1. Today is Week One in our study “What’s It All About?” We are taking a five-week walk through the issue of internal prioritization, what is really important to us. Knowing that we are all doing it together as brothers and sisters in church can be disarming and comforting. Last week we began our series of messages by asking a series of questions: What is life really all about? Is it all about me and should I live my life for the here and now? Is this all there is?

--And to answer those questions correctly we must ask the most important questions of life: Who is God? What is He like? What Does God Want From My Life?

2. You can summarize the Bible’s teaching on this question in just a few short words. He wants your whole life! There is no verse in the Bible – and I have read it all – that says you can follow Christ and live your life – any part of it – any way that you want to. The truth is that the Lord God wants all of you: Not 10%, not 20%, and not 50%, and he wants all of you because He is selfish or possessive. He knows for sure that He is the very best thing that can ever happen to you.

3. Let’s begin today’s message, “It’s All About God,” with a quote you have heard many times: “If God is not Lord of all He is not Lord at all.” When we make the declaration, “Jesus is Lord and Savior of my, it is not merely a statement of creedal belief we are talking about. It is not embraced Beliefs that will change my life, but the Presence of God’s Spirit received deeply in my soul and the Truth of God alive Shaping my Values that ultimately leads to life change!

--To know Jesus as Lord and Savior is actually make the choice to bring everything in my life into submission to Him.

4. In His kingdom manifesto, found in Matthew chapters 5 through 7, Jesus was attempting to help His disciples to understand what He valued, and subsequently what cherished values would change the world for the next 2000 years.

--Matthew 6:19 – 24 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. 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 both God and money.”

--Matthew 6:33 “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”

5. Jesus made it very clear what really matters most in Mark 12:30 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” That bold statement about knowing God and walking through life with God, in a deep and growing commitment to please the Lord, really doesn’t mince words does it? It is all about what or whom I choose to love from the inside out!

6. A. W. Tozer wrote this incredible word, which helps us to enter into our study of how we view God’s will and ways, our life, money and possessions. “It is difficult to study the issues of money and possessions without being impressed with the power they represent – the power to bless and the power to curse. Many of the problems in our community and in the church stem from our human inability to use money and possessions as God intended.”

--Dr Fred Smith, Christian businessman and writer wrote: “Perhaps money and things are such touchy subjects in church because there is no greater test to human ego than money and the Gospel confronts our ego.”

--One of the greatest things about walking through life in a deepening relationship with the Lord God is – the Blessedness of knowing that I really Own Nothing.

--When Jesus is Lord is a lifestyle and not merely creedal we are set free to see ourselves as stewards, as simply Managing His resources for Him until He is finished with them and calls us to live with Him in the place at which we are storing up true treasures by the ways we choose to live now.

7. In relation to this topic of what really matters in life and walking in such a way as to please the Lord God I was struck with the thoughts conveyed in Moses’ address to the children of Israel found in Deuteronomy 30. The context is that Moses is getting ready to die and to pass on leadership of the people to Joshua. He is attempting to give them one last word about what really matters to God. In the future if you go astray and are led away into captivity, seek the Lord and desire to know His grace and forgiveness. Let’s read what he says repetitively:

Deuteronomy 30:2, 3 “when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you.”

Verse 10b “Turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Verse 16 “For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands.”

Verses19b, 20 “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

8. As the passage unfolds Moses calls the people to love the Lord their God wholeheartedly, which is the Heartbeat of Commitment, there is an incredible word to them about what God would do for them in their hearts in response to their choice to love Him. Look with me at verse 6: “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendents so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul and live.”

--Circumcision is cutting away something useless in order to be bettered. Why does a medical professional circumcise a little boy? He is doing so to increase the sanctity and sensitivity. Why does God say he will circumcise the hearts of his people?

--He is telling us He will cut away what is spiritually useless to us in heaven in order to increase the Sanctity we live in and our Sensitivity to His leadership in our lives.

--And lets be honest here. Jesus said, “What is highly esteemed among humans is detestable to God.” God will cut away the things in our hearts that are crowding out spiritual life and health, things that are valued by the world system in which we live.

9. Before we look at the remainder of the message for today I want to give us just one more thing to think about as it relates to what we cherish in life. Truth is so obscure and outdated, and falsehood is so ingrained in our culture that unless we love and cherish the truth we will never know it!

I. God Is Completely Committed to You and Me:

1. God is completely committed to you and me to Love us with a love that surpasses knowledge.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his One and Only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness.”

2. God is completely committed to you and me to Redeem us from sin and its grasp, making us to be His own sons and daughters.

--I Peter 1:17 – 19 “Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”

--Colossians 1:13, 14 “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

3. God is completely committed to you and me to Forgive us of our sins, to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

Ephesians 1:7 “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace”

I John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

4. God is completely committed to you and me to Deliver us from the clutches of the enemy, sin, and temptation

Psalm 34:4 “I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.”

