First Things First

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Sometimes we are faithful to God and hard times still come. That's just part of living in a fallen world. It's often how God tests us and grows and shapes our faith.

But y'all, there are enough passages in scripture like Matthew 6 33 and like Haggai 1 that you should take them seriously. You put God first and he multiplies you. Happy Monday and thanks for joining us again today on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host Molly Vidovich. Okay folks, we've got a lot of ground to cover today. We'll get to hear Pastor J.D. continue our brand new teaching series called Begin Again as he takes us to the tiny book of Haggai. And also today is the Day Before Giving Tuesday, an international giving holiday that we get to participate in each year with our Summit Life family. So be sure to keep listening to find out how you can be a part of getting God's Word into the hands of someone who doesn't have access to it. But right now, grab your Bible, search diligently for the book of Haggai and let's join Pastor J.D. Summit family, Summit family and guests, but Summit family in particular. We are in our final week of this series Begin Again talking about generosity and about giving God our first and our best. I don't feel like I am typically a rah rah rah, this is going to be the greatest weekend ever kind of guy.

But honestly, I have been praying for this particular weekend and for this particular message for a while now because I believe that what happens this weekend is going to impact the next 10 years of ministry in and through the Summit Church. Speaking of money, it seems like every time that I talk about investing money nowadays, the subject of cryptocurrency comes up. How much crypto do you have?

Do you like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Solano or Dogecoin? And it seems like we're all hoping that we don't get asked to explain how it works. Am I right?

I'm always like, look, I won't ask you if you want to ask me. Is that a deal? Who would have imagined that 10 years ago that we would be talking about an entirely new form of currency that's nothing more than a bit of data buried on a hard drive somewhere? The people, by the way, who did know that 10 years ago are actually doing quite well today. I bought a little bit, unfortunately not 10 years ago, but just a few months ago, just to mess with it.

And by little, I mean very, very little. What's interesting now is hearing about all the people who had it at the beginning, but had no idea of its potential value. You've probably heard about the guy, Laszlo Hanyek, I think was his name, who 11 years ago paid for a couple of Papa John's pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoin or something like that, which means he basically spent $4 billion in today's money on a fast food dinner 10 years ago. Or maybe you heard about the guy in the United Kingdom who threw out his old hard drive, and then a friend reminded him that he'd loaded some Bitcoin onto it years before. He checked to see what it was now worth and found that the Bitcoin on his hard drive was worth more than $6 million. By that time, of course, the trash had already been picked up, because isn't that how it works? Whenever I need something out of the trash, they come that very moment.

So he goes to the landfill and digs and digs and digs, but never finds his hard drive, which made me wonder, by the way, how long would I dig in a landfill for a $6 million object? I mean, let's just show of hands here. How many of you would never even try? You'd be like, nope, I'm just not going out there to try, even for $6 million. How many of you would stick it out for a whole hour?

Raise your hand. I'm like, I'm in it for an hour, okay? Two hours. Six hours. How many like six hours I'd still be out there? How about a whole day? Anybody like a whole day? How many like a week? I would spend at least a week out there for $6 million.

How many of you like as long as it takes? I'd still be there today, pastor, if that's what I thought was out there. Here's my question.

Here's my question. What is something that you thought had no value actually turned out to be incredibly valuable? And what of other things that you thought had value actually turned out to have no value at all? I ask that because one of the Bible's most frequent themes is that we often invest in things that don't matter won't satisfy and cannot sustain us. Today in our final message in Begin Again, I want to show you how a really obscure Old Testament prophet, one whose book you may never have even heard of, maybe never heard a sermon preached out of, I want to show you how he makes that point in a very powerful way. So if you got your Bible this weekend, Haggai chapter one. Haggai chapter one. If you don't know where Haggai is, relax.

