God would use them, equip them for all that he is going to accomplish in their lives and
through them in that place. You'll be hearing hopefully from Randy next week and if not next
week then the week after about how God used him and Kelsey and their team in Cuba.
James chapter 4, and I want us to read starting this morning in verse 13 as we are working
our way through the book of James. James 4, 13 says this, come now, you who say today
or tomorrow, we're going to go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade
and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For
you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say
if the Lord wills we will live and do this or that. As it is you boast in your arrogance
and all such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it
for him, it is about with me if you would and let's pray that in these verses God would
speak to us and challenge us this morning not to find him irrelevant. That your word
is filled with testimony concerning your power, your authority, your sovereignty over the
affairs of creation, over the affairs of our lives, kings and kingdoms answered to you.
You caused them to rise and you caused them to fall. Not every kingdom that has ever had
power at some point vanishes. But the kingdom of God lasts forever. And so this morning
I thank you and I praise you that you are a righteous God, a righteous king, a loving
king who cares deeply for your citizens, for your children, for your people. God you care
for us. I thank you that yours is a kingdom that cannot be shaken. That yours is a sovereignty
which cannot be overruled. God help us as your people to be kingdom minded in our everyday
affairs, in our going to work, in our going to school, in our conversations. May we not
treat you as if you are irrelevant to our lives. God thank you for the songs that we've
been able to sing this morning. Songs about you, our great God. Songs about what you've
done for us and the person of Jesus Christ, the salvation that you provide for us and
offer to us. Father the friendships being as the people of God, being able to hear others
lift their voices and sing. The privilege of hearing other people pray. Now God to hear
you speak from your word. So God I pray that I would just simply be a useful vessel this
morning through which your power, your word are issued for. Amen. You can be seated. James
has been walking us through from the very beginning in this book. He's been walking
his readers and us through this emphasis of living an undivided life. A life that is
not one thing one day of the week and something else the other six days of the week. And James
in a very short letter, generally speaking, five chapters, something that you and I've
been working through last fall and now this fall. James does a very good job. One of being
blunt. Okay. He's very blunt. He doesn't beat around the bush. He just gets to the point
and he shows his readers and he shows us the disconnect between what our profession is
as believers and how that practice is being lived out. But James hits in these five chapters
every area of life. He encompasses every area of life to show us that the faith that you
and I possess, the faith that you and I profess as believers, that we say that we are Christians,
that we are born again believers, that we are children of God, that it has implications
not only in this setting on a Sunday morning, but it has implications for every setting,
every context in which you find yourself every day of your life. It has implications for
how we treat our spouse and our kids. It has implications for how we worship, has implications
for how we work, has implications regarding our excellence or our lukewarmness, mediocrity.
It has implications for how we speak, for how we treat those who may be unwanted in
our society, for how we view other people, the matters of the heart. And he is saying
in this, if you find that your life is at a step with what I am saying, that his spirit
inspired and what I am writing to you, if you find that your life is at a step at any
point, you are living a divided life. You are compartmentalizing your life. God says,
I will have none of that. And so James is addressing people who profess Christianity,
who profess to be followers of Jesus, but their lives are out of step with that profession.
James here, and really all throughout this letter, his tone is almost like a father who
is rebuking his children in a loving manner, but in an urgent manner because he sees that
their lives are not what they ought to be. I don't like to be rebuked, do you? I don't
like to be challenged. Encouraged? Yes. Padded on the back? Yes. But rebuked? We don't like
that, but it's the thing that sometimes we most need. And God doesn't mind rebuking us
when he sees that our lives are out of step with his plans for us. And James does this
in this letter. This morning I want to talk on the subject, the irrelevance of Christ.
