Untitled Sermon

📷📷Growing up, I had this woman, Miss Janet, who was like a second mother to me. She taught me everything from how to play baseball and football to how to treat a lady. There is not a time when I am walking on a sidewalk with my wife, or my daughters, where I don’t hear Miss Janet telling me , “Chris, you better get on the side closes to the road, if a car jumps that curb it better be hitting you and not her.” Or, “When helping someone, don’t ever expect anything but a thank you, that’s all you need.”

(Tell story about helping Pa with the Shell station)

Miss Janet was so influential into molding me into the man I am today. I will never forget her and the amazing things she taught me

Let me ask you all a question. If you knew you only had a month left to live, what do you think you would absolutely need to pass onto your family and friends? Here is a better question, what would you be leaving them with? What would be that one thing that is so profound that you would have to communicate to everyone you know before you leave?

The truth is, no matter what you believe, we are all leaving something, right now. An impression…an example of some sort. In some shape or form you are leaving something that people are going to remember you by, whether that’s good or bad. Miss Janet had no idea what she was teaching me at that time would be something that I would be remembering for the rest of my life AND something that I will carry on down to others. I will never forget her as long as I live. She was leaving a legacy and she didn’t even know it.

You are leaving a legacy.

I have heard it said before, that dash on your tombstone signifies who you were in life. People will come visit you at the cemetery and look at the date you were born and the date that you died and reflect on who you were in between those dates.

So, here is the bottom line what are we living for now, that we could leave for tomorrow?

What are we representing in our lives?

What are we representing in our lives now that others will take when we are gone?

📷📷📷We have for the last few weeks been talking about David and his life and how we can relate it to our own lives. The unassuming choices we make, the giants in our lives, the power of friends, and the power of decisions. (Add to this section as sermons are being done each week)

This week, we are going to talk about David’s legacy.

What is it that we know and remember about King David?

We know he was the son of Jesse, the second king of Israel from 1010 B.C. to 970 B.C., a shepherd before that, we know he was fearless, we know he was great friend, Continue to add.

Today, I would like to start at the end of David’s life in 1 Chronicles.

Where we are now is David has already communicated to all his officials, the leaders of Israel, his desire to build the temple for the Lord. David couldn’t do it because he has shed so much blood in his life, and his son Solomon was going to build it, but David has already started collecting the materials to build it. He gathered the officials and Solomon around to also encourage them to recognize Solomon’s leadership. As he had them all together, he looked at his son, who was going to be the next leader of Israel, and told him this:

Slide And Solomon, my son, learn to know the God of your ancestors intimately. Worship and serve him with your whole heart and a willing mind. For the Lord sees every heart and knows every plan and thought. If you seek him, you will find him. But if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. Slide

I’m pretty sure David, the man after God’s own heart, had raised Solomon up in a home that loved, honored, and respected God, daily. Solomon heard everyday growing up, God this, God that. But why did David, at the end of his life, think it was necessary to tell Solomon again? Why, because David knew it was that important. He knew that he wanted the last things for him to say to his son, was the most important thing of all.

So, what can we learn from some of these last words of David? What is this legacy that David is leaving us with?

We can learn our purpose in life.

How many of us, or know of others who dwell on this question? What is my purpose. What am I supposed to do with my life? What do I live for? What is it that I am going to pour my blood sweat and tears into?

We all know we need to have a purpose, right?

We can find this purpose in the verse we just read:

Slide And Solomon, my son, learn to know the God of your ancestors intimately. Worship and serve him with your whole heart and a willing mind. For the Lord sees every heart and knows every plan and thought. If you seek him, you will find him. But if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. Slide

David here is not giving us A purpose, he is not giving us an option to choose from, he is giving us THE purpose for life.

What is it?

It is to know God…. serve God…. and seek God.

Know God! To do this, we must have a relationship with God.

There is a difference in knowing of God and knowing God.

Look at Tom Brady. We can know all of his states. How many touchdowns he has thrown in his career, how many records he has broken, how many footballs he deflated.

We can even know his favorite foods, and clothes he likes to wear. But does that mean we know him?

NOPE.

We just know of him. The only ones who truly know Brady is those he is closest too and intimate with.

The same goes with God!

We can have all the knowledge that is in the Bible about God, but that doesn’t mean we know God. It just means we can win at Bible trivia.

To know God, we must have a relationship with God. We need to be intimate with Him. We need to be near to Him. It means we have to be invested in Him.

Just like a marriage would never last if you only spent 1-2 hours a week with your spouse, or maybe it would, I don’t know. Seriously, just like a marriage would never last if you only spent 1-2 hours a week with your spouse, either will your relationship with God last if you think showing up on a Sunday and listening to me or Shane and doing a Sunday school class is all you need to have a relationship with God.

It is more than that, it is 24 hours, a day 7 days a week, 365 days a year, sometimes 366, involvement with God. That is how we know God!

We make Him central to who we are.

It means you are a child of God, before you are anything else.

You are a child of God before you are a mother.

You are a child of God before you are a father

You are a child of God before you are an athlete

You are a child of God before you are a student

You are a child of God before you are a wife

You are a child of God before you are a husband

You are a child of God before you are a friend

You are a child of God before you are a farmer

If you have excepted Christ as your personal Savior, then you are a child of God first, before anything else.

It all flows from this understanding that you know God. That you belong to God.

If you are, whatever it is you are, before you are a child of God, you will suffer, and not see His fruitfulness!

