Good, Better, Best
- Ashland Church of Christ
- Jan 12
- 15 min read
Guest Pastor J Cook
January 12, 2025
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Transcribed by Turbo Scribe
I have a confession to make to you.
Notice that I prepared this sermon for last week. And unfortunate events were such that I couldn't present them to you. We're in the second Sunday of the year.
And it's still an appropriate thing to talk about. My text today is going to be out of Ephesians, the fifth chapter. Starting in verse 15.
God said, Be very careful in how you live. Not as unwise, but wise. Making the most of every opportunity because the days were evil.
Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. On 1929, the Rose Bowl, it was Georgia Tech versus UCLA. It was promising to be a pretty good game.
Until right at the very beginning, it seems that Georgia Tech fumbled the ball. And the guy by the name of Roy Riegels, he recovered the fumble. He was just a freshman, though, and I guess he was excited about the game and it didn't work.
And so he headed on a 65-yard run the wrong direction. His teammate, by the name of Vinnie Long, ran him down and tackled him just before he scored for the opposing team. A few plays later, UCLA had Hunt and Georgia Tech block the kick and score safety, further demoralizing the UCLA team.
He went on to lose 8-5. But from that day forward, he was always known as the Wrong Way Riegels. Now, keep in mind, he was a freshman.
He was inexperienced. And the idea of being ridiculed or reminded of that terrible mistake could have pretty well made him fold. But he went on to become the captain of the team, went and made the All-American team.
Still, the Wrong Way Riegels. When I look at that, I think, boy, that's a parable, if you will, for a lot of people today. Many people who just live their lives that way, they don't go the wrong way because of a loss of a side purpose or a never-had goal.
Proverbs, the 12th chapter, has an interesting verse to it when it says, and I'm going to give you the summation first. It says, sometimes a path may appear to be a correct choice based on one's perception, but ultimately leads to a negative consequence or disruption. Now, if you've memorized it the way that I did when I was a kid, it's there's a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is the way of death.
In other words, not everything that we meander along in life and the choices that we make, even though some of them might even seem kind of real, might seem good. They're not necessarily so. Andy Stanley once quoted, many people are what you might call directionally challenged.
They don't know where they're going. They have a goal. They just wander through life expecting that everything will turn out all right.
I would guess that if we were to ask people, are you very busy? It seems like you live in a world that's always in a hurry, always busy. You walk fast, you talk fast, you eat fast, and then you get up and say, excuse me, but I've got to run. It's been years since I've been caught speeding, caught speeding.
It's not that I haven't sped, it's that I haven't been caught because I've noticed this about my driving. If the speed limit is like 55, let's say between here and this is 55, you can count on me going 62. I'm going seven miles an hour over the speed limit.
I was told by more than one cop that seven is seven, nine you're nine. So if you're going nine, you're in trouble. You're going to get picked up for it.
But I noticed, why am I doing that? I will go seven miles an hour over, even if I don't need to go, if I'm not late, anything. I'm just seemingly in a hurry all the time, or I feel that I'm in a hurry. And I wonder, what does that seven miles bring me? I mean, when you're going down the highway, 72 there, headed to Springfield.
All of a sudden, someone speeds past, and you call them an idiot because of their speed. Then you think, well, they're in a hurry, I guess. And you get up to Wabash Avenue, and you turn off, and there they are waiting to get a stop line.
They haven't gained anything. So also, I think many times we have been in a hurry for things, and we fail to take to the admonition of the bishops to live wisely. We need to be very, very much in tune with the way that we are living.
So many times we'll go so fast, we probably make mistakes, but don't even notice. We're just blue blazing through life. Here we are on the second Sunday of 2025.
I wonder how well we did last year and more for this next year. Will we be as busy as we were? Will we make better use of our time? In a few days, will we be looking back with joy or regret? Will we be looking to the future with anticipation or with frustration? I think our text that the Apostle Paul presents, it offers us some lessons that we really need to consider. He says right off the bat that our time on this earth is limited.