And when you first hear that title, you may jump back a little bit. That's good. I'm not
here to suggest that Christ is irrelevant. I am here to suggest that by the way we as
his people live, we are telling the world that he is irrelevant. We are communicating
to those around us that Christ, although I go to church on a Sunday morning, he really
doesn't have the authority in my life because really he's irrelevant. My desires, my plans,
my businesses, my goals and dreams outweigh Christ and his claim on my life. The irrelevance
of Christ. James says here, he says, come now you who say today or tomorrow we will go
into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Yet you
do not know what tomorrow will bring. Now, if you read this text in isolation from the
rest of the Bible, you would think that what God is wanting us to do here is to quit all
of our planning, to quit all of our strategizing. But when you read the rest of scripture, you
know that that's not the case. We see where God, before the foundations of the world,
had the plan of salvation laid out. He had strategy laid out. We see that God is a very
organized God. We see that Jesus had plans to go into such and such a town. They planned
ahead. David as king obviously had to plan, had to have things organized, had to think
about the future. The scriptures constantly teach us that we ought to be living in the
present in light of eternity, that eternity ought to influence how we live today. So James
is not saying that we need to put all our plans aside, that we need to drop all of our
goals and all of our visions for our lives, our family or our business. What he is saying
here is that you need to be very, very careful because in all of your planning and in all
of your strategizing and in all of sitting down and planning out the calendar for 2017,
the human heart has a tendency to leave God out of those plans altogether, to dismiss
him, to not factor him into the equation and to seek his will for God. What is it that
you would have us to do? And how is it that you would have us to carry this out? James
is speaking to a group of people that were in an economically growing place in a growing
climate. There were opportunities for business. There were opportunities to make money, to
go here and to go there for these merchants who would go and sell things and make things
and trade things. The picture James paints here is very familiar to these first century
readers and it ought to be very familiar to us. The period was marked by growing commercial
activity. Jews were especially active in some of these ventures. Many had left Palestine,
the Israel area. They left Palestine to settle in cities throughout the Mediterranean world
in pursuit of financial gain. Modes of transportation and distances have changed since then and
now, but the bottom line has not. The bottom line is not. You hear today, if you want to
find out why something has happened, follow the money drill. You hear businesses talking
about the bottom line. Stock market is based on the bottom line. How much profit did this
company make in quarter three or in the fourth quarter? And that's dependent on whether their
stock goes up or down. How does the CEO do it? We don't necessarily care how he treats
the people. We don't necessarily care whether his family is in order or whether he has neglected
his family to pursue this business and accomplish the things that need to be done. What is the
bottom line? How much growth is there in our business? How much profit is there in this
business? The mentality never changes. It's always about the bottom line. And James looks
at his people and he sees the people who when they first came to Christ, when they were
first saved, when they first heard the message of the gospel, the power of Jesus Christ,
and they said, yes, I need to be forgiven of my sins. I need to be renewed. I need to
be transformed. He sees a people who were energetic and enthusiastic about doing whatever
God wanted them to do. God, I will take up my cross and I will follow you because we
are passionate about the cross in that moment. But as years went by, these believers who
were once babes in the faith who were now growing into maturity, much of that enthusiasm
they had left, much of that passion was gone and they had settled back in to the routine
of life. It was all about the bottom dollar once again. It was all about making things
happen. It was all about accomplishing something that could make the business more profitable
or the church appear stronger. And instead of asking God, what do you want me to do?
How will you use me? They were committing the same sin that many of us commit that many
of us as church churches commit. They were making their plans and setting their schedules
and simply asking God to bless their plans instead of seeking His plan. You see, there's
a very big difference between seeking God on the front side and simply asking Him to
bless on the back side. There's a very big difference in waiting on the Lord, in bowing
before Him and asking Him, God, does this opportunity, does this business opportunity, does this
college opportunity, does this marital opportunity, does this business adventure or investment,
does this match what your will is for my life? Instead of saying, oh, this can be profitable
and this is a good idea because I know so and so and we'll just ask God's blessing on
the back side of it so that we can sound spiritual. To really wrestle with the Lord Jesus and
His Word. Say, God, how are you going to use this? God straightened out my heart so that
my heart and my vision for whatever opportunity this is before me, God did it as your will
to accomplish eternal things instead of just worldly interest. I was thinking about this
passage. I was thinking about these merchants. I was thinking about the way many of us think
the CEO mentality, this business mentality, where it is about the bottom line. I thought
about my own life, my own planning, my own educational pursuits, career, planning as
a church, trying to organize things and strategize things. Here's the truth to the matter, friends.
If you and I are irreverent to our God in worship, we will make Him irrelevant in our
lives. I'm going to say that again. When God becomes irreverent in our worship, He becomes
irrelevant in our lives. These merchants, these Christians who had lost this passion
and this enthusiasm for serving the Lord, who had become more business-minded than kingdom-minded.
It's not that going off and selling and trading were bad things. The problem is that they
had lost their awe of God. They had lost that sense of astonishment at who God is and what
He had accomplished for them in the person of Jesus Christ. They had lost that bewilderment,
that mystery that leaves us gazing at God and hungry to learn more about Him. They had
lost all of that. They had forgotten just how wonderful it would be for God to take
them and to do something extraordinary through them. So they compartmentalized their lives.
They said, God, you'll get this much time and this much focus and this much devotion.
