Get Your Actions Behind Your Priorities – Thanksgiving Sunday
Matt 6:19-34 Oct 8, 2006
Intro:
This doesn’t really have anything to do with my sermon, but it fits the day and made me smile:
Review:
This fall we have been on a journey, discovering what Jesus meant when He said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10). Our theme has been that Jesus’ full life is a life of love. We have talked about four key parts: first was that we need to get on what Jesus called “the narrow road which leads to life”, second we talked about walking that road “in step with the Spirit”, third was keeping our head up and our eyes focused on others rather than ourselves, and last week we talked about how when we know we are a critically important part of the body of Christ and are using the spiritual gift He has given us, our lives are full of love and significance, and we know another critical piece of what it means to live life to the full.
Thanksgiving:
Today is the day we celebrate Thanksgiving, where we discipline ourselves to pause and really reflect on how blessed we are, on how much God has done for us, and on who God is in our lives. It is a day when we should take stock, find the good, and make a concerted effort to take those things that we see and appreciate and express our gratitude for them, to God and to one another. It is a day to see how full our lives really are, because of God’s presence with us. The very thought that we have to make an effort, we have to stop and think about the things that we are thankful for, reveals a part of our culture – our focus is most often directed not to what we have, but what we do not have. This is a reality of a culture based on a free-market economy which values material things – we must be constantly bombarded by the things that we do not have, so that we will try to accumulate them. If we were all content with what we have, I truly believe most of our economy and culture would collapse! In some ways, that maybe would not be a bad thing… Two weeks ago I talked about how that is a false concept of a full life –that a full life means we have lots of money and stuff. That misses the mark.
A second wrong concept is that a full life means we will always feel alive – that emotion we feel at those few moments in life where everything seems so much brighter and stronger and glorious. Think perhaps of when your team was playing for the championship, the game comes down to the last play, and somehow you pull out the victory. Or perhaps when you first held your child. Or your first kiss, or when you were really there for a friend, or even that time you really knew the incredible presence of God surrounding you and loving you and filling you.
Each of those are wonderful times, where we really feel alive. Our lives feel full. Now listen closely – God’s road to fullness does not lead us to some place where we feel like that all the time. This is very important, because it is easy for us to think that when Jesus said He came to give us life to the full, it means we should feel the way we felt at those moments. And it is easy to think that if we are not feeling that way, we are doing something wrong, we are missing something, or even that God is holding back on us.
God’s road to fullness is about something deeper than feeling alive. The feelings are good, they are important, I am not diminishing them in any way, but there is something deeper. And that deeper thing is this: A life of love. Often that feels great, and sometimes it feels hard, sometimes it feels sorrow – many of us know that acutely as we hear again this morning of the death of yet another woman that we loved and that poured so much of her life and love into our church, and sometimes it doesn’t feel at all it just chooses to continue to love. That choice to love, through whatever set of feelings we might be experiencing, is the only way that you and I can live in the fullness of life in the long term. That type of life is a life of love.
Get Your Actions In Line With Your Priorities:
One day, I was having breakfast with a young man from our church who was in the middle of one of those very hectic seasons of life, and I asked how he was doing, how he was managing the balance, how he was coping, and he said this: “the hardest part for me is that the thing that is most important to me, namely my relationship with God, is the thing that I have the least amount of time for” – and as we talked it was clear that what he found so frustrating was that his actions were out of sync with his priorities.
Today’s passage of Scripture talks about that exact thing, and gives us a great promise. It also talks about the last key to living a full life.
Matt 6:19-34, NLT
19"Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal. 20Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves. 21Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be.
22"Your eye is a lamp for your body. A pure eye lets sunshine into your soul. 23But an evil eye shuts out the light and plunges you into darkness. If the light you think you have is really darkness, how deep that darkness will be!
24"No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
25"So I tell you, don’t worry about everyday life--whether you have enough food, drink, and clothes. Doesn’t life consist of more than food and clothing? 26Look at the birds. They don’t need to plant or harvest or put food in barns because your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than they are. 27Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? Of course not.
28"And why worry about your clothes? Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, 29yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 30And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you? You have so little faith!
31"So don’t worry about having enough food or drink or clothing. 32Why be like the pagans who are so deeply concerned about these things? Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, 33and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.
34"So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matt 6:19-34, NLT)
A Perspective and A Promise:
Jesus urges us to live now, for eternity. To live, now, for eternity. That is the point about treasures on earth vs. treasures in heaven – live now, and let the things we invest our lives in now pay dividends for eternity. Those things actually aren’t things as all – they are people. They are relationships. It is about a focus on people, and a life spent in sharing joys, sorrows, opportunities, the high moments of happiness and the low moments of heartache, and sharing those together.
