The Main Thing

Thank you, Kayla. We do know the answer to that question why, don't we? Even Jesus Himself, as He cried out from the cross, why? My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? We know that deep in His heart He knew the answer to that. He knew that it was little children and adults that needed His forgiving grace on the cross. That was the reason why He died. Thanks for reminding us of that, Kayla. It was business and management expert and author Stephen Covey who first came up with the saying, or at least attributed with coining the phrase, the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. Now that is a lot of wisdom in that. And not only is there a lot of wisdom in that saying, it's a wonderful principle for how to deal with stress. The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. Now what Stephen Covey was talking about was how to focus on priorities in business and management, leadership. What I want to talk about is how to do the same thing in life, particularly in the Christian life. You see, when life seems to be pulling you apart and your energies are going in many different directions and your focus is getting unclear and the stress is just piling on. When all of that is happening in your life, you and I must get back to watch really important, the main thing. In other words, what our priorities are. Now we're going to talk today about the third key, third principle for overcoming stress, for coping with stress in our lives. We looked at the first one a couple of weeks ago and the first principle for overcoming stress is to understand we need God's enablement rather than operating in our own strength. The second principle that we've already looked at is love, the principle of love in relationships. Love God, love others. That sums up what we're to do in life. We keep that in focus. It'll answer a lot of other things. Today I want to talk about the third principle for coping with stress and that is priorities. And Christ, as always, is our perfect example. In fact, the Bible tells us that he is our pattern for living. First John chapter 2 and verse 6 says, whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus walked. If we claim to be his follower, we're not doing a very good job following if we're not walking like he walked. And so the key to living the Christian life is to understand how Jesus lived and by his grace and strength and power live in that same way. So he is our model for life, for Christian living. We're going to see today in the life of Jesus the example of what it means to keep the main thing, the main thing. Because Jesus did a wonderful job in his life of keeping priorities in order. I want us to look through the gospels today. We don't have one text that we're going to focus on, but I want us to look through some of the gospel accounts and just pick out some things about how Jesus kept the main thing, the main thing, how he organized and ordered his priorities. If you are familiar with the gospels or if you even take kind of a surface reading through the gospels, one of the things that will be impressed upon you is that Jesus had as a priority for his coming to earth doing the will of God. Priority number one for Jesus Christ was doing the will of God. Now we're going to see that in a moment, but I want to clarify first of all that I understand the whole concept of the will of God sometimes gets a little fuzzy and it's a little difficult to understand. I mean, we have a lot of questions about God's will and what it is and what it means for me personally, what it means for you personally. There are lots of questions about God's will. One Sunday school teacher of young boys was teaching on the will of God. He was trying to clarify how important the will of God is, what it means to keep the will of God and seek the will of God and do the will of God. And one little guy at the back of the room was confused. He had to look on his face like I'm clueless. So he raised his hand and the teacher called on him and the little boy said, I just don't understand if God is going to live forever, why does he have to have a will? I understand the whole concept of the will of God can get confusing and we wonder what is the will of God for me. Well, I'm not as concerned today for the purposes of this message about what God's specific will is for your life. In fact, I'm not sure that that's as important to figure out as it is to figure out what does God expect of me as a Christian, as a child of his, as a follower of his. What is his will in general for me? If you can nail that one down, then the other things will take care of themselves. God will open the right doors, close the right doors, lead you step by step in the right direction. His specific will for you will become clear if you have down his will, his overall will for your life. And that's what we're going to see about Jesus and then about our commitment as well. First of all, I want to show you Jesus' commitment to God's purpose. In fact, I'm going to use the word purpose because sometimes the word will of God is so confusing. Really, what we're talking about here is what is God's purpose? What was God's purpose for Jesus' Christ coming to this earth and what is God's purpose for us? That's his will. Well, Jesus had a priority commitment to the purpose of God for him. It's kind of stated in a mission statement that the writer of Hebrews summarizes in Hebrews chapter 10 where this is said of Jesus. Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me. With burn offerings and sin offerings, you were not pleased. Now, here it is. Then I said, here I am. It is written about me and the scroll. I have come to do your will, oh God. That's the purpose statement of Jesus. I've come to do your will. Now, what I want you to do for a few moments is look through the gospel of John with me. Would you just open your Bible to John chapter 4? Now, we're just going to kind of flip through some pages here. I just want to give you a feel for how often this comes up in the life and ministry of Jesus. I mean, it's almost on every page that he has come to do the Father's will. That was clear in his focus. He never lost sight of that. John 4, verse 34. This is when the disciples are coming back with food from the village and Jesus has been talking to the woman at the well and he says in verse 34, my food said Jesus is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. I mean, that's clear. Crystal clear in Jesus' mind. This is my food. This is more important to me than what I eat is to do the will of God, the will of him that sent me. Look over at chapter 5 and verse 30. By myself, I can do nothing. I judge only as I hear and my judgment is just for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. Now, chapter 6, verse 37, or verse 38. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me that I shall lose none of all that he has given me but raise them up at the last day. Now, chapter 8, verse 29. The one who sent me is with me, 829. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone for I always do what pleases him. Chapter 9, verse 4. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming when no one can work. Chapter 10, verse 36. What about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said I am God's Son? Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. Chapter 12, verse 49. 12, 49. For I did not speak of my own accord but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say. Chapter 14, verse 31. But the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me. Chapter 15, verse 10. If you obey my commands you will remain in my love just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. Chapter 17, verse 4. 17 4 says, I have brought you glory on earth. This is Jesus praying to the Father. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. Are you getting the feel that this is important to Jesus? I mean almost every time he speaks he's saying I came to do the Father's will. I came to do what pleases him. I'm speaking only what he tells me to do. His whole life revolved around that. His whole life was centered around doing the will of God. In fact when Jesus comes to his very last night on planet earth before he's going to give his life as we heard in that song on the cross that night before he died he said this in the Garden of Gethsemane as he prayed. It's on the screen, Matthew 26, going a little farther. He fell with his face to the ground and prayed, my Father, if it is possible may this cut be taken from me yet not as I will but as you will. So even at the very last his passion was to do the will of God no matter what it would cost him. So what does he say as he's hanging on that cross? In verse 1119 in verse 30 he says when he had received the drink Jesus said it was a drink that would enable his parts throat to speak clearly with a loud voice. He said it is finished with that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. What was he saying? The work you sent me to do your will is finished. I did it. I finished the work. It's done when he died on the cross for our sins. That was the work that God the Father sent him to do. His whole life revolved around doing the will of God. And it was only finished when he died there on the cross. Yes, Jesus commitment was to God's purpose, God's will for his life. And I'm convinced that our commitment to God's purpose needs to be just as strong. We too need to be committed to God's purposes just like Jesus was. By the way, the Bible identifies for us clearly what God's will is for us, what God's purpose is for us. If you've been around the chapel very long you know this already because we talk a lot about it as it has to do with the church, what our purposes are. But the same thing is true for our individual Christian lives. God has identified clearly in his word five purposes for us. This is our priority. This is what we should be about. Be what our lives revolve around. First of all in Matthew chapter 22 when Jesus was asked what's the greatest commandment? He said love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. Now Jesus is obviously referring to the Old Testament because that's the only Bible that was there up till that time. But later on Paul in Romans 13 says the very same thing about the New Testament time. That all of the commandments, all that God expects can be summarized in love God and love others. Those are two very, very important principles as we saw last week. And then in Matthew 28 Jesus gives us three other things that are at the very core of how we're to live. He says to his disciples right before he leaves. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And you promise us to be with us to the end of the age. In those two passages Jesus lays out for us the five purposes that our lives are to revolve around. The first one is worship. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Now worship is not just what we do on Sunday morning or Sunday night or Wednesday night when we gather together in a church service. That's just one small slice of the pie. That really means to live a lifelong surrender day by day 24, seven lifelong surrender to Jesus Christ. That's worship. Worship is a lifestyle, not just an action of singing on Sunday morning. That's just a small piece of how we express our adoration to our God. But real worship biblically is a lifestyle of surrender to Jesus Christ. Our lives are to be about worship. Our lives are to be about ministry. Love your neighbor is yourself. And the Bible tells us very plainly how we do that. John in 1 John chapter 3 says, how can you say you love God when you see your neighbor in need and don't reach out to him and try to love him, meet his needs? So you know what real ministry is? Ministry is taking the love of God, translating it into action and reaching out to meet people's needs. That's ministry. And there are all kinds of different ministries that we have here at the chapel and some of you are involved in personal ministries beyond the church that are involved