What Do You Pursue?

Awesome. Good morning. Thank you all so much for being here today. Appreciate all the lively chatter. There we go. Awesome. Welcome. You’re making a great investment by being here today. Thank you so much. For our guests and returning guests, want to thank you again just for being here. So happy to see y’all. And you are doing a great thing prioritizing your spiritual health by being here on a Sunday morning. You could be doing any number of things. So, choosing to spend some of your time right here, we take—I—we’re just honored by that. We take a lot of joy in that. I want to say thank you.

I want to say thank you, too, to a particular group of folks that really—they—they show up all the time way more often than what we want. But Miss Becky not only leads a bereavement team, that’s a group of folks that help put together a meal anytime somebody from the church family passes away. We held a funeral service for them. Miss Becky and the bereavement committee got a—a note from the family of Don and Debbie Pastel Smith on behalf of Reggie and Miss Anne who had passed away. This is what it says: “Miss Becky and bereavement committee, and by extension anybody that brought food for the meal, we want to thank you for the beautiful dinner given for Reggie and for our family in memory of Anne Pastel. Your love and fellowship was truly appreciated. Love, the family.” Thank y’all so much for that.

You know, one of the—the—the greatest things that Jesus did in His earthly ministry was He ate with people. So much so that His opponents, His detractors said, “All Jesus does is eat and drink. Who is this guy?” And I’m convinced one of the greatest things that we can do when someone else is going through a hard time is just by sharing some food with them. So, thank you all so much for doing that and providing that space for them.

If you are new with us, we’re going to do something that you may not have experienced before. Every Sunday morning, we just tuck a little bit of time in the worship service just for prayer. We believe that if we do work in our strength then we get what we can produce which doesn’t last, but if we ask God to move then we get what God can do which will never be undone, never be thwarted. So we pray every Sunday morning, and this month we’ve been praying in line with those videos for global missionaries as well as our Lottie Moon Christmas offering. Thank you all so much for everybody that’s given to that offering. You know, our goal was 3500—just $3,500—that would go straight to support missionaries serving overseas in places like Tokyo, Japan. Y’all crushed that. Want to thank you for that. So, we want to continue to pray for that offering as well, pray for global missions. So, what I want to invite you to do is just grab a neighbor and pray out loud for a few moments, asking God to bless that money that we’re raising alongside other churches, and ask God to bless the work of His missionaries around the world. Y’all take it away. I’ll put a bow on it here in a moment.

Holy Spirit. God, I want to say thank you so much for the time that my wife and I got to serve overseas, Lord, just being ambassadors of a new kingdom. Lord, not America, not the Southern Baptist Convention, but the kingdom of heaven. Lord, I want to thank you for that. Thank you for bringing us into that work. Lord, thank you for all the—the missionaries that you have overseas right now. Lord, specifically those that are in Japan, God, I’ve read, I’ve heard that Japan is incredibly tough soil. Lord, that for someone to choose to follow Jesus means choosing against their entire family. It means choosing against everything in their culture. It—it’s truly difficult. And Lord, there’s some missionaries there that just need some encouragement today. God, as we’ve gone through the holiday season here, Lord, I got to spend a couple days gathered with my extended family. They didn’t get that, Lord. They’re still doing the work over in Japan or other places around the world. And I—I pray that you would encourage them, please. Lord, thank you for our church’s generosity to the Lottie Moon offering. Father, thank you that we exceeded our goal. Thank you, Lord, for the sacrifices that were made by our members to give to that. I—I trust, God, your word, which says that you honor our sacrifices done for you. I trust you’re going to do something with that. I trust that you’re going to use that money and you’re going to accomplish something around the world for the sake of the gospel that we would never get to experience or enjoy otherwise. Lord, I’m asking you to do something right now that would be beautiful, be powerful. We’d all walk away saying, “Surely God was in that place.” I’m praying you get a hold of me. Father, you and I, we have worked together this past week to develop this message. I trust, God, that you’re going to use it. Please get me out of the way, Lord. Anything that’s not helpful, anything that’s not edifying, I pray that it would be quickly forgotten. But Lord, anything that you want for us to take away, anything, Father, that needs to stick in our shoe that we wouldn’t be able to ignore, I pray that you would lodge that in our souls. For anybody here, Lord, that doesn’t yet know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, I pray you get a hold of them. I pray as I share the gospel, Father, that they would be not just intrigued or interested, but they would be, Father, that they’d be like people starving and thirsting in the desert coming across an oasis. May the living water of the Holy Spirit be poured into a heart for the first time today. God, we love you. Thank you for loving us. It’s in your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Well, I want to say thank you again for everybody being here today. Your very presence in this room today tells me something about you. Aside from the fact that you might have some nice clothes that you want to wear for other people to be able to see—I’m just kidding—you probably want to pursue God. I think you wouldn’t be here right now unless there was something in your heart, in your mind that made you say, “I want God. This Jesus thing, this Christianity thing, there might be something there for me. I want that.” Or maybe you’ve been walking with God for a long time and you’re like, “Man, I’m going to dutifully show up for church every single Sunday because I know that is where I need to be.” We want to pursue God.

