Does Putting God First Mean I Shouldn't Pursue Happiness?

If I'm putting God first in my life, what should my life look like? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Well, welcome.

We pray that you had a wonderful weekend. I'm Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us right now with your question at 833-THE-CORE.

Our phone lines will be open for the next 25 minutes, 833-843-2673. You can also post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts, and you can email us with your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Barbara calling in from Tennessee. Barbara, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Hi, yes, my question is, if I'm understanding the Old Testament right, when two people get married, the man takes the wife or the woman into his household, and they're considered married as one. Now, my question is, in the New Testament—I mean, I guess my question is, when and why does a person need a piece of paper to make vows in front of God? Yeah, Barbara, thank you for that question, and so it sounds like to me what you're asking is, you know, if two people love each other and they sort of make this promise to each other before God, I mean, isn't that good enough?

Why do we have to go before a priest or a pastor, before the state, and get, you know, this legal piece of paper, this legal document? Does that have to be a part of it, or can we just sort of be married in God's eyes? Well, when you think about marriage and what marriage is, going way back to the very beginning of the Bible in the book of Genesis, where God created Eve, and he brought Eve, the woman, to the man and brought them together. It's actually a really beautiful passage of scripture in Genesis chapter 2. It says in Genesis chapter 2 verse 21, so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh, and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and brought her to the man, and the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore, verse 24, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. This is the very first marriage ceremony that we see in the Bible, and one of the things that a lot of commentators will say about this text of scripture in particular is you have this sort of covenantal language. Now, in the Bible, a covenant is sort of like a legal contract. It's this binding document, we might say, right, where two people enter into this contractual relationship, and I know that that sounds kind of like, oh, boy, well, that seems to take all the love out of it, but in reality, it doesn't. It's this pledge or promise that's rooted in love, and that is binding, and that's a part of what a marriage is. It's not just two people who say, well, we really like each other, so let's just be married before God. No, I think that there also has to be this sort of legal, we might say, covenantal aspect as well before God, before witnesses. You think about even our own relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. We are, as the church, referred to as the bride of Jesus Christ, and we entered into this relationship with Jesus through covenant, through what the Bible refers to as the new covenant.

In other words, it's not just this sort of free love relationship, if you will. We're bound together by the promises, ultimately, first and foremost, the promises that God makes to his people, which bind him to us, and so I think that this is meant to be a part of what earthly marriage also has as a part of it too, and so that's what I would say. Then again, there are some who say, well, doesn't that take the love out of it, this idea that we have to go and get legally married, that kind of a thing. Can't we just be free and we love each other and we're basically functionally married, we're living like we're married, but I think God intends for us to have this other element, this commitment, this covenant, and that's what you see in the Bible. You see it in the Old Testament, you also see it in the New Testament, and I say, if two people really love each other and they're committed to one another, then they should be willing to enter into that sort of legal element as well, and that's a part of what marriage is. Thank you so much for that question, Barbara. The one other thing I'll say is if we want to think about what marriage ultimately is supposed to be a picture of, you go to the book of Ephesians in Ephesians 5, and Paul tells us it's a picture of the relationship that Jesus has with his bride, the church. That's what Christian marriage, biblical marriage, is rooted in.

It's rooted in the relationship that God has with his people, and so there's another wonderful passage of scripture to look at. Thank you. Barbara, thanks so much for your call. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez.

If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, we would love to hear from you. You can call us right now at this number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 833-843-2673. Our phone lines will be open for the next 20 minutes or so, and we would love to hear from you. No question is off limits. Well, better check with Adriel on that, but I think most questions are fair game for Pastor Adriel, so give us a call right now, 833-THE-CORE.

Let's go to a voicemail we received from Walter. My question is that if we promote or condone stories that use sorcery and the magical arts in any way, then aren't we encouraging the behavior of and suggesting that one should emulate the protagonists? After all, the authors are holding these characters up as examples of good and noble character.

Thank you very much. Yeah, and I'm guessing you're referring to maybe some of the more popular books that are out there where you have sort of discussions about wizardry and that kind of sort of these fantasy books that a lot of kids are really into. Is it okay for us to read those books, for our children to read those books as Christians? Well, one, I think that there's a matter of sort of personal liberty here. For some, it might be a really big issue. Your conscience doesn't allow you to do that. For others, if you realize, like Paul says in 1 Corinthians related to meat offered to idols there in the time of the New Testament church. For some people, it really plagues their conscience when they think about this issue.

