The Rescue Church

A Waste of Time

Productivity has been a buzzword for years. In training for the decades old Franklin Covey Planner, they encouraged a person to write down their tasks for the day and note the importance of completing them in descending order. Since then, and probably before then, productivity experts have taught about prioritizing tasks and then addressing them in priority order. The we don’t do this, we can find ourselves distracted by less important things and fail to accomplish the most important things. ...

Broadcast on:: 10 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

For today, the text is found in 2 Timothy chapter 2, it is on your note sheet. And it says this, it says, keep reminding God's people of these things, warn them before God and against quarreling about words. If it is of no value, and it only ruins those who listen. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. Avoid Godless chatter because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene among them are Hymenaeus and Phyletus who have departed from truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place and destroyed the faith of some. Therefore God has sent God's solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription, the Lord knows those who are his and everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness. Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments because you know they produce quarrels and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but be kind to everyone able to teach, not resentful. Silence must be gently instructed in the hope of that God will grant them repentance leading them to the knowledge of the truth and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil who has taken them captive to do his will. Gracious God, as we jump into this text today, I pray that you would be at work, Holy Spirit that you would speak, that you would teach what should be taught, that if it's not from you that people wouldn't hear it. God, just quiet our hearts, quiet our minds and let us know what you want us to hear in Jesus' name. Amen. So I don't know. I'm going to ask how many of you use some sort of productivity tracking, productivity management, something, a calendar, a planner, something? I know my family does, there's a number of others of you do. When I was younger, back in the '90s, I started using the thick paper planner, the Franklin Covey Planner. I don't know if any of you have heard of the-- yes, so the funny thing is when I carried this Franklin Covey Planner around with me and it had all of my stuff in it, my license, my credit card, my check-- anything that was there, yes, we used to actually carry checkbooks, but that was with it. And Eve's dad always thought I was just walking around carrying a Bible. I think he thought I was super spiritual or something, but I know there was one time he reached out. He's like, "Hey, Sam left this Bible here." No, it wasn't my Bible with my planner and it had everything in it. But anyway, I've always believed in a planner because I believe in productivity. And one of the keys to productivity is that you get the things outside of your head and outside of your mind and get it down on paper or into electronic media or something so that you're not always trying to manage everything in your head. And if you go through any of the training, whether it's getting things done or the training that the Covey Group used to do with the Franklin Covey stuff, they talk about making sure that you-- after you get everything down, you go through and mark the things in priority order. One of the ways they did it in this Franklin Covey system was using an alphabet like ABC. The most important was A, then it was B, then it was C. And if I remember correctly, if it was like the super important things that had to be done, it was AAA, is that right? You remember that? Or was it something different? It was what? Just A? Okay. I just-- I remember highlighting all of those things on my sheet so that I could make sure that I got done the most important things. Now, people thought decades ago that with the implementation of technology with computers and everything else, that we were going to become so productive that we would not need to work regular work weeks. In fact, there wouldn't be enough work to do because we'd be so productive with all of these things that have app, that we have, at least tools that we have. And instead, what happens is some of those tools that are made to make us more productive, make us less productive, because they distract us from the most important thing. Well, in this teaching here with Timothy, and Paul is writing to Timothy, Paul is an apostle, followed Jesus after Jesus' death, and he's invested in Timothy, and he's continued to invest in Timothy, and after investing in Timothy, he reminds Timothy of his purpose and his calling, and he sends him to Ephesus. And so the book of 1 Timothy-- keep in mind, we're in 2 Timothy-- the book of 1 Timothy, he writes to Timothy, challenging him, and encouraging him to hold the true doctrine, and to lead in that church well and appoint solid leaders who put the first things in order of priority. They put the right things as a priority, namely Jesus Christ as Lord. And so that's the first Timothy, then between 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, Paul comes and hangs out a little bit, then he leaves, and he's back in prison. But he's writing to Timothy, and he's writing to Timothy dealing with some different things. He's telling him, among other things, he's talking to him about dealing with disappointments and hardships and all, and we've addressed some of that, suffering the last couple of weeks. Paul was very familiar with suffering. After all, he's in prison, Timothy's familiar with suffering, because he's struggled trying to, over the last roughly seven years, trying to lead this church and dealing with opposition and things that go into it. And now, part of the opposition that Paul is addressing