Believers are called to put God and His things first in their lives by properly ordering their priorities. The sermon emphasizes that this requires a reckoning, resolution, and regulation of life's complexities, urging listeners to confront and consider their commitments, ensuring that God remains the supreme priority above family, possessions, and personal desires. True sorting of priorities is only possible through God's direction, found in His Word, prayer, and the counsel of other believers, requiring courage to remove illegitimate things and focus on those that honor God. The ultimate application is to live a life where God is demonstrably first, not just in thought but in action, as a testament to His grace and a fulfillment of His purpose.
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to have our brother from Colorado Springs here to open with prayer for us this morning. I remember visiting Colorado Springs and there they have a railroad. And it's like this. One comes down as the other one goes up. And I understand they're on the same piece of string. And so one goes up, the other comes down and so they work. And the guide is talking to you as you travel on this breathless or breathtaking journey. And I recall the guide that we had said to us, now, some of you are asking, what's going to happen if the table breaks?
But he said, you don't have to be worried. Because right down at the bottom of the hill, we have two big springs. One is Colorado Springs and the other is Manitoulin Springs. Wasn't very comforting, I can assure you. Let's read just a few verses from this very strange chapter for this morning. Dare any of you having a matter against another go to law before the unjust and not before the saints?
Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world, and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life? No, I'm not going to talk about Mr. Baker, and I'm not going to talk about this tragic fiasco that's going on and believers are going to law with believers which is anti-scriptural absolutely.
These matters are supposed to be solved within the church. And the testimony of God is suffering tremendously as a result of the widespread popularity and fame, now notoriety of these men. It's a very tragic thing. But whatever you read about it, remember it is all against what the Bible teaches. But that is not my topic for this morning. After the heavy rains of this past week, I thought I ought to take a little trip down to the dock and make sure that the boats were still up in the water where they should be and that the bilge pumps were working properly.
My grandson, who is four years of age and staying with us, he insisted on coming along. And so as we approached the water's edge, I said to him, Now, what are you going to do if I fall in the water? He said, I'll throw the anchor to you. I said, Thanks a lot. And he looked at me very strangely. Then he said, Oh, the anchor would sink. No, I would throw you a lifeboat. I was very gratified that he hadn't really meant what it sounded like he meant.
Now, I hope you realize my very difficult position this morning. This is the end of the conference. We've had new speaker after new speaker after new speaker, and each one somewhere along the line has thrown you into the water. And now I'm supposed at the end of the conference to do something to deal with that situation. You know, when these preachers preach and they make sure that some practical truth gets across to you, why I remember the last preacher saying in the middle of the week, now I don't want to stop preaching and start meddling, but that's exactly what he did.
But I'm the one who's supposed, at the end of all of this preaching, to do the meddling. Because the fact is, in view of all that you have heard over these past eight weeks, God, the Spirit, has been speaking to your heart. And this last week particularly, And you've been pulling up yourself short a little here, and pulling up yourself short a little there. And when something particularly hit you rather hard, when you went out and said, thank you for the message tonight, you really weren't grateful at all, because it was painful to realize that something that he had said had hit home in a very real way.
Now there's an expression in these verses that I want to take out of context and use it as a text this morning. This is what it says. Know ye not that we shall judge angels how much more the things that pertain to this life. The things that pertain... to this life. Now the word judge here is a word that means to separate, to choose or to determine.
And God is telling us it is our responsibility to determine the things that have to do with this life. We've got to ask ourselves are we really now going to put into practice the things that have been brought before us week after week? Last night, if you were here at our talent night, you listened to the choir and you had some demonstrations about the five things that go with increasing age. Here they are, bulges and bridge work, bifocals, boldness and bunions.
Now I want to put a sixth that goes along with increasing age and it's this one and it may not be a very familiar word to you. Bovinity. Now there's something to add to your vocabulary. Bovinity. Now you say, I thought a bovine was a cow and you're right. and bovenity is being cow-like. It really means to be dull sometimes to the point of stupidity. And you know, my mother used to say to me, there's no fool like an old fool.
Oh, you heard that too. The fact is we have to be very, very, very careful that insensitivity has not crept into your life to the extent that these things that you hear run off you like water off a duck's back. Bovinity, being dull almost to the point of stupidity. It's very certain that the older we grow, the more anxious we are to sort of let somebody else do the work.
