Ducks in a Row: First Things First | Full Service | Crossroads Church

Aug 16, 2026

Devotional

Sermon Summary

Bible Study Guide

Sermon Clips

60s
#StartWithLove
“``Here's why I put these two sentences together. This is why it's so hard, I think. Instead of starting with the law, which asks the question, is this sin or not? Whatever the this is. Jesus says, start with love and ask, is my action loving or not? See, this what does love require of me, is often an obvious answer that I can't squirm out of by asking a whole bunch of tricky questions. This one, we could have debates and, you know, all sorts of things. But I think why they didn't dare ask any more questions is because he was gonna get even more clear on how simple it is of what God requires of us. What does love require of me?”
55s
#OrderYourLoves
“what if he's right? What if the question that was being asked in the fourth century that's still being asked today, why do we have so much difficulty having our lives produce the kind of peace and joy and hope and courage that we desire? What if he was on to something? That it is not that we need better schedules or better, bank accounts. What if, really, the crux of the matter is that we have our loves out of order? if none of our rethinking, replanning, reorganizing will amount to much unless we focus on the first duck, the top duck.”
59s
#DisorderedLoves
“So this is the question that sort of, sparked the idea that comes up with the the theme that we're talking about. And when I when I look at that question, I think this is in sixteen hundred years ago. And I think, golly, people are still trying to answer that question. And if nobody sets out to be miserable, why are why are so many lives characterized by these things? Well, Saint Augustine said sixteen hundred years ago that the answer was disordered loves. Disordered loves, loving the wrong things in the wrong, order is why this happened. He he summarized it this way. We love less important things more and more important things less than we ought to.”
56s
#AskTheRightQuestion
“if we're gonna begin our quest to get our ducks in a row, it's gonna start with this. Number one, ask the right question. And this is the right question. And understand why this question always comes up and always has to come up. There's good reasons and bad reasons that it always comes up, and let's, investigate our motives for asking it. The question boils down to what's the most important thing in God's eyes? What's the top duck? If we're gonna put them in order, who gets to decide the order? And Jesus is saying your heavenly father has already told you how to order what your heart is attached to.”
45s
#LoveRightOrder
“And here's my invitation to everyone listening right now. Let's do that. Let's no matter where you are in the Jesus journey, let's go and take up the quest of figuring out how to make sure that we love the right things in the right way, in the right order, for the right reasons. It might be tough, it might it might cause us to rethink some things that we've thought, we've known for a long time, but that's where, that's where the good stuff is.”
49s
#GodsPriority
“On and on it goes. But this is the right question. And it's the right question not because we want to, in in some way, make what we're good at the standard that we believe God cares about more. You've seen that. Right? That that I pick whatever the thing is that I don't struggle with and I say, well, that must be the thing that's most important to God. Why? Because it makes me feel better. the right question if we ask it from the perspective of what does God want for us, not from us. And so the first thing we have to do is ask the right question. What is the most important thing in God's opinion?”
36s
#LoveGodLovePeople
“if we wanna get our ducks in a row, I think we gotta start here. One, ask the right question. God tells us what's the top duck. And then get the right answer. And understand that it's never one answer, it's two answers, love God and love people. And then third, see the right response. And the right response almost always includes rethinking things that we thought we already knew.”
53s
#PrioritizeLove
“So whether you're thinking about reordering, rethinking, replanning, what is gonna be at the top of the list? I I would say this, that that your schedule is super important. Where you're gonna spend your time and your money and your gifts and your talents, super important. Family, your job. But probably, there's one duck that we need to get right in order to make all the other ones make any sense. The the one thing that might make the biggest impact, the top duck might be reordering our loves, and that might not even be a topic that you've ever thought of.”
40s
#RediscoverTruth
“this is a critical juncture in our journey to get our ducks in a row is understanding that that you can never separate these two answers that Jesus gives. Jesus gives an answer. What is the most important thing in the eyes of God? And he says, love God and love people, and never separate the two. Now that that might be so familiar to us that it just it it doesn't even, make an impression on you when I read it.”
53s
#DontNormalizeTruth
“You know why? Because I just got used to it. I I wouldn't even see the hole in my ceiling anymore. But what do you think would happen when someone walked into my living room for the first time? Oh my gosh. What is what is wrong with your ceiling? And I'll go, what? Oh, yeah. There's a big hole in it. Sometimes I think, that these, these truths, what is the most important thing to God? Love God, love people. You've heard it so many times, you've just gotten used to the power of it, and so it's lost some, of the potential life changing power in our lives over this simple thing. Jesus takes Deuteronomy”
48s
#AncientWisdomNow
