Jeff Schreve - To The King Who Is Priority #1
Summary:
Through the prophet Haggai in Haggai chapter 1, God confronts His returned exiles for prioritizing their own comfortable homes while leaving His temple in ruins, showing that they’ve pushed Him out of first place in their lives. The preacher ties this to the biblical call for Christ the King to have preeminence in everything, as in Colossians 1:18, warning that self-centered priorities lead to empty lives and divine opposition. The key takeaway is to consider our ways, circumstances, and the opportunity to repent, obey, and put the eternal King first, receiving His blessing and presence in return.
The Alligator Pool Challenge
A very wealthy man had a party and invited a bunch of people, a lot of his friends, associates, and acquaintances. They all came to his house, and this very, very rich and wealthy man had some exotic animals. In one part of his house, where he had a big outdoor Olympic-sized swimming pool, he had it populated with alligators, and he liked to go out there and watch the alligators. For his big party, he had the people come, and he said, «I want you to come see my pool of alligators.»
So they all gathered around, saw his pool of alligators, and the rich man said this. He looked at the guys and said, «Hey guys, I have a challenge. If any man is brave enough and has enough courage to swim across the pool and fight the alligators off, swim across the pool, I will do one of three things for you: I’ll either give you five million dollars cash right now, or I’ll give you my mansion in Hawaii, or I will give you my beautiful young daughter, who is in her twenties, to be your wife.» They saw his daughter and said, «Wow!»
As soon as he said that, boom, there was a splash in the water, and all the people looked. There was a guy swimming for his life. He was swimming so fast, darting this way and that way to avoid the alligators. He finally got through the Olympic-sized pool, reached the other side, and jumped out, huffing and puffing. The rich man came up to him and said, «Man, that was awesome! That was amazing! So what will it be? Will it be the cash?» He said no. «Will it be the house in Hawaii?» He said no. «Is it my daughter?» He replied, «No, I don’t want any of that. All I want to know is the name of the guy who pushed me in!»
Priorities and the King
Priorities. We’re in a series about the king. The king who is priority number one—that’s our message for today. Our series has been wrapped around 1 Timothy 1:17, where Paul recounts his own salvation and then breaks into a doxology. 1 Timothy 1:17 is a doxology, extolling the greatness of God: «Now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be glory and honor forever and ever.» The Apostle Paul was so in love with the king; he was so focused on the king. The king was his everything. He said in the letter to the Colossians, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, the king of kings and Lord of lords, «He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.» Now watch this, so that he himself might come to have first place in everything—first place in everything. That’s where the king is supposed to be. That’s what he’s supposed to have—first place in everything, first place in your life. First place in everything in your life.
So does the king really have first place in you? That’s the question! Does he have first place in your social life? First place in your dating life? First place in your business life? First place in your marital life? In your family life? How about this one—first place in your financial life? Did you know that there is a direct connection between your heart and your wallet? A direct connection! Jesus made that connection in the book of Matthew. He said, «Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.» So there’s a connection between the heart and the wallet. Does the Lord have first place there?
The Story of God’s Old Testament People
You know the story of God’s Old Testament people is a story that’s not so unlike our story. They would do well for a while, and then they would get complacent. They would seek God first, their King first; He was the priority. But then they would get complacent, and they often got complacent when God began to bless them. The Lord even warned that in Deuteronomy 8 before they ever went into the promised land. He said, «Listen, be careful! Beware! Because when you come into the promised land and I bless you there, be careful and beware that you don’t forget me. Because it’s going to be very easy for you to forget who is the one bringing you all these blessings.»
Then He said, «If you forget me, the party’s over for you because I will back off of you if you refuse to honor me as your king.» So the story of God’s Old Testament people is that they forgot Him so much of the time. They forgot Him, and the Lord would have to bring hardship upon them. He’d have to put the screws to them so they would turn back to Him. The scripture says in the Book of Psalms that when He killed them, then they sought Him, and then they realized that the Lord Most High is their rock.
