The Great Commission: Part 3

The Great Commission: Part 3 - Living On Mission

Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; 1 Peter 2:9

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Excited to be with you guys this morning. We are going to be wrapping up our Great Commission series. If you have been with us the last few weeks, we have been able to share interviews with some of our missionaries who are associated with our church and are doing God's work around the globe. We have another one of those to share with you this morning. But I want to kind of just remind us of where we are and what we've been talking about. We've been talking about this thing called the Great Commission. It's something that is specifically given to us from Jesus—some of His last words that He gave us before He left earth and went back to heaven. He commanded us to go and make disciples. That's part of our vision and mission here as a church: to see our community saturated with the glory of God through making disciples in the everyday stuff of life.

Jesus was incredible at this. He had a core group of people, the disciples, that followed Him, but He had an even larger gathering that followed Him regularly. He would just do life with them. He would teach them His truth, teach them God's Word, and teach them who God was and His character as He went through life. Jesus would often be found just teaching, maybe alongside a field, and then even using the field as an illustration to teach. He just went through life with His people. So, we have a heart here at Spring Valley Church to do the same. But it says this in Matthew chapter 28: "Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'"

Pastor Lauren last week focused in on this scripture and said, "Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations." What's awesome about the word "go" is that, as you look at the original Greek writing, it actually meant "as you are going." So, as you are going to the grocery store, as you are going to your neighbors, as you are going to work, as you are at work, as you are going to school—wherever you are going—we are called to give and show Jesus to everybody. And it says there, "to all the nations." God is doing some incredible work around the globe. In these interviews, we have only seen a snippet of what is happening in the Lord's kingdom around the world. Our calling is to go. I'm going to talk about that a little bit after the video. But it also says in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, which Pastor Andre dug into a little bit in week one. If you know the region of where this was written during Jesus' time in Israel, these are larger, circling areas of influence. So Jesus says, not only here in Jerusalem, this city—so maybe not only in Rocklin and Roseville—but also in Judea or Placer County, and all the way to Samaria, California, Northern California, the West Coast, and then to the ends of the earth, the entire globe. This is our calling: to spread the word and love of Jesus everywhere that we go.

Maybe that means you're leaving the States. Maybe that means you have to go two doors down to that neighbor. Maybe it means caring for and loving on that family member who might have a little different view of life than you. Maybe it means that person in class with you that nobody talks to. Maybe it means that person who cut you off this morning on the way to church. But our calling is to go, and with the power of the Holy Spirit, to be witnesses in all of these places. So this morning, we're going to show another video. This is another one of those missionaries where we can't really share specifically where they are at. This is Cory and Jennifer. Cory actually grew up at the church that I did—the church that planted this church. So there's a connection there, and he and his wife have been where they are for quite a few years. But what's cool with them is their missions work is a little bit different. They're doing and supporting local pastors on the ground through caring for, teaching, and raising them up. So we're gonna hear a little bit more of those stories, but I'd love for us to turn to the screen.

Well, it's pretty amazing and humbling, right? To hear some of the ways and conditions that some of the missionaries are working in around the world. I mean, I'm still baffled. I've watched this video, I don't know how many times—obviously, I was in the conversation. But to hear, "We just need heat, not even plumbing," it's like, whew. You know, sometimes we come into church and the AC might not have kicked on early enough. But it's running. It's just a little warm in here, and we're like, "Oh man, I can't. Whew, hard Sunday." And it's just like, man, hard Sunday of sleeping on the floor, no plumbing, and just praying to stay warm. That's incredible.

Well, I'd love to share a couple of thoughts as we wrap up our series this morning and focus in on what Jesus might be calling us to do. I love what we've heard through all of these stories of missionaries. We've heard stories of the power of prayer. Cory was talking about the shaman who went and just did a prayer walk, and then the shaman was like, "What's your deal? When you show up, I can't—my stuff isn't working. There's something more powerful happening here. I want to know more." How incredible is that? We've heard stories of the power of people's lives and witness. This girl who gave up her job and went against family cultural norms and said, "No, I got a greater calling in life from Jesus to do something different." And she was beaten. She was abused—physical, verbal, emotional abuse. And yet she stayed faithful to that call. Because of that, her actions spoke louder than any words that she could have said to her family. Because of that, there are more people who are going to heaven for Jesus because of it.

So, where do we go from here? Well, first thought is we are all called to share. We're all called to share. Cory talked about this, and in his conversations he has with other faculty at the college and other students, I think sometimes we go, "Well, I don't know what to say." Well, sometimes it isn't knowing what to say; it's just showing up and letting them ask the questions. And going, "You know what? I might know that..." Cory and I talked offline that some of the conversations he has, he's had to go back and say, "You know, I don't know. Let me go do some research, let me study, but I want to come back and give you the answers." We freak out and think, "I don't have all the answers." It's okay to not have all the answers, but it's about continuing to show up in people's lives. We're all called to pray. This has been a theme all throughout these interviews, if you guys haven't noticed. And specifically, Darla last week, in her and her husband's ministry, she even said on the call, "Sometimes it's not the financial part that we need, it's the prayers. We need the prayers." And Cory was a witness to that—the power of prayer to go out to those villages. Sometimes you go, "Well, you know, I don't have the money to be able to give to these missions, but we can pray." We can take time every single day to pray over these workers who are on the front lines. And then we are all called to go. This might be uncomfortable for us. This might mean, for Darla, it started as short-term missions and then it turned to long-term missions. Sometimes it's just going to our neighbors. Sometimes it's going to our family. But mostly, honestly, it's to continue to be faithful where we are. Tomas talked about the story of the two ladies, about how she just started inviting people into her home to just have tea and to just talk about life. And when those spiritual conversations or questions came up, or the open door opportunity, she wasn't afraid to take those. Sometimes we think going means, "Well, I got to leave the United States." I don't know if you've noticed, but the world is a much smaller place than it used to be. And we live in a very diverse location here in California. Guys, the nations are here. The nations are among us. The nations are around us. We don't have to necessarily... I mean, Cory was talking about how he's doing work with people in California that are from his nation that are doing work here. Missionaries are coming to the States because the people have gathered here in these locations. There are people in your life that God has given you relationship with for the sole, number one purpose of sharing His love with them. We've thought about that. You guys have people in your life that I will never know. And sometimes we think, "Oh, well, the pastor's gonna be the one who's gonna lead them to Jesus." No, you're the one that's gonna lead them to Jesus. You're the one that's gonna show up in their life. You're the one that's gonna pray for them. You're the one that... Another translation says this: "But you are God's chosen and special people. You are a group of royal priests, a holy nation. God has brought you out of the darkness into His marvelous light. Now you must tell all the wonderful things that He has done."

We are called to share. We are called to pray. And we are called to go. So how are you going to live intentionally as a missionary in your life where you live, learn, work, and play? We're all called to this. So how will we show that love to the world around us? Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for this morning. God, we are super grateful for people like Cory and Jen, God, who are on the front lines in a place where they really can't be open about you. But God, you've given them favor and opportunities, even within that country. God, to talk to friends, to talk to coworkers, to talk to students, to talk to those in their lives, God, that they have been specifically placed near to share that love. And so God, I pray that we would go intentionally, focused, thinking about, Jesus, who have you placed in my life that needs to know Jesus? And how do I need to start praying and showing up and showing them the love? God, we thank you for this calling. We pray for your kingdom work around the globe. We love you, Jesus. We thank you. Amen.

The Great Commission: Part 2

The Great Commission: Part 2 - How We Go

Matthew 28:18-20

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, yes, we are on week two of our Great Commission series, "The Hope for the Whole World." We want all the world to know about Jesus. I have been loving, I guess we only have one week, but I've got a preview of today. So I've been loving watching these videos of the missionaries that we are in contact with, and I'm excited for you to hear today from another one. But it's really about not only hearing their stories, but then taking that and asking, how can we apply it to our own context? How can we live out the Great Commission? How can we go and make disciples, as Jesus calls us to, in our own context, in our own everyday lives?

Last week, we heard from Tomás in the Czech Republic and the stories that he shared of what his family is doing and what their ministry is doing. It was so encouraging to get to hear from him and what God is doing in their area of the kingdom. And today, we're going to go to South Asia, and we're going to hear from some missionaries and what God is doing through them, their family, and their ministry there. So I'm really looking forward to hearing that. But what I want us to do is, as we are hearing their stories, not only become more aware of the global impact that we can have, but also ask how we can apply this to our own lives. How can we live out the Great Commission in our own lives? So we're going to take a minute, well, a few, and we're going to watch the video, and then we'll come back and talk about more for us in our context.

I love hearing from these missionaries around the globe. And if you want, this week you'll get an email with all of their information. You should have gotten one about Tomás last week, but you'll get that email. So if you want to commit with us to signing up for their newsletter and to praying for them, you can check that box on your program and drop that in the back today. But it's just the last year to a year and a half I've really felt just more aware of the global church and how significant and kind of just cool it is that we are all worshiping the same God together. Czech Republic, South Asia, Europe, Australia. It can feel so far away geographically, but we are all so connected because we are all part of the same kingdom. We serve the same God. We worship the same God and celebrate Christian holidays like Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost. And so to just be reminded, to put names with faces and stories with real people, makes it more tangible and reminds us that we are the body and we all have a role to play.

It's all going to look different for each of us. For some of us, like your pastors, it's full-time vocational ministry. But for most believers, it looks different. It's serving in your local church or in your community at parachurch organizations. So maybe it's more of a local focus. Or maybe it's more regional. Maybe you are helping with educating pastors or those who are training up to be ministry leaders. Maybe you're working with something across the state or North America. You're serving in a regional capacity. Maybe you're going on short-term missions, just like she did, to get started—a week here, a couple weeks there. Or maybe it is, for some of you, a more long-term missions situation. Maybe it is a summer, or half a year, or full-time. But it's going to look different for all of us, whether it's locally, regionally, or globally.

Last week, Pastor Andre talked about our passage in Matthew, and this is really our theme verse for this series, which is what we call the Great Commission. It's Matthew 28:18 through 20. I'm going to read it for us. It says, "Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'"

Two things I want to pull out of that passage today, real quick, in the time that we have left. Go and make disciples. We're going to go backwards though. We're going to start with the making disciples part, okay? We are all commanded to make disciples, every single one of us. If we are a follower of Jesus, if we have surrendered our life to him and made him the Lord of our life, we are all commanded to go and make disciples. How do I know this? Because in this passage, Jesus is talking to the 11 remaining disciples, right? He is speaking to the 11. So how do I know this is for all of us? Well, I know this because discipleship, making disciples, is not a one-time thing. Salvation is a one-time decision. You do it, you've done it. Discipleship is a process. It is an ongoing process. We call it sanctification. It is becoming more and more like Jesus. And so that was going to go beyond the disciples' lifetime. So the disciples went out and they started the church and they made disciples. And then those disciples made disciples. And then those disciples made disciples, all the way down through church history. So we too are part of this command. We too are called to make disciples.

I also know that this is true because it was not commanded to be done in the disciples' power. It says, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me," Jesus. Jesus is saying that. The authority has been given to him. So this was not done in the power of the disciples. This was not done by their authority and power. It was done by the power of Jesus. And last I checked, we all have the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead because we have the Holy Spirit living in us. So we too have that same power to go and to make disciples. So we are all commanded to go and make disciples.

Secondly, going back to that word "go," we are to make disciples as we are going. The Greek word here for "go" is to pursue the journey on which one has entered, to continue on one's journey. So as you are going, you have started this journey as a disciple of Jesus. So as you are becoming more like Jesus, as you are going in your life, being discipled, becoming more like him, you make disciples. You do it in the everyday stuff of life. This is a lot of what she was talking about. On the way to the market, to pay a bill, cooking food, eating around the dinner table, in their home. This is where we make disciples.

I know that we live in a very individualized culture. You have your house, I have mine. You have your family, I have mine. You do things your way, I have mine. But why can't it look different for believers? Shouldn't it? Shouldn't we be up in each other's business a little bit more? Shouldn't we maybe intrude just a little bit, or at the very least, invite them into our space? Invite them into our home. Live together. Because honestly, for some of us, if you went to some friends or some family or some coworkers and you invited them to church, it would be weird. It would be awkward. They'd be like, "You don't know my last name. Why are you inviting me to church?" So start with getting to know them. Invite them to coffee or grab lunch together when you're on your lunch break. Talk to them. Ask them about their family, their struggles, their hobbies outside of where you guys are together normally, what they love to do, who they are. And then eventually, hopefully that door can open that you can have spiritual conversations.

It is as you are going, as you live your life, as you become a disciple of Jesus. Because discipleship, it happens at church. It happens in kids ministry. It happens at youth group. It happens in the Bible studies and the more formal, traditional things that we have going on. But it also happens on trips to Costco, and coffee, and cooking dinner, and inviting people over to your home. And I would argue that that happens more naturally in those settings. Discipleship, you have so much influence when you're doing things shoulder to shoulder with people, when you are living life with them. So what if instead of putting a ton of pressure on ourselves to convince people to follow Jesus or to convert someone, we just do life with them? One really practical way that I would encourage you to take with you is to ask people a natural question you can ask is, "Do you have any sort of spiritual faith or practices?" People, especially in the West, I feel like are very open to just spirituality. Not everyone, but a lot of people are open to spiritual things. Whether it's the universe or some just general God, they're open to that. So it's not out of the blue or totally weird for you to ask them about what they believe. And then that can often open the door for you to share what you believe, what God is doing in your life, that you serve the one true God who loves you and wants a relationship with you.

You don't have to word vomit everything you know about the Bible or Jesus. We say we want to saturate the community. We don't mean drown them, okay? We're saturating the community because we are all going out at the same time, and we are all dripping Jesus as we go. That's how we saturate it. Not by dumping it all on one person. But as we are going, as we are living our life, as we are looking different than the world, because we are trying every day to look more and more like Jesus. That's how we saturate our communities. That's how we go and make disciples. We're going to go and we're going to have spiritual conversations. We're going to meet people with their tangible needs. And yes, we may even overtly ask someone if they want a relationship with Jesus Christ or if they want to come to church with us. That is good. But it's also doing life, meeting people where they are, having just general spiritual conversations that as you do that, as you are going, you can be making disciples. We don't have to overcomplicate it. Sometimes it literally is just having people in your home, cooking a meal together, opening up that door for conversation. But we are all commanded to make disciples, and we are gonna do that best as we are going.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for today. We thank you for the ministry they have. We pray over them again, Father, that you would just bless what they are doing, the work that you have them doing there. We thank you for this church building that is underway. God, we just pray favor over that, that it would just be a light in their community, that it would be used for your glory and for the furthering of your kingdom. God, I pray for our people here at Spring Valley. I pray that they would take this command seriously of going and making disciples, that is not just for pastors or ministry leaders or super Christians, but it is for them. God, help us to remember as we are going to make disciples, to be aware of the people around us. Open our eyes to see them. To not just keep our head down in our individualized culture, but to look up. Make us aware. Help us to be open and vulnerable. Open our eyes to see those that you want us to see. Give us boldness where we need boldness. Give us vulnerability where we need vulnerability. God, we thank you for who you are. We thank you that you are using us to build your kingdom. God, may your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus' name, amen.

The Great Commission: Part 1

The Great Commission: Part 1 - Local Missions

Matthew 28:18-20 ; Acts 1:8

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are starting a new series today called The Great Commission, and we are excited about diving into missions. Pastor Chris gave a preview of this last week, but we are just going to dive into missions for three weeks. So let me go ahead and pray one more time. Sorry, I know we just prayed, but I need prayer right now, and then we'll start our sermon. Heavenly Father, again, thank you. Be with me right now. Give me the words to say. I just pray that this Sunday will continue to be an expression of worship to You in all ways: through the singing, through the hearing of Your Word, and also through the fellowship with each other. So we pray this in Your name. Amen.

One of the main tenets of church is to preach the gospel and to make disciples of Jesus. We have ours on the side: to see our community saturated with the glory of God through making disciples in the everyday stuff of life. And every church has some kind of mission or vision statement that pretty much says that. This comes from Jesus giving the explicit instruction to His disciples while He was with them. The disciples, the twelve, would be crucial in the early church and were tasked with continuing the work of Jesus, continuing to build His heavenly kingdom throughout all the earth. Matthew 28:18 says, 'Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.' Make disciples of every nation. He's speaking this to a group of Jews, and He's reminding them to go beyond just their people group, their friends, the people that they know, that they grew up with. This is going to be for people beyond that group. And He says, baptize them, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Jesus is saying, bring them to a place where they're living in the will of God, walking in the way of God's wisdom, living a righteous life according to God's truth. And that instruction that Jesus gives His disciples is still true for us today. For every believer, every follower, everyone who considers themselves a disciple of Jesus, this Great Commission is for you.

If we flip over to Acts chapter 1, verse 8, we get Luke's retelling of Jesus' final moments. And what does He say? What does He prioritize telling the disciples? It's not about the hierarchy of the organization, which apostle is number one, number two, number three. It's not about the finances of the ministry. No, He says this: 'You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.' Dr. John Berry, a theologian, says the locations mentioned in this verse represent a geographical broadening in scope of the apostles' mission from Israel's capital to the land of Israel to the entire world. So Jesus reveals His plan, His hope, and His will for the church to spread the gospel, to spread the good news, starting with their immediate surroundings and working their way out. Today, to contextualize that, since we don't live in Jerusalem, we might say local to regional to international. Jesus' instructions for us today is to take His gospel to people in our area, in our region, and around the world.

Mission throughout the Bible is about God's will being fully realized in a specific location with a specific people. And in Scripture, God invited His people, the Israelites, to participate in that mission. Today, missions is about God's will being realized and lived out all around the world. And missions work is accepting God's gracious invitation to us to actively participate in that realization. So this morning, we're going to focus on the local aspect of this commissioning mandate and how it pertains to us here at Spring Valley Church. What is our local impact in our community, in our neighborhoods, in our cities? And our prayer is that our heart as a church would grow for fulfilling and carrying out the Great Commission, and to taking the gospel locally, regionally, and internationally.

And what I love about missions is that we as a church are all different, and some of us have a deep passion for different areas of missions. So some of us love local missions. We care about those in our neighborhoods and our cities, as Jesus would describe the widow and the orphan in our communities, and that is beautiful. And if that is you, if you have a heart for local missions, we need you at this church. Some of us have a heart for our region, maybe that's defined as California or Northern California, or maybe as broad as the West Coast, and we want people to know Jesus and we want people in that region to come to know and love God. And if that's you, then we need you at this church. Some of us have a heart for people around the world, and maybe that compassion comes from your own travels, seeing people around the world who are hurting, who are in despair, and seeing them live an unfulfilled life because they don't know God. Or maybe your heart for international missions comes from your own ethnicity and your family and your people who do not yet know God. And if that's you, that's so important, and we need you here at this church. We want people here at Spring Valley who have a heart for all of God's people all around the world, near and far.

And we formed this series to encourage a muscle in our church that hasn't been used in quite some time. As you know, COVID changed a lot of life, and it changed church life as well. This church, Spring Valley, has a rich history of missions, going on missions trips, supporting missionaries. And while a few of you are still familiar with some of those missionaries, we wanted to spend some time reconnecting with them, reestablishing our connection with missionaries around the world. In an ideal world, we would have flown them out. We would have had them right here in person, and they would be sharing their heart with you. We could not do that. And so we did the next best thing, which is each week, this week and the next two weeks, we're going to watch a video of the missionaries, interviewing them and finding out more about them and their heart for missions. So without further ado, let's turn our attention to the screens again.

Well, hey, Spring Valley Church, so excited. Pastor Chris here, and I would love to introduce you to who I would call a friend of mine, Tomas, who is doing some amazing work around the globe for Jesus and for the kingdom. And this is part of our mission series, and each week we're going to have an interview coming to you where we're going to kind of get you to get to know somebody who is doing real missions work around the world. And Tomas, you're going to be here. You're going to kick us off and welcome. Tell us maybe a little bit about you and the family, where you're serving at, and how long you've been there.

All right. Hey, guys. It's wonderful to be there. I wish I could be there in person. California was a place where I used to live, and that's my district. And I love people there and connecting with people. I am right now in the Czech Republic. My name is Tomas Moises, which actually means Moses in the Czech language. And I'm serving in the Czech Republic, actually the most atheist country in the world. And it is not easy. And we've been here for the last 15 years, I think, if I'm counting correctly.

That's awesome, man. Wow. That's some tough ministry, man, of working with. Oh, man. So kind of tell us a little bit, what are some things that are actively happening in your ministry, things that you're facing, maybe an area of physical, maybe spiritual, emotional, mental, like how are you connecting with people? How are you helping them? What's kind of going on with your work right now?

