View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's words you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 830 or 10:30 a.m. if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, find [email protected] be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: All right, so it is not that often that I get to speak to our congregation. If you don't know who I am, I'm Richard. I'm one of the youth ministers here. When asked to give a sermon in front of the church, I normally want to give everyone a message that's really been touching my heart recently. And I also don't want to get fired. So we're going to try to obey those great two commands this morning.
So the month is August, and what I want to do really quickly is after I was asked to speak, I was struggling, thinking, what do I want my message to be? Because I'm teaching classes and other things all the time, I'm with the younger people. A lot of what do I want my message to be to the congregation? And in a way, as I go throughout this lesson, I want to take you guys on that journey. I want to take you on the journey of how I got to the point that I end up with at the very, very end. So just letting you know it is August. Here is what that means to a youth minister.
Peace.
It is a wonderful, wonderful time. I love August very, very much. And that is because the summer is over.
Don't get me wrong, every single summer I look forward to, I've been here, I think, seven or eight summers now, and each one I'm just pumped about. I'm ready to go to camp, ready to go on mission trip, ready to do all of these activities with the teens. But then those last couple of weeks, I'm a little weary.
I'm a little tired and I'm starting to struggle. If you didn't know it, there are a couple other guys on staff, though, who understand this struggle. This is one of them.
Beautiful young man, Brandon Presnell.
Legend has it that this was him at the beginning of his very first summer at Madison and at the very end of the summer, this is him.
So you can tell, like, he's got a little bit of some facial stuff going on. Gray hair, just in one year. It's crazy.
There's another guy on staff, though, Jason Helton, who is just an excellent looking young man.
One summer later, though, just really struggling. You can see the hair and I. Everything else. I didn't want to just make it to where I was making fun of them, though. I wanted to make sure to include a picture of myself. So following the last seven summers, that was so you can tell there's a little bit of graying on the left picture. But in all reality, I am exhausted at the end of every summer. It is a great time, but it is a busy time. So as I'm planning this lesson in my head, I'm like, all right. When I think about my own life and when I think about the conversations I'm having with families and other people in our congregation, busyness is the thing. That's what I want to talk about, because we are just a super busy people. In fact, I was just looking up in a catalog some statistics on Americans and their busyness. Eight in ten Americans, the middle one, respond that they're busy on a regular basis when they're just asked the question, how are you doing? 80% of parents feel burnt out in some area of their life.
59% of our young people feel like that. Balancing their life in the sports and the school and everything else is just a really, really difficult thing. But even more so than that, we have a two year old right now. But three years ago, if you were to ask me how my life is, I would tell you it's busy with a two year old, it really feels busy. But then I look at my parents, who are retired now. And when I'm going over to their house or I'm talking to them on the phone, I say, how are you guys doing? And a common answer is, we're busy in american society, in our congregation, we just seem to be a very, very busy people that fill our calendars. But here's the problem.
I started looking up verses about busyness, and I couldn't find any.
And I came to this realization that the Bible doesn't necessarily teach against busyness.
And I was like, well, on to the next subject. Like, that's not working at all right now. But then I. Then I began saying, you know what? I need to look at some major characters in the Bible, because I remember times of peace from different major characters. So I started asking the question with all the different people on this list, I started asking, was Moses busy? Well, yeah. Moses led millions of Israelites across the wilderness for years upon years. That's a pretty busy guy. I look at David. He was the king. He was the king's king. The king that all the Jews to this day look back to. But he was constantly at war, constantly being pursued, constantly struggling with a society of so many busy people himself. I look at Peter and all the churches he impacted, following Jesus around, all the stuff that they did. He was a busy guy. And then I look at Paul, all his missionary journeys and everything else that we know about from Paul. He was busy. And I said, you know what? But surely, surely these guys were all men. They weren't God. Surely Jesus. The guy that I know went up on mountains to pray. The guy that I know would sleep in boats. The guy that I know that just took time to relax so often. Surely he wasn't busy, right?
And I started examining his life, and I began realizing, like, oh, Jesus was an incredibly, incredibly busy man.
It's too much to put on the screen. But if everyone can turn to mark, chapter one, I just want each and every person in this room, even if you don't have your bibles with you, to imagine this day that Jesus has. In Mark, chapter one, starting in verse 21.
