One Thing

8/04/24

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Sermon Transcript

Good morning. If you looked in the bulletin this morning, you’ll notice the topic, the title of my sermon is “One Thing.” And you may have thought to yourself, “Maybe that means he’s just going to say one thing.” I admire your optimism.

I’d like to start this morning with a question. What are your priorities? What is important to you?

Now, I know that each of us could pretty quickly come up with a list of answers to that question. But there’s a problem with coming up with a list of answers to that question. You know, if I were to list my priorities, I might find myself answering a different question: What should my priorities be? But that’s not the question. The question is, what are my priorities? Not what they should be, but what are they? Not what should be important to me, but what is important to me? You can be asking yourself the same question. And those are two different questions.

But would it surprise you to know that we can go to the same place to find the answer to both of those questions? And would it surprise you to know that the one place we can go to find the answer to both of those questions is our cell phone. Yes, my phone can answer both of those questions: what my priority should be and what they are.

If I want to know what my priority should be, I want to answer that first question, then all I need to do is take out my cell phone and tap on the Bible app right there. It’ll tell me what should be important to me. Well, what if I want to answer the second question? Not what they should be but what they are. Well, out comes a cell phone. But this time I don’t tap on the Bible app; I tap on the calendar app. My calendar will tell me what’s important to me because my calendar will tell me where I’m focusing my time and my energy.

The Bible tells me what I should think is important. My calendar tells me what I do think is important. And sometimes there’s a disconnect between those two answers. You know, someone asked me, “Is God a priority in your life?” I will very quickly say yes. Yes, sure is. But what if I never make time for God? What if when God calls me he gets a busy signal? Is God really a priority in my life? Yes, he should be. Is he?

You know, if someone asked me, “Is Bible study a priority in your life?” I would very quickly say yes. Yes. But what if I never opened my Bible? What if I know very little about it? Or worse, what if I care to know very little about it? Is it really a priority in my life? Yes, it should be. Is it?

A priority is something that is important to us. And what can we say about the things that are important to us? They are the things upon which we focus our attention. We can talk all day about what our priorities should be, but when it comes to our priorities, our focus is where the rubber meets the road. If I want to know what is important to me, then I need to determine that to which I devote my time, that to which I devote my attention, that to which I devote my energy. My priorities are the things that keep me up at night. I don’t lose any sleep over the things that aren’t important to me. I lose sleep over the things that are important to me.

So now we have a way to figure out what our priorities are, not what they should be, but what they are. And I think we know our priorities. We know what is important to us. I know mine, you know yours. And that means we’re ready for our next question: What is your top priority? What is most important to you? Well, how can we figure out the answer to that question?

The best way to determine what is most important in your life is to determine which of your priorities never takes a back seat to any other priority. You know, whenever two priorities collide, something has to give. But if you have a priority that never gives, if you have a priority that never yields to any other priority, then you’ve found your top priority. That’s it. And by that definition, you can never have more than one top priority. So what then is my top priority? What is your top priority?

You know, for many people, I would say most people in the world, their top priority is their own life. If you put a gun to their head, every other priority of theirs will very quickly fall by the wayside. But if I’m a Christian, my own life cannot be my top priority. It cannot. It cannot. Yes, it is certainly a priority. Absolutely. It cannot be my top priority if I’m a faithful child of God. The command is to be faithful unto death. And many Christians throughout history have done just that. They chose God over their own life. Revelation 2:10, “Be faithful unto death, I will give you the crown of life.”

Well, for others, their top priority is their family. But once again, that cannot be the answer for a Christian. It cannot. In fact, Jesus tells us that neither our own life nor our family, neither of those things can be our top priority. Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters. Yes. And even his own life, he cannot, cannot be my disciple.”

What does the word hate mean in that verse? We all know what that word means in that verse. It means just what we said, that those other priorities, our family, my own life, as important as they are, they cannot yield to the top priority of following Christ. They cannot. They must not. It means that if I’m forced to choose between my family and Jesus, I will choose Jesus. It means if I’m ever forced to choose between my own life and Christ, I will choose Christ. In Mark 10:20, Jesus spoke about those who have left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for his sake. That is what it means for God to be your top priority.

A Christian can have many, many different priorities, but no one, no one can ever have more than one top priority, and for a Christian, that top priority must be God. In fact, that’s the great and first commandment. Matthew 22:37, “He said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”

But how can I tell when God is my top priority? Well, as with any priority, it means that I focus on God. I devote my time, my attention, my energy, my strength to God. But I do that with all my priorities. Having God as my top priority means more than that. It includes that, but it means more than that. Having God as my top priority means my focus on God is unlike my focus on anything else. Having God as my top priority means that my focus on God is constant. It means that my focus on God is something I do all the time. It means that my focus on God is not something I can ever turn off. Why? Because if I ever turn it off to focus on something else, then that something else has edged God out and God is no longer my top priority.

