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Sermon Transcript

Find Luke chapter 10 this morning. As you’re finding your place, let me ask a question. How many of you have been exposed to someone who has the flu this week? And you came to church? Alright! There’s a, there’s one-time rule in church today: no shaking anybody’s hand today, okay? You can give an elbow-bump, maybe a fist-bump, but no shaking of a hand. We don’t want you to go home sick, and I have been around Andrea all week. She’s quarantined in the bedroom. I’m feeling a little distant; I’ve been banished to the basement. So, we don’t want to get that intimate this morning!

And intimacy is the subject of the message this morning. This morning, I came in and somebody had graciously provided some breakfast burritos for our worship team, and so I dove into that—because I hadn’t had breakfast yet—and I’d finished that off—and I had the wrapper in my hand. And Lonnie Mullins, our Facility Manager, held out his hand like this. And I had forgotten that I had the wrapper in my hand; I thought he wanted to shake hands. And now when I saw his hand, I’m like, “I’m not quite sure I want to shake hands with you; I don’t want to be that intimate with you this morning and share the germs!” But then I realized he really wasn’t wanting to shake hands—he was wanting to serve me by taking my trash—as Lonnie is always picking up our trash around here. He’s a wonderful servant of Jesus!

Now, that illustrates exactly what the problem is in so many of our lives. We want Jesus in the general vicinity; we just don’t want to get that intimate with Him. We’re afraid we might catch something from Him or He might change us in some way. It’s just a little too risky to get too close to Jesus. And some people feel that same way about the church. They don’t want to get too. . .they like church, they’re a fan of church, they just don’t want too close. They’re afraid they might catch something or they might change in some fundamental way. So we all have this. . .everybody here has some type of proximity to church. . .at least if you made it to church this morning. If you’re watching online, you’re even further away, but we would welcome you to come next week and get a little closer to us. . .unless you have the flu!

So, that’s what we’re all about here this morning; we are trying to diagnose and solve this problem. So many people feel like they can’t dive any further into this relationship with Jesus and His church because they have already given the best of their time, the best of their money, the best of their energy and the best of their love to other things! And so, when it comes to church, they’re like, “Ah, I don’t know if I have anything left over to give!” Well, we learned last week, God doesn’t want our leftovers! He wants the first and the best. And when we get close to Him, we find out that the closer you are, the simpler life actually gets. And we’ve learned, it’s not easy to follow Jesus, but it is simple, and it makes other things very simple in our lives.

Now this morning, we’re going to look at a very simple story preserved in God’s Word, and we’re going to find out that there are two characters in this story. One of them had a very simple relationship with Jesus, and the other had a very complex relationship with Jesus. So let’s just read this story here in Luke chapter 10, beginning in verse 38. Here’s the story: “Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered [and said] ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.’”

It’s one of the simplest things the Lord ever said, and we’ve been looking at the simple statements of Jesus. A few weeks ago, we just simply saw where Jesus said, “Come to me…” “Come to me…Take my yoke upon you…my yoke is easy…my burden is light.” If you’ll just get in the yoke with Me, if you’ll come to me—take that initial step—come to Me, begin a relationship…you’ll find out that it makes the rest of your life very simple!”

And then we learned, a couple of weeks ago, that there were some religious guys that came up to Jesus and said, “Man, it seems really complicated–all these commands in the Bible.” And, and they asked Him, like, “Which commandment is the most important [commandment]?” “If we just simplify it all down to like one thing, what would it be?” And Jesus said, “Love…God” [Mark 12:30] and, “Love people, and you’ll be doing great!”

And then, last week, we saw that sometimes there’s anxiety in our lives because of a lack of simplicity. And Jesus said, [Here’s the remedy for anxiety: it’s simplicity.] Seek first the kingdom of Godand [then] all these things will be added to you.” [Matthew 6:33] So we’re going to act like simply the Church!

That’s what we’re going for, and in this story here’s what we see. First of all:

 

  1. Intimacy is the avenue to the one thing I really need.

 

Intimacy is the avenue to the one thing I really need. In the story, we see these two contrasted lives: Mary, who chose the one thing necessary—intimacy—over Martha, who chose the many things that she thought were necessary.