Wow. So I think I'd have to start in the beginning because for the last 15 years, the ministry has developed and changed. And I think we really have to be adaptable when we do ministry, where we go, being sensitive to the leading of the Spirit and just keep saying like, Lord, lead me. Lord, lead us. Lord, show us. Be in prayer and prayer in specifics and over people, knowing the people that you are reaching, connecting with the people you are reaching, because although they might be from the same nation, they are different people, just like Americans. And so when we came to Czech Republic, we started actually with the youth. I used to be a youth pastor in California, and I loved it. And I thought, I'm getting away from that. I'm starting to get gray a little bit. And the Lord said, no, you're going to be doing that. So we started with the youth because they are very open. A lot of them do speak English. So English was one of the tools we used to connect with people. We would go to local schools and have conversations in their English classes. And afterwards, we would invite them to English club, conversation club, and we would just talk with them, hang out with them. And it actually became a counseling session for some of them. So that was great.

From that, then from there, we started youth club. And basically, we would just meet with these students. They would come over, hang out, eat food, play video games, play games, do fun stuff, a lot like a youth group. And they don't have youth groups here, so they don't experience that. So we had a blast. And every single time we would talk about a topic like love, forgiveness, family, relationships, and we would always bring in the Bible, not really pressuring them because all of them were atheists, all of them. And we would have anywhere from 20 to up to maybe 70 people that would come and hang out with us. And it was great. We would talk about the Bible and the wisdom of God and what He says. And eventually they started catching on. They started regarding the Bible as an amazing source of wisdom. So you got these atheists that love the Bible. That was a great thing.

From there, God led us to start a Q&A club. Because for Czech people, really the discipleship and coming to Christ starts way ahead of the curve than maybe in the United States or other places because they don't believe there is God. They have no concept of God and history, whether it's the history of the church here in Europe or whether it's the Age of Enlightenment and communism, that really eradicated faith for most people. And so we're sort of coming back to it, sort of postmodern, post-church, post-communist country. And so we did this Q&A club where we used a lot of apologetics, you know, defending faith with science, defending faith with history, with philosophy and all these maybe ways of venues of really breaking down the barriers, because this is where the barriers are. Once you get through those barriers, Czech people are pretty open. So they're hard on the outside but very soft on the inside. So we did that for quite a while. We would have up to 30 students sitting in one room asking about God. They were all atheists, and we would talk for hours, and they loved it. And we did that for years. So over 10 years, we had about 700 students come through this ministry in a town of 14,000. So that's been pretty amazing.

So many of them accepted Christ, were baptized. Unfortunately, they like went into the world. So we only got to keep some of them. And actually, what's amazing about it, we planted a church and these high school students are now our elders in the church. So our elders are under 30 leading people in their 50s, 60s, you know, because we now have adult believers coming to Christ. And so the youngest people in our church are actually leading the church, and they're the most faithful ones. They're the ones that understand the word. They preach. We switch off in preaching. We switch off in teaching. They're the ones doing baptisms and stuff like that. So it's pretty amazing how God has moved these high school students to be the leaders of the church. And it's such a privilege. I feel so privileged to be part of something like that, you know, because I don't take it for granted, especially here in the most atheist country in the world.

That's crazy. Dude, that is so cool to hear the stories of the students you had that you brought them in and then you raised, God raised them up. You were there with them and now they're doing ministry. That's so cool. Amen. Is there a story or something of a recent ministry win or something you want to share with us that happened just really recently in your ministry?

Oh, there's so many wins and so many drawbacks that I could think of. And I don't want to say you win some, you lose some, but the reality is that you want to see people saved and you want to see people grow in Christ. It never happens as we want it to. It always happens as God allows it and leads people to. Prayer is so powerful. It's unimaginably powerful. I think underestimating prayer is the weakest thing we can do. So really, we need to focus on prayer. Amazing thing. We, for example, just recently, well, probably about a year ago, and this is something that I would want to encourage you maybe in doing. So we pray. We say, God, bring somebody today that needs you. Show us. Whenever we remember, whenever we can, we pray that prayer. And one time, my wife and I do Wednesday morning dates. We try to have a date once a week. If it works out with kids, it doesn't always work out. But we were in a coffee shop, and we were talking to each other. And I overheard these two ladies talking, and they used the word God, which nobody ever uses in their conversation in Czech Republic. Wow, okay. So I had to plug my computer in and the outlet was right next to them. Perfect, perfect excuse. I'm like, hey, I'm sorry, guys. Can I just plug my computer here? They said, fine. And I said, I wasn't trying to listen into your conversation, but I heard the word God. And they said, oh, yes. Do you believe? And come to find out, there were two very esoteric women, very open to the spiritual, but definitely not Jesus, definitely not God even naming him. And so we started talking and eventually one thing led to another and we ended up having a discovery Bible study at one of the ladies house. And she, she is a person that sort of helps people with traumas.

And so she invited all these people to her house to have this Bible study. And so we sat there in the most atheist country in the world, reading the Bible with these esoteric people. And they loved it so much. They said, when can we meet next. And this lady became what we know from the Bible as a person of peace. She's the person that opens the doors, that serves as the connection to her community. And it's been incredible because she has been growing by leaps and bounds and she has been leaving so many things behind. She still has some ways to go, but she says, I love Jesus. And I know this might be strange to some people, but when I came to her house, she's got this Buddha and she's got this, I don't know, like mandalas, and she's got all this stuff in her house. So we're doing a Bible study there. And, you know, after a couple of times, I came over, and she's got the big statue of Rio de Janeiro Jesus standing over all these idols. And she says, I bought Jesus the biggest because he's the best. That's awesome. So we're working out the kinks, you know, and she's still not completely there. But it was amazing. And she actually bought herself a ring. She said, I am married to Jesus now. I don't want anybody else. I don't want any other thing, any other person that is going to be more important. And she reads the Bible all the time, every day. So cool. She invites people to read with her even when I'm not there. So that has been, and this is just a recent thing. So unfortunately, that friend we met her with just separated from her and said, I'm basically just cut off the relationship because she's being grown in Christ. And the other friend cannot handle this new person she's becoming. So that's just one. There are so many stories like that. But that's just one of the stories that we experienced recently.

Oh, that's amazing, dude. I love to hear that. That is so cool. That is so awesome. Hallelujah. Well, I got a question I kind of want to ask everybody we interview. And that is if somebody in our church either wanted to look into what it means more to be a missionary, maybe God is calling them to the mission field or to a specific group of people. But then also, too, part of what we want our people to understand in the series is that God has calling all of us to be missionaries where we live, where we learn, where we work, where we play. And so what would be an encouragement for our people, for them to be a missionary where they are right now, where God has them where they are?

Absolutely. I think it is so important and sometimes underrated the fact that people need to be missionaries where they are. You know, in the early church, that was the case. I mean, we hear of Paul going out, but the fact was that he was one of the not so many people that were going out necessarily. More people were staying where they were and reaching out to their neighbors. And that's how the church really grew the most, according to my opinion, as I read the Bible. And so the mission field doesn't need to be complicated and complex. It's like it's all about just praying, God, bring me somebody or bring me to somebody. And it doesn't, another thing I would say, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will come to church. You know, they might not want to come to church. You will have to go to them and spend time with them over coffee or helping them out with stuff in life, listening to them. You know, I'm praying for them all along and it might take some time. It's a thing of patience and it's a thing of mercy and love. And that's how God works.

But I would definitely encourage you to do that first because I think sometimes we love the sense of adventure. We want to go out and we want to do all this ministry and go somewhere different than where we grew up and we want to reach people there. But the fact is that if we're not doing it at home, it's probably not going to be a good experience for us and for anybody else if we go out with that attitude. I've seen too many people go into a mission field and turn it into this glorified vacation where they come in and then eventually they just kind of burn out or they don't feel successful. So they just kind of sit it out or live it out in some form or fashion. But really the preparation starts at home. And I definitely don't want to discourage you from going to the mission field. It's an amazing thing. If you are called, you better answer that call because you're not going to be comfortable or happy anywhere else but where God is calling you. But that call might be to your neighbor. So it's really important not to get overtaken by emotions or by these ideas of grandeur, how we're going to go out and save the world somewhere else. The grind really starts at home, where you are reaching out to people around you, taking that time, and that will prepare you and shape you to be the person that God is calling into a different country, different place, different culture.

That's awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for the time today. I'd love to pray over you as we go. But what's something specific that our church can be praying about for you? And how can they get to know more about your ministry? What's going on and how can they support you?

I think right now, the biggest thing is we have a church with a lot of young families because all these young people that are now our leaders and elders, they got married and we have so many little kids. I mean, our church is just booming with little kids. And we really don't have the physical capacity within our church to meet there anymore. So we are praying for a place. We're looking for a place, but there's nothing coming up. It's really hard to find a place even to rent or to buy or anything like that. So we would say pray. Pray for us that God brings that, that God opens those doors and pray that God opens doors to people around us. You know, I think we've been we've proven to the people in our community that we are serious about being here. We are serious about, you know, shining the light of Christ and and helping them out in any way and in a form of fashion. And so pray that God would also open up the hearts of the people here and that he would send his workers because the harvest is ready. But we need workers here. We need people, especially working with these young people. As you see, I'm getting gray. I'm not as relevant as I used to be with them. So if you know a young person who wants to serve overseas and has been faithful in serving Jesus where they're at, we would love to talk with them, connect with them. Obviously, pray for us. If you want to support us, we were on the GP site, too. We'll give you more information about that. But like I said, you cannot underestimate prayer. And that is really, really, really, really important, especially in a place like this, where it's dry, where it's hard, and where we feel so alone sometimes.

I'd love to pray for you right now. Thank you. Heavenly Father, God, we just thank you for my brother Tomas. God, just his heart that he has for the place of the people that you've placed him at. God, to hear these incredible stories, God, of what you're doing with so many young people and young families in a small town. God, just how incredibly amazing that is, Jesus. You are moving in such powerful ways. And so, God, I pray that you would just continue to create opportunities for coffee shop conversations, for conversations to happen in the grocery store or with friends. I pray, God, for the people in the church, God, that they would just continue to have a boldness to speak the name of Jesus in such a place that is so pushed away from God and any thought of there being a creator and a savior out there for them, Jesus. And so, God, I pray that you would just continue to break down doors and break down barriers, God, that people would have an open heart to hear about you and to hear about the truth of the Bible and the gospel and just that they have a Savior who deeply loves them more than they could ever dream or imagine. And so, God, I pray, too, for opportunities with a facility, Jesus, that they would find a place to call home that would be able to have the capacity for these families and the little ones and the kids, God, that are continuing to come to you and finding you for the very first time.

And so, God, I pray for a blessing over their family. God, you would protect them, protect their marriage. God, keep them safe as they're out every single day, just saying, God, what do you have for me today? And that they would just stay attuned to the Holy Spirit every single step of the way with whatever they do. God, direct his path, direct his words. Jesus, continue to allow them to be a light in a dark place. Jesus says they go out and they sow seeds. God, may they be encouraged, Jesus, even today that you are moving it. And it may be something where they're not seeing any seeds take root, Jesus, but sometimes we don't see what's happening under the ground, God, even before it springs up. Jesus, just encourage them today. Jesus, bring the people that they need to continue the ministry, to continue to reach more and more people for you. Jesus, we thank you for their faithfulness. God, to shepherd these people. God, continue to just bless them with strength and endurance. God, to just bring them encouragement. I pray even this day, Jesus, we thank you for your calling on our lives. And we thank you for the truth and the reminder that you're with us every single step of the way. We don't have to do this alone. And so, Jesus, we thank you for that. God, give us the strength we need to face today. We love you, Jesus. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Cool. And we pray that the Lord blesses Spring Valley. And we have a longstanding relationship. It's been a while, but we just pray that the Lord blesses you guys in every way and that he uses you where you guys are at. Cool. Thank you. Appreciate the time today. Thanks. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the prayer and thanks for the time as well.

I really appreciate those words from Tomas, his insight about local mission. If you want to watch that again, we're going to send every Monday of this series, you're going to get a recap email with the video and also links on how to support them. So it'll include, if you want to sign up for their monthly newsletter, they will give out updates. They send those out. And then we'll also have information about if you would like to partner with him and give to him being there. I just heard from him this morning via email, and he's saying that they could use prayers. Their monthly donations have dropped significantly in the last six months. And so they are really praying that people would come and support them. So if God has impressed that upon your heart, we will give you all that information come tomorrow. So I just want to close with this. We should all have a heart to reach people for Jesus. I love that he said it. It doesn't necessarily mean bringing them to church. It may just mean having them over, having a conversation with them, inviting them out to coffee. And it can be a slow work. I think sometimes we do have visions of grandeur, say, I'm going to reach this person, and within a week, they're going to be a Christian, and their lives are changed. And God can do that. That is possible, but it also may be years in the making. He's been there for 15 years, chipping away, grinding away, presenting the gospel over and over. And so that's the encouragement for us. It takes intentionality. It means that we're going to be open to conversation and interactions with people around us that maybe God brought into our lives for a reason. It means taking a prayerful approach, praying like he does with his wife every day, hey, God, bring someone along. Use me today. Bring someone along that I can share an encouragement, your truth, your love to. And local missions means being open and willing to interact with people that maybe you wouldn't normally interact with. Now, whether that's volunteering at a local organization, Loaves and Fishes, a local food bank, a halfway house, all those are great options, but it may simply mean talking to a neighbor, like he said. It may just mean having a conversation with someone.

I don't want to spell it out too much for you of what local missions looks like for you, because I think I want to encourage all of you to have a conversation with God and say, God, what is it that you want me to do? How do you want me to be involved with what you're doing in my local area? Is there someone that I need to have a conversation with? Is it my neighbors? Is it my coworkers at work? Maybe it's the parents at school drop-off. Who needs to hear your truth, and who can I begin a relationship with? I will say, too, from a church standpoint, coming off these last amazing couple days of Camp Awesome, as a church, we're praying that Camp Awesome will be an annual local mission for us. That we would be, this year we did not really spread the word. It was just our church with a couple other people. But in the years to come, we want to let people know. We want to invite everyone from the community to join Camp Awesome. And so that could be an extension of local missions for us here. But we're taking it one step at a time, prayerfully, to help God's will be realized in our context and in our community and partnering with him to share the good news of salvation that only comes through Christ, that more might belong to the kingdom of God. I want to read these verses for you one more time. Acts 1:8, and this is for you. It says, but you, all of you here in this room, will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, or Rocklin, Roseville, California, America, and the world, and to all the ends of the earth. I want to read Matthew to you again. And Jesus came to you, and he says, And all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to all of you here at Spring Valley Church. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded all of you. And surely Jesus is with you until the very end of the age. Amen?

Let's pray. God, again, thank you for our time this morning. Thank you for all that you're doing through your spirit, the work that you are doing in the lives of kids, in the lives of us, and God, in the lives of those who are not yet in this room, who are not yet believers. But God, we know that you are working in their hearts, and God, we want to partner with you and the work that you are doing. And so, God, I pray that through your spirit, you would prompt us that we would be attuned to your spirit, that we would be ready to have conversations, even if they have nothing to do with church and faith yet, but we just start to build relationships with people, letting them know that we're there for them, that we love them, that they're cared for. And God, when the timing is just right, that we would mention you. And God, that you would be a part of our conversation with everyone around us. So God, give us what we need. Give us strength. Give us the words. Give us wisdom. And God, I pray that through Spring Valley Church and all of us here, that your kingdom would grow. We pray this in your name. Amen.

God's Way - First Things First: Part 4

God’s Way - First Things First: Part 4 - A Cautionary Tale

Genesis 4:2–16; Matthew 23:23; Romans 12:2; Malachi 3:10–12

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, good morning, everybody. If I haven't had a chance to meet you, my name is Pastor Chris, part of the team here, and I have the privilege of leading this church. It's an honor to be able to worship with you this morning and to wrap up our series we've been in now for the last four weeks: "God's Way, First Things First." And if you've been in church for a while, maybe this is the first time in a while, or maybe you're here checking it out for different reasons—yes, we are talking about money today. It has been a journey that we've been on for the last four weeks, just digging into Scripture and asking, "God, what do you have to say about money? What does it matter to us? Why do you care about it? And why is it a thing?"

We started off week one, and I said this, and I'll say it again. I think I've said it every single week that in our lives, there are dark areas. There are places where the light of God has yet to shine. Until we allow God's Word to penetrate those places and shine His perfect light in them, we will continue to be in bondage. A part of this is talking about a larger conversation about discipleship. We've said it before that our vision and mission here is to see our community saturated with the glory of God through making disciples in the everyday stuff of life. I don't know about you, but for me, the everyday stuff of my life probably includes finances. God has called us to live in a certain way as financial stewards of what He has blessed us with.

In the beginning of humanity, we read in Genesis that a lie was told to Adam and Eve by Satan in the garden. This is the same lie that we believe today. The lie is this: that God is holding out on you. That God does not give you enough. God will not give you enough. And so, in turn, we have to take control. We have to make sure that everything is taken care of, and we have to be the ones making all the calls and decisions in our lives. It's the same lie that was told to Adam and Eve in the garden with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Whether you want to admit it or not, at some level, we all still believe this lie. For the last four weeks, we've been deconstructing that and breaking it down, trying to see where this lie begins. We talked about Abraham and Isaac and how God wants to pour out His blessings on us, but it involves trust. We've talked about so many other ways in life of what Jesus has said about money. If you haven't been around, I encourage you to please go listen to those on our website or podcast. There's really good stuff in there that helps us begin to understand that God is not holding out on us, and that God truly wants to bless us, but it is an act of trust.

Last week, we talked about firstfruits. We talked about the fact that God is actually the one who first gave to us. He gave His first and His best, and His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross for us. So the act of generosity isn't one where God's just up there, the big man upstairs in heaven looking down going, "You mess up, I'm gonna zap you." Rather, He is the one who actually gave first and says, "This is what generosity looks like. This is the way I want you to live." There's a system, a process to all of our lives, and that isn't just how we treat our relationships or our marriages, or how we raise our kids, or what we do with our lives, or the words that come out of our mouths, but it also includes how we spend our money.

Today, I want to talk through a couple of cautionary tales that we see in Scripture. Does anybody know what a cautionary tale is? Hint: the word is in the title. It's a tale of caution. It's okay, you'll get there this morning. Drink some more coffee. But a word of caution, a cautionary tale—what does it do? A cautionary tale has two purposes. The first is to tell us, "Hey, don't do the thing that I'm cautioning you against. Don't do it." And the second is, "If you ignore the teaching I'm giving you, if you ignore the caution, this is what is going to happen. This is going to be the outcome." The outcome, most likely in cautionary tales, is going to be negative. I won't tell you later, "I told you so," because I'm telling you so right now. Cautionary tales equip us to be better decision-makers, revealing clear cause-and-effect truth in our lives.

We're going to talk about a set of brothers who were second-generation humans on this earth: Cain and Abel. They are actually the sons of Adam and Eve. What's interesting here is that we come to this point in Genesis when Adam and Eve had sinned, and they actually got kicked out of the garden because of their sin. They're trying to figure out life, and then they have two sons, Cain and Abel, and they're just trying to figure out this world. But what we do know is that in Scripture, God is still clearly having a relationship with them. Sometimes I think we get caught up in thinking, "Oh, they were in the garden with God, and they got kicked out, so then God doesn't talk to them anymore." But that's actually the opposite effect. God is a very relational God in their lives. He's talking to them. He's telling them how to live. He's giving them direction and instruction on their lives on a regular basis. We see this all the way through Scripture up to the flood. Because the reality was, Noah didn't just wake up one morning and go, "Hey, I wanna build a boat. I don't even know what a boat is. I've never seen a boat. I don't even know that I knew the word boat, but I'm gonna build one." No, God gives very deep instructions. You could read in the Bible down to inches and feet. God gives him a clear blueprint of what to build when He says, "I want you to build a giant boat called an ark." So God is still speaking with His people on a very regular basis, giving them directions for how to worship, how to live their lives, how to conduct themselves, and how to live in relationship with other human beings on this planet.

So we come to Genesis chapter four, where we're going to spend most of our time today. It says, "When they grew up, Abel became a shepherd while Cain cultivated the ground." Now, first off, these are both great professions. These are both good. God loves both of these. These are both very necessary to sustaining life. One is not better than the other, okay? I wanna get that off the front here. "When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel also brought a gift, the best portions of the firstborn lambs of his flock." Last week, we talked about firstfruits. We talked about why God wants the first things. Why does God want the first? Because the first is the best. Do you know who gets the best pineapples? The first crop. Hawaiians. It never leaves the island. I hear they're magical. I hope one day to taste one. It pales in comparison, I guess, to what we have here in the States. But think of olive oil. The first press of the olives is what? Extra virgin olive oil. It's the best. And then every press after that, it kind of goes down in grade. God wants the best for us, and He gave us the best in His Son, Jesus, and He asks for the best of us as well. The first is the best.