But I've got a life to live. Friends, we do the same thing today. I love being around
new believers. I enjoy being around folks who all they can talk about is Jesus. If you're
around a new believer long, you will find that many of them don't have all the lingo
figured out, all the church lingo. And sometimes they say things that theologically may be,
I'm not so sure about that. But man, there's a passion about those folks. There's a real
genuine desire for these folks to do whatever it is that God wants them to do. As the old
saying goes, they are ready to attack hell with a water pistol, right? They may not know
what they're getting into, but they are ready to go for it. Send me to Cuba, I'm there.
Send me to Africa, I'm there. Send me to Russia, I'm there. God, whatever it is that
you want me to do, I am there. You want me to take my business and give all of my profits
away? Hobby Lobby, we are there. We will do whatever it is that you want to do because
God, we're on fire for you. And there comes a point where you do have to, whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa. There has to be a little planning, but boy, don't kill the passion. Don't kill
that enthusiasm to serve the Lord. Because when you get around folks that have been Christians
for a long, long time, the tendency is to lose that all. We lose that reverence. God
becomes just something else in our schedule. And when we lose that irreverence, when we
become irreverent, he will become irrelevant in our lives, not by his choosing, but by
our choosing. We will simply no longer think about him and the events of each and every
day. Our planning will be divorced from our profession. James rebukes these folks for
their hard attitude. He says, you're leaving God out of your college plans. You're trying
to pick the schools, got the best sorority or not the best name or the best football
program. You know what I find? And it is a little bit scary. When you're talking with
a high school senior, a high school junior who's preparing to go to college, one of the
last things that factor into their college decision, if it factors in at all, is this
question, have I investigated whether there's a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching church
in that community? Is there a group of people who will hold me accountable, who are on mission?
We don't think about those questions. Frankly, we don't care about those questions. Christian
parents don't care about to ask those questions. Why? Because God's irrelevant. Christ is irrelevant.
The deal here is we're picking a college so that our child can prepare himself or herself
to receive the education to go out and make a lot of money. And we're losing kids in
the process who are going off to college, who haven't been equipped in the local church
shamefully before they went to college, and now they are isolated. They're out there on
an island somewhere with all of the temptation that's out there and no church home that will
love them. Here's what I find. I find young men and women who have been dating and who
are ready to make the leap. And I want to scream at them as everybody else is all excited
and crying and making wedding plans. I want to scream at them. Are you sure you know what
you're doing? And every couple that I marry, Ace and Jamie can tell you, what's my focus?
Is it the wedding? No. It's the marriage. It's the marriage. Now, some of you ladies
can throw stuff at me afterwards. The wedding is important because that's where the church,
where you make your vow and you vow before the people of God. So it's important. But
friends, it's the marriage that we've got to prepare for very rarely, very rarely when
I hear or see or counsel young men and young women who are preparing to get married. Do
they factor in the other person's belief, the other person's walk with Christ? Mom and
dad are asking, is he a hard worker? That's a good question to ask. Is it not? Does he
have a job? What are they asking about there? They're asking, can he provide for you so
that you can live a comfortable, secure life? And in that, we are bowing down to the idols
of comfort and security and convenience. We don't ask those hard questions because we
don't plan with Christ in mind. He's not a priority. Somebody has totally different
viewpoints on what it is to be saved, on what it is to serve in the local church, on what
it is to be on mission. Somebody has no fruit, no Christian fruit in their life, and we simply
don't care. Oh, he's cute. He's cute. Well, we've dated for so long, we've known each
other. I will change him. Y'all hear this laughter? We're more guilty than we could
ever have imagined at making Christ irrelevant in our lives, irrelevant in our endeavors,
irrelevant in what we want to do. And so James says, here's what you ought to say, verse
15, if the Lord willing, we will live and do this or that. Now, my granddaddy was really
good at uttering these words. If the Lord's willing, if the Lord's willing, how many of
you have heard that? How many of you said that? If the Lord's willing. This is a good thing
to remind ourselves. It's good to voice this because as we voice it, we hear those words
and we remind the people around us that God is sovereign and we are not. Here's the problem
with this. We have come to use this as a tag along phrase, much like praying in Jesus'
name, where we say the word because we know we're supposed to say them or maybe we've
gotten in the habit of saying them and we really don't even contemplate them as they
come off our lips. We don't really understand what it is to pray in Christ's name and we
really don't understand what it is to plan if the Lord is willing. And so it's not a
tag along phrase. Now, I want you to think about two people. First of all, the Lord Jesus
and second, the apostle Paul. The apostle Paul and the Lord Jesus didn't just use the tag
line if the Lord wills and added on to the end of their sentences to sound more spiritual,
to sound more like a Christian. They intentionally used this phrase and these thoughts came to
my mind. Two reasons. Two reasons that they intentionally used this phrase. Number one,
they were so keenly aware of their dependence upon God. They were keenly aware of their
dependence upon God. They knew that they weren't sovereign. They knew that God was sovereign
over the affairs of men. They knew that he was their Lord, that he was their master,
the one that they were supposed to please to live their lives in pursuit of bringing
glory to him. They understood that their lives were lived in dependence upon God. Number
two, Jesus and the apostle Paul lived their life if the Lord's wills because their deepest
desire was to live in the center of God's will wherever and whatever that may lead
them into. It isn't just saying if the Lord wills which really matters. It's the attitude
of our hearts that James exposes. The Lord Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane and I
mean he is praying as fiercely as a man has ever prayed because he knows what is ahead
and he is begging his father, please take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not my
will but your will. You see that's not just putting a phrase at the end of a sentence.
