Levi Lusko - Kicking the Bucket List
I'm going to open up God's word with you to a place I've never taught. And I'm going to preach to you the shortest sermon Jesus ever preached in his 3 and 1/2 years of public ministry. If you're new or visiting, welcome to Fresh Life. We are really glad to have you. You came to church on a perfect day, joining us at church online. We're just thankful for all God's doing. And we're not talking about that in the past tense, because he's doing it right now. He's doing it right now. And in Luke 17, Jesus gave the shortest sermon in his life. I taught Lenox one time John 11:35, which is the shortest verse in the Bible. It's "Jesus wept". Only I taught him it "Jesus cried," John 11:35 because if it rhymes, it's easier to remember.
And so I said, Lenox, the shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35, Jesus cried. So if you ever ask Lenox, if you bump into him on the street and you say, hey, bro, what's good? And then eventually after the small talk and pleasantries, you say do you know any Bible verses? He will probably, in his arsenal of scripture verses that he knows, that boy knows some scripture, he will tell you all the pieces of the armor of God and what they stand for. I mean, he's just, he'll get you, he'll get you around a good portion of Psalm 128, not all of it. But he can get the basic beats of it. But he knows John 11:35, "Jesus cried". Shortest verse in the Bible. What I'm going to do today is I'm going to teach you the shortest sermon in the Bible.
Today, by the end of this message, you will have memorized an entire sermon from the mouth of Jesus. And it's only three words. Are you ready for it? Remember Lot's wife. Luke 17:32, remember Lot's wife. Preach back my whole sermon to me. Ready? Go ahead. Remember Lot's wife. And Father, we pray that these three words would pierce our hearts and change our lives. Thank you for such a poignant warning. Now, would your Holy Spirit drive it home? And in that, I say, "do whatever you want to do with it, whatever we need, not what we think we need, not what we want, certainly not that, but what you want. In Jesus' name".
Michelle accumulated a ton of college debt, as many do. Added to that all of the normal debt, as one does when one is not smart. Right? And by the time she reached the end of her 20s, she was overwhelmed, overloaded, strapped to even make headway against the debt while managing to eke out an existence for herself. That was when she started a blog. And the blog blew up. Michelle now makes $760,000 per year in passive income. That's that Warren Buffett, teach your money to make money while you sleep or you're going to have to keep working till you die kind of money. That's the Holy Grail of culture these days, all about that passive income. Money that makes money while you do nothing, honey. Right?
And so with this kind of cheddar coming in, Michelle was asked, what do you do? And she said, "I bought a boat. I bought a boat and I live on it". And she says, "I'm living, literally, my dream. And my dream is as follows, to live on a boat. So now I can just go anywhere, anywhere I feel like, there I am. Travel all the time". She said, "I only have to work 10 hours a week. That's how much time it takes to generate the content for the blog that now has brought me this Holy grail of a life with just passive cash flow. It just pours, it just pours out. So with all of that, what are you going to do? You get one life. I just get to be on a boat". She explained, "I just travel and I hang out. Sometimes I snorkel and explore and hike. Really, I just do whatever I want since now I live full-time on a sailboat".
And may heaven help us to see that while we understand that the world would run after such a carrot, there must, for us, be something more. I want to, from this shortest sermon Jesus ever gave, preach to you a message that I'm taking as my title Kicking the Bucket List. How do you and I kick the bucket list? Buckets used to be used in executions, or so I'm told. The men or women that were going to be hung would be made to stand on the bucket with their hands tied behind their back, the noose upon their neck. And at a certain point, when the cue was given, a soldier would kick the bucket causing there to be the sudden drop. And in that moment, there would be, of course, death. And so eventually, the bucket began to be associated with expiring. Kicking the bucket, shorthand for dying, however you die. Not just execution, but any kind of death. And at some point along the way, someone realized, hey, what goes in that bucket? What goes in that bucket represents what you do between now, birth, and then, death.
What do you put in your bucket? Because Michelle, now with really unlimited resources, of course, every resource is limited. In our minds we think, if I get this much, I can do anything I want. If I get this much, I can do anything I want. And whatever the number is in your head that if you had that you could do whatever you want, there's someone who has that who has a different number. Just FYI, you should compare notes later. And the studies are interesting about how happiness peaks after 70k a year. So you're not going to, you will experience more happiness till 70k, but from 70k to billions the actual happiness does not come because the problems compound with the resource. Biggie told us that forever ago, mo' money, mo' problems. How do we kick the bucket list? I will never forget how I felt the first time I watched the Dead Poets Society.
