Get On The Team It Takes Teamwork To Make The Dream Work
Here’s My Time
11/8/2020 Psalm 90:1-12 Mark 3:13-19
We are in part 2 of our series “Get On The Team-It Takes Teamwork To Make The Dream Work.
Last week Pastor Toby emphasized that if we are on God’s team, we are to offer our services and spiritual gifts that God has given us to the life of the church and body of Christ. She encouraged us to examine our lives to see if we are contributing our part of service in the kingdom of God.
Do you consider yourself part of the first string on the team, or do you consider yourself on the second team, third team or just a bench warmer.
The more important you consider God’s call upon you, the more you will make yourself available to serve.
One of the most important players in a basketball, hockey, football or soccer game never gets to play, but often gets everybody attention especially towards the end.
This player manages to bring out the best in players when all hope seems lost. The player is the time clock. Some teams do more in the last two minutes of a game than they accomplished the whole game and they end up winning the game.
Unfortunately, we can’t wait until the final two minutes of our lives and pull off a great victory, because for us the when the time runs out, it’s not the game that we celebrate, but rather the life which is to come in heaven.
One thing that every human being gets equally from God is the same number of seconds in every minute, the same number of hours in a day and the same number of days in a year.
Daylight Savings Time is actually make believe. We can’t save it, we just push it around.
Time is something that we have that is different from other things we have been given. I can’t let you borrow some of mine. I can’t give you some of mine to add to yours. I can’t even lose it like I do my car keys. I can’t save some of it for a later day. With time, I am either investing it or wasting it or sharing it.
The writer of Psalms prayed that God we teach us to number our days that we might gain a heart of wisdom.
The psalmist David said that we get 70 years, and if our strength endures we might get 80 years of life. The Lord has blessed many of us well beyond the 80 and 90 year old mark.
David lived to be about 70 years old. But since he gave us the 70-80 range lets take 75 years . Someone has taken how the average person in the United States will spend 75 years.
3 solid years 24/7 will be spent in grade school to college
7 solid years 24/7 will be spent eating
14 straight years, no breaks on the job
5 years in a car, bus, plane traveling
5 years will be spent talking
1 year recovering from illness
24 years will be spent sleeping
3 years, reading (now on computer)
12 years entertainment, tv, sports, fishing, hobbies
1 year left to do everything else
The question is how much of that time is being invested in our relationship with God. We are going to spend a fraction of our life here on earth. Yet the way most of us live, our goal is to prepare for the last 5, 10, 20 years of retirement.
If we truly believe that Jesus was telling the truth about heaven, and how long it lasts, shouldn’t we spend our time in such a way to prepare to live there instead of our golden years on earth.
The years are not nearly as golden in retirement as we are led to believe. Psalm 90 lets us know God is planning on being around for all of eternity.
Jesus came to this earth knowing that he had a limited amount of time to accomplish God’s work. He had a dream of saving people from their sins and empowering them to live their lives for God in such a way that time would be their asset.
You see time is either working for us or against us depending on what we are doing as it passes. That’s why its important to know what’s important.
Jesus knew very early, that it was going to take teamwork in order to make his dream work. He also knew that he was working in a very short window. His public ministry lasted from 3 to 5 years.
When you get my age at 64, having someone tell me I have 20 years left to live is not that comforting. Why? Because I remember how quickly it seems the last 20 years went by.
Looking at Mark 3:13-19 (NIV2011) 13 Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him.
Jesus was ready to put together a team that was going to impact the world far after he had been crucified and raised from the dead. Luke lets us know that Jesus had spent the night in prayer over his decision.
There were many people who were following Jesus, but they didn’t all have the same motive. On this particular day, Jesus heads up a mountainside and Jesus called to himself those he wanted.
Do you realize that Jesus called you into the kingdom because he wanted you? Jesus calls with a purpose in mind.
Pastor Toby last week said, “Only you can do the job God has qualified you to do.”
Since we all have a certain amount of time, nobody else has the time to make up for where we are wasting time. Are you willing to break away from some of the things calling you, to go up the mountain and find out why Jesus has called you into his kingdom.
Sure Jesus called us to save us, but that’s only the first step. He’s now interested in our giving him our time. When Jesus gave the call to come up the mountain not everybody went up, and none of those who went up knew exactly what was going to happen.
The first group separated itself from those who wanted to stay where they were. But then Jesus makes the next separation.