For others, they realize that an idol is nothing in the world, that this isn't real, and so they're able to enjoy the meat. I would say with something like this, there's Christian liberty, there's freedom. Now, that doesn't mean that we should promote or be in favor of anything that's contrary to God's word. Things like witchcraft, sorcery, those kinds of things, we know that that goes against what the Bible tells us and teaches. In fact, in the book of Acts, in Acts chapter 19, you have this great big conversion of a number of people who used to practice those sort of magical arts and they burn essentially all their magical books and they turn to the Lord. It really is this wonderful picture of conversion, of turning to God. I think we have to keep those things in mind as well.

If believers are reading things like the Lord of the Rings or the Chronicles of Narnia where you have all this fantasy involved and sometimes magic, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Yeah, I appreciate your question. Thank you and may the Lord bless you. Some interesting questions today here on Core Christianity. By the way, you can leave us a voicemail 24 hours a day. If you have a question you can't get in during the live program, feel free to call us and leave your message that way, 833-THE-CORE, or you can go to our website at corechristianity.com, look for the little microphone icon there, click that, and you can actually record your message.

That's really great for our international listeners, so if you are listening somewhere overseas right now, feel free to use the website to leave your question that way. Let's go to another voicemail we received, this one from one of our callers named Nate. Hey, this is more of a practical question more than anything else, but why and how did the original translators of the Bible in its entirety separate the verses and the chapters? What was the purpose and the process behind that?

Thanks. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't think that that was done until much later. I mean, so you have all these New Testament manuscripts, even Old Testament manuscripts, that have been discovered from the first handful of centuries, but it wasn't until, I think, the 12th or 13th century that they began to add verse numbers and chapter numbers, and really that was just for convenience sake. So there isn't anything inspired about the chapter divisions in the Bible or the verse numbers in the Bible. Sometimes I've heard pastors and preachers say things like, oh, this is the middle verse of the entire Bible, and so it's got this sort of special significance, but the verse numbers, they're not inspired by God.

The chapter divisions are not inspired by God. They weren't a part of the original, but they are helpful, I think, for us. If we think about things like scripture memorization or even just being able to point to passages of scripture, they're certainly helpful for me as I'm answering questions here on the broadcast, being able to say, oh, go to Jeremiah chapter eight or go to Luke chapter four, that kind of a thing. And it's a way in which we're enabled to really study the scriptures and memorize scripture and refer back to scripture.

And so I'm grateful for the chapter divisions, but we have to recognize that they're not a part of the inspired text. Thanks for that question. You're listening to CORE Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to Catherine in Denver, Colorado. Catherine, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?

Yeah, hi, good afternoon. I have been Christian since I was a little girl, so Jesus has been with me throughout my whole life. My question is, and I have a hard time with this, is that God has always been here.

He's never started, never ended. But when he made Adam and Eve, and he knew that what they were going to do is eat from the tree, and all these sins entered the world and all, why didn't God just him knowing the future, and how come he just didn't put a stop to it? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Catherine, I appreciate the fact that you recognize that God is omniscient, and that he's sovereign, right? He didn't need anything. He created all things from nothing, going back to Genesis, the very beginning of the Bible, and he knew what would happen. He knew that Adam and Eve would sin. And so it sounds like your question isn't.

You're not the only one with this question. We've received this question before many times, and many people throughout the history of the church have asked this question. Why did God allow this? Why did God allow sin to enter into the world?

If he's omniscient, if he's all powerful, if he's all knowing, what was his purpose behind it? Well, we know that God left our first parents, Adam and Eve, to the freedom of their own will. And part of that is just God giving them the opportunity to know him, to turn to him in love and in faith. And Adam was the representative of humanity.

I mean, he was sort of our representative head. In Adam, Paul says in the book of Romans in Romans 5, all of us have sinned too, but God gave Adam and Eve freedom. And I think one of the things that's illustrated here, Catherine, is that God desires our love. He calls us to love him. And he gave Adam and Eve, there in the garden, that choice to follow him, to know him. And again, like I said, left to the freedom of their wills, they didn't follow him.