Robin Williams, teacher, students, pupil, sitting around. He stands up and he tells them, he says, we've got to live greatly. Why? Because you're going to die, boys. You're going to die, boys. And in between now and then, what's the secret to life? He said, carpe diem. Between now and being worm food, he said, you only get one shot. So suck the marrow. Make sure your sailboat pulls into every beautiful place you can. You get one go round, so you had better make it count and enjoy it all and drink it all in and take all the beauty you can into your life. And I think that's the heartbeat of the bucket list living. Where we have this, like, here's what it's going to be. And here's what I have to do. And it's all the National parks' magnets on my RV. And it's have the kayak and ride the kayak and the bear is going to be there.
I'm going to see the bear on my kayak and then the emptiness inside of me will be fulfilled. If I could just get that Bob Barker. Right? And whatever it is for you, there is probably something in your head that if you can get that into your bucket before it gets kicked, then all of a sudden, what's wrong will be made right. And I'm joking and having fun and taking shots at all those things. And I realize that for all of us there's some, I just want to do this before I die. I just want to take my kids to Disney World. I just want to go over here. I want to do this. And there's nothing, I want to say, hear me, hear me, hear me. There's nothing wrong with having some things that you would love to see done before you die. But here's the problem, is thinking these things will complete you, thinking these things will somehow make up for the deficiencies you feel within you, that there is, on this planet, some thing you can do and, finally, you'll feel right.
And that nagging feeling will go away that there's got to be something more, some accomplishment, some degree, some hot chicks, some big payday, some epic trip, something out there. If you can just do it, scale it, climb it, buy it, eat it, snort it, drink it, that you're now going to wake up and go, oh, that feels much better. Now, let me just be on my boat for the rest of my life. And I'm not going to ever need to do anything more because I did that thing. The text is, of course, Genesis 19 that Jesus is referring back to. And the couple is Lot and we don't know her name. We just know her as Lot's wife. We are to remember them. Jesus said, you and me, we're to remember them. Remember Lot. Remember Lot's wife. The city was Sodom.
Now, Sodom and its sister city, Gomorrah, like Minneapolis and Saint Paul, they conjure up certain things in our mind. And today, looking back, we remember them as like, wow, this place that received judgment, this place, fire and brimstone. But don't forget, in that day, that was bucket list, living in Sodom. If I could just have a house there. Sodom was, for 1,500 years, the capital city of its region. 50 foot high walls, 17 feet thick. It was considered impregnable. It was the safest place you could possibly live. It was financially thriving, a place of might and prosperity. It had arts. It had commerce. It had temples. It was triangulated with all the things. You want outdoor activity? Bam. You want to go to a play? Whew. Look at that. And you still want a dope place to eat dinner? But it's crowded. But like in a good energizing way, not too crowded.
Sodom was your spot. It was situated in a valley that made it well watered constantly. So it was lush. So it was green. It was thriving. It was like Montana summer all the time, without the fires. But it had this dark and seductive underbelly because the people that lived in Sodom still weren't happy. So they continued to look for something else. And it got darker and darker and darker because when you don't look to God to give you what you need, it just gets darker. No one looks at one image of pornography and says, wow, that was so delightful, I will never need to look at any ever again. They tell themselves that in the moment, but tomorrow the high of the original one wore off so you're chasing it, just like the person who ends up OD-ing, hoping to feel the sense of home they felt the first time they got high.
So in Sodom, the sins compounded to where chapter 13, verse 10 says, "the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the Lord". And Lot liked, from the outside, Sodom a lot. Because of his father Abraham, well, Father Abraham was his Uncle Abraham, he knew enough about God to know the outsides of what it could look like to have a relationship with God. But he always had the sneaking suspicion that maybe in the world there was more happiness. And that God's way was just restrictive. And everything Abraham told him was actually going to pull him away from having fun. So he always had his eye on Sodom as a thing that could fill up the hole in his heart.