It's right after Zephaniah and right before Zachariah, if that's helpful to you. By the way, as you're turning there and figuring out where it is, it's important for me to preach from obscure Bible books like Haggai from time to time, because one day you're going to meet Haggai in heaven, and he's going to say to you, how did you like my book? And I don't want you to be embarrassed. Or maybe even more importantly, he might say, you never even heard of my book? Who is your pastor?

And then I'm going to look bad. I'm doing this so that we can all tell Haggai we love this book. Haggai chapter one, verse two. The Lord of armies says this, these people, the children of Israel say the time has not come for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt.

The year is about 520 BC. It's about 18 years after Daniel died. God has now kept his promise to bring the children of Israel back from exile in Babylon, bring them back to the land of Israel. And he's even moved on the heart of a pagan king named Cyrus to help fund the rebuilding of Jerusalem. There were two Jewish leaders in particular that were key in this process. One was named Nehemiah. He helped rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. And Ezra, he helped lay the foundation of the temple. And they stepped up to lead the charge, and they would eventually have books of the Bible named after them. So all that to say, Israel got off to a great start. They built the walls of the city.

They laid the foundations of the temple. But then production, after a couple years, just stopped. Just stopped. For about 16 years, it stopped.

Well, why did it stop, you ask? I'm sure they had their excuses. Resources were tight. Furthermore, this was a strange new land, and they all had to get their own homes established. Plus, there were still a lot of enemies all around them. And so, as people often do in a time of uncertainty, they pulled inward. They circled the wagons. They focused on building their own little kingdoms.

But here was the thing. These were the people of God. They had been saved by God, delivered from exile all by himself.

God did. God was their provider. He was their shield. He was their refuge, their rock.

They were called by his name. And the temple was supposed to be the center of their lives. That was the place where they would worship and serve God, the place where they would hear from God, the place where they could teach their children about God, the place where strangers from other nations could learn about him. It's why they had been chosen. The temple should have been their first thought, not an afterthought. And so, verse three, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai. Is it time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses while the house, this house, the house of God, the temple, while it lies in ruins? Weird, God says.

You've had time to build other nice things, like nice paneled homes for yourselves, and yet my house, my house still sits in ruins. By the way, quick little side note, slightly off topic, but I cannot help when I read that verse, but think that this is what God might be saying to some of you about your choice not to return to church in person yet. I realize that there are still some that are genuinely at risk, and you have to stay separate from people. But there's a bunch of others of you who seem to feel perfectly safe going to restaurants and grocery stores and Target and sports stadiums, yet my house, God says, is a place you have yet to return to. That is a different sermon for a different day, I guess, but hey, it was on my mind, and I felt like it applied to the text there.

So take that for what it's worth. Verse five, I will return, okay? I will return to that one day. Verse five, think carefully then. Think carefully about your ways. You've planted much, but you've harvested little. Because you put yourselves first, and me second, God says, two things have happened. Number one, God frustrated their efforts. When God says you planted much, but harvested little, what he means is you put the farming work in, but the harvest was terrible. You're putting the hours in, but the grades aren't coming.

You're investing the money, but the returns are not there. It's not that you're not doing your part, you actually are. You're doing a pretty good job of it. I'm the one who's frustrating your efforts.

Y'all even makes that clearer in verse nine. When you brought your harvest to the house, I ruined it. I'm the one who did it. Why? Why, you ask? Because my house still lies in ruins.

Oh, each of you is busy with his own house. Verse 10, so on your account the skies have withheld the dew, and the land has withheld its crops. I have summoned a drought. I'm the one who did it. On the fields and the hills, it wasn't bad luck.

It wasn't somebody else's fault. I'm the one doing this, God says. On the grain and on the new wine, the fresh oil and whatever else the ground yields on people and on animals and on all that your hands produce.

I did all of this. God says to them, I called you to give me your first and your best so when instead of the first and the best, you give me your second and the rest, you set me against you. Now this is one of the most important financial principles in the Bible stated probably most clearly by Jesus in Matthew 6 33 when he says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And then all these things, all the rest of these things will be added to you in context. All these things are all the other things that we worry about. Provision, companionship, retirement, marriage, financial stability. You seek me first, God says, and all these other things. You fill in the blank.