The Scriptures tell us that he then appointed twelve of them for a specific task. Jesus doesn’t seek volunteers, he makes appointments to task for us to do.
He wanted them to do be willing to give their time doing two things. The first thing, was to invest their time getting to know who he was and what He was all about. This group was going to be with Him and get to know him in a much deeper way.
But then after they got to know him, He was going to send them out to do a job. The job for them was to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. For us it may sharing our faith with a friend.
Jesus knows that His time is winding down, even though it seems like his ministry is just getting started.
He can’t go into every little village there was preaching to people and setting them free. If he tried that, He never would have made it to the cross to be crucified.
His dream was to reach more people through his team, than he could reach by himself. And still arrive at the place and time the Father had set for him.
14 He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach 15 and to have authority to drive out demons.
16 These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter), 17 James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means “sons of thunder”), 18 Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot 19 and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
When we look at this list three things stand out to me. The first is that the first 3 guys, Peter, James and John are going to get to do more things with Jesus than anybody else.
They are going to be a part of Jesus’ inner circle. They each have a time table to do God’s will that is very different from the others.
The second thing I notice is that some of these guys we have no idea of who they are or what they did. We do know something about Andrew, Phillip and Thomas and Matthew. The Bible tells us very little at all about Bartholomew, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, or Simon the Zealot.
Yet Jesus thought they were important enough to be appointed among the twelve.
When you give your time to Jesus, it doesn’t mean everybody is going to know who you are or what you’ve done, but God will know both.
Remember you aren’t spending your life to get a name carved in a stone here on earth. You are spending your life based on Jesus telling us in Revelation 2:17 (TNIV)
17 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To those who are victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give each of them a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.
The third thing I notice is that Judas is part of the twelve. How could Jesus make such a bad mistake in choosing Judas? Jesus didn’t make a mistake. Judas started out no doubt as many of us do, with an intent to follow Christ.
Judas saw something in Jesus that he wanted for himself. But an opportunity came that gave him the impression, his time could be invested more wisely than simply following along with Jesus.
All of us are presented with the same opportunity to give our time investments to other things and to other dreams that do not include the call of Christ. Sometimes these calls come so innocent, we don’t realize how much of our time they begin to consume.
Can you imagine how different our walk in the Lord would be, if we responded with our time to the call of Christ in the same way that we respond to our smart phones.
We live for the next red-light to read the next text, or news item, or to scan the next item coming up on facebook. Can you imagine telling someone on the phone, I got to get off this call, Jesus is calling?
What could we do with the hours we give to social media, Netflix, amazon, spotify, and a host of other things? How about attend a Life Connect Group. Or start your own group.
Judas didn’t have to worry about Social media. But he did have to plan for the future.
Judas was made the treasurer in the group. I don’t know at what part in his job did he borrow something intending to put it back next week.
After a while he noticed that no one knew if he borrowed anything or ever paid it back.
At some point in time, he made the decision to take from the treasury without putting it back. Time was working against Judas. He began to think of the money they collected as his money.
We see just how far he had sunken, when Mary, Jesus’ friend, came and poured some very expensive perfume on Jesus feet as a gift and wiped his feet with her hair.
Everyone in the room had the privilege of smelling this wonderful fragrance. But Judas responded, “why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor.” Why this was worth a year’s wage? What he’s really saying is, “this was a wasted opportunity. You actually poured this expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet.”
Judas had no idea what Mary had done she would never have the opportunity to do again. She did not know that Jesus would be hanging on a cross in a manner of days. She did not know that her time with Jesus was rapidly coming to an end.
She did not know that this act was part of God’s plan of salvation for the world. She was simply seeking to get on God’s Team and giving of her time to do it.
Judas on the other hand is trying to find a way to get off the team for his own benefit. Mary wants to see Jesus’ dream work. Judas wants to see it end.
Now the scriptures tell us that Judas didn’t make his comment because he cared anything about the poor. He was actually helping himself to whatever went into the treasury.
At this point we can see that Judas was spending more of his time thinking about how he was going to be blessed in this world, rather than what he would be taking into the next. He was living as though Heaven wasn’t real.
Judas begins making out a time schedule for his life. He already has x amount of dollars in the treasury, but that’s not enough to support the life-style he wants to live in the future.
