Rev. David Holwick O The Holes of Life #3
First Baptist Church MOTHER'S DAY
Ledgewood, New Jersey
May 10, 2009
Isaiah 32:14-20
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I. Fitting Mother's Day into my series.
A. What life-sucking pit can I associate mothers with?
1) I did a silent assessment of my children's mother.
2) Obviously, it deal with the stresses and busyness of life.
B. Moms have more on their plates these days.
The Toronto Sun newspaper had an article on a crackdown
the police conducted on the local highways.
They gave out 473 tickets to 599 drivers in one day.
In one case, an officer found a woman driving a minivan
while looking into the back seat.
He pulled her over to see what she was doing.
According to a police spokesman, "The woman was reading to
her young son.
When the officer questioned her about it, she told the
officer she only had two pages to go."
#19505
I am sure many of you mothers can relate to her.
1) House cleaning.
2) Childrearing.
3) Job outside the home.
4) For Celeste, earning a college degree at night.
5) It is hard to do it all!
II. Isaiah's day of disaster. Isaiah 32
A. The beginning of the passage describes a terrible invasion.
1) Verse 10 describes a crop failure.
2) Verse 14 describes abandoned cities and broken fortresses.
a) Judah is a howling wasteland.
B. Then something dramatic happens.
1) The Holy Spirit is poured out on God's people.
2) From other passages we know that this must be what students
of the Bible call the Millennium, God's reign on earth.
a) The desert blooms.
b) Justice and righteousness are on top.
c) Everyone lives in peace and security.
C. Consider his description of a righteous (blessed) life: 32:17
1) Peace.
2) Quietness.
3) Confidence.
a) And it all lasts forever.
D. Mothers can appreciate a final touch.
1) In verse 20, the livestock don't have to be fed.
You let them go, and they take care of themselves.
2) Wouldn't it nice if you could do that with your kids?
III. Hurry sickness.
A. Isaiah's quietness and confidence seems to elude us.
1) Things never seem to slow down, only speed up.
2) Where did the time go?
Forty years ago, a Congressional committee predicted that
by now we wouldn't know what to do with our spare time.
They expected the work week to be cut to 30 hours.
3) It hasn't quite worked out that way.
a) Baptist writer Polly House calls it "hurry sickness."
B. Signs you have hurry sickness.
1) You come to a stop light and you decide which lane you're
going to get in based on the types of cars in it.
2) You choose the cash register at Wal-Mart not just on how
many people are in the line, but how much stuff is in
their carts.
3) You keep track of the people in the OTHER Wal-Mart lanes
and get really steamed when they move faster than you.
4) You try to do at least two things at a time:
a) Talk on the phone and type on computer at same time.
b) Drive the car while you put on makeup.
c) You have magazines and books in the bathroom.
C. It can even involve our prayer life.
1) Do you pray when driving or in the shower?
a) Do you count that as your prayer for the day?
2) Hurry sickness makes us superficial and destroys our
intimacy with God.
a) It crowds out prayer.
b) It crowds out significant relationships with others.
#19689
D. Being Under Satan's Yoke.
1) An old story of a convention for demons.
a) Satan tells them they can't keep Christians from going
to church, or from believing in God.
b) But they can dilute the Christian's relationship with
God.
2) The Satanic plan to distract Christians:
a) Fill their lives with non-essentials.
b) Tempt them to spend beyond their means.
c) Choose the trite over the significant (nature walks)
d) They'll have no time to seek power for Christ.
3) Thus the acronym - BUSY:
B-Being
U-Under
S-Satan's
Y-Yoke #5474
IV. How can we handle hectic-ness?
A. Get ready, set, relax.
1) Ridgewood's Family Night.
Ridgewood is about the size of Roxbury, north of Paterson.
A frustrated mom named Marcia Marra came up with the idea
for a family night - for the whole town.
That single night off took the town seven months to plan.
They had an 18-member committee.
School officials, pastors, politicians were all involved.
It would be one night with no sporting events, practices,
office meetings or homework.
Marra herself took it so seriously her answering machine
told callers to call back in the morning.
She wouldn't even let them leave a message.
One family spent the night playing Monopoly with parents,
kids and grandparents.
They also ate a sit-down dinner together, a rarity.
The mom didn't have to yell at them all night.
#6778
2) A quiet time is biblical.
a) When Jesus was at the peak of popularity, he would
slip away to have a night of prayer by himself.
b) Maybe he marked it on his DayTimer.
1> All we know is that it was intentional.
B. Can we be busy and spiritual at the same time?
1) Pastor Mark Brouwer thinks busyness has produced a myth.
We view the fast pace of our lives as the primary
roadblock to having a meaningful spiritual life.
If our lives were simpler, slower, less complicated,
then we could be the person God wants us to be.
We assume our ancestors lived like that, like "Little
House on the Prairie."
They didn't have modern gadgets to distract them, so
they were more loving and more spiritual.
Not necessarily.
Life doesn't have to be slow and simple to be spiritual.
You can be spiritual and contented right where you are.
Even if your life is going a million miles an hour.
John Stroman once said,
"Burnout is not the result of too much activity.
It is the result of the wrong kind of activity."
#5248
Perhaps there are activities you should cut out.
Do you watch TV obsessively?
There might be activities, even in church, that are doing
you no good. They are just sucking up time.
Cut them out.
But you can't cut out everything.
2) You need to equip yourself to live the spiritual life in
the midst of your responsibilities.
Spirituality is not through escaping the realities of
an overloaded world, but in meeting God there.
2 Peter 1:3 says, "His divine power has given us
everything we need for life and godliness through our
knowledge of him who called us...."
That's just as true for us as it was for Grandpa Walton.
#30638
V. Living Isaiah's vision now.
A. Don't slow down life, but reorder your priorities.
B. Get a handle on your time-sucking compulsions.
C. Leave special time for God, no matter how busy you are.
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
This sermon series was inspired by one done by Rev. Jeffrey Stratton,
pastor of American Baptist East in Evansville, Indiana.
# 5474 "Satan's Perfect Scheme," submitted by Victor Keen, Ledgewood
Baptist Church, Email, April 1, 2000.
# 5248 "Burnout," by John A. Stroman; Rev. Brett Blair's Illustrations by
Email, www.sermonillustrations.com, February 1, 2000.
# 6778 "New Jersey Community Takes a Night Off," by Wayne Parry, America
Online Family News, March 27, 2002. Copyright The Associated
Press.
#19505 "Burning Both Ends of the Candle," by Randy Cassingham, THIS IS
TRUE internet newsletter, July 6, 2001. Originally from the
Toronto Sun newspaper.
#19689 "The Cure For Hurry Sickness Is Rest In God," by Polly House,
Baptist Press, http://www.baptistpress.org, August 14, 2001.
#30638 "If Only I Wasn't So Busy," by Rev. Mark Brouwer,
http://www.bridgewood.org; Bridgewood Church (Christian Reformed);
Savage, Minnesota. Brouwer's sermon on
These and 30,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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