The Wisdom of Firsts
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Many years ago now my father was drafted into the Army as World War II began and he became a bomber pilot and flew bombing missions over Europe. He was shot down on his thirteenth mission in October of 1942 but, as thing would happen, he was not captured. He made his way to Paris; was picked up by the French underground; stayed with some people in a safe house directly across the street from Gestapo headquarters; was smuggled out of France over the Pyrenees Mountains, that is the southern Alps of France, in the middle of winter; made it back home; and, as chance would have it, was stationed in Memphis, Tennessee where he met a beautiful Southern woman and here I am today.
As you look as those kinds of things and the chances it had to take for our parents to meet and for us to be, or multiply it out by all the things that had to happen for grandparents, great-grandparents to survive and make choices and happen to meet someone to marry and have children and all the things that go with that, we might be tempted to affirm with much of the world today that we are just cosmic accidents. But that is not what the Scriptures tell us. The Scriptures tell us that we are not accidents, at all. Colossians 1:16 For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, …everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. And that testimony is repeated throughout the Scriptures. In the beginning, God… But it was not just the world that was created and that we were created with it, we are personally created by God. Yes, God created a process of how people are born, but we believe that we just didn’t happen. In fact, Ephesians 1:4 says For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. And again that testimony is repeated, that before the creation of the world God had you and me in mind personally, individually. We are not here by chance and we all have a purpose.
Now for each one of us here have different purposes in God’s scheme of things; but, at the same time, we all have similar purposes and we all have one particular purpose which I would like to talk about this morning. And that purpose is to love God. God created human beings to have a relationship with us, personally. Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord thy God with all your heart and mind and soul and that is the purpose of all of us here. I said a minute ago this is the season of stewardship; and I believe that that’s a time not just to talk about money but to reflect on our lives, to reflect on what the first things are. Life often goes very well if we can keep our priorities straight; and maybe coming to church is a way to do that, to be reminded of priorities and what the first things are. So I called my sermon The Wisdom of Firsts, first things.
(Deuteronomy 6:5: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.)
The first first thing, if you will, is to love God. It is to love God. But what does that mean? I think we have a little trouble with that. After all, we don’t see God with our eyes. Sometimes we don’t feel his presence. God is so big to be unimaginable at times, how do we have a personal relationship with this Being who is like that? Well I think we have to remind ourselves a couple of things, one is, what love is not. I say that because, as I have said many times, in the modern world love has come to be a sort of feeling sort of thing; you know, if you “lost that loving feeling” you might as well end the relationship. Because love comes and goes, we can’t control these feelings; and if the feelings go away, well, we might as well say goodbye and go find someone else in which we have feelings for. Same thing with God, it is always hard to have feelings for God. Now I am not saying we shouldn’t; in fact, I think we ought to have feelings for God. God certainly has feelings for you and me. He loves us with feeling.
Sometimes when I sing the worship songs or hymns or do other things in worship where I read a scripture or hear a sermon, I have an overwhelming feeling toward God. It doesn’t always last, and matter of fact, it doesn’t; but it is there. It is nice. It is good. I want that. I want more of that. I expect that when we get to heaven that we are going to have it all the time. And I look forward to that. But, what is love toward God?
Well, first we have the command, but I think with God loving is about trusting him and obeying him. Jesus says “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” or “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” Later, John will say in one of his letters, “We do not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” So whether the feelings are there or not, love for God has to do with actions and obedience. This morning I would like to very briefly go over four things. You will hear them again over the next few weeks, just four ways in which we can love God through our actions.
