Leftovers

Introduction

In the words of Jim Neighbors, surprise. Well, with Tony’s absence, we filled in with myself and Jared. There was a little bit of confusion this morning, and who was gonna preach this morning. I talked to one elder and he talked to another elder, and we just kind of got confused. But I came up here and got my stuff on the computer, and Jared walked up and said, You preaching this morning? I said, Yeah. He goes, So am I. And I looked at him, I said, Well, you’re too late. I got my stuff on the computer already. And that’s as he said this morning about traditions, that’s a tradition you can’t break. You get your stuff on the computer before the other guy, you get to go first.

But I know I do appreciate Jared giving up, you know, being willing to go ahead and do it tonight to allow me to do this morning. It’s good to see everyone here. I know we have quite a few visitors with us. It’s good that you’re here. I’m especially thankful for Ariel and Lexi coming all the way from school just to hear me preach.

But an awful one. I hope that each and every one of us who are here this morning, we are here because the Lord’s work is more important than our time. We’re here because there we go. We’re here because it’s important to us. Now, to start off, I know I’m thinking about when you know we just said it wasn’t that long ago we had Thanksgiving. And I remember growing up as a young boy, growing up, my favorite time about Thanksgiving was not Thanksgiving Day, it was the next day. Because suppertime, we always had leftovers, and to me, that was better than the original day of Thanksgiving of eating it. Who doesn’t like leftovers? I mean, we do eat leftovers, hopefully, not too many days in a row, because you know, after a while it gets old.

But anyways, we all like leftovers and we like to eat leftovers, and sometimes they’re better than the original meal. But if we talking about leftovers, turn to your in your Bibles to Malachi chapter 1 and verse 8, or you can read the PowerPoint. It says, And when you offer the blind as a sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you offer the lame and the sick, is it not evil? Offer it then to your governor. Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you favorably? says the Lord of hosts. Now, when we talk about money and material things, most of us understand that the Lord’s work requires those kind of things. And sometimes things come up where maybe the church doesn’t have enough to continue the Lord’s work.

Brethren will give up some of those things, or maybe sell some things, or reach deeper into their pockets to help that so that the Lord’s work will continue. They’ll dig deep and to get the necessary funds, just as the early disciples did in Acts chapter 4 and 34 and 35, when they sold their possessions and they all gave it to the church. So that people had people who had need had those things to help them. Like this morning, when the collection plate passed by.

If we’re not prepared, we do. We feel guilty. And we’ve been taught all our lives to adjust our living standard to the needs of the Lord work of the Lord’s work rather than the other way around. But we don’t always give as we should, obviously, and I’ll raise my hand because I’m guilty of that at times. But most of us know what the word sacrifice means, or it should mean. And we feel guilty when we ignore our conscience concerning the financial sacrifice. But I’m not here to talk about giving to the church or our finances. That’s not what I’m talking about. And that’s not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about something that’s even more precious to us than financial things.

1. Our Time Is Our Most Precious Possession

And something that’s our most precious possession. And surprisingly enough, that’s our time. That’s our time. And in today’s world, I think our time sometimes is more important than anything else in this world. Taught, going too fast. We have to understand, too, that time is something that is sacrificed to the Lord. Just as I said this morning, I’m glad to see everybody here this morning. But the question is, are you planning on being here tonight, too? You got that in your mind that my time tonight is for the Lord. What about Wednesday night? Are we planning on the midweek Bible study to be here? Planning ahead, we got that already set. Nothing’s going to interfere, right? We’re going to be here. That’s what I’m talking about. Our time is important.

It’s an important possession. Paul said, if you would turn over to 2 Corinthians chapter 12. The Apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, beginning at verse 14, he says, here for this third time, I am ready to come to you, and I will not be a burden to you. For I do not seek what is yours, but you. For children are not responsible to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. I will most gladly spend and be expended for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? I love the attitude that Paul had. He wasn’t worried and cared. He didn’t want to be paid. He didn’t want their money. I’m here because I love your souls.

I’m here for you. And I will spend my time coming to you a third time to do these things because that’s how I feel about you.

Money is very valuable to us. It’s a precious commodity. Obviously, we wouldn’t be able to live without it. And I got to thinking about this sometimes. You know that the typical American would much rather write a check to support a worthy cause and be done with it, as we say.

