What Does It Matter?

This was a sermon given by Pastor Jonathan at the LGMC Upside 2012 Retreat in Harrisonburg, VA. Good afternoon. I love it that there is so many people here attending church this weekend. Yo, give yourselves a round of applause for making such a conscious decision to come here and worship God! Let’s give it up to the pastors and teachers, and facilitators for making this happen. This kind of stuff is a lot of hard work and there’s a lot of planning, preparation, prayer and sacrifice that took place to make this happen. Most especially, let’s give God all the glory, let me hear some noise Upside. Alright. Let’s pray. You open your notes and you’ll see the title of this opening sermon. It’s called, “What does it matter?” Like, what does it matter for me to write notes on what this pastor Jonathan is saying? Or what does it matter if I don’t pay attention to the sermon or the small group discussions? Or what does it matter if I don’t pray? Or read the Bible or go to church? What does it matter? I know I don’t know many of you, and many of you don’t know me, so how could I possibly know what it matters, or doesn’t matter to any of you? Don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking, I went to my fair share of retreats where I drew elaborate pictures of how ugly the guest speaker’s hair was. Don’t get jealous, I won’t be balding anytime soon. Hhaha. Just kidding, not about the bald part. So my name is Jonathan and I’m one of the teaching pastors at One Heart Baptist Church in New York City. But I also go by Pastor Jkwon, that’s my rapper name and I’ve been blessed enough to be in ministry for kind of a long time. In fact, in the beginning when I started out doing pastor work, my closest friends, my old college roommates, who are brothers to me, asked me, “Jon, why are you wasting your talent being a youth pastor? What does it matter to their lives?” And at first I believed them, I started doubting. The reason I started doubting was because the people at my church were going to jail by the padiwagon, other guys were getting too high on drugs to remember their parents names, other guys were getting arrested, and these other guys were dropping off their new born babies at my apartment with little notes saying, “sorry pastor Jon, I can’t do it.” So I asked God exactly what my friends asked me, “what does it matter—there are plenty of pastors out there, I don’t NEED to be here, they can take care of your sheep, does it matter God?” Here’s the answer I got—IT MATTERS! IT MATTERS A LOT! It matters for me, it matters for you, it matters for GOD! You MATTER here at this church. You MATTER at your school. You MATTER in your family. Let’s go to Philippians 1:18-26. 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. 20 I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22 If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! 23 I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; 24 but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me. – Philippians 1:18-26 So let me break this down to you because I know some of you don’t know what’s going on. The apostle Paul is in jail. He’s basically waiting to be executed. Yeah, now you can say, “what does it matter?” All that work. All those years, all those sacrifices and the thanks he gets is jail time and then you have some dudes jacking up the gospel that he had been proclaiming. And people are telling this to him while he’s in jail. Come on man. That’s horrible! If anybody could have said, “what does it matter?” It’s Paul! I don’t know about you, but if somebody took something I worked so hard at and ripped it off and used it for something else, I’d be pissed. What? But Paul isn’t asking this in futility. He knows what it matters. He says that the methods don’t matter as long as the bottom line that matters matters. Here’s what I mean by that—you may think that how you do and what you do don’t matter, but the end results of how you do and what you do matter. The way you think matters, matters. If you didn’t take a single note yet, write this down in big block letters on your booklets, “WHAT I DO MATTERS IN THE NAME OF JESUS” You see, this is the beginning. The start of the retreat and we have this theme and it’s an incredibly loaded theme filled with extreme significance because our lives have significance; because what we do on Sundays has significance; because what we do when we live our lives and how we live our lives have significance—it matters that through whatever way or method or quark, “Christ is preached.” Dead or Alive, Christ will be preached by our lives—that’s what matters. Paul ain’t worried about what other people are saying about him, nor what other people are doing to him. I told you that you’re going to get to know a lot about me over the next few days and I hope to get to know as many of you as I possibly can too. But I started telling you guys earlier that my best friends asked me “what does it matter anymore, this church you serve at? You can do God’s work without being a pastor, we don’t like what being a pastor does to you. You’re wasting your talent with people who don’t care. You don’t need another high pressure, high stress job. You need to get married.” Yeah, they’re giving me more pressure than anybody else. Haha, I’m just kidding. Some of us will crack under pressure and begin to say, “it doesn’t matter.” In high school, you’ll find yourself saying, “what does it matter if I ditch class? It doesn’t hurt.” “What does it matter if I smoke weed, it don’t hurt nobody.” “What does it matter if I sex with my boyfriend/girlfriend everybody’s doing it.” “What does it matter if I don’t come to church one week because there was a drinking party?” And we think this because everybody tells us, it doesn’t matter. Paul is in jail! He’s waiting to die! You know of the twelve disciples, 11 of them died martyrs? That’s because what they believed mattered! In fact there was that one guy that wasn’t martyred and his name was John, and he wrote the Book of Revelations, but not before some dudes try to boil him alive in a vat of oil and then send him to live in a cave on a remote island, called Patmos. Come on; just imagine his skin after being boiled alive and not dying! I know, just thinking about it makes me cringe. You think these people did what they did if it didn’t matter? You think I’d be here if it didn’t matter? Of course you matter and of course it matters! So what if we don’t get to be a part of the cool crowd. So what if we don’t get spoiled rotten? What matters is a matter of our priorities. If you read verse 20: the bottom line, the bottom line I was talking about the exaltation of Christ through and from our lives. We can choose how we want to live our lives, but we want to our lives, regardless of what we choose in terms of colleges, majors, concentrations, hobbies, to be the exaltation of Christ. That means we do the best and we become the best and we strive for the best, not so that we can become gangster rapper popular, but to make God the OG – the Only God of our lives. What am I saying about what does it matter? I’m saying exactly what’s written in verse 21 — For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Paul was saying I’d rather die because it’s better—that’s his dream to die and be in heaven. But if I have to live, I still die to myself anyways because Christ is the only matter to my life. Nothing else matters in life because trust me, very little actually matters in life, you find that what matters is that you dying to yourself and living for a cause greater than yourself is the only way to have any true life. Here’s how we know that we’re living too small – our dreams are accomplishable. If you can accomplish everything you dream of within five years, then you’re life is not Christ. You’re basically saying that your life matters only as much as the five years it takes to accomplish what’s on your heart. Jesus died for you, for me, on the cross in the most painful and horrible way, not so that we can waste ourselves with petty and small things, but to do something glorious in His name! This is what it means to live is Christ—we don’t live our pathetic-ness, but we live Jesus’ incredibleness. But we don’t get that. We’d rather play it safe. We think we matter if we do these small things and it’s wrong—horribly wrong. Before I started seminary and started to really get dirty for God in ministry, I had been trying to cut deals with God. I believed, for some reason, and I bet a lot of you believe this too, that I only matter if and when I become something. I had said to God, and I remember this conversation I had with Him so vividly because while God is not vengeful God, He knows how to be a winner—so God will rub it in my face when I say, “God, ministry, are you sure this is really what you want? I was much better at being a political monster.” And He’d say, “JKwon, because God calls me JKwon, you might have been playing politics but nothing you ever did mattered, but now you’re doing ministry and you do more any given Sunday and because of me, you matter.” It’s so true. When Christ matters, you will find yourself in the midst of miracles and God’s power overflowing in your life. But you can only do this if you decide that what you do and how you do it matters. Trust me, if you don’t think you matter, think again, Jesus died precisely because you mattered. God raised Jesus from the dead because you mattered. Now find him to be the matter of your life.