Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity
Sermons. This week we are continuing our sermon
series called A Matter of Time, where we're talking
about what time is, why it matters, and how we
can make use of it. We all have the same 24 hours
in the day, but it never really feels like enough.
We always feel rushed. Things are out of balance.
We don't know how to best spend our time. So
in today's sermon, Rob is going to unpack for
us what it means to make the most of our time.
How do we make more time? How do we set our priorities
so that we have enough time for everything? Today's
readings from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter
6, verses 25 to 34. Therefore I tell you, do
not worry about your life, what you will eat
or drink. or about your body, what you will wear.
It's not life more than food, and the body more
than clothes. Look at the birds of the air. They
do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and
yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you
not much more valuable than they are? Can any
one of you, by wandering, add a single hour to
your life? And why do you worry about clothes?
See how the flowers of the field grow. They do
not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even
Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like
one of these. If that is how God clothes the
grass of the field, why is here today and tomorrow
is thrown into the fire? Will he not much more
clothe you, you with little faith? So do not
worry, saying, what shall we eat? O what we shall
drink, O what shall we wear? For the pagans run
after these things, and your heavenly Father
knows that you need them. But seek first his
kingdom and his righteousness, and all these
things will be given to you as well. Therefore,
do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will
worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble
of its own. The word of the Lord. If you were
here last week, you know that we kicked off a
brand new teaching series, which we're calling
A Matter of Time. And if you missed last week,
then hey, you know, don't worry, you dodged a
bullet, because what we basically talked about
last week is that, hey, you're going to die.
And your time is running out, and it's running
out faster than you think. And yet, rather than
deny that fact, rather than avoid it, the Bible
tells us that wisdom is found, and wisdom begins
when people realize that their days are numbered,
and they make the most of the time that they
have. So that's what we learned last week. Now,
this week, we're moving on to something a little
different. We're going to talk about making time.
And you might say, Rob, I don't think you can
make time. In fact, didn't last week, we learned
that nobody can make time. You've only got a
certain amount of time and that's it. And that
is absolutely true. But we use this phrase, making
time, in a different way, don't we? We say, I
want to make time for things that are important.
Or I want to make time for, you know, the things
that are like valuable in our lives. And so,
yeah, making time is just another way of saying,
you know, prioritizing certain things in our
lives. Now, I want to begin by showing you a
little demonstration up here. And some of you
will have seen this demonstration before. In
fact, there was a leadership guru by the name
of Stephen Covey who wrote this book called The
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And
he died in 2012. But back in the day, he used
to make the rounds and do conferences and workshops
all the time. Some of you maybe even were at
a conference with Stephen Covey when he came.
through. And anyway, Stephen Covey, he had like
this little illustration that he did to talk
about, you know, the importance of prioritizing
and making the most of our time. And it went
a little something like this. He said, you know,
imagine that this jar is your life. This is the
time that you have in your life. It might be,
you know, the time you have this week, might
be the time you have today, might be the time
you have this year, might be the time you have
for your whole lifetime. I don't know. But you
can imagine that the jar is your time, the time
available to you. And then he had a bunch of
small rocks and he would, you know, dramatically
pour the rocks. in and and he would say like
these small rocks they represent all the the
kind of things that you do with your time and
some of those things might be total time wasters
you know you waste your time others of these
things might be good or fun or there's nothing
really wrong with them but all of these little
rocks even though they take up your time the
truth is none of them are, you know, ultimate
things. So these rocks, you know, I would say
for most of us, you know, half of these rocks
are just social media. right it's just all the
time we spend you know scrolling through instagram
or scrolling through uh tick tocks or whatever
the case may be or maybe it's netflix you know
with the amount of television and the streaming
media that we watch you know that's it's you
know again it's not like it's horrible but just
it's not an ultimately you know important thing
in our lives you know maybe it's surfing the
internet maybe it's online shopping maybe it's
gaming i know you know a lot of people spend
hours and hours and hours gaming and gaming.
