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FEBRUARY 11, 2018

REORIENT: OVERVIEW

LUKE 12:22-31
REV. MICHAEL DENSMOOR                    SERIES: REORIENT

The transcript below has been slightly edited to make it easier for reading.

Today, we're going to be starting a new series called “Reorient.” This series came about as a discussion I had with some of the people here in this church. Quite honestly, when I look out, I see a church filled with people who are just uber-talented. Opportunity, education, resources, location - you have been blessed by God to do things that so many people can't even imagine doing. 

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But as I look around and see so many people who love the Lord and can do so much, a question for the past year has just been stirring around in my mind: if this church (and other churches like us) are filled with such wonderful, godly people who want to love the Lord, filled with opportunities, why is it that our impact in this world is so little? In a city the size of one that we find ourselves in, why is it that so few people take notice of how Christians are living, acting, and talking? 

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It's a question that, for a while, has really just been in my soul. I've chewed on it, I've meditated on it, I've thought through it, and wrestled with it. One of the things that the Lord gave me, through discussions with some of you, is it comes back to an issue of are we putting our emphasis on the right things? A different way of saying it is, do we have things in the right order and priority? I want us to stop for the next few weeks from talking about other things, and talk about how do we reorient ourselves around God's plan for us so that we can be the kind of church and make the kind of difference in this place that God wants us to make? 

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It's not good enough for God for us to just come, sit, go home, and say, “Oh, I'm a Christian. I went to church.” God isn't short of people to sing to Him. He's got all the angels of heaven singing for Him. God's not short of people worshiping Him. He has all the saints who have gone before us, around the throne worshiping Him. He doesn't have an ego problem, where He needs someone to stroke it so that He feels good about it. 

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So if God doesn't need us to be doing those things, the question we have to be asking is why are we here? Why is this church needed? We need to be people with a focus and a mission that's clear. To me it starts about getting our priorities right. So let me just summarize the next seven messages I'm going to give you. Here's the summary statement: life is busy, put God first. Pretty simple, right? 

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Life is busy. Who here doesn't have a busy life? Hours in traffic, hours at work, now your phone is ringing non-stop all day and all night - it never ends. The bad part about being in a wired age 24/7, is it’s 24/7. It never ends. What's even worse is when you have work in America, 12 times zones away. So you're working all day and then you close up shop. Then the minute you're done with dinner, they're waking up in America. Then they're starting to work and ask you stuff, email, phone calls, WhatsApp, etc. And you wonder, “Does it end?” The answer is, “No, it doesn't end. It doesn't end at all. It just keeps adding.” 

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As uber-competent, uber-resourceful, uber-intelligent people, it's only going to get worse in your life. It's never going to get better. There's a very real possibility that you've got your priorities out of order. It's a real possibility that you're going through life, but you're not making the difference and the impact that God wants you to be making. 

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So I want us to pause from all of that, and I want to talk about reorienting our life around what God wants for us. For that, I want us to read together from Luke 12. In Luke 12, I find here one of the monumental verses for the Christian life. It's important that we focus on this as we focus on doing the activities, the routines in our life, so we don't just show up in the years we have on this earth, but instead we are used by God for glory. So I want us to look at Luke 12:22-31. Let me read for us: 

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And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.

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Let's pray:

Father, we ask in these next few moments that You will speak to us, that You will help us to rearrange our lives around Your priority, that You will help us to be the people of God that You have called us and placed us to be. We thank You, in Christ's name we pray, Amen. 

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We see here, that Jesus has told us in verse 31 (a very simple verse which I believe almost every Christian has heard repeatedly in their lives and is even memorized), seek His kingdom and these things will be added unto you. We see a whole series of commands from Jesus throughout the Scripture which reminds us repeatedly the importance of having the right order in our lives. Seek His kingdom and these things will be added unto you. 

 

In the Lord's Prayer, we pray, “Thy kingdom come.” We pray for His kingdom, and then, “Oh, by the way, we need food. We need our daily needs covered.” There's always been a consistent approach in the life of Jesus to focus us on having the right order to things in our lives. However, as the busyness of life calls and begins to hem us in, pulling us into different directions, we need to be reminded that having the right order to your life is of supreme importance. 

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So in the series, we're going to be looking at several words all starting with the word “re-“: reorient, repent, restore, renew, reconcile, redeem, and repurpose. We're going to be looking at a whole series of messages to talk about what does it mean to put God first in your personal life, relationships, career, church, society, and world? Reorient. The word “re-“ actually comes from the French, and it means, “to go back to the original place.” So when you see a word, “repurpose,” it talks about going back to the original purpose. “Renew,” to be made new again. 