All these other things, I'll add them to you. The flip side of that is also true. You seek first the kingdom of self and all these things will be taken from you. That's what Haggai is showing you.

That's why C.S. Lewis very famously said something I often quote to you probably way too much. He said, when you put first things first, when you put God first, God says, I'll throw in second things.

But when you put second things first, you will lose not only the first things, you will eventually lose the second ones also. Now y'all, I want to be really, really careful here because scripture also tells us that sometimes we are faithful to God and hard times still come. That's just part of living in a fallen world. It's often how God tests us and grows and shapes our faith. Like I said a couple of weeks ago, don't interpret this as some kind of spiritual rebate guarantee where you write God a check and he promises every time to send you back a bigger one.

This is not some kind of ironclad contract. But y'all, there are enough passages in scripture like Matthew 633 and like Haggai 1 that you should take them seriously. You put God first and he multiplies you. And if you don't do that, he frustrates your efforts just like he did in Haggai's day. The Israelites are like, look man, we can't give because we don't have any excess.

And God responds, you don't have any excess because you don't give. Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. We'll get back to our teaching in just a moment, but I mentioned it before and we'll talk to J.D. about it later on in today's broadcast. But I want to make sure that you know Giving Tuesday is tomorrow. If you're not familiar, Giving Tuesday is an international giving holiday that takes place the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. And each year J.D. Greer Ministries selects a gospel-centered cost to support thanks to the generosity of our amazing Summit Life family.

And this year we have the chance to do something incredibly exciting. Your gifts tomorrow are going to help fund the translation of the Bible into a language it's never been translated to before. We are partnering with the Museum of the Bible to fund this vital work. And any gift that you give tomorrow will be doubled up to $50,000. All you have to do is call us tomorrow with your gift or give online at jdgreer.com slash donate.

Don't miss out on this. Every dollar given tomorrow goes toward this cause. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. So here's an honest question for those of you experiencing financial frustration or life frustration. Here's an honest question for you. What if, what if some of that was God trying to get your attention?

What if right now he's saying to you, stop giving me your seconds and your thirds? Stop squeezing me in at the margins. You're over here asking, why my career taking off? Why am I so frustrated in this area? Why in college can I not seem to make things work?

Why is it that I'm experiencing so much frustration? And God is saying, stop trying to squeeze me in at the margins. That's why. I don't want to be tipped with your loose change and your lunch money.

Give me your first and your best or give me nothing at all. I am not saying that is his word for all of you who are in financial strain. I'm saying maybe that is what he is saying to some of you. Throughout this series, I've told you a number of stories where God wrote these things on my heart. They all occurred early in my adult life. Let me tell you one more.

Okay. I've told you two. This is my third one here. Years ago, again, shortly after college, I got into a silly little fender bender. One of those really, really frustrating accidents where you just cut a corner too quickly and you do several hundred dollars of damage to the side panel of your car.

The accident felt so unnecessary and so random. But the moment, I mean the moment that it happened, the Holy Spirit immediately pressed on my heart a decision that I had made the week before to withhold the tithe from God because of some stuff that I really wanted to buy. And the immediate clear sense that I got was the Holy Spirit saying, look, I'm going to get this one way or the other. You either have the joy of giving it to me or I'm going to take it out through stupid accidents like this one.

Now, like I said, please be careful with this. The Bible does not teach some kind of Christian karma system where each time something bad happens, you should look for something bad that you did that brought it on. I mean, think about it. The core of your theology is a perfect man who lived a perfect life and was still betrayed by his friends, falsely accused and then crucified on a cross. And God used it all for something amazing. So I'm not saying that it always has like something God's like, dude, but what I'm talking about are moments when God sends something into your life to wake you up and you know it. By the way, in my experience, if that is what is happening to you, the Holy Spirit will make it known immediately with a clear, obvious action step. God is not an unclear communicator. He doesn't like give you secret codes he's wanting you to figure out. If he wants to tell you something, he will make it known. And if he doesn't make anything clear, then you can assume that what you're going through is just part of the suffering that he's appointed his people to. But the point is you should at least ask the question and I would submit to you that some of you are right where you are because God is saying the same thing to you.

