Paul's letter to Titus, the second chapter. Here now God's holy word. Teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith and love and in steadfastness. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. Bond servants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything, They are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority, let no one disregard you. Remain standing just for one more moment as I read the text from my sermon. This is verses nine through 12 of Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians. And he writes, now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. For that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you brothers to do this more and more and to aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I pray that you would help me to rightly divide it this morning, that by the power of your Holy Spirit, I would be representing you well here this morning to the Saints at Crown and Covenant Church. that you would help me to articulate what you have put in my heart, and may it be a blessing and a benefit to the saints here, and may you be honored and glorified in all that I say. In Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. Before I turn to God's word, I just want to take a moment to greet you from all the saints at Foundation Church up in central Ohio. I recognize a lot of faces here. To some of you, I am unfamiliar. So I am Elder Andy Kuzel. And unfortunately, I won't have as much time as I'd like to to stick around today. I'll grab a bite and the fellowship meal with you, and I have to fly back home. But this place has a very special place, and you people have a very special place in my heart. If you have not met me, I have a wife and nine children. I have 10 children. One's out of the house. My wife Kirsten was dealing with a brain cancer almost five years ago, and we came down to Houston for treatment. And I didn't know Peter Allison very well at the time. He called me and said, your family's staying at our house. And I said, no, you don't understand. My whole family's coming. There's, you know, 11 of us. It's going to be like a month. And he said, no, no, I won't hear anything else. You're staying at our house. So, uh, we slept in Peter and Alice's master. They slept in their office for four weeks and opened up their house to our family and, um, It was a very blessed time and great memories. I remember Rachelle sitting on the couch reading books to my kids with them sitting on her lap and a lot of fun times with the Allison's. Although, as soon as we got there, a few days later, the whole Allison family left and went to Tennessee for a week. And now that I'm here, Peter and Alice are gone again. I'm kind of wondering, like, Every time I come they seem to not want to be around, I don't know. But the Allison's have been great friends to us and so many of you have as well. My wife went home to be with the Lord shortly thereafter in the spring of 2017, but whenever we come here we have We have wonderful memories of the way that we were loved and cared for and I the Lord brought Andrea to us two years ago. We celebrated our two-year anniversary three days ago. So praise God that you know if you're looking at if the job application is mother of nine, marrying a 55-year-old guy, who's interested? That's a pretty short list, probably, humanly speaking, of people that would be interested in that, but the Lord brought us Andrea, and we're so thankful that she's been part of our family for two years. Some of you have had the pleasure of meeting her. If you haven't, I hope that you'll get to sometime. So as you know, Peter and Alice are out in Omaha worshiping right now with the Saints at Dominion Covenant Church and enjoying some extended family, visiting a grandchild or, you know, extended family out there. So we pray that they're enjoying their time of worship out there as well. I know that your session has been augmented by Phil Kaiser and Gary Duff. You all know those men, right? What a great blessing to the church they are. I trust that you are availing yourselves not only of the wonderful teaching of your pastor, but also of Pastor Kaiser and Gary Duffs, one of the best friends I've got in the whole world. If you don't love that man, there's something wrong with you. I mean, he's just, those are good, good men of God. And I'm so thankful to be knit together with them as brothers in Christ and in this denomination. So with that brief welcome, let me then, if I can, turn our attention to this topic of the sustainable Christian life. I've had a conversation with Boy, a number of families recently at our church and elsewhere that have come to me and said something like this. You can tell me if this sounds familiar. They'll say something like, I wanna do something great for the kingdom of God. I wanna be impactful for the kingdom. I wanna serve my king, but I seem to get burned out, I'm weary, I can't seem to accomplish what I wanna do, and I don't know why. Familiar to anybody in here? I mean, I had four or five families come to me in a period of few months asking this question. How can we do more for the kingdom? We want to do great and mighty things. We want to be impactful. Interestingly, if you read God's Word, and I pray that you all do, I don't think if you read through the Bible, you would come to the conclusion, I think it's our goal to go out and do incredible, impactful things for the kingdom. I don't think it's our job, I don't think we're called to do, to strive to do noteworthy, to be influential. I want to give you some examples that might sound strange to your ears. You say, well of course we're supposed to do that. Think about Moses. Moses