Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Jesus should have the first place in everything. That means he should have the first place in your heart. He should be the one you love the most, that you think about the most, that you care about and are passionate about the most. He should have the first place in your obedience. He should be the first place in your priorities. That means that his agenda should rule your life. What is getting your first and best? Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D.
Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovich. We are in a new teaching series called First, the preeminence of Jesus in Colossians, looking at how Christ is first in all things. If you ever miss any part of this study, you can always find previous messages online at jdgreer.com. But right now keep listening because today, Pastor J.D. challenges us to consider whether we're on the front lines of living with bold, reckless faith, or are we kicking back, washing the faith of others from the sidelines? Turn in your Bible to Colossians chapter one as we join Pastor J.D.
I saw a chart recently that really, really disturbed me when I think about our church in light of it. Somebody shared it with me about another movement and they said it's the difference in the first generation and the second generation of a movement. This is true whether you're looking in the Bible or whether you're looking all the way through history. I want you to think about first generation, second generation. The first generation, their attitude is we'll do whatever it takes. The second generation says I'll only do what I'm asked to do and only if I've asked really nicely and only if it's really convenient for me and my family. The first generation assumes personal responsibility for the mission. The second generation assumes somebody else will do it. Somebody else will take care of that.
Why aren't they taking care of it? The first generation expects personal sacrifice. They come in believing that's what it is. The second generation expects personal comfort. The first generation sees problems and innovate solutions. The second generation sees problems and complains. First generation sees possibilities and dreams about what could be. The second generation sees barriers and reasons to quit. First generation hears the voice of God firsthand and they own the vision. The second generation inherits the vision second hand and questions every decision.
Why didn't you do that? This one doesn't work for me and it'll work for my family. I'm going somewhere else. First generation steps out with bold reckless faith in God. The second generation sits satisfied in the stability of the institution. The first generation feels privileged to be a part of the movement. The second generation feels entitled to the benefits of the institution. Here is the question.
Which of those two lists better describe you? Let me give you a story, an example from the first generation that I think captures it. I've told this story here before, but it's one of my favorite memories of that first year. There was another guy at this church named Tim Jackson who was still here and I started a basketball ministry on Monday nights because the facility we were originally in had a gym. So he's opened it up for guys in the community to come and immediately a bunch of guys who were more athletic and a lot younger than I showed up, but we kept playing.
I led one of them to Christ. He was 6'5". His nickname was Ayer because he was the heir because they all had nicknames for each other because he could dunk like a fool. So his name was Ayer. There's another guy whose nickname was Money because he never missed a three-pointer. One guy whose nickname was Street because he was so fast. My nickname, I kid you not by then, my nickname was No Don't Shoot.
That was their name for No Don't Shoot. But I got to know this guy and his girlfriend and I led them both to faith in Christ and baptized them in our church, at least as far as I could remember. It was the first African-American we'd ever baptized in our church. He got up there and he gave the most incredible testimony about how God had brought him from darkness to light.
And there was hardly a dry eye in the place when he got done. And so after the service was over, I was out in the lobby and one of our older members comes up to me. Our older members comes up to me and he says, he pulls me aside. He says, son, he says, son, you know, I don't like a lot of these changes you're making in our church, right? And I kind of hung my head because I was like, oh, where's this going? And they look up at him and he kind of, he just stands there for a minute and he's all like choked up. And I see tears in his eyes and he points toward the baptistry.
He says, but if that's what we're going to get right there, you can count me in for all of them. That's first-generation faith right there, right? That first-generation faith is why you're sitting here today. I got a bunch of emails on file from the last three or four years that would characterize second-generation faith, okay? My question is which one better characterizes you? Because second-generation faith is death to a movement.
Every time. We need first-generation faith because God is not finished with this church. There is still a rapidly growing city around us and there are new generations of college students and high school students coming in every single year. And there are all kinds of children growing up in our children's ministry and there are churches that are yet to be planted and there are people that are yet to be reached and families that are still coming here. It's going to take first-generation faith to reach them.