I did my part. And be done with it rather than to donate even a little time for a cause. Many times we see that on the news where famous people who write big checks to, like Haiti, when Haiti had that big earthquake. Lots, we heard about lots of it. I mean, they write big checks. And oh, look what I did, I write the big check. But what about your time? That’s what I’m talking about. We can write big checks, but we don’t give our time to God. God wants our time. He wants that time. He’s not interested in the biggest check or that kind of thing. But it’s a precious commodity to us. And the Lord’s body, every one person has a problem about giving his money.

2. Most Selfish and Stingy About Our Time

There are several more who have a problem about giving the thing that we are most selfish and stingy about, and that’s our time. Our time, we are more stingy about that than we are of material needs. If the Lord works conflicts with any activity, do we hardly consider giving up that activity as a sacrifice? Sometimes I think what we put more emphasis on our activities personally than we do the Lord’s work. We need to think about those things. Such a sacrifice was simply out of the question. This activity is ours. It’s mine. I can’t give that up. I’m not about to give it up. This has been planned for a long time. It’s too bad the Lord didn’t say that when he went to the cross.

Think about that. But we’re not going to part with it willingly. Our rule seems to be that anything has to give, that it should be the Lord’s work. If anything’s going to give, it’s going to be attending services. It’s going to be doing the things that God wants me to do. Do we feel the spiritual matters? Are the only optional things that we are involved with? Is that our attitude? God’s work is optional. I didn’t say that very well. Optional. God’s work is not optional, but it should be first thing. It’s sad if we think that if we come to that point that spiritual matters become optional in our lives. We may occasionally sacrifice having certain things, and sometimes we are not, we will not let the Lord stand in the way of doing something that we want to do.

Jesus wrote, not Jesus wrote, but in Matthew, Jesus said, in chapter 8 and verse 21, remember when the man he said, follow me, and the one man said, Let me first go bury my father. And then Jesus said, Let the dead bury the dead, but you follow me. Where was the emphasis that Jesus was putting? What was the emphasis he was putting on? Think about it. Here’s the man that wanted to bury his father. His father had died. Isn’t that important? It’s very important. It’s a loved one. He’s passed away. I want to go bury him. But Jesus said, -The dead will bury the dead. Follow me. Jesus put the emphasis on doing his work over burying a loved one. Excuse me. So that raises a problem, doesn’t it?

3. Giving Our Lord Our Leftovers

If that’s our attitude, then our problem is we’re giving our Lord our leftovers. If we’re not planning, and our time is so important to us, and our activities are so important to us that we fail to do the Lord’s work or take our time to do these things, then we’re giving our Lord leftovers. We do with our calendars and date books that which we’ve always said was sinful to do with our checkbooks. Give the Lord nothing but what is left over. We would think that would be sinful with our checkbooks and even our calendars. But our calendars, we fill them out, fill them out, fill them out. And we sit there and we said we fill out check after check after check and we just go, whew, what am I doing?

Right? But we do we think about that when we fill out the date books and calendars? We don’t feel as guilty, do we? As when we do the checkbooks. And that involves time. Like the Jews of old in Malachi chapter 1, verses 8. And in verse 13, what did they give? What did they bring? The lame and the sick for animal offerings. We insult the Lord by giving him nothing but the time we have no other use for. We’re giving him our seconds or leftovers. That’s what we’re doing. And it’s an insult to him. If the Lord needs us for an hour or two, that’s fine. Unless we have anything else that we could possibly be doing. It begins to look as if the Lord gets our time only when there is absolutely nothing else going on.

4. A Few Questions I'd Like to Ask

Nothing else. And I got a few questions here I’d like to ask. Not specifically everybody, but more specifically the elders here. We got Bob and Ken and Ernie’s here. Hey, Ernie’s good to see Ernie this morning. And he walked up and led the prayer this morning without a cane. That’s great news. It’s good to see. But think about this. Isn’t it hard sometimes as an elder when you set the time for services to be able to please everyone so that it’s an expedient time that it doesn’t interfere with somebody’s schedule in some way or some form? You can’t please everybody with that, can you? It’s hard to get everybody pleased with the times that we set for services. Some like five, some like, well, we should be at six.