was not looking to do anything great. Moses was out there in the wilderness and God came to him and said, you're my man to go to Pharaoh. And he said, who, me? Are you kidding? I can't talk. You got the wrong guy. God said, no, you're my man. And Moses said, no, I'm not your, I'm definitely not the right guy. He's arguing with God. Does that sound like a guy who had written down his goal that year, I'm going to be influential for God? Think about Joseph, sold as a slave. You know the story, he's in prison for years. You think he's thinking, I need to be the prime minister of Egypt. That's what I'm gonna do to really be influential. I don't think that's what he was thinking when he was sitting in prison. You think of Gideon, hiding from the Midianites when the angel of the Lord comes to him. Here's Gideon's response, pardon me, my lord? But how can I save Israel? My clan is weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family. Think of David. When Samuel comes to anoint the next king, here's all of Jesse's sons. David's not even there. He's out tending the sheep, right? He's not first in line going, me, me for king, David for king, David for king. Perhaps the best example, my family and I have just finished reading through the book of Esther in our time of family worship. I'm sure you all know the story of Esther, but her cousin Mordecai. You all know the story of Mordecai and Esther? Esther ends up saving the Jews because Mordecai basically encourages her to do that. I wanna read you a passage from the very end of the book of Esther. It's nine chapters and the 10th chapter is a little short mini stub of a chapter. It's just a few verses. And here's what it says about Mordecai. This is the end of the story. And all the acts of his power and might and the full account of the high honor of Mordecai to which the king advanced him. Are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia? For Mordecai the Jew was second in rank to King Ahasuerus, and he was great among the Jews and popular with the multitude of his brothers, for he sought the welfare of his people and spoke peace to all his people. Second in command, King Ahasuerus had, I think it's at 127 provinces. This was a powerful, powerful man with a huge territory that he reigned over. And Mordecai ends up second in command, just like Joseph did to Pharaoh. So was Mordecai the guy that was striving to be influential? That his goal? Let's back up a little bit to earlier in Esther, in Esther chapter three. Here's what got the ball rolling. so to speak, for Mordecai. It says, and all the king's servants who were at the king's gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman. Haman was the wicked man that the king had elevated to this position of high authority. All the king's servants bowed down and paid homage to Haman, for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage. This reminds me, I was reading on the way out here, Alistair Begg just wrote a brand new book, and I read it on the plane on the way out here, called something about brave by faith. And he's talking about how Christians should live in a culture where we are persecuted, where we are in the minority, where we are no longer socially acceptable. I think we all know that time has come. And the book is based on the first six chapters of the book of Daniel. So you know the story of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Daniel, You know, they did a lot of the stuff that the king told them to do, but at some point, they drew the line. Not allowed to pray, Daniel said, I'm gonna pray. You gotta eat the king's food. We're not gonna eat the king's food. We're Jews, we don't do that. Here's Mordecai, everyone around him is bowing down to Haman. Mordecai would not bow down or pay homage. Then the king's servants who were at the king's gate said to Mordecai, Why do you transgress the king's command? And when they spoke to him day after day, and he would not listen, they told Haman to see, in order to see whether Mordecai's words would stand, for he had told them that he was a Jew. And when Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage to him, Haman was filled with fury. One of the most powerful men in the kingdom, filled with fury. What started it? made the simple decision, I'm not bowing down. So the application there I think is fairly obvious. We live in a culture where we're being asked every day, every week, are you gonna bow down? Are you gonna worship the idols of this age? Are you gonna do what everyone around you is being told to do? And sometimes it's things that We have scruples about, sometimes it's things that God has commanded us not to do. He said, don't do that. Don't say that. Don't believe that. And we're being told we have to. We're being told it socially. We're being told in the workplace. We're being told by our civil magistrates. And we as Christians are being put into a difficult situation. So that's another topic, but I'm just trying to get you to understand what put Mordecai in this position that led him to be second in command in all of the kingdom of Ahasuerus. He just made a simple decision. I'm not bound down. So we all want to be fruitful members of the church. I remember hearing a story years ago and I don't remember who it was. I think it was one of our Puritan forefathers who said that on his tombstone he wanted one word and the word was fructuosis. Same face I made, Gloria. I have no idea what that word means, so I looked it up, and it means fruitful or productive. This man wanted his life to be fruitful, and that's a good and noble intention. I'm not saying we shouldn't want that. We should all want to be fruitful for our king. But this desire