Maybe it's watching sports, watching hockey,
watching baseball, watching FIFA World Cup is
coming up, watching the NBA playoffs that are
on right now. Others, you know, again, and I
don't want you to get the wrong idea. These things
might, they're not bad things. They just take
up time and they're not ultimate things. So maybe
it's like you're one of those guys who just likes
to tinker in the garage for hours and hours and
hours. Takes a lot of time, right? That goes
in this jar. Or maybe you like to like play rounds
and rounds of golf all the time. Beautiful, wonderful,
but you know, takes up a lot of time. Maybe you
like to keep your lawn like really, really manicured
and perfectly cut. And hey, that's not bad. None
of these things are necessarily bad, but they
just aren't that important. Those are the little
rocks, okay? Then there are the big rocks, right?
The big rocks, these are the things that actually
matter to you and matter to you a lot. If I was
to ask you, you know, what matters most to you,
you would say things like, well, if you're a
parent, for example, you would say. my kids.
So if I have only so much time in my jar... I
want to make sure I put time in there for my
kids. Or if you're married, you would say, well,
yeah, I have to spend some time with my spouse.
And so you put that in there. Or you would say
something, oh, maybe you're not married, but
you have other important relationships in your
life, you know, friendships. Yeah, those have
to go in the jar because those are really important
to you. Maybe you've got a job that is really
important and life -giving to you and you want
to prioritize that. So yeah, the job's got to
go in there. Or you're a student, you're at school
and you're... Studies are important and getting
good grades is like essential. So you gotta fit
that in there. You gotta make that fit in there
somewhere. And then, of course, a lot of people
would say, well, their spiritual life is important
to them. So that needs to go in the jar. Or other
things like your mental health or your physical
health or eating well or exercising and all that
stuff. So these are the big rocks. These are
the things that actually do matter and the things
that matter most to you. And the thing is, here
is the problem. And this is kind of... Again,
Stephen Covey was the one that did this. When
it's all said and done, you look at it, and a
lot of people say, you know, I can't fit all
that into my week. I can't fit all that into
my year. I can't fit all that into my life. There's
just not enough time, we say, in my day, my week,
my month, my year, my life. And so we actually
end up not spending. enough time with our kids
and we end up not spending enough time with our
spouse and we end up neglecting our health and
we end up neglecting our our spiritual life and
all these other things that are important and
here's you know at the end we we look back on
our life and we we say oh shoot you know there
just wasn't enough time And one of the reasons
that happens is, well, there's a couple reasons,
but one is that the urgent will always crowd
out what is important, right? There is no shortage
of things that urgently come at you every day.
Every time your phone dings, notification, notification,
notification, it's in your face, it's coming
at you over and over again. The phone rings,
someone's knocking at the door, right? urgent
things. If you're not disciplined in choosing
what's actually important, then yeah, all those
urgent things are just going to overwhelm you.
Whatever grabs your attention is going to fill
your day. Another way to kind of put this is
if you don't choose your priorities, somebody
else will choose them for you. Your phone will
choose for you. Your boss will choose for you.
You know, advertisers will choose for you. Your
friends, you know, that seem to have way too
much time on their hands doing all sorts of crazy
things. They will keep inviting you and they
will ultimately choose how you spend your time.
So the whole point of Stephen Covey's demonstration
is basically to say this. Stop and ask yourself,
what are your big rocks? Right? In other words,
what are the things in your life that are really...
and truly important. Because if your priorities
are not clear, then something's going to suffer.
And what usually suffers? Your relationships
suffer. Your health suffers. Your spiritual life
suffers. And the sad thing is then you can come
to the end of your life or end of some season
of your life, and you can look back and realize,
wow, man, you know, I wish I could go back. I
wish I could go back and do that again differently
because, you know, I put the wrong things. in
first and i didn't make room and i didn't make
time for what really were the important things
to me now no shame here right because we've all
been there we have all done this but here's the
thing that that stephen covey does in his demonstration
he says Think, what if you did it a different
way? What if instead you put the things that
are most important to you into your time first?