In 722 BC, the kingdom split after Solomon passed off the scene, and his son Rehoboam became king. Rehoboam was a big idiot, and the kingdom split. Ten of the twelve tribes of Israel said, «We’re not going to follow you anymore, Rehoboam, and we’re not going to follow the house of Judah in the house of David.» They didn’t, and they became their own kingdom. The Bible talks about them; it calls them the Northern Kingdom and calls them Samaria. It calls them Ephraim—all those are synonyms, calls them Israel. All those are synonyms for the Northern Kingdom. The Northern Kingdom departed from the Lord very quickly, and in 722 BC, they were taken over by the Assyrians and scattered abroad. We call them the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
But the Southern Kingdom, with the capital in Jerusalem, made up of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin—that kingdom is called the tribe of Judah or the Kingdom of Judah. They were more faithful to the Lord, but eventually, they fell apart, and God raised up Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. Babylon came into the Southern Kingdom, and in 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar came in, slapped around God’s people there in Jerusalem, and took captives back to Babylon. That happened in 605 BC. Nebuchadnezzar was letting them know he was the boss. Then he came back in 597 BC, took more captives back to Babylon, and then in 586 BC, because Judah hadn’t learned that they better not go up against Babylon, they looked to Egypt to help them fight against Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar came in, besieged the city, and destroyed it. He broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned the temple of God, destroyed it, and took the gold and silver utensils that were in the temple—the temple was filled with millions upon millions of dollars' worth of gold. He took all that back to Babylon and left them just devastated and destroyed. It was just awful.
As I told you last week, the Book of Lamentations—five chapters of lament—is all about the destruction of the city of Jerusalem. Jeremiah the Prophet just sees it; he’s just weeping, can’t believe what happened to Jerusalem. So in the history, they go back. So many of them are now living in Babylon, but then Babylon gets taken over, and in 539 BC, there’s a new kingdom on the block. They took over Babylon—they defeated Babylon, and that’s the Medo-Persian Empire. Their king is Cyrus, and Cyrus allows the Jews to go back to Jerusalem, to rebuild their city and mainly to rebuild the temple. Zerubbabel, you might have heard that name before; his friends called him Bubba, takes 50,000 people back with him to go to Jerusalem for the purpose of rebuilding the temple of God because that’s the heartbeat of Jewish life—the temple of God, with the sacrifices and all the things that they did there.
Well, they were doing good for a very short while, rebuilding the temple inside of a year, and then they hit opposition. You know what happened to them—they quit building the temple. Year after year after year after year, they were just saying, «Oh, it’s not time to do this. We need to work on other things.» The Lord wasn’t their priority anymore. The King wasn’t their priority, and in 520 BC, God sent Haggai the prophet to His people in Jerusalem, and he had a pretty stern message for them.
Haggai’s Message from God
The Book of Haggai—if you have your Bible, turn there; it’s the third to the last book in the Old Testament. Go to Matthew and take a left; you’re three books in, and then you hit Haggai, just a little book—the second shortest book in the Old Testament—just two chapters, but it’s packed full of truth. It says in Haggai chapter 1, verse 1, «In the second year of Darius the King, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Josedech, the high priest, saying, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts: This people says the time has not come, even the time for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt.'» Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, «Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate? Now therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. You have so much, but harvest little. You eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied. You drink, but there is not enough to become drunk. You put on clothing, but no one is warm enough, and he who earns earns wages to put into a purse with holes,» says the Lord of hosts. «Consider your ways.»
Three Admonitions from the Lord
I want you to notice with me today three admonitions from the Lord. An admonition is an authoritative counsel or warning, and God sent Haggai the prophet to give His people an authoritative word of warning, and I think it’s a word today for every believer in every age to check our hearts and make sure—is the Lord really number one? Is He really the priority?
So the first admonition God wants us to consider is our ways. That’s what He says in verse five and verse seven: «Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.» Now the Message Bible puts it this way: «Take a good hard look at your life; think it over.» That’s what «consider your ways» means. It’s like, «Hey, you need to sober up. You need to look in the mirror. You need to take a good hard look at yourself and the direction you’re going. Look at your life!»