Now that's something that none of us want to hear. None of us want to think, we always want to think of time as being almost a commodity that's always going to be there. But we know that that simply isn't true.
And the Bible supports that over and over again, how quickly life passes by us. The 39th Psalm says, Show me, O Lord, my life's end. The number of my days.
Let me know how fleeting is my life. You made my days a mere handbread. The span of my years is nothing before you.
Each man's life is but bread. We must think of how carefully we live because the time here on earth is limited. The psalmist again said it this way, The length of our days are 70 years or 80 if we have the strength.
Yet the span is but trouble and sorrow for they quickly pass and we fly away. Now I realize that some younger people that are here would probably look at 70 or 80 years and that sounds like an incredibly long period of time. I can remember when I thought that anyone over 70 probably had George Washington in their class.
He loved me. He was going to be the student to succeed, the classmate to succeed or something. But it's relatively easy to look at life and to see, if you'll pardon the expression, life is like a roll of toilet paper.
It starts spinning a lot quicker at the end than it did in the beginning. So also, you'll find out that life has a way of fleeting past us. Some of you will be shocked as to how quickly life passes by as it passes by with you in it.
I was in grade school over here at the old Parsonage. I remember coming downstairs one morning and Dad and Mom were there in the kitchen. Dad's drinking a couple of coffee mops, fixing breakfast.
One of them said, did you hear that so and so died? Dad in the middle of it replied, oh really, how old were they? And Dad said, I think 72. And Mom said, oh, so young, so young. I was 12 years old.
Let me tell you what I thought. At 17, I found the pedicure by the forest where they took people. There were 72 of them up in the area.
72 seemed like such an old number. I stand before you today at 70. 72 isn't that old at all to me.
This almost tells us to number our days. I don't think he's morbid about it. He's constantly thinking about death.
But I think he's trying to say realize that it's a limited resource. And that you need to be aware that your time here on earth is limited. Make the best of it.
Use it in a good way. James, the poor teacher, says look here you who say today or tomorrow we're going to a certain town and we'll stay there. You'll do business there and make a product.
How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog. It's here a little while and then it's gone. All we have is right now.
So our time on earth is valuable because it's very limited. We need to keep that in mind. That line has always seemed too short.
I just last week had two females. One man that was 93 years old that seemed like he was full. He was gone unexpectedly.
But he'd been in poor health. We thought that recently he had some strange albinism that would make him be able to. Both of them I would consider friends.
And I would bet you that a 93-year-old, even a 72-year-old, ask him how long his life. How does 93 years seem? I guarantee you Bernie would have said, in so many ways, it just passes by in a breath. It's just there and it's gone.
So also we would be wise at least to acknowledge that our time here, every one of us, is limited. And so we need to make the most of every opportunity. That's my second point today.
He says that make the most of every opportunity. And he gives the reason. He says because the days are evil.
Jesus said that Satan is a thief, a robber. One of the things that he takes most quickly is he tries to rob us of our time. Because time is one of the most precious possessions that we have.
We often have a way or a tendency to put off things that are important to us. Because we assume we'll have more time tomorrow. He was going to be all that mortals should be tomorrow.
No one should be kinder or braver than he tomorrow. A friend who was troubled and weary he knew, who'd be glad for a lift and who needed it too. On him he would call to see what he could do.
Tomorrow. Each morning he stacked up the letters he'd write. Tomorrow.
And thought of the folks he would fill with delight. Tomorrow. It was too bad indeed he was busy today and had not a minute to stop on his way.
More time he would have to give others he'd say. Tomorrow. The greatest of workers this man would have been tomorrow.
The world would have known him had he ever seen tomorrow. But the fact is he died. And he paid for you.
And all that was left when the clipping was through was a mountain of things he pretended to do. Tomorrow. So many of us, that seems to be the message of our life.