Wednesday night, let’s do it at seven because it’s a school night. It should be 7 30. It’s one of those things. It’s just hard to please everybody. Well, how about how about how often do we hear complaints about services running over? I don’t think you have to worry about that this morning. I’m about halfway through, so we’ve got a little bit more to go. But how many times do we think we look at our watches like, oh man, it’s 11 35? Tony’s going over. It’s 11 40. Boy, Tony, you’re long-winded this morning. How many times do we hear that? Or how many times do we find ourselves looking at our watches when he’s up here giving the lesson from God’s Word? What about the constant pressure to cut gospel means shorter?

Gospel meetings even shorter and shorter. I can remember when I first became a Christian in years back, even back when we first met Stephen Terry, gospel meetings went all week long. Now they go till Wednesday. Some places might still have them go to Friday, but now they go to Wednesday. Well, why is that? To be honest with you, I think it’s because people don’t want to give up a week’s worth of time. A week? Every night of the week? That’s a lot of time. That’s a lot of activities that we have to give up. But you think about it’s important. And not only that, the elders, you know, they schedule our gospel meetings two times a year. And in spring and in fall.

And they schedule them, and it’s just Sunday through Wednesday. And being a member here and other places, and every body of the every church of Christ that I’ve seen or I’ve been in, it’s like the gospel meetings, you see people there, and you see visitors, and sometimes the crowds are large, but a lot of times we don’t see our very own brethren there every night of the gospel meeting. Maybe one night out of that out of those three days. It’s only three days now. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we don’t see them there every night. What does that tell the elders? Where is the importance? That’s got to be emotionally straining to see that. And every congregation that I have been affiliated with has that problem.

Fortunately, this congregation, like tonight, I’m pretty sure we’re gonna have about the same amount of people as we here we have here this morning. That’s one thing I’ve always been very impressed with, Decker Prairie, is that on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights, we always seem to have over a hundred people. Some nights, you know, we do have our low times, but for the most part, we’re always here. And that’s something you can be proud of, and I’m sure the Lord is very proud of that also. How about the complaints about certain things of keeping children from getting to bed early in, like gospel meetings, for example, getting our children to bed early on school nights, but yet from the very same people who make those complaints would in a second take their kids out of school for some act other activity.

But yet on a night that it’s a gospel, I mean, oh, our kids they’ve got to get to bed early. But if it’s some personal activity that is yours, that’s my activity, in a heartbeat, we would take them out of school. Oh, it’s okay, you can miss one day. You can miss one day. What about our groups? You know, our elders, they put groups together, and this is gonna hurt brethren, but I’ll be honest, you know, I’ve seen the groups, I’m group three. We have a list of people’s names, but I have never seen three quarters of those names in that group at one time. Those groups are put together so that we can write notes, letters, encourage those who are sick that can’t be with us, encourage those who are injured and are not able to get out and be with us.

Even more so, encourage those who visited with us, and even those who possibly are spiritually sick and that need spiritual encouragement. Those groups are for us. That’s why the elders put them together, so that we can take that most precious commodity that we have, time, and give it back to God. That’s what those groups are for.

One Sunday night a month that we do that. We have four groups. So you’re only one Sunday night a month to take a little time to write some notes. Plus, it’s good fellowship because you’re fellowshipping with your brethren. Considering all the evidence that we’ve talked about, can we honestly deny that we nowadays tend to be motivated by the overriding concerns, by these overriding concerns? Do we ask ourselves how can we constantly whittle away at the Lord’s work and keep it from intruding on our schedules? Do we ask questions like, how can we keep it from conflicting with anything else that we want to do? Or how can we keep the church convenient? That was brought up in this morning’s Bible class. That church is just a convenience.

Or how we just want to make it convenient. We don’t want to spend a lot of time. And sadly, I really have to say sadly, have we lost the concept of sacrifice when it comes to the Lord’s work? We need to do some real seriously thinking of any of these questions we have asked ourselves, or we have even thought of. So the real work of the Lord in all ages has intended to encroach on busy schedules. Just back, even the same thing, back during the time of Christ, they had schedules too. Look what he said to the man who wanted to bury his father.