And we've been suffering the consequences ever since. Now, one other thing I'll say, and this is something that many great theologians in the history of the church have said, is that God doesn't allow anything that he hasn't already purposed how to solve. I mean, God knew that this would happen, but he also knew what he would do to solve the problem. And way back in Genesis, in Genesis 3, verse 15, you have this promise that's given to humanity, that one day, the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. In other words, the sin in the world, the evil in the world that exists, the brokenness that we see all around us, this rebellion against God, that would be crushed. And God was going to send his son into the world.

That's promised way back there in Genesis 3. God's going to send his son into the world so that we might be redeemed, so that in him we might have life, so that we might be restored. Our wills even be restored to follow God and to love him.

And so God had a purpose in all of this. And we may not fully understand everything now, this side of heaven, if you will, but when we're with the Lord in the presence of the Lord, I think we'll see things with a lot more clarity. That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13.

You know, now we see through a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Then we're going to know just as we also have been known. But in the meantime, trust that God is good. Trust that God loves you.

The Lord had a purpose and that God was able to, through the sinfulness of humanity, bring about his redemption, which is precisely what he did in Jesus. Thank you for your question. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Here's a follow-up question for you, Adriel. We know that God is not limited by space and time. We know that he is sovereign.

He knows the future. In Revelation 13.8, the Bible says that Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. So there's, I guess, a theological philosophical question for you. Did God know that Jesus was going to be slain and paid the penalty for our sin, even from the foundation of the world?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I mean, it was a part of this sort of plan within the Trinity, if you will, from eternity past, that the Father would send his Son into the world to redeem his people. And so there again, it's not that God is caught off guard by our failures. He's always one step ahead of us, even when we think we're one step ahead of him. And he has made a way, a plan, provision for guilty sinners to know him, to love him, to experience his grace. Amen. What a great promise.

Amen. Well, the summertime is just around the corner, and many kids will be out of school, many families will be planning road trips, and we want to offer you a wonderful CD that families can listen to in the car or at home as maybe as part of a family devotional time. Yeah, I love that you mentioned road trips there, Bill, because when our family does road trips, that's one of the things we like to do. We like to put together a playlist of music to listen to with the kids. I mean, I have four kids, nine, seven, four, or five.

I forget sometimes. So we like to get together and just listen to music, and especially music that's edifying and uplifting. And so we're excited about offering this resource.

It's called Evensong by Keith and Kristen Getty. The Gettys are wonderful musicians and hymn writers, and if you're familiar with that hymn, In Christ Alone, they're the ones who are responsible for that wonderful hymn. So get a hold of this resource for a donation of any amount, Evensong, and I know it'll bless your family. It is really beautiful, both musically and spiritually. We'd encourage you to get it, and you can go to corechristianity.com forward slash offers to learn more about the Evensong CD, or you can call us for that offer or any one of our offers at 833-843-2673.

Again, that number is 833, the core. Well, let's go to a voicemail we received from one of our listeners named Brooke. Hi, thank you for your ministry. It has been a blessing. I was wondering, what should my life look like on a daily basis if I'm putting God first, as it says in Matthew 633?

For example, is it okay to buy something I don't need, like a coffee, or should I take the money I would spend on that and help others? Thank you so much. Bye.

Hey, Brooke. Thank you for giving us a call with that question, and I know that there are a lot of Christians that really wrestle with this. Is it okay for me to spend my money on things that I enjoy? There's so much suffering in the world. There are so many people that are more needy than I am. I just feel bad even going to Starbucks and buying myself a coffee, that kind of a thing.

It sounds like maybe that's where you're at. You're referring to what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6, verse 33, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. In the context of Matthew's Gospel here, we're in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus has been talking quite a bit, actually, in this section about money, how we think about money and possessions.

He says, Don't lay up treasures in heaven, beginning in verse 19 of chapter 6. Don't idolize money. Verse 24, No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. So don't be a worshiper of money.

