, God, we are far from you in our thoughts, and our words, and our deeds. God, that we don’t love you as we ought. We don’t love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

And God, as we hear that, we should be led to godly repentance. And the reason that we can come before you to repent of our pride, and of our selfishness, is that we know full well that you’re a merciful and gracious God, and that you have already forgiven us in Christ Jesus in all that He has done for us through the cross, and through the empty tomb. God, I pray as we move into 2026, that your all-sufficient work would be on our mind.

That we would be able to live our lives as believers from a place of rest in you, that we might love others well. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.