in this text has to do with the teachings that are being taught. They started to introduce teaching that's not necessarily in line with scripture. And not only is it not in line with scripture, but they've used these other teachings that are related to truth as a distraction from the things that are important. And Paul starts off this passage that we read, warning them about arguing. He warns them at the beginning, and then he continues in that passage in verses 23 and 24, and says, "Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because they produce quarrels, and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome." So there's times when we can get into arguments and quarrels on things that maybe don't need to be arguments and quarrels. In fact, if you've sat through our next step class that we do with the rest of you church, it talks about what we believe as a church. And in there, we talk about some of the things that we believe are essential based on God's words and things that we believe are true, but it's not the most important things. And we break those up into essential and non-essential. And if you want to go through that class, we'll do that again this fall. But in that, we broke down to how we should handle these essentials and non-essentials. And we've started by saying in an essential belief, we need to have unity. There's core doctrines and primary teachings. We've preached through this before, but if someone was to say within the rescue church as the rescue church, that we don't believe that Jesus is God, well, that would be something we would need to address. That would be one of our core doctrines, Jesus as God. Paul addressed that in the previous weeks of what we've read where Paul says and teaches us how Jesus is not only God, but who spoke the world into existence, but man, God in human form dealing with the things that we as humans do. And so it's essential that we have unity in those core doctrines. I'm not going to go through all of them today. It's also that says, we also say that in non-essential beliefs, we have liberty. There's some things that are not absolutely core to what we believe. It's not core to our relationship with Jesus. It's things that are taught, we believe in Scripture, and we believe that it's things that the Bible says, but it's not the most key points. It's not as foundational, I'll say, as some of the other things. And Romans 14, it says, except for Him whose faith is weak without passing judgment on disputable matters, so not to get hung up on those things that get disputed. I'll give you one that I think is a safe one to bring up because I just hope it is, and it's one that's debated in the church world and among theologians and scholars, and it has to do with the Eucharist, the communion. And there's a debate in church world, and you may not even know this debate exists, but there is this debate in church world that can get tense depending on which side of the line you land on, that communion, the Lord's Supper, is a remembrance of what Jesus did. His death, his burial, and his resurrection, the bread represents his body, the juice or the wine represents his blood. So that's one and that's where we would stand as the rest of the church. But there's another teaching that says that when you take that bread and actually swallow it, it literally becomes his body, and it's like you consuming Jesus' body and remembering it that way. The same with the wine, it literally becomes his blood or the juice, it becomes his blood as you swallow it. I'm not going to get hung up on which is right and which is wrong because regardless of that, what we know is that we do communion and we celebrate communion in remembrance of what Jesus did for us. But if we were to make that non-essential doctrine, something that we wanted to fight about, it could take away from the core of truth, the core of the gospel. So when we say this, we say in non-essential beliefs, we have liberty. But in all of our beliefs, we have charity. We had to use the word charity, I debated on changing it because it's kind of the alliteration thing. I don't know why pastors do it, I don't know why I do it. But just so if you look through those things, it's in essential beliefs, we have unity and non-essential beliefs, we have liberty and all of our beliefs we show charity. I could have said love, but that doesn't end with a why and so I couldn't do it. So I said charity instead. But the reality is in all of our beliefs, we need to show love. In 1 Corinthians 13, it says, "If I have the gift of prophecy and confathom all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have faith and can move mountains, but I have love, I do not have love, I am nothing." We as Christians have often given ourselves a bad name because of the way we have handled truth. We know the Bible is true and so we use that as truth and instead of lovingly tell somebody what it says or lovingly address it or lovingly address keeping the main thing, the main thing, we take some of the things that are important but aren't the primary thing and we beat people's heads over, beat them over the head with it in hopes that they're going to fall into submission and finally just give in and agree because we beat them over the head long enough. That is not love. One of the hardest messages that I gave or one of the ones that was hardest to most uncomfortable to preach on was the Bible's teaching on same-sex relationships. Hard to teach on because I know that it affects people's lives and it's a very divisive thing. And so when we preached through it, as we taught through it, we tried to include a variety of different perspectives, a variety of different backgrounds, and in all of it throughout it, the goal was to be loving because whether or not a person has dealt with that area of sin in their life or something other like lust or hate or something else, none of us are perfect. And I don't know if you know that if so, I'm sorry to break it to you so bluntly, but none of us are perfect, and so if