If you say, I am a (Fill-In), and I think of God occasionally, you will suffer and not see his fruitfulness.

But, if you put God first and make it about Him over you, you will be fruitful. That is what it is to know God.

First David says to know God, second, he says to serve God.

Serving God is the evidence of knowing God.

Let me explain that for a minute. The way we serve one another and treat one another in our homes, church, community is the evidence that we have a relationship with God, which shows we know God. It shows our hearts have been touched by God.

It is almost impossible to serve God without knowing Him. How many of us in our lives, or even now, have ever been bored coming to church? You are just going through the motions and you think you are doing the right thing by serving God by coming here. That’s serving God without knowing God.

Then there are those who know God and don’t serve God. You say I know God, but I ain’t doing ANYTHING. Knowing Him is all I need to do, leave me alone with all this serving stuff.

But the reality of it all is you can’t do one without the other. You have to know God to serve God. You serve God by knowing God.

I heard someone once say, Serving God without knowing God is slavery. Knowing God without serving God is disloyalty. But, knowing God and serving God is LOVE.

That is what David is teaching in this passage.

Why, because we are all called to serve.

Look at Jesus! He came down to do what? To serve us. Shouldn’t we do what he did?

We are a church of disciples making disciples. What is a disciple? Becoming more like Christ! Yes! We should do what Jesus did. We should become more like him by following what he did in our own lives.

I know when you hear the word serve, some of us think of it like a pop-up math quiz with stuff we don’t know. Like letters and number together, What!? Whoever thought of that, letters and numbers together. The only letters and number I want to see together is a check with the letters of my name and the numbers of a large amount. That’s it!

Ok, ok, let’s get back to what I was saying. I heard one of my professors, Matt Young, explain to me what Gospel Math is and we can use it in the term of serving. So, when you get someone asking you if you can help serve somewhere and you instantly feel like, I don’t want to serve, this is where Gospel Math comes in. Think this, Jesus, who is above me came down here to serve me, then that must mean I must serve them! That’s Gospel Math! It can be used for everything in life!

The purpose of God we find through David is to first know God, second to serve God, and finally third is to seek God.

It says here in the passage, “If you seek him you will find him.”

It doesn’t say if you seek him, you may find him, or if he is available you can find him. It says you will find him.

Remember when you were younger and went to the grocery store with your mom and you went into the toy or candy aisle and got caught up in the moment. You saw everything you every wanted was right there in front of you, within arm’s reach. You turned around to beg your mama for a toy or a piece of candy, but she wasn’t there! Remember how scared you were? Remember how your heart raced and thumped against your chest because you thought you lost one of the most important things in your life. All the sudden you started panicking and running down the aisle to search for her thinking you were never going to find her. Down one aisle, nope! Down the second aisle, nope. Oh, that fear is building! Down the third, fourth, fifth aisle, nope. Finally, the sixth aisle you go down you see her. All the fear goes away, and you have that moment of relief. You finally found her, there is nothing to worry about anymore!

This world we live in is just one big grocery store that we came to with God. But somewhere in it we stopped and got distracted and lost sight of God. We put the focus on our wants and desires for just a moment, or it seemed like just a moment, and looked up and God was gone. But this is the cool thing about God’s grocery store, that moment we seek Him out we don’t have to go down every aisle to find Him. We call out to Him and he shows up!

But it doesn’t end there in the verse. If we keep reading it says, “But if you forsake him, he will reject you forever.

If you think losing your mama in a grocery store is fear, think of being separated from our source of life, our sustainer, our happiness, our joy. Everything good in the world comes from God and being separated from him should be the worst fear we ever have.

Sometimes we want to hide from God because we don’t want Him knowing what we are doing, but we still know He is there if we need Him, but how scary is it to know God leaves us alone. He isn’t there when we don’t want him, or when we do.

The alternative to seeking God is abandoning God. To forsake him is to choose an identity in the opposite direction.

The Bible calls this being lost.

Tim Chaddick says this about being lost, “you are not lost because you are going to a bad destination, you’re going to a bad destination because you are lost.

So many people are lost, but God brought his son, Jesus, to seek and save those who are lost. It is Jesus who saves us from the darkness. It is Jesus who saves us from being lost.

Here is the best way to describe on how to seek God. Everyone get a pencil, pen, crayon, marker, whatever you can use to write with so you can write this down.

How do we seek God? By believing on Jesus.

Continue to believe on Jesus and not give up, follow Jesus, become more like Jesus (Disciples making disciples)

At the end of it says, “But if you forsake him, he will reject you forever.

But look at what Jesus says in , “However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them.”

Seeking God, by believing on Jesus is the most important part of our purpose of life. Without it, we get separated from God and can’t go to heaven. With it, we have everything, we have eternal life!

At the beginning I asked you if you only had a month left to live what would you be leaving those around you with.

Although David did some great things through his life, at the end of it all he wanted the leaders of Israel and his son to know was the true purpose of life. He wanted them to know that no matter all the great things he accomplished, it wasn’t about him, but about God. He didn’t say know me (David), serve me (David), or seek me (David). He said to know, serve, and seek God! David spent most of his life living in a way that honored God and brought Him glory for those after him may see that and glorify God.

Here is the bottom line what are we living for now, that we could leave for tomorrow?

What are we representing in our lives?

What are we representing in our lives now that others will take when we are gone?

Is it to honor God above all things?

I have this friend, I know this may sound morbid to you, but I have this friend who lives his life right now in a way that he never makes it about him, but always about God. So I told him this

John 3:16 NLT

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.