“God’s
Priorities or Ours?”
January
22, 2006
First Presbyterian Church Carson City
Pastor
Bruce Kochsmeier
Purpose: For
people to realize that what God is offering is of infinite value compared to
what we try to hold on to – whether it is our life or a building or anything
we think gives us comfort.
This
world is coming to an end. The
older I get the clearer it becomes. I
know, people have said this before and even pinpointed dates, given away
everything and stood on a hill and waited for Jesus to come pick them up.
It never happened. But even
if it had in the literal sense they were missing the whole point.
If they knew the world was coming to an end; if WE know it the most
important thing to do is what Jesus told us to make our highest priority and
that is very simply to make baptize and make disciples.
It is the only thing that matters. And
as far as giving everything away when we know the world is coming to an end, we
don’t need to be afraid of giving up whatever resources we have to help draw
people into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
Jesus isn’t going to ask, “Where’s your car? Where’s your house? Where’s
that cool red motorcycle?” He
isn’t going to ask, “Did you save the old building?
How many walls?” No, Jesus
is going to ask, “Where are the others?”
And if we show up with anything less than a friend or stranger in tow who
didn’t know him till we introduced them to him, Jesus is simply going to say,
“What are you doing with that? What
did that have to do with what I invited you to do?”
I’m
not proud of telling you this nor am I whining, nor should I be surprised
because the longer I live and the more seriously I take Jesus at his word the
more I believe in the reality and tangibility of spiritual warfare, but I am
drained. The last couple of weeks
have been really hard for me. I
haven’t prayed enough. I’ve
probably gone to too many meetings. But
God is faithful and so many of you have reflected this to me.
And gratefully, my dogs Gracie and Spike take me out in the hills every
morning and remind me to make God’s grace and call not my highest priority,
but my ONLY one. And I’m learning
the liberation of taking God at his word and following.
Many of
us would look at this thought from Paul’s words to the Corinthian church and
think it is a word about marriage taken out of context, but it’s not. It is a word about what matters.
What Paul is saying to them is what God is saying to us – “Don’t
let the matters of daily living blind you to what really matters.
Don’t elevate what you do here on a daily basis to being that in which
you place your hope, even if it is that which is as vital as a good marriage or
as special as an old building. Your
relationship with God is far more vital and incidentally your marriage which is
passing and temporal will only be as good as how you make God’s will your
highest and solitary priority.” It’s
just that simple. The world IS
coming to an end. Everything we
tend to think is SO important is passing. It
just isn’t going to matter and any importance it may have will only be clear
when we filter it through total obedience to the call of Jesus Christ. Budgets and buildings and everything just won’t matter,
they don’t matter if we aren’t daily submitting ourselves to the life-giving
relationship to which God calls us in service to Jesus Christ and his kingdom.
I
don’t know what’s going to happen with our efforts to build a sanctuary. I don’t know what the city and the world around us are
going to say. Sometimes I wonder if
we should just stay right in this room and send the money we have to build a
church or MANY churches where they are welcomed.
I don’t know what we are going to do to make up our budget or send
resources into the world to make the love and saving grace of Jesus Christ
known. All I know is what really
matters. And that is this:, until
our hearts break for the world the way Jesus’ heart broke we won’t be where
or who we are to be. Until we are
willing to give everything away as Jesus did; until we realize that anything we
concern ourselves with that is less than simply trusting God as Jesus did, to
the point of letting God tear down our lives to the ground level, we won’t
really even have a life. Whatever
we have will be a fleeting illusion.
This is
the best thing about hard times for Christians.
It is why the church really only grows; why Christians really only grow
during persecution, because only in these times do we really know what matters.
The rest of the time we are subtly and dangerously relying on the
insulation of the world. As long as
we are comfortable by the world’s standards we will never really be
comfortable. When our priorities
are having the world understand accept us we will only be in tension, trying to
pile up enough of what we think will make us comfortable and whole, all the
while ignoring the voice of God’s Holy Spirit who is saying as sure as these
words we have just heard say, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks
back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
A great
man put it this way, “We're too comfortable to be spiritual. We think we will
be able to pursue God better without danger or hardship. And yet it works in
just the opposite way. Nothing is more difficult than to grow spiritually when
comfortable.”
That's
why the believer Alexander Solzhenitsyn's reaction to his exile to the Soviet
labor camp was to bless it, because it was there that he discovered that
"the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to
thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul."
Jesus
isn’t laying a guilt trip and neither am I.
But what Jesus IS saying is gracefully convicting if we let these words
sink in. What Jesus is saying is
that the only place we are going to be at home; the only place that is going to
really feel right; the only place where the threats and anxieties of this life
have absolutely no impact on our lives is when we are letting ourselves and
everything we have and are belong to and obey the call of Jesus Christ to
surrender.
I said
the other night at the historic review commission and have been quoted in the
papers and on TV that we can’t accept money to build something other than the
most basic structure. It hasn’t
been universally understood or received. All
that I am saying; all that I believe JESUS is saying to us is that there is NO
priority that can share center stage with his kingdom.
While we are in this world nothing matters but letting God pour his love
through us for his purposes and his purposes are people and people are not saved
by saving old buildings. When Jesus
said, “Let the dead bury their own dead” he wasn’t lacking in compassion.
He meant that those whose hope is in the things of this world are
trusting in something that will never be alive; that will never give life.
Until we accept this Jesus is telling us we are looking back and not
letting ourselves come into his kingdom.
What a
powerful invitation this is! Way
too often the kingdom of God is thought of something that someday somewhere in
some ethereal setting we may realize, and we will.
But we begin that realization here and now as we let God take hold of the
literalness of our lives and use them to show us and to show the world that
eternal life begins and ends with giving God all we are.
The
world is winding down, even for the young.
The only hope our broken world has ever been able to offer is as an
opportunity to begin our eternal praise of God NOW by giving those who do not
know about the kingdom of God everything needed to see God’s peace.
We will only be able to give this to them as we give ourselves every day,
every dollar, every emotion, every crisis, every challenge to God’s perfect
care and plan. Today is that day.
Now is that moment. This is
the most important season this church has every faced.
If you have never let God have your whole life for the sake of the world
knowing the salvation of Jesus Christ this is the most important moment of your
life. May we ALL surrender our
priority today to God. Amen.