And Jesus and his disciples went into capernaum. And immediately on the sabbath, he entered the synagogue, and he was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority and not as the scribes. And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are. The holy one of God. But Jesus rebuked him, saying, be silent and come out of him. And the unclean spirit convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice came out of him. And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, what is this, a new teaching? With authority, he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him. And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.
And immediately he left the synagogue, and he entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. Now Simon's mother in law lay ill with a fever. And immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her. And she began to serve them. That evening at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demonstration. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him.
And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went to a desolate place. And from there, he prayed.
Just imagine the day that Jesus just had.
He walked with his disciples into the city of Capernaum, where he begins teaching in a synagogue. As he's teaching in this synagogue, most of the Jews in that day in time would be in the synagogue for hours in the morning, listening and feeding on the word. Suddenly, a man with an unclean spirit enters, and jesus heals him.
After healing him, word is spreading, and jesus continues to teach. But then he stands up, and he goes on a journey where suddenly Simon and Andrew let him know that their mother is sick.
He comes into their house, he heals their mother. And then the entire town begins to hear about this. And it says, until past sundown, people continued to bring him person after person after person who were sick, demon possessed, suffering in any imaginable way.
This was an incredibly, incredibly busy day.
But then you have verse 35, which tells us that following this busy day that lasted late into the night, Jesus woke up very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he went to a mountain and he prayed.
In the midst of Jesus busy life, he never took his eyes off of what was most important.
And at this point in my lesson planning, I'm like, okay, I have a direction. Busyness is not the answer.
The answer is priorities.
Priorities. The things that matter most in our lives, the things that we put numero uno above all else. So I began looking at my life and looking at myself and just asking the question, are my priorities in line?
And they weren't always that way. You see, even working at a church as a youth minister, being surrounded by spiritual conversations at all times, I could see that as we went through this busy summer, things like Bible study and prayer and other aspects of my life could really easily start sinking down as the busyness of life picked up. My priorities weren't in order.
And as I planned this lesson, that's where I was. I was just recognizing this and saying, what do I need to do? What do I need to study? What can I read about this?
And I came to Luke chapter ten.
In Luke chapter ten, I'll just read it from the screen. As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.
She came to him and she asked, lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me.
Martha. Martha, the Lord answered, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed, or indeed, only one.
Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.
Here we have Jesus and his disciples as a large group of people traveling to a house, a group of sisters. Their family knows that they're supposed to prepare them a meal to eat, that they're supposed to set them up to have these discussions that Jesus is prepared to give. And yet one of them decides to sit at the Lord's feet while the other one decides to get caught up in the busyness and the preparation of that day.
How do we begin to develop our lives to be more centered on our relationship, God with God, than the tasks we are so caught up in? And here's what I mean by that.
I can speak for this in my life, but I think many of us could in our own separate lives.
It's not always that we're pursuing sin that keeps us away from God, but sometimes just not making him the priority creates this gap between where we are and where he is.
So as I studied this, as I began thinking about Mary and Martha, I just have a couple different things, two or three different things that I think helped me to start developing a closer relationship with him in the midst of a busy life. And first of all, is this. Satan can use the good to distract us from the best. A verse that I think of when I think of Mary and Martha is actually Luke chapter 14, verse 26. This is when Jesus is looking as his disciples. He's talking about the cost of discipleship, and he makes this incredibly bold, almost evil sounding claim. He said, unless one hates his mother, his father, and his brothers and sisters, even his own life, he's not able to be my disciple.
And a lot of people take this and they're like, whoa, what in the world? What has Jesus just said? Hate your children, hate your spouse, hate your parents, hate your own life. What is he talking about here? And after a quick study, it's pretty obvious that Jesus, he's not proposing that we hate these things, but he's saying, you should love me so much that that is the comparison that everything else in your life has.
Going back to my summer with the youth ministry, though, oftentimes even good things, like a camp, a mission trip, an activity, whatever else that could be so, so beneficial and so, so good, even those things could take me away.
