Where is your focus?
Where do you find joy? For many, it is spending time with their family and friends. For others, it’s a lovely home, reliable cars, and maybe a cabin on a lake. Or perhaps you’re part of the current wanderlust trend, and you live on the road soaking up joy in every new destination.
How many of you immediately said your joy is found in Christ Jesus?
We admit that Christ is not always our first thought either. And while there is nothing inherently wrong with a nice home, an RV, or a comfortable retirement fund; our responsibility is to make sure our material possessions never become more important than our faith in Christ Jesus.
It is natural for our sinful flesh to seek joy in this world. But it will always fall short. There is nothing that compares to the joy found in Christ. Yes, that Alaskan cruise was amazing and rightfully, you enjoyed every breathtaking minute of it. But that joy is fleeting.
A nice home wears out, requiring constant repairs to keep it nice. A vacation ends, and then you have to go back to work. Retirement funds run out, leaving you destitute, or they don’t and you die without enjoying it. It is entirely too easy for our flesh to become enslaved to our material goals. But what will never fail us? The Word of the LORD that endures forever. Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added on to you.
The joy we find in Christ lasts eternally. Thanks be to God!
Here is today’s sermon text from Luke 12:
13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”