Ordering Your Life
Notes
Transcript
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The meaning of respectable
The meaning of respectable
The Greek word for respectable is kosmios.
To better understand this, we are going to first look at the root of kosmios, kosmos.
When you hear kosmos we think of space, the universe…which is correct, that is what the word means.
It means, the universe, the world, sometimes mankind.
But specifically when it speaks of those things, it is related to the order of them.
Nation’s exist, but not without order. There are people who lead, and others who follow their leading.
The world exists, but not without order. It exists with heat and cold, with seasons and times.
The solar system exists, but not without order. The planets move in a specific arrangement that has been established by God. Orbiting the sun with perfect harmony.
This shouldn’t surprise us, Our God is a God of order, so when we look at the order of all creation, it speaks of the character of the one who created it.
When Jesus came, it was in the fullness of time. The exact moment in history so that redemption would be in the exact order in which God had planned it.
When the Jews sought to arrest Jesus. We see time and time again that Jesus would slip passed becasue it wasn’t His time. It wasn’t in the right order of events.
When we speak of kosmos, it is this order on a large scale.
Kosmios is still about ordering things, but it is now on a personal level.
It is used as respectable, good behavior (KJV), having a good reputation (NLT). Someone who has decorum, is polite, modest.
The heart of the matter is that a respectable man, is one who has order in his life, and who fulfills the duties that are assigned. Within that order they lives in a holy way, who’s dress and mannerisms are befitting a follower of Christ.
Last week we looked at self-control which covers the modesty part of kosmios, this week I want to look at the aspect of our lives that needs to be ordered.
Ordering Loves
Ordering Loves
Why do I refer to these things as loves?
We are discussing the things we care most about in our lives.
How do we order the most important things in our lives?
Think of this as a pond, you throw a stone into the water, and it creates a ripple effect that works it’s way out from where the stone struck.
Ordering our loves is noticing that the most important loves are the closes rings, then we work our way out to the farther rings as we go.
God
God
I do, and I don’t like the idea of putting God in an order when it comes to ordering our loves.
God is the closes ring in the pond, but He is also the pond itself, all the water.
I Do becasue....
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This means that your love for God is first.
As much as we try to take care of other relationships, we want to take care of our relationship with God first.
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Does Jesus really want us to hate our parents, our spouse, our kids?
NO,
Our love for God is to increase to the degree that our love for God is so great that all other relationships dwindle in comparison.
God doesn’t want your love to decrease in other relations. But your love is to increase with Him!
That is why God must be at the top of the list.
At the same time, I don’t like God being on the top of the list because we believe that He is just a box on the list.
We forget that God is in every part of this list.
You cannot love God, if you don’t love your spouse correctly.
You cannot love God, if you don’t love other believers.
He is all consuming. We glorify Him when we order the other loves in our lives correctly.
We also cannot love the other things on this list, if we don’t love God properly.
Spouse
Spouse
The first thing in order after God, the marriage relationship.
This relationship is of the utmost importance.
Ephesians 5:22-26
Wives, you are submitting to your own husbands.
Allow your husband to lead.
God created woman as a help meet it says in Genesis. You are to be helping your husband in his task of taking dominion.
You get a voice in the relationship. But the end decision is in the hands of your husband, and God will hold him accountable for how he leads.
This is how God calls you adorn yourself, with the inner beauty. With a quiet and gentle spirit.
Understand if you love God, you show that love God by coming under the authority of your husband.
If you are not allowing him to lead, you aren’t loving God.
Ephesians 5:25
Husbands
To orient your life correctly, your wife must be first after God, and you must love your wife, cherish your wife as Christ did the church.
Work comes second.
The hunting trip with the boys, it comes second.
You make sure she is well taken care of first
v. 26
Your job is bring her to Christ in couple devotions or family worship.
Your job is to make sure she is growing in the Lord.
1 Peter tells us that if you aren’t honoring your wife, your prayers are hindered. That’s how important this is.
The spouse is our first love that we are to be caring for other than God.
Loving your spouse, is loving God.
Kids
Kids
Our second order of responsibility. Kids
Children are our future, they will be shaping the world.
Children are a blessing from God.
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
One of the greatest curses is to have your generations be cut off. That your family line would cease and to be remembered no more.
