Do I Matter?

Introduction

Good morning. And welcome to everybody, especially if you’re visiting. I want you to know right up front, I’m not the normal preacher. Don’t want you to judge the book of this group by the short synopsis on the back cover. But it’s good to see you all. Keep the Moody family in your prayers. I know from firsthand experience being in the hospital, especially watching your child go through difficulty is something incredibly difficult. So prayers to them and to their patience and success in getting through these treatments. You know, we live in a somewhat polarizing society, at least I think we do. On the one hand, as individuals, we might have that doubtful voice inside our head that wonders whether we make a difference, whether we have any positive impact on the people around us, whether we make any impact to those around us.

And at the same time, there are things like social media that seem to almost tell us that every thought we have is so important that we should share all of it with the anonymous masses. If we dig a little bit deeper than surface level, maybe we wonder if the effort we put in at work really matters. I know I’ve felt that way. You put in the extra time, you put in the extra effort, you make sacrifices for your employer, for your boss, for your performance, and then at the end of the day, maybe you’re left wondering because of a bad performance review or a lack of a bonus that you were hoping or expecting. Does what I do really matter?

Or maybe it’s the work you put into raising your kids. The days where it feels like you’ve told them X, Y, Z a million times, and they still won’t listen. Thankfully, I don’t have that problem with Abigail. She listens, she’s great. You may wonder about your kids, will they ever get it? Will it ever sink in? I can tell you, if my parents were here, they would say that about me. Does what I do as a parent even matter? Getting the shovel and digging deeper still, these thoughts can haunt us on a spiritual level. Those family and relationship issues that you’ve been praying for, the money problems that you’ve been bringing to God every single day for months, the health issues that you or someone you love are suffering through, that you’ve been nonstop begging God to fix, and he hasn’t.

1. You Matter Because God Created You

Do my prayers matter? Do I matter? For the remainder of this lesson this morning, I want to give you three reasons to help you remember that you do matter. Whatever it is you’re dealing with, whatever it is you’re struggling it with, whatever you’re going through, you matter. These are very simple points. I love simple lessons because maybe I’m simple-minded. But these are simple things that you’ve heard before, and hopefully they will serve as a powerful reminder. At first, I would say that you matter because God created you. The beginning seems like a very obvious place to start, but I think we can easily forget this very true fact when we’re going through times of trouble or difficulty. The fact that not only do we exist, but we were specifically created by God for his purposes.

And I think it’s important that we start with this point because this idea of being created by God is foundational to everything else that we believe, everything else that we are, everything else that we’ll go through in the remainder of this lesson. If there was no creator, if there was no thought put into our existence, could we really ever say that we have any value or that we matter? If we just randomly exist.

To do was cover one thing. The only one we’d really need is a true understanding of the fact that God made us individually. Of course, if we’re talking about the beginning, we have to start in the beginning in Genesis chapter 1, beginning in verse 26. Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. From the very beginning of time, God made mankind special. Unique compared to everything else that he created.

Think of the heavenly bodies, the moon and the stars and the sun, all of these incredible things, and yet you are different. You are special.

That I individually have some sort of value. And I would guide you to the 139th Psalm. Psalm 139, beginning in verse 13, David writes, for you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance.

But Abigail and I have the same genetic disorder. Obviously she has it much worse than I do. If you were to ask me what it is I deal with and what my issues are physically, I tend to kind of joke about it and describe it as most day most days I feel like I’m held together by scotch tape and Elmer’s glue.

And I remember reading this verse as a kid and thinking, I don’t feel fearfully and wonderfully made. And maybe when you think about your life, whether it’s physical issues or emotional issues or relationship issues or financial issues, maybe you think, well, I don’t feel fearfully and wonderfully made. And I think to some extent, we’re facing a societal epidemic of this same underlying problem. A seemingly growing number of people around us don’t know who they are. They’re confused about their identity, they’re unsure of how they feel and who they feel like they are. In some cases, going so far as to make permanent life-altering choices in an effort to resolve those feelings and to figure out where they belong, where they fit in. But God did not create us with mistakes.

Do the verses we just read in Psalm 139 sound like we were made by accident? David says, You formed my inward parts. You knitted me together. He uses the phrase intricately woven. Does this sound like a mistake? Does this sound accidental? And in case you think the idea here is that God simply made you and set you on a path and left you to your own devices, David uses the phrase, the days that were formed for me. And he says that they were already known by God, even when your physical existence was still unknown. You have value. You are worth something. You matter if for no other reason, because God created you.

