Friday, September 19, 2008

Priorities

Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, "When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?"--skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat. The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: "I will never forget anything they have done" (Amos 8:4-7).

How many times do you check your watch during church?

We’ve all done it. We've all had Sundays where there were important things to do once church was over. For some of you, it has been a need to get back into the field as soon as possible. For many, it has been a need to get home and get dinner ready for company.

Sunday can be a busy day. Football season is upon us, and many times the game starts at noon. Many people eat out for Sunday brunch, and you want to get to the restaurant before the lines get too long. Many businesses are open by 11:00 on Sundays, so it would be nice to get away from church early enough so that you can run to the store and pick up a few things before lunch.

And so we check our watches. Are we going to have to sing every verse of each hymn? How long will the sermon be this week? Can’t pastor cut the prayers a little shorter?

This tendency is nothing new. Even when I was a child, people used to come up for communion and then rush out of church without waiting for the closing hymn or the blessing to depart. You may have read about how the puritan church services back in colonial America could run three hours or longer—can you imagine how squirmy the children must have been by the time services ended?

The prophet Amos writes of this same problem happening in Israel hundreds of years before Jesus was born. The people who went to church are quoted as grumbling, "When will…the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?" Remember, under the Law of Moses, no work could be done on God’s Day. Here in America, many have been frustrated by "blue laws" that prevent the sale of alcohol on Sundays; imagine how frustrated people would get if all businesses were closed on Sunday! No grocery stores would be open. You could not shop a sale at Target or Wal-Mart. There would be no place where you could go to eat out. You would be forbidden to do work at home on your computer. You would not even be allowed to cook—under the Law of Moses, meals were to be made a day in advance and eaten cold on the Sabbath. Under these strict laws, all you could do on the Lord’s Day would be to spend time together with your fellow believers in worship, followed by sitting and visiting with your family at home.

Isn’t it terrible, what God expected of His people?

I think all of us can agree that the most important things in life consist of our relationship with God and our relationships with each other. These are so important that God set aside one day a week so that these relationships could be confirmed and enriched on a regular basis. But in the days of Amos, God’s people had lost sight of what is important. For them, the desire to do business and make money had become so important that they had come to look at the enforced rest of the Lord’s Day as an inconvenience. Time for God and time for family had become less important than time to make money and time to spend money.

Does this describe you? Are you a person who keeps stealing peeks at your watch, impatiently waiting for church to end so that you can go make money or go spend money? How many of you will think about money only once on Sunday—when God’s offering plate comes before you? How many of you will go home from church and spend your day with your family instead of working or shopping? When you wake up on Sunday morning, do you make a mental list of many places you have to go, many things you want to get done—or do you look forward with a smile on your face to spending the day with the Lord and with those you love? What does God say to you through His prophet Amos?

Jesus said, No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money (Matthew 6:24). Look at what the love of money can lead to. Not only did it distract God’s people from focusing on worshiping Him, it also led them into dishonesty; we read in Amos: you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land…skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales…selling even the sweepings with the wheat. When a person’s life is built on money, he becomes prey to the temptation to shortchange others through dishonest measuring and diluting quality, while raising prices as far as possible. Think of all the times you have been disappointed by a product whose advertising oversold its real value? Think of all the times you have had problems getting satisfaction under a warranty. These are just a few of the problems that come from making money the focus of life.

But there is another side to the love of money. We want money so that we can buy things—but things can become a distraction. A man who spends money on sporting equipment may be tempted to go out fishing or golfing or camping on Sunday morning instead of attending worship. A woman who spends money drinking on Saturday night may be too hung over to go to church the next morning, and might even become abusive when nagged to get up. A child whose parents have bought him a new video game might resist putting the game down to go to Sunday School, maybe even going so far as to pretend to be too sick to leave the house. These are just a few of the ways in which money interferes with our time with God and with each other.

Jesus lived in poverty. He owned no house, no land, no business. The Bible tells us that His travelling ministry was supported by the donations of widows who followed Him and treasured His teachings. When Jesus was crucified for our sins, the soldiers divided His possessions among themselves, and all that Jesus had were the clothes on His back. Our Lord did not let making money or spending money interfere with what is truly important—His relationship with God His Father, and His relationship with the people whom He called friends. Jesus valued every opportunity to spend time in God’s House; Luke 4:16 tells us, on the Sabbath day He went into the synagogue, as was His custom.

The love of money can interfere with relationships and lead to sinful behavior, but the love of Jesus can build relationships and lead to a sanctified way of life. Jesus came into our world to repair broken relationships. Our misplaced priorities had angered God by ignoring Him in favor of pleasing ourselves; each of us had broken off any kind of relationship with God because of our sins. So Jesus came to earth to repair these broken relationships; He did this by offering up His life in payment for our misdeeds. With our sins atoned for, return to God was made possible; Jesus rose from the dead so that He could take us by the hand and lead us back to a relationship of mutual love with God. Reunited with the Almighty, we need no longer fear death, because God has opened His eternal home to all who hold His Son’s hand in friendship.

The love of Jesus also builds relationships between people. When we are united with God through Christ’s blood, we become united with our fellow Christians as well. Listen to these words from Mark chapter three: A crowd was sitting around Him, and they told Him, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you." "Who are my mother and my brothers?" He asked. Then He looked at those seated in a circle around Him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother." When you become a follower of Jesus, the Lord regards you as a brother or sister—and that makes you brother or sister to every other believer as well, one large family, all children of God!

The love of money can lead us into sinful behavior, but love of Christ leads us into God-pleasing conduct. When we love Jesus, we feel bad about disappointing Him with our mistakes; we are ashamed that our sins caused His agony and death, and it tears us up to cheapen His suffering by continuing to sin each day that we live. Our love of Jesus moves us to pray to Him frequently, begging His forgiveness for all that we have done wrong.

Our love for the Son of God makes us want to thank Him for everything that He has done for us. We thank Him by telling Him in prayer that we are grateful. We thank Him by telling others about the wonderful love that the Lord of Life has shown each of us in our lives. We thank Jesus by giving back to Him generously from what He has given us, especially the money that so desperately wants us to spend it on anything else instead of the Church!

Finally, when we love our Savior, we want our relationships with Him and each other strengthened. We want to spend time with Jesus in prayer and devotion and Bible study; we want to gather together to sing His praises and receive His body and blood in Holy Communion. We want to spend time together with the people whom the Lord has gifted our lives with. We want to invest time in building the strength of our relationships with parents, siblings, spouses, children and friends. We want to invest in loving our Savior and our fellow Christians, because when the Lord Jesus calls us to leave this life, people won’t remember what we had, they will remember who we were. And while the money in our lives will remain behind on earth, our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ will last forever.

When you are in church, don’t check your watch. When you are at home, don’t be in a rush to turn on a game or to go out shopping. Instead, look forward to the time during the week when you can leave work to get home to your family; treasure the hours that the Lord makes available so that you can spend quality time with Him in prayer and praise and meditation. Make time with God and family your top priority.

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