in helping people's needs be met. Our lives are to be around that, about that. The third thing is evangelism. Go disciple all nations. In other words, take the gospel to them so that they may have the opportunity to receive Jesus Christ. Our lives are to be centered around evangelism. Everywhere we are, whatever we're doing, looking for opportunities to share the gospel with other people or to be salt and light kinds of testimony or witness to other people's lives. That's what we are to be about, evangelism. And then we're to be about fourth fellowship. Jesus said baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baptism is not only a public testimony of your faith in Christ. Baptism is also a public way of identifying with the local church of saying, I'm a part of a body that's bigger than just me. I'm a part of a group. And so it's kind of a sign, if you will, of what it means to share your life and community with other believers, to be a part of a fellowship of believers, to be a part of a church. Our lives are to be about that. And then our lives are to be about discipleship. Jesus said teaching them to observe whatever I've commanded you. We're to be involved in disseminating the word, teaching the word of God so that we can become more like Christ as our lives are transformed by the word of God. Now this doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go into full-time ministry to fulfill these five purposes. What it does mean is that everything we do, whether it's at home or at work or in our neighborhood or when we're out in the community, whatever we're doing, we should focus our lives on the opportunity to live a lifestyle of surrender to God, reaching out to meet other people's needs, seeking to spread the gospel as much as we can, identifying with and fellowshiping and sharing our lives with the community of believers, and passing along the truth to somebody else so that we can disciple them and nurture them in the faith. That's what our lives are about. That's our purpose on this earth. There's some kind of commercial. I just remember a little bit of it. I don't remember all of it, but it's a sports commercial. Of course, you know the only thing good on television is sports. That's all I ever see. There's a sports commercial that shows some professional athletes just really committing themselves to their thing. Then the end of it says, I live for this. I live for this. Well, I think every Christian ought to grasp these five purposes and say, I live for this. This is what life is about. This is my purpose for being here. I live for this. I live for worship. I live for ministry and evangelism and fellowship and discipleship. That's what my life is about. It doesn't mean you're in full-time ministry. It means whatever you're doing, your life is focused on those five things. That's the main thing. The main thing is not making money in a job. The main thing is to use that opportunity of employment to glorify Christ, to worship Him with your life, to train and disciple someone else, to be a salt and light witness to someone else. If you make a million bucks a year in your job and never influence anyone for Christ, you're a failure because you've not lived out your purpose on this earth. So living to do the will of God, I live for this. That's the attitude that we believe is all I have. Doing the will of God is priority number one. But there was another equal priority in the life of Jesus. That was impacting the lives of others. Now I will readily admit, and by the way, I want to say this was a priority for Jesus. It's clearly a priority for Jesus to impact the lives of other people. When you think in big terms of what was the priority of His coming to earth, we've already talked about that. It was to do the will of the Father, which really was to die on the cross. But when you talk about the priority of His earthly ministry, you know what it was? The train twelve men. That was His purpose. That was His priority. Now He ministered to great crowds. He healed people. He even raised some people from the dead. But you cannot read the Gospels without coming to the conclusion that Jesus' main focus in those three, three and a half years was to train twelve guys to take His place when He left. It was discipleship. That was a priority for Jesus. In John chapter 17, it's a tremendous passage. John 17, if you still have your Bible open in John, open it to chapter 17 there, Jesus in His prayer, this is really the Lord's prayer, in John 17, where Jesus is praying to the Father just before He's going to Garden of Gethsemane into the cross. And He's pouring out His heart to the Father and He's saying, Lord, I've glorified you. I've finished the work you gave me to do. And He kind of outlines for us what He has done with these twelve men. I don't know of any better outline for discipleship, for impacting the lives of other people than what's here in John 17. There are four things that Jesus tells the Father. I did with these twelve men. Four things. The first thing was example. Look at verse six. He says, I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. In other words, they looked at me, they saw you. Now none of us will ever be able to do that as well as Jesus did it because Jesus was perfect. But we ought to be able to have someone looking at us and saying there's some things I can learn from that person's life. Example is an important part of passing along the truth to the next generation. You see, they must see the truth. Are we showing how to live of life for Christ by the way we live? So example is an important part of discipleship. The second key ingredient, by the way these are four key ingredients. The second key ingredient is edification. Look at verse eight. For I gave them the words that you gave me and they accepted them. Looked in at verse 14, I have given them your word and the world has hated them. For they are not of the world any more than I have of the world. And then in verse 17, he says, sanctify them by your truth, your word is true. So the second important part of discipleship, of impacting the lives of other people is edification, which means to build up in the word of God. It means that there must be some teaching of the truth of the word. Jesus said, I gave them your words. I taught them what you said. And that's an important part of discipleship. The third key ingredient of discipleship is encouragement. People need to be encouraged, not blaster or discouraged, encouraged in their faith. Look at how Jesus did it. First of all in verse nine, I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you've given me, for they are yours. And then in verse 12, another way he encouraged them. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by the name you gave me. One has been lost except the one doomed the destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. You see, Jesus encouraged those men that God had given him to plan and prepare for the church. These guys would be the ones who start the church. Jesus is preparing them for three years. And one of the ways he does that is he prays for them and he protects them and keeps them safe. He's nourishing them. He's encouraging them. Now none of us will be able to protect and keep others safe the way Jesus did. But when we're impacting the lives of other people, part of discipleship is that we do everything we can to pray for and keep encouraging those people that we're teaching or modeling the Christian life for so that they don't become casualties, spiritual casualties along the road of life. That's an important part of discipleship is encouragement. Build them up and encourage them. Keep them going. Don't give up. Stick in there. Keep going. And then the fourth key ingredient in discipleship is extension, verse 18. There came a point where Jesus said, I've done what I'm going to do. It's time for you to go out and do it now. Verse 18. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. Okay, three year training program and now it's time for these guys to go out and do it. That's an important part of any kind of discipleship is preparing these people to do the same thing that you've modeled for them and taught them to do. At Paul knew that. Paul said in 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 2, to Timothy, the guy he had been teaching. He said to him, and the things you've heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, in trust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. Paul said, now Timothy, get this. You've heard me teach these things. You've seen me model what it means to live the Christian life. Now you get some people and do the same thing. Make sure they're trustworthy, reliable people so that they will be built up and encouraged and edified and taught and then they can turn around and do it for someone else. You're eventually going to extend your own ministry through them, Timothy. Now that's what discipleship is all about. Send other people to teach and model the Christian life for other people so that then they can do it for other people and other people. You see how the whole thing multiplies that way? We really need to become more intentional about this at Johnson Chapel. We really do. Now over the years, over over 50 years we have done a fairly decent job of gathering large groups of people together like this and teaching the word and worshiping God. We really need a greater focus on this very thing that Jesus modeled and Paul modeled and that is somebody who's been trained taking a few other people and training them so that they can then be trained to train others and train others and train others. Some churches call it small groups, some just call it discipleship, but we've got to get better at that. It's my vision. My vision for the future of this church is not just to do large group things like this because if this is all we do, we're not well balanced. We've got to also do some small group things where we're getting people into the meat of the word and asking each other questions and challenging each other and encouraging each other, praying for each other, doing the one and others of the New Testament and so that we're preparing other people to go out and do the same thing. It's my vision and burden that someday we'll be doing that. I mean, we're not done yet, folks. We've got a lot of work to do still to make us the kind of church that Jesus is pleased with. I'm thinking pleased with a lot of things that are happening, but there's still a lot more we could do. And my passion and vision is for small groups ministry to be taking place so that discipleship is like a fever spreading through the whole church. Obviously, anything like that has to be well structured and well supervised in under pastoral care so that it doesn't run off on its own, but that can happen. We can do that. We have got to become more intentional about the small stuff, not just the big stuff, so that we're actually doing what Jesus did with His 12 men and what Paul told Timothy to do with the paparazzi, the paparazzi and the other guys that were learning under Paul. But I want to go a little further than that. This discipleship thing, this impacting the lives of others is not just something that happens structured in a church. This is an everyday priority for all of us. You are discipling somebody else. You may not know it, but you are. There's somebody in this world that looks up to you. And they're looking up to you to be a model. It may be a younger brother or a younger sister. It may be for some of you moms in here who have preschool children. It's those little children and your discipleship group is those little children that you're pouring your life into and you're modeling life for and you're teaching and training at your discipleship group. For every mom and dad, it's our children. It may be for you a coworker, someone who's training under you or someone that works with you and your purpose as far as the company is concerned is to train them to do the job well and you should be doing that. But you