2. You Matter Because God Loves You

So we must press on. If being created by God, if being intricately woven was not enough to help you realize that you have value, you also need to know that you matter because God loves you. When I think about God’s love, maybe your mind goes to the same place mine goes to first. The old standby of John 3 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

But it was not economical. They didn’t get as good a gas mileage. They were more expensive. And so I ended up with a car. And I drove cars for several years, and there’s nothing wrong with a car, but I wanted a truck.

In 2019, the car that I had, we’ll just say it met an untimely end. And with Abigail on the way at that point, it seemed like the perfect excuse to finally get a truck. I mean, we were gonna have one whole kid. Surely a truck was justified. I didn’t care what it took, I was gonna get my truck. And I ended up with a Ford F-150, and some of the men in the room are saying, alright, a Ford F 150, and other people are saying, ugh, that’s okay. And let me tell you, that thing was fancy, and it was loaded. And by fancy, I mean it was silver. And by loaded, I mean literally the only options it had were power windows and power windows. Power windows and mirrors.

But I didn’t care. I finally owned a truck. I finally had what I always wanted, and I loved it. Then a couple years after having the truck, Abigail finally got out of the hospital, and I quickly, I guess, had to be an adult and admit to myself that between her and all of her medical equipment, a truck just wasn’t gonna work. So I sold the truck and bought a big white van. Not as big as Jacob and Stephanie’s, but big and white nonetheless. And as she progressed, as she grew, as she got stronger, we got rid of some of the medical equipment. And one day, it hit me. I could get a truck again. And so we traded in the big white van on a truck.

And it’s newer, it’s it’s not new, but it’s newer, and it has a few more options beside power locks and power windows. And it’s sitting right out there. And every time I get in that truck, I think to myself, man, I love this truck. I can’t wait to get in it after church and drive away and drive it home because I love that truck. Now I don’t really mean that I love it. Hopefully, you’re seeing a bit of irony between God so loved the world and me loving a truck. Hopefully, it’s starting to click. How many of you like your vehicles?

Do you like them enough to die for them?

What about your house? A couple weeks ago, a storm blew through, and the rain and the thunder woke me up, and I always tend to wake up with those kind of loud noises because if we have a power failure, I gotta go and get the backup batteries out and get everything all switched over for Abigail and make sure that she’s all taken care of. And the power didn’t go out, but I found myself sitting on the bed in our front bedroom, looking out the window. And as the deluge of rain came down and the wind was blowing the trees practically horizontal, and the lightning was striking, I realized that I was sitting there safe, dry, and comfortable. Our houses provide a place to live. They provide safety and security.

They provide comfort, and maybe you might consider your home or part of your home your happy place. And at some point, if you’ve lived there long enough, your house kind of turns into a home, and you start to consider your house more a part of who you are. Who here would die for their house? It would be absurd to die for a truck. It would be crazy to die for a house. And just as crazy as it is to think that we would die for some physical created thing, that is exactly the plan that God put in place that he would sacrifice his son to die for some physical created thing.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, the praise of his glorious grace with which he has loved, with which he has blessed us and the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. God said, I’m going to create this worthless thing. And before I create this worthless thing, I am going to have a plan to save that worthless thing. And my plan to save that worthless thing is to send my son to be tortured and die for it.

John says, by this we know love. We know what love is. We can understand love, that he, that is Jesus, laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Maybe on social media or back in the day in the newspaper, on Craigslist. The first step that you have to take when you’re going to sell something is to decide on a price. And if you ask around enough, eventually someone is going to tell you this. Well, I know how much it’s worth. It’s worth whatever somebody’s willing to pay for it. How much are you worth when you consider what God was willing to pay for you? And if God loves you enough that he chose his son to suffer and die in your place for your sins. And he made that plan before you even existed. You matter.

These worthless human created things who, let’s be real, I am not worth saving. I have not done anything good enough in my life to warrant God to save me. Yet he offers that to us.

Because you matter.