Continue on. "The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, but He did not accept Cain and his gift." What a jerk God is, right? Or wait, hold on. There's probably more there. Unless maybe God had, at some point, given instruction to all of humanity about what He wanted in the gift of the harvest. Hmm. God's standard was already clearly communicated. And yet, Cain kind of went rogue. And this was not good. Continue on. "This made Cain very angry. He looked dejected." Here is where the cautionary tale begins. The caution here is that we are to give God what He asks. Plain and simple. And the caution is that giving whatever you want instead causes issues. Growing up as a kid, we had a dog, and one of my weekly chores was to get my butt out into the backyard and pick up all the little and large deposits our dog had made in the grass, the flower beds, and sometimes the brick patio and all over the place, right? And I remember there was one time where my dad was like, "Hey, garbage night, get out there, go pick up the dog poop." And I'm like, "Dad, I don't want to. I've already done my laundry, I unloaded the dishwasher, and I cleaned my room." And my dad went, "Fantastic, that's great. Now you have time to go out and do what I've asked of you." Because doing the laundry, picking up my room, unloading the dishwasher, was not the directive that my father had given me. He said, "Get your butt outside and pick up the dog poop." Now, don't use your hands if you're picking up dog poop. Use like a little pooper scooper. But the principle here is the same. God says, "I want you to give in this way. This is my expectation of you." And yet Cain goes off and does what he wants. And I think he comes with a little bit of an attitude and says, "Hey, God. Like, yeah, here's some of my crop. It's what it is. You're welcome." Cain's got this little bit of an attitude thing going on. And God is like, "Hold up." Cain is choosing independence over obedience to God.

I think maybe this question is close to where we are in our lives: where have we given God something else than what He asked for, the first and the best? And so God, in His graciousness, has a very direct conversation with Cain. He says this: "Why are you so angry?" the Lord asked Cain. "Why do you look dejected? You will be accepted if you do what is right." A caveat here: There are times in our life, I've experienced it, and I think many of you have, where God presents two really good options. You could go this way or you could go this way. And in His love and His grace and His care, He says, "You choose. I love you. I'm gonna bless whatever route you wanna go on. You choose." He's great like that. This is not one of those situations. This is not a moment where God says, "Okay, Cain, well, I want this, but you choose, bud." No, He's saying, "You need to choose what I've asked you to choose." And Cain let his brokenness and selfishness make the decision and not be obedient. I think some of us have done that. Cain is not choosing the direct, clearly previously stated obedience. God's saying, "Hey, Cain, bro, what's going on, dude? I told you what's up. You're not doing it. We need to have a conversation." This is Chris's translation, if you didn't know. That's not a biblical quote right there. But hey, Cain, dude, we gotta talk. So He says, "Why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you do what is right, but you refuse to do what is right. Then watch out. Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you, but you must subdue it and be its master."

I could wrap up today right here and go home. That is such a good bunch of theology right here in this passage. And I think for so many of us, we could take this and immediately apply it like right now, right? But this is a cautionary tale. It's saying, "Hey, Cain, if you keep walking down this path, bro, it's not gonna end well for you. It's not gonna end up in a place where I think you want to be. So you gotta watch out. That sin is crouching. Do what is right. Master it." And what I love here is that God's patience is so huge in this moment. God had already given him direction and he already disobeyed. Like how great is it that God is like, "Hey bud, let's talk about this." I mean, He could have been like, "Zap, you're done, next." Seriously, this isn't a mystery to Cain. Cain's like, "What am I supposed to do?" God's like, "No, this is how you're supposed to do it. Hey, Cain, you're not doing it. We need to talk about this." Because God is like, "Hey, I have a calling. I have a path. I have a way of life for you. And that way is filled with peace. Cain, I made you. I love you. I care so much for you. I have a calling for you. And if you do it my way, 100% of the time, it is going to turn out great. But you got to do it my way." But how many of us are like Cain? I'll admit it. I'll be the first. I want to do it my way the first time. "Me do," as my three-year-old says in our house. "Me do." I'm like, "Baby, you don't know how to mow the lawn. And you're out here going, 'Me do, me do' with the mower. I'm like, no, this is not gonna end well."

Because if you see this outcome that God is saying don't do, there's already anger and dejection from Cain. We're gonna see in a moment, there's violence, there's loss, there's wandering, there's blame. Like Cain's path just compounds into just bad. Have you ever worked with someone who you have to follow to clean up their messes afterwards? Have you? People are saying names. Don't say names. Some of you are like, "I can think of four people right now." Like so much work. You have to follow this person and fix the mess that they are making. It's exhausting. It costs time. It costs resources. It costs money, your energy, your sanity. But God is saying here, do it my way, the right way, the first time, and there won't be anything extra fixing needed. It's easier to keep relationships healthy than it is to repair a broken one, right? It costs time. It costs energy. It costs sometimes counseling to mend broken relationships, and we could have just done it right the first time. God here in His grace is trying to warn Cain, but he's choosing his own path. Verse eight: "One day Cain suggested to his brother, 'Hey bro, let's go out into the fields.' And while they were out in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him." Welcome to church. Maybe you've heard this story before, maybe you haven't, but God literally just told him, "Bro, you go down this path, it's not going to end well." But Cain chooses anger and dejection and then takes it out on his own flesh and blood, his own brother. Guys, there's like, I think, at this point in time, four or maybe five people on planet Earth, and 20% just got killed.

And I think sometimes we can look at this story with Cain and be like, "Man, that's horrible. I'd never do that." But I'll admit, I've had bad days and come home and I wasn't the nicest to my kids. I wasn't the most loving and caring husband that I should have been. And I have to go back. I have to ask forgiveness. I say, "I'm so sorry. I had a horrible day at work. This happened, this happened, this happened. And I just took it out on you guys." And maybe you've done that to people in your family or people that you care about. Or maybe it was done to you. I don't know all of your stories, but I know some, and I know some of you didn't grow up in the best houses with the most loving and caring parents. And dad might come home after a hard day. Or mom. Or maybe a sibling to sibling, like we read in the Bible. Maybe it was a teacher. Maybe it was a coach. Maybe, unfortunately, it happens. Maybe it was a pastor at some point in your life. And I'm so sorry for that. And Cain is continuing to choose to do it his own way rather than choosing to do it God's way. Verse nine: "Afterward, the Lord asked Cain, 'Hey, where's your brother? Where's Abel?' Well, I don't know," Cain responded. "Am I my brother's guardian?" But the Lord said, "What have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has swallowed your brother's blood. You will no longer will the ground yield good crops for you, no matter how hard you work. From now on, you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth."

There are always results to our actions. Always. There are always results to our actions. Is it God's fault what happened to Cain? No. God warned Cain. He said, "Dude, don't keep going down that path. There's gonna be outcomes. There's gonna be results that you cannot even fathom that you do not want." The fallout wasn't God's cruelty. It was a consequence. Consequence, I think sometimes we hear that word, we think only just bad stuff, right? Just consequences. But here's the definition of consequence: A consequence is the result, outcome, or effect of a prior action, decision, or situation. Consequences can be good. Consequences can be bad. And for Cain, it was a bad consequence. It was a curse. God was trying to present him with good consequences if he chose His way and His path, but Cain decided to do something else. Cain decided to make him and his identity, his outcomes, his crop, his income, his God. Instead of submitting to Yahweh, God Almighty, in saying, "You know what, God? You are right. You are God. I am not. I am submitting to you." And yet I think we do the same at times, right? We make things in our life our gods. Now, are they little carved wooden or metal figures or different things? No, idols throughout culture have looked like all sorts of different things. We talked about the rich young man a couple weeks ago that he had made money his God, and he comes to Jesus and says, "Hey, how do I get into heaven?" God says, "Well, love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength, love your neighbor as yourself, honor your mother and father." And he's like, "I've done all those things." And Jesus is like, "Awesome, bro, that's great. But you need to sell your wealth and give it away because that's your God." And he walked away dejected, just like Cain, because he didn't want to surrender what had become his everything, his whole world, the center of his life.

The reality is that God is the one who brings the provision. It's nothing that we do. Cain gave such value to his crop, it became his idol. And I find it interesting that this is a similar curse that his parents had felt and walked through. Because in the garden, it was this perfect, immaculate place where they had to work for nothing. God created an environment that things just grew. Food was available. It was there. They didn't have to water. They didn't have to fertilize. They didn't have to weed. They didn't have to plant. They didn't have to grow. Man, that sounds like a great place. My garden gives you some of that. But then Adam and Eve, they get kicked out. And now part of their curse, because of their sin, they have to work the ground. But God still allows things to grow. And now Cain gets removed a degree further from that, that it says that the ground will not produce for him. His idol he once had is now completely gone. And a curse is put on him because he broke the relationship with God. Even after God said, "Hey, here's how to live your life. Hey, here's a warning, you're not going right. Hey, buddy, get back in line, it's not going good." Boom, murder. And for some, that kind of sounds extreme. I don't think anybody in this room has ever killed anybody before. But all of us have sin in our lives. And all of us at time, from time to time, choose our way, our selfish, our own way, our own path. And then Cain kind of has a little bit of a four-year-old temper tantrum. Cain replies to the Lord, "My punishment is too great for me to bear." I find it interesting sometimes that when we get caught in something that we know we did wrong, we have justified our actions so far gone that we can't even understand what fair is. We're at such a far, sinful, broken place that we can't even see clearly because we're so burning with selfishness inside of us. Cain's acting like a little child right here. Then Cain goes on to say some things that God did not say. He says this: "You have banished me from the land and from your presence." Did God ever say Cain was banished? No. But Cain knew his consequences. He knew what it meant for his punishment that was coming because he had chosen himself over God rather than allowing God to come in and to be the choice that he selected. It was Cain's choice, not God's.

Continues on: "You have made me a homeless wanderer." Cain, I tried to tell you, man, I really did. "But that warning I gave you about those things tempting you, they became your master rather than you mastering those temptations. These are the results." He says, "Anyone who finds me will kill me," Cain said. "Nope," the Lord replied. "For I will give a sevenfold punishment to anyone who kills you. Then the Lord put a mark on Cain to warn anyone who might try to kill him. So Cain left the Lord's presence and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden." We don't know what this mark was. We have no idea what it is. There's some bad theology in church that gets thrown around that some people say this is where darker-skinned people came from. And that's a lie. That's not true. It's a lie from the church to manipulate, to control, to degrade people that are created. All people are created in God's image. And so if you've been told that lie or you've heard that lie, like put that away. That is not from God, okay? We don't know what this mark was. We have no idea. But all we know is that whatever it was, it was clear as day: "Hey, do not touch that, bro. He messed up with God. You don't wanna get pulled into that garbage. Stay away." This is the cautionary tale from the Old Testament. Now I wanna talk about a cautionary tale from the New Testament. These are words of Jesus in Matthew 23:23. Jesus says this: "What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law, which are justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things."

What is Jesus saying here? Jesus is saying, yes, you should tithe. That's what you should do. But see, if Cain was over here going, "Whatever, God, you take this," the Pharisees over here were so high and mighty, they're like, "I'm gonna even tithe my herb garden. Here's 10% of my basil, 10% of my rosemary, 10% of whatever." Okay, side note: please don't bring me your garden tithes to the church, okay? I have my own garden I'm struggling with, okay? I don't need your garden too. But Jesus here is saying, "You're doing it your own way." Huh. Is there a story from the Old Testament of someone who was trying to be tithing and giving and worship in their own way? Oh yeah, we just talked about Cain. And here's the opposite of the Pharisees saying, "We are following every aspect of the law. We are so high and mighty." And Jesus is like, "Okay, cool. But what about justice and mercy and my grace and my love and my faith and my hope? Like, what about that?" Jesus here isn't saying not to tithe. He's actually affirming the Old Testament principle of tithing. And He's actually kicking it up a notch and saying, "Hey, there's more to it than that. Tithing is the foundation, not the ceiling. Like there's more to it." And we've talked about that. We talked about in the Word, we said the term extravagant generosity is what God desires of our hearts and our lives. "Well, pastor, you know I'm tithing. And so like, God, He doesn't care about these little sins in my life. I'm doing the big one. I'm doing the 10%." Wait, sorry, excuse me. What? We don't get to just pick and choose what's kind of nice for us, or what's okay in our eyes, because we selfishly say, "I'll do it." Do we? We see the world through our own eyes, right? We see the world through our perspective, and when we think we see what is good and pleasing and all that, we say, "Perfect. I'll just do that. That's exactly." No, no, no, no. God wants all of you. And that includes your finances. The Pharisees were giving themselves permission to ignore God's heart of justice, mercy, and faith. "We're going to do it how we want to do it, Jesus. We got this law thing figured out. Don't worry about us. You need to go look at those sinners over there." And Jesus is like, "Are you just pointing at yourself? Because I'm here talking to a sinner right now."

But it's hard, right? It's hard. And it's uncomfortable sometimes to walk through these things. And I've learned in my life, I know that there's times where I have to say, "Hey, search me, God. I'm blind in areas. I need you to open up my eyes. I need your perspective. I need to change who I am. I need you to put your new spirit in me so I can see my blind spots in my life." And God will come in and He'll work in your life and He'll soften your heart and He will give you new desires for His will and His way. Because the reality is, this is a discipline of discernment. We're out here having to filter through what is God's will and what is my will? "Well, God put that thought into my head, so that must be God's will." No. I've heard Christians come and say, "Well, God wants me to get a divorce." Nope. I think you're leaning a little bit too much on your will and not looking into and trying to discern God's will. But it's difficult. Discernment isn't guessing, guys. Okay, isn't just like poking in the dark going, "Okay, maybe here, maybe there." Discernment is a transformation process. It requires humility and Scripture and Christian community. That's why we gather here. It takes a commitment, a daily commitment to waking up saying, "Jesus, I am yours today. What do you will for my life?" Scripture calls this a renewing of our mind. Romans 12:2: "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way that you think. Then you will learn, you will know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." Cain and the Pharisees chose a way that was sinful, selfish, and full of hatred. But God's desire for our hearts is good, pleasing, and perfect. And it requires an obedience shift to begin to walk in God's way. We have to change our mind. Our mind has to be renewed into who Jesus wants us to be. It's a practice of obedience. Obedience. God's law is not a cage to control us. God's law is a compass for us to navigate this world. And we have to step into obedience with His guardrails for our lives.

So what does this look like when it specifically comes to finances? Well, it looks like this. If you have given nothing to the church, you've given nothing back to God. We talked about the storehouses last week. If you have given nothing to God, I wholeheartedly believe that He has a heart of generosity He has put within you when you've accepted Jesus Christ into your life through the power of the Holy Spirit, and has a calling for our lives to be generous. Maybe you've started giving, and that's awesome, but maybe it's inconsistent. It's kind of here and there. It's your choice. Maybe kind of like Cain's choice. He gave what he wanted to give. Maybe you haven't stepped into full obedience to Him because you're just going, "I'm just gonna give this right now, God." But God is saying, "Step in obedience. I want you to trust me. And I am going to give you my first and my best in Jesus. And I ask of you to do the same to me." Maybe you've stepped into practicing consistent obedience with a tithe or a percentage when it comes to your finances. A tithe is 10% of your total income back to God. It's what He asks of us in Scripture. And so if you're in that place, praise God. That's amazing. You've worked to get to that place. It takes time. It is hard. It is not easy. But maybe God is asking you to step out into more generosity beside that. To order your finances in your life, to live in a way that says, "I need less because I want to be God's light in this world. I want to give out of His immense generosity that He's blessed me with." This happened recently with Lauren and I. It was really interesting. God put on my heart for about a week, and I wrestled with it, that I needed to be generous to someone in our lives and to give them a few hundred dollars. And I wrestled and I wrestled and I wrestled. I went back and forth. I go, "Well, what about just 100, God? Can we just do 100?" God's like, "That's obedience. I want the two. I want the full amount. I want all of it. Because I want your trust. I want your obedience." I'm like, "God, I'm tithing right now. This money's really tight. I got bills coming up." God's like, "No, you need to be obedient." And so I wrestled and I wrestled and I said, "Okay, fine, God. You're right." And I've been preaching this series. This was like week one. And I was talking about how God has everything to give to us and provide and pour out of storehouses. And I'm like, "Okay." So we gave it. About a month later, just a few weeks ago, I got all that money back when someone blessed our family. And God goes, "Do you trust me? Do you trust me enough that I have enough that I wanna just blow your mind? But you gotta trust. You gotta step out. You gotta walk in generosity."

So wherever you are in this process, I'm not asking you to do what you want. I'm asking you to have a conversation with God. Talk with Him, search His Scriptures, and ask, "God, what do you desire for me? How do you want me to be obedient when it comes to this financial discipleship and this obedience?" And then I want you to step into that and to trust God. Malachi chapter three says, "Bring all the tithes in the storehouse so there will be enough food in my temple. If you do, says the Lord of heaven's armies, I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won't have enough room to take it in. Try it. Put me to the test. Your crops will be abundant for I will guard them from insects and disease. Your grapes will not fall from the vine before they are ripe, says the Lord of heaven's armies. Then all the nations will call you blessed for your land will be such a delight, says the Lord of heaven's armies." I want that second final part to be true for each and every one of our lives. I'm gonna ask the ushers to pass out a card this morning to you. And I want you to take a look at this and begin to pray about what God wants you to do. Because the reality is that we cannot have the latter without the former. We don't get to have God's poured out heavenly blessing in our lives in the way that He asked us to without the obedience. And I want you to not give yourself the excuse or a pass or permission and say, "Ah, God, yeah, I know this just doesn't apply to me." I want you to push back against the lie of Satan in the garden. Maybe you're just gonna look at this card. Maybe you're just gonna take it and you're gonna take it home and you're gonna pray about it. Maybe you'll throw it away on the way out. I don't know. But what I want you to do is I want you to have a conversation with God and to say, "God, where do you want me to step up? Where do you want me to begin to trust you to push back against that lie in the garden that you are not gonna provide if I say yes to one of these things?" God's Scripture is very clear there in Malachi. Test me. It's the only place in Scripture where God says, "Put me to the test. See what happens. See that I will not just give you everything that you dream or imagine or hope to have in life."

Now is it always going to be financial? No. Lauren reminded me of a story of the church that we were in previously, of there was a challenge that we did in the church. And there was a couple who had been trying to get pregnant for a really long time. And they signed up and felt like God was asking them to step into this 90-day challenge or three months. And they did, and they started tithing faithfully. And then soon after that, they got pregnant. The blessing may not come in the ways that it might not be financial. It's not going to be always my story where God asked me to give, and then He just returned it back to me. That might not be it. But what God is asking us is to step up into this and to trust in Him. So the first part of the card says, "I have no income and I need some help." God is not asking you to tithe out of finances that you are not bringing in. But maybe if you are bringing in finances, maybe that is retirement. Maybe that's investments. Maybe that's through different benefits. Maybe that's through, I don't know, a side hustle. Maybe that's through your full-time job. Whatever that looks like for you, if you don't have any of that, mark that first block because we wanna be praying with you to say, "We wanna come alongside of you. Maybe we can help try to figure out how to get you a job. We know different people. We're gonna put feelers out. But we wanna be praying with you because I don't believe that God doesn't want you to live in a space of not having income." Maybe you're the first box after that that says, "I am stepping up and giving for the first time in the amount of blank." You fill in the blank. Maybe this is for you to step up for the very first time and God, I've been listening to you for these four weeks, I don't know how it's all going to work out but I feel like I'm supposed to do this, and that's that first step into obedience into God. Maybe you've been talking and praying about you're the third box as I am stepping up and accepting the 90-day challenge to give regular in the amount of blank every how often. I want you to kind of put some rubber to the road here of how often, whether that's whenever you get paid. We talked about that firstfruits of when we get paid. So maybe you get paid weekly. Maybe it's twice a month. Maybe it's once a month. Maybe it's quarterly. I don't know how your income works. We all have kind of different. But whatever that looks like, you are saying, "I'm going to put God to the test. I'm going to step up and I'm going to give this amount every this time." Maybe you're the third box and saying, "You know what? I've been giving. It's been here or there, but it's only like maybe 20, 50 bucks a week, or maybe it's 100 bucks a month. That's just kind of where you are. But God says, that's great, and I love you in that, but I have a calling for you to step up into a tithe, and a tithe is the 10%." Maybe that's you. You're going to check that box, say, "I am stepping up and accepting the 90-day tithe, 10% challenge, to give in obedience to God's instruction in the amount of blank, every blank." You fill in the timeline. Maybe you are the fourth group or the final group and you're like, "I am already a biblical tither. Praise God, that is amazing. And I am committing towards extravagant generosity. I am giving and stepping up and wanting to give extravagantly in the amount of fill in the blank." And then yes, we want your contact info because we want to be praying alongside of you for these next 90 days. We wanna be walking with you, want to be encouraging you. We want to be helping you. You might need to get some financial resources in your life like Pastor Andre talked about to get finances in order. You might have to reevaluate your entire budget of where you spend your money and realize, "Man, I'm going to Starbucks seven times a week. It's probably not the best. Or I'm eating out all the time. I'm DoorDashing. I'm Ubering food to my house because I just didn't wanna go buy groceries and cook something." You might have to reorder some things in your life to begin to have a place of space and margin for generosity with God. And so I want you to ask, "God, where are you calling me? Not where am I comfortable, but God, where are you leading me to trust and have faith in you."