“in the fourth century, so sixteen hundred years ago, wrote about the importance of the order in which we love things. And the reason he wrote about it was in his day, there was a sort of philosophical debate going on about how to answer this question. The question was, if nobody sets out to be miserable, we'd probably agree with that. Right? Nobody sets out to be miserable. Why are so many lives characterized by conflict, frustration, and unfulfilled longings?”
34s
#DucksInARowSeries
“This series over the next three weeks, ducks in a row, is all about reordering the way that we love things. And I'm going to try to describe why that is so important. It's so important, one, because of the power of love, but two, because Jesus talked about it with his disciples, and they passed it on. And the scriptures talk about the power of loving the right things first.”
65s
#BeyondRituals
“And so his response, it shows he's rethinking something that he thought he was sure about. When he brings up the, the burnt offerings and the sacrifices, that is him saying, look, we are to be obedient to God, but nobody's obedient all the time. And so when we're disobedient, what do we do to, close the gap between what's expected of us and what our reality is? And the practice that he was very familiar with, he had taught burnt offerings and sacrifices. You do religious things. And I think, I think that his response shows he's adding it up in his mind, and he's come to the conclusion, I don't think that makes any sense anymore.”
43s
#PrayForPriorities
“If you are in one of our campuses, I'm gonna pray now and invite the worship teams to come up. If you're watching online, let's all pray together. Jesus, our ducks are sometimes not even close to being in a row, and we can't fix them all at one time. But, Lord, help us to understand what comes first, what deserves our hearts first attention, what we would love first. Speak to our hearts. We're listening. We pray it in your name. Amen.”
42s
#StartWithJesus
“Over the next three weeks, before the fall schedule descends upon us, join me. Join me in asking God to help us reorder our loves. Well, where would we start? If if we wanted to undertake this, this exercise, where would we start? Well, we'd start with Jesus. Because as I said, he had a lot to say about the power of loving the right things and loving the right things in the right way and in the right order.”
41s
#WhichMattersMost
“which are the really important ones? Because, again, let's be honest. There's 613 of them in the Old Testament. They can't all matter the same. That just doesn't make any common sense. So if we're gonna whittle it down, if we're gonna try to get to the heart of the matter, this teacher of the law, and I would suggest many people in our day have to ask this question. What is the most important one? Which one matters the most?”
41s
#CommandPriority
“It's a fairly common religious question, and and not much has changed. When we think about religious debates in our day, a lot of it boils down to this question. Somebody says this command is more important. Somebody says this command, this sin is worth than this, which still goes on today. But in this scene, the teacher of the law says, basically, look, we know that we have to obey god in order to receive his blessing and acceptance. Right?”
80s
#ConvictingClarity
“So Jesus puts these things together, and this is, I think, why they responded the way they did. We'll get to verse 34 right at the end, but I'm gonna jump ahead just for a second and say, they said, no more. We're not gonna ask him any more questions after Jesus gives this answer. there's a debate. I read a bunch of different opinions about why they said no one dared ask another question. I mean, that's a strong statement, isn't it? Where the whole chapter there asking him, tricking him, trying to get him to say stuff, and then he says, love god, love people. That's it. And then they said they didn't dare ask another question. Man, that's interesting. And I think, at least this is the most satisfying answer to me, is that they were afraid if they kept asking questions, he was gonna get clearer on what he did on what God demanded from them. And he'd gotten they were plenty clear already. Right? It's the idea, the more you understand, the harder it gets. So much harder, so much more convicting.”
56s
#FallReset
“If we wanted to take on this idea of reordering some things in our lives, getting our ducks in a row, where would we start? Well, with fall, just around the corner, and the transition sometimes between summer and fall feels like the appropriate time to ask these sorts of questions. Before I make any new commitments, before I fill up my calendar, before I make assessments about what I'm going to do and what are my priorities, we often step back and ask the question, how can I do it better? How can I make better choices this fall as I start this new year? Even if you don't have anybody going back to school, it seems like that this transition, brings up some of those questions.”
65s
#SeasonOfPriorities
“One out of place duck? Yeah. Some of you. Maybe all of us, would say that. How many of you feel more like your ducks look like this? Yeah. Like a big chaotic how many are you sitting next to someone whose ducks? No. No. Don't don't answer that. Let me take that down. Let me let me simplify the question, in a little bit and ask a follow-up question. When when it comes to ordering our ducks, who gets to decide what order is the best? Could you, feel some connection to that video that we played that highlighted the things that are the most concerning at different ages? They change. Right? What what's most important in one season of our lives turns out to be not so important later. You know what I loved? I loved that bedtime started at the top and then went almost all the way to the bottom and then came all the way back up again. Then by the time you were 80, it was very, very important again.”
Ask a question about this sermon