Putting God First
Grant van Boeschoten
January 11, 2008
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)
What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!
God wants to do a new thing in your life. He is the God of New Beginnings, the God of forgiveness and the God of a fresh start for life. When you make God the Lord of your life, he forgives your past and sets you up for a life of purpose and promise. You get saved, you are made whole and you are given the gift of the Holy Spirit.
God does not take his relationship with us lightly though. The words that we say, the actions that we take, even the motives that go into our words and actions, these are all things that God takes notice of.
Deuteronomy 6 can be described as a portion of scripture that compels us to wholehearted commitment in God. It is about loving God with all of your heart, your soul and your mind, and it gives example after example of how the Israelites were to lived whole heartedly after God.
Deuteronomy 6:15 (NLT)
…for the LORD your God, who lives among you, is a jealous God.
You see, God loves us so much that he doesn’t want us to love anyone else more than him.
It’s kind of like how wives love there husbands so much that they don’t him to love anyone else more than her.
What kind of a marriage relationship would you have if there wasn’t a healthy level of jealousy between man and wife. Wouldn’t it be strange and damaging if there was an apathy in this area. Isn’t the standard that husband and wife love each other more than anyone else?
In fact, if there was a marriage without this level of jealousy in it, we would think that it was lacking. And so it is with God.
Our relationship with him is lacking when we don’t understand that he is a jealous God, and he wants our best affection, our best praises, our best gifts, and the best part of ourselves to be given to him in love. It is simply the foundation to a good relationship with God, anything less would be lacking.
Today I want to challenge everyone to put God first in your life. And specifically I am going to lay out 3 different areas where I believe that every single God fearing person needs to put God first. Your time, your resources and your decisions.
1. Your Time
I have learned through 4 and half years of marriage that one way to tell your wife that she is very important to you is to spend quality time with her. I have also found that the time of the day matters when you spend this quality time. It’s going to be a little bit different for everyone, but for me if we can spend a good amount of time between 9:30 and 10:30 at night, where I am just focused on Brenna, then it is a good thing. And the truth is that I don’t do that enough.
The truth is that the way we spend our time says a lot about what we value in life. God wants us to value his relationship with him, and we need to show God this through the quality time that we spend with him.
I have found that if I will give God the first part of my day, that his presence will remain with me in a real way throughout the rest of the day. If I can get up early enough to read my bible and go for a prayer walk then I communicate with my time how valuable God is to me. And I believe that it strengthens my relationship with God.
Manytimes we think of our relationship with God as something that will take care of itself, or as something that God will take care of for us. There are even some elements of truth to those thoughts.
Revelations 3:20 (NLT)
"Look! Here I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me calling and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal as friends.
Jesus is standing at the door asking to have a meal. Just think about it, if you are about to sit down to dinner, and you here some knocking at your door and you go to answer it and there is your friend, just standing there asking to come in for a meal, it is going to do something to your relationship.
Jesus is the one who is taking the initiative to spend time with you. He is the one who is already at the door to your life, asking for some time just to visit with you. All that you have to do is open the door.
The extraordinary thing is that when Jesus comes in you have got the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords as your friend. You have the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the first and the last. You have the creator of the universe, the giver of life, the great provider. You have God who is standing at the door knocking.
But so many times we find other things to fill up our time. And then when we have spare time we are just so tired that we do something lazy instead of spending time with God.
I have found that whenever I make time for God in my life I am better for it. I get some of God’s love in my life, I get God’s thoughts in my mind, I get God’s wisdom in my decisions. He is the kind of friend that makes you much better.
And he really wants your time.
SUNDAY
He also wants the first day of every week that you live for the rest of your life. Every Sunday is God’s day. He doesn’t even make room for excuses. He doesn’t allow for us to have our own reasons why we shouldn’t give the first day of our week to him.
In fact, when we Keep Sunday’s as Holy days for God, when we faithfully attend Church and use the day as a day of rest, it is a signpost to the world around us that we are God’s.