You don't just put a phrase at the end of the sentence to sound spiritual when your life
is about to be taken. If you utter those words, it's because you mean it. God, whatever agony
I have to go through, if it's going to bring you glory, it's over. Have any of you even
contemplated, even allowed the thought to enter your mind that God may call you to leave
your job tomorrow and go serve in some third world country? Do you even allow that thought
to enter your mind? Most do not. Because when we allow that to happen, when we put ourselves
at the Lord's will, he may just take everything from us and send us somewhere where we'll
really get blessed. Not with finances, not with materials, but blessed with a love for
his people. You know my mentality, at least I hope you do by now, that what I do is ministry
and what you do is ministry. My pulpit is here on Sunday. Your pulpit is at your office
or at your school. I hope that you really see that God has put you there for the purposes
of serving him and serving those people, allowing Christ into your job, into your classroom.
But I will ask this question this morning, have any of you, particularly some of you
young folks, have you ever allowed the thought to cross your mind that God may be calling
you to ministry? He may be calling you to preach. He may be calling you to serve in
some capacity on a church staff. Folks, it's not a glamorous job, but I wouldn't rather
be, I wouldn't rather do anything else. Could it be that God is preparing some of our young
people for an education, not so that they can make hundreds and thousands and millions
of dollars, but so that they could take that education somewhere and teach people who have
nothing shared with you the story of a mom who looked at her son-in-law and uttered these
words. You're planning to take my daughter and my grandchildren over into a different
part of the world to serve the Lord. You can forget about it. You can go. They will stay
with us. Dear friends, that is the irrelevance of Christ. That is the irrelevance of Christ.
Losing out of people who profess to be Christian. That's what James is addressing in these passages.
Has Christ become irrelevant in your business, some of you businessmen, that your job now
and the sole reason for your job is to prepare yourself for retirement? Plan, yes, prepare,
yes, but don't let that be the motivating factor of why you do what you do. Our God is so much
bigger than that, amen? He's bigger than that. In his book, Don't Waste Your Life. Piper
speaks to those who have planned out their retirement. And this is what he says. I will
tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. A couple took early
retirement from their jobs. He was 59, she 51. They moved to Florida where they now cruise
on their 30-foot boat. They play softball and they collect shells. Picture them before
Christ at the great day of judgment saying, look, Lord, see my shells. This is a tragedy.
That we would plan all of our lives. That we would accumulate such wealth to spend it
on ourselves and our pleasures instead of using our businesses and our jobs and our
influence and our wealth to give it back to the Lord and his kingdom where it will not
be destroyed and where it will not be stolen so that he could use it for his glory to bless
other people. And when we don't use our wealth like this, we are proving that Christ is irrelevant
and others will view him the same. To be able to genuinely utter those words, God willing,
for Lord willing is, as Kent Hughes says, it is the posture of a burning heart that
is on fire for serving Christ. To wake up every morning, God, is it your will or is there
something else that you would have me to do where I can better serve your people and bring
glory to your name? Take your Bibles and go with me to Daniel 4. Daniel 4. Oh, planning
that is divorced from our profession is a divided life. Daniel 4, we're going to start
in verse 28. Daniel has just interpreted two dreams for King Nebuchadnezzar. And here
is Nebuchadnezzar's response. All of this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end
of 12 months, he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon. And the king
answered and said, Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a
royal residence and for the glory of my majesty? And while the words were still in the king's
mouth, the fellow voice from heaven, O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken, the kingdom
has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be
with a beast of the field, and you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods
of time shall pass over you until you know that the most high rules the kingdom of men
and gives it to whom he wills. And immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar.