So you, yeah, you put in your relationships first.
You put in your faith, you know, your relationship
to church and your spiritual life. You put in,
you know, your school and your studies and your
marriage and all those things. What if you put
all those things in first? What would happen
then? And then in very dramatic fashion, he takes
these other things. Let's see. Come on, baby.
There you go. Room to spare. Room to spare in
there, right? And so the point that he's, yeah,
there is room to spare. Look at that. And someone
even told me after the service that sometimes
what Stephen Covey would do next is he would
take like a pitcher of water and he would dump
that in there. And that would, you know, fill
up all the other gaps too. Whereas if you did
it the other way, it just didn't fit. The point
he is trying to make is this. Put... the big
rocks in first put the the things that are really
important make time for them right because the
secret the secret to getting more done in your
life is not just to keep adding more i gotta
get more done but actually it's about prioritizing
correctly and and when we change our priorities
and we decide ahead of time what is actually
most important then we actually find there's
more room in our life than we thought for some
of those other things. Or another way to put
it is, we actually don't have a time problem,
he says. The problem we have is around prioritizing.
We have a prioritizing problem. You don't just
naturally drift toward the things that are most
important. You have to schedule it. You have
to prioritize it. It makes me think of that great
line from the book of Ecclesiastes. Yes, yes,
there is a time. For everything, everything important.
But it comes down to prioritizing, not just adding
more, but prioritizing more in our life. Now,
I could end the sermon there and go home and,
you know, you know. That wouldn't be a complete
loss because there's something important for
us. And we could all benefit from going home
and writing down on a piece of paper, you know,
what are the most important things in our lives
and how can we make sure that we put them first
and prioritize them. But we are not here today
at Trinity Streetsville to hear about the gospel
according to Stephen Covey. We are here to hear
about the gospel according to Jesus Christ. And
Jesus actually has something really important.
important to add to this and to say about this
and we cannot miss it and that is this you know
throughout the whole Bible we are told something
very important about this process. And that is,
we are supposed to, as followers of Jesus, we
are supposed to put God in the jar first. God
needs to be both the first rock and the biggest
rock in our lives. In other words, God is meant
to be the number one. priority in your life and
it's interesting because there's a few places
in the bible where god is even referred to as
a rock like in psalm 18 for who is god beside
the lord and who is the rock except our god now
the thing is if you put god first the same kind
of thing happens here everything else finds its
place around him that God rock, when it goes
in first, it takes priority over everything else.
And it becomes like the center around which everything
else in our lives ultimately fits. Now, the Bible
never uses the word prioritize. And in fact,
I don't even think the word priority or prioritize
is maybe even in the Bible. But it uses another
word to talk about, I think, the very same thing.
And that word is the word to seek. To seek. And
when you hear the word seek, you might think
of, oh, you know, that's what you do when you
lose something and you have to go find it. Like,
I lost my keys. I'm trying to seek them. Or you
play hide and seek. But the Bible actually has
a much deeper way of understanding that word
seek. In fact, the Greek word for seek is zetao.
And it means not just to, like, find something
that's lost. It means to pursue something. It
means to aim your life at something. It means
to orient your decisions around something. So
when Jesus says, seek first, zeteo first, the
kingdom of God, he is saying, he is saying, orient
your life, prioritize your life, pursue God.
But Jesus actually goes even a little further.
He says, seek first. So he like emphasized seek
first. And that's another Greek word, proton.
So if you put those two words together, zetao
and proton, seek first, seek first. And if you
were to kind of translate that, I think into
like just plain old English with something like
this, make the kingdom of God your primary pursuit.
Make God. And God's way, the kingdom, and God's
plans, the kingdom, God's commandments, the kingdom,
God's vision for the world and for you, make
that the big rock in your life, the thing around
which you organize and arrange everything else.
Seek first the kingdom of God. Now, it isn't
just Jesus who says this. You look through the
Bible again, Psalm 63. You, God, are my God.