CS Lewis wrote a book years ago called the Screw Tape letters. In the screw tape letters, here's the setting. He imagines that the devil and one of his minions are talking with one another, and they're discussing how they can get a man on earth to go to hell. How can they get him to just completely look away from God? And in the midst of this devil character and his minions conversation, here's something that the devil says. He says it's funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds.
In reality, our best work is done by keeping things out.
And as I read this, this kind of struck something in my mind because I began to realize, you know what? I might not be pursuing things that are wrong, but in the midst of such a busy life, when I'm not prioritizing God, suddenly the devil's winning, even though I'm doing good things, even though I have positive things going on. The elders and ministers recently met this past month to have a discussion about what our congregation might be struggling with and how we could help out in some ways in the future. And one of our shepherds made this comment that also struck me. He said, are we creating disciples of Madison or are we creating disciples of Christ? And here's the point that he was wanting to bring up. Vbs, mission, trips, care bears, all of these other incredible things that we do are just that, incredible. They're amazing. But if we begin letting anything, you could say fathers, mothers, children, brothers, sisters, even activities within the church to get in the way of our relationship with Christ, none of the rest of this stuff matters.
It's a priority aspect where we have to keep him first. And even the good things can sometimes get in our way of our relationship with Christ.
Second thing I feel like we can understand from the story of Mary and Martha is that we are more beneficial to God when we have a relationship with him. To this day, nothing is recorded anywhere about what Jesus said in the home of Mary and Martha. We have no idea what he was talking about. You know who does have an idea what he was talking about?
Mary.
You know who has no idea what he was talking about as well as us.
Martha, when we are so focused, when we are so focused on simply doing things for others but yet lack a relationship with God ourselves, what's that all for?
In an airplane, some of you may have not flown. This is a talk that they give at the beginning. For those of you who have flown, you probably don't listen to the talk. But in this talk, what the airline attendant normally says is if the plane has any difficulties, oxygen levels will go crazy and oxygen masks will drop from the very top compartment. When they drop, do not put the mask on your child and then yourself, as is the habit. Instead, put your mask on yourself and then apply it on your childhood. And that's because they don't want you messing around with the thing that you need to get on your child and suddenly realize you don't have any oxygen yourself. And whoops, neither of you have oxygen at that point.
My wife is really into this and I am not. But there is a thing called enneagrams. If you don't know what enneagrams are, it's basically a personality type test that kind of ranks you as a number one through nine. And one of the most common types of people is a two. And a two is called a helper. And if you were to take this test and then it were to appear on a screen, you're a helper. I feel like you'd feel really good about yourself, and I would too.
But in this Enneagram test, there's a positive side of every aspect and there's a negative side. What this person will struggle with and the aspect that I feel like these helpers struggle with, that it says in these Enneagram tests is that they are so caught up in helping others that they forget to take care of themselves.
But it's not only that.
This is something that I've shared with the teen parents and with parents in our connect group and a few others. But I want to share it on a congregational level.
All of us are influencing or impacting someone, hopefully for Christ. I especially think of this when it comes to parents and children, but it can happen in any sort of circumstance. When you think of the person that you're impacting for Christ, would you rather them look like Mary or would you rather them look like Martha?
Well, most of us are probably going to say, I'd rather them look at Mary and have them sitting at the Lord's feet. Well, here's my question for you. Is that the example you're setting for them in your own life right now, as a parent, as a teacher, as an individual who's just impacting people for Christ, are you a Mary or a Martha? We all want people to be Marys. But sometimes I know in my own life that can get in the way.
And then finally, last thing, I think we need to make sure to understand that we can get from this story of Mary and Martha is that God is meant to be a source of peace.
He's not meant to be a source of more chaos.
I looked at this list of guys that I brought up earlier that were so busy in their lives, and I started asking a different question. Did this person have peace?
Moses passed away on Mount Nebo near the end of his life. Based on what we have in deuteronomy, he was a guy with peace. David wrote psalm 23 in the midst of all of his struggles. He was a guy who had peace. Peter, as he struggled, as he made all of these mistakes, committed all of these, like, egregious sins around Jesus later on in one and two, Peter talks about how important it was to have peace.
