Distracted - Worry
Notes
Transcript
Text: Matthew 6:25-34
Christianity and Materialism
One night a thief broke into the single-room apartment of French novelist Honorè de Balzac. Trying to avoid waking Balzac, the intruder quietly picked the lock on the writer's desk. Suddenly the silence was broken by a sardonic laugh from the bed, where Balzac lay watching the thief.
"Why do you laugh?" asked the thief.
"I am laughing to think what risks you take to try to find money in a desk by night where the legal owner can never find any by day."
Today in the Word, November 6, 1993.
In the fifth century, a man named Arenius determined to live a holy life. So he abandoned the conforms of Egyptian society to follow an austere lifestyle in the desert. Yet whenever he visited the great city of Alexandria, he spent time wandering through its bazaars. Asked why, he explained that his heart rejoiced at the sight of all the things he didn't need.
Those of us who live in a society flooded with goods and gadgets need to ponder the example of that desert dweller. A typical supermarket in the United States in 1976 stocked 9,000 articles; today it carries 47,000. How many of them are absolutely essential? How many superfluous?
Food Inc
The call of this passage is for the one that wants to truly Understand the life that Jesus offers.
That life that is beyond the normal life to be lived on this earth. It makes sense doesn’t it.
Many Christians want a life that better and beyond all that is offered here below.
But they don’t want to have to do anything different than the world around us. They want to live the same backwards, selfish, incongruent way as all of their neighbors. And it goes against Jesus own conclusion in this passage.
(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
When Jesus was teaching this portion of Scripture he was connecting back to the OT
Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
Someone says oh preacher that OT stuff isn’t for today…
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.
In fact the direct context of this verse is the prayer that he models for the believer when he says...
After this manner therefore pray ye:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
When Jesus declares in vs 24 that no man can serve two masters.
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
He was acknowledging the hypocrisy of saying you serve both and only actually serve one.
Here is a problem that all of Christ’s followers have and that is that each of us are highly skilled at convincing ourselves that we can for a fact serve to masters.
Thus many of God’s people are living Distracted.
We are distracted with material possesion and earthly needs.
“preacher why do you make a distinction. Well there are in fact real needs that must be met. We need to feed our family, protect our homes, plan for security of the future. But to all those Jesus says. DON’T WORRY.
But if we are honest in America we are not usually fighting to put food on the table as much as we are deciding which name brand we may have to forgo. Much of our discomfort exists at the level of Creature comforts. To these Jesus says,
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
Here is a principle…
The Distractions you are to guard against happen between two masters.
Worry and serve self and don’t serve God.
Prioritize possessions and don’t serve God.
But it always comes down to a choice between two.
God or Mammon…
We get distracted by the wrong things.
Priorities cannot be a distraction. Let me illustrate with the family. You find a new hobby and it has captured you every thought. You have mountains of articles, hours of instructional videos, and at least one how to guide. You can see yourself at mastery much sooner than 10,000 hrs. If you could just give your free hours to the project as apposed to you know your family.
I know it is not popular…I’ve had the complaint pastor doesn’t want us to have any hobbies. NO I’m fine wake up when they are asleep and live your hobby. When you get home from the evening you dont’ take you hat off and set it on the rack you just switch hats. Leave your office hat on the rack and pick up the husband hat, father hat, teachers hat. But I’ll not back off a man that has brought children into the world for your wife to raise. That’s immoral and you signed up for the responsibility and if you don’t get to kill one more buck this year I will cry no tears for you.
Your priorities are not distractions. Your priorities may be heavy and they may not always be interesting to you but they are priorities non-the-less.
So it is with your servanthood to Jesus Christ.
When you have subjegated the spiritual to the material you have a misunderstanding as to who we are. You are human this means the BODY and SOUL come together.
YOU are not a SPirit with a meat Suit.
You are not a body with a ghost in the network
You are body and soul. And only we can get the idea that we have times that are holy and times that are for us. And you are living distracted. You cannot comparmentalize your spirit as if you do not need to have a walk with God that prioritizes HIM over all things.
Jesus illustrates this with the eye.
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
Simply put if you try to have two things in view at the same time you will get nothing. You try to focus on an object in the foreground the background gets blurry. If you wish to put your attention on the back ground the fore gets hazy.
If you try to focus on two objects on this platform at exactly the same time you will seen none of it at all. You must pick one thing and look at it alone to see it fully.
It is the state of being ‘pure in heart’. That is to say I have my attention on only one thing. That one thing is the God of heaven.
Do you remember the promise of
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
This brings us to our next principle:
The cares of the world are designed to capture and control our focus.
FCF: We get distracted and place Possessions over the Person of God.
It is here that we need to understand that God has the grace that we need to live this kind of life. Because we obviously can’t just determine to do better or none of us would fall to such a universal and obvious point. But consider the one who never failed.
Maybe you’d remember the night that Jesus was betrayed.
And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people. Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him.
Fast forward the story a little and we find when Judas realizes what he has done.
Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
How often have we been found with the betrayal of possessions living like a Judas. While the real lover of our souls lives in perfect faithfulness to us. Having never failed to love us as we need. And even the night Jesus gave up
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