also in your heart of hearts ought to be seeking to model for them how a Christian does his job. What Jesus would look like if he were there on that workplace. So you're discipling. You're training, you're teaching, you're encouraging, you're modeling for that person. You see discipleship happens every day of our lives if we just look for the opportunities to do it. The sad thing is sometimes we miss those opportunities and we don't use them. Some of us are so, so tied up with our own little kingdoms and our own little worlds that we miss the opportunities to impact the people around us that should be an everyday priority for us. Impacting the lives of others was a passionate heartbeat of Jesus Christ. And if we're going to have the kind of priority system he did, it's got to become a priority of ours as well. Impacting the lives of others quickly, we must go on. A third priority in the life of Jesus was pursuing a balanced life. Luke chapter 2 and verse 52 has a wonderful statement about the early life of Jesus and the balance that he had. Just flip over there real quick. It's just one verse, Luke chapter 2 and verse 52. Now I believe this describes how Jesus grew as a child into adulthood, but I think he kept the same balance all the way through his adult years. Luke 252 and Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. Right there is a balanced lifestyle for every believer to pursue. I'm talking about balance here because it's so easy for us to get off in one area of our lives and focus all of our time and energy and attention on that and other things getting neglected. One of the worst imbalanced lifestyles I ever heard about was a guy by the name of Dan Gorski. Dan Gorski has been recruited by McDonald's to be their star witness in a trial that's been a suit that's been brought against McDonald's. The suit against McDonald's accuses them of making food that makes people fat. If you eat all McDonald's food you get fat. That's the suit. And so Dan Gorski has been recruited to be a star witness on behalf of McDonald's. You know why? He holds the Guinness Book of World Records for eating the most big Macs. He's eaten 19,000 of them in his life. His whole diet. Now this is true story. I was just if I would tell you anything wrong anyway but this is true. I'm not supposed to do that, I'm a sermon on them out. You remember that? Okay. Every day he eats two big Macs and drinks Coke. It's all he ever drinks is Coke and all he ever eats is two big Macs. He tried a slice of pizza one time and said it's just not the same. The guy eats big Macs all the time. Now if I think there's something weird about that guy really. The first weird thing is that he has no taste for anything else. That's all he ever eats. The second weird thing is he's six foot tall and 180 pounds. There is something wrong with that man. If I were to eat that way I'd weigh 400 pounds. But this guy, you know, something is wrong with it. But he is way out of balance in his diet, obviously. Some of us are way out of balance in one or two areas of our lives. We're not living a balanced life. Jesus shows us the perfect balance in the way he grew and entered adulthood. And I believe continued these same things. I mean, just give them to you quickly. There are four of them here and they're very clear. Jesus had mental growth. He grew in wisdom. He had physical growth. He grew in stature. He had spiritual growth. He grew in favor with God. And he had social growth. He grew in favor with men. Now, some of us may need to put a little bit more emphasis on the mental growth. Some of us learn to read and kindergarten and thought, well, that's done good. I can get that over with. And we've never read a thing since. And we're not expanding our knowledge. We're not learning new things. We're not conquering new challenges, learning new skills. Some of us may just need to crank up the brain cells a little bit and still grow some mentally. Some of us may need to focus a little bit on physical growth. Proper exercise, proper diet, proper rest. That's a part of life. It's a very important part of life. And some of us have gotten out of balance in that way. Thirdly, some of us need to focus on spiritual growth. We're not giving enough time in the word or prayer or involvement in church. And your spiritual side of your life is really suffering. Because everything else has become more of a priority. Fourthly, some of us need to focus on social growth. Relationship with family. Relationship with coworkers or fellow believers in the church or friends, whatever it may be. Whenever you find yourself becoming unbalanced, then do whatever it takes to get back in balance. Learn to say, notice some things. Adjust your schedule. Drop something. Cut back on something. Whatever it takes to get back in balance in those four areas. Jesus pursued a balanced lifestyle. Now, if you put as a priority of your life, doing the will of God, living out His purposes for me, impacting the lives of others so that someone else will carry on what God has done in you when you're gone. If you put your life into that, if you put your life into pursuing a balanced life, I'm going to tell you something. It's going to smack you right in the face. And that's going to be interruptions. When you determine to live a life of purpose, you're going to have to learn how to handle life's interruptions. And Jesus, again, is a beautiful example. We don't have the time to go into it in depth. But I challenge you some time to read the gospel of Mark. And what you will find is that in Jesus' life, life was full of interruptions. I mean, I was amazed. I read back through Mark this week and tried to pick out passage. And I've got him all written down here. We don't have time to do them. But if you read that, you'll find that every time Jesus started teaching, got interrupted. Somebody cried out, heal me, or I'm demon possessed. You know, get out of here. Or Pharisees or something happened in Jesus was interrupted. When he was teaching in one house, they started tearing