Earnestly, I seek you. Earnestly, I prioritize
you. Earnestly, I pursue you. I'm not, you know,
just going to find some place in my life to tuck
you, God. No, I'm going to put you at the center
of my life. Earnestly, I am pursuing you. Or
how about Proverbs 28? Those who seek. The Lord
understand what is right. That's a beautiful
thing to say because what it basically means
is when you seek God, when you put him first
in your life, then he begins to shape your understanding.
He begins to shape your thoughts. He begins to
shape your decisions. He begins to shape your
priorities and your thinking and your whole life.
Seek him first. Put him first into the jar. Or
how about this one? Psalm 119. I seek you with
all my heart. Question, how many things can you
seek with all your heart? One. If it's all your
heart, you can only seek one thing that way.
And the psalmist says, make sure it is God who's
got that priority and that place in your life.
Just Him. Just God. Now, you might say, well...
But what about all the other important things
in my life? And of course, there are other important
things in your life. And even Jesus acknowledged
that. Jesus says there's things like, what are
we going to eat? That's kind of important. that's
a rock. It needs to go in your jar somewhere.
You got to eat, right? Or what are we going to
drink? That's important. It's got to go in there.
What about what we're going to wear? Of course,
that's important too. It also has to go in there.
And we spend a lot of time and a lot of energy
worrying about those things. What Jesus is saying,
he is not saying that those things are bad. He's
not saying, don't put those rocks in. You don't
need those. He is just saying, don't put those
rocks in first. Don't make them the priority.
He even says that's what Gentiles do. That's
what pagans do. And a Gentile or a pagan, just
so you know, they kind of sound like really scary
words, but basically it's just a person who lives
as if God doesn't exist. Meaning there are some
people out there. Maybe there's even some people
here today. Maybe it's even us from time to time
who put food and clothing and security and material
things ahead of God. fill our time jar with material
stuff first we said let me get these things look
after first let me get these all in there and
then maybe at the end i can fit god in there
somewhere right but these are all important things
and jesus knows these are important things all
he's saying is zetao proton seek first the kingdom
of god well when you do that that's when All
these other little pebbles, they somehow seem
to find a place, right? All these things will
be given to you. All what you need, your food,
your shelter, your drink, your clothes, your
security, your material needs, they get looked
after. When you seek God first, everything else...
finds its place. But if you don't seek God first
thing, even God gets bumped out of your time
jar. So like last week, we talked about, man,
time is short. You don't know how many days,
how many years you've got. What Jesus is saying,
no matter how many days or weeks or years you
have, put God first in your day. Put God first
in your week. Put God first in your year and
in your whole life. Let him become the center
around which everything else orbits and is organized.
Now, the question is, yes, but how? I hope you're
nodding your head. Yes, Rob, I agree. This is
absolutely true. I have to do this. How do I
actually put God first? How do I make sure he
is a priority in my life? The answer is there's
a hundred ways. There's a thousand ways you can
do that. I thought, though, today I can give
you three ideas, three places to get started.
And maybe all three apply to you. Maybe two do.
Maybe one do. Whatever. You can decide. But here
is one way to make sure that God is the first
and biggest rock in your jar, and that is to
give God the first part of your day. When you
get up in the morning, somehow find a way to
say to God, God, the priority of this day. This
day I'm about to enter into is you. And so I'm
putting you first. I'm going to give you the
first few minutes, the first 15 minutes, the
first half hour of my day. And that might look
like, you know, saying prayers at the beginning
of your day, the first part of your day, reading
your Bible at the beginning of the day, the first
part of your day. sitting in silence, doing some
journaling, or doing all those things, you know,
prayer, Bible reading, silence, journaling, whatever
it is, it's a way to say yes to God at the beginning
of your day. And I will say, and many of you
know this, I'm just telling you stuff you already
know, that if you do that, if you say yes to
God at the beginning of the day, it is so much
easier to say no to other things That come at
you throughout the day. Things that are far less
important. I will be honest with you. When I
have done a good job of this. And I haven't always
done a good job of this. And I still don't always
do a good job at this. But when I do. Put God
first in my day. Before the work starts. Before
the phone calls start. Before the meetings start.