The very fact that we are living in such a way that we'll put off the important stuff till tomorrow. We have our health today, put it off till tomorrow. Jesus went to the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
He sat down to teach and Mary was sitting at his feet just soaking every word in. Meanwhile, Martha was out in the kitchen preparing dinner and she was ticked. She was ticked that her sister wasn't in there helping her with the meal.
She was afraid that they were going to burn the biscuits, I guess. The story is about how Mary said, or it was Martha that said, Lord, don't you care that my sister is left to do the work by myself? How can I help me? Notice Jesus' words. He said, Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things.
But one thing is needed. Mary's chosen was better than the blood you take away from her. Here's Martha's problem.
She didn't realize that she had the Son of God in her living room. And she was tending to things that seemed important to her. Comparatively speaking, were not at all.
That's a mistake that I make almost every day. We get so caught up in the here and now that we fail to deal with the eternal. The things that last forever.
We're overloaded with commitments. We don't care if they pinch each other in our giving. If you want to know what your priorities are, and we often say we're here in church, and so God's our top priority.
Look at two books that you have. A calendar book and your checkbook. And see whether God fits into even the top ten as far as how important He is to our lives.
Martha needed to realize that the Son of God was in there speaking the words of truth. He alone had the words of life. And she was missing it all because she was trying to face the launch at the time.
We seem to be overloaded with all of these commitments that we make. We commit ourselves to go here, go there. We fail to deal with the eternal.
The things that will last forever and ever. There are so many demands on our time. So many good things that need to be done.
But there's just too many hours in this coming year. There's just so many of them. And we want to make the most of every opportunity.
So what are we supposed to do? I would point out that any of you remember Sears and Roebuck catalogs. Any of you remember those? I mean, I remember as a kid. We did this huge, big thing.
It was right before Christmas. And the three of us had to be joined by Brother Timothy. And we would sit there and we would spend away hours trying to figure out what toys we were wanting.
And circling them. You know, fat chance that we were going to get them. But it was a place to be detached from a thought at the time that appeased us.
But Sears and Roebuck catalogs, they have articles. And you can imagine. Let's just take, for instance, an earwax picker.
Now, Sears had one that was very functional. That model was called Sears Good model. And it would do the job.
That's exactly what it did. It wasn't any flashy thing. But it would do that.
And then there was Sears Best model. The Best model had an option that the Good model didn't have. It was a model that Brad shot a little warm shoot of water in your ear to help the process of cleaning out the earwax.
But then there was also Sears Very Best. Man, this thing was way ahead of its time. It streamed music into your ear.
It did it all. It did the whole ball of wax. Anyway.
The whole ball of wax. That's pretty good. I'm entertaining myself.
But anyway, all I want to point out in all that is this. Sears never made you buy a choice or make a choice between bad and good. It was always a choice between good, better, or best.
God asks us to consider in life choosing the very best. Many times we'll go ahead and be situated with things that are in and of themselves not that bad. How many times do we find ourselves pulled away from church because of something that you had to make a choice of? The kids, the sports teams, or whatever it might be.
And isn't that bad? Not necessarily, but is it bad that we're making choices many times that we're teaching to our children that other things take priority over the church of Jesus Christ? It's important that we recognize that we do that very often. We need to start thinking, are we going to choose the very best? And the final thing is this. Understand what the Lord's will is.
Don't be so conformed to the world. As a matter of fact, the Bible says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may know what God's perfect will is. His good and perfect will.
Have you ever thought, what's God's will for me this New Year? Is there anything that needs to be adjusted? Is there anything that should be different? Is there anything that's robbing me from trying to make a choice or two for God's very best for my life? Does He want your mind to be saturated with worries and anxieties that you can't think spiritual thoughts? Do you think He wants your caliber so crowded that you don't have time for the very best things? What do you think God's will for you this year is? You know, we're in church here, so we'll obviously say, God's number one. He's my top priority. And we might fool ourselves sometimes in thinking that.
Reminded of a sixth grade Sunday school teacher. She had a little book that was little quizzes for her kids, and they were so painfully simple. The answers were Moses, Jonah, Jesus, whatever it might be.