But man, if you are like me, it is easy to get distracted, right? It is so easy in your desire for more of God for the distractions of life and the world and our souls to kind of get in the way and run interference on that whole thing. Like even the Christmas season, we just went through a couple weeks of the most heightened intensity and interest in Jesus that our calendar and culture affords. Yet, who of us went through Christmas undistracted? You weren’t focused on the presents. You weren’t focused on the family gatherings. You weren’t focused on the beautiful decorations. Your mind was squarely on the baby in the manger. Said nobody.

Man, there’s so many things that distract us. I think about busyness of life and man, we just get to this place where it’s like, “I just got to get through the day. I’ve got to get to the next meeting. I’ve got to get to the next meal. I’ve got to get the kids to the next thing. I’ve even got to get to the next church event. I’ve got to do the next thing.” We’re just so busy, we’re distracted. Or for others of us, it’s our comfort. And it’s like, man, I just want things. I just want to live my life my way and that gets in the way of having more of Jesus right now. I’m hungry. I’m literally—I’m hearing my stomach growl and I’m getting distracted. I’m praying with poor Michaela and I don’t say amen. My stomach just kind of gurgles it out.

You know, for others of us, it’s not busy or comfort. It’s man, it’s like pleasure and success. It’s like I just got to get more and more. I got to get the next promotion, the next accomplishment, the next toy, the next treasure, the next luxury. You’re too distracted by the things of this world to even focus on God for very long at all. Others of us, it’s doubt. You might want to pursue God. You might say, “There might be something in all of this,” but you can’t deal with your doubts or you can’t put them aside long enough to give God much of a chance for him to advocate for himself. Sometimes, man, it’s just our pride. I don’t need God. Life goes pretty good when I live my way. Why would I want to submit to a higher being I can’t see and follow rules when, man, my own control and my own wisdom has gotten me pretty far? We’ve all got barriers to God. We’ve all got hurdles that we have to get across in order to pursue Him. We’ve all got something or many things that make it hard for us to pursue Him.

In light of that, I want to invite you to open up to Luke 2:41-50. As we close out our Advent series, as we’ve just been looking at the story of Jesus and His birth in this passage, as we wrap up Advent and as we wrap up 2025, we’re going to look at a moment in the life of Jesus where He pursued God, where it was so clear that God was His chief motivation, His most important thing to have, and why He did it, why He could live that type of life.

My main hope this morning is that above all you would pursue God. That’s the main point. If you’re a notetaker, you see those blanks on your sermon reflection questions or your sheet there. That’s the main thing I want you to take away from this. Above all, pursue God. I just want to say it one more time. Above everything, pursue God.

There will be so many things in 2026 that will call for your attention. The next success, the next disappointment, the next opportunity, the next failed expectation, the next pleasure, the next comfort. And what I want to say to you this morning, above everything, above all, pursue God.

Above everything, Jesus pursued God. But that began with His parents, not with Him. Look at verses 41 and 42 with me. Every year Jesus’s parents traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. When He was 12 years old, they went up according to the custom of the festival.

Right off the bat, we look and we see that in the life of Jesus, there is a rhythm of pursuing God. A rhythm of pursuing God. It was all centered around these festivals that the Jewish people were observing. This one in particular is the Passover festival. It’s okay if you aren’t super familiar with what that means. In the life of the nation of Israel, they had these spiritual high water marks, these incredible moments where they saw God deliver the people through what seemed to be impending and certain doom. One of which is the moment of the Passover.

So you have the people of Israel, they are enslaved in the land of Egypt. They had gotten there through God’s providence and His kindness. But at this particular moment, they were enslaved. And the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, was oppressing them. He’s got his thumb on them. And they are beginning to call out, “God, what are you doing? God, will you take care of us?” So God sends them a guy named Moses. Moses would be the mouthpiece of God to Pharaoh. He would be the human deliverer for God’s people out of slavery in Egypt.

Now, God takes Pharaoh and He takes the people of Egypt through a series of judgments called plagues. There’s 10 of them. The last one, God tells Moses to tell Israel and Pharaoh and all the Egyptians that He will take the life of the firstborn in every family unless they take the blood of a spotless lamb and they paint it on the doorpost of their home. If they would trust in the spotless blood sacrifice, then God would deliver them. He and the angel of death would pass over their house and move to the next one.

And God is going through the entire land of Egypt on a particular night. And He is looking for which families were going to obey Him, which families were going to trust in His method of deliverance. The ones that did, He would pass over them. The ones that did not, including even the house or the houses of the Israelites, anybody that did not obey God, God would take the life of the firstborn son.

The people of Israel, most of them do this. Even some of the people of Egypt do this. And God uses that Passover moment as part of how He would deliver them out of the land of Egypt. After the fact, God would tell His people to remember what He did. This is Deuteronomy chapter 16. This is one of the books that Moses, the leader at that time, wrote. Deuteronomy 16:16. This is God to the people of Israel. All of your males, all of the men are to appear three times a year before the Lord your God in the place He chooses at the festival of unleavened bread, the festival of weeks, and the festival of shelters. No one is to appear before the Lord empty-handed.

That first one, the festival of unleavened bread, that is Passover. That’s when the Israelites were supposed to make bread without any leaven so it wouldn’t have to rise so that they could just grab it and eat it on the go whenever. So they would commemorate this moment every year by coming back to Jerusalem and celebrating this Passover moment.

Now return with me to Luke chapter 2. Every year His parents travel to Jerusalem for this. Every year Jesus as a child, God made man. Every year He was going with His parents up to Jerusalem. And when He was 12 years old, they did it again. This was a rhythm. This was just normal for them. Special but normal. Just like for us, it’s normal for most of us to celebrate Christmas and Easter. Special but normal.

I’ve got a question for you. Every year they traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. Every year they pursued God. What does your family pursue? What’s normal but special for you? If we could be really honest, what does your family pursue? Might be athletics. You or your kid is involved in every sport imaginable so that they could get some sort of offer later in life to be able to play sports for a little bit longer. It might be finances. Every single decision that you make as a family is all about the bottom line and gaining more and more. It might be control. The purpose of your family is to control others through influence or through winsomeness or through saying, “Hey, we are the leaders in our community.” Your family might be pursuing comfort this way. We’re going to get all the toys, all the cars, all the stuff, anything we could ever want, all the trips, all the vacations.

What is it? What does your family pursue? What do you think others think you pursue? It’s what you talk about. It’s what you base your decisions on. For Jesus, growing up, He grew up in a family that had rhythms of pursuing God. Man, parents, I’m begging you, please establish rhythms of pursuing God that will set your kids up to follow Jesus for the rest of their lives.

Every earthly pursuit and accomplishment will fade away in this life. These bodies that we work out, they will still get old. Our financial accounts which we want to pump up will still go empty. Every accomplishment and pursuit you pursue in this life will be done away with. But every investment into your relationship with God and your kids’ relationship with God, that’s eternal. You’ve got a question to make or you got a question to answer. Why would you live for the temporal when you can live for the eternal? Why would you live for here and now when eternity lasts for eternity?

As a man, Jesus would spend entire evenings in prayer with God. 40 days of fasting in the wilderness. He would take every opportunity to minister to anybody the Father brought to Him. He would fulfill His God-given purpose in living and dying and resurrecting for us. He would have a lifetime of faithfulness in pursuing God that began with the choices that Mary and Joseph made.

I want to give you an easy one. Parents of middle and high schoolers, next weekend, did you know that we are taking your children to the Folly Beach for a weekend just for them? Did you know this? 6th through 12th grade, we’ve got a spot for you. They’re going to eat good food. They’re going to play some games, obviously, but man, they’re going to learn about the Lord. They’re going to have just a weekend of dedicated time of being with Him. They’re going to leave on Friday, come back during church on Sunday. Dads of parents, would you like to take your wife on a date Saturday night? I’ve just freed up your calendar. There you go. Talk with Carter. Talk with me. Talk with Becca. We’ve got space for everybody that would want to go. Parents, we have got to do this.

That rhythm that Jesus experienced, it continued every year of His life. This particular passage happens when Jesus was 12 years old. This year, Jesus would make His own choice to pursue God. If you’re a notetaker, you could write that down. He made His own choice to pursue God. It’s in verses 43-48. After those days were over, which means after the festival was done, that’d be over a week of celebrating and reflecting, studying the Old Testament and just thinking about God’s kindness to His people. After those days were over, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but His parents didn’t know it. Parents, you ever left your kid somewhere? No, I’ve never done that. No. Assuming He was in the traveling party, they went a full day’s journey. Then they began looking for Him among the relatives and the friends. When they didn’t find Him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for Him. After three days, moms, three days, dads, three days. After three days, they found Him in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to them, asking them questions. And all those who heard Him were astounded at His understanding and His answers. When His parents saw Him, they were astonished. And His mother said to Him, “Who can relate with this? Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

Jesus makes this choice to pursue God. When all the others left, Jesus stayed behind. Parents, I also want to say this. Don’t be surprised if you are faithful to raise your kids in rhythms of pursuing God. Don’t be surprised when they choose God over you. I think about Becca wanting to go overseas to serve the Lord as a missionary and her telling her parents about that. Now, Becca’s parents raised her in church. They raised her in a church that talked about missions all the time. They even sent her on mission trips with other church members. Why would they be surprised by this? Parents, why would you be surprised when you get to see the reward for your faithfulness in the lives of your kids?

The parents, they don’t find Him. Mary and Joseph, they don’t find Him because everybody’s traveling in a group. That’s what people would have done back then. Remember, they’re not driving. They’re not flying. They’re walking. So Mary and Joseph and their kids, including Jesus, would have been walking along with some of their friends from home. They all would have traveled together naturally. The parents and the very youngest kids would have traveled in one little clump, and then you would have had all the 12, 10, 11-year-old boys traveling in another little clump, and some of the other kids in their little clump, and they would have walked all day or at least until the next meal like this. So Mary and Joseph, they’re not particularly worried when a couple hours go by and they don’t see Jesus. It’s not until they’re about to break camp or make camp for the night and have some dinner that they realize what’s going on. They don’t find Him. So, they do what they’re supposed to do. They go back. They go back to Jerusalem. Eventually, after three days of looking, they find Jesus in the temple sitting among the teachers.

Jesus’s choice to pursue God kept Him in the temple having all-day Bible study for four days, which is amazing to me. Jesus, we know He is the Word. He wrote the Bible. Luke 24 tells us that the whole Scripture is ultimately about Him. Yet Jesus Himself had to learn. Jesus Himself had to ask questions. Jesus Himself had to learn how to put it all together. Jesus is fully God, but He is also fully man. And in this moment, He’s a 12-year-old boy. 12-year-old boys, Jesus experienced every type of thing you experience. Five-year-olds in the room, Jesus experienced what it was like to have younger siblings He had to share His toys with. Young men, Jesus knew what it was like to have ambition and to have drive, but trying to figure out what in the world He is going to apply that to. Jesus had to learn these things. He had to learn Scripture. Man, if Jesus spent time learning the Bible, if Jesus intentionally chose to pursue God, then we need to all the more.