But that leads us to our next question: How does someone focus on God all the time? How does that work? Does that mean I go live in a monastery, dress in a white robe, and sit on a hill and think about God 24 hours a day? Is that what I need to do to focus on God all the time? The answer is no. Doesn’t mean that. We know it doesn’t mean that. In fact, for most of us, maybe all of us, I think living that way would be a sin. Why? Because we are commanded to work, we are commanded to provide for our families. 1 Timothy 5:8, 2 Thessalonians 3:10. It’s not a sin to focus on our family, it’s a command to focus on our family. It’s not a sin to focus on our work, it’s a command to focus on our work. The sin happens when either one of those things or anything else becomes our top priority instead of God. That’s when the sin happens.

So then what does it mean to always be focused on God? Well, the more I focus on something, the more I see only that thing and not other things. Focus is how I go from seeing many things to seeing one thing. So when I focus on God, I’m seeing God and only God. But God is invisible. Colossians 1:15, how can we see something that’s invisible? Well, the Bible answers that question and the Bible says not only can we see the invisible but we can clearly see the invisible. The Bible says not only can we look at things that are unseen, we’re commanded to look at things that are unseen, and the Bible says not only is God invisible but we can see him who is invisible. Romans 1:20, “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly, clearly seen.” 2 Corinthians 4:18, “As we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are not seen or unseen.” Hebrews 11:27, “By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.”

But how does that work? How can we see the unseen? How can we see the invisible? We see the unseen when we see everything and everyone through the Word of God and in the light of our relationship with God and our faith in God. You know, many of us here today, myself included, are at this very point in time using something that provides, I think, a great illustration of how we see the unseen. We are looking at the world through eyeglasses.

Now, when I look through my glasses, what do I see? Well, assuming I’ve cleaned them in the last year or so, and I do try to clean them every year whether they need it or not, assuming I’ve cleaned them, when I look through those lenses, I don’t see the glass. Glass is invisible to me. I’m not looking at glass right now, I’m looking through glass to see other things. Glass is invisible. But that invisible glass allows me to see everything and everyone clearly. If I take these glasses off, I can’t read the top line of the eye chart. No, really. But when I put them on, I can clearly read even the smallest line. I think our focus on God is like our eyeglasses. I cannot see the invisible glass in my eyeglasses, but that invisible glass changes how I see everything else. Likewise, when I focus on God, I can suddenly see the world clearly. I can suddenly see people clearly. My constant focus on God allows me to see everything clearly.

You know, Mark 8:22, “And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. And when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ‘Do you see anything?’ And he looked up and said, ‘I see people, but they’re like trees walking.’” Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again. And he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Why did Jesus heal the man that way? Was it perhaps to make the very point that we’re considering here? That it is our focus on God and only our focus on God that allows us to see everything clearly. And so if I want to see everything clearly, what must I do? Well, in the physical world, I got to put on these eyeglasses. I’ve got to put on my eyeglasses. And in the spiritual world, same answer: I must always wear my spiritual eyeglasses. 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I’ve been known in part, then I shall know fully even as I am fully known.” 2 Peter 1:9, “For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he’s blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.”

I need to keep my spiritual eyeglasses on. Focus is not just looking, focus is seeing. It is my focusing on God that allows me to see everything clearly, so I must always focus on God. If I want to see things correctly, I must see those things as God sees them, and the only way to see something as God sees it is to look at that thing through the Word of God. We must view everything in our lives, including every other priority we have, through the Word of God. That’s what it means to focus on God all the time, and that’s the only way, the only way we can be certain that we are seeing everything clearly.

The Bible describes our focus as our mindset. Romans 8:5, “Those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” Colossians 3:2, “Set your minds on things that are above.” The Bible also describes our focus in terms of our heart. Psalm 86:11, “Unite my heart to fear thy name.” Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Did you catch it? What is it that I can do if I have a pure heart? I can see God. Being pure of heart means being focused on God, and when I focus on God, I can see Him. Being pure in heart is like having the correct eyeglass prescription. I can see. But what if I’m not pure in heart? What then? James answers that question. James 4:8, “Draw near to God, he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” When my heart is not pure, then I am double-minded. And being double-minded means I’m trying to serve two masters. It means that I have double vision.