Verse 7 “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.”

Verses 17, 18 “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delvers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

II. What I Am Asked to Choose Between:

In Hebrews 11:1 – 12 the author is recounting the roll call of the heroes of the faith. He speaks of Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham. Then he writes this comment in Hebrews 11:13 – 16:

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were looking for a better country – a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

It is important that we grasp what is being said in that passage of Scripture. These heroes of the faith basically chose to live as though what they had here on earth, and for some of them it was considerable riches, were not their true treasure. They decided to live here as though they owned nothing and found the blessedness of amassing treasure in God’s heart!

Please walk through a deepening progression with me from the heart and life of Abraham, one of the men mentioned as looking for a heavenly city. It is my hope that we can all find ourselves in this progression as we see how God was working in the heart of one of His dearest friends!

1. The World’s Cheap Substitute Treasures – Abraham was a rich man in the goods of this world: sheep, cattle, camels, herds of all kinds, and goods of every sort. He was so wealthy that we read a bit later on that the Canaan land couldn’t support both he and his nephew Lot. But he wasn’t able to content his heart with the things this world affords. He had a hunger to know God and to walk with God so he left Ur of the Chaldees and headed for a land the Lord would show him.

--The truth is that we all have a God-ordained inner dissatisfaction, a hole in our hearts. Like Abraham, we all have to decide what really matters in life and the things the world offers us are a cheap substitute at best.

2. What I Can Provide for Myself – Abraham and Sarah knew they had been promised a son, by God but they decided God needed a little help delivering the goods. So they decided together that Abraham would take Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant, and make a child through what they knew to be their best initiative. There is tremendous hostility nation-to-nation in the Middle East today, because of that decision they made to provide for them rather than trust God.

--What you and I can provide for ourselves in life is not ultimately satisfying what we really need either. Things we can do or own will not fill the hole in our hearts any better than what Abraham and Sarah did fulfilled the promise of God to them.

3. The Provisions of God for me – Abraham was old enough to be Isaac’s great grandpa when Isaac was born. He quickly became the apple of Abraham’s eye and the object of his affection. One night God came to him and asked him to do the unthinkable. He told him to go to the region of Moriah and sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering on an altar. Can you imagine the agony in the old man’s heart? With a bit of imagination and a willingness to step into his shoes, I imagine him wrestling all night in prayer under the stars. How could he slay his own son? Even if he could get up the consent of his protesting heart how could he reconcile this with God’s promise, Genesis 21:12, “Through Isaac will your offspring be reckoned?”

--We are told in Scripture what Abraham did to reconcile it in his heart. He reasoned that he would do what God asked him to do and then trust that God was able to raise his son from the dead. This was the solution for his aching heart so sometime in the early morning, in humble and brokenhearted obedience, he and his boy set out for the region of Moriah.

--Hebrews 11:17 – 19 “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did received Isaac back from the dead.”

--The point of this illustration from Abraham’s life should be apparent but lets connect the dots. You and I are not to content ourselves with what God has provided for us and revel in the provisions we enjoy. We must get beyond how good He has been to us and love God first and foremost for who He is.

4. Complete Surrender to Knowing Jesus Only – Abraham moved beyond things he had been given to enjoy. Abraham moved beyond what he could provide for himself. He also moved beyond the provisions of God for his life, including his one and only son Isaac. He went after a personal walk with God alone as the object of His desire and affection. For that choice of love God permitted him to keep Isaac and provided another burnt offering that day.

--What God has provided for us, even including our most treasured relationships, cannot be permitted to have first place in our hearts. This is the calling of God to all of us who would walk with Him in Spirit and in truth. Nothing, no matter how good it is can be permitted to become treasure to us.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

III. What Commitment to God Looks Like in the Scriptures:

The Christian who is alive enough to want to know him/herself well at all will recognize the symptoms of the possession malady and will grieve to find them in his/her own heart. If we long to know and walk with God the truth is He will want to do something about the matter. God would be Lord of all or not Lord at all.

The Lord will work to circumcise our hearts as Christians today in similar ways as He worked in the lives of the children of Israel in the wilderness before they entered the Promised Land. The believer in Christ Jesus will recognize our part in this relationship with God is to be Committed to the Process of Cutting Away what stifles Sanctity and Sensitivity to God’s Leading in our lives!

Six Commitment Choices To Be Made:

1. Loving God supremely, as the first affection of my heart.

2. My Time prioritized with the Lord God having the opportunity for some of my best, most productive minutes of the day.

3. Making the choice of Servanthood first to the Lord and then to my spouse, to my brothers and sisters, and to those who aren’t yet my brothers and sisters in Christ.

4. Living for the ability to be a Blessing in someone else’s life.

5. Storing up for myself true Treasures, in the heart of God, where nothing rusts or corrupts

6. Embracing deep and abiding Generosity with the things the Lord has permitted me to use

WELCOME