Levi, how could you possibly know that? The Bible actually says that. In Genesis 13:10, when they were choosing where to live, Lot lifted his eyes and saw the plains of Jordan, that it was, here we go, well watered everywhere before it got destroyed, yeah, important delineation, before the end of it was actually told. And what was it? It was, look at this phrase, like the Garden of the Lord. Linguistic experts say that there's a shift in tone when that phrase is used. And it's as though the narrator shifts to Lot's heart as Lot's heart speaks for a moment. We're told what Lot saw when he looked at Sodom. And the phrase "like the Garden of the Lord" is a charged, biblically theological phrase that refers to the Garden of Eden and all the pleasures that were contained before the fall. That's huge. That tells us this was, in his eyes, bucket list.
This could get me back to the garden. This could make up for what was lost when the presence of the Lord was cut off from sinful humanity. If I could get, if I could live there, his heart spoke, then you'll finally be free. Your heart will sing. You'll have carpe diem. That's what you need to be happy. That's how you get back to the garden. And they lived there for a while, of course. And as the story goes, an angel was sent to rescue Lot, not because of Lot, but because of Abraham. Abraham was praying for Lot a lot. And the only reason Lot and his family were given the chance of rescue is because the Bible says Abraham stood in the gap between those who are in trouble and in God. And I believe today, God is looking for his people. God is looking for his church who will put themselves into the gap between those who are in danger and the danger.
I'm telling you, God is still looking for those who will intercede for those who are in trouble. Does he find that in your heart? Do you want to sit back and criticize those in danger and judge those in danger? Or will you put yourself in between God and them and say, God, save them or I'll perish. Right? With that spirit like Jesus. So that's what Abraham did. And so angels came to rescue Lot and his family from this place. But you can't be rescued against your will. So even though Lot and his kids got out safely, as the story goes, the angel warned them, "do not look back as you leave. Do not turn back and look to Sodom" it's verse 17. He said, "escape for your life. Do not look behind you. Do not turn back to Sodom. Do not stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed". But lot's wife looked back. Lot's wife, verse 26, "looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt".
Destruction was the end of doing the same thing Lot originally did, thinking something back here behind me, if I could just get back to 19, if I could just get back to this time, because we don't just look forward to accomplishments to put into our bucket that will make us happy. We also look back to previous times that, while we lived them, we were, while we lived in them, we weren't fulfilled. But we think, if I could get back to that, I was actually fulfilled. The rear-view mirror looks, at times, a lot better than it really was. This idyllic sense. A lot of us are either running from our childhoods or chasing them. It doesn't work. That's no more satisfying when you experience it, than filling your mouth up with a spoonful of salt. You will end up salty, jaded, discouraged, or you'll just end up just resorting to anything that can numb you, drug you, because you're so salty about life that you just, now, I'm just happy to be blissfully unaware.
Just stay stoned. Never really feel anything. Translation, number one, it doesn't work to look to accomplishments, places, people, sailboats. Solomon said so. He did all that. Ecclesiastes 2:11, "it was all so meaningless, like chasing the wind". What powers a sailboat anyway? There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere. He said, I lived like Tommy Bahama. And it didn't do nothing for me. Because there's a God shaped hole inside of our hearts. And as long as that remains empty, it will remain empty. Nothing else can fill it. And as Jesus people, because we as Jesus people need to remember Lot's wife because we can't, even following Christ, still kind of have our eye on the world. Not being in Sodom, but getting as close as we can to Sodom and valuing those things that those in Sodom do. What does that do? That belittles the Resurrection. It belittles the future hope that Jesus came out of the grave to make our reality.
Paul said it this way, 1 Corinthians 15, "if the dead do not rise, then yeah, let us eat and drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die". He's saying to live carpe diem, got to get it, got to get it, got to get it, it's how you should live if there's no resurrection. But that should have been all changed the day that God gave us immortality, the day God gave us an inheritance, the day God gave us a future hope. The day God made forever yours, forever is yours. That should have been the last day of bucket list living because forever is yours. What do you need to have to be happy when you know all of eternity is yours and that after 10,000 years of singing God's praise, you will have no less days to sing those praises than when you first began? Why would you ever go back to Sodom? Why would you ever look back to Sodom? Why would you ever think, I need that to give me the garden?
Listen to me very carefully. You don't need to get back to Eden. You need to watch God transform your wilderness into his kingdom. And if you do that, then you're living like what? Like Abraham did. "Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you, for I called him alone, look at this, I blessed him and increased him. For the Lord will comfort Zion. He will comfort all her waste places. He will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert will thrive like the Garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in it, thanksgiving and the voice of melody".