Ezekiel 20:20
“Keep my Sabbaths as holy rest days, signposts between me and you, signaling that I am God, your God.”
What signal do you give out each Sunday. Are you saying to your own self, your family and your community that God is YOUR God. Sunday’s are a chance to make a statement with our lives, they are a chance to declare that we are God’s people, and he is our God.
For the Christian, it should not be a weekly decision, “Do we go to Church or not.”
• It should not be a decision that is made by our emotions.
o feeling lonely or sad or depressed. (Church is the Answer)
• It is not a decision that is made by our circumstances
o Stayed up to late last night.
o Relatives are staying with us.
o Next week is so full that I need to get extra rest
(so full that you need God’s word to get through it!)
It is a decision that is made by the authority of the word of God. And we just have to decide that God’s word is the final authority in our lives, not our emotions or circumstances.
Putting God first in life means that when it comes to our time, God gets the best of what we have to offer.
2. Your Resources
The Jewish people had just returned from captivity in Babylon (modern day Iraq.) They had been away from there land for the last 70 years and now were finally returning home again. The city of Jerusalem was in ruins. It was desolate. Work was scarce. There was not enough money to meet the needs and demands of everyday families.
To make matters worse there was even a drought in the land at the time and so there crops weren’t growing.
What kind of a word do you think that God wanted to give to these his beloved people? What kind of hope do you think that God wanted to bless them with?
Here is what God said to these people, in this desolate situation through the profit Malachi.
Malachi 3:6-7 (NLT)
6 "I am the LORD, and I do not change. That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already completely destroyed. 7 Ever since the days of your ancestors, you have scorned my laws and failed to obey them. Now return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty.
"But you ask, `How can we return when we have never gone away?’
The people were living in deception. They thought that they were with God, but he was asking for them to return to him. To a group of people who didn’t realize that they had ever left God, this raised some questions in the minds. They said, “How can we return when we have never gone away.?”
You see, many Christian don’t realize that some of the actions that they take are really actions against God. For example, lets say that you are a person who reads their Bible faithfully, who prays every morning, and who watches the Miracle Channel every Sunday, but does not attend Church.
You think that everything is fine, but then God is saying, Return to me. And you say, “How can I return to you if I have never gone away. And God says, follow what I have said in my word, ‘Let us not neglect our church meetings, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other
Heb 10:25 (TLB)
So the people who were living in the desolate ruins of Jerusalem didn’t know that they had drifted away from God. In the next verse, God showed them exactly what they had done to cause the separation.
Malachi 3:8-9
8 "Should people cheat God? Yet you have cheated me!
"But you ask, `What do you mean? When did we ever cheat you?’
"You have cheated me of the tithes and offerings due to me. 9 You are under a curse, for your whole nation has been cheating me.
There is the answer, although I don’t think that it was the answer that the people were expecting to here. It is quite possible that in their minds they had been holding back their tithes and they had been holding back there offerings because they just didn’t have that much to give.
They might have thought that because they had little, that God wouldn’t mind if they decided not to tithe, that he would understand.
But, if that is how they were thinking then it shows they did not really understand the heart of God. Because God is not trying to burden us down with another tax that he has called the tithe. He is not trying to take our hard earned money from our hands so that we have less. This is not at all the intention of God.
God’s intention is also NOT to curse us. In vs. 9 where it says that a curse had come upon the whole nation there is nothing to suggest that this brought God any pleasure whatsoever. It also does not say that the curse originated or started with God. Instead, it shows the cause and the effect for why the curse is on the nation.
CAUSE – Robbing God through a failure to give tithes and offerings
EFFECT – There is a curse on the land as a result of their actions.
It is a matter of cause and effect. There are consequences when we do things that are wrong. For example, if you were to smash your head against a wall repeatedly, and if I saw you doing that then I would probably say to you, “If you keep smashing your head you are going to get a headache and maybe even knock yourself out.”
What I am I doing by saying that? I am simply predicting and explaining the outcome of your actions.
It’s not my fault that you have a headache?
It’s not my fault that you are cruising for a bruising?