we treat us as being better than someone else and as our sin is not as bad as somebody else, we give up that love and that empathy and that sympathy with which Jesus greeted people. With a woman at the well, he didn't meet her and go, "Hey, you and fill in whatever word you want to use for somebody who's sleeping with multiple people, hey, you whatever, stop doing that and then we can talk." No, he sits, he talks, has a conversation, and then casually just kind of brings it up unless her come to the revelation and the realization that how she's living and what she's doing isn't what God's best for us is. But when we quarrel about these little things, when we start to make the outside non-essential things as the essential things, Paul says it becomes like gangrene. That's the specific word he used. So I thought, let's have a little bit of fun and since breakfast is done for most of you, I'm going to pass this image around and you're all going to get a chance to look at it. Don't worry. It's actually, it's not a real foot with gangrene. It's just an image that is of what it could look like cartoon wise according to mail, that they're a pretty reputable organization mail. So I thought, well, I can use their stuff. So this is their representation of what gangrene can look like in the foot. I know you're all thankful that you came for breakfast church to see a gangrene impacted foot. But Paul compares those quarrels to gangrene, the quarrels to this disease that does nasty things to our body. What does it do? Well, we'll get to that in a second, but he believes it is so important that we address it and so important that the church in Ephesus addressed it, that he called out the people that weren't, that were being the quarrels of ones and the ones that were causing the issue by name. He specifically calls out how many is, in Phyletus, and says, hey, they need to be addressed because what they are doing is toxic and it hurts the body. And that's when he compares it to this gangrene. Mayo says, gangrene is a death of a body tissue due to a lack of blood flow or serious bacterial infection. Gangrene commonly affects the arms and the legs, including toes and fingers. It can also occur in muscles and organs outside the body, such as the gallbladder. Now for those of you who see something and then all of a sudden think you have it, stop panicking, don't worry, please don't be that person. If you are, we have a great clinic in town. You can go let them tell you that you don't have gangrene. But my point doesn't to make any of us feel like, oh no, my foot's about to fall off or be infected or my hands or whatever. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying this is what Paul brought up as what the corollings in the body of Christ are like and the false teachings or the teachings that get away from the core matters of scripture are like. About gangrene, some things that according to Mayo, this isn't according to Sam because I am no doctor, according to Mayo it says the earlier gangrene is identified and treated, the better chance are for recovery. That probably applies to issues in the church. Gangrene is a serious condition and needs emergency treatment. It's not something that you just pretend doesn't exist and hope that it gets better because it doesn't, you actually need to address it. Again, probably can relate to those corollings and things within a church. Gangrene poisons the entire body if not dealt with quickly. If not dealt dealt with, gangrene can lead to serious complication. If it's not immediately treated, bacteria can spread quickly to other tissue and organs. You may need to have a body part removed, amputation to save your life and removal of the infected tissue can lead to scarring in the need for reconstructive surgery. Interesting that throughout the New Testament, God compares the church to a body and he compares the church to a body and says we are all different parts within the body. If that's the case and he says it is, so I'm choosing to believe it, we need to be careful about not addressing issues, even ancillary issues, because they can start to penetrate into the body. They can start to spread and cause festering issues and if not dealt with, they can actually ruin the entire body and kill the entire body. He's saying that could mess up and wreck the entire church of Ephesus and by relatability it could address, if not address, could negatively impact us and destroy the rescue church. So while we need to be careful about quarrelling about non-essentials and all, we still need to stand on truth. I'm not saying that by any means Paul is saying now we let everything go, everything's okay. This is you do you because your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth. That's not it at all. He's not saying throw doctrine out the window. If anything he's saying let's focus on what is doctrine and what is key truth. From the text he says that accurate interpretation does matter. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved. A worker does not need to be ashamed who correctly handles the word of truth. He tells us doctrine matters, in fact you need to be able to correctly use the Bible, to correctly understand the Bible, to correctly teach the Bible. And then later in chapter 3 of 2 Timothy he says all scripture, not just part of it, but all scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training and righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. The servant of God may be thoroughly equipped. The Bible matters, doctrine matters. This is not Paul saying hey we don't want to cause quarrelling so that means we let everything go. That's not what he's saying. We need to be intentional about keeping focus on key truth, key doctrines. So then if we're not supposed to fight and quarrel about non-essential things, what does that look like? Why does that matter? And it matters for this reason and it's that point I have on your note sheet. It's when things that aren't the main thing become the main thing, they distract