Kingston Church of the Nazarene
Sermon: Non-Series
April 29, 2020
Sermon Title: We are Sojourners - Travel Light
Sermon Scripture: 1 Peter 1:17-23 (key verse: 17)
{DO NOT READ} INTRODUCTION: WE ARE SOJOURNERS - TRAVEL LIGHT
We are traveling through life on a journey that leads to a destination. Some of you have an organized and well thought out plan and you know where you’ll end up. While others of you are living life at the whim of the culture around you hoping you will end your journey with a hopeful and prosperous end.
Everyone has been given one life to live on planet earth. But why do so many live as if this is the only life they will ever have? You were made not made for this earth; you were made for eternity.
The title of my message is: WE ARE SOJOURNERS – TRAVEL LIGHT.
TRANSITION – LIFE IS AN EXPERIENCE
Life is an experience full of many mountains and valleys, and every one of them offers life lessons to capitalize on for your benefit and for the benefit of others.
STORY: TACO A CANOE
While in college, I and a friend borrowed a canoe to go down the Animas River. Neither one of us had ever canoed before, but how hard could it be? Get in the boat and paddle downstream and go as far as you want until you’re done, right?!
The problem is we truly had no idea what we were doing. We had no life vests, and I didn’t even wear shoes. Off we set down the river. The water seemed calm and comfortable at first. Then we hit the rapids and neither one of us knew how to work together or even traverse the rock outcroppings. As you can imagine, we both began to panic and do our own thing. I paddled one way, he paddled another, and we found ourselves sliding down the river sideways and didn’t know how to get out of this predicament. The water was rushing faster and faster and we were at the mercy of the rapids at this point. We started bouncing off smaller rocks and we starting to spin us around and around. We were at the mercy of the river's power.
We needed help! We were out of control! It seemed death might be our only option to get out of this predicament.
Seconds seemed like hours! All of a sudden, we saw a huge outcropping of rocks ahead of us and we were headed straight for it. We were yelling at each other over the roar of the rapids – he went one way and I went another, and in no time at all, we hit the rocks. This time, however, we didn’t bounce off the rocks, we slammed into them and broke the canoe in half, and we fell out of the canoe, holding on desperately trying not to be swept away and lose our lives.
POINT: Tragedy/accidents change your perspective about what’s important in life. We were carefree and careless college students, but we came out with a renewed understanding that life is short, and what we do during your life matters.
That day on the canoe trip started out as a fun opportunity and ended up with the stark realization that life is precious and shouldn’t be wasted on unimportant stuff.
{DO NOT READ} TRANSITION – THIS WORLD IS NOT OUR HOME
The Bible is very clear that life is short, and we need to travel light because this world is not our home.
[slides] 1 Peter 1:17- 23 says,
[] “17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. [] 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
[] 22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”
{DO NOT READ} TRANSITION – WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
HAS ANYONE EVER ASKED YOU WHERE YOU ARE FROM?
• I’m never sure how to answer that question.
o Do I go all the way back to my childhood, college, since I’ve been married, or where I’ve lived the longest?
o Should I say I’m from “Heaven?”
o How do you answer that question?
The Bible is clear about a great many things, and one of them is we are sojourners/foreigners in this world.
“A sojourner is a person who resides temporarily in a place.”
Peter’s insightful words to the dispersed Christians enduring persecution in North Asia Minor. His emphasis is to encourage Christians to remember that life is hard and difficult to endure but to keep the hope that this world is not the end, but a transport system to eternity.
This is key for us because we are enduring a very harsh period in our lives as we live through the COVID-19 pandemic. I don’t know about you, but Andrea and I have been ‘spring cleaning’ our house since the stay at home orders, and have found that we really don’t need a lot of the stuff we’ve accumulated over the years, and we’re getting rid of a lot of it.
In 1 Peter 1:17, Peter reminds the church -
[slide] V. 17 “Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.”
We are reminded to live out our time as foreigners (temporary dwellers) here. We find this proposition throughout the Bible.
• 1 Chronicles 29:15: “For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding.”
• Philippians 3:20: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,”
• Ephesians 2:19: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,”
You were not made for this planet but for eternity with God in Heaven.
{DO NOT READ} TRANSITION – WHY WE TRAVEL
If we are sojourners on planet earth and this world is not our home, why are we traveling?
1. God created us to have a relationship with him. (Garden of Eden)
2. God created the earth as a paradise to be lived in until sin entered the picture and separated us from God.
Therefore, we are traveling through this life to spend eternity with God in a New Heaven and a New Earth. (Rev. 21:1)
Why do we travel?
• We travel to experience God’s creation.
• We travel to have communion with people
• We travel to find ourselves.
• Most importantly, we travel to return home.
Home is where we can the truest form of ourselves exists.
HUMAN PREDICAMENT -
We sojourn in an increasingly fragmented world that has a way of eroding our commitments to God and blurring our focus. Our culture has been stricken by such an intensification of choices and changes that our identities, values, and perspectives are being engulfed.