I want to be careful here. We are saved by grace. O.K. Grace is God’s unconditional, undeserved love for us, His action in Christ which we received through faith we are saved by grace; but we can do things to love God. I want to be careful, too, in saying that it isn’t just legalism. None of these things are legalism. They can be, can kind of easily become legalisms. John Piper tells a great example particularly for men. He says, ”Suppose you bought flowers for your wife. They were just beautiful flowers and you gave them to her.” Then she asked, “Why did you give me those flowers?” And you said, “Because I had to.” You see what happens with that, don’t you? Pretty easy… Now with a lot of guys, we do that, don’t we? We get to the 14th of February and we go, “O my gosh! I have got to buy flowers!” And the radio announcers are just going, “Get something for your wife. Get something for your wife. You just have to do this.” It has to be more than that, doesn’t it? Now, sometimes she will accept it because you forgot and by grace she says it is O.K.
We are not talking about legalisms. Relationships are better when they are not legalistic. But there are some things we can do. So we love God, we love God with the First Hour of our day. Psalm 1:2 says But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
I have an illustration I love to use so you may have heard it before. It is about the proverbial young minister who is about to do his first wedding. He is all nervous about it and he wonders if he forgets his lines what he is going to do. So he asked an older minister, “What do you do?” He said, “I always quote Scripture. It works every time.” Sure enough, the young man got into the ceremony and was about to have the couple say the vows and he forgot the words. He quoted Scripture. He said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
That joke works every time. Why is that funny? Well because we all know that being married is hard. It is like another story that I love to tell along with that. It is about the proverbial father who gets the bicycle on Christmas Eve and spends hours and hours and hours trying to put it together. He finally reads the directions. At the bottom it says: Best results if you follow the directions of the maker. That is true of life, isn’t it? The Scriptures do give us directions. We often have heard there is no manual for marriage, there is no manual for raising kids; but there is. It is called the Bible. It just doesn’t have it Step A, Step B, Step C. But the manual is there. How many of us read the Scriptures on a regular basis, to learn what God wants us to do and how to handle things? How many of us pray every day? Well we might, going to the store. That’s great. Keep doing it. But having a specific time… Give God that First Hour. I don’t want to say literally an hour. It could be in the middle of the day, it could be at the end of the day, it could be a few minutes. But have the discipline of giving God some time, because no relationship grows without time.
Most of you know that we have been doing the marriage course which is a great course for any couple no matter where you are in your relationship. The very first lesson, the very first time, is how no relationship is good unless you carve out time with your spouse. Novel concept! But with the busyness of life it is hard to do. It is hard to do with God too.
We give God the First Hour, we also need to give God the First Day, as well. Notice what Isaiah says about the Sabbath. He says:
“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the Lord’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
then you will find joy in the Lord,
and I will cause you to ride on the
heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of
your father Jacob.”
The mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Now, in the course of history, there has been some changes with the Sabbath. For one thing the Sabbath used to be on the last day of the week. It has become the first day of the week because Christians began over time, but pretty quickly, to celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday. It also went from being exceptionally rule-bound, in terms of what you could or could not do on the Sabbath, to much less being rule-bound. It became as what is known by theologians as the Lord’s day. But it is still the Lord’s day. It still has the same sorts of things. The Lord’s day is meant to be a time of rest. It is also meant to be a time of worship, of worship. It is the Lord’s day.
Now in our culture right now a lot of people are saying: I don’t need to go to church, (even Christians). Church, as a matter of fact, is harmful to my faith. I can worship God by myself easily. Well, certainly you can worship God by yourself. I just encourage you to do that, but we need the community. We just heard that. We need to be in a community of worship. We worship together as well as alone. My friends, we don’t want to be legalistic about the Sabbath; but in our culture, Sunday has become all about me and all about us. I do not know how many times I have heard “Well I don’t want to go to church on Sunday because it is my day. It is the only day I have and it is my day.” Well if you are not a believer, that’s true, it is your day. But if you are a believer, it is not. It is a day that belongs to God. The reason it was so strong in the Scriptures is that that day was a day of worship and rest. Worship by saying “my life is yours.” We give a day to declare that all my days are yours because we had nothing to do with being here.