The problem that the people had is they went back— they went back all jazzed up, man! I mean, they’d been living in Babylon for a long time, and now they get to go back to Jerusalem. I mean, Jerusalem was everything to those folks, and they were excited. They went back, but you go back, and it’s a horrible place because it had just been decimated. But they go back and are like, «We’re gonna rebuild!» They were excited; they got a T-shirt, «We’re rebuilding the temple!»
But then, you know, you run into snags, and they ran into some snags. They built the foundation, but then some opposition came, and some difficulties came. They said, «Well, we gotta stop. We can’t do this anymore.» So they took a little break, but their little break turned into a 15-year break, and God wasn’t pleased at all because He was on the back burner. God doesn’t like the back burner. The King of the universe doesn’t sit well with being on the back burner; you have bigger fish to fry!
When he’s the biggest fish ever—by a gazillion! God says there’s something that you’re doing that’s more important than I am now before we throw those people under the bus who lived back in the day of Haggai in 520 BC, we need to remember something: we are so much like those people. Hey, it’s easy to let our self-centered agenda become the priority. That’s what happened to them.
They went back saying the Lord is the priority; building the temple is the priority; making beautiful again the City of God and the temple of God—that was their priority. But then they hit some difficulties, and they started to drift away from that, and all of a sudden, it was, «Well, building my paneled house—that’s the priority! It’s not time to build the house of the Lord; it’s time for me to work on my house.» That’s what God said to him! «Oh, it’s not time to build my house. But it’s time to build your house and to build your house nicely.»
Because when it says that you dwell in your paneled houses while my house lies in ruins, a paneled house is what they did for palaces. They would take wood, and they would have to work on that wood to get it into panels. They would put the panels on the house. We’re not talking about them building a shanty; we’re talking about them building a nice house for themselves while God’s house lies in ruins. Well, the Lord didn’t like that at all!
But it’s easy for us to follow in their footsteps and to get self-centered and selfish and let that take priority. You know that is the first temptation in the Bible. When the devil came to Eve and said, «You shall eat that fruit— the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God says, ‘Don’t eat it nor touch it, lest you die! ’» And he said, «You surely shall not die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.» And that was the temptation: «Hey, I can be like God!»
Well, that would be to be like God because then I could be the center and the substance, the sum of everything! I wouldn’t need to depend upon Jehovah God because I could be God. That was the temptation. It wasn’t to fall down; it was to be lifted up—to be like God! You and I deal with that all the time. It’s the big «I.» It’s all about me! Life is all about me, and my agenda is what matters.
When I was selling chemicals for a chemical company, my boss told me. He said, «Jeff, remember WII FM.» I said, «WII FM? What is that?» He said, «It’s an acronym: What’s In It For Me!» Remember that when you’re calling on prospective customers. «What’s in it for me?» Because everyone is interested in what’s in it for me. Every prospective client is interested in, «If I buy from you, Jeff, how is this going to help me? How is this going to get me recognition? How is this going to make my job easier? How is this maybe going to get me promoted? What’s in it for me?»
Why do you sell with WII FM if you’re a salesman? Because everyone is selfish at the core! Everyone is self-centered at the core, and every Christian has to deal with the issue of selfishness and self-centeredness.
Hey, it’s easy to let that take priority! It’s easy to say, «What’s really important here is what’s going on in my life, and not so much God’s agenda, but my agenda.» And the Lord says, «Oh no, that’s not the case at all!» But not only is it easy to let our self-centered agenda take priority, it’s easy to make excuses as to why it’s not the right time.
Well, it’s not the right time! He said in verse 2, «Thus says the Lord of hosts: This people says the time has not come, even the time for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt.» Haggai, you don’t understand. It’s not time! It’s not time for us to do this. I mean, we’re still getting settled here! I know we’ve been here for 16 years, but we’re still just kind of getting settled in—1617 years, something like that!
And he said, «It’s not the right time!» Huh? It’s time for you to dwell in your paneled houses, but it’s not time for you to rebuild the house of the Lord? Is that what you’re telling me? They’re like, «Well, yeah, that’s kind of what we’re telling you!» Excuses!