I've been sharing this with some of our pastors and leaders and one of them talked to me recently and he said, I'm realizing now that all the benefits that I enjoy here at this church is because of somebody else's bold, sacrificial, audacious faith. He said, but I was reading how Moses, when Moses in the Old Testament transitioned leadership to Joshua, Joshua had to have his own experience with God. Joshua had to hear from God and own this vision for himself with a first-generation faith. He said he had to go in the promised land on his own faith, not Moses's. He said that promised land for this church are all these people that God has given us to reach and the new things that he wants us to do. And Moses's faith, while it was awesome, is not going to be sufficient to guide us into the promised land to accomplish what God wants to accomplish through us.
And then he says this, and I quote, we need to be the second wave of the first generation. We need to show the same first generation faith that they showed. Y'all listen to me, I believe this is a matter of life and death for this church. I think this is a matter of life and death for this community. The faith of the previous generation was awesome.
Praise God for it, but it is not enough to take us into the future and into the places God wants for us. So let me ask you to consider personally, all right, I'm gonna ask you to consider this personally. Number one, two questions. Number one, what is getting your first and best?
What's getting your first and best? Is it the mission of Jesus? Remember, Paul says Jesus should have the first place in everything. That means he should have the first place in your heart.
He should be the one you love the most, that you think about the most, that you care about and are passionate about the most. He should have the first place in your obedience. That means that what he wants should be the first consideration in anything that you do. He should be the first place in your priorities. That means that his agenda should rule your life, right?
At this church, we say that that will express itself in three primary ways. First, he will be first in your time. Does Jesus get the first and best of your time? You parents, do you spend more time teaching your kids how to throw a slider or how to know and follow Jesus? Do you spend more time worrying about climbing the workplace ladder than you do seeking Jesus, knowing his will and living it out? Or how about this, of all your weekly commitments, when things get tight, when things get hard, is it your commitments to the kingdom of God?
Are they the ones that are the first to go? I'm thinking things like small group and volunteering and whatever ministry God's got you involved in. He's supposed to be first in your time. Is he first in your, secondly, talents? Your time, your talents. When you think about your talent and your career, does the kingdom of God get the first consideration? God gave you that talent for a reason. He gave you that talent for a reason because your workplace is a mission field. Yeah, you're going to use that talent to provide for you and your family. And I'm sure you enjoy it, but your talent is a key to get you into a mission field that nobody else can get into. And you've got to start seeing your job as a means to get into a place to bring the gospel to people.
And you're supposed to use the financial benefits of your job first and foremost for the interest of his kingdom and not just your own. Which leads me to the third element, in your time, first in your time, first in your talents, first in your treasure. Who or what is getting the first and the best of our treasures? You see, think about what you do with your money. Think about it in two categories. One category, we've got the first and best category. And then the other category, you've got the good enough category. And for those of us who have a limited income, usually we're willing to deal with good enough in some areas so that we can have the best in other areas. And that's what we kind of focus on first.
Let me explain what I mean in case that's unclear. Imagine a couple in their late 20s, early 30s, they're standing outside of a house that a real estate agent has taken them to see that is just a little beyond their price range. Because that's what real estate agents like to do, right?
They like to take you to the upper end of it and then just a little bit farther. And so here you stand out in front of this house and the conversation goes like this. A bunch of you've had this conversation.
I'm not judging you, I'm just saying. You've been there and you're like, ah, this house is awesome. We want this house. Man, can you imagine our family in this house?
It's going to be so good for our family, but it's a little beyond where we are. And one of you says, yeah, I think we can do this. I think we can do it. But in order for us to do it, everything else is going to have to change. We're not going to be able to upgrade our cars for the next few years. We're not going to be able to go on vacation like we wanted to go on vacation. We're going to stop eating out all the time. We can't go to Starbucks three times a day. We're going to have to cut our Netflix things back from four screens to two screens. This is going to be bad, okay?