Do you see what he's saying? He's saying you don't need to look back to what was, you need to look forward to what is. You need to look down and see what's happening right now. If you would just live a life of praise. Oh come on, I wish I had a church that had a song in their lungs. I wish I had a church that knew you could take your Babylon and you could make it thriving and fresh and flourishing. That blessing is now. Blessing is here. Blessing is where you are because you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. That dry bones, all you got to do, they're song activated. That you get a prophesy over your apartment. You don't need a sailboat. You don't need a camper van to be happy. Buy a van, buy a boat. I don't care. But I'm telling you, when you look to Jesus and you remember forever is yours, you can just take the pressure off, the pressure off, because you know that the next world is greater than this world. And the next world is yours. And if the next world's greater and mine, then the one I'm living on that's inferior and perishable, like Sodom, it's end is judgment and fire.
And then recreation, resurrection, transformation, and then ultimately occupation. By who? You, me, and Jesus. It just makes the shiny stuff on this planet, everybody else is running around, a little less valuable, trying to get. The more you look forward to the next world, the less you'll need from this one. Then you can live on mission. "By faith, Hebrews 11, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise in a foreign country". Didn't care that he dwell in tents. By the way, every time you hear about Lot it's building a house. Every time you talk about Abraham it's, I'm building a tent. Because this is a pilgrimage. It's a camping trip. I'm not getting too comfortable here on this planet.
"Dwelling in tents, the heirs with him of the same promise". What promise? "The city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God". When you got your eyes on the future, when that's your prize, the coming kingdom of our great shepherd and overseer of our souls, Jesus Christ, you can relax here now. And just remember how good heaven's going to be for a second or two. Remember that Isaiah says that the hills are going to clap their hands. Remember that the mountains are going to drip with the finest wines. And the banqueting table has the choicest of meats. Remember that there's something in creation that's as beautiful as it is broken. Angels point, Grand Canyon, one of the most deadly hikes in this country. Oh, it's so beautiful. It's deadly now. Mount Rainier, wow, towers above Washington. 400 people have died climbing on it. And the ground shifts under your feet. Beautiful, but deadly because it's under a curse. The curse gets reversed, it starts singing again.
In the meantime, it's your time to shine. In that day, you won't have to praise to transform your situation. It's just going to be permanent situation of awesomeness and divine shekinah all the time. And in the meantime, we keep our eyes on that any time we forget how important our mission is. CS Lewis, I love it, he talks about, look at the quote on the screen, believing "that God will one day give us the morning star, put on the splendor of the sun" like clothes. We can believe that the ancient myths that we tell our children where animals talk and all that stuff. It might not be actually poetry. It might be prophecy and history. It might be what was. It might be what will be. You'll notice Eve didn't flinch when a snake talked to her. Maybe the animals did talk. And maybe they will. I think there's something in there.
So encourage yourself. It takes the FOMO off. It takes the constant multitasking off. What is it with this multitasking? Why am I watching this screen, but also on this one? Because I'm afraid I'm going to miss out on something. But if you've been given the morning star as clothing in the future, and you know that, then on this page you can just read the page. You can just, I'm in it. I'm in it. I'm in it. So here we go. What will happen to you, if you remember Lot's wife, stop looking back at Sodom, and you look forward to your prize and you live on mission today? If you need less from this world, you will be able to do more for it.
Number one, jot it down. The less you need from this life, the more you can do in it. How did the early Christians who believed the Resurrection take the faith that was fledgling and transform an entire empire? You're like, Levi, I'm going to need you to clarify what you mean. I mean 8% of the Roman Empire was Christians in the years immediately following Christ's Resurrection. But flash forward a few hundred years, it was 50%. How do you see half a pagan empire, cult, emperor worshipping, debauchery, Dionysus, all of that, how do you touch a whole empire? Simple. You have your prize in the coming world, so you're a little less precious and worried about what happens to you in this one.
So a plague hits, a deadly plague that was killing, at its peak and its zenith, 5,000 Romans per day, 35,000 a week. And many people fled the city. Got to get out of here. Got to get out of here. Why? Because I need to protect my carpe diem. Abandoning loved ones, abandoning family. You're a liability to me now. You're keeping me from my sailboat. So you've got to go. The Christians stayed. The Christians loved, not just their own, they loved those who they never met before. And it was that that transformed the Roman Empire. The dying looked to them and said, I don't know, if I make it through this, my eyes are opened. You've told me about this Jesus.