It’s easy to make excuses as to why it’s not the right time for you, for me, to go all out for the Lord. It’s easy to make excuses for that! You know what Billy Sunday said about an excuse? He said, «An excuse is the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie.» So, the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie! Like sausage—you know when you make sausage and you stuff that stuff in the casing? You don’t want to go on YouTube and see how they make sausage because you’ll never eat it! It’s some nasty-looking stuff the way they make it, but that’s a lie, or that’s an excuse—the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie!
Benjamin Franklin said this: «I never knew a man who was good at making excuses who was good at anything else.» Do you make excuses in your life? Make excuses as to why you can’t really walk with God, why you can’t really serve God, why you can’t really give to the Lord your time, your talent, your treasure—why you can’t do that?
You know, sometimes people say, «Well, Jeff, don’t get all worked up about it because I’m in college right now, and I’m just waiting. I’m going to do this later! I’m going to get serious about the Lord after college.» And then college comes, and college goes, and then they say, «Well, I’m gonna get serious about the Lord after I get married. I need to get married, and once I get married, then it will be easier for me to really plug in.»
And then they get married: «Well, I’m gonna get—you know, we just need to have kids! Once we have kids, then it’ll be okay.» And then they have kids: «Well, you know, our kids are little; they’re sick a lot! I don’t want to take them to the nursery because then they could get really sick or I could get somebody else sick, so I’m gonna wait till the kids are old enough.» And then the kids are old enough: «Well, you know, it’d be easier if we didn’t have the kids to come! So I’m gonna wait till the kids are grown and gone.»
It’s always later, later, later—time for you to do the things you want to do, but it’s not time—the time is not right, even the time to rebuild the house of the Lord, even the time to put God first.
Listen, it is always the right time to put the Lord first! It’s always the right time! I don’t care what’s going on in your life. I can tell you with certainty today that whatever you’re doing, if you are seeking your own agenda, it is time right now, today, to give up your own agenda and embrace the agenda of God because it’s time for Him to come to have first place in everything.
Now, to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever! Are you giving Him honor? Are you giving Him glory? Are you giving Him first place? It’s easy to make excuses, and it’s easy to lose sight of the greatness and priority of God.
Why was it so important to God for them to rebuild the temple? Because God dwelled there. That was the house of God with His presence there in the Holy of Holies. That’s where the people would come. That’s where the sacrifices were made. That was critical to the life of Israel, and for His house to lie desolate, what an insult! What a slander! What a mockery to the king! And the Lord wasn’t pleased with that at all; He was very offended.
Now, some years later, after they built the temple, the people in Malachi’s day, the last book of the Old Testament, would start—they did the same thing. They started treating the Lord like He was some kind of old shoe. They weren’t giving Him the honor that was due Him, and the Lord said to those people who were bringing mangy, flea-bitten offerings to Him, He says this: «Malachi 1:14: But cursed be the swindler who has a male in his flock and vows it, but sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord, for I am a great King,» says the Lord of hosts, «and my name is feared among the nations!»
And why are you giving me your scraps—your leftovers—when I am a great king? Says the Lord of hosts. Did you know that in the little book of Haggai, that terminology for the Lord, that designation for the Lord, the Lord of hosts, is used ten times? The Lord of hosts—what does that mean? Yahweh Sabaoth in Hebrew—Jehovah Sabaoth—the Lord of angel armies, the Lord all-powerful, the God who is over the armies of the hosts of heaven. He is the great, the mighty, awesome God! He does not show partiality nor take a bribe!
«I’m a great King,» says the Lord of hosts, «and my name is to be feared among the nations!» We sometimes get a little too casual with God. Hey, you can get close to God, but don’t ever get casual with God. You know what happened to Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus chapter 10? Moses' nephews? God was setting everything up in the Book of Leviticus—how you come before Me and all that! They came before Him, burned strange fire before the Lord, and God killed them. God killed them just like that! Why? Because I’m a holy God! He says, «You don’t come before Me any way you want! You come My way—My name is to be feared!»
Consider Your Circumstances
Hey, God wants us to consider our ways! Secondly, God wants us to consider our circumstances—not just our ways, not just the way we are going, but also the way things are going! The way things are going in our lives!