The perspective is that our lives here are temporary. We don’t like to think about that, but that is one of the things that I’ve been reminded of as I’ve shared with Mary Naugler’s family, Brian Bell’s family, Audrey Taylor’s family, and Martha Hanson’s family. Our lives here on earth are temporary, but our life in heaven is eternal. Jesus’ perspective is that we should live for the eternal, in all the things we pour our effort into in the now. “Store your treasures in heaven”.
With that perspective of living now, for eternity, comes a promise: “Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, 33and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.”
The question for us, which Jesus points out kind of bluntly, is this: do we have enough faith to trust God to live life His way – not seeking after stuff, but seeking after His Kingdom, seeking to live a life of love, seeking to live knowing that our lives are temporary and that we should live now for eternity. Do we have that faith, which leads to that life of fullness? That is Jesus’ promise: “he will give you all you need if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.”
What is it that you need today? Some of us need comfort – seek God and you will find it. Some of us need hope – seek God and you will find it. Some need to have our mourning turned to dancing, seek God and in His time, He will do so. Some need to see how full our lives are, seek God and His perspective and you will see how rich your life is. Some of us need to rejoice, seek God and He will lead to joy. Some need a kick in the pants to remind us to live for eternity, you can come and see me and I’ll gladly be God’s foot… I’m being facetious, but there is also the reminder there that as we seek God, we find Him answering in our relationships as brothers and sisters in Christ, and as the body of Christ here on earth.
The perspective is this: live now, for eternity, and the promise is this: God will give us everything we need, as we seek Him and make His Kingdom our primary concern.
One Day At A Time:
The one other thing I wanted to point out from this passage, on our theme of living life to the full, is this: Jesus says that the road to fullness comes through living one day at a time. “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (vs 34).
If we want to live life to the full, the let us live in the moment. Enjoy the now. None of us know how many more days we have, but that is not for us to worry about. Living in tomorrow just leads to worry, or to false hopes, or to seeking treasures on earth. Living in today is about seeing God, living with God, enjoying each moment of brightness and sharing each moment of hurt. It is about really being with people, connecting, making time meaningful, enjoying our moments, and living in thankfulness to God that we got to share another moment, we got to take another good breath, we got to see and smell and taste, we got to live. That is living life to the full.
(for Corporate Prayer) Thank God for What We Cannot Lose (Our Daily Bread, Sept.-Nov. 1997, page for November 27)
When we express our gratitude to God, it’s easy to emphasize material prosperity and the qualities of life that are wonderful to have but easy to lose. Good health is a great blessing, but it could be gone tomorrow. Into the most loving families and friendships, death intrudes when we least expect it. Our tables may be loaded with food today, but we could be out of work tomorrow and wondering about our next meal.
How about taking a new approach to giving thanks today? Instead of focusing on the traditional areas of food, family, and friends, let’s thank God for what we cannot lose.
Romans 8:35-39 is a great place to begin. After considering the difficulties and calamities that can strip away the externals from our lives, Paul concluded that none of them “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 39). God’s love is unfailing, unceasing, unchanging, and unconquerable.
Benediction – 1 Chronicles 29:10-13:
“O Lord, the God of our ancestor Israel, may you be praised forever and ever! 11 Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty. Everything in the heavens and on earth is yours, O Lord, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as the one who is over all things. 12 Wealth and honor come from you alone, for you rule over everything. Power and might are in your hand, and at your discretion people are made great and given strength.
13 “O our God, we thank you and praise your glorious name!
The Blessings that Remain
There are loved ones who are missing
From the fireside and the feast;
There are faces that have vanished,
There are voices that have ceased;
But we know they passed forever
From our mortal grief and pain,
And we thank Thee, O our Father,
For the blessings that remain.
Thanksgiving, oh, thanksgiving
That their love once blessed us here,
That so long they walked beside us
Sharing every smile and tear;
For the joy the past has brought us
But can never take away.
For the sweet and gracious memories
Growing dearer every day,
For the faith that keeps us patient
Looking at the things unseen,
Knowing Spring shall follow Winter
And the earth again be green,
For the hope of that glad meeting
Far from mortal grief and pain—
We thank Thee, O our Father—
For the blessings that remain.
For the love that still is left us,
For the friends who hold us dear,
For the lives that yet may need us
For their guidance and their cheer,
For the work that waits our doing,
For the help we can bestow,
For the care that watches o’er us
Wheresoe’er our steps may go,
For the simple joys of living,
For the sunshine and the breeze,
For the beauty of the flowers
And the laden orchard trees,
For the night and for the starlight,
For the rainbow and the rain—
Thanksgiving, O our Father,
For the blessings that remain.
Annie Johnson Flint V. Raymond Edman, But God!, (Zondervan Publ. House, Grand Rapids; 1962), pp. 20-21