Intimacy is a nearness; it’s a closeness that’s driven by the pleasure of personal relationship. If you’re married, you have a husband/wife relationship (or maybe if you’re boyfriend or girlfriend, you’re trying to build this thing together), what you’re going for is intimacy. And it’s something that’s driven by the pleasure of being in the presence of the other person. That nearness and that closeness that you long for is driven by the pleasure you receive by being in this person’s presence.

And so, intimacy is the thing that a relationship with Jesus is all about; it’s getting nearer and closer to the heart of Jesus. And even though Mary was able to experience that physically, we experience that spiritually in a relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. And so, getting closer and nearer is how I get the pleasure of His personal presence in my life.

Intimacy is an unhindered access that is granted by a personal invitation. Before you can just come strutting into the presence of God, you better make sure you have an invitation. Otherwise it would be actually dangerous to walk into His presence unshielded from His holiness. We are shielded from God’s holiness by God’s forgiveness and God’s grace—and now He invites us to boldly enter into His presence. And so, intimacy is what we have access to because of the personal invitation.

This morning, I don’t know how close you are to Jesus, I don’t know how near you are to Jesus. But I do know that every person in this room has access to God through Jesus Christ. What Jesus did on that cross now shields you from the terror of God’s holiness. Now you can come boldly and humbly into the personal presence of God the Father. And He’s inviting you to come! Why are you waiting? Why are you so distanced? Why are you so afraid of intimacy? Why are you afraid you’re going to catch something? Why are you afraid He’s going to change you in some way? He does want to change you for the better, and our desire for intimacy is what drives us into His presence.

Intimacy is a familiarity that produces personal affection. What we see in the story of Mary and Martha is, Martha had a business relationship with Jesus. She did just a bunch of stuff for Jesus—serving. Mary had a love relationship with Jesus—personal affection. Now listen: serving is not a substitute for intimacy. Intimacy is a prerequisite for serving. If all you do when you come to Jesus, when you come to church, is serve—you’re a worker, strap some responsibility to your back and you’re going to help this thing move forward—that’s great! Unless you’re using your service as a substitute for intimacy. The one thing that you really need is intimacy. And intimacy is the avenue to the power of God’s personal presence. He doesn’t want a distant relationship with you.

Notice here in [Luke 10] verse 39 it says that, “Mary…sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.” There are some things that you cannot learn from a distance. There are some things about Jesus you cannot learn in a classroom; you can only learn them at the feet of Jesus, not through serving, but by listening to His teaching. That’s what we do when we come to church—we come to listen to the teaching of Jesus. That’s simply church–it’s getting to the feet of Jesus.

My greatest fear for the hundreds of people that shuffle in and out of Harvest Bible Chapel every week is that somehow you would shuffle in, fill your head with a few more facts about Jesus, and shuffle out of here–and yet you never get to the feet of Jesus where you worship, where you find pleasure, where you grant affection and where you are changed! There’s some things you can’t learn from a distance!

There’s some things you can’t learn from Google. Did you hear, in the news this week, there was a big outrage? Because the Google home device (you know, that they created to give you all the answers to the most important questions of life?)–if you ask that contraption, “Who is Jesus?,” the answer you get back is, “Sorry, I can’t help you with that.” If you ask it, “Who is Satan?”—it gives you a very-well-defined answer. If you ask it, “Who is Buddha?”—very well defined answer. “Who is Mohammed?”—very well defined answer. “Who is Jesus?”—“Sorry, I can’t help you with that.” That is the correct the answer! You can’t get to know Jesus by a Google search! You have to get to the feet of Jesus. He is the One Who wants to teach you, and it is because of His invitation that you can have intimate knowledge of Who He is. When was the last time you got to the feet of Jesus? Don’t shuffle in and out of here and just keep Him at arm’s length.