from the main thing. When things that aren't the main thing, those ancillary things, things that they're disputing about. To give you an idea, some of what was being disputed about theologians believe in the church in Ephesus was they were bringing in teaching from the Old Testament, tradition from old Jewish doctrines and old Jewish teachings. And when Jesus came, he died and offered a salvation that took out any sort of need to earn it, any need for us to make sacrifices, any need for us to hit these religious rules that had been put in place in the Old Testament. It was by grace we were saved, not by works. But yet they were trying to at times pull some of that old Testament stuff in and say, "Well, yeah, but we need this too." And Paul's saying, "Hey, we need to keep the main thing the main thing." And the main thing is Jesus Christ who gave his life died so that we could have a relationship with him because all of us have fallen short and all of us come short of reaching that perfect standard of God's holiness. But Jesus makes a way through us. Now the passage that we opened with today, it starts with a verse that we ended with last week where it says, "Keep reminding God's people of these things." So what are these things? If we're not supposed to get hung up on the anselary, I've said, "It's Jesus in the gospel, that's part of it." And then in verses 11 through 13, I don't have those printed out, but it lays it out in a different way, almost as a liturgy. Now, if you know me well, you know that I'm not a big fan of liturgy. I'm not a big fan of liturgy because it can become that same thing that you say over and over again and you pay no attention to what it was because it just becomes habit. It becomes ritual, it becomes reciting. But you also know that there is a value to reciting things and committing them to memory and being reminded of it. So I believe that could be part of the reason when Paul wrote this. He wrote it in this way so that it could be taught in a way that could be remembered. And he said this. He says, "Here is a trustworthy saying. If we died with him, we also live with him. If we endure, we also reign with him. If we disown him, he will disown us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful because he cannot disown himself." The point of that is narrow down into this. It's all about living in a relationship with Jesus. That is the main thing. And so when people start to get away from the main thing, when we as Christians start to drift to other things becoming more important than the relationship with Jesus or it's Jesus plus something like it appears it may have been in this church. And it starts to happen. We need to lovingly and quickly bring people back because remember, gangrene spreads quickly. So we need to lovingly and quickly address those things. I think we talk about charity or love and I think as a church, we sometimes mistake love for passivity or for just general acceptance. Because when we think if I was to confront somebody on something, that doesn't feel very loving. Yet I've heard it said that to be unclear is to be on time and that idea comes out of the idea of if someone doesn't know clearly what is expected, if they don't know clearly what truth is because we're afraid to hurt feelings or we're afraid to, honestly it's probably not their feelings we're worried about. We're afraid of what they're going to think of us if we're truly honest. And so if we are avoiding being clear and avoiding telling truth, then we let them that person or that person lets us continue in something that's not in line with where we should be living and how we should be living. But that doesn't mean, and so then there's the flip side of the coin is yes we need to address it and not be passive, but it doesn't mean that we are expected to beat somebody over the head and beat them into submission and beat them into obedience. Some of us think that works and don't worry that people thought that well before you. A couple of things in the U.S. history that I can look at. We had this idea that if we made alcohol illegal, alcoholism would go away. Did it work? No. Okay. We had another idea and we've gone back and forth on it and I'll preface this by saying I firmly believe the Bible teaches that a child is a life at the moment of conception. People preface it with that, but just for the point of this illustration, did people's attitudes towards the life of an unborn child change when Roe v. Wade was reversed? It really didn't. There is still an attitude that says it's okay, it's my right, I can destroy this fetus. So if that's the case that we can't mandate people heart change, maybe we need to be careful on our approach of beating people over the head with it. Do we need to take a different look at this? I'll give another example, let's take it out of anything political and let's go right into your personal homes for those of you that have kids. We as Christian parents want our kids to follow Jesus. Everybody agree with that? If you have Christian parents, you want your kids to follow Jesus. But sometimes what we do in an effort to encourage our kids to follow Jesus is we keep pushing them to say a prayer so that we can feel good about things. Or we force them towards a baptism so that we can feel like they've checked a box and now they're going to heaven. But when in reality it's not about a behavior thing that saved them, it's about a relationship with Jesus that does. Because I can push somebody to say a prayer and say something and get them to say it when really they have not come to a personal relationship with Jesus. Two examples. I've got a family member, not my immediate family, I'll use broader family who as a child prayed a prayer saying they wanted Jesus to be their savior. I would argue that their life as a teenager and in high school did not match up with that of a Christian. No, they didn't get pregnant, they didn't go to all the parties but their anger, their attitudes towards their parents and so many other things did not line up with somebody who was following Jesus. My family member sent a message to all of us around the year 2000 saying I realized that what I was doing I did because it was my parents' beliefs and my parents' religion. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that I need this for me, not for them and so I chose to follow Christ as my savior tonight and I hope you'll celebrate with me or something like that. That was said because at that point they realized that what they had done was because there was a pressure from a church and from family to do something but it really wasn't theirs. It's like a friend of mine that was at a camp and made a public decision and he was baptized to say hey I follow Jesus and then as a young adult he said I just did it because everybody else was doing it. It really wasn't something I believe, in fact I don't even think God's real. Now thankfully today this man loves Jesus as active in leading in his family and in his church but at the time when people thought they could push somebody to do something and believe something they didn't realize that it's really about us stepping back, presenting the hope of the gospel and letting the Holy Spirit do what he does. He makes a heck of a lot better Holy Spirit than you or I ever will and we're told in John 16 8 that when he comes he will convict the world of its sin and this is Jesus talking and when he says when he comes the Holy Spirit hadn't yet been sent. He came after Jesus had ascended into heaven so he is here now and he says he will convict the world of sin and of God's righteousness and of the coming judgment. It doesn't mean that we don't teach truth but instead that we teach it generously, graciously and lovingly trusting that Holy Spirit will be the one doing convicting. So that line that I had left is a fill in the bank, as followers of Jesus we would do well to let the Holy Spirit do what the Holy Spirit does best. So as we wrap up there's a chance that somebody who's watching this video or that's here in person goes well this is all good for Christians but I don't even believe it and if that's where you're at hey I'm glad you're listening, I'm glad you're here, I'm glad you're connecting with us, we love you and just know that this teaching can apply to your life as well. It goes back to anything we do that when we start to let those outside things come in and become the focus we take our attention away from the main things. This can happen in a variety of ways, in an election year my fear is that there's friendships and relationships that could be destroyed because we let those issues supersede the relationship and the friendship and the connection because we get so hung up on what two men or a man and a woman or two political parties or however it is want to say and do. I'm not saying that's not important, it is absolutely important and we are privileged as a country to be able to vote and to have a say but I'm also saying that while that's important it's not more important than that relationship you have with that other person. I'll give another example again that is just real practical, social media, how many arguments happen on social media over things that really aren't the most important things. There's those keyboard warriors that are out there looking for a chance to argue and then there's those people out there that bait them to increase engagement and throw out something to start a fight. Either part is an appropriate reaction and thirdly I'll say if you're married I promise this matters. If you hope to be married I promise this matters. I say that it's not even based on what I know, not even based solely on scripture but based on conversations I've had with people that have been married a long time. Since I was young in my 20s I would have conversations with people that would and I'd love to get no people, no one their story. Anytime I would meet somebody that had been married 50 years, 60 years more, one of my questions is how did you do it. My marriage is easy so I figured it would be easy for me but for other people how do you do it? I think without fail because I cannot think of an exception to this. Every one of them whether it was the husband or the wife that answered would say some version of it was remembering what was most important and keeping that most important. Don't let those side things, those side disagreements become the main things because that will mess up your relationship. Keep the main thing the main thing. So as you go through life if you're saying hey I don't even believe this God thing just know that this truth still matters. The truth of keeping the primary thing, the primary thing matters because whether it's in the church or in your marriage or in your personal life when things that aren't the main thing distract from the main thing they become that main thing. Let's pray. Our gracious God we're thankful for the hope of your word, we're thankful for practical lessons, we're thankful for illustrations that can become vivid where you can create compared to a body and then Paul uses that illustration of gangrene to show what can happen in the body when there is that quarrelling and that disputing. God help us to have that image in our head at any point when we get to that spot where we want to fight about something that doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that we don't speak up and don't speak truth but it also doesn't mean that we do it in an unloving way. So God help us to be a loving people, a loving church. Help us to elevate you first and foremost putting you at the forefront. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for listening to this recent message from the Rescue Church. We pray that God will use this message to encourage, challenge, and inspire you in your faith journey. To hear our messages live, head to one of our physical campuses. If you'd like to learn more about the Rescue Church, please visit us online at therescuechurch.com or email us at office@therescuechurch.com [BLANK_AUDIO]