Paul, throughout his prison epistles, throughout most of the books that he wrote in the New Testament, talks about not his own concerns, but his concerns for other people and for the gospel. He was a man of peace. And then even in Jesus own life, a life of persecution, a life of suffering, and a life that ended in harsh, harsh death, he starts out this ministry by bringing out the beatitudes, by saying, blessed are the people who are going to experience everything that he then ended up experiencing. And he was saying that to help people understand that in the midst of his life as well as ours, we're able to have peace.
And this, as I began planning this lesson, brought me to Matthew, chapter eleven, verses 28 30.
Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Whether you have a one year old in your arms, whether you are an incredibly busy person, this church, whether it took a lot of effort for you to come today, for your first Sunday and however many years or whatever else, I have a question for each and every one of us as it concerns our religion and our relationship with Christ.
When you think of what you're doing for Christ, when you think of your relationship with him, when you think of the activity that you participate, when you think of all of these different things in the midst of that, while you think about your relationship with Jesus, are you able to say, my yoke is easy and my burden is light?
That doesn't mean he's going to take away your busyness.
But if your priority is him, then. I believe that this verse is a litmus test to let us know if we truly have a genuine relationship with him right now in our lives or if we don't.
When I examine my own life and the busyness that I have, I see oftentimes that though I'm doing a lot of good things, though I'm participating in a lot of church work and good work and other things, I don't always feel this way.
And I just this morning want those of us who feel this way to kind of wake up, have a relationship with him.
That's an image of Niagara Falls. And when me and some of my friends were in our, I think this was my junior year of college, we were all sitting around in a dorm room, and it was a Thursday night, and we realized that all of our classes had been canceled the next day, that Friday.
So we are just silly, dumb college students, and we're sitting around in a huddle and we're like, all right, so we have a free Friday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning. All right, let's see how far we can go in one weekend.
So we pulled out a map. We put a pin at our location in west Tennessee. We pulled out a string from it, started calculating different things, drew this big circle around the map, and we had it in one weekend. In two and a half days, we were able to drive from west Tennessee to Niagara Falls, Canada. We're doing this thing. So four of us who were not so little guys, hopped in my friend's Prius and started driving north, making this great journey into the great unknown. And as we were driving, we're switching who's driving, who's sleeping, who's sitting where. And then finally, Saturday morning, about 08:00 a.m. we arrive at Niagara Falls. I get a cup of coffee from a vendor there. I have my feet propped up. I'm leaning back, and this is the view that I'm watching. And I remember sitting there for an hour and being amazed by the beauty. By the end of that hour, a thought came into my mind, and I started thinking, what have we just done?
I love God's creation.
A waterfall, after an hour, at least for me, gets pretty boring.
And even after watching it for that hour, what I began to realize is not only that, but we have a 20 plus hour drive back that we have to make to our college campus. And the drive up there had already been miserable. And here's the thing.
I think in a lot of our lives, even when it comes to good things, not just things, that are busy work within the church. But when it comes to ball games with kids, when it comes to our work schedules, when it comes to XYZ, anything that you might have going on in your life, it's really easy to build up that schedule and think, when this day comes, I'm going to get filled and it's going to be awesome, and I'm just going to be sitting there full of joy forever.
And then that's just not the reality.
And it hits that this thing that I've been filling up my calendar with is not nearly as fulfilling as I thought it would be. It caused me at least to think about John, chapter four. Jesus and the woman at the well. Woman at the well is drawing water, talking to Jesus about water. And then suddenly Jesus answered, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling to eternal life.
In your life, in your life, in your relationship with God, in what you're doing for him.
I'm not asking any of us to get rid of the busyness.
I'm simply asking the question, are you prioritizing him right now, above all else?
Is he the person that you go to to find rest? Do you have rest?
A christian life without Christ is meaningless.
Whether you're doing a bunch of stuff, whether you're coming to church, whether you're taking care of your kids in whatever way, we need to remember that our priority as individuals has got to be Christ in our relationship with him.
And that's where my study ended. All I want to ask each and every person in here today is, do you have a relationship with Christ?
Are you practicing that relationship?
And is that relationship causing your life, in the midst of busyness and chaos, to be a life that also has a peace that surpasses all understanding? Because that's what he offers us and that's what it's meant to be.
If you have any struggles with this, if you'd like to be baptized or talk about anything else, you can come while we stand and while we sing.
