In the book of Genesis, we see that God created the perfect setting for us to be in relationship with him and with each other. His plan included us walking with God, walking with our spouse, doing the job of managing the world, and then creating a community. And God said – I want to walk with you for eternity in this relationship, but I am giving you a choice.
God also said if you eat of that tree, you will surely die. And then the devil entered in. He gave Adam and Eve a worldview that would compete with the one they had received from God – and then gave them a choice to make. As we know – rather than choosing to keep God at the center of their lives and keeping their eyes on him, they choose self. Eve went from seeing things from God’s perspective to seeing through her own eyes and leaning on her own understanding, or worldview. And Adam followed.
Mankind made a mess of God’s perfect plan for us – we wanted a different worldview and we got it. And thousands of years later it still isn’t working very well for us. But God sent Jesus the Christ down to say “Have you had enough of this yet? I want to save you from this. This world was supposed to be a perfect design, but now it is a mess in every part of your life. Your relationships don’t work, the work you do is by the sweat of your brow, there are thorns and thistles and the world itself is broken. Everything is a mess – I am letting it stay that way so you can experience what it looks like to rule your own world.
And He offers Himself to us. He says if you receive Me, you need to understand who I am. I am the King of the heavens. I am God the son. I am the only one that can save you from this mess, but I want you to open the door of your heart, I want to come in and I want you to let Me lead you back towards your design.
Discipleship is the process of God coming into our life. We say yes to him as our Savior and yes to him as our Lord. We agree to follow him, be changed by him, and to become committed to his mission. And He is going to lead us back to the design. Ultimately there is going to be the new heaven and a new earth where the kingdom of heaven is now established. and those in the kingdom are there because they remember what it was like to be their own King – and every one has fallen short.
Now think about this – we were separated from God, from His plan. There was a problem. Even though we were the ones that walked away from Him – He did not walk away from us. He went first to fix our broken relationship. He gave up His divine rights and privileges. Philippians 2: says – and He laid down His life for us. He reconciled the relationship with us – as rebellious broken people, He left heaven and laid down His life and went first in restoration of the relationship. At the expense of Himself. And those of us who understand His love now agree that because He chose to go first we must let Him be first in our lives.
The devil will always challenge the truth and give us a competing worldview, but the Bible throughout tells us that if we want a restored relationship with God – He has got to be first. Look at the 10 Commandments – what is the first one?
We are to worship no other gods before Him. We are to worship Him and worship Him only. Make no other idols– don’t let anything else ruin your heart. Let God be first. He has to be first. When Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment? Jesus said, to love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength – and the second is like it – love your neighbor as yourself. And He says all of the law and the prophets hang on those two commands.
He has to be first.
God said these people can get so easily distracted because they have a sinful nature – because the devil is out there creating a culture that is always luring them in. We have an idol heart that wants to worship something – we are broken, God says I am giving you a way of life that will keep you safe from building idols in your heart. God knows what we are – and He created a pathway for us to walk.
Do you know how many verses on love there are in Scripture? 714. Do you know how many Scriptures there are on finances? 2400. Why does God speak so much about money? Money becomes the means by which we can buy with our own hands what we think is important. Comfort, pleasure, security, power – I don’t need God for those things. If I can get money than I can buy those things for myself. Now here’s the problem with that. The Bible says some trust in horses, some trust in chariots (Psalm 20:7) All of that is lame in comparison to God, it is all unstable. It can be here today and gone tomorrow. Your money in the stock markets could be there, then one day inflation hits and now it is worth half as much.
Money makes us think we can get what we think we need without having to go to God for it. – I don’t have to do anything else. Money gives me my means by which I can be me –me without God. I can be faithless, except for my faith in me. I can pursue and pay for what I think I want and what I think I need.
There is another reason why money is mentioned more than anything else. The Bible tells us we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces in the heavenly realm (Ep. 6:12). The devil is always giving us a competing version of the world. He says don’t trust the spiritual, eat the fruit that is right in front of you. Concentrate on the physical, what you can see, what you can do, take matters into your own hands. He wants us to believe the physical is more important than spiritual.
The devil uses money, possessions, and the earthly world we live in to deceive us more than anything else. If he can get us away from our relationship with God, we start to see these things in the physical realm in our own strength and in our own power. The devil wants to get us to use, or rather misuse, money in whatever way he can get us to do that. And so, what happens is that you don’t use money correctly, you’ve got too much debt. You in turn work too many hours to pay the debt which takes away from your relationships at home.
The number one reason for divorce in the country right now is financial difficulty. If Satan can get us to take our eyes off of God and look at the world, chase the world, pursue things in the world – there is a ripple effect. Money becomes too important and people become tools to get money. because if I don’t get money that I can’t pay my bills. Then what happens in the work life? You get money out of order in the work life – it becomes too important to you and what happens? Well, the work life area falls apart too.
The number one reason for divorce in the country right now is financial difficulty. If Satan can get us to take our eyes off of God and look at the world, chase the world, pursue things in the world – there is a ripple effect. Share on XIf you have employees working for you that have money issues, and the money issues are causing home issues – how good are they at being an employee? It leads to impact there. And then what happens is this – if Satan can get you spending too much money here and working too many hours there, then you have neither time nor money for the church that was supposed to be the avenue for God to reach the whole world and encourage the believers.
If the devil can get us caught up with money he is able to affect every sphere of our lives – you can see why he works on that so hard. The Lord in his Word speaks about finances so much because when you get money wrong – it quickly creates idols in our hearts. And it impacts every part of God’s design for us.
God is always calling us to make a choice as to what we will put first in our lives.
This post was taken from the Real Life Ministries sermon series “First” – To watch the video of this sermon click below:
