How do you navigate between what is good and what is best in life? In this message we'll look at two major waypoints and one north star to help guide us when we feel lost in the complexities of life.
Chadron Bible Church Podcast
Learn to Navigate - Matthew 22:34-40 (The Journey of Life series)
(soft music) - Welcome to Shadron Burian Church, where we wanna have deep roots in Christ and in God's Word so that we will bear fruit for God, helping others to follow Jesus as well. Find us at shadronburian.org or on other platforms under Shadron Burian. Thanks for joining us. (soft music) (soft music) Again, we're talking about the journey of life. This summer, life is a journey. It's a marathon. It's a long, long journey, right? Not a, not a hundred meter dash. Not a sprint, but a marathon. And in a journey, journey can take a while, right? And before you set out on a journey, you need to learn how to navigate, right? How to use a map, how to use a compass, maybe how to read the stars. There's a lot of different ways that you can navigate on a journey where you're going. You might know, yes, where you're gonna go, but getting there, actually getting there and navigating is another story. Many folks who have started out confident of where they want to go in their journeys in the thick of it, right? Out in the woods, in the forest, or in the desert, whatever it is, in the thick of things actually lose sight of the destination. They get lost on their journey. And they're wondering, right? What steps do I take next? Which direction is true north? I don't know if you've ever been lost in person before, like not in a spiritual sense, but like physically you're lost out in the woods. It can be pretty disorienting. And even some of the best survival guys, most skilled survival guys can struggle to find the right path again, because your anxieties and emotions can take over and you forget the fundamentals as to how to get to where you want to go. So that's what we wanna talk about today. The journey of life is no different. It's complex. There's a thousand directions you can go in life, a lot of choices that you can make, every season, every day, every season and every day presents new challenges, new choices that will question your and test your priorities in life. It's complex. There are so many choices we can make in life. And I'm not even talking about just between bad choices and good choices, but good choices and the best choices. How do you determine what is best out of the good? Because we have so many options. And I'll just give you an illustration from my own life as I was thinking about it this last week. When I go to work, when I show up here at the office and I'm getting ready to put in my, you know, nine to five, so to speak, I have a dozen different things I can do. I can work on my sermon, I suppose. I could put together the prayer list. I could pray for the congregation. I could spend my time doing that. I could go out, I could do visitation. I could write an article for the newspaper. I could work online on our website or on the social media side of things. I could, I don't know, I could catch up on emails and text messages. There's always emails and text messages to catch up on. I could talk to the ministries that I oversee, ask them how they're doing, what they need. I could work on that. I mean, there's a dozen different things. Good things, right? All good things. How do you prioritize that? How do you work through that? I mean, when I go home, I can do more work. A lot of guys do. They don't have an office just at work. They got a home office. I could do, I could catch up on yard work when I go home in the evenings. I could pull weeds in the garden. I could cook dinner for my family. I could go on a walk with my wife. I could play catch with my kids. Or I could go hang out with a friend or I could go on a walk with God. Just talk to God, I could read. I have a dozen choices at home too in the evenings as to what I wanna do. How do you navigate that? How do you navigate that? And that's my question for us this morning. Those were all good choices, right? How do you navigate between what is good and what is best in life? What do I include in my life? What do I exclude? What do I prioritize? What's worth chasing? What's not worth chasing? What's worth investing my time and energy into? And what's not? Even the most internally organized people that I know have their priorities right struggle with that question right there. Even the most internally organized people I know will battle that question right there day in and day out. And they're also gonna battle it. We're all gonna battle it day in and day out. But also with the big questions of life, the big life determining, life shaping decisions that we make. Guys, I have story after story of people who got that wrong. I could stand up here for an hour and just share stories of people who got that question wrong and at the end of their life looked back with regret. Just this week, I was watching a documentary. Random documentary I saw on TV and it was on Monday. Not that that matters. But the dad said, I missed watching my son blossom into a world-class athlete because I was too busy with my commercial fishing business. His son became this world-class, world-renowned athlete and he missed it all. There's another story of a man named John who, you know, God forsake our lawns this year, right? For them looking good. Yeah, I just, I don't know, every lawn this year seems to look terrible. But John, there was a guy named John who went in and he went to talk to his counselor, him and his wife, were there having marriage problems. And John says, I put in all this money. So hundreds of dollars, you know, this guy spent hundreds of dollars and hours on his lawn every year, right? And he said, I will spend hours every week working to make my lawn beautiful for her and she doesn't give me any respect for it. She won't even acknowledge it. And she says to him, are you kidding me? Do you know how many times I've wanted you to put the weed heater down and play with the kids? She could care less about that perfectly manicured lawn. And then there's the story of Dale. Dale would define his life with three words. I blew it. Dale had, Dale has passed on. But he would light up telling you story after story, after story about all of his great hunting and fishing adventures. But when you asked him at the end of his life about his relationships and his most important commitments that glow would fade. And he would say, I blew it. And he'd say, I wish I had another chance. I'd give anything to go back and get a do-over in life. And his pastor said, for every successful adventure he had three stories of missed opportunity. He had three stories of missed opportunities as a husband, as a father and as a friend. (clears throat) Maybe you can relate to the words of one man who said, my biggest fear is that I'll reach the end of my life and realize that I blew it. I wish there was a way to simplify it all down so that I could know at all times I am living well. I don't know about you, but I can relate to that. Is there some sort of magic formula out there? I don't know if there is, but is there a way to simplify it all down so that I can know at all times that I'm living well, at least in that moment? And I think we may not like it, but I think that there is. God doesn't give us a well-defined map for our lives. He never says, well, you're gonna be here for this long, then you're gonna be here for this long, and then you're gonna do this, and he doesn't do that, does he? There's a reason for that. It's so that we stay in union with him and rely upon him. But there are two waypoints, I think, in scripture that can help us develop an internal compass to help us navigate between what is good and what is best in life. So that we can live well and that we can finish well. And I wanna turn to Matthew 22 for that. Matthew 22, 34 through 40. Matthew 22, 34 through 40. We find two waypoints here for our lives to help us navigate. Verse 34 reads, "When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together." One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind." This is the great and foremost commandment. And then he said, "The second is liken. You shall love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets, the whole Old Testament, all of the scriptures at that time. So what are my two waypoints? What are our two waypoints? That's pretty obvious, right? Love God and love people. Are you boil down all of the scriptures, right? And the scriptures are complex. There's a thousand commands, do's and don'ts in scripture, right? But you boil it all down and what do you get? Love God, love people. That's the fundamentals to keep you from getting lost. Loving God, loving people are a filter, I think through which our decisions and our choices should all pass through. Kind of like a grid, a sure fire grid. If it's not loving God, if it's not loving people, well, you'd get the point. I can get back on track, I've found, in just about any moment by operating with these in mind. Is this loving God and is this loving people? Loving God first, loving people second. I mean, whether I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, doing the will of God or not, whether I'm confident or not of what I'm actually doing, I know I can do these two things in that moment and live without regret. I may have questions about some of the big decisions in life, but you know what, that day, I can love God and I can love people and I can live that day without regret. Isn't that something? It's an amazing thing, so waypoint number one, love God. Number one priority in all of life. You don't have to question what it is. It's to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Just love Him to the othermost. Give your, I mean, give yourself to God in a relationship. That's number one and I found if you, if you just get that thing right, you get that right, it's like everything else falls into place for the most part because you have that first priority where it's supposed to be that'll prevent you from a world of hurt, right? And even in my relationship with God, it's even organized in my own mind. Like my walk, my union with God is number one. Like just my very, it's a very friendly and fatherly relationship with God that has nothing to do with my performance whatsoever. It's just me and God talking and walking. That is the number one thing in my life. More important than my service for God. Second would become my obedience to God. I just wanna obey Him, right? And then thirdly, it comes my service for God. I don't need to worry about serving God if I'm just not obeying God, kind of thing. I need to get that, right? But it all starts with this performance-free, grace-based relationship. That's number one, union with God, union with Him. If I do what I do out of a love for God, it's pretty difficult to look back on life with regrets and doubts because even when I feel like I'm not sure if I made the right decision here or there. Like I'm not sure if God wanted me there, but I went there. I still look back on it knowing the motive of my heart was to glorify God in that and He used that to grow me, even if it wasn't necessarily for me. Does that make sense? It's that grace net, it's always there to catch you when you fall, to keep you back up on those bars and keep swinging, and it catches you. The grace net catches you, God uses it all. The second way point is just love people. Love people, waypoint number two. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And I think that implies that we already do love ourself, so let's love others like we love ourselves. And all of those stories I shared with you already, I shared with you three, Dale, John, and another dad. What did they all get wrong? They're most important relationships. They're closest relationships. They dropped the ball on. And they realized at the end of their life or whatever at the end of the season that they were in, that people were more important than things that they did or things that they had. The kids are more important than the lawn. My kids more important than how much money I make. At the end of the day, people are always gonna be more important than things. I have a song that I enjoy listening to now and then. I think I've even mentioned it in this series, but it says that where you invest your love, you invest your life. Where you invest your love, you invest your life. My old pastor used to say all the time, there's only two things that are eternal. And it's God's Word and people. God's Word and people, what do you wanna live for? You wanna live for what's eternal? People are always more important than things, things that are not eternal. The world's message is put yourself first. You know, and I should probably qualify that a little bit. We've talked a lot about in this series about self-care, like taking care of yourself. Self-care is not selfish if it's done for long-term, whatever, ministry, serving others. But generally, the world's message is only think about yourself. You do what makes you happy. Climb the ladder, go after the wealth, the power, the influence, your dreams, your happiness, your ambitions, just go after that and don't worry about who gets in the way. 'Cause after all, what matters most is your happiness and you getting things your way. Actually, Jesus taught the exact opposite. He taught that true greatness is being a servant of others. And if you wanna find your life, you'll lose it for his sake and for the gospel's sake. It's just the opposite of what the world is constantly preaching at us. Turn with me to Mark 10, if you will, Mark 10, 41 through 45. In this passage, the disciples are starting to argue about who's the greatest. You got James and John wanting to sit at Jesus' right hand and left hand when Jesus comes into his kingdom and they want the positions of honor. And Jesus says, hearing this, the 10 began to feel indignant with James and John. Calling them to himself, Jesus said to them, you know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and they're great men exercise authority over them, but it's not this way among you. But whoever wishes to become great, among you shall be your servant, whoever wishes to be first among you shall be the slave of all. And then he points to himself as the example for even the son of man, even myself, did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So true greatness is true living well. What's living well look like? It looks like living for others. That's a life well lived. Luke 20, that's how Jesus lived, right? Luke 22, 26 through 27. Let's go ahead and turn there. Luke 22, 26 through 27. The argument continues. This was, that last one in Mark 10 was just before the Passover and they're on their way to Jerusalem kind of thing and now they're here and they're at the Lord's Supper. They're at the Lord's communion table essentially. And the dispute continues and he says in verse 26, but it is not this way with you. Again, he's talking about how the Gentiles lorded over the people and totalitarian mindset, but he says not with you, the one who is greatest among you shall become like the youngest, the leader like the servant. For who is greater than one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? That's the greater one, but I am among you as one who serves. So even God when he comes down to earth and human flesh isn't sitting there reclining at the table. He's serving them and he actually gets up after this and he washes their feet. As an unforgettable object lesson saying, guys, get over yourself, model this, imitate this. You guys are acting like the world. Stop, like just imitate me, which is humility and a servant heart. Jesus is saying look to me as the model, the perfect example, he's the one who fulfilled. He's the one who followed the two waypoints, the two great waypoints perfectly. When you study Jesus's life, you can see how much he loved God and how much he loved people. He would always prioritize his relationship with the father. Everything he did, he was in harmony with the father. He would leave the crowds to go spend time with the father. And he wouldn't have any guilt or shame about it. He knew he needed time with the father. But when he wasn't with the father, what do you find him doing? Serving people. And again, that's an expression of his love for God too, but we can serve out of a love for God. But he was there, he was preaching, he was teaching, he was healing, he was meeting people's knees, he was just having conversations with people about the Lord's things. Trying to bring them freedom and hope. When he was loving God and he was loving people, he followed the waypoints perfectly. And I like to think that we can reorient ourselves, our own lives when we get lost in life, we can reorient ourselves by just looking to Jesus as the one true unchanging North Star. For centuries, when people use the stars to navigate and there's one star, right, the North Star, Polaris, that never moves, it's always fixed and unchanging. Jesus is also an unchanging one. He's the star we can look to help navigate life's decisions. He's the true magnetic North. Hebrews 12, one and two, talk about life as a race, right? This verse keeps coming up for us. Last week, we talked about laying aside encumbrances, things that weigh us down. But this week, when we turn to this verse, he says, let's acknowledge how he talks about fixing our eyes on Jesus. He says, let us run with endurance, the race that is set before us. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. He's the one that we wanna focus on in life. He's the map, he's the compass, you might say. There's actually a Colton Dixon song. I think it's called, I'll build a boat. Came out last year, I think. But he says, in that song, you're the map, you're the compass, you help us navigate the currents underneath. So sometimes when I'm looking at how does it look like to love God? What does it look like to love people? What decision should I make? Well, sometimes you can just ask yourself, what would Jesus do, right? I mean, that's the old WWJD bracelet. You might ask, what would Jesus want me to do? What did Jesus do? What does it look like? Well, how did Jesus live? How does he wanna live that out through me now, with his spirit and me? So asking the right question can be really helpful in life. Instead of asking, what do I feel like doing? We can ask, what would Jesus want me to do? What does God want me to do? And that'll boil everything down too. Think about how many voices are out there telling you what you should do. I'm one of them. I'm here trying to get your attention to your boss will try to tell you what big decisions you should make, your friends, your family, coworkers, everybody's got advice for you on social media. But if you boil it back down to what does God want me to do, since he's number one priority, that gets rid of all the other voices, doesn't it? And it says, you know what? What does God want me to do? 'Cause I wanna please him the most. I wanna honor him the most. At the end of my life, that's what I wanna hear. Well done, good and faithful servant. From God, not from whoever else, necessarily. That's the most important thing. Asking the right question can be super helpful. I was gonna share an illustration too, about those dog races that they have with Greyhounds and things. You know how when they race around the track, there's a little mechanical rabbit that they chase? Well, one time, the mechanical rabbit just stopped. It broke, and the dogs quit running. They didn't know what to do. When they took their eyes off the rabbit. Sometimes I feel like we can feel like we don't know what to do when we take our eyes off of Jesus. If we can stop running, or we can forget to run, that race that's set before us. So let's keep looking to Jesus. I hope this is helpful for you guys. I think that remembering those two waypoints, and looking to Jesus as the example of the one who followed those two waypoints, can simplify and clarify. Not only your day-to-day decisions, but also your big, life-defining, life-changing decisions. And it'll allow you to live that day, or that season without regret. I mean, I don't think anybody is gonna say on their deathbed. I wish I hadn't loved God so much. I wish I hadn't loved my wife and my kids as much as I did. You think anybody's gonna say that at all? In fact, if the Lord took me home tomorrow, and I hope he doesn't, but, if he took any of us home tomorrow, I think we would say, "You know what? I wish I would have loved God and loved people more." Pursued my own interests less. At the end of the day, I think that's what we would say. More time for God, more time for family, for friends, for neighbors that I know need help, that sort of thing. Zeke Pfeiffer, he's a pastor down in central Nebraska. Wrote this, he calls it chasing others' dreams. He says, "Instead of chasing our own dreams, we chase others' dreams. Chasing others' dreams is the one passionate pursuit that can add clarity and simplicity to your entire life. Making others' great is the zero regret pursuit that simplifies and clarifies all other pursuits." Listen to this, "If you love well, everything you do is in focus and counts, regardless of the outcome." He says, "But if you don't love well, then your moments of greatest, then even your moments of greatest accomplishments are meaningless." That's a clarifying statement, isn't it? And he goes on and he shares the story of his father-in-law, RB, who went to college his first semester, right in the middle of his first semester at college, his father got cancer. And by Christmastime, his father couldn't run the grocery store anymore. His family owned the grocery store, his father ran it. And so RB, halfway through his first year at college, had to stay home to run the grocery store. And he thought, "At the time, I'm just going to run this for six months and then I'll be back at college." Well, RB ended up there for four decades because as he thought about it, while he was there, he thought about his mom. He thought about his sister. He thought about all of the employees at the store. And he chose to love these people by staying there. He was an ambitious man. He had the world set before him, but as he thought about the responsibility of loving his family and loving these people that God had put in his life, that's what he chose. He didn't regret it. It's just like that story of George Bailey. Doesn't it remind you of the story of George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life? George Bailey's this young man. He's gung-ho. He says, "I know what I'm going to do tomorrow, the next day, next year, and the year after." He says, "I'm going to shake the dust off this little crummy town off my feet and I'm going to go see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. And then I'm going to come back here to college and see what they know. And then I'm going to build things, airfields, skyscrapers a mile high, bridges a mile long. All his life is set before him. And then what happens? His father has a fatal stroke and he has to stay home and run the business. And he gives his college money to his brother Harry and he's just there a little bed for the falls, feeling pretty insignificant. And he doesn't understand how valuable his life has been until he's given a glimpse of Bedford Falls without him. Remember that? It's dull, it's lifeless, greedy people are in charge. His wife isn't loved. His decision to put others first benefited that community and so many life giving ways. If only we could get a vision, right? Like that. But I would move that we adopt, Matthew 22 is our own personal vision for our own lives. Our church board, and I'm not saying we adopted as our church vision necessarily, but our church board is looking into this vision. We're re-visioning things for our church, right? And I can't tell you how many times in this visioneering process, Matthew 22 keeps coming up over and over and over again. I'm not saying it's gonna stick or anything like that, but at least for your life, think about it. Think about adopting a vision for your own life. There was a man named Brad, he was an ex-marine, had a wife and five boys. He was a Harley riding scuba dive and mountain climbing gym rat. You know what I mean? But a day came where on his boy's birthday, I think his boy was four or five years old, he overheard his younger son talking to his mom and he said, "Mom, today's my birthday, "it's the best day ever, it's gonna be great. "We're gonna have a party "and everybody's gonna be there, right? "Everyone except Dad, of course." And he said that was the comment that got him. And he realized he needed a new vision that was beyond himself. And he was pouring over the scriptures and what did he come to? Matthew 22, love God, love people. He said that is how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. No more running over other people. God gave me a bigger picture to chase. Maybe God's giving you a bigger picture to chase. This morning, at least that's my hope. One of the things you can do to help you navigate, very practically speaking, is just take some time this week, maybe, and write down all the possible directions that you can see yourself taking in life. Here are all the directions, here are all the areas of focus in my life, the things, the places, the whatever, the things that I sense myself being pulled towards. It's work, it's education, it's family time, it's whatever. Write down all those major areas of focus in your life and then take that list and filter it through the two great way points in the North Star, the true North Star. See what remains. See what's not loving God and what's not loving people. And then order what remains from greater to lesser. It's quite the exercise if you haven't done that. I recommend it anyway. Prayerfully, think about it. Maybe it'll take days or months to do, I don't know, but it's always kind of reshaping itself and in our seasons of life. Something to think about and then share that with your friends and family who you might, or an accountability partner so that they can help you live those out as well and keep you on track. And when they sense that you're getting off track. I'll wrap this up with a quote from Gordon McDonald, ordering your private world. He says, "One of the great tests of human character is found in making critical choices of selection and rejection." What to leave in, what to leave out. Amidst all of the opportunities that lurk in life's path. Your challenge will not be in separating out the good from the bad but in grabbing the best out of all the possible good. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]