to do something sensational, to do something huge, to do something grand, where does this come from? And I've spent some time thinking about this and studying it. I think one possible source is from the second great awakening when Charles Finney and these other preachers came and they were not satisfied with the ordinary means of grace, of teaching people God's word, passing the faith to the next generation. They wanted to have more converts. They wanted to have more emotional conversions. They weren't getting results, so they were looking for new methods. This is what some of these preachers were doing. And they wanted to bring people to these climactic emotional experiences so that everyone would stand back and go, wow, did you see what happened there? Did you see what God's doing? And I'm not mocking that when that really happens. When the Holy Spirit moves, incredible things happen. We've all read stories and seen things. Maybe you've experienced it in your own life. Certainly not mocking that. But when that becomes the goal, of we've got to create this incredible experience. We've got to, I think that's where some of this comes from. It's the contrast between the oak tree and the bamboo, right? The bamboo will grow three feet in a day. The oak tree, little by little by little. Watching an oak tree grow, boring, right? Preachers during Finney's time started having conversations about how many conversions they had. Can your story top this one? Wait till you hear my story. So I want to contrast that with something from a pastor, a reformed pastor named John Nevin, who lived at the same time as Finney. And here's what John Nevin said. He called it the traditional system of the catechism. And here's a quote from this pastor. He said, the old Presbyterian faith into which I was born was based throughout on the idea of covenant family religion. church membership by God's holy act and baptism, and following this, a regular catechetical training of the young with direct reference to their coming to the Lord's table. In one word, all proceeded on the theory of sacramental educational religion. Do you hear how that's different than what Charles Finney and these others were doing? One approach focuses on extraordinary emotional highs and lows. The other emphasizes a slow, steady maturing process. Really pretty significant difference. This is important for us as members of Christ Church. It's important for us as parents, future parents, grandparents, You may say to me, I don't know why I feel so burned out and so overwhelmed. I'm not doing anything extraordinary. I'm just having children, working full time, starting a business, keeping our home in order, cooking, cleaning, shopping. birthing, nursing children, caring for multiple children, educating my children, educating my grandchildren, fostering, adopting, protesting at the abortion mill, protesting against ungodly civil magistrates, serving our church, writing a book, teaching a Bible. I don't know why I feel tired. Am I being funny or is this us? I think in reformed circles especially, this tends to be more prominent. I know it is with the families I hang out with. People are just, they can't figure out why am I so tired? I'm trying to do something great for God. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say this describes some of us. Now, all these things that I just listed are good things. I've done a lot of those things. You probably have too. So I'm not, lest I offend anybody, I'm not saying, hey, don't do any of those things or those things are bad. The question is, should we be trying to do all of those things at the same time? Or should we even be trying to do most of those things? Should we really be trying to take it to a whole new level? This is the world we live in. We see things on social media and everyone, you see the highlight films of what other families and other churches are doing and we kind of go, There's one family in our town that I really like. They're friends of ours. And every year, they do a Christmas letter. I do a Christmas letter, too, for our family. Pictures of the kids, you know, a couple of sentences. Well, this family, they list all the things they've been doing. And it's the letter of shame. Do you know families like this? Whenever I read it, I go, man, what's wrong with us? Look what these people are doing. They built, you know, they're building cities. They're, you know, it's incredible the things they do. So I'm talking to this guy. This dad was at my house two weeks ago. And I said, I'm not even going to read your letter this year. And he said, now don't forget, that's the highlight. That's the highlight reel. You know, when you watch the highlight reel, you see all these incredible things, but there's a lot of little regularness, ordinary stuff in between there. So here's a question I want to ask us. Should we make it our goal to be influential? I gave you some biblical examples of people that were influential, but it's not because they set out to be influential. We all know about Billy Graham, right? A good man of God who went home to be with the Lord. And Billy Graham's ministry, when it started, he was working exclusively with conservative ministers of the gospel. And then in 1956, he believed he could have more influence if he would start to partner with some of the more liberal ministers. Now I'm not here to have a criticism of Billy Graham, but that led to, you know, there are a lot of things that he did and said that a lot of people have questions about that think maybe could have been done differently. But he made this decision because he wanted to have greater influence. And so some would argue that maybe he began to compromise