Number two, what happens if you take the pressure off this world? Number two, the more you can actually withstand pain in it, the more you can withstand pain in it. Paul gets beat up. I know our teams, everyone on our team is tired, I get it. But did your bag get beaten? Did you get put in a jail cell? Well, no. But in the catering tent, they were at a bagels this morning and, Timmy and I were joking, because he missed a flight coming and delayed and had to get on this one. And he's a big boy and riding in a little seat, right? There's a Tommy boy reference there in there I'm not going to use cause I love you, Tebow. But we were both acknowledging the moment we feel like complaining about our problems serving Jesus, the early disciples were beaten and walked out rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for his name. Yeah, but you don't understand. Someone said something mean about me on Instagram.
So Paul is in another crisis. What does he say? I just hope I get out of this because I really want to get to Rome. I want to see the Colosseum and have pasta. I've heard it's amazing. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time, Romans 8:18, are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us". When you think about the coming glory, when you think about your resurrected body, when I think about my baby girl coming out of that grave and living with her forever on a perfect planet, when I think about the animals talking, when I think about the 24 elders throwing their crowns down at the feet of my King, when I think about getting to thank, in person, the one who died on the cross for me, it transforms the bad day and the back pain.
Number three, the more you take the pressure off of this life, the more you can actually enjoy it. When you don't need your boat to fill the hole in your heart, and you can just see it as a boat, and if it gets scratch, guess what? Good. Now you can just chill. And when you don't need that Disney World trip to be so epic, you can laugh when Disney World floods and people be swimming through the streets of the Magic Kingdom as they currently are, it's a swamp, people. All right? It rains every day. And you can, look, if we don't get to the thing, we don't get to the thing. We can enjoy it a little bit.
Look, I'm just saying, now you can go to Ibiza if you want to go to Ibiza. Go to the Greek Isles, if you need to go to the Greek Isles. And if Lake Como gives you joy, I don't think God up in heaven is angry that you like Lake Como. All I'm saying is that once it's not the garden of the Lord, then you can just be Lake Como. And dang, isn't it pretty cool? And yeah, it's nice to have nice things. And yes, if God gives blessings, fabulous. Just don't be defined by them. Have them in your hand, don't have him in your heart. This isn't a don't have money sermon.
How can we fun the kingdom? How can we reach a generation? How can we do all God's got in his heart without money? So how do we have the blessings but not be defined by the blessing? How do we steward these things, but not take our identity from them? That's the rub. More, you can actually enjoy it. 1 Thessalonians, "aspire to lead a quiet life, mind your own business". Come on, someone. That's a sermon. It's the Bible. It's not me. Mind your own business. I don't got time to tell you how to live your life because it's hard enough living mine. You see what I'm saying?
Now, I realize I do for a living tell you what to do with your business. That being said, work with your own hands. So the grail isn't FIRE, financial independence retire early, never work again. Work is good for you. Without work, something shrivels inside of you. So if you have made the carrot, get a mil in the bank and live off the passive cash flow, just get ready to watch your soul shrivel like a raisin. I'm coming after the gods of this culture because they have shown up in the House of the Lord. And we're going to tear down Moloch. We're going to rip down Baal. We're coming for the high places. We're no longer chasing after Sodom. "Work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing".
He's saying this is how salvation works. You work alongside lost people. And they watch how you work. And they watch what matters to you. They hear you talk about first day of the week, first thing you're going to do when you get paid. They watch how you marry. They watch how you bury. They watch how you live. They watch how you lead. If you quit your job and live on the boat, how are you going to reach lost people? Every port I flow into. Awesome. If you can keep that really what's happening, like Graham did. You see Graham, like Melissa, did the same thing, focused on passive cash flow, which by the way should be the flow for all of us. But Graham said with the, and here's the exact amount, 160k per month, I'm netting passively, Hello, Graham's doing something right.
With the two businesses he launched, after a failed career as an audio engineer in 2009, led to creativity to make ends meet. So 13 years later, he's now seeing all this flow in. It's a blessing to his wife, blessing to his kids. He makes family dinner a priority, not just eating out, but cooking together. He said, we like traveling, too. We like Florida, but we also went to the South of France. And it was amazing. But when asked what do you do now with all this coming in?