Before people are knocking at my door. Then I
always feel like. Today was way. More productive.
I don't know if that's your experience, but I
just feel like throughout that day, I moved a
different way. Like if distractions came at me,
I was able to quickly figure out, is this an
important distraction? Something I need to deal
with? Or is this unimportant? Something I don't
need to deal with? You know, and at the end of
the day, if you didn't get everything else, if
you didn't get everything on your to -do list
done, there's something about since you started
your day with God at the center, that at the
end of the day, if you didn't get everything
done, you can say, I'm okay with that. I'm okay
with that. Obviously, I wasn't supposed to get
that done. But what I did do is I put God first
and all that other stuff. Well, as Jesus said,
tomorrow, let tomorrow worry about itself. Okay,
so that's the first thing. If you want to prioritize
God in your life, put God at the start of your
day. Give him the first part of your day. Now,
here's the second one. You can also give God
the first day of your week. You know, what's
the first day of the week? Sunday. It's the first
day of the week. I always felt as a kid, Monday
was the first day. We always said it was the
weekend, right? So Saturday and Sunday were the
end of the week. Monday was the beginning of
the week. But no, no, look at any calendar. Sunday
is the first day of the week. And in fact, it's
the day of resurrection, right? Acts 20 says
that the early church met. On the first day of
the week on Sunday. So just like giving God the
first part of your day helps you prioritize all
that's coming at you that day. Giving God, making
time for God on the first day of your week is
a way of prioritizing God as you head off into
a brand new, what is sure to be busy, busy week.
What I'm getting at here is prioritizing. Sunday
worship is prioritizing what we're doing right
here and right now. And so, yeah, I'm kind of
preaching to the choir. Yeah, you're all here.
Yeah, you've done it. Hooray. But I want to say
that actually something I've noticed at Trinity
and even something that we track here at Trinity
with our software, our fancy software, is that
even though on any given Sunday there might be
three or four hundred people that come to Trinity,
You know, the Sunday before, there would have
also been 300 or 400 people, but they weren't
all the same people. It was like a different
group of 300 or 400 people. Yeah, there were
some people that were there. And then the week
after, again, it's like a different group, a
different mix of 300 or 400 people. So it's like,
yeah, we always seem to have 300 or 400 people,
but it's not the same 300 or 400 people. And
it actually makes you think, my goodness. My
goodness, if everybody who called Trinity their
spiritual home, their home church, if we all
said every week, every week, I'm going to put
God first in my week and I'm going to, you know,
prioritize going to church, we would probably
have to add like a... a third service or something
like that to get everybody in. It's just a funny
thing to think about. I don't want you to like
get the wrong ideas. This isn't like the pastor
getting mad because there aren't enough people
in church, right? But yeah, the author of Hebrews
says, hey, don't give up meeting together. You
know, don't get out of that rhythm. It's about
putting God first in your life. First in your
jar and starting the week orienting your heart
and your mind and your time with God first. So,
you know, worship isn't a leftover time, right?
It's seek God first time. Because whatever happens
in the rest of this week, whatever is going to
happen the rest of your week, you cannot control.
But you can control this prioritizing of putting
God first and worshiping. At the beginning of
the week. Okay? So, give God the first part of
your day. Give God the first day of your week.
And then the third thing you can do to prioritize
God and say, I want you to go in my time jar
first, is, and this one you might be like, what
is that? That seems different. But it's give
God the first portion of your resources. Give
God, you know, the first part of your income.
Now you might say, Rob, that doesn't even have
to do with time. Uh -uh. I beg to differ. Because
what? is your income. Your income is essentially
your time that has been converted into dollars
and cents, right? You gave your time to your
employer, they gave you dollars and cents in
exchange for your time. So to give God the first
part of your income is just another way of giving
away your time, or it's actually giving prioritizing
your time for God. So it's a way that even while
you're at work, you can be putting God first.