So what am I saying? Am I saying that trying to serve two masters is somehow related to not seeing things correctly? And the answer is, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. But the reason I’m saying that is that’s what Jesus said. That’s what Jesus said, Matthew 6:22. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other. You will be devoted to one, despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

Our inability to serve two masters, our inability to do that, is related to our spiritual eyesight. That’s what Jesus just told us. Well, but what if I try to do that? What if I try to serve two masters? What if I try to keep one foot in the kingdom of Christ and keep one foot in the world? What if I tried? Will that work? The answer is no, it will not work. That would be like me trying to keep one foot on solid firm ground while keeping the other foot in a swiftly flowing river. What would I be like if I tried to do that? I would be unstable. And that is precisely the word the Bible uses to describe such people. James 1:8, “He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

If I am not focused on God, then I am unstable in all my ways. If I am unstable, then every time some priority collides with my priority of God, I just struggle over what to do. If I’m unstable, then I try to spend a lot of time with one foot in the church and one foot in the world, and I fret and worry every time I’m forced to choose between the two. Is there a better word to describe such a person than the word the Bible shows? Unstable.

But what if instead I am focused entirely on God? What if God is my top priority, a priority that never yields to any other priority, that never gives to any other priority? What is my life like then? Two words: perfect peace. Isaiah 26:3, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.” If we get that top priority right, then we will get all of our other priorities right as well, and we will have perfect peace. But if we get that top priority wrong, we will get all of our priorities wrong, and we will be unstable in all our ways.

And God must be our top priority. God will not accept second place. Exodus 20:3, “You shall have no other gods before me.” It is a sin if God is not our top priority, and there is a name for that sin: idolatry. We cannot change our top priority like we change our socks and be pleasing to God.

You know, I think the greatest danger for a Christian today, the greatest danger, is to believe that the Christian life is something that we can just switch on and off, that we can clock in and clock out when it comes to our life in Christ. We switch it on every Sunday morning, but then we switch it off when we leave this place. And we have a religious life on Sunday morning, we have a family life the rest of the weekend, we have a work life during the middle of the week, and every life we have has its own different set of priorities. That is not the way a child of God lives. We are to be living sacrifices. Romans 12:1, that’s all the time we are living. We are to do everything in the name of Christ. Colossians 3:17, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord.” That’s everything, whatever we do, whatever we say. There’s no clocking out when it comes to following Christ.

You know, I think we often see our priorities as a ladder with, you know, God is the top rung and all our other priorities kind of come down below. But you know what, that kind of makes those other priorities look separate from our priority of God. You know, God’s the top rung, and then we’ve got all these other priorities, and they’re separate from that priority. That’s not what I see in the Bible. I think a better way to see our priorities is more as an umbrella, where that top priority of God is the umbrella that covers everything in our life, all of our other priorities, everything we do, everything we say. Whatever priorities I have, they must all be held in accordance with the will of God. They must all be directed to the glory of God. They must all be under God’s umbrella.

What can we say when we do that? What can we say about God being our top priority? What do we gain when we focus on God, not just some of the time, but all of the time? Well, I think there are at least five things we can say about such a focus. And each of those five things comes from a verse in the Bible that includes the title of the sermon, “One Thing.”

First thing we can say about our focus on God comes from Luke 10:42. One thing is necessary. Our focus on God is necessary. Our focus on God is not an option. It is a requirement. It is a command. Yes, it’s easy to become anxious and troubled about many different things in this world, but we must never allow those many different things in this world to distract us from God as our top priority, that one thing, our proper focus on God. That’s what Jesus taught Martha. Luke 10:41, “But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary, one thing. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.’” That is what Jesus taught Martha. That is what Jesus is also teaching us in that same verse. One thing is needful. One thing is necessary. Mary chose the good portion. Have we?

The second thing we can say about our focus on God comes from Psalm 27:4. “One thing have I asked.” Our focus on God allows us to accomplish great things in the kingdom of Christ. Does that really surprise anybody? Are we surprised to discover that focus is the secret to success in the kingdom of God? I don’t think anybody’s surprised by that. Think for a moment about those in the world who have accomplished great things, maybe in sports or politics or science. What do they all have in common? They are single-minded. They don’t let things distract them or divert them from their goal. I think we all know what focus can accomplish in an unfocused world. We’ve seen it.

Now let’s think for a moment about the great heroes of faith in the Bible who accomplished great things for God and through the power and strength from God. How did they do it? I think the answer is the same we see in the world of sports, in the world of politics, in the world of science: they accomplished great things because they were focused, and those who accomplished the most were the most focused. If we look at examples in the Bible, we will find that it is those who were the most focused that did the most for God, those who were single-minded, single-minded. We see that with the Apostle Paul, but we also see that with King David. We just read it. Psalm 27:4, “One thing have I asked of the Lord that will I seek after: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.” One thing have I asked. David was single-minded. That was true of Paul. That was true of David. And of course, Jesus gave us the perfect example to follow. There was never a moment when God the Son was not entirely focused upon God the Father. John 6:38, “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” That constant focus on God is how we accomplish great things for God and through the power of God and from the strength that God gives us. That constant focus on God is how we, like the early church, can turn this world upside down. Acts 17:6.

