Making it count 2

Make it count #2

Good morning… it is great to be with you all again. My name is Jamey Mills, I am the lead pastor of Northside Church… and we are so glad that you have joined us today…

We are in the second week of a new sermon series we are calling “make it count”… and we are looking at some really important and practical things… and my hope is, no matter where you are in your relationship with God, you are willing to look at it… and weight it out.

We all want our lives to count for something… and last week we talked about how our lives are make up of days just like today… and that we will never become who we want to be… or maybe who God created us to be… without living intentionally.

We looked in the Bible at Romans ch. 11 where it teaches us this important truth…

Everything that we are and have comes from God, belongs to God, is sustained by God, and is to be used to honor God... making His love and grace known.

The truth is, if we want to follow Jesus… this is for sure a big part of what it means to make it count… realizing all we are.. and all we have are from him and for him… you can find that sermon on our website… if you missed it I really think it’s worth your time.

Today I want to talk a little about how connected our heart is… to those things we invest our time, energy, and resources in… and how cool is it to know that Jesus speaks directly into that.

Valuing and investing in the right things is so important to making it count.

It reminds me a little of a story that Jesus told in Matthew 13…

Matthew 13:44–46 NLT

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.

“Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls. When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it!

The point Jesus is making isn’t about selling off what we have to upgrade to nicer things… He is teaching about value… and not just any value but the value of God’s Kingdom.

He is comparing literally all that you are and have… to all that He has for you. And He is saying that if you could really understand the value of it… If there was a way for us to know and see it… and what is really wroth… we’d realize is that its worth far more than all we are and have… great than all we have acquired…

It’s the kind of treasure you’d bury… and then willing sell off all you have to obtain it. Jesus is speaking in a way that helps us understand… that is not just more… its worth far more…

Value… what is it that you value? How can you tell?

Throughout history, some people have made it easy to tell. I have found a few interesting stories of unusual ways people had chosen to be buried…

There was a guy buried in his Cadillac, a lady in her Ferrari, all kinds of people with instruments, or some fishing and hunting gear… some with pictures of loved ones… or of things they had done… One dude was buried with his recliner and another was buried with hundreds of dollars in small bills tucked in his sock in case tipping was thing where he was going.

One incredibly famous female recording artist was buried with tons of cash and expensive clothes… she wanted to be set and look good for whatever was next…

There was a dude that was buried with a power saw, I guess in case he woke up…

Probably the most interesting was an ancient Chinese ruler from the early first century… then they exhumed his burial site, they found he was buried with a working toilet… just in case of an emergency I’d guess…

In every single one of those cases… if they were to be exhumed today (don’t do that its people get all kinds of mad) do you know what you’d find? They are long gone… but their stuff is still there.

It remind me of the person who asked John D. Rockerfeller’s accountant how much money John left behind… and his accountant wisely responded… all of it.

How much money did John D. Rockefeller leave behind?

And that is a reality all of us face… Maybe not our favorite reality… but it is.

I remember going to the dump with my dad… I loved it. My goal was to be as destructive as I could be… and if I could break glass… that was extra… but if I could break a TV screen… that was ultimate.

In Randy Alcorn’s book “The Treasure Principle” he makes this point… that sooner or later, everything we own… ends up here… at the dump. What we spend so much time, passion, and energy trying to acquire… will someday… be someone else’s garbage.

I have seen it… motorcycle I saved up for as a kid… is gone. My first car, I am sure is gone. the backyard I put so much effort into at our fist house… has been changed to meet the needs of another family…

Thanks for joining us… JK that is a real bummer… but there is a great truth here… and Jesus goes out of His way to warn us about it. To tell us that there is a better way... to use all He has entrusted us with…

And God knew that this would be hard… so much so that He talked about this topic as much or more than any other. It’s THIS topic that has the potential to grip our hearts… and motivate our days in ways that rob us of what it means to really make it count. And some of us, I’d guess all of us really struggle with it… its one of the most unpopular discussion topics of our day, but Jesus spoke clearly and often about it… why? If you are interested in following Him, we cannot just tune him out if we don’t like the topic… so, I want to encourage you to do your best to listen with an open minds, hearts and hands…

Matthew 6:19–21 (NLT)

19 “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. 21 Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

Jesus doesn’t tell us to stop working… to stop trying… he doesn’t call us stop investing… but instead tell in what matters… to invest in ways that last for longer than our days here on earth.

Jesus tells us to invest in ways that last longer than our days here on earth.

What is that you treasure? It’s not invisible. In fact, if we are willing to take an honest look, it is probably the most visible part of our lives… what makes it hard to see at times is our culture… It can be hard to identify what we treasure when it is camouflaged with the culture around us… or when its sort of universally accepted… its easy to sort of not really think about it.

What you treasure is probably the most visible part of your life.

What would the 3 people closest to you say when it comes to what your treasure?

If I were to ask the 3 closest people to you what it’s you value most or that it is you treasure most… what do you think they’d say?

James ch. 4 reminds us of how short life is… it’s a “mist” that here and then gone… and it is Life flies by… it literally seems like just yesterday we adopted our kids… and I dont know how it happened but here we sit with a 19 year old and a 14 year old.

James 4 teaches us that life is a mist that is here and then gone.