He would stay into that generation in Haggai chapter one. So that's number one. Because you put yourself first, me second, I'm frustrated in your efforts. Secondly, he says, because you did that, you're unable to find contentment. They're unable to find contentment.

Look again at verse six. You eat, you eat, but you never have enough to be satisfied. You drink, but you never have enough to be happy, whatever that means. You put on clothes, but you never have enough to get warm.

The wage earner puts his wages into a bag with a hole in it. I went on a skiing trip last year with one of our pastors. I won't tell you his initials, but his name was Daniel Simmons, who decided to try snowboarding for the first time, which means if you've done that, that he fell a lot. And all he had thought was a good idea to only bring jeans on this trip.

So the first night was miserable for him. So we got up early the next day and went out to buy the man some ski pants. And we found this marked down pair at a ski shop there. It was a great deal. So Daniel buys them.

They're bright orange. He puts them on and we get out there on the slopes. A couple hours later that morning, he discovered that his wallet was missing, which led him to then discover a humongous hole in the pocket where he put his wallet. And I was like, well, now we know why the pants were marked down. We spent several hours that morning and into the afternoon retracing his steps, retracing his ski paths, but we found nothing. Later that afternoon, as he was taking the ski pants off, he discovered his wallet at the bottom of one of the legs of his pants. The hole in the pocket opened up to the inside lining and that's where his wallet had fallen into. There is nothing more frustrating than having a hole in your pocket.

Am I right? Any money that you saved on your ski pants gets lost through that hole. Any enjoyment you thought you would get because of the pants is ruined by concern over the loss of your wallet. Now, I'm not saying that's what God was trying to teach to Daniel.

He and Wendy are two of the most generous people that I know. But to Israel, God was saying, listen, you keep spending money to buy stuff, but it's like there's just a gigantic hole in your heart. So that no matter what you put in, you aren't finding that happiness, that security, that contentment that you seek.

I feel like this has got to be one of the worst possible states to be in, right? You obtain what you always wanted to obtain, but you still don't feel like you always wanted to feel. You get married, but you still feel lonely.

You bought the vacation home, but you still don't feel connected to your family. You get to the top of that corporate ladder, but you still don't feel significant and fulfilled. You're like the guy that I've told you about often, who was the CEO of the Fortune 500 company in Forbes Magazine, who gets interviewed and said, I spent my entire life just climbing the ladder of success, only to finally get to the very top of it and realize that it was leaning against the wrong building. Not even the building I thought I was climbing. It was something else.

I got here and it's not what I thought it was. Or the words of that great philosopher, Jim Carey, who said, I feel like everybody, I wish everybody would get rich and famous like me and do everything they've ever dreamed of doing so that then they could see for themselves. That's not the answer. Y'all have heard it said money can buy a bed, but not rest. They can buy education, but not wisdom. They can buy companions, but not friends.

They can buy you a house, but not a home. It can buy you amusements, but not happiness. It can buy you religion, but not salvation.

Friends, just reason with me for a minute, will you? What good is all that money and all that success if it does not produce the joy and security and satisfaction in your heart that you crave? God says that you'll never find, never, no matter how much stuff you have, if I am not first, because life does not consist, Jesus says, in the abundance of possessions, contentment, happiness, security. Oh, there's a different path there. There's a different path there. And it's not found through that path that you've been on, that path where you put yourself first to get your career established and build your house and load your bank account.

Those who idolize money and try to put it in that spot are always gonna find that it disappoints. Another one of the prophets, Jeremiah, who lived about a hundred years before Haggai, he said it this way, Jeremiah 2 13, my people have committed two sins, two evils. Evil number one, they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and they dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. You see, in ancient Israel, there were two ways that you could get drinking water.