But the fact is, and you've been reminded of it time and time again, that when your work is finished, the Lord will take you home. And if the Lord hasn't taken you home yet, and you all look very much alive to me, Then it's an evidence that your work for God is not finished and must not be relegated to somebody else. The things that the preachers have said are things that pertain to your life and things that pertain to my life. Now if you're going to have an uncomfortable time this morning, I just want to tell you I'll have a more uncomfortable time because these things apply to me more than they apply to you.
The preachers have been very anxious to get across to us the thought that in our lives we must put things in the right order. Did you notice that this conference there was more emphasis upon worship than in any other conference that I remember in the past. I don't think that's accidental because worship is the primary exercise and all of our service should be an expression of our love for God. If we are going to put things in order, what we've got to do is take a very careful look at the things that are important, more important, and most important, and then make sure that we put the right one on top and the right one on the bottom.
As we've gotten older, We've recognized the need for putting things in order. Some of us may have spent quite a long time pouring over our financial affairs and saying, now, I really have got to make sure that everything is as it should be when I breathe my last breath. Now, that's very wise. Maybe you have been spending a time with a lawyer from time to time making out a will and doing things like this, putting things in order as far as the end of your life is concerned.
But the preachers have been very anxious to remind you that God wants you to make any adjustment that's necessary in your life now. And I'm not talking about financial things. I'm talking about other things in your life that you dare not, after these eight weeks, put off adjusting. Things that have to be changed. Priorities that have first of all, or that call first of all for a reckoning. and secondly for a resolution and thirdly for a regulation.
Priorities of course are the things at the top of the list. Now you and I live lives that are constantly face to face with complications and complicated things. The world in which we live is very complicated. It's at one time a world of discovery and a world of disaster. It is at one and the same time a world of wonder and yet a world of wars. I see there's another war, along with the other twenty-eight that are presently raging today that's about to break out between Turkey and Greece.
Oh, you didn't know there were so many wars going on. See how fortunate you are. The world's a very complicated place. And living here doesn't tend to make us appreciate simplicity. Now, because it's complicated, you obviously are not going to solve your problems in a simple fashion. Not only is the world complicated, but the society which we form a part is also very complicated. What a violent society we are living in. Can you imagine that a woman with child herself should go into a mobile home and kill a three-day-old baby's mother and grandmother and steal the baby and disappear into the blue?
Can you believe it? Can you understand it? It's a reminder of the complicated world that we are living in. I read rather sadly just a couple of weeks ago in our own local newspapers that crime in our area has gone up twenty three percent. Did you read that? Things are not getting simpler. They're getting more and more complicated. Violence and crime. The society is getting more and more affluent. and yet more and more abandoned.
Did you ever dream that in all of your life there would ever come a day when a preacher would stand up in his church and distribute contraceptives? Did you ever think that such a time would happen? then on our college campuses they not only would be available but would be pushed upon the students. This is an abandoned society, makes the picture very complicated. And as if that were not enough, not only is the world very complicated, and the society which we form a part very complicated, but the personality that is me is very complicated.
you're a very complex person and if you are going to be able to put your your priorities in their proper order you've got to realize it's gonna take work it's not going to be simple in your personality there is desires and that desire sometimes is very clement there are in your personalities certain compulsions that drive you. There are times when your fears grip you and almost to the point of despair. Time when guilt seizes you and you scarcely know where to turn.
It's obviously not going to be a very simple thing to put first things first and to sort them out. Priorities then first of all call for a reckoning. How can we help having to sort out priorities in view of everything that's going on around us? You don't want your life to be lived as a wasted life, do you? You don't just want to drift through time and meet your death as somebody who accomplished nothing. You don't really want to sit down on your leaves and let George do it, including some of the things you ought to be doing.
Basically, deep down in your heart, even though the thought drives terror into your heart, you have an earnest desire to get things really sorted out before God. And the preachers through the conference have been endeavouring to help you to do that. Now these priorities then call for a solution. They've got to be resolved. Contentment with a mixed up, purposeless life is the worst kind of bovinity. I use that word so I don't use the word stupidity.
It is the worst kind of dullness. And yet there are countless thousands of people are living that way. But a believer ought never to live that way. Now am I wrong in assuming that everybody here may not be saved? If you're not born again, if you're not saved, there is no way that you can sort out your life. There is no way you can really recognize what are the true priorities in living. Because you see, to do this sorting out, you need God, and you need him in a personal and special way. And you can never have him in that way until you have his Son in your heart as your very own personal Savior.