And so we're gonna have a moment here. The worship team's gonna come up. And we typically don't do stuff like this, but I wrestled with God again this week. He keeps doing this to me. And I was like, "Okay, God, I'm gonna have him fill out the card and then I'm just gonna like, just leave it on the seats. Just leave it on the seat, just let them walk out, go on with their lives and do that." But God's like, "No, I want them to step forward in obedience." And I'm like, "God, this isn't who our church is. Like people don't come forward for prayer, let alone a commitment to give money to the church. Like, God, that's not going to happen." He says, "You need to trust me. You need to trust me in what's going to happen next." And so I have no idea what's gonna happen, but this is what God's asked me to do. So I'm being obedient. So I wanna put out a bucket here. And I want whatever God is pulling on your heart right now to come forward and to do. There may be nobody that comes up, but God's calling me to be obedient in this moment. So I'm being obedient to Him. My obedience isn't contingent on your response. And maybe two people come up, maybe one person, I don't know. But maybe the reality is you need to go home and you gotta talk with your spouse. You haven't had the conversation I've told you to have for the last three weeks. You've been ignoring it. You've been skirting it. You've been, "Oh, we're too busy." And so you can't actually come and put a card in right now. We will continue to have this going forward. We will provide cards next week. So if you go home and then you forget it on the way back to church, we'll have more cards next week. But I want you to come in obedience. God asks us to come and bring our worship to Him. I think we get caught up and think worship is just music, this, the band, right? No, no, no. Worship is actually our entire lives that we're called to give. And every act of obedience is worship. And so we're going to sing this final song. We're going to worship God. And I want you to continue to pray about this card. And I want you to come in obedience to trust to Him. Only if He is asking and calling you to step forward, okay? Don't come grumpy. Don't come angry. Don't come mad at God. "Fine, whatever, dude, here." Don't want that. He doesn't want that. Only come if He's actually truly leading you in obedience in this to say, "This is what I'm asking you to do." Eyes are gonna be on you. It's gonna be awkward. Let's just call it what it is, okay? "Well, I wonder what they're gonna give." Nobody gives a crap because everybody's sitting in that chair and they're wrestling with God themselves right now too, okay?

Jesus, we thank you for who you are, God. You're amazing, you're incredible, you're generous, you're gracious. You gave first, Jesus. And so God, you are asking us to step in obedience with you. So Lord, as we sing this song, I pray for our people. Lord, I pray over their hearts right now as they sit and they wrestle. And you're gonna call some, maybe, God, hopefully, into obedience to step forward. But maybe some aren't gonna step into the obedience this week, but that's okay. You have grace for them. You love them. You hear them. You see them. You know where you are. And so you see into their hearts and you're gonna continue to stir and you're gonna continue to work and you're gonna continue to draw and you're gonna continue to pull them closer to you in every aspect of their lives. And this includes finances at this moment. And so Jesus, in the song that we sing, God, we trust you. We worship you. We thank you. God, I pray for those who are checking that first box, say, "I don't have a job. I got nothing. I am so lost right now." God, I pray a prayer of provision and blessing over them in ways that they cannot dream or imagine right now what you're gonna do in their life and how you're gonna rock their world and say, "Here I am." So Jesus, we trust you this morning. We praise you. We worship you.

God's Way - First Things First: Part 3

God’s Way - First Things First: Part 3 - Financial Discipleship Q&A

1 Corinthians 16:1-2; Malachi 3:6-10; Proverbs 22:1-7; 1 Timothy 6:6-10; Deuteronomy 14:22-23

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are continuing in our God's Way First Things First series. And if you haven't been around maybe the last couple of weeks, we've been diving into and understanding what it means to put God first in everything in our lives. And that until we let God's glory and His goodness shine into all the dark areas of our lives, we will continue to be in bondage in those places. And if you've been with us, we've been talking about and processing this foundational lie that began in humanity all the way back in the garden in the beginning of the Bible in the book called Genesis. And this was the lie that the serpent told Adam and Eve in that garden: that God is holding out on you. That you don't have enough, so you have to look out for yourself. You have to control everything. You have to say, "Hey, God, you're not providing, so I'm going to do it my way."

We've walked through maybe what it looks like, how we live this lie out today. We live this lie out in how panic drives who we are. Our anxiety and our worry—the stats as of late, they are through the roof in society. That we over-schedule ourselves, running here and there, everywhere, to make sure everything gets done. We focus on being self-providers to make sure that we have enough. But we know that this lie, that we don't have enough, that God is holding back on us, is truly that: a lie.

And then it comes down to a point of real trust. And we talked about Abram, who then became Abraham. He had all this wealth in the world, but he had no heirs. He had no children to pass that wealth on to, and he was angry with God. He was frustrated. He's like, "God, how could you even let this happen?" And God goes, "Let's go outside, buddy. Let's look up at the stars. See all those? Try to count them." Abraham ran out of fingers and toes real quick trying to count stars. And God said, "Those stars represent the descendants that you are going to have." And Abraham's like, "We don't have any descendants." And God goes, "I know. I got a plan." He's like, "Well, but what about this? And my wife and I, we are way past those days of when that is to biologically happen." Sarah, even at one point, laughs at God.

I had a frustrating conversation with God two weeks ago in the middle kid's room down in this hallway. And I found myself going, "I am no different than Abraham and Sarah." And I have personally been on a journey along with you guys in this of what does it mean to be truly obedient to God in everything that we are and everything that we have. And I love it because I'm having conversation with you guys as well. Many of you have been hearing from God. You've been having the conversations. You've been praying. You've been saying, "Okay, God, well, I don't know what this fully looks like, but I'm here and I'm listening. God, speak to me." Many of you are stepping into financial discipleship and biblical stewardship. And I love this because honestly, I have just been asking you to have a conversation. I haven't even put a challenge in front of you guys yet. But you're being intentional with this. You're hearing from God.

And we too, as a staff, we've been having conversations of, "Hey, maybe how we have gotten in the way." The first of which is, I haven't really ever talked this bold about money in the church before. Hi, my name is Chris. I'm your friend. And you guys have been so receptive. You've been so gracious. I thought by week three, there'd be like two of you right here. That would be it. But you're here and you knew it was coming. Maybe not all of you, but.

And today I want to kind of walk through maybe a little bit different of a talk this morning, but some Q&A to maybe answer the why behind why we live the way that we live and why God calls us to live this way. And so the reality is that when we look at money, we look at how we spend our money, how we save our money, how we use our money, it reveals who we are at our core. And that this relationship with money has instructions given to us by God in His word.

And we're going to be in a few different scriptures this morning, but the first of which is going to come from First Corinthians chapter 16. And this here is Paul writing a letter to the church in Corinth, which is another small church that started around the Mediterranean area. And he's telling them, kind of giving them some instruction when it comes to finance. He says this: "Now regarding your question about the money being collected for God's people in Jerusalem, you should follow the same procedure I gave the churches in Galatia. On the first day of each week, you should put aside a portion of the money you have earned. Don't wait until I get there and try to collect it all at once." So Paul here is talking about this idea of don't wait to the last minute to try to figure all this stuff out. And Paul isn't necessarily talking about what the Old Testament talks about—we're going to say, walk through in a minute—of this principle of first fruits. I don't know if you guys have heard that before. But Paul is echoing this idea of when you put your finances together in order, there is a system in which you should do that. And he is echoing this idea of honoring God with every single aspect of our lives.

No different than maybe when you get to work and you pray, "God, I am your servant here at work. Use me how you desire." Or maybe at home, you come home and you go, "God, use me in this place how you wish. I am your servant." Maybe in parenting, for me as a father, I pray regularly, "Lord Jesus, give me your strength. Give me your hope. Give me your help. I am your servant in this place as I father the children that you have steward to me. My children are not my own. I just have them for a certain amount of time. They're God's. But I am called to lead them and to instruct them and to teach them into God's word."

And so a theological posture for us would be that honoring God in every single sphere of our lives begins with what we do first. And that this idea of first fruits is about not a transaction. It's not a transaction, but it's about worship. We talked about that week one. It's about trust. We talked about that last week. And it's about priority realignment. We're going to dig into that a little bit more.

But the first question that I commonly get when talking about money and finances is this in the Bible: Why does it have to be first? What matters for these things to be first? Does it matter if it's in the middle? Does it matter if it's the end? Like if it comes from the same pot, why does it matter? And I, honestly, that's a legitimate question. And I think it's something that for us to think about and to discuss. The logistic reality is what matters most receives our first attention in our lives.

If you are married and you have a spouse, my spouse is right here. This is Lauren. As an earthly relationship here on this planet, she is my number one. God is my ultimate number one. But as an earthly relationship, she is my number one priority. And so she deserves the best of me. She doesn't deserve my tiredness. She doesn't deserve my leftovers. She doesn't deserve my second best. She deserves my number one. And so as we would say, I think, in here, those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus and Christians, God deserves our number one, right? And things in our life are really important. They become a top priority. And so this also carries into our other relationships and our other things in our life. They are set in a certain particular order. And so we will carry this into our whole lives.

Side note, if you're in here and you are unmarried, I want to encourage you: make God number one in your life right now. Because it is only going to carry into your future marriage and relationships in a way that is going to be a solid rock foundation in ways you can't even imagine. And it's just going to set everything in order, perfect the way that God instructed. But when we think about our finances, the biggest chunks take priority and get to the front of line, right? I think for most of us, that would probably be a mortgage or a rent, right? Probably our largest expense we have on a regular basis. Now, if you own your home, I'm very jealous of you. But when you were paying that baby off, okay, that was your largest thing. And then that brings the largest thing, then puts other things in order and perspective, right? And so as an order, this top thing, everything else just kind of slides into place as you go through your finances.

This is about priority realignment and putting God first in our finances reorders our priority with everything else. Because God is in first place, then that puts everything else in their right place. I think I got a slide for that. I want to put that up on the screen. When we put God in first place, it puts everything else in right place. See, our financial world falls in the right place when God leads.

We talked about this a few weeks ago, the different levels of financial engagement with the church. Maybe you never have given before, and that's fine. That's okay. Maybe you've given one time to something like our Operation Christmas Child, where we send shoeboxes with practical gifts and toys in the gospel around the globe for kids to hear about Jesus for the first time, and you gave to that. Awesome. Thank you so much. Maybe you have a monthly thing where you are regularly giving. Maybe it's $20, $50, $100 a month. Maybe you're putting something in on the regular saying, "God, I want to be in a relationship of financial discipleship with you." I know some of you others have stepped up into tithing regularly. And we're going to talk about what a tithe means. But you look at your whole sum that comes in, you get, "God, I'm going to give 1% of all of this back to you." And then maybe 2%, 3%, growing in that, in your generosity. And then you have tithing, which is 10% of that. And then it stops right there, right? No. God asks for extravagant generosity. And I've said for the last few weeks, and I'm gonna say it again: you are a recipient of extravagant generosity.

This space, this facility, this building would not have happened without extravagant generosity. There are people, a part of this church and others who are no longer with us, that sacrificed big time for us to be able to purchase this facility and to move here to have a place to call home. Because we were just bouncing around before that. We started in a school in 1999. Set up and tear down. There was no home for us. But God opened up doors for rental facilities. They were a place, but they really weren't our place. And then God allowed a place like this for 24-7 ministry to happen. For youth group during the week. For children's ministry. For Bible studies. For events. For weddings. For funerals, for things that we can call home and a place to take a foothold in the community for the kingdom of God.

So however you are regularly paid, maybe that's weekly, twice a month, monthly, quarterly, however you get that income, you give God the best and the first and this puts everything in order. And when we do that, put God first, we have our fixed expenses, then everything else kind of falls in line. And you may come to a point where you get to the end of the month and there isn't another trip to TJ Maxx in store. Sorry, ladies, I just stepped on some toes. I apologize. Man, we can't go back to Bass Pro or Home Depot or, I don't know, where are guys spending money these days? Golf. There you go. Golf. There's not another round at the end of the month. But when we put this in order, everything orders out the rest. And when we are intentional about something, it orders our priorities.

Now, sometimes there may be a situation where you don't get the tithe to be like the first thing, auto-pay bills. They'll sneak in there on you sometimes. But it's a personal practice of worship. For my wife and I, we get paid around the 15th and the end of the month. And I will intentionally that morning when I wake up and my phone says, "You got money, a direct deposit," I try to take a moment and to worship God and literally write the check right there to say, "God, this is the absolute first thing that is coming out of this blessing that you have given." I know some of you will take a moment and utilize our online giving portal and you will set up a moment. You will sit down, you will pause, you maybe turn on some worship music, maybe you sing a song to God and then you click the button and you give the tithe. Others of you, you write the check during week, you come in, that is the first stop that you do and you go to that drop. You will not talk to anybody else. You're like, "I am going to worship and you walk in, you drop, and you're like, hello, I can talk to you now." But it's a priority. It's your first thing that you do.

And when we put God first in things, the other things that kind of just suck up our finances become less of a priority. "Ah, you know what, Pastor? There was a lot of stuff that happened this month and just, we got to the end and it just, there just wasn't enough." Okay, it happens. But maybe you need to reorder some of those things so that it is a priority, is a first thing, it is something that is done at the beginning. Now I'm not saying this: get this right, you have to pay your mortgage and rent, that's just reality of life, okay? I wish it wasn't the case, it is, and in California stupid expensive, let's be honest, we just call it what it is, so that is a big chunk. All right. I realize you have that. I realize you have to put food on your table. Okay. You have to provide maybe for your family, for your kids. You have to take care of them. I get that. I don't think anybody came in here this morning hungry intentionally because you did not have enough. So I know if you did come in this morning and you don't have enough and you're hungry, please come talk to me. We have people in this church who have asked, "Pastor, when someone comes in, they are hungry, send them my way. God has blessed me and called me to take care of them." That is the purpose of the church. Okay?

But when we prioritize, what gets cut at the end of the month isn't God. It's what's less essential. The less over becomes less and even less wasted if you want to talk about it. Last two weeks, I've asked you to go home and have a conversation with God, if your spouse, if you have them, with your family, maybe even with your kids, about what this means. This week I want you to begin to maybe pull out your bank statement and begin to evaluate where you are spending your money. And then just let the Holy Spirit speak.

Because I know for me, I am the first, things can just slip in. I've been trying to make iced coffee on my own during the week. I love me some cold brew. Okay, I have some like right here in front row. And I've been trying to make it at home because it's now stupid expensive, but we went on vacation and we came home and I got out of routine and then I didn't have this and I was out of beans and all this stuff. Like a week has come by and I've gone to Starbucks like four times. Don't tell my wife, okay? And I'm literally going order and I'm like, because I know it's not, I'm not being wise there. There's better ways to do things and it might take us some time to sit down, and it's not going to be fun. It's not going to be comfortable, okay? I'm telling you that. But on the other side of that, oh, guys, let me tell you what that is. It is amazing. So ask ourselves, is this honoring God with the provision that He has given us, or are we feeding extra just stuff?

Question two, I get asked: how much should I give? What is tithing? Great questions. I get asked this lot as a pastor and people come to me. And I want to go to a scripture in Deuteronomy chapter 14. And it says this, it says, "You must set aside a tithe of your crops, one-tenth of all the crops you harvest each year. Bring this tithe to the designated place of worship, the place the Lord our God chooses for His name to be honored. This applies to the tithes of your grain, new wine, olive oil, and the firstborn males of all your flocks and herds." Anybody a farmer or cattle or rancher in this room? No, this makes no sense to us, right? Let me translate this a little bit. This was their currency, their grain, their crops, their wine that they would grow their grapes and turn into wine, the olive oil they would get from their trees to press out, the firstborn males of their flocks and their herds. This was all their money. And God is saying here, I want you to set aside a tithe of all of that, a tenth of what you bring in.

Did you know that we don't get the best pineapples? Did you know that? A couple of people have been to Hawaii here lately. The best pineapples stay on the island and they are the first crop. I think that's called a plant crop, I think is the correct term, you guys will correct me later. But this is the initial pineapples that are grown on the plant and I guess they will just, you can see the future if you eat them. I've never had one personally, I hope and dream and wish one day I can, but they are the first pineapples. Hard because they are the main one off the plant and then everything that grows is kind of an uproot sprout outside of that. It's secondary and that plant puts everything into that first pineapple that it grows and they will just, they will blow your mind. You guys ever thought about extra virgin olive oil? It's the first press, right? Oh, it's the best. I don't know how or why they came up with that name, whatever. But then you have like extra virgin and the next press is virgin and then after that it's just like it just gets like blended up, I guess. I don't know how it works. But when we go to the store and we're like, "I'm gonna buy olive oil, what you got?" Extra virgin? I'm not going to muscle anything else. It's the first. It's the best. You guys have had like, we had friends who went to Italy and came back and brought us like true extra virgin all the way from Italy. Oh my gosh, guys. I want to just like spoonfuls of this stuff. It is amazing. But it's the first. It's the best.

And this is what God is asking of us is that He has a system and an alignment for us that He wants this best for Him and for us to learn in that. And this tithe piece is the foundational piece of scripture about financial generosity. And it's a process of growth. Talked about all those different phases. Stepping into that next phase, and I trust you, God, more. That next phase, I trust you, God, more. Next step, I trust you got more, to lead us to a place that is ever blessed, that we're going to talk about in a moment here, comes with a promise only found in a certain part of scripture, only about tithing and finances.

So what does that look like practically? Chris, like break it down for me. Well, if you get whatever your paycheck is, $1,000, $2,000, $100, whatever that is, you just move the decimal over one, and that's your amount. So if you made a hundred bucks, you move it over one, it's $10. That's what that breaks down to. And God here isn't saying, "I have to have your money." Okay? That's not what this is. God is greater than all of this. He is beyond that. He has Everything at His disposal. It's a step in relationship with trust with Him. And I will tell you, if you don't want to do it, don't do it. Wait, pastor, you just said, yeah. Don't want to do it? Don't do it. You got free choice. You got free will to be able to do it if you want. And especially don't give grumpy, please. Nobody likes a grumpy face. I'll use other words, positive relationships in church. Don't give grumpy. We're gonna, we're gonna read a scripture on that in a moment. But but the the reality is asking, "Lord, what do you want for me to do? Where do you want me to begin?"

Now people get lost in the weeds: is it pre-tax? Is it post-tax? Is it net? Is it gross? Is it off my retirement, investments, birthday money? Is it over if I get cash back on a return? Is it like people can get so lost on this stuff. I found a quarter on the ground. Now I got to find two and a half pennies to give to Jesus. I can't break a penny in half. Do I round up, round down? I'll just give a whole quarter to God. I don't want to. And that's not what I'm saying here. What I'm saying is a heart posture with Jesus. And I'll tell you, I have some thoughts on it. I have my own personal thoughts. These are Chris's thoughts, not God's thoughts. So if you want to talk, love to talk. And you might have different thoughts than I do. I know some of you in this room have different ideas about some of those little details in that. But it's a heart, a posture, giving that to Jesus, growing in relationship with God.

And here, there is a promise that is given to us out of Malachi chapter 3 and it is an incredible thing and it's only found in that scripture with no other topics besides that one. And that when we step into the tithe there is an incredible blessing and a promise from the Lord that comes with that. And I know some who have stepped into tithing were like, "I couldn't be generous. I stepped into tithing and now I can be generous in ways that I never imagined. I have money to just buy somebody a meal on the street. I have money to be able to..." There was a time when Laura and I were going through a hard time in life. And we had friends who didn't have a whole lot of money. But they were really good about this stuff. And they just sent us like 200 bucks. Blew our minds. I'm like, "I think you guys are actually making less money than we are. How? What the...?" "We want to bless you." And it's an amazing how God works this out. Because I will tell you, one plus one equals infinity with God. The math doesn't math with God. I've tried to figure it out. I carry the one in the movie, He does something just awesome in the middle of it and He just makes it incredible. But it has to start with this: Malachi chapter three.

"I am the Lord, I do not change. This is why you descendants of Jacob are not already destroyed. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have scorned my decrees and failed to obey them. Now return to me," says the Lord, "and I will return to you," says the Lord of heaven's army. "But you ask, how can we return when we had never gone away? What do you mean? Should God's people cheat you? You have cheated me," says Lord. "But what do you mean? When do we ever cheat you? You have cheated me in the tithes and offerings due to me. You are under a curse for your whole nation has been cheating me. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my temple. If you do," says the Lord of heaven's armies, "I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great that you won't have enough room to take it in. Try it. Put me to the test."

This tithe is the only time in scripture where God guarantees an outcome when you are obedient to God. He's saying, if you trust me in this, then I will open up the heavens and I will rock your world. Is it always financial? No. Okay? I'm not saying, well, if I start tithing today, then God, you better send me that $20,000 check in the mail. It's not what He's talking about. He's talking about a blessing over your life and your family and your family's family and generational things here, guys, that will change everything about who you are.

But this blessing, this storehouse, heaven, what does that mean? Well, that's a great question. If I remember correctly, from the Bible, in heaven, the streets are made of something that starts with G, ends with old. They're with, okay, that's your part. You say that back to me. I give you a clue and you say, okay, perfect. Okay, so the streets in heaven are made of gold. Guys, they are paving with gold in heaven, paving. What are they making their storehouses out of? And then what are they putting into those storehouses? Like, you guys ever thought about that before? I had this moment of like, what? This week. That's where they keep the good stuff. And God is saying, "Will I not open up the gates of heaven? I will not pour out upon you." Whoa. And the Israelites over here have been stingy with God. "Well, we haven't cheated you." "Yeah, you have." "Well, what do you mean we haven't?" "You're not being generous. You're not tithing." "Oh, yeah. Yeah, sorry, we forgot." God says, "Trust me in this and I will take care of everything. Trust me in this and I will take care of everything."

