CATM Sermon - September 11, 2005 - Your Absolute Best!
It’s a good thing to be relaxed and casual. One of the comments we get a lot here at Church at the
Mission is that people like the fact that there’s not a lot of formality in our worship times together. It’s a rare thing for anyone to wear a tie and more often than not, your pastors are found wearing t-shirts or the like. Things are general just really laid back here.
I think the reason most people nowadays seem to like informality is that formality seems just plain unnecessary. Wearing a fancy suit or dress doesn’t, in most people’s minds, actually add anything to the experience of worship.
Playing dress-up just seems so unconnected to encountering God. (By the way I’m not criticizing
anyone here who may like to dress up - I’m just speaking of how I think most people feel)
Having a super-structured service where you follow along in a book just doesn’t seem like an essential thing as we come to worship God. Relating to each other formally also doesn’t make sense in this context.
And then we have the nagging example of none-other-than our Saviour Himself who...well who just hung out with people and shared life and...well, he just never wore a 3-piece suit.
Speaking of three-piece suits [play movie of penguin, still at first and then wiggling and falling into water] [While still] If we’re too casual about everything all the time, we can [penguin stumbles into water] find ourselves in places we just don’t want to be in.
So casual and lighthearted is good. But sometimes, sometimes we need to be not so casual and a bit more serious about the things that are truly important.
Not superficial things like clothing, but deep things like our relationship with God, our communion with God. And our relationship to people around us and the world around us.
Of course we are given the amazing gift of the Holy Scriptures to help us figure out our relationship to God.
And there are a few passages in Scripture which have always been the big ones for Christians, and have always carried a lot of weight because of the scope of what is said in the passage. Lisa read one just a few moments ago that I want to highlight as we discuss the topic of Firstfruits” today.
In Mark, chapter 12, Jesus says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these."
This is our key passage for today, and we’re going to come back to it in a minute to see how it relates to the whole idea of firstfruit.
Before we do that I want to look at an odd little story in the first book of the Bible.
Genesis 4:1 Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man." 2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD.
4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
To condense the rest of the story a bit, Cain kills Able and gets banished from the Garden of Eden. A bad day in anyone’s books.
Now, this story is one of many stories in the Bible that troubled me for a long time. I thought, hey...so they both brought an offering to God. One guy was a farmer so he brought produce and one guy was a shepherd so he brought God some meat. What gives? What possible difference was there between the two guys or their offerings? None, right?
As with a lot important things, you’ve got to look at the details if you’re going to figure out what’s going on. There was a distinct difference, a huge difference between the offerings and the attitudes of these two brothers.
To put it simply, Cain brought some produce. Able brought his best. Cain brought a casual offering to God. Able put a lot more thought into it. I imagine these guys thinking to themselves.
Cain: “I’m really super-busy with these crops, but I need to bring something to God today. I’ll grab something from the field on the way. God will understand”.
Able: “God is awfully good to me. How can I express my gratitude? What’s the best I can give my God? I know. I’ll take the firstborn, my first success among my flock this year. I’ll take it and sacrifice it and bring the tastiest portions to God.
That might start to show a little of how grateful I am to God for all He’s given me”.
Now that’s just me imagining these guys and how they might have thought to themselves before they brought the offering.
Able brought a generous offering, one that reflected his hard labour in caring for his flock. He brought his firstborn. His firstfruits.
Cain brought an obligatory or a ‘required’ offering to God. He brought what he had to bring. The sense I
get is that for Able, there was worship in the preparation and in his intention and in his following through with his plans.
Now, maybe you think I’m being unfair to Cain. Maybe
his attitude and intention was just as pure as Able’s. We don’t need to look hard, though I think, to get a good look at Cain’s heart.
In his jealousy at God looking with favour at Able’s
offering and not his, he kills Able. Not yells at him, not struggles through this tough scenario with him. He kills him in cold blood.
This is actually the first incident recorded in Scripture of the innocent dying at the hands of sinful man. Something that continues to this day. But for us today, this is the first peek that Scripture gives us at the value of firstfruits. There is something big about giving God our best.
There is something honourable about spending time
thinking about “How can I live my life in a way where I give my best to God? How can my life reach its highest potential?” And along with that, “How can I stop wasting my time, wasting my life?”
Now let’s go back to what is known as the Great
Commandment:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your
strength. The second is this: ’Love your neighbour as
yourself.’ Mark 12
And to our other key passage today:
Proverbs 3:9 “Honor the LORD with your wealth, with
the firstfruits of all your crops; 10 then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine”.
How does this relate to firstfruits? Well...what are
firstfruits?
Your Emotions (Fruit of Your Heart) God wants us to love Him with all of our heart. What does that mean? One thing it means is that God is not satisfied with us just knowing about Him. Accumulating facts and figures from Scripture about who He is.
