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Father, we thank you that we can gather in your name at the start of this new year. Do ask that you will be present by your spirit that you might speak to each and every one of us. In Jesus name, Amen. Well, day five of the new year. I wonder how many people have broken a resolution yet.

Anyone? No one wants to admit it. You know, it could be already in the first five days. You know, you've tried, but. But today, you know, you're gonna go out for a run every single day of this year.

But then you woke up this morning and were like, not this day. You know, you came to church, which impressive, well done to make it. Because it's been a foul day, hasn't it? It's been a horrible day. But I don't know what your dreams are for 2025.

They're probably varied for lots of us. You know, it might be that you want to, I don't know, get that six pack finally. Not that I'm revealing you my inner psyche. Well, I don't know what your, your dreams are for 2025. Maybe you haven't even thought about it, you, resolutions, because, you know, they get broken anyway.

But I wonder just for a second, if you were to pause now and you just imagine yourself at the beginning of January 2026, you know, what would that look like for you? You know, where would you, where would you be? How would that be different for you? You know, maybe I have a decent haircut finally. I don't know, it could be whatever it might be.

Just visualise where you might be in 2026 because this is a good time for thinking forwards. It is a good time for making resolutions and thinking where our life is taking us. We don't always take the time to do it, but it is important to do and it's important to think ahead because we don't just suddenly make changes in our lives. We don't just suddenly get that six pack, do we? Without doing lots of crunches.

I don't know, whatever you need to do to get a six pack, it's not going to happen. But whatever you would need to do, you'd have to do it every day, wouldn't you? You know, you want to run a marathon, you don't say, well, I'll go out just for a massive run tomorrow and then the day after, I'll be all right. You know, you got to. Those daily habits lead us to where we're going to be, don't they?

And so as we're thinking, where do we want to be in 2026, we obviously will have different goals. There'll be a different image. But there is a goal that we all share. There's a goal that we should all share, which is to have Jesus as our first love. To love Jesus with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength.

We can share that goal. To think, you know what, January 2026, I want to sit here loving Jesus more than I did in January 2025. That should be a goal for each one of us. And as we have that as a goal, we're thinking, okay, what are the daily practises that we need to think about in order to get there that will help us? What disciplines are going to help us?

Well, this is kind of where Jeremiah is going in our text. Just let's read again that verse 16 and just really the middle section of it. We'll miss out the first line and the last line. The Lord says through Jeremiah, stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths.

Ask where the good way is and walk in it and you will find rest for your souls. See, in this passage, what the Lord is calling his people to do is to stop. You have to stand, to look, to ask for those good paths, to ask, where is that taking us? Where is our walk taking us? And to walk in the way that the Lord would have us go.

This is what he's asking for us in Jeremiah's context in the 7th or 8th century BC. He's calling the people at a time when half of Israel, the Northern kingdom, has been taken into exile. And he's telling them, look, guys, you need to turn back to the Lord. Turn back to your first love, because otherwise this is going to happen to you. There are real consequences from turning away from the Lord.

So stand at the crossroads and look. And actually, we had the whole reading Ali brought to us to verse 20. It's actually part of a bit of a sad context because we know even in the end of verse 16, the people say, we will not walk in it. You know, this is all part of an accusation against Israel. The Lord called Israel to himself, but the people said, we will not walk in it.

But that first section is still a call for us, still a call for us to stand and to look and ask for the ancient paths that is still ringing in our ears today for us to listen to. So I just want us to think about a few bits from this verse. The first thing is that we've got to stop and think. It's kind of almost so obvious that it almost seems like it's not worth saying, but it is important because that first word, stand, our first word, stand, is not moving, is it? The Lord says, stand at the crossroads.

It's as if you say, look, maybe you're just cracking on, going around in life. It's just so fast, you know, everything's whipping past you. You can't even stop to look. Just stand at the crossroads and look. This is the first thing you ought to do, just stop.

You know, life isn't blurry, you know, just stop and look. And you've got to look because actually there's a progression in this verse. Stand at the crossroads and look. You can't stop to look if you haven't stopped.

If you come to a viewing point and you want to gaze at the view, you don't rush past it, do you go, hmm, lovely view. That would be silly. You got to stop to stand at the view and look.

I don't know if you've ever had the experience. Maybe you had it over the Christmas of driving along on the motorway. You're trying to follow a sat nav. There's a lot of fun things about following a sat nav on there. But one thing that happens sometimes is that it drops the signal, doesn't it?

Searching for GPS doesn't always tell you it's doing this. You're going along the motorway and you're wondering which junction it is. You've forgotten, probably. If you're older, you probably actually have some idea of where you're going. But if you're my age or younger, have no idea what road you're on.

If it says left, you just go for it. Anyway, you're driving, wondering what junction you're on, and then it suddenly picks up the sat nav as you whiz past junction five and it's like, yeah, that was junction five. And you're like, so annoying, isn't it? But sometimes life is like that, isn't it? You know, you're sort of whizzing down the motorway and at the last minute you think, oh, I should have taken that turn.