It’s your fault. But by talking to you about it maybe I can convince you to stop banging your head and to start doing things with your actions that will bring life instead of death to you.
This is what God is doing in Malachi with the nation of Israel. He is telling them that the consequences of not tithing means that they have removed his blessing from their lives and from their land, and the result is that they are living under a curse.
Is the curse God’s fault? No. Does God want to see them cursed? No.
So what God is doing is explaining to them what the problem is, and the next thing that he says to them is the solution that they need to hear.
Malachi 3:10 (NLT)
Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple.
That is the solution. Bring all the tithes to the storehouse. Now we have churches and that is where you bring your tithe to. You bring your tithe to your local church, and here is why.
If you were to go to Earl’s and have lunch with your family, to which establishment would you pay the bill. Would you walk across the road to “Montana’s Cookhouse” and give them the money for your food at Earls? No, that’s crazy. You pay for the food at the place that made the food for you.
You give your tithe to the Church where you go, because that is the place where you are being fed. It says, Bring all the tithes into the Church SO THAT there will be enough food in my Temple.
God is saying, if we are all faithful tithers the Church is going to be able to be funded and empowered to do every single thing that God has called it to do. There won’t be lack, there won’t be decisions that need to be made according to the bank account instead of lining up to God’s direction for the Church.
We tithe so that there will be provision for the Church. This is the system that God has set up on earth to accomplish his work through the Church.
Your tithe sets your church up for success. But your tithe will also set you, and your family up for success.
Malachi 3:10-12 (NLT)
10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do," says the LORD Almighty, "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! Let me prove it to you! 11 Your crops will be abundant, for I will guard them from insects and disease. Your grapes will not shrivel before they are ripe," says the LORD Almighty. 12 "Then all nations will call you blessed, for your land will be such a delight," says the LORD Almighty.
The truth is that you can’t out give God. The truth is that there is nothing like living under the blessings, provision and abundance that God promises to us and to our families if we tithe.
The truth is that by holding back our tithes, we are not only robbing God of what is rightfully his, we also rob our church and our families of the blessings, provision and abundance that God has planned and predestined for us.
The choice to tithe is a choice to bring your family into the best of what God has for you.
God wants the best part of your time. And he also wants the best part of your resources, the first 10%. Commit to becoming a faithful tither and witness as the Church does more than it has ever done before and your family is transformed by the blessing, provision and abundance of God Almighty.
3. Your Decisions
The final area that I want to challenge you in putting God first is in your decision making process.
Here is the standard, and the order, that each one of us needs to consider when we make decisions.
1. What does the Bible say about this situation?
-For example, if you are contemplating theft or idolatry, the Bible says that this is a bad decision.
Psalm 119:105 (NLT)
105 Your word is a lamp for my feet
and a light for my path.
I heard of a tribe that developed a lantern that could be tied around a person’s ankle. This way they could safely travel at night without walking into danger. However, since they were lamps for the feet the people could only see ahead to their next step.
When you spend time reading your Bible, God will show you the next step that you need to take in life.
2. What does my Church say about the situation?
The church has been mandated by God to live in unity as the Body of Christ with Jesus operating as the head of the Church. A Church that is following God’s will and direction will be able to help you follow God’s will and direction as well.
Because we all have a similar cause and a similar mission, which is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and to declare and establish the Kingdom of God, we all are affected by the decisions that you will make. Your decisions will affect this churches influence.
By asking the Church for advice you will gain a
• wider perspective with a Big Picture in mind
• prayer from people who want to see you win
• advice from people who may have already had to make that same decision in their past.
Church, as we continue to put God first in our life we are going to see him work wonders through our lives, our families, our Church. Our region will be completely transformed by the goodness of God. People will come to our homes and say, God is so Good and here is the evidence.
My prayer is that every member of this Church will actively put God first in the way that we spend our time, the way that we spend our resources, and the way that we make decisions.
Be encouraged and empowered to live full and abundant lives with the blessing of God over everything that you set out to do.