So she thought she'd throw them a curveball. They'd done so well, had a couple, three of the others, and she finally got them. She said, I want to ask you, what is a small animal with a bushy tail that runs in the forest, hides in a nest for the winter, and is brown? The kids kept on thinking and thinking and thinking.
I love said, I think it's a squirrel, but I'm going to stick with Jesus. You know, that's how many times deep our submission is. How deep are we going to go with Jesus? What good or what is most important in our lives? Many Christians say to God is that we lie to ourselves when we look at the amount of energy that we've expended on him.
Therefore, when Sunday rolls around, as a result of saying he's first, it doesn't make any difference. The top priority for you and your family should be that I'm going to take him first. In the long run, won't you think that in death, you answered, you hoped that God would see that you took him first? You also need to schedule some time to pray and to read some work.
I had a leadership meeting with my elders this morning at seven o'clock. We were going around making some confessions of our weaknesses. And I noticed that there were three of the elders there.
You know what one of their weaknesses was? They don't read their Bibles. Elders in the church, they don't read their Bibles. And let me tell you, there's a confession time here.
And we don't read very much at all, do we? Or we might read a sports illustrated or something like that. But as far as reading much, that's a hard discipline for us. And yet, that has to be one of the things the Bible says to study to show yourself through.
We've got to work in the needs, not be ashamed. God is inviting the word of truth. We need to pray and to read his word.
That needs to be a priority for us. We also need to spend time with our families. Janie and I used to walk.
I mean, my health is not such that I can do it anymore. But we'd walk around the big block from our house. We'd go right past the literally gardens that are now empty.
They're planted in a different part of town. We both remember the times that we sat there in the great church and yelled and screamed and carried on for our kids and supported them in the little league. And now those diamonds are soft.
I think, where did that time go? Was it that we were there and full of youth and vigor and yelling and screaming? Janie really making an idiot out of herself. Oh, it is sad. It is sad.
Why? It gets away from us. It really does. It gets away from us.
Unless we're cautious, we're going to find out that it passes us by. It seems that we live today in two ways. The two greatest enemies of time were these things we did in the past.
We sat around and regret them and regret them and regret them. Or anxiety about what's going to happen in the future. In fact, many of us are engaged in a little game of I wish.
When you're a little kid, I wish I could go to school. When you're in school, I wish I could be in junior high. When you're in junior high, I wish I could be in senior high.
When I'm in senior high, I wish I could get my driver's license and drive. The list goes on and on and on. We seldom live today, here in this moment.
We find ourselves wishing our lives away. A little gal by the name of Nathan Starr was interviewed once. She was 85 years old then.
Just a spring chicken. Young girl. From Louisville, Kentucky, she provided these poetic words.
She said, I had my life to live over again. I dare to make more mistakes the next time. I relax.
I deliver up. I'd be sillier than I've been on this trip. I would have taken fewer things seriously.
I would have taken more chances. I'd eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have made more actual troubles but fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I'm one of those people who is sensible in saying hour after hour, day after day, who ought to have had my moments if I had to do it over again, though I've had more of them. In fact, I try to have nothing else. Just moments.
One after another. Instead of looking so many years ahead each day, I've been that one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, or even a coca parachute. By the end of the weekend, I've traveled much more.
If I had to live my life over, I'd stay barefoot earlier in the spring, stay that way earlier in the fall. I would do more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds.
And I'd pick more daisies. You know, someone said, life is what happens to you while you're making plans to do something else. If there was any way that I could impress upon you, how quickly it passes, and how the importance of seizing this moment, right here, right now.
Father, thank you for the time that you've granted us up to this point. We realize that's why we're here. We realize our tomorrows are a blessing from you as well.
I just pray that you would be with all of us, that we would not be a people put off, the things that should be taken care of, that we reorder our priorities. Father, help us to thank you again for this time we get. I pray in Jesus' name.
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