I'm putting you first in my life. You know, the
way we spend our money is one of the clearest
indicators of what is really important to us.
I mean, let's be honest. If you're not sure today,
you know, what do I prioritize in my life? you
probably just got to go home and look at your,
like, MasterCard bill, and you can figure out,
yeah, well, that's what's most important. That's
where I'm putting all my energy and my time and
my money. The Bible says, hey, here's an idea.
Give God the first part of that. Give God, in
those days, the first fruits that come off your
field. But for us, give God the first portion
of your resource, the first portion of your income,
because that is just another way to say, God,
your kingdom comes first. God, your mission comes
first. God, your priorities have first place
in my life. It's like I said before, don't choose
your priorities. Someone else is going to choose
them for you. And if you don't choose to like
decide what you're going to do with your... income
or your resources, believe me, there's always
something that'll come along and it'll be gone
before you know it, right? So we need to put
God first, not because you feel pressurized by
the minister, not because we're at the mercy
of the moment, but we have decided ahead of time
to put that rock in first. And I would say, there
are people here at Trinity who do this all the
time. And if you were to ask them, oh, but what
is that like? What is it like to give God the
first part of your income? You know what they
would probably say? You know what? They would
probably say this. You know, my Heavenly Father
seems to know all the other things that I need,
and He provides them for us. You know, we're
not in want, we're not in lack. We're seeking
God's kingdom with our resources, and God is
making sure we've got enough to eat, enough to
drink, enough to wear, and all that stuff. So,
I don't want anyone to hear me wrong today. There
are a lot of good things in life. A lot of good
things, right? Careers, experiences. Your security,
right? Your family, your friendships, your hobbies,
all your dreams. We're not trying to say that
any of those things are bad. In fact, many of
those things are really good gifts from God.
The point is simply this. Don't seek them first.
Don't make them the big rock in your time jar.
Don't make them the first rock in your time jar.
Because when you do, you're going to crowd out.
what matters most, and you will even crowd out
God. And remember this, Jesus didn't just teach
this, he lived it. Jesus put his heavenly father
first in everything he did. God was Jesus's big
rock. I mean, Jesus was the rock, but God was
his big rock, right? He wasn't distracted by
other things. He didn't let other people determine
what his agenda was for the day. He put God first
in everything he did. And because of that, even
though he only had like a few years, three short
years of ministry, he changed the world in that
time. Why? Because he sought first. God's kingdom.
But, and here's the part that kind of is mind
-blowing. It wasn't just that Jesus put God first.
Jesus also put me first. He also put you first.
He put others first. His life, did you notice
how Jesus was always putting others first? You
know, people in the world who the world had no
time for. It seemed like Jesus had time for them.
He put them first. In his death, he put you first,
right? Jesus did not choose his own survival
over your forgiveness. He chose forgiveness over
his own life. He put us first. And in his resurrection,
he put you first. He rose, why? To give you new
life. God was his biggest rock, absolutely, but
you were also his priority. And so here's the
question. If you were his priority, why wouldn't
he be your priority? Right? God is not going
to force his way into your time jar. That's not
how God works. He's not going to break down the
wall. Revelation 3 .20 says, Behold, I stand
at the door and knock. Not I'm going to kick
down the door and force my way into your life.
No, he's knocking. And he's saying simply this
at the door. He's saying, I would like to be
in your life. More than that, I would like to
be the first thing in your life. More than that,
I would like to be the center of your life around
which everything else is arranged. So that's
the question. The question is quite simple. What's
going in first? It's going to be the big rock.
And what would it look like for you to put God
first? First in your day? First in your week?
First in your resources? Because what you seek
shapes everything else. And when God is first,
everything else finds its place. Thanks be to
God. Amen. Thanks for tuning in to this week's
episode of Trinity Sermons. This sermon was recorded
at Trinity Church Streetsville in Mississauga,
Ontario on May 10th, 2026.