Third thing we can say about our focus on God comes from Luke 18:22. One thing you still lack. Our focus on God will cause us to stand out in an unfocused world. As Christians, we know we must be different from this world. Matthew 5:13-14. Salt of the earth, light of the world. We must be different, and if we are constantly focused on God, we will be different, very different, very different. Why? Because most people in this world today, including most people in the larger religious world today, are not focused on God, certainly not as their top priority, often not as any sort of priority.

Jesus met such a person in Luke 18, we just read about it, someone who was very religious but someone who had a top priority other than God, the rich young ruler. And what did Jesus tell that rich young ruler? Luke 18:22, “When Jesus heard this, he said to him, ‘One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have, distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and come and follow me.’” That rich young ruler seemingly lacked very little. In fact, he seems to have lacked only one thing, but the one thing he lacked was the most important thing: he needed constant focus on God. That is why that rich young ruler had so much trouble with his priorities. That’s why we see him agonizing there about what to do. He was allowing those great riches to stand between him and the Son of God. And Jesus said, “One thing you still lack.” What was that one thing? It was loving God with all his heart, it was loving God with all his soul, loving God with all his mind, loving God with all of his strength. It was having God rather than his riches as his top priority. It was having his proper focus on God all the time. If we want to be different from this world around us, then we will work on our focus on God, on the things of God, the people of God, the Word of God, and we will not allow ourselves to be distracted.

The fourth thing we can say about our focus on God comes from John 9:25. One thing I know. Our focus on God is evident. If we’re always focused on God, that is not something we’ll ever be able to hide. Everyone will know it. Everyone will see it. We see an example of that with another great miracle of Christ, which again involves restoring eyesight. John chapter 9, we find a blind man who very quickly became a focused man, and how do we know that? We know that because he told us. John 9:25, “He answered, ‘Whether he’s a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I do know, though, I was blind, now I see.’” One thing I know. For this man, his focus had been reduced to one thing he could see. And what that man went through physically, everyone who has obeyed the gospel of Christ has gone through spiritually. “Had our eyes open, amazing grace, how sweet the sound, saved a wretch like me, once was lost, now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” We have experienced that same transformation. But did we also experience that same focus? Like that blind man, can we say, “One thing I know: I was blind, now I see?” Is that the one thing I know? If it is, then as with this blind man in John 9, my focus on God will be evident to everyone I meet. I’ll tell them all, “I used to be blind. Now, now, I see.”

The fifth thing we can say about our focus on God comes from our scripture reading this morning, Philippians 3:13. One thing I do. Our focus on God is a journey toward a goal. Our focus on God is not a starting point. Our focus on God is not a destination. Our focus on God is a journey. Our focus on God is a way. Our focus on God is a direction. Our focus on God moves us toward a goal. That’s what Paul told us. Philippians 3:13, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do: Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” One thing I do. I press on toward the goal, Paul said. Yes, we must be focused, but we must be focused on God. We must be. And we must be focused on our goal of pleasing God and living eternally with God and obeying the great commission of Christ.

Focus alone is not enough. History shows us that some of the most focused people in the world have also been some of the most evil people in the world. Focus must be on God. We are not improving our focus as some sort of self-help program. We are improving our focus to be pleasing to Almighty God. 2 Corinthians 5:9, “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim,” our focus, “we make it our aim to please Him.”

So let’s end where we started, with a question: What are your priorities? That may not be a question that we are always asking, but we can be certain it is a question that we are always answering. If we have a problem with priorities, the solution to that problem is for God to be our top priority because when we do that, all those other priorities will immediately fall into their proper place, and our instability will be replaced with perfect peace. Paul told us in Romans 8:6, “To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” We must all have God as our top priority. Not only will that transform each of us, but it will transform our congregation, it will transform our community, it will transform this world. That’s how the first century church turned their world upside down. But if we are unfocused and unstable, then we will be ineffective in whatever we try to do.

If you’re outside of Christ today, either because you have never obeyed the gospel or perhaps because you fell away from Christ, fell back into this world, then you are not focused on God. But you can change all of that. You can change all of that. And the first step to making God your top priority is to obey Him and to trust Him. And God bids you to repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins, Acts 2:38. You must obey the gospel of Christ. And having done that, you must be faithful unto death. That is what it means for God to be your top priority. That is what it means to have nothing before God, not even your own life. Faithful unto death. When Christ calls someone, He bids him to come and die. And you will die to this world in the watery grave of baptism if you obey the gospel of Christ. But you won’t stay dead. Instead, you will come up out of that watery grave a new creature. Knowing this one thing: I was blind, but now, now, I see. We can help in any way this morning. Please come while we stand, while we sing.