Thus says the Lord of hosts: «Consider your ways! Take a good hard look inside and take a good hard look outside and see what’s going on in your circumstances.» Look what He says in verse 6: «You’ve sown much but harvested little; you eat but there is not enough to be satisfied; you drink but there’s not enough to become drunk; you put on clothing but no one is warm enough, and he who earns earns wages to put into a purse with holes.»
You say, «What is He saying there?» He’s saying this: the one who will not honor God, God won’t honor him! If you will not honor God, God will not honor you! These people were not honoring God, and God was not honoring them! And so they would sow a lot as farmers and reap a small crop. It’s like, «What’s the deal? I should have a lot bigger crop than that!» Well, you’re not honoring God, so God’s not honoring you!
Many of you remember the name Eric Liddell. Eric Liddell was the Olympic athlete called the Flying Scotsman. He ran in the Olympics in 1924. They made a movie about his life called Chariots of Fire. Do you remember the story of Eric Liddell? He was supposed to run his main race—the hundred meters—but they were having the race for the hundred meters on Sunday. Eric Liddell was a committed Christian who had a personal conviction. «No, I’m not running on Sunday!»
And so they said, «Well, that’s when the race is!» He said, «I can’t do it.» And they said, «Well, what are you gonna do?» He said, «I’m gonna get in another race.» And so he began to train, but he didn’t have much time. He began to train just for a few months for the 400-meter race. That wasn’t his race!
You know, before the Olympics, he ran his best trial in the 400 meters was forty-nine point six seconds. Well, that’s not chopped liver! I mean, he could win here at forty-nine point six! You know he’d be the best runner at Pleasant Grove or T High or Arkansas High or Liberty! Hey, you’re awesome! But when you’re trying to be in the Olympics, that’s not all that great!
And so he was getting ready to run that event, and no one gave him any chance! Somebody handed him a piece of paper right before he ran that event, and it was from 1 Samuel 2:30: «The one who honors me, him will I honor.» The one who honors me, him will I honor! And he ran that race, and God honored him, and his time in that race was two seconds faster than he had ever run it before!
Listen, any of you there in track and field, you know you don’t shave off two seconds from your best race, but he did! He won the gold medal, and he gave all the glory to God! The one who honors me, him will I honor! And the reverse of that is true: the one who doesn’t honor me, God says, «I won’t honor you!»
And not only does God not honor us when we don’t honor Him, God will work against those who will not honor Him. This is a really eye-opening and frightening thing. We’re talking about admonitions here—strong warnings.
Look what He says in verse 9: «You look for much, but behold, it comes to little. When you bring it home, I blow it away. Why?» declares the Lord of hosts. «Because of My house, which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house.» God says, «You’re leaving My house just lying in ruins! You’re running to your own house! You’re making your own house so nice and so beautiful—your paneled expensive house—and My house is a mess! And you don’t think anything about it!»
You just say, «Well, it’s not time to work on God’s house; I need to work on my house.» God says, «No, you’re not honoring Me; I won’t honor you!» And secondly, «You’re not honoring Me! I’m going to work against you!»
This is kind of serious business—to put the King on the back burner of your life! Serious business! You claim to be a Christian, and you’re not living for the Lord with all your heart—serious business! Even the church in Ephesus—they were doing so many things right! Revelation chapter 2, and the Lord says, «But I have this against you. Verse 4: You’ve left your first love! Repent and do the deeds you did at first, or I’m coming quickly, and I’ll remove your lampstand from you. I’ll take the church out unless you repent!»
Because God is the God who deserves our very best! I love the line from Dr. Phil when Dr. Phil has somebody on his program. He begins to talk to them about what’s going on in their lives, and they give their explanation as to why they’re doing what they’re doing, and he says to them, «Well, how’s that working for you?»
So this is the Lord saying to His people, in effect, «Hey, how’s it working for you doing what you’re doing? Putting your agenda above My agenda, working on your house and not working on My house! How’s that working for you?» Me lining up against you, me blowing away what you are working for! It’s not working well at all!