So it's just that we got to, we're going to go good enough here so that we can go first and best over here. Does that make sense? Or picture another couple in their maybe late forties, early fifties, maybe late fifties, and they've just finished the applications for their kid to go to college and they get that tuition bill that there is no other word, honestly, to describe that than ungodly. And they're looking at that thing and they're like, how can they charge that much to go to school? And then you're like, this is like the national debt.
How can anybody pay this? Right? And you think, well, and then the conversation happens and it sounds like this.
I don't know. We just, I really want, I really want little Mikey to have the greatest possible launch into life. And if this school is going to help him get launched in his career, we want him to go to the best school he can get into.
And he got into this one. So I think we can do this, but everything else is going to have to change. So we're not going to be, you know, sweetheart, you're not going to be able to get that Audi you've been looking forward to when you traded in your minivan and, and, and started riding. You're not going to be able to do that right now. And we're not going to be able to go to Hawaii next year to celebrate our empty nester life that we were always going to do.
And we're not going to be able to move into the country club, whatever it is you're putting in that category. We're going to have to stay with good enough so that our child gets the first and the best. Now, let me be very, very, very clear with you. All right. There's nothing wrong with putting some things first in your family. Okay.
I'm not trying to make you feel guilty about that. My question is why we rarely, if ever asked that question in light of the kingdom of God, in light of our giving, we never seem to have the conversation that goes like this. Now we can do this. We can do what we think Jesus is leading us to do in his kingdom. But if we do it, everything else is going to have to change.
We never have that conversation. It seems like instead what we ask is how much can we afford to give after all these other commitments have been fulfilled? They come first. The kingdom of God comes after. After we get the kind of house that we want to live in. After we go on the vacations that we think our family would really enjoy. After we drive the kind of cars that we want. And after we get the kind of clothes that we want to wear. And after we achieve the lifestyle that we've always wanted to live.
And after we send our kids to the colleges we want them to go to. After all these things, we ask what can we afford to give from the leftover to God? Paul says, Jesus does not deserve your leftovers. He is first. He went first. He deserves the first place in everything. He's not a leftover kind of God.
He's a first place kind of God. Hey, have you ever been invited to somebody's house and they served you leftovers for dinner? Does that ever happen? Right? I mean, you could walk in there and it's like, you know, mashed potatoes and that morning's bacon and limp, frits fries. You know, the food just ain't no good. I mean, the macaroni soggy, the peas are mushed and the chicken tastes like wood. Little rappers delight anybody. Come on.
80s rap is the best rap. Shame on y'all for not knowing that. Okay. If that really happened, if you got invited to somebody's house for dinner and they served you leftovers, how would that make you feel? You would feel insulted because you knew that that meal was originally first prepared for somebody else.
And it was only a second hand thought for you. If you had somebody famous coming over to your house. My kids and I discussed this the other night. We're going through this and I was like, okay, who's the most famous celebrity that we could ever imagine, you know, inviting to our house. And I was of course, looking for them to say Nicolas Cage, but my kids said, no, Zac Efron.
Because, because they like the greatest showman and they're like, Zac Efron, that would just be awesome. And I was like, okay, let's imagine that Zac Efron was coming for dinner. Do you think we would serve him leftovers? Are we going to go through, here's some leftover bologna and here's some stuff we didn't eat this week and put that in in front of him?
No. If we want to honor him, we're going to give him the best meal. We're going to give him the first.
Y'all let me be clear. Jesus does not deserve your leftovers. He is first.
He went first. He should be first in our lives. So what I'm trying to say is this, I do not think this season is about you getting to a good enough level of giving or a good enough percentage in your life. Instead, I want you to ask yourself and I ask this without apology, I want you to ask yourself, what is that level of giving that declares unequivocally that Jesus is first and that his kingdom is best in my life, that he has the preeminence.