his message or his approach to some degree by cooperating with these other ministers. Did any of you avail yourself of Ligonier Ministries and any of the materials there? There's a guy there down in Florida named Bob Godfrey, Robert Godfrey, who I really like. He's a church historian. It's kind of his specialty. He's written some books and done some really good DVD series on that topic, if you're interested. at one point proposed this topic, this title for a book. And he said, I'm probably not going to write the book, but if I did, it would be called The Myth of Influence. The Myth of Influence. And here's what Bob Godfrey says. This really hit home for me. Through the history of the church, it's fascinating how many bad things have been done in the name of being influential. It might strike your ears strange like it did mine. It's fascinating how many bad things have been done in the name of being influential, whereas almost always those people who have actually been influential didn't set out to be influential, but set out to be faithful. Mordecai, Daniel, Joseph, David, Moses, They just set out to be faithful. Michael Horton, another Christian author that I have benefited from a lot, wrote a column in Table Talk Magazine seven years ago. I'm gonna read you a short excerpt from what he wrote. His article was called The Ordinary Christian Life. I changed it to the word sustainable, because I think that's even more fitting. And I got that word from Ashley Narwald in our church. If any of you know Ashley, we were having this conversation, she said, we've got to do something that's more sustainable. And I said, that's a great word. I'm going to steal that word from my sermon title. But Michael Horton wrote this, the ordinary Christian life, this is the life that I'm arguing for this morning, a belief from God's word. The ordinary Christian life is not the opposite of the radical Christian life. The ordinary Christian life is a radical life, a life of daily trusting Christ, daily repenting of our sins, daily dying to self, daily taking up our crosses and following Christ, daily loving God and neighbor, and daily proclaiming the gospel to ourselves, our families, our friends, and our communities. And he finishes with this, the ordinary Christian is not Complacent, passionless, nominal, or casual. On the contrary, every ordinary Christian is united to Christ by faith and will bear radical life-giving fruit. That's what we want, right? We want fructuosis. We want to bear radical life-giving fruit. So I'm not arguing to be any of those things, complacent, passionless, nominal, or casual. In Jesus's discourse in the 15th chapter of John, he said, he's talking about the vine and the branches, and he said, abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. He's saying you wanna bear fruit, just abide in me. That's how you're fruitful. Michael Horton says, this is a quote, we are restlessly impatient with the ordinary. Andy Kuzel, I confess in front of all of you, I am restlessly impatient with the ordinary. I do believe God has called each of us to do something, not everything, but doing what we're called to do is enough. Hopefully by now you know what you've been called to do. Maybe if you don't, that's something to pray about. To me, it's enough to know that we're called by God to maintain his faithful presence in the world. I was about to read you the last page of my sermon that I already read. So what does the apostle Paul tell us to do? You're saying, Andy, you're telling us what not to do. Here's some things that we ought to do from scripture. And if you go to the end of Ephesians chapters four and five, you'll find a lot of these things. I'll just read you a few of them briefly. Let not the sun go down on your wrath. These things I'm gonna read you are all pretty simple. They're not easy to do, but I think if we just strove to do these things, it would keep us plenty busy as followers of Christ. Let not the sun go down on your wrath. Settle accounts with others quickly. Labor with your own hands so that you'll have to give to the needy. Use of our words. How important is this in scripture? You can't get through hardly any part of the Bible without either seeing someone using their words for the glory of God or using words sinfully. So we're to edify and encourage others, Ephesians 4.29, right? Don't let any unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only that which is edifying, useful for building others up, that it would edify the hearers. I'm paraphrasing there a little bit. Matthew 28, Jesus said, go therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. So there's something we can all be doing. There's a lot in here that he's commanded us to do. We need to know it and be able to teach it to others. Jude, beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Each one of us, whether you're parent, grandparent, child, each of us has a responsibility to pass the Christian faith on to the next generation. It's one of the great things that a local church can do. Be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. Wives, submit to your own husbands. Husbands, love your wives and don't be bitter. Children, obey your parents. Honor your father and mother. See, God uses us. We're all weak, broken, fragile. And yet God uses us by doing those things that I just read to you from his word. He uses us to accomplish his purposes. Even if we don't set out to do anything extraordinary. These things would take us a lifetime to master, and we're still not going to master them in a lifetime, those things I just read. So I'm trying to say we can serve our extraordinary Lord by doing ordinary things. We're not the ones that are extraordinary. It wasn't Daniel that was extraordinary. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, not extraordinary. God is the hero of the story, not those men, right? Jesus told us that his kingdom was gonna grow at a very ordinary, sustainable pace. How long has it been? 2,000 years so far. I think we might have 10 or 20,000 more years to go. I'm not predicting or guessing, but I think it might be a while. I think we still might be in the early infancy stages of the kingdom of God and the church of Jesus Christ on earth. So Jesus told us And I think those of you that have an optimistic eschatology like I do, we look to the future to go, the church is going to be victorious. It's not looking very good in North America right now, right? I do read the headlines, and I understand that it's not looking good. But if you look at history, you have these little ups and downs. But over time, long term, the trajectory is the church is going to be victorious. Amen? But it's not a hockey stick. Yes, you have times with revivals and different things where you see these hockey stick, you know, the growth like this and then it kind of settles down. You had the great awakening and then some of those people really wasn't good fruit. But over time it's doing this, but it's long and slow and sustainable. He said it's like a mustard seed that grows into a tree. How long does it take a mustard seed to grow into a tree? It takes a long time. Remember the story in Daniel, the rock, Nebuchadnezzar had the dream and Daniel's interpreting it, the little rock comes down and it crushes the statue and over time that rock becomes the mountain over a long period of time. And some would argue, I think it's gonna happen, well, it's been 2,000 years already, that's pretty slow by our standards. For impatient Andy Kuzel, 2,000 years is a long time. So do you see it? It's not one giant jump all at a time. It's little sustainable steps. You know, we just, I was telling some folks, we just butchered 26 chickens, had them butchered. Those things grew pretty fast. They grew from a little chick this big to a big fat thing in about nine weeks. That's pretty fast, you know, multiplying tenfold their size. But most of us, you watch your children grow. I haven't seen some of your children for a while, and I see them, I'm like, wow, your kids are bigger. But when you're watching him every day, slow, so slow, you can't even see it. I believe this is how Christians are to grow. This is how the Lord wants to mature us. Sometimes you have a big blip, kind of a big aha. But most of the time, the way he sanctifies us is little by little, step by step. And there's other applications to this in the Bible about building wealth little by little, The dot-com billionaires is not how wealth is supposed to be created generally. It's by just little by little, working, saving, investing, et cetera. Okay, so let me bring us to an application. What should we do today? I just gave you some of what the apostle Paul gave us. One of the fruits of the spirit is self-control. And when we hear the fruit of the spirit is self-control, I think a lot of us think, I gotta control myself, keep myself from sinning. And I think that's a part of what the apostle's telling us. But I think part of self-control is governing ourselves, governing our schedules, governing the decisions we make. In other words, sometimes it's good to say no to some very good things to allow someone else to have the blessing of doing that thing instead of us. Amen? I'm terrible at this. I don't even know why I'm preaching this because every opportunity that comes along, I'm like, we're going to do this. And I look at my wife and Andrea will say, we're already doing, you know, and I go, yeah, you're right. I even tell her, please remind me when I want to do some new venture that, you know, we're already doing too much. So here's what I'm not advocating. As a minister of the gospel and representing Christ to you this morning, I pray faithfully, I'm not saying say no to everything. Hole up in your house, just you and your family, enjoy your life, don't inconvenience yourself. I'm certainly not saying that. I don't think that's what the Bible instructs us to do. What I am suggesting is let's be content with living a sustainable, ordinary Christian life. How uninspiring. Are any of you on Facebook? I don't do Facebook. I'm on Facebook, but I never look at it. But who wants to post on Facebook, today I did ordinary things? I mean, how many likes is that going to get, right? You're not going to get any new friends posting stuff like that. Isn't that the deal? You want to get likes on Facebook, right? How many likes did you get? Did the usual today. Post that today and see how many of your friends like it, right? That is boring. Well, here's, I'm not gonna give you like my top 10 habits for your best life, but I am gonna try to give you from God's word some things that I think might be helpful. These are things I would suggest that will help us to bear good fruit that are sustainable. Okay, we've gotta do things that are sustainable. Read God's word every day. I can't believe he's even telling us about this. Are we doing it? Are we actually taking time to open the Word of God? Not the, you know, I'm gonna flip open and that's the page God has for me today. You can do that, but you know, something a little more structured maybe, to be in the Word every day. You know, if you read God's Word a lot, for most of us, you can commit a lot to memory even without trying to memorize. My little five-year-old, she's, The youngest is always the smartest, right? The last one to come along. She's got a brain that just, she's got nothing