Rany Alcorn in his book talks about the idea of a dot and a line (SHOW PIC)

That our life is a blip… a dot… on the timeline of eternity…

And his point is learning to invest in the line… to live for the line… to live for eternity… invest in eternity… and not what ends up in the dump.

What does it mean to live for the line?

He said it’s like spending 10’s of thousands of dollars furnishing a hotel room for a weekend stay…

It is so easy to invest in things that don’t last… to allow things like money to be the ruler of our day… its easy to begin to measure our success and value by it, it can bring a false sense of security and hope, its easy to think our lives our fuller because of it…

It is so easy to invest in things that don’t last. To allow things like money to rule our days. It can become the way we measure successes. It can bring a false sense of security and hope. Its easy to think it make our life more full… but Jesus is reminding us is a fraud. It can never deliver.

Jesus is trying to help us make that shift… in treasuring and investing in things that last… Helping us realize that the promise of security, and hope, and a fuller life coming from those things is a fraud…

In the blink of an eye, every single earthly treasure can be taken from you. That is a history lesson as much as it is a Bible lesson.

In the blink of an eye… every single earthly treasure can be taken from you… and that’s as much a history lesson as it is a bible lesson… that has been lived out… we have seen it. and maybe to smaller degree we are living it… how fragile is our whole system?

Investing in what matters… I mean, do you hear what Jesus is saying? That where our treasure is… their our heart will be…

Both and that day and in this… the heart is sort of identifying the reality of who we are really are… our motivations, our passions… the central most part of who we are…

Both in Jesus’ day and in ours, the heart is central part of who we are. Its where our motivations and passions come from.

and Jesus is saying that where our treasure is… our hearts will be.

Crazy stuff, but its true. Years ago I read an article and decided to invest in some stock… I know nothing about the market… and do you know what I did everyday for the next weeks? I checked… I thought about it… I even prayed for it…

But then it went to one a week… to once a month… and literally until this sermon came up… I bet it was over a year since I last checked… do you want to know why? Because I stopped investing… and… it faded.

Jesus is saying that where we invest all we are, all that he has entrusted us with plays a huge role on who we become.

That our investments… are formative.

Jesus is saying don’t invest in all that stuff that can be taken from you… that ends up in the dump, instead… invest in what I have for you…

Jim Elliot along with 4 other young men were speared to death as missionaries trying to love and serve an unreached people in Ecuador… this people group that were as rough as they come…

Before his death he said this…

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose: Jim Elliot

Jim Elliot knew what it meant to live for the line… and the crazy thing about that is… His wife Elizabeth was one of the ones that eventually moved into the village with that same group of people that killed her husband… some of the kids of the men ended up knowing one of the men who threw the spears as… grandpa… and that man actually died not long ago.

In my life there is a guy that reminds me of investing in the line… Marlon love was a pastor of a small church in my home town… he spend his life investing in eternal things… and Marlon was the one who played a critical role in my dad becoming a Christian… which impacted my life in a huge way… which lead me to what I am doing today… and though my friend Marlon is long gone… his investment in eternity pushes forward to this day… and my family is just one small part of that investment.

He is no fool to give what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose…

Jesus is saying that whatever we decide to invest our time, energy and resources in… our heart will follow.

Storing up treasure in heaven is right there… investing in… what God cares about… with all that he is given you… which is everything. All you have and are…

What does storing up that sort of treasure look like?

Living out a right relationship with the one who created you, knows everything about you and loves you anyway.

Storing up Heavenly treasure… and the rewards of it start now lived out in a relationship with Jesus.

It means experiencing the life God has for me, the way he created it.

The full and free life God has wanted all along for you. Free of life taking things like sin, pride, hate, addiction, greed, selfishness… and full of live giving things like serving, peace, love, patience, mercy, grace, selflessness…

It means using all that God has entrusted us with… all we are and have to invest in His work.

Loving and serving people well. Knowing that God is using you and what he has entrusted to you to change eternity. Real care and real compassion… being the hands and feet of Jesus and watching what God does with it.

I think it means knowing that being faithful with all we are and have no means being trusted with eve more.

and make no mistake… Jesus says there are rewards that lay beyond this physical life… God longs to bless us for being faithful.

Today… I want to ask you this… are investing in things that end up in the dump? Are you spending your time and energy… your money… and your resources on things that don’t last?

Investing in eternity… things that last… loving people, taking care of those who need it… showing compassion… being involved and present in the lives of those around you… using what God has given to share truth about Jesus… which has the power to change lives… helping to build up His Church...that is what storing up treasure in heaven looks like… and that’s what it means to make it count.

Living for the line… investing in eternity… If it wasn’t for guys like Marlon love… and all who supported that little church back then… the truth is… I don’t know where I’d be. Where my family would be.

I want to encourage you to think about… journal about… write about… what living for the line looks like for you…

Caring for the hurting the lost and the alone…

Caring for those in other countries serving and sharing God’s love and grace.

Praying for people in your life… with purpose… and trying to build relationships with them…

Showing people Jesus everyday in what we say and in the way we act… live… serve…

We are no fool, who gives what we cannot keep to gain that which we cannot lose.

Do you want to change your heart? Invest in the things that really matter. … when you put your treasure there… they become the things you treasure!