And I know that some of us are sitting there and I used to be like this and I've been a member of a church for a long time before I was a pastor. And you're like, well, I just don't like it when churches, when they talk about money. Let me be very clear to you. God does not want your money. God does not need your money. God is after a whole lot more than your money.
He's after all of you. And that certainly includes your money, which is why Jesus talked about money more than any other subject because he knew that as long as his firstness in your life didn't affect your money, then it was all just words and a sham. So he would say, if you really want to know where the rubber meets the road of what's really first in your life, you follow the trail of your checkbook.
He didn't do that because he needed money. He did that because he knew that what is really first in your heart will show up in that area. So I am saying to you in this season, not because God needs money, but because God deserves our heart and our first and our best. What does your giving show is the first and the best thing in your life. Let me make it really, really personal to you for you, for my wife and I, as we've been kind of processing this over the last three or four months, we've realized that our giving over the last three or four years has kind of begun to settle into the good enough category.
Now, let me be clear. I think it's good enough. I'm not embarrassed by it. If you knew the amount, if you knew the percentage, I would say it's exemplary. I would feel good about it.
I wouldn't be ashamed in it. But we are asking in this season, does it still declare that Jesus and his kingdom are first to us? I want something that unequivocally declares to him, you're the best. You're the reason we exist. And if you hadn't chose to come from heaven to earth to save us, us and our kids will be lost and we would have no future. Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe sin had left a crimson stain.
He washed it white as snow. So where the whole realm of nature mind, that would be a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all. I want something that declares that, that Jesus is not just important to us.
He's not one of our many priorities, but he is first. Here's another way we're thinking about it. I've used this analogy before to capture it. When you sit down to a breakfast of bacon and eggs in the morning, both the chicken and the pig had a part in bringing that breakfast to you. The chicken made a contribution, a very generous contribution. The pig, the pig went all in, right? The chicken has not really changed for the experience.
This is more of a transaction. The chicken gets up the next day and makes another contribution. The pig, however, is fundamentally transformed by the experience of providing you breakfast. My wife and I do not want to be chickens in our giving. We want to be pigs for Jesus. Okay.
And you've never heard that before and now you got it. We don't want merely to make a generous contribution. We want to be fundamentally transformed by the experience because we establish Jesus as the unchallenged first and best in our lives, getting therefore the first and best in our finances. So we want to come up with a number that unequivocally declares Jesus is first. He is first. He went first. Therefore we're going to put him first.
Here's my challenge to you in this season. Does your giving say leftovers or does it say Lord? Now, maybe you're sitting there right now and you're saying, well, JD, hold on a minute. Just wait, wait, wait.
I'm in an entirely different place. I'm not thinking about nice clothes and new cars and expensive colleges for my kids to go to. I mean, I can barely afford to pay the bills. My kids eat cereal with a fork to save milk. When I go to the park, ducks throw bread at me. That's how poor our family is, right?
You're like, I just lost my job. I'm not thinking about any of this other stuff. Y'all for you also, there's a place for you to put Jesus first. Jesus says unequivocally in his word that if you will seek and prioritize him first, then all the rest of the things that you need in life, he will provide for you. Matthew 6 33, seek first the kingdom of God, put him and obedience to him first. And hey, I promise all these other things I'll take care of you.
Best illustration, best application I've ever seen of that. There's a pastor, older pastor named David Jeremiah, who said that there was a couple in his church who came to him and said, hey, we really want to obey Jesus in this and give him our first and our best, which for them was the first 10%, the tithe. And so he said, but we just can't afford it. I mean, there's no way we can make ends meet if we do this.
And so pastor Jeremiah said, I looked back at them and I said, all right, I tell you what, I understand that, I understand your struggle. What if you, what if you wrote out a check for what the first and the best was the first, you know, in their case, the first 10%, what if you wrote that check out, gave it to me, I'll put it in an envelope, I'll seal the envelope, I'll put it in the front desk of my drawer, the top drawer of my desk, and I won't cash it until the end of the month. And if at the end of the month, you can't make ends meet, if you come back to me and ask me for it back because you can't afford it, I will get it, take it out, I won't cash it, you can tear it up and that'll be the end of it.