3. You Matter Because God Wants You

And I think it’s fair to say that everybody in this room at some point or another has wanted something. And of all those some things, I’d guess many of them, most of them are inanimate, lifeless things. A vehicle, a house, a new job, a raise. Those of you who have little kids, some peace and quiet? We have goals and hopes and dreams. I deal with this a lot of work. My nine to five job is in the world of retirement planning. And all day, every day I hear conversations about people’s hopes and dreams and how they’d like to spend life in retirement, and how do they get to that point where they can stop working and still afford the kind of life that they want to live?

Maybe it’s owning a vacation home. Maybe it’s finally having the freedom and the means to travel. Some folks simply want to be able to pay the bills and not have to work anymore. Yet all of these things, these wants, desires, goals, hopes, and dreams, we want them because they provide something of value to us. And one way or another, they make our life better. They make our life more easy. They like our make our life more comfortable. They make us happy. They all serve to provide some sort of benefit or advancement to our lives, but what does God get from us? What value do we add to him? What does he have with us that he doesn’t already have without us?

And yet, in some other ways, maybe this is the least relatable point. Because, sure, you could argue that God gets a relationship with us and he gets love from us, but really, I mean, when you stop and think about it, what does God have with you that he doesn’t already have without you? What do you bring to the table? To the creator of the universe, to the one who has breathed life into you. What do you add to that relationship? And I think it’s important that we understand where we fall in our relationship with God. We don’t want to become too big for our britches, as some might say.

I am not that important. If I cease to exist today, God would continue to be who he is and what he is, regardless.

Yet he wants me. If you look at your Old Testament in Isaiah chapter 64, reading just verse 6, the prophet said, We have all become like one who is unclean. All our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all like a lymph. Our iniquities like the wind take us away. And the New Testament in Luke chapter 17 and verse 10, and Jesus talking with his disciples about the idea of servanthood, he says, So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded to do, say, we are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty. Hopping back to the Old Testament. And a passage that was referenced in our recent gospel meeting, Psalm 8. Beginning in verse 3, David says, When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you’ve set in place, what is man that you’re mindful of him, and the Son of Man that you care for him.

David says, God, I don’t understand why you even acknowledge my existence. Think about eight billion people.

Some weeks. Between the meetings and the projects and all the compliance work. Eight billion people. And one of my struggles in my role at work is to make sure that the people on my team feel like they matter. That requires time. That requires thought. That requires effort and energy to make sure that they understand that they make a difference, that they matter. Eight billion people. And yet God wants you. We are filthy garments. We are unworthy servants. We don’t even deserve for God to give us the time of day. Yet He wants us. In your New Testaments, 2 Peter chapter 3, beginning in verse 8, Peter says, but do not overlook this fact, beloved. That with the Lord, one day is this a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day.

Not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. God doesn’t want some people.

He wants everyone.

Timothy says the same thing in 1 Timothy chapter 2, beginning in verse 3, he says, This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. He wants all people, he wants everyone. That means he wants you. No matter how little value we bring to the table, no matter how little impact we have in the grand scheme of 8 billion other people, no matter how fragile our existence, he still wants us. We could go on about the differences that perhaps we do make. My intention is not to say that we bring nothing to the table, but that in relation to God, it might as well be nothing comparatively.

We could talk about the differences we do make and the impact we do have in this life, especially with respect to things like the impact that we have on each other, or the souls that we help bring to salvation. But there are times in life where we can feel empty, isolated, abandoned, ignored. So many pressures in life and things that we want to go a certain way, and they don’t. We pray and we pray and we beg and we plead for things that seem like obvious things that God would want to do for us or to give to us. I know I’ve had the thought in my life and times past that God, if you would just let this thing happen, there’s no downside. Why? Because I’ve analyzed it.

And yet sometimes we can find ourselves sitting, waiting, and questioning whether we matter. Because whatever it is in life is not going our way.

Conclusion

When you find yourself surrounded by these thoughts, you feel backed into a corner, you feel trapped. Asking whether you matter, whether your existence makes any difference to God. Remember these three things. God created you, He loves you, and He wants you this morning, and you understand who you are in relation to God, but you have not bent to His will. You have not followed the steps outlined in the New Testament to have a relationship with Him. What are you waiting for? God has given everything for you. He has already paid the price. You simply have to accept His forgiveness and repent and be baptized. If you understand what you need to do and you’re ready to do it, why wait? If you are a part of God’s family and you have been letting this idea of having value impact you in a negative way, and you’ve allowed Satan to rule your thoughts with these questions, maybe we can help.

If there’s something we can do for you, please come to the front as we stand and as we sing.