else to do. So she absorbs everything she hears. We work on these scripture passages. She's memorized, I'm not kidding. She's memorized 15 Psalms in the King James word for word. And she's memorized a whole bunch of storybooks just because she's hearing it all the time. She's got nothing else to do. So she'll listen to it over and over. Now I've made you feel guilty again. You're not as good as my five-year-old. I'm not as good as my five-year-old. I can't do the stuff she does. My brain is tired and full of yucky stuff, too much clutter up there. So reading God's word every day, praying intentionally and specifically. I pray sometimes on the fly. Do you do this? I think of someone, like I'm driving, but just to take time to just have quiet and really focus on who and what we're praying for. Worshiping every day in your family and worshiping as a congregation. I was gonna say I'm preaching to the choir. I am preaching to the choir. You're all here worshiping faithfully, so I don't have to tell you that. But that's important, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs every day. You know, when I have this conversation with myself and with other people, sometimes people will say, I don't have time. I know I should do it. The schedule's just so busy. But how many of you are old enough to remember the Cats on the Cradle song by Harry Chapin? Wow, I'm getting old. Only a few hands went up there. There's a song by this musician, and he's talking about how when he's a little kid, he wants to be with his dad, and his dad's always too busy. Not now, son. Not now. Maybe later. I'm busy. And then finally, The dad retires, and he wants to spend time with his son. The son's like, Dad, I can't. Job's a hassle. Kid's got the flu. But sure, good talking to you, Dad. And it's a really, and I think that man actually died tragically in a plane crash or something, is that right? Or a car accident or something? So he ended up fulfilling the prophecy of his own song. But it's just a, it's one of those sad reminders that sometimes we, and I'm a dad, you know, but if you're a father, a mom, a grandmother, a grandfather, aunt or uncle, sometimes we don't have time. We say we don't have time for these things, but we have time for other stuff. I don't have time to memorize scripture. I got about 20 Billy Joel songs in my head that I can recite word for word. Not proud of it, not gonna do it right now, but listen to them so many times in my youth that that stuff rolls around in my head and it's nailed down. I've got it. Or maybe your favorite song from your favorite movie or, you know, we've all got stuff that we spend time on that's not super productive. I don't want to be the dad. I don't want you to be the dad, the mom, the whatever role you play in your family where the little ones come to you and say, don't you have time to read me God's word? Don't you have time to discipline me? Because I know that a father that loves his children disciplines his children. Don't you have time to worship the Lord together with us? Thinking about Robert and Rachel that you can, I'm sure you're already doing family worship, you're a family. And I've had people come and say, well, our little one's too little. Your little one's not too little. I'm sure you know that. I'm sure you're reading scripture to that little one and singing songs. Now is the time to be doing these things. 1 Timothy 2. Paul says, first of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings, and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior. In Matthew Henry's commentary, he says, The summit of the ambition of a good Christian is, now would you like to know what the rest of the sentence says? This is Matthew Henry. The summit of the ambition of a good Christian is to lead a quiet and peaceable life, to get through the world unmolested in a low private station. That's the summit of the ambition of a good Christian, to lead a quiet and peaceable life, So in closing, here's my charge to you, beloved saints of Crown and Covenant Church. Slow down, good Christian. Maybe this is you right now. Maybe you look back and you think, oh, I have regrets. I wish I would have done more. This message is for you too. Slow down, be content with doing those simple things that God's called you to do on a daily basis. Just look into his word, it's there. Read the last half of Ephesians, read Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus about leading a quiet and peaceable life, being vigilant, sober of good behavior. Seek to be faithful in those little things that seem little, and then maybe God will make you influential, amen? I'll close with this from John 15, 5. Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. Let us pray. Father, I thank you for these portions of your word that we have looked into this morning. And I pray that what I have spoken would ring true in the ears of my hearers this morning and in my own. There's always more to do. There's always invitations and opportunities and we need discernment and discretion to be able to hear your voice, to know what things you have called us to. and what things you have called us to leave for others. Help us to be like these men that I have referenced in your holy word, men who are just going about, not just, they were going about leading sustainable lives, just trying to be obedient, seeking to be faithful. May we also, as your sons and daughters, may we seek to be faithful, not seeking influence, and may you use us in whatever way you would choose. by the example and the sustainable way in which we try to obey the patterns and precepts that you have prescribed for us in your holy word. And this we pray in Christ's name, amen.