But oops, I've gone past it now go around. It's a bit frustrating. Life is like this, isn't it? Sometimes life can be done in a hurry. I wonder, one writer puts it like this, can I have my next slide?

I should have done the clicker, should I? I failed in my resolution to be master of my own slides. Okay, the next one. I wonder if you agree with what this writer says. Just one more click.

Is that going to Are you telling me to. Are you coming? Give me a slide, Chris.

No, no, no, go back, go back, go back, go back. No, ignore that. Okay. You didn't see that.

You were all concentrating, weren't you? Okay. Oh, well, if you're listening on the podcast to this later, you should have been here. Okay, so I wonder about this sentence. One writer says, hurry is the characteristic of the age in which we live.

Do you think that's true? That is true, isn't it? Hurry is the characteristic of the age in which we live. So much so that there was a book called the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry somebody gave me. I thought, yeah, I'm going to get that.

But I want to read it quickly because I want to read some other books. You know, if I can get through it in a day, it'll be all right. But hurry is the characteristic of the age in which we live.

You've already noticed the spoiler that this actually was written in 1888. A fellow called J.C. r.A. The first Bishop of Liverpool. Hurry is the characteristic of the age in which we live.

1888. He goes on to say a few more words. This would have given it away, I think. Railways and electric telegraphs and general competition appear to oblige the modern Englishman to live in a constant breathless whirl.

I don't think electric telegraphs cause me to live in a whirl anymore, but there is. This sense of hurry is still there, isn't it? And it's quite surprising that somebody can say that so long ago. Because if I were to say, why are we living in such hurry? I would start blaming, you know, mobile phones or like, you know, the pressures of the modern world or something like this.

The reality is. But the reality is, Even in the 19th century, this was exactly the same because this is just what people are like. We love living in a hurry because if it's blurry, I don't have to stop and think about it. We just want to crack on. Actually, this is just part of the human condition.

Even in Jeremiah's day, people needed to be called, stand at the crossroads and look, because you're probably going to whiz off trying to do something else.

Oh. He goes on to say, they seem unable to find time for calm, quiet, serious reflection about their souls and a world to come. So true, isn't it? That's so true. Some things just don't change.

That's remarkably prescient, I think. So. We're not unique in our situation, you know, it can't be an excuse for us today to say, look, in 2025, our, our world is just busy. You can't take time for reflection now because, you know, we've got pings and text and things. No, that's.

We can't get that excuse. It's just part of the human condition, actually. It's always been the case and it's serious. One more, one more quote from Bishop Rao. He says they live in perpetual hurry and in a hurry they often die.

I mean, that's quite, quite serious, isn't it? That's not what we want to be like, is it? You know, rushing so, so fast in life. We don't even ever stop to think and then we rush all the way to the grave and we haven't paused at any point. We've just let life hurry past.

Don't let that be you today, you know, let's take time to stand at the crossroads and to stop. It's always tempting just to crack on. I'll do it next year. But no, stand at the crossroads and stop. So I just wonder, as you pause just now and think to yourself, are there any crossroads coming up for you this year?

There might be a crossroads in your life. There probably will be for some people. It'll be obvious, what am I going to do next year? What school, university should I do? That new job?

Where's that relationship going, whatever it might be? What are these crossroads?

And just commit, say, actually, do you know what? I'm going to take time. I'm going to stand, I'm going to look, observe that. I'm going to see that that's a crossroads. I don't just want to whiz past that junction and realise I should have gone somewhere else later on.

Stand and look.

Well, once you've stood and looked, we do it because we can ask for the ancient paths. You know, you can't ask where you're going unless you've thought, unless you've stopped to think, can you? Unless you've stopped to think. So Jeremiah says, stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths.

Ask where the good way is and walk in it.

The good old way. The good Old way. Notice that in the way that our Bible is set out, if you've got one in front of you, you'll notice that it's set out sort of in poetry, in lines, the way Hebrew poetry works, is that you say one thing and then you say something similar, which sort of sharpens the first thought. So we're saying, ask for the ancient past. Ask.

Ask for the good Way. So there is a good way. That is the ancient path. You know, he's not just sort of saying, any old thing will do. It's not any old thing.

It's a specific ancient path. That is the good way. There is the good way. So what is it? You know, as we come to these crossroads, we've taken the time to stop.

We're thinking, what is the good way? What is the ancient paths?

Well, in Jeremiah's day, when he said this, when he said this, they would inevitably have been thinking about the wilderness years. The wilderness years. This is the time that when Israel had come out of Egypt and they spent time in the wilderness. These are the ancient paths before they came into the promised land. This is the age of their fathers.

So they're thinking of the ancient paths. This is what Jeremiah is calling them to turn back to. Now, you may be thinking, okay, but I thought that the wilderness was all about grumbling and complaining. And that is true in numbers. Certainly there's a lot of grumbling and complaining.

But the way Jeremiah remembers it in Jeremiah chapter 2 is this. The Lord says this. I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown.

I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown. This is the ancient path, you know. This is the path their forefathers took through the desert, you know, in the wilderness. They were following the Lord as a bride, loving, loving a groom. It's relevant that it's through a land not sown, because they had to trust the Lord for everything.