He was driven from among the men, and he ate grass like an ox. And his body was wet with
a dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as an eagle's feathers, and his nails were
like a bird's cloth. God judges Nebuchadnezzar for his selfish arrogance. We know too much
church lingo to ever say something verbally like King Nebuchadnezzar did. Hopefully we
would never say anything like that. But within our hearts and minds, how many of us are thinking
while I've built this business, through my expertise, through my hard work, I have become
what I am today, because of me. Look at me. Look at me. Oh, the tendency in ministry.
The tendency in ministry is to take a church like Glory Fellowship, and to go to a pastor's
conference, and Stephen would tell you that this goes on all the time, to go to a pastor's
conference and to talk about how much the church has grown in my time. And to talk about
how many baptisms we have, how many people have joined the church, and what ministries
we're involved with. And we do it in a humble way. It's called humble arrogance. And we
do it in such a way so as to appear humble. But what we're trying to get people to do
is to see our glory, that we are some kind of majesty. God judges that. Dear friends,
Glory Fellowship is what it is today, not because of the preacher. It is what it is
today, not because of the praise team. It is what it is today, not because of some core
group that was some special anointed group that started Glory Fellowship. Glory Fellowship
is what it is today because of God's great blessing and grace and mercy on this church.
And we pray that it will continue. We pray that it will continue. Planning that is divorced
from our profession. Let's move quickly. James addresses, he says, your planning is devoid
of eternity. Your planning is devoid of eternity. He says, you're thinking and acting as if
all that matters is what happens on this earth. Did you not forget that you are a mist, that
you are a vapor that will disappear, that will vanquish?
Psalm 39.6, behold, you have made my days to be only a few hand breath. And my lifetime
is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath. Surely a man goes
about as a shadow. Surely for nothing they are in turmoil. A man heats up wealth and
does not know who will gather. Human life in the grand scheme of things here on this
earth is really insignificant compared to life in eternity. It's not that this life
here on earth is insignificant. It's that our length of time here on earth is insignificant.
What matters, what happens here on this earth and how we live our lives is very important.
But you and I will never accomplish what the Lord set out for us to accomplish. We will
never be what he called us to be if all we're trying to do is live for the here and now.
I gave this illustration when I first came to Glory Fellowship many years ago and it
fits in. I carry a handkerchief around. Some of you call it a snot rag. I have problems
with sinus analogies at times. I counsel folks that sometimes are crying and their makeup
is running all over the place. I like to have a handkerchief. And I wouldn't tell you if
I blew my nose on this before I gave it to you, have a look. The temptation is for us
to live for what we can see. Jesus warns against that. He warns against storing up wealth here
on earth where the rust sets in, corrodes, and where thieves break in still. He reminds
us that in everything we're going to be storing up treasure in heaven. I heard this illustration
one time and it's really stuck with me. How many of you have ever been to the Rocky Mountains?
Anybody? You've seen pictures of the Rocky Mountains. I want you to imagine with me for
just a moment that a bird, if I threw this handkerchief on the ground and a bird came
by and picked it up, and this bird in its beak carried this handkerchief with my initial
handkerchief. He carried it to the Rocky Mountains and one time a year, just once a year, he
took this handkerchief and he rubbed it over the top of the Rocky Mountains once a year.
But the handkerchief did not wear out, and if the bird did not die, by the time the Rocky
Mountains were rubbed smooth to the earth, the first second of eternity would not yet
have begun. Do you see why God commands us to prepare for eternity? We're storing up
all of this stuff for the here and now, not factoring God into our equations. We think
that retirement is the eternal life. We think that vacation is the eternal life. We need
time away. Don't get me wrong. We need time of reflection and rest. Dear friends, the
hope is not vacation or retirement. The hope is eternal. The sacred rest. Just to ask you
generally this morning, I think I've given you enough specifics. Are you planning out
your schedule, the vacations that you'll get with your business this year? Are you seeing
how many vacations days you can get so that you can use them to go to the beach or to
the Disney World? Are you asking God, God, would you have me to take a week or two weeks
of vacation to go on a mission trip somewhere? God, would you have me to take a week or two
weeks of my vacation? Not necessarily all of it. God, if you wanted me to take all of
it, if the Lord wills it, that's what you want, then I'll do it, to serve people here
in Walker County, to go to the mission of hope, to go to a place of refuge, and just to minister
to folks. Are we factoring God into our planning at all? Finally, James denounces or he rebukes
planning which denounces Christ's commission. Look at verse 17 of James four, last verse
in chapter four, and then I'm going to shut up and sit down. He says this, so whoever
knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. That's interesting.