And that comes about by realizing that when he died upon the cross, he died for your sins. and in love for you ever since you were old enough to think he has in this way and that way and the other way been trying to bring influences to bear on your life that will cause you eventually to open your eyes wide and say I see what I need is God and I can only have God as I surrender to his son who died for me admitting my sin, receiving him into my heart, and being born again.
Now, that's where it all starts. But most of us here had that experience a long time ago. You say it's an experience once and for all, but there are those who tell you otherwise. But I have to believe that once you're saved, you're always saved. You know why? Because the Lord Jesus says, when you're saved, you are built as a living stone into a living building. Not by Gabriel, not by Michael, not by the pastor of your church, not by one of the elders.
The Lord Jesus said, I will build my church. Now, what kind of builder is he? He's a master builder. Now if he builds a block into a building and it falls out, whose fault is it? When the Lord Jesus builds a living stone into that living building, which is the church, because he's a master builder, it is there to stay in spite of what may come into the life that that living stone represents. Nobody can snatch you out of His hand. You can't even snatch yourself out of His hand.
His grasp is secure and it is eternal. So you were saved sixty years ago. You're not that old, all right. Fifty, let's say five years ago. Somebody here just been saved a year. Listen. You have resources at your disposal that will enable you without any doubt at all to be able to sort out this complicated thing called priority. Now here's the process. First of all, you've got to confront the things that claim to be priorities in your life.
You've got to face them fairly and squarely. Confusion in the life of the Christian is deadly to that Christian's testimony and effectiveness. It's obvious that God and the things of God must come first. Now you have a lot of responsibilities. You have a lot of things that claim to be priorities. You have a family. You have a home. You have time.
You have at this point good health. Now how far does your priority to your family take you? I've said this before and I'll say it again. A man who loves his wife first and God next, is the man who will never know what it is to love his wife to the fullest extent. Love God first and then love your wife and loving God will so expand your capacity for affection that you'll love your wife far more in second place than ever you could love her in first place.
God must come first. Before your family? Yes. Before your family. and while we are thinking about it, this business of family and priorities, how far does your responsibility go? I wonder if any of you, as the time goes by and you're thinking about the moment of your translation, it may not be far away, you turn over the pages of your will, Do you intend to leave any of God's money to ungodly children? I think if you do, unless they're absolutely deprived and poverty-stricken and not able to make their way, you're going to answer to God for that.
God's money is for God's use and not to be spent on the pleasures of the world and the evils of society. Our ungodly children have no claim upon our funds. I don't know whether anybody ever said that to you, but I believe it with all my heart. What is more, I remember telling some of the folk about a lady who I used to go and visit up in Tineck, New Jersey. And she wasn't too well. She used to come to the ladies' group that I had there for years. And then eventually she got a little less able to come and a little less able to come.
And then eventually she was housebound. And so because she couldn't come to me, I used to go to her. I would leave the ladies' meeting and I would go and spend a little time with her every week. And oh, she became a very worried lady. She said, I don't walk as well as I used to walk. And I sometimes feel my heart flutter. And I'm just afraid I'm going to be sick. And my money will run out. When that woman died, she left me in her will. Four hundred dollars.
But as a result of that, I got a copy of her will. And that dear Christian lady was so sure her money would run out that although she put the Red Cross at the end of her list, the Red Cross got seventy-five thousand dollars of her money. It's amazing how the Lord looks after his own. It's amazing how the Lord cares for his own and provides for his own. I think in this matter of priorities we've got to look over our family relationships and we've got to look over the matter of our goods.
You say, I have no problem because I don't have any. Well, sometimes that's a good thing because I understand by refute I've heard that a great big headache. You know, your life is something that is intended to have at its forefront the God of heaven and the things of God. Now you've got to confront these things that are claiming your home. Tell me something. You're now fifty years of age, sixty, seventy. Eighty.
Mr. Bachmann died this week. He was ninety-two. Did you ever really think that you would be living as comfortably as you're living today? Did you? Did you ever think that you would have things as nice as they are today? Hasn't God been gracious to you? Hasn't he been kind to you? I look around my home and I look at my wife and I look at my grandchildren and my children and I say, I don't know why God has been so good to me. It really shouldn't be difficult for us to put God first, should it. But we can't just do it by mentally exceeding that God's got to be first in my life.