And there's a discipline piece here that is required of us. And I'm not saying having a lot of money is bad. Do not, I did not say that. Okay? Don't try to go there. I did not say that. And I don't know how it all works. God gives money to some people and less over here. I don't understand. He creates it all. But the obedience principle is exactly the same no matter where you're standing. Honestly, sometimes a lot of money means a lot of tithes. And that might be honestly sometimes even harder than having less in a smaller type. But it's an obedience piece. And it's the same calling that we all have. Asking ourselves, am I honoring God first?

So where do we give? Where do we give? That's a good question. Where do we give? Well, how many are traveling to Jerusalem, to the temple on a regular basis? No? No? Nobody? You're not weekly flying over there and depositing? No? Okay. It's a joke. But what I'm saying here is that today, the modern temple or synagogue is the local church. The storehouse is that piece. And so He's calling us to bring all the tithes into the storehouse. Another translation says, bring the full tithe into the storehouse.

And I've been asked this before, and some people say, "Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris, What if I put like 3% over here into this really good thing, and I give like 5% to Spring Valley, and then like 2% like goes over here." And I will say, I love your heart of generosity. That is phenomenal. Don't stop being generous. But I would like to provide maybe an alternative perspective here from Scripture that says to bring the full tithe, the full 10%, into God's house. And then out of that, live your generous life. Give to missionaries around the world. Give to parachurch organizations. Help pastors plant churches in different places around the world that don't have the gospel accessible to them. Yes, be generous in that. But the way we live our lives, how we live and give, is interpreted of what we do. I've heard it once said, give where you are being spiritually fed. And it's a heart check for us. Because generosity follows God's lead, not our obligation.

All right, I got two more questions. I got to go hurry here first. How should I give? It's a great question. Some people have asked, how should I give? Well, I see three pieces to this. That it's first intentional, it's accountable, and it's accessible. What do I mean by that? Well, intentionally: when when COVID happened we stopped passing the buckets or passing the plates, if you grew up in church or whatever it was called, and we moved to just a drop box because we didn't want to, here you go, here's your COVID, like we didn't want to pass that around, okay. And some of you that was a hard move. You were used to coming in church, worshiping, singing a song, doing the the offering tithing piece during worship, and you just like, we just went to a box. But we've gotten used to the box, right? And it's not necessarily in front of us. Sometimes something that's in front of us reminds us on a regular basis what needs to be important and how we need to live our lives. We are talking about possibly bringing back the buckets because it's an act of worship as a family together rather than just a boop in the back of the room. And we have to be incredibly intentional in that, that we are doing on a regular basis. It's a deliberate choice to honor God so we don't forget and we have to be intentional.

Is it accountable? And this isn't just tax purposes, okay? I'm talking about a financial shift that might happen in our lives when our, and that usually tends to be our giving changes. And this, I will tell you as a pastor and as our team and our pastoral care team, you don't necessarily bring us in on the loop. You don't necessarily tell us. And so when there's some tracking systems of finances in the church, when those things change, that can be an indicator that we need to just touch base. And not in the sense of, "Hey, where'd your tithe go? You're not giving, you're used to." No. "What's going on? Can we help you? How can we come alongside you? You lost a job? Okay, well, we know this person, they're looking to hire over here, and this person over here, how can we connect these things?" It's a family. You'd want to know, I think, as a parent, if your child was struggling through something, right? And so part of tracking that, writing on the envelope, we don't fingerprint the money in the back, guys. So if you're just dropping cash back there, awesome, God bless you. We don't know. And there's another accountable piece in that for you to be able to begin to track of like, "Hey, pastor was challenging me to give and I started giving and I've given this much and like my finances haven't dipped. Like things are still good." And it's a moment to go, "God, you are amazing," but you're not tracking that. You don't know. We don't know. We can't help you in that.

Is it accessible? I talked about this, trying to figure out, do we begin to pass the place? Do we have some sort of other way to do that? We're making sure our online giving is always 100% secure. We are working to make sure that there are easy ways for you. If God prompts you to be able to be generous in things like even Camp Awesome and Operation Christmas Child and being able to have you guys as a stirs in you to be able to have a quick avenue, an easy avenue with no barriers, to be able to engage with that and to be obedient. It says this, 2 Corinthians 9-7. "You must each decide in your heart how much you will give. And don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure. For God loves a person who is giving cheerfully." God loves a cheerful giver. I said earlier, don't give grumpy. Right here in scripture.

Fifth question, what about debt? What if I have it? Oh, great questions. Love this. I want us to think in this way, okay? Because we probably have it, the reality is. And when I'm talking about unsecured debt, I'm not talking about like housing, like a mortgage. That's more secure because you have the problem. I'm talking about like credit card debt here, okay? Three things I want us to think about this, okay? Think mission possible, not mission impossible. Because sometimes we got debt, it feels impossible, right? It feels impossible to get out from this mound. One, avoid it when possible, okay? There's times it's going to happen. Happens in life. It's happened in our life where you're just like, "Oh, man. Did not see that coming." Life happens. I got to put something on the credit card. Okay. There's grace in that. Okay. But when possible, avoid it. Don't just be like, "Charge it, charge it, charge it, charge it." Like, don't do that. Two, pay it off as quickly as possible. Don't make minimum payments. You will never get out from underneath it. It is set up in a system that is to just destroy your soul. Don't. And then don't take on more debt when possible. Figure out how to realign. It's going to be hard. It's going to take work, I promise you. But it is worth it to get out of that. And we have resources and different things we'd love to connect you with to help you if you are finding yourself in that place right now. God wants you to have freedom from that.

I want you to hear me this morning. God does not want you. But we live in a world, right, where it's like, "I have to have a good credit score and have a good credit score. I've got to have debt. But if you have debt, then you have a bad credit score. But if you don't have debt, then why do you need a good credit score?" Something there going on that's fishy. Proverbs 22. We're going to close with this. "Choose a good reputation over good riches. Being held in high esteem is better than silver or gold. The rich and the poor have this in common. The Lord made them both. A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. A simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. True humility and fear of the Lord lead to riches, honor, and long life. Corrupt people walk a thorny, treacherous road. Whoever values life will avoid it. Direct your children onto the right path, and when they're older, they will not leave it, just as the rich rule the poor so the borrower is servant to the leader. Choose a good reputation over riches."

I don't think we hear that in life very much. But what about the cool dude who has all the stuff and the toys and all that? Yeah, he's probably up to his eyeballs in debt, let's be honest. And one missed payment, all of that fun stuff goes away. Talk about finance with your children. Prepare them. I was a product. I had a grandfather who was so financially sound. And he taught me at an early age. He brought me alongside me and said, "Hey, this is this. And this is what this means. And this is like, it's your tithe. And this is how you got to pay your taxes. And you got to invest." And like he set me up and taught me some core principles I'm so grateful for today. Teach your children about these things. Plan ahead.

I don't know if you guys know when you drive your car, your tires start disappearing. They just poof, go away. And if you bought any lately, you know they're not cheap. Right? So the scripture says a prudent person saves away for the future. Maybe we need to start putting away some money on a regular because you know those tires and those new tires are coming. And if you don't have the money, it's going to get you into a bad place. Think ahead. Plan ahead. How do I set new healthy financial habits? 1 Timothy 6. It says, "Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. Pouring out the riches of heaven, right? Remember that scripture? After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into this world, and we take nothing with us when we leave it. So if you have enough food and clothing, let us be content. But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. The love of money. And some people craving money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows."

That's interesting, pierced. I did a cultural background on this. Did you know when you borrowed money from somebody, you owed somebody, they would pierce you with their name. I owe somebody 20 bucks for both of these. I'm just kidding. But that's what they would do. And to walk around with piercings was actually shameful. You would walk around and you would see a loop maybe in someone's nose and it says, "Doug." Like, "Oh, you owe Doug money." What does that year say? "Susan?" "Susan?" But people would appear, and it would be a cultural shame. We don't have that today, do we? We tout, right? We're like, "Woo, look at us." You don't want to know my credit score. I get emails every month. I'm like, "Delete." I don't care. I'm not buying anything. But it's a cultural shame. Great wealth is actually true godliness and contentment.

So as we close, how or what has God told you today? Maybe there's a question. Maybe you had a question and I gave you an answer today. Maybe you have more questions. Maybe it's about debt. Maybe it's about financial discipleship. Maybe it's about first fruits. Maybe it's about contentment. But what will you do about it this week? And on your card, on your program, you came in your little response card. I want you to check the box. Maybe if God said something to you today about financial changes that may need to happen in your life. And I'd love for you, we're gonna have ushers in the back on the way out. Drop that in there. And we wanna be praying alongside of you. We're not gonna be like, "Hey, what did God tell you you're supposed to start giving?" No, it's between you and God. We are presenting the gospel and the scripture. And it's your choice on how you want to respond to what God is saying to you.

But don't forget, remember, I want to leave you with three things right here. Ask Him, trust Him, and align with Him. That's what it's about. And it's a journey. You're not going to figure this thing out overnight. You never will. It's a journey with Jesus as He leads you deeper into trust and faith and hope and freedom in Him. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for this morning, God. We are so grateful for your encouragement, God, for your grace, for your love and care. God, even as we mess up with this stuff, God, you are still there saying, "I love you. You are my child. I have better things for you." And so Jesus, I pray that we would listen to your leading, listen to your calling in our lives. God, maybe we need to have a conversation about our finances, about our budget, maybe where we're spending some things, maybe how to focus in on getting out of debt. But God, at the same time, you don't say, "Hey, if you got debt, make sure you pause that giving. You can get out of that debt first." No, God, you ask us to be obedient in the midst of it all. And so God, I pray that we would step forth and trust and faith in you. God, that we would know who you are and the better calling and the better life that you have for us and the freedom that is on the other side of that. And you want to pour down, God, the blessings of heaven and just blow our minds. God, I pray that you would do that this week. We love you, Jesus. Amen.

God's Way - First Things First: Part 2

God’s Way - First Things First: Part 2 - How God Gives First

Genesis 15, Genesis 22, John 3:14–21

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, good morning, everybody. Excited that you are here with us today, and we're going to be continuing in our God's Way First Things First series. We will be in Genesis here in a moment, but I wanted to give a quick recap of where we were and how we wrapped things up last week. If you were with us, we began to walk through this idea that there is a lie that has been told to us since the beginning of time, which began in the garden with Adam and Eve. That lie came from the serpent, or who we know as Satan. He came to Adam and Eve and said, "Did God really say that you can't eat of that one tree in the garden? Did he really say that? Like, why would God allow that to happen? To create something in the garden, a poisonous fruit, which is probably what we know is reserved for Disney movies, right? Like, why would God create a poisonous fruit in the garden?" He says, "Actually, what you don't know is that God doesn't want you to have the knowledge. He doesn't want you to have the knowledge that he has. He, God, is holding out on you. He's withholding his everything from you. And so in return, we have to figure it out on our own. We have to take control. We have to be the ones that call the shots because God isn't gonna give us enough." And this lie has perpetuated and passed itself down year after year after year until even today: that you can't have God's blessing because he's not going to give it to you. He is going to hold out on you.

And we began to walk through what it means that God desires the absolute best for our lives. He wants the absolute best for us. But there are areas in our life and in our heart where there still is darkness. Until God's light shines in those dark places, we will continue to have bondage in those things. So the only way for us to begin to stop believing that lie is to trust in God, because he is the perfect designer. He's designed everything in our world. You want to know how he's designed marriage? Read the Bible. You want to know how he's designed relationships and families? Read the Bible. You want to know how he has designed sex? Read the Bible. If you want to know how he has designed community, church, life, and relationships, read the Bible. If you want to know how he has designed finances, open up God's word. Because he is the perfect designer, and he has a design for us.

And like I joked kind of last week, I talked about how our cars are designed to run in a certain way. The price of gas lately is out of control, and it would be easier for me to find an alternative liquid to put into my car. For me, I would say that would be water, right? My spigot's right next to where I parked my car. I could just fill it up, top it off, and I'm on my way. But that would cause catastrophic damage to my car. It wouldn't run anymore. It wouldn't work. And God has a plan. He has a design. And yet we go, "Oh, God, okay, I know you have your plan, but you know what? I know best. I know how this works. You can keep your instructions. That's fine." And yet we struggle in our lives, our marriages, our world, and our finances. And we go, "God, why are you letting this happen?" And God's like, "I had a design for you guys." But we take control because we don't think that we're going to have enough.

So we talked about these maps, these zones of where we are with our trust on the spectrum with our finances with God. The first zone is kind of the beginning line of where we've never given to the church. The finances are ours. I direct them. I choose where they go. You've never given to the church. Maybe you've given once. Maybe it was through something like last Christmas. We had Operation Christmas Child where we gathered things. Maybe you donated some toys or some socks or maybe something to that. And that's amazing. But the next step that God wants us to take is consistency in giving. Maybe for you, that looks like starting with about twenty bucks a month, fifty bucks a month, whatever you're at. But you're beginning to have a faithful, regular giving system where we see God is in the systems, that you would have that flowing in a system. And then maybe from there, you would step up to a proportional commitment. You give a percentage. You begin to look at everything that God has blessed you with: your income, your retirement, your investments, everything that comes in as income. And you begin to say, "Hey, I'm going to give a portion of this, maybe one percent, two percent, three percent." And that's where I'm going to start, having a proportional giving of what God has blessed me with.

And then I said from there, the Bible talks about biblical stewardship, discipleship, is a tithe. And what does a tithe mean? Well, tithe is the word tenth. And you could be like, "Holy buckets, Chris. You're talking about ten percent of everything that comes in?" Yeah, that's what the Bible says. But that's it, right, Chris? There's nothing more that God's asking. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. We kind of want to land there and be like, "Okay, good. I'm good, God. I did. I'm fine. I'm set." But God goes, "No, no, no, no. I have a level five that is extravagant generosity. That is a biblical ten percent tithe and beyond. Giving to things like local para-church organizations, maybe like a Christian pregnancy center or gathering in a local nonprofit that works with the homeless. Or maybe it's a situation where you are a recipient of this, and the fact that you're sitting in a facility that was only possible with people who had extravagant generosity. Before this building, there was not a home per se for Spring Valley Church. There were leased buildings. It began set up and tear down in elementary school back in 1999. And then God opened up different doors and then eventually this one here where we can call this place our home, ours, twenty-four seven. And because of that, we have things like youth group that happens on Monday nights. We have things like people being able to come and worship God during the week. Men's and women's Bible studies, children's ministries, Camp Awesome, that we would have a space to call our own to even be able to do something like that for days. Like this is amazing. And you are sitting in a place; you are a recipient of that extravagant generosity."

But this lie that Satan began and gave in Genesis 3 really begins to influence everything that we are. It influences our finances. It influences our time, our resources, our life planning. And Jesus spent, I talked about this last week, one-third of his time talking about money, possessions, and finances. That's a pretty big deal. And I began to really wrestle with that. I'm like, "Jesus, why did you spend that? I mean, I thought you were all about love and grace and forgiveness." He is. But he also knew that at the forefront of that was where our hearts were. And there was a rich man who came to him that said, "Hey, Jesus, how do I inherit heaven?" And Jesus says, "You have to obey the law, honor your mother and father, love others better than yourself, love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your strength, everything that you are." And he goes, "I've done all that." And Jesus goes, "Sweet, you're getting into heaven." No. He says, "Sell everything you have and give it away." Why? Because Jesus knew that that rich man had made finances and money his idol. He had replaced God. Yes, he had checked the boxes, but he had replaced God in his heart with his money.

Jesus says in Matthew chapter six, "Don't worry about food or clothing. Take a look at the birds of the field. Take a look at the flowers, the lilies. Do I not care for them? Do I not feed them? Do I not clothe them in glorious splendor? Will not your heavenly Father do the same for you?" Don't believe the lie. And this ties us into our spiritual readiness regarding money and finances. Our financial decisions reveal our ultimate allegiance. Is it trust in God or trust in ourselves? And it's not about the amount. I don't want us to get caught up in that. Well, okay, Chris, what do I need to write my check every week? How much cash do I need to bring to every church on Sunday and put in the drop box? It's not about that. It's about a posture of our heart. And Jesus spoke on these things because he knew for us it was going to be something that we were going to have to wrestle with. That it was going to be a tough thing to trust God over trusting ourselves. It's a spiritual issue.

And we closed last week and I gave you a challenge. I said, "Go have the conversation." First, go have the conversation with God. Where are you at financially? Go talk to God about it. And then if you have a spouse or you have a family, go talk to them about it as well. This is a family unit thing that you all are on the same page biblically when it comes to financial discipleship. If you forgot, fear not. You got a whole nother week. But if you did have a conversation, I'm proud of you. That's awesome. But don't skip it. Don't just say, "Oh, don't worry about it." No one just stumbles into financial discipleship, just as you don't stumble into a six-pack. I'm not talking beer here, okay? I'm talking our fitness. No one stumbles into being physically fit, right? It takes intention. It takes planning. It takes discipline. But we don't like those things. They're uncomfortable, right? Last time I checked, I don't think God called us to a comfortable life. I think he called us to an obedient life.

And so today's objective, I want us to shift from identifying the lie to understanding God's actual pattern of giving. Generosity is who God is. It's his core character. And when we have that, there's an abundance that follows steps of faith. So what does it mean for us to act the way that God acts? Well, this is where we're going to be. Genesis chapter 15, starting in verse 1. We're going to have it on the screens if you want to flip there with a Bible or open it up on your phone. It says this in verse 1 in chapter 15: "Sometime later, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you." Now, maybe you might be thinking, "Hey, Chris, I thought the dude's name was Abraham." That's going to come later. We're going to talk about that in a moment. But right here, God is saying to Abraham, who is going to protect him? Is it gonna be by his own strength? Is it gonna be by his own might? Is it gonna be by his own children that Abraham is gonna be protected? No, God says, "I will protect you. Do not be afraid, Abram." This is God's character. He is protector. He is provider. He is promise keeper. And Abram's expected response was to depend on God, not his own strength, not his own control, not his own choices, not even his own children. Because the reality is he has no children.

So where's the lie? Continue on in that. He said, "But Abraham replied, O sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don't even have a son? Since you've given me no children, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant of my household, will inherit all my wealth. You have given me no descendants of my own, so one of my servants will be my heir." Where is the lie? God, you're holding out on me. You have not given me a son, an heir to everything that you have blessed me with. And he admits he has been blessed. But there is no son to pass it along. Abraham has wealth. He admits it. He has wealth. But he cares also where it goes. And it's going to go to someone who isn't his flesh and blood. Some person who is just a part of his crew that is just going to receive it, and there is going to be no legacy.

I think there's a modern parallel to Abram's fear, maybe in our lives, that fear has this incredible grip on us. We have this financial anxiety. If you're, I have a fear, will I ever be able to retire? I joke about, and my wife, we make this joke, that we are too young to have lived through the housing boom and we are too old to have been an online social media influencer. We are in this gap of living through many crises in life: 9-11, financial crisis, pandemics, inflation, wars, bloodshed around the globe. And there's an anxiety that we don't know if there's going to be enough. There is uncertainty. There's debt. There's less than ideal income. And this even goes into our parenting that sometimes we think, "God, you gave me what?" I remember that first time holding Adelyn, my daughter who's almost 12, going, "Lord, I don't know what I'm doing. And I not only have to be responsible for my own life, but my wife, which I committed to years ago, and now this tiny little human that can't do anything on their own to survive. Lord Jesus, help me." I remember praying that prayer, holding her, going, "I don't know what I'm gonna do, God."

And some for us, this rolls into how our children become our idols in our life. We become taxi drivers for our children to make sure they're at this sport, at this camp, doing this thing, over here at this thing. Why? Because we just want the very best for them. And I think it comes from a really good place. But when we look at what might be our idols, take a look at where we spend our money and how much we spend our time. It's only in America does it feel like there's this rat race for our children. Well, you know what? I didn't make it in the NBA, but my kid is going to. And I'm going to make sure that they get there if that kills me. Newsflash, it's going to kill you. We have deified our children in our life. Are they a blessing from God? Absolutely. But they shouldn't control everything that we are.

See, the problem is when we live and believe this lie, fear crowds out our faith. Fear replaces our faith. And when we go to count and we don't see, instead of trusting what God can do. Abram, God, you're not doing a good job. I don't have a son. I don't have an heir. And God in his grace just goes, "Oh, small little man, you know nothing. You don't understand what I am doing." He moves on in verse 4. Then the Lord said to him, "No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own who will be your heir." Then the Lord took Abram outside and said, "Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can, buddy. That's how many descendants you will have." God here directly refutes the lie. Your servant will not be your heir. You will have a son.