You know, some people are really satisfied by just keeping Jesus kind of out there somewhere. It’s interesting in verse 38—it shows us some movement here. Do you see it? The first thing it tells us is that, “Jesus entered [the] village.” Great! Jesus, like, got to our zip code! Jesus is, is, is in the general vicinity. There’s levels of intimacy with Jesus. And there are some people that are really excited, but a little too satisfied that, “Jesus has just shown up in my city.”

Some people just kind of are, are generally giving passive approval to Jesus: “He’s, kind of…yeah, He’s—I’m a fan—He’s, He’s kinda out there somewhere. And I’m so glad He’s in the city. Maybe He could help with the economics, maybe He could help with poverty, maybe He could help with the education, maybe He could reduce the crime rate. I’m really glad that those people out there have access to Jesus”—because He’s in the general vicinity.

Listen, maybe Jesus is in your general vicinity, and maybe from a child you’ve kind of heard some things about Jesus and you’ve kind of gone to church—kind of, sort of. Listen! It is not enough to have a relationship with Jesus where He’s just in your general vicinity. Not even Martha was satisfied with that. When Martha found out that He was in the general vicinity, what’d she do? She invited Him over to her house. She said, “I welcome You into my proximity. Jesus, I want you in my home.”

Now, can you imagine? Let’s say your husband calls home about four-thirty in the afternoon on Tuesday and says, “Honey, I’m bringing a houseguest tonight over for dinner.” [Wife:] “Oh, really? Who?” [Husband:] “Jesus!” Now, what kind of activity would take place between four-thirty and six o’clock (when dinner is served) if Jesus was going to show up at your house? What kind of cleaning process would need to take place? Better yet, how much hiding of stuff would have to be shoved into closets?—and like, “We don’t want Jesus to see that!” You know, “Surely, we…”—you know, “Jesus might…” So, that, that may have been what happened here when Martha decided to bring Jesus into her home.

Now, some of you even don’t even have a problem with that—it’s like, “Absolutely! Jesus is welcome in our home! I mean, if, if He could spend some time with my kids—because they are messed up!” And it’s like, “Children, meet Jesus! Go over there and fix—Jesus, fix them! And we…and my husband needs some…would you just have maybe…I’ll go play catch out in the backyard and maybe have a conversation.” He’s welcome into our home, but there was a level that not even Martha got to, that Mary did. It’s not enough to have Jesus in the general vicinity, it’s not enough even to have Him as a welcome proximity, but Mary got to the place of undistracted intimacy! Not just Jesus in my village, not just Jesus in my home, but Jesus in my gaze. And it’s there that I worship. It’s there that I find joy! It’s there that I find rest. It’s there that I’m changed in His presence. Everything you need flows from the power of the personal presence of Jesus. And if you don’t ever get there, your life is filled with chaos. It’s the furthest thing from simplicity!

And if you’re keeping Jesus at an arm’s length; if your relationship with His church is just kind of like, “Maybe one Sunday a month, we might be able to get our act together enough to come to church but don’t expect anything else, because I’m exhausted. I’m spent. I’m over-spent! Don’t expect me to put anything in the offering bag. We spent all God’s money on other stuff!” So, that’s what we’re trying to solve in this thing. If you want simplicity in your life, you have to give Jesus your first and your best at the place of personal presence—in a relationship filled with intimacy!

Here’s the second thing:

 

  1. Intimacy brings clarity in the chaos.

 

Intimacy brings clarity in the chaos. Look at verse 40: “[And] Martha was distracted with much serving.” Later on, in verse 41, the Lord said, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things…”

            Now, let me ask you here this morning—on church, confession time, humble, transparent, in front of everybody. How many of you have any chaos going on in your life right now? Just lift your hands!  Show the chaos! Show the chaos! Any anxiety, any trouble? Yeah. So you ought to be able to identify with Martha. And Jesus says, “Martha, Martha!” It’s interesting He calls her the name twice—because she probably didn’t hear it the first time “Martha! Martha! Slow Down! You are so anxious and troubled! There’s so much chaos! Don’t you understand—the only place you’re going to find clarity is at the feet of Jesus! Slow down long enough to get in His presence!”