If he agrees to betray Jesus, he could pick up another thirty pieces of silver. That just might make it worthwhile to take the money and run.
He’s thinking he has years left to live his life. He’s thinking how he could make his getaway. After all if Jesus is arrested, the disciples are not going to be that busy looking for him. They might get arrested as well.
He’s out of touch with reality. At this point he has no idea he’s got about five days left to live on this planet. You see rarely do things work out as we planned.
Judas thought Jesus would be arrested and thrown into jail. When he saw that Jesus was condemned to die, he tried to undo what he had done but it was too late.
He went back to the temple to give back the money he had taken to betray Jesus. Maybe he thought if he gave back the money, they would know he would let the world know about what they had done.
But they could care less of him being a blabbermouth or about his money.
They refused to take the silver coins. He threw the money into the temple and left. The time he had invested in becoming a thief had led him to a very dark place. He felt so bad over betraying Jesus, that he committed suicide by hanging himself.
Suppose someone had told Judas up on the mountain when he was called, “Now look Judas, take you call seriously in following Christ, because if you do not, you’ve only got a few years on the team and then you will die.”
Do you think that it would have made a difference. Judas is not the only disciple to have a surprise ending.
There was also chosen James, the brother of John. We always hear them together, Peter, James and John. Jesus poured Himself and his teachings more heavily into these three guys.
Since Jesus’ dream was to have his work continue long after his resurrection, you would think he chose these three guys because they would be around for a long time.
These three guys were together when Jesus called them to be become fishers of men and women.
They were together when Jesus appeared after the resurrection on the lake cooking the fish. They were there together when Jesus was taken back into heaven on the day of Ascension.
They were there together on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell and they began speaking in tongues.
The three of them were certainly all on God’s team. They certainly were willing to the work to make the dream work.
They planned to give their time serving the cause of Christ. Yet God had very different time schedules for their lives. God has a different time schedule for each of our lives.
That’s why we can’t put off doing tomorrow what God calls us to do today with our time.
We know that John ended up living to be a very old man and spends his last years in exile on the island of Patmos where God gave him the vision to write the book of Revelation. He is most likely the only one of the 12 left alive when Revelation is written around 90-95ad.
That would be about 50 plus years after the resurrection of Jesus. We can understand why Jesus invested in him.
We know that Peter is used by God to do all kinds of miracles in the book of Acts and preaches the gospel to the Gentiles. Peter writes two books in the New Testament and is a tremendous leader in the church.
He is crucified under the Emperor Nero around 65-67 ad. That means he had about 30 plus years of ministry after the resurrection of Jesus to give his time to the Lord. We can again understand why Jesus invested so heavily in him.
But then we come to James. James had just as much heart and wisdom to serve the Lord as Peter and John did, but God had not allotted him the same amount of time.
James was arrested about 8 or 9 years after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and put in prison by Herod.
James was quickly executed by Herod simply to gain the favor of the religious leaders who had crucified Christ.
When James said yes to Jesus on the mountain, he had no idea it would cost him his life. The countdown of about 13 years had begun unknown to James.
We keep counting up with the passage of down from the day of our birth. But there is always a clock counting down to the day of our death. Jesus was keenly aware of this. He often used the phrase my time or my hour has not come.
He was keenly aware of the role time should play in our walk with the Lord. He warned us of dark times coming when we won’t be able to work for the Lord.
We put names on statutes and bridges and buildings and streets to make us think we can go on indefinitely into the future. Yet the bible clearly tells us, it is appointed to man once to die and then comes the judgement.
As the for the illusion that 90 or 100 years is a long time, God tells us that we are nothing more than like a mist that appears for a little while and vanishes.
In other words we are like the spray from a can of air freshener. We see it, we smell it, but in a few hours its all gone. Contrast that with the Lord whose perspective on time is that a 1000 years is like a day in his sight.
People may say what’s taking Jesus so long to come back. He’s only been gone two days and God wants us to use as much as our time as possible to get others to be ready when he comes back.
God wants you on His team. Can you imagine what happens to a team when the star players no longer have time to give. Cleveland could easily win the Super Bowl this year if in each game they played, the other team’s star players didn’t have time to be involved in the game.
Where does your time go today? Is it in building a relationship to God. Is it in allowing God to do a work in you to touch others. It’s your time, are you wasting it or investing it. Never forget, Jesus invested his time for you to be saved.
