Don’t Look Back
A New Year’s Sermon
Chuck Sligh
January 5, 2020
NOTE: A PowerPoint presentation is available for this sermon by request at chucksligh@hotmail.com. Please mention the title of the sermon and the Bible text to help me find the sermon in my archives.
TEXT: Luke 9:62 – “And Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.’” (And also turn to Psalm 103)
INTRODUCTION
Satchel Paige had a good rule for living: He said, “Don’t look back, something may be gaining on you!”
Illus. – My track coach in high school was my dad. He had many words of advice both on and off the track, but when it came to running races and relays, there was one above all others. He used to say: “Run as fast as you can, and whatever you do, don’t look back.”
The reason is three-fold:
First, looking back during a race BREAKS YOUR CONCENTRATION.
Second, it DISRUPTS YOUR FLOW OF PHYSICAL MOTION
Third, it SLOWS YOU DOWN, even if for a split second, and has been known to cause runners to lose a race by a hair in a close race.
The Bible also calls for us not to look back. In our text, Jesus said, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Looking back hinders forward progress. Looking back may be making you depressed. Looking back to the past may be bringing you defeat in the present, thus paralyzing you from action to affect your future.
The title of my message today is very simple: “Don’t Look Back.” Let me share four brief thoughts with you on that subject today:
I. FIRST, DON’T LOOK BACK AT SINS THAT HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN.
Illus. – I never will forget a lady in our church in Wiesbaden whom I’ll refer to as Jan, which is not her real name. Jan had SO many problems, both personally and in relationships with others.
One day I went to visit her and her husband and as we talked, she poured forth a succession of serious problems in her former life—one right after the other. She confessed that before her salvation, she had transgressed all Ten Commandments, not in her heart like most people, but literally she had transgressed all Ten Commandments, including 2 abortions. Though she’d since come to Christ for salvation, and experienced a changed life, she couldn’t find assurance that God had truly forgiven her of all her sins. She lived with a sense of floating guilt that beat her down and made her feel dirty and unworthy to be a Christian.
Jan suffered from “looking back-itis.” When we’re saved, God wants us to come to the realization of our full and complete pardon in Jesus Christ. So I shared the scripture in Psalm 103 I want you to see with me.
Turn to Psalm 103 for an amazing promise of God’s full pardon: “1 Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. 2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: 3 Who forgives all your iniquities; who heals all your diseases; 4 Who redeems your life from destruction; who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies. (Now go with me down to verse 8? The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. 9 He will not always chide: nor will he keep his anger forever. 10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heaven is above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those who fear him. 12 As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. 13 Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him. 14 For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”
I wonder if you believe this for others, but not for yourself. If you’ve been saved by trusting in Christ as your Savior, then God has put away ALL your sin, even your most serious ones! If our transgressions are as far as the east is from the west (that is, a distance of infinity), that means God doesn’t look back on our sins after He has forgiven them.
If HE doesn’t look back, what right do YOU have to look back at past sins?! What right do YOU have to feel the guilt of sins already paid for and forgiven?
I’ll tell you something else: when God saves us, not only does He forgive us of all our sins, but He delivers us from judgment for those sins. NEVER will the believer have to face the punishment for sins. Now, there may be natural reaping from seeds sown in the past. The alcoholic with cirrhosis of the liver is not cured when he trusts in Christ. The immoral person with an STD is not suddenly cured because she is saved.
There are the natural, temporal, PASSIVE consequences for our actions on this fallen earth, but once we’re saved, God never ACTIVELY punishes for sins in our past life. Rather, He extends to us His mercy and His grace.
GRACE is God giving us what we DO NOT deserve—forgiveness, heaven, a relationship with God, a new family, hope, purpose, guidance in life. MERCY is God NOT giving us what we DO deserve—judgment, punishment, retribution, hell, purposelessness.
In the passage I just read, look again at a couple of verses:
• Verse 4 – “Who redeems your life from destruction; who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies..…” – Brethren, in God’s tender mercies, He withholds from us the judgment we deserve. That’s mercy!
• Verses 10 – “He has not dealt with us according to our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.” (There it is: we are not rewarded according to our iniquities. We don’t get JUSTICE; we get MERCY!)
• Verse 11 – “For as high as the heaven is above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those who fear him.”