It’s interesting here. Martha asked a question. Do you see she asked the question? It’s the wrong question, and yet it shows how chaotic Martha’s life was. She, she walks up to Jesus and says, “Can I register a complaint? I would like to register a complaint!” And this is the way it works in church, right? You come up: “I would like to register a complaint. Some of your church members are just sitting around and praying! They’re just sitting around—listening—while there’s all this work to be done!!” Do you see what she said? “Would You tell Martha to get up and over here, where the activity’s really needed!” In other words, Martha was saying, “Mary needs to be more like me!” And Jesus said, “Martha. Martha! You need to be more like Mary!” Do you notice there’s not any anxiety going on at the feet of Jesus? There’s no trouble going on at the feet of Jesus. But in your world, there’s trouble and anxiety everywhere.

I learned this years ago; I can’t remember where I learned it from: Velocity is the enemy of intimacy. Have you found that to be true? Velocity is the enemy of intimacy. The greater your velocity increases, the less your intimacy becomes. Greater intimacy—it will slow down your velocity. But I’ve also found this to be true: the less intimacy with Jesus you have in your life, the more it speeds up your velocity—because you are going on a search for something to satisfy. “Am I going to find it at the mall? Am I going to find it at the ball game? Am I going to find it in another kid? Am I going to find it in another relationship? Maybe I can find it on Google; maybe I could order it from Amazon Prime”–looking for something to fill up our lives. And the only thing you’re doing is creating chaos, anxiety and trouble.

Look at the contrast between these two. I’ve told you a couple of weeks ago, that one of the most influential books on our church and on our church staff, I read—actually, in the months before we planted the church. It’s a book by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger called Simple Church. And I read this book, and I’m like, “Oh man! If I could be a part of a church like that, that would be amazing! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a church like this. Let’s see if we can create one!” And so that’s what we’ve tried to do. It’s been very influential. And this is a very simple book and it simply revolves around four words: clarity, alignment, movement and focus. If you can create a church that does that, that’s great! Do you know what I find in this text? Do you know what you find in Mary’s life? You find clarity, movement, alignment and focus. Do you know what you see in Martha’s life? Confusion, congestion, diversion and distraction. Let’s talk about those!

What Mary found was very simple: “I know Who God is, and when God’s around we need to slow down; we need to get at His feet. When Jesus shows up, you get as low as you can as fast as you can!” I’ve heard some people that don’t know God, and they don’t like God. They don’t like the way things have gone in their life, but they somehow think that one day they’re going to get to Heaven.

They’ve made statements to me like this: “One of these days, I’m going to have, I’m going to have a conversation with God! We’re going to sit down, we’re going to have a face-to-face conversation! I’m going to tell Him. . .” Mm, not safe! No. When you get in the presence of God, you don’t get in His face; you get at His feet. Things become real simple: He is God, I am not. I worship! I give Him everything! I surrender all!

That’s the place that Mary got, but not Martha! Jesus was right there. And she had access, and all she thought the relationship involved was working and serving Him. And that somehow Jesus would sit back and applaud and say, “You’re such an awesome servant! Mary, go help her!” That’s not what He said.

Serving is not a substitute for intimacy. Intimacy is the prerequisite for serving. If you get them backwards, you end up with a life full of confusion—you’ll be asking the wrong questions like Martha did. Martha; her life was filled with congestion. So many things Martha had in her life that were clogging up the intimacy that she needed. She was racing around; she didn’t feel like she had enough time to get supper ready. Maybe she didn’t feel like she had all the ingredients that she needed and she didn’t have enough energy to pull it off. (Isn’t it cool how we’re seeing all these different things?) “I don’t feel like I have enough time, I don’t feel like I have enough energy, I don’t feel like I have enough money. I don’t feel like I have enough love to do it all!” That what was going on in Martha’s life. And Jesus said, “Martha! You are troubled by so many things!”