One of my favorite things that he said that made me reach out to him on Instagram and speak life over him for being so vocal about it, and he wrote back and I said I'm going to share your story this Sunday, he said, we attend church the first day of every week. And we do volunteer work with local organizations. We take our kids to help unhoused populations in our city. He said, my philosophy is that I make this money so I can give most of it away to charities and to my church, to groups that are doing good in the world. He's got giving goals. He's not done. He's working with his hands because he said he's got giving goals. He says right now I'm sad because my wife and I are only donating 30% of our income to God's work. But we are hoping to eventually get that all the way up to 50%. I'm telling you, there's something about being marked by heaven.
Paul said in Philippians 3, "I don't count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, I forget the things that are behind". I remember Lot's wife. Why? Because I'm reaching forward to those things which are ahead. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. His crown he was chasing wasn't a perishable crown. He was chasing after an imperishable crown, the one that you and I are invited by God to chase after, too. Finally, we're done. Worship team, you can come on out here. I'm going to go preach this sermon to some people who are going to give me some actual love while I'm preaching, in a minute. No, it's fine. I'm not throwing shade. And it doesn't even count now if you give it because I've already chastised you for it, duly. Because you're so tired. Because it's been such a hard draining week serving God, right?
Once the pressure's off, because now your prize is in heaven, what's the last thing? What's the last thing? What's the last thing? The more you'll be prepared to leave it. The less this life is your garden, the less this life is your, it's a trinket. It's great. It's a trinket. It's a dollar store doodad, then you'll actually be prepared to leave it. You know you're going to die. You don't hear a lot of people just say that to you because it wouldn't be polite talk. But since we're all up in here and I'm in your business already, let me just remind you you're going to die. Robin Williams was right, worm food. How do you deal with that? How do you sit with that? I think it entirely hinges on how you view death. I'm going to give you two possibilities. Ready? Death is leaving your garden or going to your garden.
Jesus said, remember Lot's wife because she was looking back at her garden. And a lot of people die on this earth looking back at their garden. That's death for a lot of people. They're leaving all their money. They're leaving all their crap. They're leaving all their stuff. They're leaving all that ever meant anything to them. Let it not be so among us. Let us have a light touch on all the stuff here so death is easy. Because our prize is forward. We're straining ahead, Heaven, eternity, souls, kingdom, glory, the throne.
So let your death be like Paul. Finally. He know how to be blessed. He knew how to eat a nice dinner. I know how to be a base, I know how to, I'm not saying we have to be aesthetic and live in a monastery. You're like, well the church should be like John the Baptist, who wore camels' hairs. Go for it, bro. But if you want to rock clothes from the Gap, that's cool, too. Just don't let them in your heart. It's all going to get sold, the estate sale that is your life, that someone's dropping stuff off at goodwill that you today, every parent, like the kid in the closet, I don't want you touching, that's my special jacket. Right? It's theirs. Right? And I think when we get that revelation, we'll be ready to leave it.
Jesus talked to this guy who was in a big process of building a bigger barn. And he needed a bigger barn because even his old barn wasn't big enough for his new crap he wanted to put in his bigger barn. And he died. And the first word he heard when he stood before God was you fool. You fool. He's so foolish to value most what you can hold on to the least. So is everyone rich on Earth, but not rich toward God. Church, I'm just saying, I don't want to get to heaven bankrupt. I want to have been laying it up, storing it up, treasuring it up, keeping it up. So I want to go to my prize, not leave my prize when I die.
So what's the revelation we need to get there? Because I feel the Holy Ghost doing something right now in this moment. The revelation that's going to get us to change the whole bucket list thing is remembering our great God. In the Book of Isaiah we're told, this is chapter 40, how he looks at this life, he counts the nations. Every place on Bucket List for all of us, he counts the nations as, look at it on the screen, a drop in the, Bucket.
Behold, how does God count things? The nations are as a drop in the bucket. And when we get the revelation of a big God who looks at the world that we're tempted to think is the stuff, and he's like, that's a drop in the bucket, we'll have a different perspective and hold things differently. I'm wondering who today, hearing this message, says, I'm going to live differently because I am forever changed by this word.
Stand up to your feet. All across our church, stand up to your feet. Are you changed? Are you saying, I'm going to live differently, I'm going to love differently, I'm going to serve differently, I'm going to spend differently?
Father, we thank you. We love you. Jesus changes. Do your work in us. We need you. We're lost without you.