Listen, DON’T LOOK BACK! Don’t go back down the cul-de-sac of past sins and regrets. A cul-de-sac is just a fancy word for a “dead end,” and looking back at past sins is a dead-end street for sure.
II. SECOND, DON’T LOOK BACK AT DEFEATS THAT DISCOURAGE YOU.
All people have some defeats in their past as a Christian. The old saying about skeletons in people’s closets has the ring of truth to it. Only those who never attempt anything are free from failing.
But look with me at Psalm 37:23-24 and notice how God lifts up those who fall – Psalm 37:23-24 – “The steps of a good man are established by the LORD: and he delights in his way. 24 Though he falls, he shall not be cast headlong: for the LORD upholds him with his hand.”
Don’t allow failing to make you feel you’re a failure. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)
Illus. – I remember an elderly Englishman I’ll call Ian in our church in England. After being away from God for many years, he came back to God in our church and became a model Christian and had such a loving and humble spirit.
Before coming to our church, I knew he’d been away from God, but never dreamed what he was wrestling with. He was faithful and true as a Christian since he had started coming to our church, but I could always tell that there was still something haunting him. He seemed to be walking around with a heavy burden on his shoulders.
One New Years Sunday, I preached a sermon similar to this one, and towards the end, Ian—a very typical, non-emotional, stiff-upper-lip type of old-school Englishmen—was weeping in his seat by the time I read this verse.
After the sermon he came up to me and said, “Chuck, you’ll never know what that sermon meant to me. When I was young, I gave my life to God and married a godly woman, but one day, I visited a prostitute. I felt so guilty that I confessed it to my whole church. Rather than helping restore me, they cast me out and told my wife to separate from me, and we’ve been separated now for 40 years. I never stepped foot in a church again for 38 years—waiting each year for my church to restore me to fellowship. Even though I have confessed this failure in my life many, many times, I have never felt God’s forgiveness. I thought God was through with me. I thought I was a worthless, wicked pile of rubbish. I thought God could never use me again and didn’t love me anymore. I let this destroy me for 40 years and keep me from fellowship with God and other believers. Tonight, my load has been lifted and I KNOW my God has forgiven me. And I really believe that verse, I CAN do ALL THINGS through Christ who strengthens me. Pastor, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Believer, have you failed God?—Then get up off the ground and keep on keeping on! Don’t stop serving God and never quit! Never forget that God will NEVER leave you and He will NEVER forsake you and you CAN do all things through Christ who strengthens you! You can get up from the worst fall, and with God’s power that strengthens you, overcome and be useful to God.
III. THIRD, DON’T LOOK BACK AT THE PAST AND SEE IT BETTER THAN IT WAS.
The preacher in Ecclesiastes says this about the past: “Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.” (Ecclesiastes 7:10)
Numbers 11 tells us that the Israelites began to look back to Egypt, and they began to remember it fondly. This, of the place where they were under bondage and where they had been oppressed and enslaved. But now, in the present difficulties, instead of looking to the Lord, the people looked BACK to a past that really never existed.
Illus. – I only knew my grandfather on my mother’s side a few years. He died when I was about 13 years old. I only have a few memories of him, and one of them was of him sitting around talking about (DO AIR QUOTES) “the good old days.”
Listening to him, you’d think that life was a bed of roses back in the old days. In truth, it might have been SIMPLER in his day, but it was an age of death and disease before the advent of modern medicine and antibiotics. In his early years he read by candlelight because electricity was not yet available in that area of Texas. His mother had to churn their own butter, make most of their clothing, and hitch up a horse and buggy to go to town. And he had the grand experience of using an outhouse until his mid-40s! It was an era in which there were few modern conveniences—like telephones and cars, and certainly no air conditioning, televisions, computers or iPhones.
All this in (AIR QUOTES AGAIN:) “the good old days.”
Humans have a universal tendency to remember mostly the good about the past and forget much of its HEARTACHE and SORROWS. That’s a mercy from the Lord—but it can also give a false picture of the past. Somehow, distance lends enchantment to the past. It engenders a nostalgia that’s never quite honest.
Vance Havner once said, “The present is never as good as it used to be.” But the truth is that a great future beats a great past every time.