And I think there's some imagery here that God is speaking to him inside and then takes him outside. Sometimes we need to get outside of our little world. We're stuck in this inside little bubble thinking God can't do that. He's not enough. It's not gonna make it. We're not gonna last. We're not gonna survive. God is calling us to step outside of that. And he takes Abram outside and says, "Look at the stars, dude." One of my favorite things when we go up to South Lake Tahoe at night is to go out and look at the stars. Like if you guys have never done that, gotten away from the city and been outside in like really darkness, but to be able to just look up into the sky, like holy buckets. There are so many stars. And I'm reminded when I look up that, I was like, I can only imagine at that place in that time in the world with like no light pollution, what would have the night looked like for Abram? And God goes, "Count him. I double dog dare you. Don't lose track. You can't count him." Because fear says you will not have enough. But God says to Abram, "My promise is you will have everything." We have to replace our limited human perspective with the unlimited divine promise from God. And we have to shift our perspective to God, knowing the full truth of everything that he is. To the point that you will not believe your own eyes. And it will remove your fear because it will come to a point where you can't even count the blessings that God is bestowing upon you.

It won't always look like money, guys. That's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying you start tithing and then your money will be perfect. You'll start reordering your heart in the way that God wants you to, but God will provide in many different ways to bless you in things that you can never dream, ask, or imagine. For Abram right now, counting zero was easy, right? That was his tunnel vision: zero. How many kids? Zero. But God is saying, "Look at the stars. That's how many descendants you're going to have." And this is one of the greatest verses in the Bible. I absolutely love it. In verse six it said, "Abram believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness because of his faith." The lie is God is holding back that you have to do it your way. You have to control it. You have to make sure that you have your plan and your system. But the truth is that God says, "Do it my way and all of my abundance is yours. Everything that I have, I want to bless you with." See, the key principle here is abundance follows faith. Our way triggers scarcity and anxiety, but God's way unlocks overflow.

Abraham had a change of heart in his mind and his action in that moment. And it wasn't just lip service. It wasn't like, "Okay, yeah, God, sure, I hear you. Stars equal descendants and there's a lot of them. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Cool. Thanks, dude." But there was a promise that God was going to come through. So do we believe the lie that Satan has been telling us forever, or do we believe that God, when it comes to money, says "you will have what you need, put me first, everything else will be taken care of"? Because this is ultimately the financial question before us, right? Are you trusting yourself? Like the lie, like Adam and Eve, like Abram before God came into his life? Are you trusting God? And what's awesome here is after this moment, God has a ceremonial covenant moment with Abram, and he actually changes his name. The name of God, if you don't know in Scripture, is Yahweh. And I know there's a whole lot more to it if you know Hebrew. I don't know Hebrew, so you can ask Pastor Andre. He's very skilled and knowledgeable in that. But the word Yahweh literally has within its core this idea of God's breath. And I heard it said this way once, and it changed my perspective. It's literally like Yahweh. It's literally the breath of God inside of us that sustains us. That is who God is. And God goes through this ceremonial covenant with Abram and says, "From now on, your name is going to be Abraham." Abraham. God literally puts his name in the middle of Abram's name. How cool is that? So that every time that somebody would call Abraham's name, they were saying the name of God. And Abram was reminded of that covenant that he has with God.

And so we come to chapter 22 and it says this. It says, "Sometime later, God tested Abraham's faith. Abraham, God called. Yes, he replied, here I am. Take your son, your one and only son, Isaac." So God fulfills his promise, right? We read that shortly after that covenant God says, "Hey, I'm gonna come back around a little bit and you are going to have a son." And Abraham and Sarah go, "What?" Because by this time they were old. I'm not gonna say a number because then that might offend some of you in the room, okay? But there comes a point in life where men and women just do not naturally conceive anymore. Okay. And Abraham and Isaac had, or Abraham and Sarah had tried time and time and time and time and time and time again to have a son, to have a child, and it didn't happen. And they just gave up on that hope. And then God comes along and tells them, and he's like, "What?" And it's interesting because Sarah laughs so loud that God, having a conversation with Abraham, goes, "Did your wife just laugh at me?" And Sarah goes, "No, no, no, I didn't." Okay, now, first off, if you didn't know, you can't lie to God, okay? He knows everything, all right? But Sarah doubles down on this going, "I know my life, I know my body, I know biology, the basics of it. That doesn't happen when I'm my age." But you're talking to God, the God who promised an heir. But Sarah just digs down and fights and says, "No, I know better. I know best." Isn't it awesome when you get to have a conversation with someone who thinks they know better and they know best? Isn't that just the most fun? No, it's miserable. They sit there, they dig down. "This is my side of the story. This is the truth. This is what is right. This is what is true." And they fight from their perspective.

We're going to touch on that a little bit. But God says there's going to be a son. And God says it's not going to come through your concubine. It's not going to come through your messed up plans that you've screwed up to try to create. Now you've got Ishmael around. But it's going to come through my promise, my design, my way, not yours. And so Abraham and Sarah have a son. And they call him Isaac. And so here in verse 22, he says, "Take your son, your only son. Yes, Isaac, the one that you love so much and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you." Do you ever read a Bible verse and go, "I just don't like that?" Like this is one of those Bible verses where I'm like, "I don't like this. I don't like this concept. I don't like this test. I don't like anything about it." And I go, "God is, man, like, we have the understanding of the other side of this, but Abraham didn't." And I'm thinking, "God, sometimes in life, I'm like, God, is there any way you could teach me a lesson and just make it easier? Like, why does it have to be so hard sometimes?" But God here is saying, "Hey, I need to know if you trust me." You've said you trust me. You've had probably some small actions that show that you trust God. But God goes, "I need to know because I think deep down in here we get caught in this as well that we begin to idolize the blessing that we receive from God rather than the one who provided the blessing." And God here is saying, "Abraham, I've given you the blessing of the one son that you deeply desired, the son who you love with everything that you are. Do you trust me with this? And do you love me more than Isaac?"

And there's this nature of just spiritual testing, and it's almost comical. That at the moment that we have a commitment to God, it is always followed by testing. So the question, and you may have experienced this last week, I asked you to have the conversation. Did you avoid it or did you have the conversation? If you did have the conversation, either something happened to you last week or something's going to happen this week. Because here's what happens. It is so incredibly regular that God tests us to verify our obedience. Not to trip us up or to mess with us or to say, "Ha, ha, ha, you little idiot, like you messed up again." Like, no, no, no. But God tests us to want to know, do we truly believe what we say we're going to do? I had this happen a few weeks ago, preparing this sermon series. And I was doing some errands around here. I was driving around and all of a sudden, my engine kind of running a little rough. And I'm like, "That's weird. I'm like, it won't happen again. Keep driving." It happens again. I'm like, "Okay, that's, wow, what? Something's not right here." And all of a sudden it goes and goes. And I get to the point, the check engine light is not only on, it is flashing at me. So I'm like, "Oh no." I'm trying to come up Sunset over here past Rocklin Event Center. You know that's a big hill. My car is revving, shaking, making the most Lord awful sound I've ever heard in my life. And I'm like twenty miles an hour. People are honking at me. They're flying around me like, "What's this idiot doing?" And I'm like, "Lord Jesus, just get me to the church, please, Lord." And I limp it up the hill and I coast down a little bit and I sit in the light. I'm like, "Lord, the church is right there. Just please." And I'm like, "This is it. This is my car's toast. It's done. It's over. The engine's shot. The transmission is destroyed." I'm like, "God, we don't have the money for a new car. We don't have money for a car payment. This car is paid off. Lord, do you know how amazing that is?" God, no. Limp it into the parking lot, back it in, sit in front of the church, and I pop the hood, and I'm just like, "God, I don't know." And I'm like, "God, I trust you. You have a plan. You have a purpose. We're doing everything we can to live within your design financially. And we're not coming up a short, but I'm staring down something that looks like I'm going to be coming up short."

So I call my dad. "Hey, dad, stuck at church. What are you doing?" I'm like, "Hey, can you get me this tool and this tool and this tool?" This is what happened. He's like, "Okay, I'm on my way." So he comes up. I'm looking at the... I can't do anything. I don't have the connection to do the check engine. Like he brings that up. We check the engine and the most glorious peace, love, grace of God comes over me and it says an engine misfire. And for those of you who were just like that went straight over your head, that is a blessing because it could have said engine default, exploded, it's over, good luck, see you later, goodbye, transmission no worky. And so we're like, "Okay, misfire means something's wrong with the spark." We're like, spark plugs. And I start looking around. Every auto parts store in this place is shut down except for the one that is right over here. I cruise in. I grab the spark plugs. We come back. Dad helps me. We swap everything out. It was amazing. Just a little cover that comes off. Like that doesn't happen when you work on a car. Like just one cover. Replace the spark plugs. Get back in the car. Jesus, start it up, and it starts. It's not shaking. Like, okay, that anxiety-riddled lap around the block. You guys have been there if you've worked on a car. You're like, "All right. So you go around the block. You keep it simple. Keep it chill. Everything's good. You're like, all right, let's get that speed up. Let's get those RPMs." And I take it up the hill, cruising, flip a U-turn, come back, cruising, pull in the parking lot, and I go, "Thank you, Jesus." What I thought was going to have to be a brand new car, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars, $59.95, four spark plugs. Yes. And I remember driving home, I was still anxious, but I was just like, "Lord, you are so good. You are so good."

But when we step into this truth of God, he's going to test us because he wants to know whether our obedience is faith that's just a verbal one or is a visceral one that is down to our gut. So Abraham puts the wood on the back of his son, grabs his fire starter thing, whatever, flint, whatever they used, and they start on a trek. And Isaac turns to Abraham, his dad, and says, "Hey, Dad, where's the sacrifice?" Because this wasn't the first time Isaac had done this. He had gone with his dad before to offer this worship to God. And he knew that there needed to be something that was going to have to be killed and sacrificed to cover the sin. And I cannot imagine, as a dad, to have to turn to my son and to say, "God's going to provide, bud. God's going to provide. I don't know." And so he gets to the place. They build the altar. He puts the wood on. And he bounds his own one and only son and puts him on the wood and he raises his hand and God stops him and says, "Now I know." That even says in Hebrews chapter 11, the faith chapter, it talks about that Abraham had such faith that even if he would have gone through with killing his son, he had such faith that he believed God would raise him back to life. Because he embodied the covenant and the promise. And God provides an animal, a ram that's stuck in a bush right there. It's the only way God can, right? And they have a sacrifice. And there might've been silent treatment from Isaac to dad for a few weeks. But the faith that Isaac now had watching his dad trust God in a way that I pray that we never have to be tested in was amazing.

This parallels a story from the New Testament. If you guys have read your Bible and seen the whole story, but it says this in John 3. "As Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. For this is how God loved the world. He gave his one only Son so that everyone who believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son to the world not to judge the world but to save the world through him. There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him, but anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God's one and only son. And the judgment is based on this fact. God's light came into the world, but people love the darkness more than the light for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed." He's talking about this, shining light, all areas of our life. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see what they're doing, what God wants. You might have heard this scripture before, maybe a different translation, maybe you memorized it. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him believes what?" Well, believes the same thing that Adam, Abraham did with Isaac. God the Father did with his one and only son, except God finished the job. Christ died on the cross for you and for me so that we could be reconciled. That's a big fancy term that means we are fixed in our sins, that they would not be counted against us, but they would be counted against his one and only son because God's son was given for you so that you could come into the light and be in right relationship with God. And God wanted to know that Abraham was in right relationship with him.

See, God gave you his first and best, not his leftovers, not his second choices, not what was just kind of there at the end of the month, but God gave completely, fully, freely, holding absolutely nothing back with no conditions to his love. And not only that, he actually adopted us into his family and calls us his own. Do you guys believe that? I've preached this stuff for a long time and I still don't get it or understand everything that God is doing. But it's a call to discipleship. We are invited in to act like God, love like God, live like God, and give like God. Fear shows that we're holding back. Faith shows that we are trusting. God's generosity is the blueprint for our obedience. The conversation I want you to have this week now is are we willing to move forward in actually putting our faith in God with our finances? I didn't ask of anything last week. I'm not asking of anything. We're not signing on a line. You're not committing to anything right now. I'm just asking, are you willing to move forward in your biblical financial discipleship with Jesus? And it just starts with a conversation. Another conversation of God. What do you want us to do? What would it look like for us to give in the way that you have given to us, God? God holds nothing back. God has never held anything back. But I know at times, I'll be the first to admit, I have. I've held back. I've had fear overcome my decisions. Because trusting God with our everything, including our finances, is actually our full and ultimate act of worship. Giving is our worship.

We're going to talk about this more in the next few weeks, but how do we worship God? Do we worship God with our hands, with our heart, with our actions? Is it our entire life, including our finances? And are we putting our life in a way that would be correct and proper to the way that God has, as the ultimate designer, designed our lives to be? We're addressing some things here at church of how can we remove barriers? How can we invite people into practicing regular biblical financial stewardship? Maybe that's stuff that we need to do as a church. We stopped passing the plate during COVID because we didn't want to share COVID, right? Maybe we need to bring that back so we can worship together as a body. I don't know. We're still wrestling with some of these things. Maybe we need to change the way that we have our drop box in the back and the way that we have our online setup or the way that we send out our statements of those who financially give on the regular. This is a theology of giving that we need to have for our lives. And obedience flows from trust. I want you to get this right. There is no guilt. There is no shame. There is no manipulation. It is just an invitation into what God has called us to do. And I will admit, I need to ask for forgiveness from you guys. I haven't talked about this as well as I should have. And so I'm sorry. I haven't led you well in this area. Out of fear. I was afraid everybody was going to leave. I start talking about money. You guys all showed back up this week. I won't tell you we have two more weeks of this, so I'm just kidding.

But we're at a crossroads here. Is God going to be the first in our spiritual life? Is he going to be the first in our financial life? Are we going to trust him the way that he has designed things? Are we going to stop believing the lie? Because reality is free will still remains, guys. You don't have to do this. You don't. But I think, and the way that I have found, is that living in this, on the other side of it, there's no other way to experience this without just fully going in on it. That on the other side of it, there is just this place of, oh. The Bible talks about a peace that passes all understanding. I'm telling you, we've tithed for a long time, and the numbers never matched. I would do the math over and over. I'm a math guy. It didn't make sense. But God asked for faithfulness. I said, "Okay." And we've never gone without. Things have been tight. We've had to say no to things. We've had to make sure that we budget in a certain way so that we have that ability to put God and him first in everything that we are. And I know some of you I've had those stories with you of how you fought it and fought it and fought it and fought it and you just said fine and you did it and you're like, "Oh my goodness, what? Why didn't I do this sooner?" Because there's just something on the other side of obedience that just opens up our world and no other way can you attain that without that trust. I encourage you step in faith, step in trust, trust the one who is the blesser. God, don't get so wrapped up in the blessing but trust God. Have a posture of faith and of prayer and of life realignment because we might need to reorder our life around God to make this happen. And it's not going to be easy, but I'll tell you it is so worth it on the other side. And I think Abraham, if he was here today, would agree.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you, Lord. We thank you for your gift and for your sacrifice. God, we thank you for your first generosity. God, we thank you for how you first gave your one and only son, that we would even have the opportunity to be here in this place, to have new life. Jesus, I pray for courage as we have these conversations with our family and with you, God, that we would ask that you would open our hearts to what you desire for us, God. More spiritual depth, more maturity. God, shining that light in all those dark places that we wanna control and hide from you, but God, you already know those places. So God, I pray, I ask for forgiveness for maybe our fear-driven decisions that we've made in the past and are focusing on our self-reliance. God, give us strength for small faith. This isn't something that we just wake up tomorrow and go, "I'm tithing and I'm being extremely generous." But it's a journey. It's a process. God, I even pray for you inviting testing. God, you desire the best for our lives and that might take us being tested a little bit. God, we thank you for what you're doing in our lives, in our giving and our tithing as worship. And God, I pray that our life would be a life of praise and declaring to you and to the world and everybody around us that you are the number one thing in our life, Jesus. God, may it be so. We love you. In Jesus' name, amen.

God's Way - First Things First: Part 1

God’s Way - First Things First: Part 1 - Shining Light On The Hidden

Matthew 6:19–24; Genesis 3:1–6; Matthew 19:16–22

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

So I'm excited to be back and jumping into a new series with us today called God's Way. This series kind of came out of a little bit of research I had been doing, some studying of the Word, and after kind of working through our tough questions. And if you guys remember, I kicked off our tough questions series, and I said, "If you want your church to be happy, to like you as a pastor, and to come back every single week, don't talk about certain topics. Do you remember? Hell, money, or politics." Good news for you, I have already covered hell. So you can go back and watch that sermon. And we're going to hold off on politics. We might jump into it later. So just forewarning, that might be coming. But here's the bad news: we're going to be talking about money.

And I felt like in this series that this was something that was very important to cover. And I know everybody, you already have the thoughts, right? They're already flowing through your mind. You're like, "I haven't been to church in months, and this is the Sunday I show up, God. Are you kidding me?" So just keep an open mind, okay? Keep an open mind to what God has to teach all of us, including myself today. And in this, we have a core theological principle about our belief and our walk with Jesus. And we know this to be true: until God's light shines into the dark corners of all of our lives, those dark corners continue to stay in bondage. And it is only when we allow God to shine into all of our lives that we find perfect, true, whole freedom.

This is only possible when we begin to identify areas in our lives where we are misaligned with God's will. I will be honest: these topics are 100% uncomfortable, and I might step on some toes. You may not like what you hear in this series, and that's fine. What I want to do is articulate to you Scripture and God's Word for our life. I always thought it was uber cheesy when people do this with acronyms and stuff, but I've heard it said that the Bible is our Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. And it is so true that the Bible gives truth to our right-now lives. Not old Bible-timey lives. Not before-Jesus Bible, old-school, Israelite, lost-in-the-desert lives. But our personal, right-now, end-of-May-2026 lives and beyond.

As a pastor, it is my calling and my duty to equip those whom God has called me to equip. I want us to be people who are grace-filled and Spirit-guided, with transformed hearts, lives, people, and families, and to have our church as a gospel-centered place. But we have to have a cultural reality check to be able to address some of these things. And I want to make sure that we don't elevate Scripture over things, or things over Scripture. Because when we put things above Scripture, we lessen and we degrade God's Word in our lives.

Society has these rules of engagement, right? They tell you, like I said before, we don't talk, especially around the dinner table or maybe a family meal with outside family. You don't talk about politics. You don't talk about religion. You don't talk about money. You don't talk about even sex. But I want to tell you that God has a design for everything that He has created. He does. And Scripture is very clear about how we are to live our lives in every single aspect of it. Take government and politics, for example. Did you know that there is an entire book in the Bible that is dedicated to how God wants to see, use, and roll out government and politics? Does anybody know what that book of the Bible is? It starts with a D and ends with a Y. What book? Oh, you guys, you're so good. I like that. No, I'm sorry. But we are called to understand God's design.

Sexuality and relationships. God created sex. And it's a beautiful, beautiful thing when held within the context of biblical marriage. He has given it to us as a gift. It's a blessing, guys. But there are clear instructions on how that is to be lived out throughout Scripture. And when we understand His design and live it out, it leads to a place of health, joy, and just greatness. But without it, it becomes manipulated and twisted. It leads to a place of shame, control, and abuse. God has a lot to say about money and finances. I found this out. I didn't know this: a third of what Jesus talks about and is recorded in Scripture was all about addressing money, possessions, and stewardship. It is the single most discussed topic that Jesus spoke about in our Bible. So that tells me it's probably pretty important.

And yet, in the church, we do a horrible disservice by tiptoeing around it, not really addressing it, not taking it head-on, and not giving clear, biblical, direct instructions on it. And I have failed you as a pastor. Throughout my entire pastorate, I don't think I've ever dug this deep into biblical stewardship. I was talking to another pastor this week, and he's been focusing on this in his church as well. I was like, "Oh, this is awesome. I love this." But he called it financial discipleship. I was like, "Ooh, I'm going to steal that. I like that." But we like to categorize it in a way that it's just kind of over here. I'm over here. And maybe I'll get close to it, but I don't like it. But Jesus focused and taught a lot about finances. Well, I thought he talked a lot about love and forgiveness. Yeah, he does. He talks a lot about that. But when we back up a little bit more, we realize that Jesus' focus here is actually addressing finances, which are a primary barrier to practicing love, to practicing forgiveness, and to spiritual maturity.

What we do with our resources shows our true allegiance. See, in the church, we are not influenced by the world. Is that true? No! We fall into these same traps of self-absorption and consumerism that the world has too, and yet we're supposed to look different, right? And this is an opportunity for us as a church to show the world how to live. It's an opportunity for us to speak truth in grace and with patience, and with love and forgiveness, which flips the argument in a way that the world doesn't understand. And I want to, during these weeks, offer a different alternative for us to live. When lived out, as the Bible says, it brings blessing upon blessing upon blessing.

And you might know a lot about this topic. Maybe some of you are like, "I know this front and back. I know exactly what I'm supposed to do." Awesome. I would suspect you probably got a little area you can grow in. And maybe you've never heard the church talk about money before. All you've heard is some televangelist say, "Send me your money and you'll be healed." Not talking about that either. Or maybe you're like, "Yeah, I'm supposed to, but it's just hard. Have you seen the price of bananas lately?" And my desire is to just have open hands and hearts, and to let the truth of God's Word just pour over you, and continue in your discipleship walk with Him, and to let Him continue to form us into the image that He so lovingly desires for us.