• Materialism tempts us to abandon focus of God.
• We believe we have a better understanding and desire for what is best for us than God
• A lack of spiritual passion for God and obedience to his Word.
• Looking to be honored by others – pride and arrogance (not awe and humility)
It seems like the act of traveling has become a never-ending game of constantly upping the ante.
Maybe it’s all the ads and promotions, that are telling us about the latest and greatest uncovered gem/thing to have. That’s where we become consumed with shiny lights and consumed by stuff.
The problem lies in our own expectations. We’re always adding stuff to the burdensome bucket list without really taking a look at it or evaluating the cost – material and spiritual.
It is impossible to progress far in our walk with Christ without a radical shift from an earthbound to a biblical perspective on life. How then are we to travel? We are to travel light!
{DO NOT READ} TRANSITION – HOW TO TRAVEL LIGHT
1. [slide] REMOVE ALL THE ENCUMBRANCES OF THE WORLD
a. Money/Debt
b. Sex
c. Fear
d. Disease
[slide] 18 “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
2. [slide] DECOMPARTMENTALIZE YOUR LIFE AND PUT CHRIST AT THE CENTER
a. A centered life around Christ as the unifying point of integration and coherence. When the heart is focused on him, he becomes relevant to every part of life and empowers us to live before God in our work, our family, and our other activities.
3. [slide] BE GOOD STEWARDS
a. We must embrace a stewardship mindset: We own nothing, and we are not here on our business. As stewards, we manage the possessions of others.
b. We are held accountable for managing or mismanaging how we use our time, talents, and treasures.
i. “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required” (Luke 12:48).
We understand that we all need to remove the encumbrances, we need to decompartmentalize our lives, and be good stewards of our time, talent, and treasures. Now what? What are we supposed to pack while on our short sojourn?
{DO NOT READ} TRANSITION – WHAT TO PACK WHILE ON OUR SOJOURN?
[slide] Jesus instructs the disciples when they leave to do on their journey to: These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.” (Mark 3:8)
“Bring no food, no suitcase, no money in your belt” – everything that most of us would pack first if we were going on a long journey. His invitation then was to live so completely trusting in God, that you were attached to nothing. You were to live so that nothing possessed you other than the Kingdom of God.
Did you catch them? Take nothing with you on the journey, except for SANDALS and a WALKING STAFF.
In sending his disciples out with these two ‘permitted items’ to be prepared to walk a long way – longer than you’d be able to do in bare feet. Bring a staff to help you overcome the obstacles on the way, because there will be some. Be prepared to go to places you never dreamed you’d go on your own, and to go together.
There is work to be done and stuff just gets in the way on your journey. By letting go of the world’s expectations and being obedient the Christ while you are on your sojourn, you will learn what you need to learn about God through Christ, and you will do great things for him like taking care of the widow and the orphan – loving your neighbor as yourself.
{DO NOT READ} TRANSITION – ARE WE THERE YET?
Every journey has a destination and must come to an end. Our kids would ask: “Are we there yet?”
Sometimes the journey is hard, boring, or seemingly monotonous. However, there’s something to learn during the journey.
We are to learn to trust and obey God even when we don’t understand where we are going or what we will be doing along the way.
However, I think it’s a valid question to ask when you will arrive at your destination because it allows you to evaluate where you’ve come from and learned along the way. It also gives you an opportunity to make course adjustments –
• What encumbrances have you picked up along the way?
• Are you allowing Christ to be the center of your life?
• Am I being a good steward of what God has entrusted me with?
Are we there yet? It also reminds of that this world is not our home. We were made for eternity and not for the pot of gold at the end of the elusive rainbow.
Since this world is not our home, what should our attitude be? How should it affect our lives?
• Desire the mansion in God’s house that has a room reserved for you.
• Don’t be consumed by worldly enticements – gold, silver, position.
• Let us not be overly concerned about making ourselves comfortable here.
• Let us abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul.
[slide] Romans 12:1-2 reminds us:
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God.”
When this life is over, you will no longer be a sojourner but will have a permanent home in heaven if you are a follower of Christ.
What sojourn are you on? Are you trying to live as the world lives with temporary fulfillment? If so, make the necessary changes to follow Jesus by giving your heart to God and seek your permanent eternal home.
CONCLUSION – TACO CANOE STORY
At the end of our canoe trip, we both survived the treacherous waters of the Animas River, but we were forced to walk several miles barefoot until we could find help.
That day on the canoe trip started out as a fun opportunity and ended up with the stark realization that life is precious and shouldn’t be wasted.
Fix your attention on God while you are on your sojourn here on earth. He will lead, guide, and provide for you until he calls you home to be with him in Heaven.
Have you trusted in Christ? If not, leave the world behind and accept Christ as your Savior.
PRAYER
BENEDICTION
[slide] “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21
• JOIN US SUNDAYS AT 9:45 AM – SUNDAY SCHOOL AND FOR WORSHIP AT 10:45 AM.
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