Well...Did You Make It?

Well... did you make it? 

Still running every morning? Still spending 1 hour off your phone per day? Still calling your grandma with updates every other week? Still keeping your hands out of the oh-so-tempting potato chip bag? 

According to Forbes.com 80% of New Year Resolutions fail, and 80% of those fail by the second week of February. 

So, I’ll ask you again: Did you make it? 

Or did you fail? 

That’s a heavy question. If you went up to someone in the grocery store today as they’re trying to decide between Betty Crocker’s Supreme Chocolate Chunk Brownie Mix or Duncan Hine’s Dark Chocolate Fudge and simply asked, “So… did you fail?” What type of look do you think you’d receive from them? Or should I say, what type of glare? 

So you proceed somewhat cautiously, understanding that you’re stepping on fragile ground here and you explain, “Oh ya know, New Year’s Resolutions? We all fail at ‘em, don’t we? Buy the Dark Chocolate Fudge… then try again in 2022! Good luck!” 

Now, laser beams probably won’t actually shoot out of their eyes at you, but I’m assuming they wouldn’t react too well to your small interruption of their brownie aisle browsing. 

Nobody likes to fail. And nobody likes getting called out for failing; that’s for sure.

But I’m here to burst your bubble today, you fail everyday. I fail everyday. If we were being graded by a teacher for our performance, there’d be nothing written at the top of our paper but a big “F” in red letters. 

Maybe you’ve kept your New Year’s Resolution so far! Maybe you haven’t failed at that, but that’s not what I’m referring to here. 

Your steps on the treadmill might be the most you’ve had in a decade, but how many sideways glances have you given to the person running next to you, judging their performance whether better or worse than your own? 

Your hands may have steered clear of that potato chip bag, but how have you used them when typing gossip about your coworkers or relatives to your best friend? 

Your time away from your phone might be perfect, but has your time with your bible been apparent in your schedule? 

Your phone calls to grandma may be right on point each week, but how have your conversations been with your Heavenly Father? 

Like it or not, the answer to the question, “Have you failed?” is the same for all of us:

YES.

A rich man once asked our Savior a different question, “‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments’” (Matthew 19:16-17). 

I’m wiping the sweat from my brow. Even if I tried as hard as I could, there’s no way I could do that! There’s no way any of us could. Because of sin, we fail every day. 

We fail to love our neighbors --We make comments about our bosses that we’d be horrified if they heard them. 

We fail to honor God in all things --We do whatever we can to get ahead in life, to get rich, to have what we want, but we can hardly scrape out an hour on Sunday to ponder God’s love for us. 

Just like many New Year’s Resolutions, no matter how hard we might try, we always end up back in the brownie aisle.

And we can’t hide our stash of Triple Fudge Brownie Mixes in the closet from God. He sees our sin, our failure. He knows we have not kept his commandments perfectly. If that were the end of the story and we got to Heaven’s gate and God asked, “Well did you make it?” We would have to say, “No, no I didn’t, Lord.” 

Oh, but what joy we find at the cross of Jesus! 

Failure? Not by any means! 

Victor! 

At the cross of Jesus we see our failures turned into victories! We see our sad attempts turned into triumphant perfection! We see our eternal death turned into life with God forever! 

Do you know the story of Joshua? 

Joshua was a leader of God’s people. He led the Israelites around Jericho and the walls came tumbling down. God had promised the Israelites the land which Joshua got to lead the people into. The promised land was then divided up between the tribes of Israel. At the end of chapter 21 in the book of Joshua are these words, “Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled” (v. 45). 

God kept his promise to Israel then, and God keeps his promises to us now. 

Although we fail to keep New Year’s promises and our promises to God, our God has never failed to keep his promises to us and he never will.

Before Joshua even stepped foot on this earth, before his predecessor Moses floated in a basket on the Nile River, before Noah built the ark, God made the single most important promise to mankind. It’s recorded in Genesis 3:15, “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her’s; He will crush your head and you will bruise His heel.” It all goes back to that one, fateful tree. Adam and Even listened to Satan, and because of their sin, the wall of hostility or hatred was moved from between mankind and Satan, to between mankind and God. This promise is so important because God details how He will move that wall of hatred and hostility back where it belongs; where he intended it to be: in-between mankind and Satan. 

God promised to send Jesus, his very own Son, to suffer and die on a cross to pay for all the times we have failed our Heavenly Father.

“So Jesus, did you make it… or did you fail?”

“It is finished” (John 19:30). Jesus uttered those words as he completed the payment for our sins. 

So now when we get to Heaven’s gates and God asks, “Well, did you make it?” Here’s what we can confidently say:

“No God, no I didn’t make it… but I didn’t have to. Do you remember that promise you made to Adam and Eve? You were in the Garden of Eden, right after you created the world. Then they failed to keep their promise to not eat from that tree? You promised to send a Savior, Jesus, to pay for all the times I failed. And God, you kept your promise! And now, just as you kept your promise to Joshua and the Israelites to let them into the promised land, you will keep your promise to me, and you will let me into Heaven to share in your glory for eternity. Thank you God, for always keeping your promises to me… now where are those fudge brownies?”