Years ago, for three years straight I would get this horrible sinus infection around Thanksgiving, and I couldn’t get rid of it until like February! And it happened three years in a row. I finally went to the doctor. They took an MRI of my head. They didn’t find anything…except, they found this. You know, on an MRI. You know, bone is white, right? Has everybody seen one of these, like an X-ray? And clear space is like black on the X-ray.

When they took a picture of my head, they found the whole left side of my head was white! It looked like bone—that’s how much density there was in my, um (can we say this word in church) mucous? Can you say that word without people getting gross? I mean, that’s how compacted all the mucous was, and it was all infected and there was bacteria. And the doctor went on to explain, “The reason all of that is there is because you’ve been so congested. Your airways are so constricted there’s no movement for the air, and so it gets clogged up, it gets stagnant and it gets infected.”

Do you know what I just described for you? Not sinus surgery (which I had, that cleared all that up)…I just described many of your lives. There’s no movement spiritually because your spiritual life is congested with so many things. Not Mary. Not many things…one thing. Intimacy brings clarity to the chaos. Martha’s life was diverted to so many other things. Mary’s life was aligned with Jesus.

Alignment. Does your car ever get out of alignment? Like, you know, you let go of the steering wheel for a second and it drifts, like almost into a ditch. You have to catch it and pull it back. Does that ever happen? How many of you, right now your car is out of alignment? Just lift your hands. Okay, just stay away from these people in church on your way home. But it makes it hard to stay in-between the boundaries, right?

You know what happens in the Christian life? We get out of alignment one pot-hole at a time. Just, bam! Knocks it out. Bam! Boom! And you do that for years, and pretty soon you are in the ditch upside-down with the car on fire!—because you never dealt with the alignment problem in your life. Now, here’s the thing about alignment: you get out of alignment through small incremental drifts. It’s just like one day you’re a little off, one hour you’re a little off, one decision that was a little off, and pretty soon, you’re upside-down, on fire, in the ditch!

Do you know how you bring it back in alignment? By big decisive shifts! It’s not like, “Yeah, I’m going to try to go to church more. I’m going to try to read my Bible more. I’ll try to give a little more.” No, you don’t get in alignment through small incremental shifts; you get in alignment by big decisive shifts. You say, “I’m done with that! I am tired of all the congestion, I’m tired of all the sin, I’m tired of the distance! Jesus, I am deciding–I’m at Your feet—every day, every week—I can’t live without it! I need Your personal power and presence in my life. I can’t live without it!” That is a decisive shift! And some of you are trying to have a relationship with Jesus where you just kind of like, “Yeah (groan), I hope I do a little better. I’ll try a little harder.” That is not the way you’re ever going to get an alignment.

You make a choice. You make a decision. “I’m putting Jesus first and best in everything!—in my time, in my money, in my energy and in my love. Jesus, it’s all Yours!” That’s what Mary did, and Jesus said that will never be taken away. There’s no substitute, there’s no replacement for that. That’s focus. And yet Martha was filled with so many distractions. So many of us are living lives like Martha, rather than Mary.

Now, some of you have heard this passage; it’s a very popular passage to preach on. How many of you ever heard a sermon on this before? You’ve ever heard it in a Sunday School lesson? You may have taught this? Now, here’s the way I’ve heard that taught: “You see, some people in church are like Mary; they’re a people person, they emote, and it’s all about this personal intimacy. But there’s other people in the church—they just like to work, they just like to serve. And so, the church needs both. We need Mary’s and we need Martha’s. That’s why God puts us in a body.”

That is wrong, folks! You are not wired like a Martha or wired like a Mary. You choose to be Mary. That’s what it says in verse 42: “One thing is necessary,” Jesus says. “Mary has chosen the good portion.” Do you know what that means? Intimacy is simply a choice. Hear me. You are as close or as far away from Jesus as you have chosen to be. You are as close to Jesus as you have chosen to be. If you have kept Jesus in your general vicinity, or maybe even welcomed proximity—but you’ve never gotten to undistracted intimacy. That’s on you, not on Him!

Notice here how important it is to choose intimacy, and I want to give you some practical ways to make this happen in your life. It’s about to get real practical in church. Actually, I’m going to give you a homework assignment all through the week, okay? Here’s the first thing: If you want to choose intimacy, the first thing you have to do is evaluate your inventory. Now, here’s the homework assignment, okay? Now, if you’re here and you’re a married couple, one of you needs to keep the other one accountable for doing this project. If you’re here as a young person, tell Mom and Dad, “We’re doing the project!” Okay? And get the family together over dinner tonight, or maybe instead of watching a movie or something–get the family together and get a blank piece of paper, and write down everything that you are responsible for.

Write down everything you own on the piece of paper, okay? You’re like, “That would take way too long!” See, that’s your problem! It doesn’t fit on one piece of paper! Okay? You have to take inventory—seriously. “We have a house…”—some of you would have to say, “And then there’s the other house…”—and then, “Well, there’s the shed in the back, and then there’s everything in the shed: and there’s the lawn equipment, there’s the golf clubs, the recreational equipment…”

And then go to your liquid assets. Go to, “We got a bank account, we got a savings account, we got stocks, bonds, CDs, IRAs…and we’ve got all that.” Just put all that, the dollar amount on the paper, okay? Then put everything, put all the square footage that you have to put the stuff in. Just write down the square footage–in the bedrooms. And the cars. And then put your personal relationships on there. How many people are you responsible for? Put all the people on there—and pretty soon, you’re going to realize, “No wonder my life is so chaotic! I am always thinking about the many things on this list!” So take inventory.

If you’ve come to church very long at all here, you know how weird my life was before we started this church. So, Andrea and I—along with our four children—for the fifteen years prior to planting Harvest, we lived in an RV travel trailer on church parking lots. Basically a different church every week for fifteen years. Okay? So, that meant everything that we owned had to fit in a trailer. It’s alright, you can breathe now. We survived, okay? You’re like, “No, no! Really.” Yeah, really, we did this for fifteen years, okay?

Now, when it started out it was fine, it was just me and Andrea. And somebody loaned us a 1977 Avian travel trailer. It’s like a silver pickle, like an Airstream. Have you ever seen one of those going down the road? It’s like it’ll never rust—it’s made out of stainless steel. And that was our first home. And everything we owned had to go in there. That was fine! It was just two of us and it smashed us together. It was kind of forced intimacy, it was like, “We’re gonna be intimate! We got no choice! We just gotta share space!”

And then, Brooke came along, and so we brought Brooke home from the hospital and stuck her on the shelf in the trailer because that was the only place to put her! And, and so then, you know, there’s all the apparatus that comes with a baby. So imagine that all coming into the trailer. But then Zac came along thirteen months later!—and so, the Lord was good and He upgraded our trailer. And so we upgraded from the 1977 thirty-foot Avian to a 1995 thirty-five-foot fifth wheel trailer with one slide-out. We thought we were kings in a castle! It had a slide-out, you know!

And so it had one bedroom, but we had two kids, and so we ripped out the bed in there and we put the two kids in there with two beds, and then Andrea and I slept out on the fold-out sofa in the living room which means you had to make the bed every day and shove it back into the couch so you have a couch to sit on. And that’s the way that we did that.

Now listen…think about the square footage of this, okay? The trailer’s like eight feet wide—it’s got to go down the road—and so you’re thinking, “Thirty-five feet! That sounds awesome!” That’s great if you’re going on vacation! We were living in this thing, okay, with two kids and all the apparatus—and everything we owned had to fit in there. And then the third kid came along, Allie—and so we shoved her in the closet.

And we got upgraded to a little bigger trailer and so the total square footage we had at any time…we ended up in like a forty-foot (eight-foot-wide, forty-feet long) trailer; somebody do that math on that. How many square feet do you have? Three-hundred-and-twenty square feet for a family of five. And then Leah came along. We shoved her, um, I don’t know, in the tire rack or something—and so we just kept going!