What would pursuing God look like for you in 2026? Man, it might look like choosing to read your Bible before you ever turn a screen on in the morning, even if just for a few minutes. Pursuing God might look like stepping into community and joining a Sunday school class. Pursuing God might look like joining us for the 24/7 prayer that we’re going to start doing once a month. Pursuing God might look like getting the healing for some of the stuff that’s happened in your Life and joining Robbie on Sunday nights for Celebrate Recovery coming up in February. Pursuing God might look like taking a faith step and finally getting baptized or learning how to tithe regularly or learning how to share your faith. Whatever it is, I believe that God is inviting all of us to pursue Him in 2026.

Why would Jesus do this, though? Why would God in the flesh do this? And even more, why would a 12-year-old boy stay behind, stay in the temple, and show up for four days of Bible study? It was because of this. He had a need to pursue God. Verses 49 and 50 are all about the need to pursue God. Look at it again. Why? This is Jesus. The first recorded words of Jesus in the Bible, the first thing that we ever know our Savior says, “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know, Mom? Dad, didn’t you know it was necessary for me to be in my Father’s house?” They did not know. They did not understand what He said to them.

Jesus had a need to pursue God. That word necessary. He didn’t say it’d be a good thing to be in my Father’s house. He didn’t say it’d be a profitable thing. He didn’t say it would advance my career. He didn’t say this would be a fun thing. He said it was necessary. Necessary. Jesus had to be there. In the words of the King James translation, Jesus had to be about His Father’s business. He had to pursue God’s will. He had to get as close to the Father as possible.

Man, even as a 12-year-old boy, the greatest motivation of Jesus Christ was to pursue His Father’s will. Man, I look at that and I get so convicted because I think that I can run my life pretty well. I think I can wake up tomorrow. Yeah, I might mouth off at my kids a little bit. I might waste a little time working. I might watch a little too much TV or football tomorrow night. But ultimately, I think I can do a pretty good job. But Jesus, God in the flesh, says, “This is necessary for me. I’ve got to be here. I need this.” That was supreme for Him. That was ultimate. That was number one for Him. There was no close seconds.

And man, don’t you know that life goes bad when you also, like me, don’t pursue God’s will? Man, what would 2026 look like if you knew that you needed God? Not that you should have more of God. Not that you could have more of God. Not that you might have more of God later. But what would 2026 look like if your prayer was this? It is necessary for me to be in my Father’s house. It is necessary for me to be about my Father’s business. What would change? How much more peaceful could your life grow? How much more loving could your soul become? How much more self-controlled could your desires be if having more of God was your highest priority?

You see, it turns out Mary and Joseph, they didn’t get it. Jesus’s deep need to be with God, His necessary devotion to God, was lost on them. Now, Jesus had a special calling from God. He had a special mission to fulfill. He had a special reason that He had to be close with God. It is this: that God has made you in love. God’s eternal plan for you was to be close with Him. That y’all would have a relationship of harmony and peace and joy and unity and union always. But no matter what God was offering us, Adam and Eve chose against that. They broke His rule. And ever since then, sin is the wrench that’s been thrown in the engine of humanity. And things just don’t work right. There’s a knocking. Oil is oozing out. And life gets a little shaky once you pick up some speed.

So Jesus came because God recognized that we could not fix the problem ourselves. Because every time we try to fix it, we just make a bigger mess. So Jesus came and He lived the perfect life, always being tempted like you and I are, but never once falling into sin. And not only did He avoid the bad things, He always pursued the good things. It’s a 12-year-old boy showing up for four days of Bible study after doing seven days of Bible study. Jesus always pursued the right things.