I wanna pray real quick. Jesus, we thank you for today. We thank you that you have not hidden yourself from us, God. This isn't some mathematical equation that nobody knows about except for you, and we don't have to try to figure out how to just unlock this blessing. But God, that you have shown yourself, you have shown your will, your way, who you are, and through Scripture, I pray that today our hearts and minds would be open to what you have for us. That we would be receptive to what you wanna say to us individually, how you wanna challenge us, how you wanna call us up, God, into a new way of living. And maybe there might be some repentance, God, along the way too. God, I pray in this process that your Holy Spirit would move freely and that we would not resist it. That God, both as individuals and as a body of believers, that you would lead us deeper into healthy, biblical discipleship and to live into right relationship with you. Jesus, Lord, we need you, God. We need you now more than ever. We love you, Jesus. We pray all of this in your name. Amen.

Can I share a little secret with you? I love it right there, right here. I am a little bit of a closet apocalyptic movie fan. I don't know anybody else who is big into end-of-the-world movies or TV shows. Yeah. Okay. Right. You're right here with me. I'm not huge on zombies; the most I would go is *World War Z*. Okay. So, I'm not all in on *The Walking Dead*. That's just not me. But things like *Greenland* with Gerard Butler? You guys seen that one? Okay. They just came out with a second one recently, continuing the story. Great stuff. Or maybe *The Day After Tomorrow*, maybe a little bit of *Planet of the Apes*. Anybody? No? No? There's a recent movie, not a movie... yeah, a movie and a show that came out called *Homestead*. It's really good. Movies like *Revolution*. Anybody remember *Revolution* back in the day? Were they like the nanobots that got into stuff and knocked all the power out? The show went on way too long. I'm like, guys, we should have ended this seasons ago. But then there's another new, recent one called *Paradise*. If you guys are streaming that one, it's pretty intense.

So, I love these movies, and the premise of an apocalyptic movie is that you don't know what's coming. You come onto the scene, and life is great. The world's moving, everything's fine. And then all of a sudden, something happens. Maybe it's some massive weather event that changes the polar ice caps, or it's a volcano that goes off, or maybe something from space collides into Earth, or just like aliens show up, or a biochemical outbreak. And it's just like, ah. What I've noticed with these movies is they all have one thing in common: when it all happens and chaos ensues, people abandon all of their stuff and prioritize what is important. Yet, we tend to build and live our lives surrounded, centered, and focused on all of this stuff. No one in these movies is like, "Hold on, before we leave the house, I gotta make sure I have all of my shoes in the car. But what about my purse collection? I can't leave that behind." No. Nobody's like, "Let me go get my sports trophy from my seventh-grade soccer game that I got a participation award for."

Nobody's loading up their books or their coin collection or their golf clubs. No. What are they loading up? What are they loading up? This is the interactive part here, okay? What are we loading up? Kids, you're family. You're loading up family. You're loading up medicine. You're loading up water. You're loading up food, the necessities. Weapons? I took a dark turn. Okay, there we go. Gold star for my mom. But the important stuff, right? Nobody's like, "Hold on, hold on, we forgot grandma's gravy boat. Like it's in the huge, top corner on the right. For when we have gravy?" As we're running through the forest for our lives from zombies? Nobody's trying to unbolt their flat-screen TV from the wall and be like, "Put this on the truck." No. You go after what is important. And yet, what do we do? We spend our lives, even decades, collecting stuff and focusing our lives around what would be left behind in the middle of a crisis.

Jesus has an upside-down kingdom that He's called us to live. And He says that some stuff is really just the opposite of how we're supposed to live our lives. And we in the church at times get caught up in this stuff, and we can laugh at ourselves, but we get caught up in this and we build our lives around stuff that just isn't worth focusing on. Jesus talks about this in Matthew chapter 6, where we're going to be today. If you want to turn there, it'll be on the screens. But this is in the middle of what is called the Sermon on the Mount. This is where Jesus takes a moment in His ministry and preaches the greatest sermon ever written and ever recorded. And He, in here, a third of the time, talks about money and finances and financial discipleship. But He focuses in on this set of verses I want to talk about this morning, starting in verse 19.

He says, "Don't store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Rather, store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there your heart will also be. Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. And when your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. If the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is. No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one, love the other, or you will be devoted to one, and you will despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money."

Jesus said this 2,000-plus years ago. And He talks about three core things in here. I want to walk us through them this morning. The first of which He says is to store treasures, not on earth, but to store treasures in heaven. Treasures on earth versus heaven. He says, earthly wealth decays. Don't know if you know this, but no matter how hard you try, you're not taking anything to heaven. When you die, it all stays here. It doesn't go anywhere. I've heard the stories of people buried with all their possessions, loaded in a car, thinking that that's how they're gonna go to heaven. It doesn't go anywhere, guys. Jesus says here, what happens to it? It's destroyed. It falls apart. Moths eat it. It rusts away. Thieves steal it. But heavenly treasures are secure and eternal. What you sow and reap, some big church words here, farmer terms, I think we don't really know very well. We're not farmers. We may be backyard gardeners. But He says, what is in heaven, what is eternal, will last forever. And this is really our heart allegiance. Whatever your treasure is there, your heart will also be, it says in verse 21. Finances reveal our true spiritual posture.

Jesus continues on to talk about the eye as a lamp. A biblically healthy financial perspective will illuminate and trickle and flow into our whole life. And the same is true for an unhealthy one: it will breed spiritual darkness in our lives. And then He finishes with the dual-mastery improbability that no one can serve two masters. It's completely impossible because you're either over here loving this one, which means you're hating that one. And then you go over here and you love this one, which means you're hating that one. There's no way around it. You cannot serve God, He says, and be enslaved to money. Devotion to one brings contempt for the other. And so why does Jesus, if I said He talked about this a third of the time, why does He continue to come back to this time and time and time and time again? With some other topics, He talks about them once and then He's done with them and moves on.

Well, I think it's this: that His disciples, and I believe many of us modern-day disciples, are constantly defaulted towards control, assumption, and fear over trust. We constantly find ourselves at battle with our inner self, and discipleship requires confronting the gap between cultural habits and kingdom economics. And this was a reality check for His disciples, and it's a reality check for us today that Jesus taught about this repeatedly over and over and over again. Why? Because the disciples still hadn't gotten it. And I think for most of us, I will be the first to raise my hand, I'm still not getting it. And I need to be reminded in Scripture and to still trust who God is, to focus on not self-reliance, but surrender. And at the core of this, which is what I found in my study, is that we are all still believing a lie that originated at the beginning of the world and humanity. We're still being stuck and caught in this deception that happened all the way back in the garden with Adam and Eve.

If you flip to the front of your Bible, the first book is Genesis. And in Genesis chapter three—so like one, two, three, boom, right at the front—we come to this moment where Satan comes before Adam and Eve and tells them a lie. And it's the same lie that I and all of us continue to believe to this day. And this is the lie: that God really didn't say you would die if you ate that fruit on that tree, right? He's talking to Adam. He's like, "That's so silly. Like, why would God make poisonous fruit? That's only for like Disney movies. Like, really?" No. You know what the truth is? The truth is that God doesn't want you to be like Him. And if you eat that fruit, you'll have knowledge of good and evil. You will be like God. And this lie ultimately boiled down to this: that God is holding out on you. And because God is holding something back from you, you must take control and you have to provide for yourself because God's not gonna do it. It's the same lie that He gave Eve that said, "Hey, eat this, go take it out of him. Go give it to him if he needs it too." That to do it in a way that isn't God's way so that we can take care of ourselves, we gotta be in control.

And we live this out every day. I do. "Well, I got it, Pastor. I gotta work 60 hours a week, or I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to provide for my family." Or maybe, "If I do it God's way, I've run the numbers, Pastor. I calculated it out. We're just gonna run out. There's just not enough to go around if I do it the way that the Bible says." Oh, you ran the numbers? You don't think God might be big enough to provide? You must be right. God must be wrong. Just on this topic though, just on this one, right? Just this one. And it leads us to a place of financial hoarding, a scarcity mindset, and an anxiety-driven decision-making process. And I want to tell you today, we have to break the lie. You will never be able to find the peace, the hope, the joy, or the blessing that God has for you until you break the lie.

Jesus talked about this in Matthew 19, just a few chapters later than six, when a rich young man comes to Him and says, "Jesus, how do I get into heaven?" And Jesus says, "Well, you obey the law. You honor your mother and father. You love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. You love others, your neighbor, rather than yourself." And he goes, "I've done all that." And Jesus said, "Sweet, you're getting into heaven, right?" No. He says, "Take all of your wealth, all of your possessions, sell them and give it away." Because Jesus knew that this man had made wealth his God. He had made his riches an idol, and he left dejected after meeting Jesus. Because to do what Jesus was asking him to do was giving up way too much control that he didn't want to do. Because we are constantly at war with that. We're constantly at war with God's system versus our human intelligence. Fighting back and forth, back and forth.

However, when we read the Scripture and Bible, we see that God is fundamentally into systems. All throughout Scripture, we find different instructions, processes, direction, systems on how we are to live our lives. And it's funny, it's almost as if the Guy who designed everything understood how we are to live our lives. And when we live in that design, in God's plan, God's way, it works 100% of the time. Because He is the Designer with the perfect design. And our place isn't to come in and go, "Good job, God, I'm gonna do a little redesigning, do a quick renovation of this." No, our place is to be obedient and to trust. He even says specifically in this, in this topic of finances, to actually test Him in it. That's how much He believes in His system. It's a testament. And will I not throw open the storehouses and provide for you in ways that you never dreamed, thought, hoped, or imagined? We're gonna talk about that another time.

But I think of it this way. Has anybody seen the price of gas lately? It's ridiculous. It's like, there's just no limit. It's a free-for-all out there. And I was thinking, you know, it would be a lot cheaper, a lot easier, and a lot quicker just to put water in my car. Right? It's right by my house. I could fill up my tank. It would be easy. It wouldn't cost as much. It's liquid, right? It's just liquid. But if I did that, it would be foolish. And the ramifications of that would be catastrophic. I actually did a bunch of research on that when you get water in your gas tank. Like, it is a big deal. And yet, what do we do in our lives? We think, "Okay, God, I know you got your system, your way of doing it, but I got a better, quicker, cheaper, easier way. I'm just going to run with that." And yet, we find our marriages falling apart. Our families are struggling, our finances are stressing us and a burden on our shoulders, which sometimes feels like we can't even breathe. Our anxiety levels are through the roof as a society in a world today. And we wonder why. Because Jesus, who is the ultimate mechanic, came to earth, fixed what was broken. And yet we said, "Thanks God for fixing that. I got it from here." And we just run with it. And then all of a sudden our car's like, "Why God, would you allow this to happen?" Well, He's like, "Well, I gave you something that had something to say about that."

Scripture offers us a way that gives blessing upon blessing upon blessing upon blessing if we are obedient and walk in that. Here's the funny thing about discipleship: we can be really awesome in one area and be completely just falling apart in another. And we like to highlight the ways that we're doing well. "I know a lot of Scripture." Well, good for you. That's awesome. "I volunteer in the children's ministries." Beautiful. "I love it, Pastor. I'm here every single Sunday. I haven't missed a Sunday since 1972." Amazing. I'm glad that you're here. And you know who's the worst at this? Doctors. You go to the doctor, and they just have like this one thing they want to nag you about. You're like, "Yeah, yeah, I've been eating good, I'm working out, I'm getting my steps in every day, I don't go to Taco Bell anymore. Like, I'm doing great." He's like, "Yeah, but have you seen your cholesterol numbers?" You're like, "Shh, stop. Look at everything I'm doing that's great. That's awesome. Yes, yes, you're doing that right, that's great. However, if we don't address this one thing right here, you're going to have lifelong ramifications." And this is Jesus coming along our side and saying, "Yes, you're doing great. I love you. I applaud you. Keep going. Don't stop doing that stuff. Keep doing that stuff, but I got some tweaking I wanna do over here."

Because the reality is our spiritual health is bound to our whole self. Our spiritual health is bound to our whole self. We can't divide this up. And this is the funny thing about discipleship: there is usually massively unequal growth in our walk with Jesus. And that's okay. And I want to tell you, if you might be there at that place, God loves you so much. You're His son; you are His daughter. He sees your growth. He sees who you are. He says, "I want to address something else to bring full health." And so, as we close, I got a scale I want us to look at. And this is just honesty, okay? If you can just be honest with me in this, I want to walk us through a couple things here. I call it the Five Zones of Financial Discipleship. And the first zone would be, I would say, Zone Zero. You're like, "Wait a minute, you said five." I know. Okay, okay, good. This is the starting place. Maybe for those of you who are in this zone, you've never given anything to the church, whether that was your time, your resources, or your money.

You're on complete reliance upon yourself. There's no trust established between you and God. You're like, "This is mine. God, do your thing. I'm doing my thing." And if you are here in this camp, again, I want to tell you, God loves you. God absolutely loves you. This does not change your salvation. This doesn't change your place in heaven. This doesn't change whether you have to wait after you die to get in heaven. No, no, no, none of that, okay? He loves you, and He wants the very best for your life. He wants to have an honest conversation with you, and He wants you to be honest with Him. He wants you to bring your worry, your anxiety, your fears, maybe your even anger. "God, how come you're not providing? How come I have to live paycheck to paycheck to paycheck? You've got to change this, God. I am mad." He wants that. Bring it to Him.

The first step after that would be Zone One. This would be what I would consider a one-time engagement. You, at some point throughout history, at one point gave something to the church. Maybe it was last Christmas, holiday time, we did Operation Christmas Child, where we sent shoeboxes to poverty-ridden countries that brought the gospel message to them through a practical gift in their life. If you did that, thank you so much. You changed a little boy's, a little girl's life in ways that you'll never know or imagine. And you might walk into heaven one day and meet them and get to hear their story. This is big. I want you guys to get that. This isn't, "Well, I'm only in Zone One and he's up in Zone Four. I'm less." No, no, no, no, no. That's not what I'm saying, okay? Maybe you bought something for the church. Maybe you donated something to the church. And this was a first step of trust. I'm so proud of you. This is awesome. But it was still self-directed. Okay?

The next zone, Zone Two, would be emerging or stepping into stewardship and biblical discipleship in a standard method or a system. And this would look like an occasional gift on the regular. Maybe it's you throw 20 bucks a month in the backdrop box, and you're like, "God, this is what, boom, I'm giving." But you're consistent in it. And like I said, and we'll explore this more, God is into systems. And so we believe the same here at Spring Valley Church, and we have systems for you to be able to give to God, whether that's through an envelope in your chair, whether that's a drop box in the back, maybe it's online, secure. Maybe it's a way that you set up online giving on a recurrence that just automatically gets given to the church in a system that is just easy and regular. But you begin to see how God has systems set up. This is phenomenal.

The next zone, Zone Three, would be when you shift maybe from 20 bucks here or there, or a little bit here, you begin to go to a proportional commitment. What do I mean proportional? That would mean that you begin with, say, 1% of your income, you say, "God, I am giving back to you." So it is proportional to the blessing that you have received. Now, if you want to know, I will tell you that biblically, there is a word called tithe, and that is translated tenth or 10%. The desire that God has for us in this is to not stop at 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, whatever percent, but to rise up to a level of 10% of our income that He has blessed us with is given back to God through the church. This is huge because you begin to understand intentional alignment with biblical Scripture.

Zone Four would be you are arrived. You're at the 10%. You're like, "Oh my Lord, Pastor, 10%." I just lost count. I didn't get to 10%. I am extremely fortunate that when Lauren and I got married, we had somewhat of a commitment to tithing, but we decided that we were gonna commit to this 10% when we got married. And when we got married, we were both still in college, full-time. We were both working part-time jobs. She was at a Christian bookstore. I was at a Starbucks. And our rent, which killed us every single month, was $325. Oh, Lord Jesus, bring it back, Lord. And it hurt to tithe. But in that obedience, there was a peace. There was a blessing. There was a hope that without that actual commitment every single month, we could not have experienced without being on the other side of it. And it's going to take you being like, "You said 1%, now you're at 10%. But how the?" It starts being intentional. I know people who start with 1% and said, "By this time next year, I'm going to be at 2." And they continue to work at it. And 2 turns into 3 and 3 into 4. It just grows and grows and grows. It's going to take a reordering of the priority of our lives. We might have to go without some things. Like that?

"And then that's it, Chris, right? Zone Four, we're good, that's it?" No. Jesus has a standard even beyond that, and that's what He calls extravagant generosity. This is beyond the baseline of 10% obedience, but is a heart actively seeking opportunities to bless others and advance God's work around the globe. You would not be sitting where you are sitting right now without extravagant generosity. Because there were people who came before us who sacrificed and gave and went above and beyond to get us into this facility. Some of you know who I'm talking about. And that we would not have a place to call home. We would not have a children's ministry down the hall. We would not have Monday night youth group. We would not have men's and women's Bible studies. We would not have different moments of men's and women's events to be able to gather in a place that we call home to hold a foothold for the kingdom of God in Rocklin and Roseville and Plaster County without extravagant generosity. This might look like also donating to parachurch organizations, a local one called Mercy, maybe Sierra Pregnancy Center. Another one known as Gathering Inn who works with the unhoused in the area. This is the ultimate peak of what God desires for us in our biblical financial discipleship.

Now, let me be clear. This growing in these zones is about progression and is posture-driven, not performance-focused. I want to get this absolutely clear right now. That it is about a process over perfection. And I don't want you coming up to me and going, "Well, Pastor, you know I'm a Zone Five Christian." Blessings on you, I don't want to know. God cares about it, and we're not going to come in and have different seating arrangements based upon what zone you are in. Nobody's talking about that. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand or say, "I'm in Zone Three" or "I'm in Zone..." No, no, none of that. What I'm talking about is moving to a place of financial discipleship. And the reality is, the last six years have been absolutely chaos. The world stopped in a way that we never thought the world would stop. Things happen that we never thought would happen. There's fear, there's trauma, and this does cause pullbacks. But I want us to have an invitation from God right now, here in this moment, to have an honest reset. To take a moment to pause and to think about where we are at. I'm not asking you to come forward today and start committing, "I'm tithing 10%," or "God's housing me, I got to give $500,000 to the church." No, that's not what I'm saying. If you do have that, and God is asking about that, let's get lunch this week, okay? But what I'm talking about is asking for you to move forward with an honest conversation with God. And to ask just simply, "God, where should I begin?" Because it is a shift from control to dependence in these finances that will then trickle down into our entire lives. It's a process of surrender. Surrender control, embrace peace, walk in obedience.

So here's what we're gonna do. I wanna ask us, and you got on your program, you got a little card at the bottom. And I want you, if you're willing, to pray over this card and to just check the box there that says, "I'm going to have the conversation." That conversation is going to be with you and God. That conversation might be with the spouse if you have one. Conversation might be with a family if you have that one. We've been talking about this in our house. How do we begin to teach these biblical financial discipleship values to our children? Because it takes the whole family. And it takes all of us as a family. To shift from control to dependence. To break the lie. To focus on progress over perfection. And if I can so boldly say, embrace the awkward. Embrace the awkward. Trust the Designer. Align your home. And walk in Christ's ultimate freedom.

Today, let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for today. God, I pray that we would have open hearts and minds to be receptive of Your word. God, I pray that the Holy Spirit would break in here and put away this lie of self-reliance. God, that you would fill our hearts with your grace in ways that are sometimes really difficult, but absolutely necessary to have these conversations. God, help us to walk in confidence in Your system over our own cultural or personal engineering. God, that you would put peace in our hearts to replace our financial anxiety and to grow in us kingdom-minded trust. God, give us the strength. Lord, we're gonna need it, Jesus, to rely on You first above everything else. So Lord, I pray, break this lie of Satan. You would hold on to us. Put Your truth in us. Bring us Your provision. Bring us Your love. God, help us to see Your redemption and Your care and Your grace, that it may shine so bright in our lives to those far corners and far, far places in our hearts that we want to keep, and Satan wants to keep in darkness. God, that You would bring that light. You would break that lie. You would bring salvation to those spots.

When God Calls

When God Calls

1 SAMUEL 3

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Good morning. We finished our Tough Questions series. And so if you've missed any of that, I really encourage you to go back, listen to the podcast, or watch it on YouTube. Next week, Pastor Chris is going to start a new four-week series that he is going to teach. So right now, we just kind of have an in-between, and I get to do whatever I want. No, just kidding. We are... Can't believe that's on the record now. No, we're just going to be dropping into an Old Testament moment, a scene, and I'm excited for that. This sermon actually came from a conversation with a youth volunteer who said, "Andre, you should preach." He picked this out, and he said, "You should preach on this." So I'm doing that today.