down the roof and lowering a guy through the roof. I mean, this happened constantly to him. When Jesus would be on his way to someplace, somebody would stop him. This happened constantly. He came back from the synagogue one day. Typical, just like we do on Sundays, on Sabbath days in Israel. When they got done with synagogue service, they all went somewhere to eat. This time, they went to Peter's house. They get inside the house. And somebody says, Peter's mother-in-law is sick. He doesn't even get to sit down to the meal yet. And he's ushered into the room. And he heals her. And then the evening comes. This is still in Mark 1. The evening comes. And the Bible says, the whole town turned out, at the front of the house, bringing sick people so Jesus could heal them, interrupted his Sabbath evening rest. That very night, it says, Jesus goes out to pray in a solitary place. And Peter comes up to him and says, finds him early the next morning and says, Jesus, everybody's looking for you. And Jesus says, hey, it's time to go. Go to another town. And you just go through the Gospel of Mark, which focuses on the activity of Jesus. And you will find constant interruptions. You get to chapter 5 and he's walking along, or he's in a large crowd of people, actually, probably ready to teach him. And a guy named Jairus comes up and says, my daughter's real sick. Would you come heal her? So he goes with Jairus. On the way to Jairus' house, a woman touches the hymn of his garment and power flows forth from him to heal her. And he realizes, and he stops. He's been interrupted from his interruption. And he deals with that and then goes on to, there's an amazing series of interruptions through the book of Mark. Jesus' life was no different than your mind. Yours were mine. When you purpose it, you're going to put certain priorities in your life. Tomorrow, you'll get all kinds of interruptions. And you'll begin to say, fully with this. This is not worth it. I can't live this. You'll be tempted to quit. You know how Jesus handled interruptions real quick? Let me give you five keys to handling interruptions from, as you watch Jesus. I don't always do this very well, but Jesus did it perfectly. Number one, he always responded graciously. Never cut anybody off. He always responded graciously. Secondly, he made people a priority. People were a priority over projects, over things that needed to be done places that needed to be gotten to. Deadlines that needed to be met. People were a priority. Thirdly, he did not allow interruptions to deter him from his ultimate purpose. It's very important. He would deal as quickly and as graciously as possible with the interruption and then move on. Case in point, gyrosis daughter. As soon as he dealt with the interruption, he moved right on the gyrosis house. He didn't let it deter him. Fourthly, on occasion, Jesus initiated interruptions. Case in point is Mark II, where he's healed the man down through the roof and he all of a sudden realizes in the middle of this the Pharisees are thinking bad things in their minds about him. And so he takes on the Pharisees in the middle of this thing. Sometimes he initiated interruptions. And fifthly, this is important. Fifthly, you'll find that sometimes when an important priority demanded it, Jesus isolated himself from interruptions. He said no to the interruptions. When an important priority demanded it, like he needed to spend time with his father, or he knew in the case where Peter came and said everybody's looking for you and he says time to go somewhere else. He knew that there were other places to be reached. Sometimes Jesus said no, I won't be interrupted. It's not that he was being cruel or unkind to people. He was always gracious, but he kept his sense of priorities and did not let constant interruptions take over his whole life. So you see Jesus had perfect balance in this area. What we see is that Jesus has taught us what's really important in life. I've told you the story before, but it bears repeating. The science teacher did an object lesson for his class one day. He took a large, wide mouth jar and he put a bunch of big rocks in it. He looked at the class and he said okay, is it full? And unanimously he said yes. I don't think he could get another big rock in there. So he pulled out from under his table a jar of small gravel and he poured it in. Of course the little gravel filtered down between the crevices and the rocks and all. Then he looked at his class again and said is it full? They were a little more cautious at this time, but most of them still said yes. So then he pulled out a jar of sand. He poured the sand in. Of course the sand being much smaller filtered in, down around even the smaller pebbles. He asked again is it full? But sure looked full that time. Then he pulled out a glass of water and he poured the water in which of course soaked into the sand. He looked at his class and he said what's the object of that little demonstration I just did? And one bright student at the back raised his hand and said well it shows us that no matter how much you have to do you've always got room for more in your life. The teacher smiled and said no that's not it. The lesson is this, you don't put the big things in first you never get them in. If you don't get the big rocks in there first you'll never get them in. You'll fill up your life with pebbles, sand and water and you'll never get the big stuff done. What Jesus has shown us in his life is what the big stuff is. What the big rocks are. What the main thing is and how to keep the main thing, the main thing. Priorities in our lives are so very important. But our priorities have to be biblical priorities, doing the will of God, filling out his purpose in our lives, impacting the lives of other people and pursuing a balanced life. And when you get those priorities in order you'll be living more like the Lord Jesus. Oh yeah there's still be interruptions. But learn from him how to handle them, how to deal with them graciously. Let's pray together.