To order our lives correctly, means the relationship with our kids, this comes after our spouse.
The next ripple in the pond.
How we train our children, that is how the coming generations will behave.
It’s not enough to have kids, Prov 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
We must take time to train our kids.
Unfortunately, this is something parents forget, even pastor’s fail at training their kids many times.
You hear the stories of how bad P.K.’s can be. In large part the kids see their dad’s having enough time for everyone else, training everyone else, but failing to take care of them.
1 Timothy 3:4-5
1 Timothy 3:4-5
It is imperative that everyone, but especially those in leadership have their loves in the proper order.
You must take care of your kids, train them up to follow after God.
The greatest mission field we can have is in your home.
This is why mothers are spoken of so highly.
Church/People of God
Church/People of God
Galatians 6:10
God calls us to love everyone…but especially those of the household of faith.
We are speaking of ordering our loves. In the ordering of loves, we are to do good especially, this means of greater importance to the household of faith.
The apostle John wrote, beloved, let us love one another....who?
The believers, the beloved, love the other believers, the beloved.
This starts with supporting Christian businesses.
The mechanics you go to, the businesses you support, the contractors you hire. The first ones we should be going to are other Christians.
Christians should have a deep love for one another. For we are of the same Spirit.
Do I love the people who don’t know Jesus down the street, yes. But their should be a deeper love, a familial love between Christians.
Our Neighbor
Our Neighbor
After loving our brothers and sister, we move to the next one in the order of things. Loving our neighbor.
Luke 10:27
We are to love God, and love our neighbor.
This verse has been grossly misused since 2020.
It’s been used for topics from global warming, to allowing illegals into the country, to wearing masks, to getting vaccinated.
Gavin Newsom of California even had a billboard that said, “Need an abortion? California is ready to help.” Then misquoted Mark 12:31, “Love your neighbor as yourself, there is no greater commandment than these.”
Those are all misrepresentations of who Jesus was speaking about when he spoke of loving your neighbor.
Jesus used the parable of the good Samaritan to describe what it means to love your neighbor.
What we learn from the good Samaritan is we are called to help those, who God has placed in our lives, with the means that he has blessed us with.
When you see someone who has just lost a loved one. You comfort them.
I you see someone struggling to make ends meet, and you are able to help them, whether that is through financial means or through teaching them how to manage their finances, we do it.
But it is active, boots on the ground work within our community.
That is loving our neighbor.
We show grace, love, and mercy to others because that is what Jesus did for us by dying for our sins.
But that comes in order after your own family is taken care of and your able to help others.
Work
Work
Colossians 3:23-24
Proverbs has many things to say about the sluggard, those who won’t work…and it isn’t nice things.
We are to work, and when we work, it is with diligence. Doing our best job as if we are working on the house of God.
For we represent Christ with the way we work.
Work must be in the proper order.
Someone who works diligently, yet their home life is in ruin. They haven’t put things in proper order. They aren’t respectable.
Someone who spends time with his family, yet the family is in poverty because he isn’t working, they aren’t respectable.
Someone who is working a job yet they aren’t applying themselves to get a job that pays enough to support the family, they aren’t respectable.
We must work diligently, bringing glory to God with the way we work, blessing our employers with the way we work, but make sure you have enough time to spend with your family.
This is why employers should look for Christian employee’s. So you can bless them with a good work environment and suitable wages.
Employee’s should look for Christian employers. So that you might work heartily as to the Lord and bless them with good work.
Enjoyment
Enjoyment
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25
God has given us work, but God says we are to find enjoyment from all the toil.
When we have fruit from our efforts, we are to recognize that this is a gift from the hand of God.
It is not wrong to enjoy the good things God has given us on earth, it’s wrong not to acknowledge and thank God for the things we have for enjoyment.
Once again, it’s proper order.
We enjoy things, but enjoyment becomes an idol in improper order.
Enjoyment is something we thank God for, it doesn’t come before our family, we use the enjoyment to build relationships with others in our church or in the community. And we don’t skip out on work or our duties for the sake of pleasure.
This is what Paul meant by respectable. Making sure that we are living holy lives, that are oriented to taking care of the responsibilities that God has placed in our care.
We are being respectable when we keep all these things in the right and proper order.
May we glorify God with the way we live.