You know I think about that with my parents. They met and I showed up. I didn’t have anything to do with it. It was all on them. And you know I am not going into details. As a matter of fact they tried several times and it didn’t work. They had a couple of miscarriages between my brother and myself. They were glad to get me. Afterwards, I am not so sure, but… they were glad to get me at the time. All of which is to say that life is a gift. We acknowledge that gift by worshipping the Creator and the One who loves us. It is about worship and rest.
Here comes the most controversial part. We give God the First Hour, the First Day and the First Dime. The First Dime. Promises like this appear in Scripture all the time: Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; and then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will overflow with new wine. That, of course, doesn’t mean that if we give God money, it seems logical but you hear it on television, if you give my ministry money, God will flood you with wealth and all that stuff. That is not really what is about.
It may not literally be 10%. But that is what we are talking about. The goal of giving is 10%. As Buck talked to you last week, what is your Sleep Number, what is your giving number? It can be a lesser amount, but the idea is to do it on a regular basis; again, acknowledging that life is a gift and, mostly, so is everything else. Mostly so is everything else. Now we work for lots of things. We do. We take the gifts that God gives us and we turn them into other things. That is what stewardship is about. There are parables about that. But to acknowledge to God that our lives are not our own and our stuff is not our own. Who is the owner here? It is not that we are slaves, but we have come from God, we go to God. So let me encourage you to set aside money to give to God, partly to Faith Church, partly to other things. There are lots of other things in God’s kingdom.
Giving God a tenth or an amount, setting aside, is to know that we are created, that God is the owner and we give out of love and gratitude for that. That is the motivation. Now sometimes we give out of obligation. There is nothing wrong with an obligation. But obligations tend to diminish after a while if we don’t have the love that goes with it.
Last but not least, what is our First Job? Again we find it in Scripture everyplace. Not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created n Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:9-10) The verses that go before that basically say that it is by grace you have been saved, through faith. Salvation is a gift; but then we respond to that gift by working, by serving.
M. Scott Peck tells a great story about a woman who was suffering with tremendous depression. Nothing he talked to her about or did seemed to help. One day she had an appointment with him and she needed a ride. So he picked her up and said to her, “I’ve got an errand to run and while I am on my errand, here are three people in a hospital I want you to go and see, nearby.” So while he was doing his errand, she went and visited these three people. When she got back she was just ecstatic, she was beaming, she had such a wonderful experience. This great psychologist looked at her and said, “Now that we know how to treat your depression, let’s set up a regular time to do just this.” She looked at him and said, “Do I have to go do it again?”
We are all like that, aren’t we? We don’t mind serving as long as there is an end date, or, when I can have my life back; because I have other plans. I don’t mind serving from time to time, but it is not my life. My friends, it is our lives. It is what God has us here for, to serve him and the world and others. That doesn’t mean we don’t take care of our jobs. We serve in our jobs, too, absolutely; or in families, we serve in our families, as well; and in our church, in all kinds of ways. But servanthood is your job. Serving is your job. It doesn’t just end so that you can go travel, or go do this or do that. There is nothing wrong with those things, don’t hear me say that. I’m not. But it isn’t just about doing it and stopping. Part of being a steward is realizing our whole lives are about giving. Our whole lives are about serving. Our whole lives are about worshipping. Jesus says seek ye first the kingdom and these things will be yours as well.
That is what I want to leave you with, that encouragement. God has given us so much, everything, really. And we give back. It starts by realizing what life is all about, that life is all about God and loving him and all the things that flow from that; because if we have that priority, everything else will fall into place. If we don’t, that is when it gets messed up and I think we can all give testimony to that.
So as you think about your life and your stewardship, of your whole life, not just giving, think about why you are here; that you are not an accident, that God has placed you here for this time and this place and this purpose, and ask him what he would have you do and be and give.
Would you pray with me?
Lord God, thank you for Jesus our Savior and all he has given us. We are reminded of that particularly now as we have read the Scriptures and now we take part in the communion. Be with us particularly now as we reflect and we eat and drink and are blessed. In Jesus’ name. Amen.