5. Time Is Short

So they understood the time and they had schedules. Those who consider time and money and resources to be spent on self have never been more than a hindrance to heaven’s cause. We live in a busy age, and I’ll be honest, we do. We live in a busy time. There’s so many things that can take up our time, and it seems like time is especially short. And when I put that together, the first thing I got to thinking of was, he’s right, time is short. The other night I was putting together, I decided to finally, you don’t wait. If you got videos of your children and they’re still not too old, take them and put them on DVD because they do degrade. And I found that out because I’ve taken some of our eight millimeters tapes and started putting them on over on the DVD, and I was watching it, and it was when Tessa, when she was two, and Heather was eight.

And I’m thinking, I saw myself, I said, that’s not me. I got hair. But you think about that, and it’s like, where did the time go? Where did it go? Whoever would have thought that I would be referred to as Papa. I never would even have thought about that. To this day, I’m just like, Papa. Where did it go? It goes by fast, and we all have busy schedules. We have so many things these days that occupy our time. You got athletic things with the school. Athletics when in the little age when they’re growing up before high school. Girl Scouts. We got all kinds of things volleyball, softball, basketball, baseball. That occupy our time and take these things up. But are we going to allow that to encroach on our time that we need to give God?

I hope that we don’t. The time in Luke 10 and 31 through 33, Jesus refers to the parable of the good Samaritan. The first two fellows who walked by, they didn’t take the time. They even all they do was look at them. They didn’t have the time to say, hey, this fella needs help. But who did? The ones that the Jews hate most. This is the Samaritan. He had the time and he did the things that were needed. If we don’t get a fresh grip on the concept of sacrifice in the matter of our time, we’re going to lose our souls and with them everything that ever mattered. Jesus said that whosoever save his life will lose it, but whosoever lose his life for my sake will find it.

In Matthew 16 and verse 25. Can there be any doubt that withholding our schedules from the Lord, we are refusing to give up our lives for him one day at a time. One day at a time.

6. Don't You Realize What He Did for You?

And not only just in, you know, you talk about different religions and what they teach and what they do and different things that are done. It’s like I always said to myself, Well, don’t you realize what he did for you? When we take our time and we place our time above that for the Lord’s time, are we forgetting what he did for us? Think about it. Did he ever let himself get involved in anything that was so important that he could not lay it aside for any moment to serve our needs? You got your Bibles open, turn over to Philippians. Philippians chapter 2. And the lesson is almost yours. Philippians chapter 2, beginning at verse 5. The apostle Paul writes, and he says, Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus.

Who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God, a thing to be grasped. But emptied himself, taking the form of a bond servant and being made in the likeness of men, in verse 8, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death on a cross. That’s what he did for us. And we can’t give up a little bit of our time. We can’t give up maybe an activity. I’m guilty because I remember years ago my daughter was in Softball. I said, Well, softball, you know, it would be Wednesday night and she’d have a game or practice that we’d go to that. I look back at that and I said, How foolish was I.

I was foolish. Even though it was just midweek Bible study. A lot of people, you know, they think less of midweek Bible study, but it’s not any less. We’re there to study God’s word, to fellowship, to sing songs of praise unto God. And we were setting that aside for our personal activity, which is wrong. So in return, do we give him our leftovers of our time? If we do, I recall what Jesus said in Matthew 13 and verse 22, when he said about the seed that fell on thorny ground. Are we that seed? Are we on thorny ground? The thorns grew up, cares of this world, choked the life out of us. Because if we are, we need to take heed. Well, I hope this lesson has been encouraging and uplifting and informative to all of us and hope that we schedule our times to come back here again to hear another lesson from God’s word and to sing songs of praise.

Conclusion

If you’re here this morning, you’re not a child of God. You need to be. For without being a child of God, you’ll be lost forever. Why don’t you make that choice today? This morning. While we’re here, the baptistry is ready. There are men here that are willing to baptize you at this time. If you believe that believe in God and that Jesus is his son, and you get life through his name, why not do that now? If you’re here this morning, then maybe you haven’t appropriated or scheduled your time as appropriately as you know that you should have. Or maybe you have some other sin in your life that you need to make known at this time. What better time? Because the brethren are here to support you, to pray for you.

Why don’t you come forward and do that as we stand and see?