Unleashing the People of God
Matthew 6:33
Introduction:
What do you think about more than anything else? What occupies more of your time, energy and emotions more than any other item? I’m serious! What do you daydream about? When you’re by yourself in the car and your mind drifts away where does it go? The world snickers and looks at us men and winks, “We know where it goes.”
But here is one of the truest statements I can make. Each of us only has so much time, energy and passion to devote in our lives. Does everybody here agree with that statement--none of us can passionately pursue everything?
So if, at the bare minimum, you spend 50 hours a week sleeping, 40 hours a week working, 12 hours a week eating, what do you do with the other 66? Some of you will say “Add another 10 on my work hours. Okay, so 56?
How much time do you give your wife? How much do you designate for your kids, grandkids? What about baseball, basketball, golf, leisure stuff, tv, time with friends? Daggone! Time’s going pretty quickly, huh?
I had an argument with a friend of the other day. I put some sinks in for my wife (they look awesome) and for my mom. My friend said, “If you really loved them you’d pay someone to do it.” My response was, “The time it took was part of the gift.” Money can be recovered, you can never get time back.” My friend said, “Right now I can’t think of a smart alecky reply to that, but I will.” My friend couldn’t think of a smart alecky reply because she knows it’s true.
Time is part of the gift, maybe the most precious part of the gift. Because you and I can spend it any way we want, but we can only spend it once. Time is always the greatest identifier of what’s really important in our lives. More than money, more than words.
So here it is—168, 66, 56—how much of your time is spent seeking God? Not your words, not your money, how much of the 24 hours in your day are you passionately pursuing God’s kingdom? His righteousness in your life?
Oh, come on, Rick, you can’t seriously use that as a litmus test for the reality of my faith. You’re right, I can’t! But, God does.
Listen: Matthew 6:12-21, 24 (p. 685)
In fact almost the entire discussion of Jesus in Matthew 6 is all about what we spend our time and energies worrying about, going after, pursuing. He then says:
I. Pagans run after, God’s children seek. Matthew 6:32 (p. 685)
Run after, chase. It’s like the old cartoon where the stick holds the carrot in front of the horse’s nose to keep him moving in the direction the driver wants the horse to go. Satan drives this world. How? He wants to hold out in front of us things to chase after, run after: clothes, food, popularity, money, stuff! Come on; spend your time running after this stuff, it’s what you want. And the driver keeps us heading in just the direction he wants while we “run after it.”
God and His kingdom aren’t running from anyone. He wants to be found. He even is the one who begins the seeking process. He is the seeker of lost people (remember Romans 3:11, “no one seeks God). But after he knocks, after the Holy Spirit calls, He waits for us to open the door and let Him in. He rewards those who diligently seek Him.
Hebrews 11:6 say, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.”
God says, “Here I am” through his Holy Spirit. “Seek me.” And when you turn toward God in repentance He runs in your direction, not away. God isn’t playing hide and seek. He wants to be found. It’s just seek!
Unbelievers, lost people, run after stuff. God’s children seek. His kingdom, his righteousness. Their passion, their time and energies are His.
How can you know?
II. Because God comes first
But seek FIRST His kingdom and His righteousness. That’s a radically different concept than the “I believe in Jesus so I don’t have to go to Hell” theology. What Jesus is saying here is not that you won’t have to work or sleep or do other stuff. He’s not saying you can’t have any fun or have a full, abundant life. (John 10:10)
What he is saying is the kingdom of God and a life that honors its King should be the filter everything else flows through. Consider life in full view of Jesus. Don’t just tip your hat to him on Sunday mornings or when trouble comes along. It’s not a coincidence that God declares He is a jealous God in Deuteronomy chapter 6. And that Jesus compares our relationship to Him as a marriage. Listen: Ephesians 5:22-23 (p. 829)
I’m not going to spend hours talking about submission and a husband’s authority and leadership in his home. I’ll just say this--there needs to be a leader. That leader should love his wife and kids like Jesus does, or try to. If He does then his wife and children will gladly submit to his guidance. It’s easy to surrender yourself to someone who is living unselfishly for your honor. (Both husband and wife are to be humble servants). But there is no husband that will settle for anything but 100% of his wife’s faithfulness or vice versa. Being faithful 98% of the time won’t work in any marriage.