You know, they weren't sort of waiting for their crops. They had to wait on the Lord, didn't they? For absolutely everything. Every meal came from his hand. They're relying on him, loving him, following him.

This is the ancient paths, the ancient path of devotion to the Lord.

So the path that we're to ask, because we stand at the crossroads in life, is which way is the path of love for Christ.

You might think, look, wait a second. We're not talking about Jesus. This is all about the Lord. But let me show you, actually, in 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul explicitly tells us that in the wilderness they were following Christ. Our fathers, that is the wilderness generation, all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

This is talking about the wilderness. So what Paul is saying is that in the wilderness they weren't just following God in general, they were following Christ. The rock that followed them was Christ. So as Jeremiah says, ask the ancient ways, the ways of love, for love for the Lord. He's saying, love Jesus.

We're talking about Jesus, particularly devotion to Christ. Let me go back. Because we're his bride, we're Christ's bride. This is what being called to. And so we're asking, we're standing at this crossroads and we're looking for which way?

And we're saying, well, which way is going to lead me to love Christ more? Which way is going to lead me to stay with my first love?

And it's a really important question because all sorts of stuff in life can lead us away from the Lord, can't it?

Just life experience itself will show you this. You know, you move house and it sort of finds it a bit difficult to find a church. And you just sort of drift a bit and you think, well, I'll just read my Bible by myself for a while. And then that sort of drifts off and after a while you realise that that move has led you away from the Lord. Could be a new job, you know, where it seemed like a great idea and then you just felt a bit too pressured.

I can't come to church anymore, really. I'm just too tired on Sunday mornings. Got to be ready by Monday morning. So to be honest with you, I just leave it for now. For now.

You know, there are all sorts of decisions that can pull us, aren't there?

And it's not always obvious. It's not always obvious, is it? Which way these things are going to take us. Because it's those small decisions, those small, everyday decisions, isn't it, that lead us to where we're going?

So says the Lord, stand at the crossroads. Stand at those decision points in your life. Look and ask, where is the path that leads to love for Christ? Where's the path that leads to devotion to him? This takes a bit of space meditation on God's word and asking him to direct us.

Maybe we just think about one example, you know, it might be that we're thinking, you know, we're thinking that we want to. We're going to go to university this year. And you know, these crossroads, you know, okay, we stand at this crossroads. Which way is going to lead me to Christ? What are the factors here?

Well, it could be any number of things. It could be that you think, I just had to work so hard to get in that I'm actually going to have to spend every single Sunday, you know, keeping up just to keep up with everybody. But maybe you think to yourself, do you know what if I do that, and I will drift away from the Lord, it may be that you think, okay, I like this university. That city's really good. It's really cool.

But, you know, there's no CU there. And this other one, you know, I don't know, it's got a great Christian union. Maybe that's a good choice, you know, I don't know. I can't give us all of the answers. The call is to stand and to look and ask which paths are going to lead us to Christ.

Well, finally we might ask what the point of all of this is. You know, why am I going to put all of this effort in? Why am I going to think about all my decisions? Wouldn't it just be easy to live that blurry, that blurry world distracted by electric telegraphs?

Well, because the Lord says, we're going to find rest. We find rest is the end of the verse. Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask the ancient path. Ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

You will find rest for yourselves. This is the promise. This is the promise. This is the promise that Jesus makes. Actually, Jesus speaks about this verse.

He quotes the verse at the end here. Come to me, says Jesus. Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls.

You will find rest for your souls. Jesus is quoting the end of this verse when he says, come to me. Not surprisingly, given that he is the ancient paths, you know, he is the way.

You see, it's worth following Christ as our first love, because he is the end of all striving. He is the end of all trying and failing. You know, that endless treadmill, that blurry whir, that hurry that is just unceasing. You know, that only stops in Christ, where you are all that he says you are. You're lovely because he loves you.

You know, this is the promise of coming to Christ because there's peace nowhere else.

You know, we fight for that goal, but there's always another one. Always another one, always another one, always another one. But not with Jesus. He is the end. He is the rest.

Because his yoke is easy.

Certainly we're to work hard. We work for peace, we work for justice. But ultimately none of those things, even those Good things satisfy. Only Christ satisfies.

So I just wonder today whether, as you hear this verse, you might just need to hear that. To stand at the crossroads, just to take a bit of time and to say, I'm actually going to pause, get off this train for a second, stop whizzing past the junctions, I'm going to think where I am and where life is taking me, where these little decisions are taking me. And as you do that, you can think, where is love for Christ in all of this? Will this fill up my schedule? Will this draw me away from the Lord, whatever it might be?

And as we think on that, we think, well, coming to Christ is so good, because in him we have the promise of rest. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this call to stand at the crossroads and look, to ask the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is and to walk in it. We thank you for the promise to find rest for our souls. We pray that by your spirit, you would help us to take time to consider our paths, to ask those difficult questions of where life is leading us. And Father, we pray that above all, in all of these things, we may love Christ more this time next year than we do now.

We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. It.