Does that sound fair to you? And I'm like, well, yeah, that's, that's, that's reasonable. He said, you would trust me to hold that check. And they said, of course.
He said, look back at them. And I said, shame on you because you just declared you trust your pastor more than you trust Jesus, because that's what Jesus said we could do. He said, if we give him the first and the best, he promised to make all these things abundant for us. So my question is for all of you, at whatever stage you find yourself, what is getting your first and your best? What, what unequivocally declares this is first and best in my life. Here's the second question. Am I listening to the Holy Spirit?
Am I, am I obeying him? Y'all in the book of Acts, when the church was growing explosively, all you had was a group of people without any money, without any resources, just listening to and obeying the Holy Spirit. That's all they had.
I mean, they weren't impressive. God didn't look at that original group of disciples and say, well, I got some resources right there. Man, what can I do with that group of people? It's just a group of people who said, okay, where do you want us to go? You don't want us to build a church for you. You want to build a church through us. And you can do more with just our obedience than you could with all the resources in the world. And what you see in the book of Acts is this incredible story of how a group of people with no influence and no money and nothing impressive literally launched the greatest awakening, the greatest movement in history. And it all come from saying, what do you want us to do? We're a blank check.
You tell us. One moment, my favorite example of this, it's in Acts, Acts 8. You know, Jesus had told the early church that he wanted the gospel preached in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, uttermost parts of the earth, right?
Pretty clear. By the end of Acts 8, gospel's still only in Jerusalem. The apostles are just hanging out in Jerusalem. They haven't been able to get the gospel out of Jerusalem.
They're hanging out, small groups, singing a kumbaya, eating s'mores. That's kind of their existence. So the Holy Spirit speaks to an ordinary guy, not one of the apostles, ordinary guy named Philip. And he moves Philip to go up to the middle of nowhere, this old dusty crossroads where there's nothing but a blinking, you know, flashing light in a gas station and just tells him he wants him to live there, stay there.
Philip doesn't know why he's there. All of a sudden, a guy comes along the road in a little caravan of chariots that we now refer to as the Ethiopian eunuch. Ethiopian eunuch is reading from the book of Isaiah and he doesn't know what he's reading. So Philip gets him into the chariot and explains to him, this is all about Jesus, leads him to faith in Christ and baptizes him.
Eusebius, who was the third century church historian, Eusebius says that Ethiopian eunuch went back to sub-Saharan Africa where he was from, okay, went back to sub-Saharan Africa where he was from, and he planted a church and launched a church planting movement that is still in existence today. The Holy Spirit through one act of obedience by an untrained, unfunded, un-resourced guy accomplished more for the great commission than all the apostles with all their talent had been able to accomplish in eight chapters. That's what we're talking about when we say obedience to the Holy Spirit. He wants all of you. Are you giving me your first and your best and are you listening to the Holy Spirit?
First place in everything. That's the title of our message today from Pastor JD Greer. If you missed any of today's message on Summit Life, you can listen again by visiting jdgreer.com. When you join our mission and donate at the suggested level of $35 or more today, we'll say thanks by sending you our 10-day devotional and scripture guide titled Smoke from a Fire. This resource is designed to help you pray desperately and honestly, sharing your deepest feelings with the one who made you. It's different because it allows you to reflect and pray more independently through whatever difficult emotions that you may be feeling. This devotional workbook is intended to guide your daily time with God and not be a really in-depth study as you explore emotions like anger, envy, depression, and anxiety. Each day gives you a piece or multiple short pieces of scripture to read and then provides the space and prompts to reflect and pray.
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Sign up at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovich inviting you to join us tomorrow as we continue in the book of Colossians. Are you following in the footsteps of those that put their faith first? Or are you giving Jesus sloppy leftovers? Join us Thursday on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
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