First means faithful, committed completely. And my time and energies prove it to be true. If we in the church are going to be radically unleashed in the Spirit of God, by the word of God into the world we need to understand the word “first.” When we put God and His Kingdom “first” everything is on the table for discussion—everything. Every one of us struggles with this concept. Not what first means—but really doing it. Because if I put God first it means I have to surrender some of the time, energy and passion I have been giving to 2-10. So we tell ourselves, “God is number 1.” And maybe we sing that to Him, even hint that to others. But with our time and energies and resources he’s really more like 10-12. But maybe He won’t notice. At least he made the list!
David Platt and his wife, Heather, began to pray this specific prayer together, he writes in “Radical Together”: We said to God, “Wherever you want us to go, whatever you want us to do, however you want us to live, we give our lives and our family for you to spend in making your gospel and your glory known to the ends of the earth, particularly among those who have never heard the gospel.” That’s putting everything on the table. And when people put everything on the table radical things, amazing things, began to happen in their lives.
When you say God, change my life this year. I’m going to read through your entire Word (speak to my heart specifically), I’m going to pray for the entire world (reveal your compassion for the unreached people, and my place of service in it), I’m going to sacrifice for a specific purpose (that sacrifice makes the person or ministry you’ve given something up to support more real and precious), I’m going to live my life in another context (out of the rut I come. Mission fields are no longer printed on paper but engraved on my heart. You cannot be among and with others on the mission field and it not change you), I’m going to join a multiplying community (yes, this means a church. But even more I’ll share my life with others who have a heart for lost people in a close knit way).” The reasons why these are more than just signs on a stage or chapter in a book are because they help us seek God first in reality, not just theologically. They open the door and let us begin to seek God’s will for our lives and what happens?
Some couples will be called to plant churches and reach out to the unreached. Some couples will be called to adopt from difficult places. Some young people will be called into ministry, and maybe some not-so-young. Some will sell their big house and move into smaller ones so they can sacrifice for eternal reasons. Some will begin to put into practice ministries they only dreamed about. All those things have radically taken place at Fern Creek and more.
Let me ask you, would you be willing to walk up the mountain, put the most important thing in your life before God and sacrifice it, give it up? And if you don’t think there will come a time when our jealous, holy God won’t ask you to do it, you’re deceiving yourself.
When Abraham walked up Mount Moriah with Isaac he was saying to God, “I see that you are calling me to live my life without something I never thought I could live without.”
Timothy Keller in his book, “Counterfeit Gods” writes “As many have learned and later taught, you don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” The only time you’re going to discover if God’s bigger than the thing that you think you can’t live without is when He asks for you to give it up. An idol stops being an idol when we are truly willing to live without it, when we truly say from the heart, “because I have God I can live without this.”
Sometimes it seems that God is killing us when He’s actually saving us. He was turning Abraham into the father of faithfulness, but on the outside it looked like God was being cruel. Unless you’re willing to sacrifice the most important “idol” in your life God cannot be first. But if you are, sacrificing the other idols isn’t easy, but it’s easier.
If He hasn’t, He will call you to walk up the mountain. He’s not tempting you to sin, but He will test your claim that He’s first. What will that look like? I don’t know—a pregnancy test? A casket? A shattered dream? Whatever it is it will require that you believe that God is able to raise the dead. Even when you’re the one who brought the knife down.
It will happen. A few will walk up the mountain. Some will kick their idols to the curb. But many more will keep on chasing them, running after them, while saying “God, you’re number 1.” Satan remains in the driver’s seat. Stick firmly in hand. And the direction of their lives doesn’t change at all.
Let’s pray.