In a church, and in my prayer life, I don't know about your prayer life, in my prayer
life, when I ask the Lord to forgive me, it is often for the things that I have committed,
the things that I have done, the things that I have said. How about you? Very rarely do
I ever get to the point where I am asking for God's forgiveness, and I am repenting for
things that I haven't done, but should have been doing. These are called sins of omission,
and sins of omission are just as deadly to our walk with Christ as the sins of commission
or the things that we do commit. James is saying here, and this verse fits perfectly
with what he's been saying, because what he's saying here is, you are planning, and you
are leaving Christ out of your planning. He has become irrelevant to you, and therefore
you aren't creating time in your schedule to do those things that God has commanded
you to do. So you just neglect them. You aren't planning in your schedule time in your life
to go see your neighbors and begin to love on them so you have an opportunity to share
the gospel with them. You aren't planning time in your schedule to pray for the lost
folks and for the hurting folks that God would give you an opportunity to go to them and
to minister to them. You aren't planning and factoring time into your schedule to go to
the prisons and to go to the hospitals and to go see people who are hurting. You aren't
doing any of that, which is exactly what I have commanded you to do, and you know you
ought to do it because you are a professing Christian, so when you don't do those things
that you know you ought to be doing, it is sin. We don't do these things in order to
earn God's favor. James isn't saying that. He is saying that when you are walking with
Christ and you are standing in awe of the way that He reveals Himself to you every single
day and you stand before the cross of Jesus Christ and you see Him hanging there and dying
there and bleeding there for your sin and for my sin, and as you begin to just gaze
upon Him and all of the implications and all of the feelings that Christ has for you and
for me, you get a case where you can't help but to go and be obedient to Him. He says your
irreverence is causing you to do things that are sinful and your irreverence is causing
you not to do things that you ought to be doing. Dear friends, how in the world can
we understand the cross and the gospel and say that it saves us from our sins if we really
believe that and gives us the hope of heaven and allows us to live with people who we get
to call brothers and sisters. If this isn't just church lingo, if it's real, if it's meaningful
to us, how in the world can we neglect sharing this salvation with other people? How can
I neglect to give to the work of ministry? Instead of saying, God, how little can I
give to get by? We'll be asking, God, do I need to keep some just to pay the bills because
I want to give everything to the work of ministry going on at home and abroad? Amen? The problem
is that there's irreverence in our hearts and he's become irrelevant in our lives and
our lives are divided so that our practice and our planning doesn't look anything like
our profession. And it is an evangelistic problem because if Christ is irrelevant to
the people who say that he's the most excellent thing in the world, why in the world would
he be relevant to their lives? Why? If we who have tasted and seen that he is good don't
want to really taste him, why would anybody? The irrelevance of Christ is a real deal
here in the churches of Walker County. The irrelevance of Christ is a real thing here
at Glory Fellowship. Please hear me as your pastor who loves you and prays for you and
cares for you. Jesus had to warn his disciples that they needed to be careful because covetousness
could set in. Why did he tell them to be careful because he knew that it was a subtle thing
and they wouldn't recognize it? They would ignore it, they would gloss over it, they
would excuse it, they would think that it's no big deal and continue on in their Christian
life. He says, God's claim on you, God's call in your life, God's salvation and what
he's accomplished for you. All to make him relevant in every decision, event, everything
you do. Don't, don't, don't in your life allow Christ to be irrelevant. Revere him. He will
factor into your planning, into your finances and into the decisions that you make and how
you spend your vacation and what you long for in retirement, not so that I can go to
the beach and cruise on some ship all the days of my retirement, but so that I can serve
the Lord with the time that is now available to me. Don't make him irrelevant in your marriage
choices, in your college decisions, in the way that you're raising your family, in the
way you spend your time. Don't make Christ irrelevant. Let bow me if you will. Perhaps
this morning you have seen God has shown you that James address to his people is just as
applicable to you. It's just as applicable to me that it's just as applicable here at
glory fellowship that we would plan events and put things on the calendar that are very
good things, but there are things that we want to do and we simply ask God's blessing
for them. Could it be that we're missing something greater? Could it be that we who join together
weekly have become irreverent? Therefore, he would be irrelevant amongst his own people.
God bless you, Father.