That’s such a sterile approach to God and ultimately very unsatisfying. God wants you and me to be in love with Him. And what is the normal thing that happens when you’re in love with someone?
I’ve been crazy in love with Barbara, my wife, for 19
years now. From the first moment I realized that I loved her, my life changed. Everything I did was done in the light of my relationship to her. My future changed because of her.
Our children Jared and Elia are here because of her.
There just isn’t anything that goes on in my life that
somehow, someway, isn’t affected by our relationship.
I love other people, to be sure. But Barbara occupies a special place in my life that words completely fail to express, and she does so as my wife, my best friend, my lover, my help-mate.
God, apparently, wants to occupy a place in our lives that no other can approach.
Your Soul (Fruit of Your Spirit) Of course this is intimately connected with loving God with all your heart. What’s a bit different here is loving God with your soul (which means the same thing as your spirit) speaks of your worship of God. Do you worship God? Do you pour out your heart to God in love and adoration? Do you go to him when you are wounded? Do you ever thrill at His creation?
Someone said this: “Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love.
The surrender of will to His purpose -- and all of this gathered up in adoration”.
Your Thoughts (Fruit of Your Mind)Here’s an old quote: “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny”
Jesus calls us to love God with our minds. The whole
area of our minds or our thought-life is one of the most difficult for most people. There’s two challenges at least regarding loving God with our minds. One is that God places a big premium on what goes on in our heads in terms of holiness.
We know that God calls us to holiness, but it is in our thoughts or in our minds where we choose to respond yes or no to that call. In James 1 we’re called to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”.
The other challenge to do with loving God with our
minds is to be super careful about not being lazy with our minds. I’m so glad that we have access to education. I’m so glad that many of you are right now in the midst of skills and career training. That’s using your mind in a way that honours God.
And if you’ve ever been out of school for long and then made the bold decision to go back, you know how tough it is to remove the cobwebs from your brain and start to think again in a classroom setting. Learning honours God with your mind. Acquiring new understandings, gaining a broader picture of life is all part of loving God with your mind.
Here’s a quote that is both simple and challenging “Let the mind of the Master be the master of your mind”
Your Energy (Fruit of Your Body)
Each of us here today has a reservoir of strength. It’s different for all of us and it changes over time. We have so much that we can do when we are young, when we are middle-aged and when we are old. Our energy or strength is a precious thing.
Our strength and energy enable us to work, to cope with everything in life that takes physical exertion. And God calls us to love Him with ALL of our strength. Now God always sets the bar high. Many of us can hear something like that and think, “Yeesh! That’s just way out of my league”.
And yet, God knowing that it is, in fact, out of our
league, calls us to aim high, to do the hard and deep
work of struggling with what it means to love God in the practical with our energy , to give him the best of our strength, the firstfruits, as it were, of our strength.
Out of our strength comes an important way we worship
God as well. From our strength comes our ability to
labour, to work. And from our work comes the money
we need to live. And here’s our Scripture passages come together.
Proverbs 3:9 says, Honor the LORD with your wealth,
with the firstfruits of all your crops; 10 then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.
Let’s face it, one of the toughest material things that we do as Christians is to give our financial resources, which are always limited, always hard-to-come-by and always doled out with the very practical concern of whether we ourselves will make ends meet.
At Church at the Mission, we’re in a privileged position. We’re part of Yonge Street Mission and we have some support from the mission as a whole. In most churches the offerings that are received go toward two main things-the pastors salaries, and the program budget of the church which includes worship, missions-giving, office stuff and the like.
At CATM, YSM covers our salaries, in part as it
receives vital outside contributions toward our salaries. The offering we receive each Sunday at church goes only toward the program of the church. So at some level the quality of the program of the church is dependant upon the offering.
Maybe it’s this unique freedom that makes us do
something that, to my knowledge, no other church does.
That is to encourage you to give only if you have come
prepared and with a cheerful heart.
We hope that as we say this each week each of you will
gradually come to understand that we value you for
being you, not for your money. We want you to be part
of this expression of the body of Christ on earth...for you. Not for anything you may bring. We want you to come and grow with us and worship God together and join us in as we seek to bless others and call others to Jesus Christ.
We are one of the only zero-pressure-offering churches
in North America. We don’t want guests to ive...unless they come prepared to do so as an act of worship. We don’t want any of you to give...unless you are able to do so as an act of worship, an act of loving God. An act of bringing your firstfruits to the Lord.
In everything we do, God calls us to what’s best for us. He calls us to love Him completely, utterly and without reserve, and calls us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves. He calls us to our best, our brightest. And He calls us to give him the firstfruits of our lives.
God, we thank you that you bless us with your presence. In Jesus Christ you’ve given us everything we need to live lives of purpose and lives of love. Move in us and transform us that in everything we might give you our best. In Jesus’ matchless name
we pray. Amen.