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​Today, we just want to start by calling attention to God's plan that He's first. To reorient, to orient ourself anew, to orient ourselves once more back to the original place. God has created us to worship Him, and we need to orient our lives around our great and awesome God who is enthroned in heaven. 

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In terms of talking about reorienting, there's really two possibilities isn't there? Just as Adam and Eve fell in the Garden because they wanted to be like God, they decided to orient their universe around themselves when clearly the Bible instructs us that the important thing is we orient the world around Him. 

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Let me illustrate this by giving you a history in astronomy. I almost studied astronomy at the University of Chicago, and then I went into engineering instead. Then I gave up on that and decided to preach the Gospel. But that's a whole another story. Astronomy is something I just love and am fascinated by. Maybe we should all just study astronomy some retreat - just go out and look at the stars. You do that in Bogor and all you see is clouds, and it's terrible. 

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For 1,500 years, since Ptolemy (the Greek astronomer) made his map of the stars, the world believed that everything centered around the earth. It was a geocentric model. It was the prominent description, the prominent view of the universe for all the ancient civilizations. It was introduced in 150 AD by Ptolemy and became the map in which everyone centered their life around. 

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Just to show you how much we centered our life around this, the Earth is the center and it was orbited by the Sun, Moon, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Mercury. We saw the Earth is so primary and centered, that the names of the days of the week are all derived by the five planets that the Greeks believe orbited the Earth along with the Sun and the Moon. So we have Sun day, Moon day, Mars day, Mercury day, (it loses something when you get get away from the Greek), Jupiter, Venus was Friday, and Saturn day for Saturday. 

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Ceaselessly Seeking

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First of all, turning back to the Lord means to turn from your covenant violations through grieving earnestly. Hezekiah could turn back to God because he knew that God was gracious. I find it really interesting when people say, "I don't like to read the Old Testament because God's scary. He's always punishing people. He's always letting them have it. He's wiping them off the face of the earth, He's destroying them, and the ground opens and swallows them." Over and over again we see stories of plague and destruction, and we think the God of the Old Testament is the angry God while the God of the New Testament is the loving grandfather.

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Seeking Success

Seeking Security

Seeking Power

Seeking Pleasure

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Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation

Success vs. Significance

Limitations of Success

Success ebbs and flows with the economy

Success ends on the day you die

Success is never enough

Advantages of Significance

Significance will always outlast you

Significance carries on

Significance keeps on giving

Seeking First the Kingdom

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Foolishly Focused

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Part of living in grace or having a lifestyle of grace isn't just understanding that God is gracious so I turn back to Him, but it's then applying this grace into our lives and situations. Once we turn back to the Lord, we then need to start living by grace. Living by grace is an invitation from God to us, to take the grace that God has extended to us and now apply that to the people around us. The more I understand God's grace to me, the more it's going to impact and affect how I relate to others.

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Wrong Understanding

Wrong Pursuit

Wrong Confidence

Luke 12:22-26

And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

Wrong Worship

Living Like Unbelievers

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Carefully Careless

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Finally, God promises to heal our land. He will do that by two things. First, we need to be drawn to a reconciling God. The whole key in this passage isn't so much to turn and return, but it's return to the Lord. The whole focus is completely coming back to God. When we recognize that God is gracious and reconciling, we should be drawn to Him and away from our idols. What is it that's drawing your heart away from God today? Turn from it.

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Oswald Chambers

Our Lord points out the utter unreasonableness from His standpoint of being so anxious over the means of living. Jesus is not saying that the man who takes thought for nothing is blessed - that man is a fool. Jesus taught that a disciple has to make his relationship with God the dominating concentration of his life, and to be carefully careless about every thing else in comparison to that.

Right Understanding

Martin Luther

Every occupation has its own honor before God. Ordinary work is a divine vocation or calling. In our daily work no matter how important or mundane we serve God by serving the neighbor and we also participate in God's ongoing providence for the human race.

Right Pursuit

Right Confidence

Right Worship

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Father, we thank You for incredible invitation that You've given us to be agents of reconciliation. Our hearts are filled with joy this morning to reflect on how much You care and love us. You sought us out when we were enemies and were far from you just like some in Israel who mocked and scorned when they heard this. Father, we realize that when You send us out, so too some will mock and scorn. But we know that when the message of the grace of God is extended to them, people will respond. Father, we ask that You might use us to reflect Your grace to a hurting world. Father, if there are things in our lives this morning that we need to clean up - sin that we've been harboring, idols that have kept us from worshipping You - we come before You today and we ask that You would uproot these idols from our lives so that our worship might be pure, holy, and pleasing to You. Thank You Lord for being gracious. Help us to extend that grace to others. We pray in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.

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