You can’t afford not to honor the Lord from your wealth! Why? Because you don’t want to be in a position where God says, «You’re not honoring Me; I’m gonna start blowing away what you have!» Well, how can anyone handle that? I can’t handle that! You can’t handle that! We can’t handle that! We want the blessing of God! We don’t want the breath of God blowing it away! That’s what they were experiencing, and they desperately needed to remember what Solomon had written in Proverbs 3, verse 9: «Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of your produce, so that your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine!»
Consider Our Opportunity
God says, «Consider your ways! God says consider your circumstances!» And then thirdly, and finally, God says to us, «Consider our opportunity!» We have an opportunity just as they had an opportunity, and God said to them in verse 8, «Go up to the mountains, bring wood, and rebuild the temple, that I may be pleased with it and be glorified,» says the Lord. He wasn’t being, He wasn’t pleased with what they were doing—He wasn’t being glorified there! But He says, «If you’ll do that, I’ll be glorified!»
Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua, the son of Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him. And the people showed reverence for the Lord! To show reverence for the Lord means that you stand in awe of Him! You fear Him! You start to recognize that He is a great King, and His name is to be praised; His name is to be feared! That He is to be the agenda, because it’s all about Him!
It’s not about us; it’s all about Him! Consider the opportunity that they had! They heard, and they obeyed! Hey, we show reverence for the King when we put Him first, when you put Him ahead of everything else, when you put Him ahead of your paneled houses, when you put Him ahead of your agenda, when you put Him ahead of what you want to do, and you say, «Lord, it’s not what I want to do!» You say with Jesus, «Not my will, but Thine be done!» When you do that, you show reverence to God, and God is pleased with that! God is glorified with that!
Just as He says in His word, some of us think, «Well, we could never please the Lord; we could never glorify the Lord!» You can if you obey Him! You can if you go and do what He says! We show reverence for the King when we put Him first, and we receive a blessing from the King when we put Him first! Verse 13: «Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord spoke by the commission of the Lord to the people, saying, 'I am with you, ' declares the Lord!» You’re gonna do this! They obeyed, and God said, «I’m with you, and I’m giving you thumbs up and my smile, and my favor, and my good pleasure is gonna be upon you! I’m not gonna blow away what you do anymore! I’m gonna start blessing what you do!
Your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine! You’ll be a beacon of hope and light and love and joy to the community!» That’s what the Lord was saying! Now I think one of the greatest Christians that I have ever read about, ever had the privilege of meeting—he has gone home to be with the Lord—he died in 2003. But one of the greatest Christians who ever lived was Dr. Bill Bright. Dr. Bill Bright got serious in his relationship with the Lord in the late ’40s, early ’50s, and in 1951, he made a contract with God, signed his name on the bottom.
He was a businessman; he had a candy company. He was a businessman and said, «I just know things in terms of business terms!» So he made a contract with God—signed his name at the bottom—left everything blank, and said, «From this point forward, I am a slave of Jesus Christ!» And he gave everything over to the Lord. He said 24 hours later, God put in his heart the vision of Campus Crusade for Christ. Campus Crusade for Christ is a gigantic ministry—25,000 missionaries around the world and 190 countries they come from Campus Crusade for Christ. Bill Bright wrote that little track back in the ’50s, the Four Spiritual Laws; that’s been distributed and sold and distributed 2.5 billion times! It’s been all over the place!
They had the Jesus film. God has used that guy, and did use that guy, in such a great way! You know Campus Crusade for Christ, if you go on and look on their website, that ministry is about a 650 million dollar a year ministry! It is huge! Bill Bright was president, founder and president for 50 years! He never took any money from any of the books that he wrote! He wrote a hundred books and booklets. He never took anything from his salary as the head of a 650 million dollar organization of $65,000!
It’s just unheard of! He knew that everything belonged to God, and he wanted to use his life to glorify the king and honor God in everything that he did! He wasn’t a perfect man! I’d like to be like him!
I don’t know where you are today, but I want to tell you that the king is worthy! And it starts by giving Him your heart, and it continues by, every day, giving Him your heart first place! And you start off every day and you just surrender anew afresh to Him. You offer yourself as a living sacrifice to Him, and all your time, and all your talent, and your treasure-it just all belongs to Him! You hold all things loosely, 'cause it’s all to the King!