Let me tell you guys a story. When I was, I want to say seven, seven... couldn't have been older than like eight or nine. Going home in our routine after coming home from school, my mom was driving. We'd stop by the mailbox. I'd get out with the key, get the mail, and come back into the car. And one time, I just heard something. I heard... I don't know if it was the rumbling of my stomach or just like a loud thing, but I could tell by the way that no one else had heard it. My mom didn't have a reaction. And I just... I got back in the car and I said, "Mom, I think God just told me to be kind to my sister." And it was the only time that I've had this like, "I'm pretty sure God said something," but I was a seven-year-old kid. And my mom wisely just said, "Well, I think you should obey God. I think you should be kind to your sister."

The truth is, God's audible voice is not something that is common in my life. It may not be common for you. Even though we hear God in different ways, maybe through Scripture and through friends, we'll get into some of that, but hearing God's audible voice is not common. And even in Scripture, there are moments where God speaks, but those are standout, unforgettable, unbelievable at times moments in history. So you can think of moments like Moses in the burning bush, where there's something and he hears God's voice. And it's in a scene that he's like, "What is happening right now?" This is not common. This does not happen every day. Or later on in the Old Testament, when Israel is in the desert and God is giving them instruction, it says in Scripture that God's voice was like thunder. And it was too much for Israel. They were like, "God, can you please stop talking? I can't handle this. It's scary. It's loud. It's booming." Or even something in the New Testament like Jesus, when Paul on the road to Damascus, when he was Saul, hears God's voice, or Jesus speak to him. And it's a scene. And that is not... it happens, but it's not common, right? But it's a theme in Scripture that we see, that God speaks to his people. And though we may not experience those super memorable, out-of-the-world moments, we still need to recognize God's voice. We should be ready. And our desire should be to be able to recognize God's voice when he does speak to us.

John 10:4 says, "When he was brought out all on his own, he goes on ahead of them. And his sheep, this is Jesus, his sheep follow him because they know his voice." So if we are followers of Jesus, then we should recognize his voice when he speaks to us. And we should know how we'll respond if and when God speaks. And I think we can learn how to do that together this morning as we look at the story in the Old Testament of Samuel. So if you have your Bibles, if you want to turn in them to 1 Samuel 3, it'll be on the screen as well. But 1 Samuel 3 is the story of a boy named Samuel.

Now, in our passage today, we're in a time of Israel's history where Israel has been struggling as a nation to follow God. Theologians comment that Israel is in a state of profound spiritual and institutional collapse. There's a pattern that has developed in Israel's history, and this pattern is a generation arises that neither knows the Lord nor understands him, and they fall away worshiping other gods and abandoning Yahweh, the God who delivered them out of Egypt. And so this pattern that we see is Israel sins. God punishes them through oppression, says, "We're going to give you over to your sin. I'm going to punish you." The people repent and cry and say, "God, save us." God sends someone, a redeemer of some sort. And then the cycle starts all over again. They're with God for a time, but then they sin, and over and over and over again. And I got to say, as difficult as it can be to read Israel's story and sometimes hear of their incompetency to follow God, it can also hit me just how similar we are at times, right? We have a sin in our lives that just seems to be reoccurring over and over again. We face the natural consequences of our sin. And we call out to God to rescue us, saying, "God, please help me." He does. He gives us deliverance for a moment, maybe rescue. And then at some point in the future, we fall into that sin again. And the cycle in our lives is very similar to that of Israel's.

Now, in this moment for Israel, it's not just the people that are falling into sin. It's also the leaders, unfortunately. There is a head priest named Eli. And he and his sons have not been the best, especially his sons, who were also priests. And they were worthless men who did not know God. And this phrase in the Bible says, "do not know God," really is to emphasize nothing about their lives would let you know that they knew him, followed him, had a relationship with him. And even Eli himself, their dad, the high priest, he was weak and blind and unable to hear God's voice. So in a way, he himself embodied Israel as a nation: weak, blind to God, and unable to hear God's voice. And if you're reading through the Old Testament in the book and you come to 1 Samuel, you would really sense this decline in Israel. Things are getting bad. The relationship with God is strained, distant. Things are not going as they are supposed to, which usually means the time is ripe for God to intervene and to enter into the story.

So if you guys want to read along with me, it says, I'm going to read, kind of split this up into two. So the first few verses say, the boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days, the word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions. One night, Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not gone out yet, and Samuel was lying. So he went and lay down. Again, the Lord called Samuel. Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord. The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. A third time, the Lord called Samuel. And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, you called me. Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel, Go and lie down. And if he calls you, say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. We're just going to read through all of it, by the way. The Lord came and stood there calling at the other time, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening. And the Lord said to Samuel, See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family, from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about. His sons blasphemed God, and he failed to restrain them. Therefore, I swore to the house of Eli, the guilt of Eli's house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering. Samuel lay down until morning and then opened the doors of the house of the Lord. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision, but Eli called him and said, Samuel, my son. Samuel answered, Here I am. What was it he said to you? Eli asked, Do not hide it from me. May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything he told you. So Samuel told him everything, hiding nothing from him. Then Eli said, He is the Lord. Let him do what is good in his eyes. The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel's words fall to the ground. And all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word. All right.

So this first part of this passage, I think the emphasis here is recognizing God's voice. I just want to go verse by verse and kind of break this down for us. We get this context in the first three verses. Minister, Samuel was just a boy under Eli. And this part in verse 1, the word of the Lord was rare. Not many visions. The people of God, in their decline, were not hearing from God. It's important to remember. And again, we come to Eli, who is so weak, barely see, was lying down in his usual place. And again, this is just more context for us to understand that the setting that Samuel's in is not a good one. And then Samuel, when we get to Samuel, there's a little bit of hope. And it highlights the proximity of Samuel to God. It says he was lying down in the house of the Lord where the ark of God was. So at this time, they're in the tabernacle. And the author is trying to tell us that Samuel is literally, by physical location, the closest one to God. Just where he's sleeping, he's closest to God. And this is important because this is the one that God has chosen to be the voice of the truth. So this is our context.

And then verses 4 through 9 is God calling to Samuel over and over again. We get this first call. And Samuel says, "Here I am," but goes to Eli. He doesn't understand. He doesn't know God. He doesn't understand that God is speaking to him. But this response that he gives, "Here I am," echoes some responses from previous people in the Bible that we would recognize as good people, like Abraham and Jacob and Moses, have all been called by God, and they all responded with, "Here I am." And so the author, again, is cluing us into, Samuel is someone who is going to be important and good. We get the second call in verses 6 through 7. Again, the Lord called Samuel, and Samuel got up, went to Eli. Eli tells him to go back. And then a third time in verse 8, Samuel goes, responds, says, "Here I am" to Eli. And Eli realizes now that it's God speaking to Samuel. Now, Eli's probably a little bit perturbed. He's like, "This is the third time you're waking me up. I'm not calling you. What is going on?" But I think he finally clicks that. He's like, "Oh, this is God." And we have to remember that Eli is not in good favor with God. And so I think this shows that it took three times. This just shows how dull he is. His senses are dulled to what God is doing. It took him a while for him to point Samuel to the Lord.

Now, have you ever been in maybe Eli's position? Not that your senses are dull, but have you ever been on the receiving end of someone saying, "Hey, something's going on in life, this keeps happening," and you can maybe clearly see like, "I think God's trying to get a hold of you, I think God is doing something," but they haven't put the pieces together yet? Or maybe they don't know God yet? Or maybe it's happened to you that God's been trying to get a hold of you and in that moment you didn't recognize God's voice. And something's happening, and then it happens again, or God's getting your attention. You're like, "Huh, something's up right now. I think, why is this happening?" And it just takes a little while for us to understand and connect that God is trying to get a hold of us, trying to get our attention. In this moment, this is where Samuel is learning God's voice. And I think this is a beautiful moment of someone yielding themselves to serve God, but coming into a beautiful relationship with him. Not just serving him, but a relationship. And I think that is the truth that we need to hear today too. That yes, we are called to obey and to serve God, but we also get a beautiful relationship with him. What an amazing thing to be called by God by name. It shows that God knows Samuel. Even though Samuel doesn't know him, it shows that God has a purpose for Samuel far beyond what Samuel could have imagined. And it shows us today that God's calling is not by accident. It's meant for each of us individually. And it shows that God wants us and desires us to be a part of his kingdom and his work. So that is the section where we hear and read about God's recognizing God's voice.

Now, in the second half of our passage, Samuel shows us how to respond to God's voice. In verses 10 through 14, we get Samuel's response to God. In verse 10, the Lord came and stood there. This is different now. God came and stood there. His presence was there in the tabernacle in a different way. Now, I don't know if that means that he's physically standing there. The Old Testament uses that language just to show and emphasize that God's presence was as closely as possible was there. And he calls out to Samuel, and Samuel responds, "Speak, for your servant is listening." And I love this verse in verse 11. "I'm about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle." Now, if you read that and you thought, "Oh, that's exciting," that's what I also thought at first, because we say tingle today, like ears tingling. No, this is dread. This is doom. This is like really bad. God is saying, "I'm about to do something that is going to wake people up." So the Old Testament uses tingle in a way that we probably don't use tingle today. But just so you know. Okay. God is saying he's about to shake up things, get everyone's attention. And God gives Samuel his first word, this first prophecy, this first assignment. And it's a heavy one. It's punishment from God to Eli. And it's this message that also shows the shift that God is going to make from the priestly authority of the house of Eli to a different sort of authority to be embodied by the prophet Samuel. There's a lot happening here and Samuel's just a boy, but God is laying out his plan saying, "Look, this is what's going to happen to Eli," and while he's doing that he's taking care of Samuel saying, "I have plans for you."

In verses 15 through 18, Samuel holds this troubling news of judgment until morning. He's heard this punishment that's going to be given to the house of Eli. And I don't know if you've ever had that where you've had to be the bearer of bad news to someone. It's not a fun place to be. There's such a mix of emotions going on inside of us. We can want to be relieved of having to hold that bad news. So sometimes we're like, "Hey, if I just get this over with quickly, I'm just going to tell that person as quick as possible," mostly because we don't want to be holding this information. So I'm going to tell them. Other times it can be, it's someone who's important to us where we care about. And so we don't want to make them feel uncomfortable or we don't want to see them in pain. And so we contemplate, "Should I share this with them? I don't know. I think they're going to be upset." And so I think we can imagine what Samuel is feeling as he is holding this and he just heard from God. He hasn't talked to Eli yet and he's just laying in bed. "What am I going to do? What am I going to do with this terrible news for Eli's family?" We can sense the relational dynamics here. How close Samuel already is to God, and he's just a boy, and how distant Eli is, and he's the high priest of Israel. And it's this boy who's telling the high priest what it is that God said. That's very backwards. That's not how it should be, but that's the reality that Israel is in. That's where Eli is in, and that's how God is going to use Samuel. Samuel doesn't want to say it, but Eli knows he needs to hear it. And Eli puts the pressure on holding Samuel to his oath. And again, this is Samuel learning, right? When God has told you something, you can't withhold that. You need to share that. That is something, if I've given you a task, you have to obey God. And so Samuel learns just how serious this is and how important God's words are. And Samuel tells Eli everything. And the redeeming moment for Eli is how he takes it. With some honor and dignity, he says, "If that's what God has, then let it be so. Let him do what is good in his eyes."

And so from this moment, Samuel is established as a true prophet, just a boy, but he's established as a true prophet. And I love what it says that God did not allow any of Samuel's words to fall to the ground. I love that imagery, that picture that the author is trying to tell us that all of his words came to life or had meaning, they were purposeful, they were true. God did not allow any of Samuel's words to go awry, but fulfilled all of his prophet's predictions. And I didn't read it at first, but chapter 4, verse 1 says, "And Samuel's words came to all Israel." And so if we just juxtapose that, verse 1 of chapter 3 says, "The word of the Lord was so rare." And now, just one chapter later, the word of God is being heard all over Israel through Samuel. God is at work again. God's about to do work in Israel that hasn't been seen in quite some time. And God has found his guy. This Samuel that will speak for him, speak the truth to the people.

I'll talk about a tough first assignment for Samuel. He's got to tell his boss, this father-like figure in his life, that God is going to punish him severely. I already feel like that's hard. That's so difficult. And yet through it all, we see Samuel learning. We see Samuel learn God's voice, learn how to respond. And he learns that as a prophet of God, he needs to share the word that is given to him. Even if it means it's a tough pill to swallow for the listener. Through all of it, God will work and reach his people. Samuel responds in a way to make himself available to God. And we are to do the same. Like Samuel, like Paul in the New Testament, like Isaiah. Isaiah 6:8 says, "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us? And I said, Here I am. Send me." This is the response. When God speaks, we answer and we say, "Here I am, Lord." And we take on a posture of willingness, of being ready, of yielding our will to his. We open our hands and we bow our heads and say, "What is it, Lord? I am ready." We accept the call. We give ourselves into his service with an eagerness that speaks to our love and faith for God. And how we respond matters to God. Samuel does a great job and is a model of how we should respond. But the Bible also gives us examples of how not to respond, things that we should not do. If you think of Adam and Eve after they have sinned, God calls out, says, "Where are you guys?" And they hide. They don't answer. They hide. That's what not to do. God doesn't like that. We should not hide when God calls. Maybe the most famous one is the story of Jonah. God calls, and what does he do? He literally runs the other way. He's running away from God and says, "Nope, I don't think so, God. Sorry, a little busy. I'm in a city across the Mediterranean." Don't do any of that. Don't hide from God. Don't run away from God. It sounds silly, but in our own way, we can do that at times. When maybe we know that God is trying to get a hold of us, and we just be like, "Huh, is that God? No, I don't think so. I'm going to ignore that one. I'm not going to pick up the phone right now. Don't want to hear from God." Maybe we know what he's going to call us to. We don't want to do it. Whatever the reason is, but don't be like Adam and Eve. Don't be like Jonah. We want to be like Samuel. We want to learn to recognize God's voice and learn to respond and say, "Here I am."

Now, you may be wondering, what if you've said, "I am here." I've said that to God. And now you're in the place of trying to discern what it is God is calling you to do. What is God's will for your life? You've said, "Pastor Andre, I have a posture. I'm eager. I'm ready. I said, 'Here I am.' And now I'm waiting for what God is telling me to do." Well, I want to ask some questions today. And if you're in a place of wondering what God is calling you to do, or if you're wondering why God is trying to get your attention, I have eight discerning questions to learn God's will. These are in no particular order, but I think these are just reflection questions that help us possibly understand what God is trying to tell us. So if you're a note taker, jot these down.

First one is to know God. Am I more concerned with knowing God's will for my life than I am knowing God? Sometimes we get ahead of ourselves and we just want to know what to do. And we skip over the person who's telling us what to do. We skip over that relational part with God and we just say, "God, I just need to know the next step." Maybe we're task-oriented and we just want to get moving. And God is saying, "Hold up now, don't move too fast. We have a relationship. I want to talk with you. I want to speak with you." But maybe we're too caught up with what to do instead of knowing who is calling us. Secondly, is to know his word. Have I searched Scripture to find God's revealed will? For me, this is the most common way that God speaks. Because when I open up Scripture, and through his Spirit, he brings me to a place in Scripture or in reading. He uses Scripture to give me wisdom, to give me guidance. And so have you turned to Scripture and said, "Let me read, let me read his word, and better try to figure out what he's trying to tell me." Third one is prayer. Maybe the most obvious. Do I frequently ask God for guidance and to open my eyes to his will? Instead of us trying to figure it out, why don't we just ask him right? "God, what is it you're trying to tell me? What is it you want me to do?" So far, I think those three make a lot of sense.

Now we start to get into ones that maybe you're familiar with but you haven't done it in a while, and so just want to remind you of some other ways in which to discern God's will. The fourth one is counsel. Who are the wise and godly men and women from who you should be seeking counsel? People that you trust, people that know you, people that you've seen walk with God, you've seen walk the way of righteousness, live in God's will, and go to them and say, "Here's what I'm going through. What would you do? How would you follow God's will? How would you walk this situation?" That's why I love being a part of a church family is that that's what we are here for. And it's not that anyone is better than anyone else. We just like to get some perspective and say, "Hey, I've seen you do this. I've seen you." We encourage a mentorship in this church. Someone who's maybe in the next phase of life that can give you some perspective. And say, "Go grab coffee with them and just lay it out and say, this is what I'm facing right now. And I don't know. I'm not sure. What have you done? What's your experience told you?" The fifth one is life experiences. Why has God given me this particular set of life experiences? What could they reveal about what I should do with my life? Maybe you're in a situation to learn something. Maybe you're in something that is challenging, that is difficult. But maybe God is saying he's trying to reveal something to you. Oh wait, I'm so sorry, that's hold on. Life experiences now, maybe not your current life experiences. Look back at your past life experiences and look back at what you've gone through to see if it gives you instruction for what you're going through in the moment.

I got ahead of myself because the next one is circumstances. What do my circumstances reveal about God's prompting? Are any obvious needs or opportunities pointing me in a particular direction? Sometimes we just need to take a little bit of time and to gain some perspective of what we're going through and see that God is actually clearly leading us in this direction. But if we just have our heads down and just keep going day by day, we wouldn't take time to see that perspective and see the overall direction that God is leading us and see how our circumstances, as trying as they may be, may be God's way of leading us in a new way, new direction. So circumstances can play into it. Seventh is timing. Is the timing right for me to respond to a felt calling? Is God calling me to wait where I am or take a decisive step forward? This one is one of the hardest things for me. I am a slow mover, which sometimes is good to not move on impulse. And then sometimes I feel like God's been like, "I've been trying to tell you this for months. I've been giving you signs. I have been telling you that you are still not moving." And so timing is hard for me to understand what God is doing. But maybe God is saying, maybe it is a wait. Not yet. Wait here. I've given you some wisdom about what you're going to do next, but it's not yet. Or maybe you're praying and it's like, "God, is now the time? I've been sensing this call. I think that you're leading here." And we can just ask, "God, is the timing now? Is now the time where you want me to go do whatever it is?"

And the last one, and I do think that this one is important to be last. At least it shouldn't be first because it's too easy for it to be a slippery slope of selfishness. The last one is desire. What do I want? If I delight in the Lord, what would be the desire of my heart? How do I most want to serve God? Psalm 37:4 says, "Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." There is a time to tell God and to share with God, "God, I really want this. This in life brings me joy. Is there a way that I can experience more of this, that I could have whatever that is?" God gave us that emotion of joy. God gave us certain skills, interests, passions. That is God-given, some of those things that we have. And maybe there's a way that we want to serve. I think of those who are able to sing and they want to serve by singing and saying, "God, can you bring that opportunity around? I want to use this gift that I have for you." At Youth Group, tomorrow night, we're having a painting night. We're having a worship through paint. And there's people, by the way, we have a very skilled youth group. There's like an amazing painter. She's going to be the future Thomas Kincaid. She's amazing. And she just gets to use her skill that night and just paint and worship through painting. So there might be a desire that you have. "God, can I do this? I really want to do this for you." This ties in with how I'm going to use my skills for your kingdom, but there's a place where you can just lay that before God and ask him, "God, can you give that opportunity to me?" And so all in all, we have knowing God, knowing his word, prayer, counsel, life experiences, circumstances, timing, and desire. And through all of that, maybe we can better understand God's will for us, what he's calling us to do.

We've heard him call us. We've had the right response of saying, "Here I am, God." And then we can work through these questions to understand what he's calling us towards. So as we close today, I want you to bring out your programs. We've gotten to this new rhythm of exercising this muscle in our church together where we have an action step every Sunday that pertains to the sermon. Because we want what's happening here and what you're hearing on a Sunday morning to go home with you and to affect your lives. So we're trying to make that more applicable and easier to remember by suggesting something that might help your walk with God in your daily life. This week's action step is to do one or more of these eight things to discern God's will. And if you felt God calling, if you felt him nudging you in a direction, but you're just unsure, if you want to mark that, put your name on it, mark that, and drop that in the bucket in the back on your way out, we're going to join you in praying for you that God would make his will clear, make it known to you this week. And if he calls, our encouragement is to say, "Here I am, Lord, I'm ready. What is it you have for me, your servant?" We want to be like Samuel. We don't want to be like Jonah. We don't want to be like Adam and Eve. We don't want to hide and run away from God. We want to be there with hands open, hearts ready, to say, "Here I am, God." Would you guys pray with me?

Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the story of Samuel that gives us this idea of learning your voice and learning how to respond. And I pray that for those in this room, maybe we've been walking with God for decades and we know your voice and we've responded to you. And maybe we're in the midst of discerning what your will is. I pray that you would help us this week in discerning your will. Maybe we're new to having faith with you, God, faith in you. And so I pray for those in the room that they would come to know your voice, learn your voice. And they would also have hearts that say, "God, here I am. I'm ready. What is it that you're calling me to do?" God, make us a people of quick and tender response to you, God. That understanding we may obey your every word and discerning may follow every suggestion of your instilling spirit. Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening. Grant us, O God, to know which ought to be known, to love that which ought to be loved, to praise that which pleases you, to esteem that which is precious to you, and to blame that which is evil in your eyes. Give us wisdom and discernment to differentiate what is good and what only appears to be good. And above all, to be always seeking after your will and your good pleasure. Be with us today and this week, God. We praise you and we love you. We pray this in your son's name. Amen.