My life? and the things about it have got to prove that God is really first. You've got to confront them. Something else, you've got to consider them. You've got to sit down and weigh them up. The things about the family, the things about the home, the things about your time, the things about the measure of your health and your strength, and how you are or you are not. investing them. You've got to consider these things. You've got to weigh them up. And then thirdly, you've got to congeal them. You've got to bring them together to a place where they sit in the right order.
Now maybe that word set is the wrong word. To congeal is not exactly to set. It's just to stiffen up. And that's what we've got to do with our priorities. Sometimes we've got to move some of them at the bottom around a little bit because circumstances change, but never those at the top. God first and the things of God with him. Now I said that these things also call for regulation. Priorities have to be regulated. That's why sometimes little changes have to be made at the bottom of the scales. But in doing all of this, first of all, I'm going to need direction.
I can't do this by myself. Why, I can't even manage my own checkbook. How can I look at my life with everything in it and really sort these things out? Now, you have direction. In the first place, you have the Word of God. Now you're never going to get things sorted out in your life if you don't read the Word of God and read it earnestly and read it prayerfully and ask the Spirit of God through it to guide you and direct you in this matter of putting your priorities in the right order. You have the Word of God and you have the Throne of God. You can get down on your knees and if you'll spend time with God, God will reveal these things to you.
But our problem is, you know, that even though as we were singing last night, we're having the time of our lives, as the little boy said, because we are retarded, he meant retired, of course, if we think that... Well, we can just spend a little time occasionally with God. Not going to sort things out. We've got to read the Word of God. We've got to seek the throne of God. We've got to lay claim upon the power of the Spirit of God. And then as God directs us for our direction, sometimes to go to one of the children of God.
somebody who can wisely, because he's a spiritual individual, advise you and give you help. But it's there. The Word of God, the throne of God, the Spirit of God, the children of God, you don't have to be in the dark as far as your life is concerned. But there may be things that you need special help with. Then get down on your knees and get down with the book and lay hold upon the Spirit of God by faith. And then if God so guides you, seek out someone who has a concern about you, who loves you in the Lord, and see if he cannot help you.
Yes, if I'm going to sort these things out, I'm going to need direction. I'll tell you something else. I'm going to need a lot of courage. How many of you have an attic? Let me see. Just look at that. Only about seven people have an attic. The rest of you are so very, very, very fortunate. How many of you ever tried to clean out an attic? Oh, horrors. The very thought sends a shudder through you. Do you know it takes more than the courage to clean out an attic, to clean up your life, to sort out your life, to get things in the right order.
Spiritual rearrangement in the life of the believer costs. It really does. We've got to know in the muddle. which are the legitimate things, which are the illegitimate things, and the illegitimate things have got to go out, lock, stock and barrel. And then the legitimate things have got to be taken one at a time. And the questions I've got to ask myself about them are these. Do they honor God? Or do they have a detrimental effect on my testimony? is my heart set on these things if you have to say yes to that you've got to get rid of them you remember what the Lord Jesus told the rich young ruler go sell all that thou hast and give to the poor now why was that man sorrowful when he went away turned his back on the Lord Jesus because he had great possessions now that the Lord Jesus didn't tell him to go give them away because he had great possessions My God has used people with great possessions in marvelous ways.
It was because Jesus knew that man's heart was wrapped up in the things that he had. Now you may not have much, but you can still have your heart set upon these things. Aren't you glad that my time is finished? I know I've been meddling this morning what the preacher last week said he didn't want to do. I've done, but you know he did some meddling too. You know that he sent you home very thoughtful on a number of occasions. You know that you went away asking yourself some very pertinent, sometimes they seemed to you to be impertinent questions.
But do you realize that you can be coming to the meetings faithfully? You can even be reading your Bible every day regularly. You can be an apparently smiling Christian. And yet in your heart be a back-slidden one. I don't need to emphasize that. You know it's true. I know it's true. First things first. I think maybe that's the way to sum up the conference these last eight weeks. We've got to learn how to put them in that place.
Let's pray, shall we? Lord Jesus, we began by singing, Be thou exalted by seraphs and angels. Be thou exalted with harp and with song. Saints in their Anthums of rapture adored. Thine be the glory forever.