The best way is you find an underground spring, you dig a well, and then you've got this underground river of continual fresh water that's just replenished all the time. It's just there. It's awesome. It's clean. It's refreshing.

You just, this is just there every day for you. The other way, if you can't find one of those, is you dig what they call a cistern, big hole in the ground. You line it with essentially paver stones and you collect rainwater in it. Problem is water comes in there muddy because it's all from the ground. And it's also those paver stones leak.

And so it won't really hold water for that long. And Jeremiah says, what you did is you forsook God, who was this fountain of living water and joy and security and satisfaction. He was your refuge and your rock. Sin number one, is you turned your back on him. Then even worse, you dug these other cisterns like money and romance and those things.

And you tried to find that security you were looking for there. And that's the second evil. I love that imagery. Idols always work like that. They disappoint.

You fill them up and you come back the next day and find them empty. And when that happens to you, and it will, Tim Keller says, you're going to make one of four choices. When you feel like that thing that you thought was going to supply the happiness and money and security and fulfillment, you thought when it doesn't, you're going to, you're going to make one of four choices. He says option number one is you will blame the idol itself. There's something wrong with it. I got to get another one. It wasn't that guy, right? That guy, I thought he was awesome, but it turns out I actually needed a different one.

So you swapped him out for a new model. Oh, the happiness that I'm searching for. It wasn't really in being the most popular, like I thought it was. It's in, it's in finding that special someone. Oh no, no, no. It's not finding that special someone. It's in, it's in money.

That's really the way to be happy. Oh no, no. It's not there. It's not in money. It's in family.

Oh no, no. It's not in family. It's just in knowing that you're a good person or you have the right eight people around your bedside, you know, at the end. And if you've got your family, then it's going to be all or whatever other idol you come up with.

Be honest with yourself. What's really first in your life. Such an important reminder today from Pastor JD here on Summit Life. Pastor JD, we've been talking a lot about giving and generosity lately on Summit Life and tomorrow just so happens to be an international holiday known as Giving Tuesday.

We have a really cool opportunity here at Summit Life to make an impact in a different way than we have ever done before. Yes, Molly, we've got a unique opportunity for our whole Summit Life family to fund a new Bible translation for an unreached people group. I mean, I'm always excited about what we're able to do on Giving Tuesday, but when you think about translating the Bible into a language that has never had the Bible in that language and the people that are going to be able to hear the gospel because of that, I mean, I can't think of anything more meaningful to be involved in and to give toward. What is special about this Giving Tuesday is that every gift that is given on that day, every single one is going to be matched up to $50,000, which means our hope, our goal is that we'd be able to give $100,000 toward the Bible translation for this unreached people group.

This is kind of what we say around here. If you've listened here at Summit Life, you may have heard us say this, but this is what we think of as holding the rope for the missionaries that we sent. It comes from something William Carey told a big group of English Baptist when he was leaving, the father of the modern missions movement going out to India.

He said, I'll dangle on the other end of that rope on behalf of Jesus there in India, but you've got a promise to hold securely to the other side. And what it means is that those of us who are called to stay and to give have to be every bit as committed to the mission as those who are called to go. And so if you would like to invest in bringing the gospel to an unreached people group and do it with a ministry that you're familiar with, and hopefully is a blessing to you, you can go to jdgrier.com slash donate anytime tomorrow in Giving Tuesday and become a part of that project. Remember any gift that you give tomorrow will be matched and doubled up to $50,000. So it's crucial that you visit jdgrier.com slash donate.

Once again, that's jdgrier.com slash donate. This is such an important opportunity, and we're so thankful for each of you who give to make this translation a reality. I'm Molly Vitovich. Thanks so much for joining us today. And tomorrow we'll wrap up our brand new teaching series called Begin Again, as we also celebrate Giving Tuesday together. See you then right here on Summit Life. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.