Now this is what we learned from all that. First of all, there was a weight restriction on how much you could carry in the trailer. That meant that anytime anybody got anything new, something had to go! If you added a book, there was a book that had to go. If you added a toy, something had to go. If you added a kid…massive amounts of stuff had to be taken, you know thrown away—just to make it all fit!

But you know what? We look back on that time. Do you know when our life was the simplest? When everything we owned had to fit in the trailer! And now that we’ve got like a real home and all the square footage—and we had extra square footage, so we just added a kid and shoved him in. You know, we have a new room now for a new kid. So shove one of those in there. And yet, it’s so much more complex, because there’s so many more things I’m responsible for!

Number one, evaluate your inventory. Here’s number two. Once you do that, give it all to God–every bit of it. Transfer ownership of everything on the paper to God. Now, the reality is, He owns it all anyway. But we sometimes think it’s ours. And here’s the third thing. So you evaluate the inventory, you transfer ownership to God, and here’s the third thing. You pray a prayer, and here’s the prayer: “God, You see my list? How much of this stuff do You want me to keep?” Now, the question is not: “God, what do you want me to give?” The question is, “What do You want me to keep? It’s all Yours.”

We talked about money last week. Some of you were like, “Whew! I’m glad that’s over with!” The question should not be, “God what do You want me to give?” The question is, “God, what do You want me to keep? I’m going to assume I’m just going to give it all away. What do You want me to keep? Because it all belongs to You!” So you have to evaluate the inventory.

And then, as you go along, the next part of this is this: You have to eliminate the clutter. Do you remember that crazy story in John chapter 2 where Jesus went to the temple and He found moneychangers there? And they were selling pigeons and offerings. They kind of turned it into like a flea market in church. The place of worship had become a place of market. And so, Jesus got so angry, do you remember what He did? The Bible says in John chapter 2 that He actually sat down and made a whip.

Now just think about the intentionality of this: Jesus didn’t have a whip, so He thought, “I need one.” He went and gathered the materials necessary; he sat down and wove the thing together. He decided how long it would be (He was probably calculating, “How long does it have to be to get that guy?” Whoosh!) And, I mean, He had to calculate this. Then He goes back to the temple and He drives out the moneychangers and turns over the tables.

And in doing so, He yells a statement. It’s recorded for us in John chapter 2. Do you know what He says? “Take [away] these things…[They’re cluttering up the place of worship!]We do Simply Church around here, and some of you are not able to do Simply Church because you’ve brought so many things on your paper that’s cluttering up your mind, your attention, your focus—and you can’t get to the feet of Jesus! So, eliminate the clutter.

And then finally: Embrace the essential. Jesus said, “One thing is necessary. [And] Mary[‘s]…chosen the good portion…[and it will never] be taken away from her.” Have you made the right choice with what you’re doing?–with your time, your money, your energy and your love? Does Jesus have your first and your best, or are you distracted by many things, “anxious and troubled?” Do you need to make the better choice and get to the feet of Jesus?

Here’s the way we’re going to end the service. I want to invite you to do whatever it takes to get to the feet of Jesus. The front of the auditorium’s open; I would invite you to come, maybe just get on your knees; get to the feet of Jesus. Others of you may just simply want to slip to your seat, get on your knees, turn that seat into an old-fashioned prayer altar. Whatever you need to do to get to the feet of Jesus, just for a few seconds, make that happen right now.

I’m just going to be silent for a moment, and let’s listen to what Jesus would say to us. Maybe the first thing you need to say is, “Lord, I am anxious and troubled about many things.” He already knows that! Maybe you would need to admit, “It’s been a long time since I’ve slowed down long enough to get to Your feet. I want to do that, not only today, but as a pattern—as a habit in my life.” Some of you could confess that you’ve been satisfied having Jesus in the general vicinity, but not undistracted intimacy. Why don’t you welcome Him into your private space? Everything you need flows from the presence of Jesus!

Jesus, thank You that You have welcomed us by your grace into a personal relationship! I pray today, God, that our affections would be passionately centered and focused on You. And God, would You become very practical to us about what You would have us eliminate, so that we could embrace the one thing that is necessary. We pray in Jesus’ Name.

 

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