So Jesus lived a perfect life you and I are supposed to live but because of our sin we can’t. And after living that perfect life, Jesus died a sacrificial death on the cross. The blood of the Lamb of God was painted on the post of that cross just like the blood of the spotless lambs back in Exodus were painted so that when God looks at you and me, anybody that trusts in the spotless sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the true Lamb, God passes over us. And instead of death and destruction, God gives us mercy and forgiveness. If we would repent of our sin, if we would recognize we don’t deserve it, if we would say no to us and yes to God, then God would give us all of His mercy and forgiveness and kindness.

Because Jesus did not just live a good life. And He did not just die as a sacrifice, but after He really died and He really stayed in the grave for three real days, Jesus really came back from death conquering, fully dismantling sin and death and destruction for us so that we could have the peace of God. That was His special calling and His special mission. Above all, Jesus pursued God. Sauldam Baptist Church, above all, pursue God. Please pursue God.

Man, for the Christian in the room, you know this. Your joy grows as you pursue God. It does. Your life gets better. Not easier, but it gets better. Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith, it is impossible to please God. But listen, the one who draws near to Him must believe that God exists and that God rewards those who seek Him. God will give you more of Him as you pursue Him. And that’s good news because like Jesus said in John 15:5, I am the vine, you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit because you can do nothing without Me.

You want your life to matter. You want to see change in your world. You want more joy and love and peace and kindness and self-control and all those things, then pursue God. You want to see others come to know Jesus through you, pursue Jesus. Do you want to have more of God or not?

And for the person in the room who doesn’t yet follow God, I want to tell you something. God’s been pursuing you all of eternity. You know, there’s something more out there. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity in our hearts. But no one can discover the work of God that He’s done from beginning to end. You know there’s something more because the next accomplishment, the next relationship, the next thing in your life doesn’t satisfy. Yet you don’t know how to get more.

The good news for you is that Jesus came for this. Luke 19:10, Jesus said about Himself, the Son of Man, Me, Jesus, has come to seek and to save the lost. God put eternity in your hearts that you would want Him so that when Jesus came to this world you would see that is it, that’s life, that’s the way, that is truth, that is joy and satisfaction, and I want it. Jesus came for you. And what do you have to lose when you say yes to Jesus? You’ve said yes to the world. You’ve said yes to people. You said yes to careers. Whatever it is, and that hasn’t worked. Why not say yes to Jesus?

Sauldam Baptist Church, above all, pursue God. I want to give us a chance right now to pursue God. Normally we close the sermon praying in our pews. I want to invite anybody if you want more of God, you come join me up here at the altar where we just pray for a few moments and we just pray, God, would You give me more of You? Help me to pursue You, Lord. The music will keep playing. I invite you if you want more of God, you come and join me up here.

Father, make us a people that would desire You, God, a people that would want more of You than anything else in this world. God, can You convince us, please, that the next relationship, the next truck, the next house, the next accomplishment, the next pursuit, the next distraction, the next sin, the next thing, whatever it is, God, that’s not what we’ve been made for. We’ve been made for You and our hearts are restless until they rest in You. Jesus, thank You. As a 12-year-old boy, You showed up for four days of Bible study worrying Your mom sick. And You did it to show us that You had to be about Your Father’s business. Lord, when people interact With us, let that be what they see is the point of our life. That we have got to be about our Father’s business. Lord, I confess I’m about my business all the time. I’m about my business of approval. I’m about my business of making a name for myself. I’m about my business of my temptations to sin. And God, I’m so sorry. I wonder what I wasted in 2025 because I didn’t prioritize You. I didn’t pursue You. Let me live 2026 with complete abandon, complete devotion to You. Please let our church live that way and do with us whatever it is that You want to do. Lord, I feel like You’ve primed us for something. I feel like You are preparing us for something. But God, You got to make us useful first. And we won’t be useful until we’re devoted to You. Devote us, God. Purify us, Lord. Help us. Please let what just happened not be a show for anybody else, but be a true act of devotion to You. God, we love You.

Amen.