You can't have this sort of dual allegiance to money and to the true and the living God. Then he goes on to talk about not being anxious about our possessions, about what we have, what we're going to put on, what we're going to eat, what we're going to drink. This is what the nations of the world are anxious about, what they seek after. Jesus' encouragement here is, Don't let that consume your life so that you don't seek and serve God as you should. Seek first, Jesus says, the kingdom of God and his righteousness. God is going to be the one who provides you with everything else.

Now, he doesn't always give us everything we want, but he says, I'm going to be there for you. I'm going to provide for my people. So the call here is a call to be comforted, to trust in the Lord, and certainly in the context of Matthew chapter 6, to think about how it is that we're investing our money, not being selfish with our money, being willing to share, to invest ultimately in heaven. You think about what a good investment is, right? A good investment is an investment that's safe and is going to have a great big return. Jesus says, Look, let me tell you the best place to invest.

Invest in my kingdom. Where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be also. That's, I think, a really good word for each and every one of us. Where are we investing our money, our time, our thoughts? Is it in this world primarily that's slowly passing away, or is it in the world to come and in God's kingdom? That's what Jesus is calling us to. Then, just in terms of the day-to-day living, as you were referring to, is seeking to live our lives in a way where we are investing in that kingdom, where our eyes are fixed upon our heavenly citizenship. As a result of that, we're seeking to love and serve the people around us to make this world a better place, not because we're trying to usher in God's kingdom or because we can bring it about, but because God calls us to. He calls us to love our neighbors as those who are receiving a kingdom from him. Now, does that mean, as you think about investing in heaven and serving the Lord and using your resources to advance the gospel, if you will, does that mean that we can't also enjoy this world and some of the pleasures in this world? A good cup of coffee, a nice steak dinner, that kind of a thing?

No, I don't think so. I think that actually God wants us to enjoy those things. One other passage of scripture that I would point you to, I think that this is a really wonderful text, thinking about your question, is what Timothy said in 1 Timothy 6 verse 17.

Listen to what he says. As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. He says, look, there's nothing wrong with earthly riches, if you will.

That's not evil in and of themselves. It's just don't let your heart worship those things. For the rich in this present world, don't be haughty.

Don't be arrogant. God gives you these things to enjoy, but make sure you share and you do good to the people around you. I would say, sister, enjoy that great cup of coffee or that nice dinner or whatever it is that you're thinking about.

As you enjoy it, give thanks to the Lord for His kindness, for His provision, and pray and ask how God might use you and the ways He's blessed you to bless others as well. Amen. Thank you so much for that, Adriel. Brooke, thanks for your question. We appreciate it.

This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to Bruce from Grand Island, Nebraska. Bruce, welcome to the program. What's your question?

Thank you for taking my call. I was in response to the marriage. I had a question as far as, instead of going to the city to get a license, why you couldn't, as a family, have a ceremony, make a document, and have them sign it. Would that be the same?

Thank you for that question, Bruce. One of the things about marriage in the Bible is it is this sort of common institution. What I mean by that is you think of, for example, the ordinances that Jesus gave to the church, baptism and the Lord's Supper. Those relate particularly and primarily to the people of God. They're not things that people outside of the church participate in. Not everybody just goes and gets baptized or goes and takes the Lord's Supper.

They're not supposed to. This is a part of the church and the life of the church. Marriage, in particular, is a common institution where an individual doesn't have to be a Christian to get married. In that sense and in that regard, I think that the state plays a part in marriage. Now, God is the one who defines marriage. The state, civil authorities, are accountable to God and his word. They're called to, in so far as God reveals his law to us naturally, to be in line with that. Oftentimes, that's not the case. We know that there are many laws out there that are totally contrary to God and his word. We lament that fact.

We lament that reality. There is a role that the state plays here in this. I think it is right, ordinarily speaking, for two people, if they want to get married, Bruce, to make it a family occasion, make it something that's done in the context of the church, especially because we know that marriage is a picture of the relationship that Jesus Christ has with his bride. But I think there is that legal element also that the state brings about and helps to bring about that is important when two people come together. That's what I encourage. I know that there are extraordinary circumstances in the world where that's not always possible.

You think of maybe two people stranded on a desert island or that kind of a thing. But as far as it's ordinarily possible, I think it is important for us to go about it via the state as well. Thank you so much for your question and may the Lord bless your day. Thanks for listening to CORE Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833, the CORE. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program. And be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.