So, look to the future, not the past! Look ahead, not back. Look at the future with the eyes of hope and faith, not to a past that really only exists in your own mind. To look AHEAD with hope and faith is the truly Christian attitude.
IV. LAST, DON’T LOOK BACK AT OLD HURTS THAT MAKE YOU BITTER.
If you rehearse old hurts and conflicts, the hurt returns again and again and again. When we rehash old stuff, it reopens old wounds. Even those memories where forgiveness has taken place will become dangerous again if you keep revisiting them.
Illus. – I remember a couple who came for counseling in my church in Wiesbaden. Her husband had been a really bad husband with a terrible temper for the first 5 years of their marriage, doing some genuinely awful things.
But he came to Christ and there was a remarkable change in his life. But sometimes, when his wife would get in a blue mood, some of the old things he’d done—things she’d actually forgiven him for—popped back into her mind. And as soon as they did, she got grumpy and testy and resentful, and would dredge up all these old hurts and lash out at her husband.
After reminding him of his past mistakes for the umpteenth time, one night he just totally blew up, which she then turned against him and yelled, “See, you just confirmed it. You really haven’t changed at all.” At that, he walked out and refused to return until she agreed meet with me.
When they came, he described the final straw argument, and she admitted that it was all true. After listening through the whole thing, I said to her, “Well, you have two choices: you can keep doing what you’re doing and he’ll divorce you, or you can stop bringing up the past ONCE AND FOR ALL and save your marriage.”
And when I said, “Once and for all” I meant it. I told her that she was not only going to ruin her marriage, but her children would grow to resent her or even hate her. That’s when she broke, because her oldest teenage son already had started to despise her because of the arguing and malice and anger in their home.
That was the beginning of a new phase in their marriage. They’re still happily married today and serving God.
Turn with me to 1 Peter 2 and I’ll show you the scripture I told her to memorize: In this verse, Peter exhorts us to forget the past and get on with profitable living: 1 Peter 2:1-2 – “Therefore laying aside all malice [the Greek word, kakía here, which means ill-will, maliciousness, vicious character in general], and all deceit and hypocrisy, and envy, and all evil speaking [katalaliá, which means “backbiting”], 2 As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow up in your salvation.”
Paul says you have to lay all that junk aside. You’ve got to give it up! You’ve got to STOP it because it’s destructive and hurtful and damaging! And then he says when you lay down that stuff, pick up God’s Word and GROW in God’s grace.
Don’t look back at old conflicts that make you bitter! Forgive and forget, and stay in God’s Word and grow up in your salvation.
CONCLUSION
Well, 2019 has come and gone, and here we are in a new year. As you look back on last year, and the years before that, be careful:
• Don’t look back at sins that have been forgiven.
They’re under the blood of Jesus, so leave them there. On my son’s first Christian album is a song titled “I’m Clean” that goes like this:
Love is just a picture of your glory
And my best tries and love have fallen short
I pretend these dirty clothes are holy
Knees patched up with grace from you, O Lord
No one is righteous / But I’m not the one you see
Looking back, my past is worth forgetting
But every try brings me to my knees
Where I can see the shades of your forgiving
Each color covers a sinful memory
I can’t be righteous / But I’m not the one you see
Here’s the chorus:
I’m clean / I’m covered by forgiveness here
And only you can forget all I’ve done
I’m clean / Through no good of my own
But when you look at me you see your Son
And I am clean
And I love the bridge:
On my own, I’m simply man at best
But my sin’s as far as east from west,
Covered by the blood that your Son shed
HIS PERFECTION NOW DEFINES ME.
My friend, if you are saved, THAT’S how you stand before God—Christ’s perfection now defines you. That’s how God sees you. Start believing it!
• And don’t look back at defeats that get you down. – You can’t change your past, but you CAN affect the future—through Christ who strengthens you.
• Don’t look back at the past and see it better than it was. – Look ahead with anticipation and faith to NEW challenges and NEW victories AHEAD of you.
• Finally, don’t look back at old wounds that make you bitter. – Give them up and put them away forever, and live with a spirit of joy and cheerfulness and hopefulness.
Let me close with one passage from Philippians 3:13-14 (EXPAND AS LED) – “Brethren, I do not count myself to have attained: but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Don’t look back.
