Money | Colossians 1:15-18

Let's just show hands. This will be really easy. I need to know what I'm working with. How many of you actually really love Monopoly, the board game Monopoly? All right, good, good, good. Good to know this. About 40 years ago, my aunt Rosie who I've told you so much about, she decided that as a schoolteacher, she thought teaching me how to play Monopoly would help me understand math and some basic economic principles. And I can confidently tell you, 40 years later, I hate Monopoly. I hate it. One of the reasons I hate it is because, man, all the time, all the energy, all the effort, and then at two o'clock in the morning, when someone finally wins, what happens? It all just goes back in the box, man, like nobody ever takes their Monopoly money and then takes it to Chase Bank to deposit. Nobody puts it in a jar and bears it in the yard, nobody puts it under their mattress. Nobody wears their Monopoly game piece, like a trophy, and by the way, if you pick the thimble, something ain't right, all right, nobody does that at all, just goes back in the box. And one of the fundamental questions I have for us today, as we just jump into a new series today, we're going to be talking about this thing called money, is what makes real money different than Monopoly money. Like what makes real money different than Monopoly money? In order to kind of get at this question, we're going to do some Bible study today. So I hope you got your Bibles with you, hope you got your journals with you, your keyword today is money and we're going to be in three different places. I promise you can do this. This is Luke chapter 12, we're going to pick it up in verses 13 through 21 that we're going to flip over to Matthew chapter 6 and then we're going to be in Colossians chapter 1. Now if you got to pick one of those, if you're like, I ain't doing sword drills today, that's

an old school church joke for 12 of you right there. If you're not doing that, then just go to Colossians chapter 1, because really in essence what we're doing today is we're going to unpack what one word means, okay? But as we do that, let's dive into Luke chapter 12. This is Jesus. He's preaching a sermon and watch what happens. Someone in the crowd said to him, said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." So Jesus is in the middle of this teaching, big old crowd, and some dude is like, "Hey, stop preaching. I need you to help me figure this thing out with my brother." He's the older brother. He got the inheritance. He won't share with me. So would you please do that? So basically like a domestic dispute breaks out in the middle of his sermon. It happens more often than you might think. Just so you see some of those elbows, y'all throw at each other, now keep going. Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" He's like, "I'm not Judge Judy. Why are you asking me about this?" Then notice who he addresses this to. He said to them, "This is to the crowd, watch out, be on guard against all kinds of greed." And I think he's pointing at the dude who interrupted the sermon in that moment or he's at least like, you know, pointing with his eyes. Life doesn't consist in an abundance of possessions. Now you may be here today going, "Actually Jesus it does." Like Jesus, I don't know if you're paying attention, but that's actually like the thing that life is all about, like trying to get as much money so you can get as much stuff so you can get as much experiences before you die.

Like Jesus, that is what life is all about. Now you would be right if it wasn't for one fundamental reality that Jesus is going to bring to the table and something that he unpacks next. Watch. He tells a story and he told them, everybody, this parable, the ground of a certain rich man, yielded an abundant harvest and he thought to himself, "What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops." Then he said, "This is what I'll do. I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones and there I will store all my surplus grain and I'll say to myself, you got plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink and be merry. Be myself, and I, that is what life is all about. You would be totally right to ink, eat and drink and be merry if it wasn't for these next two words, but God, but God." That changes everything, doesn't it? Like if there's an eternal God, these temporary things, all of a sudden don't have as much value, do they? The first four words of the Bible in the beginning God fundamentally alter the reality of literally anything and everything that we could ever talk about, but God, Jesus keeps going. He said to him, "God said to this man on the parable, 'You fool, this very night your life will be demanded from you. You built all these big old barns to put all your cool stuff in it and guess what you're not going to get to do? Enjoy any of it. You certainly can't take any of it with you. It's all going back in the box, bro. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself, answer not you? but is not rich toward God. It all goes back in the box. Which means it would be really foolish,

much like losing a relationship over monopoly is dumb, right? Like we all objectively can say that. Like you're just playing a board game and now you'd all don't talk to each other till next Thanksgiving. Like that's a dumb way to lose a relationship, right? Because it all goes back in the box. It's all temporary, that's foolish, and Jesus is saying actually spending your life in the same pursuit of temporary things that the expensive eternal things is also foolish. Now flip over to Matthew chapter six, okay? This is an easy one to get to. First book of the New Testament, just going over there. While you're getting there, let me address two elephants in the room, okay? First elephant in the room. Some of you, you've been faithful followers of Jesus for a while, maybe you've been at Southland for a long time, and you're objectively sitting here right now going, Scott, what are you doing, bro? What are you doing? Things are going good around here. Like, Scott, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but a few weeks ago at fall kickoff, we had like the highest non-holiday attendance in the history of Southland Christian Church. The week since we've been packed out across all of our campuses, as of this morning,

we baptized 1,012 people in this church. So yeah, that's where we're celebrating, but still, yeah, yeah, awesome. Some of you are like, why on earth would you talk about one of the two things that you're not supposed to talk about in church, money and politics you're not supposed to talk about in church, right? Shorter answer is wrong. Longer answer is just simply this, this is my framework. Like, listen, I say this all the time. I'm just delivering the mail, I'm not writing it, I'm speaking the words of Jesus. That's what we're unpacking today, is the words of Jesus. So here's what I think. If speaking the words of Jesus somehow derails what's going on around here, guess what? What's going on around here ain't of Jesus. So I have literally no fear of unpacking the words of Jesus before us today. Now the second elephant in the room, some of you are like, my friend invited me, and or maybe you're like, I just got stuck in traffic. I don't even know where we are right now, but all of your worst suspicions of big churches and preachers on TV are coming true right now. You're like, he's literally up there talking about money right now. I have such good news for you if that's you.

God doesn't want anything from you today. Your purse is safe, your wallet is safe, your bill fall, all the stuff is safe, and it's safe not only from God, but it's safe from us, so don't worry. God doesn't want anything from you today. I have way more difficult news to deliver to you. God wants you, he wants you. I actually believe that in God's sovereignty, the maker of heaven and earth orchestrated things in such a way as to get you to this place in this moment to hear these words from him that he loves you so much, that he sent his one and only son for you so that you could have life eternal that begins now and life abundant. So actually, if you're here today and you don't know Jesus, our hope and prayer for you is that you receive something today, and it's amazing, it's called grace, and our bad history will be open all day today so that you can surrender your life to Jesus. So there it is, there's the sermon in the middle of the sermon. Let's go to Matthew chapter six, all right? With those elephants dead at our feet, all right. Do not, Jesus says, this is the most famous sermon. Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moths and vermin destroyed and where thieves break in and steal, but rather store up for yourselves treasures in heaven

where moths and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. Anybody else like me and you hate the whole rental car experience? Yeah, oh yes and amen, right here, all right, I'm not a fan of it 'cause usually that's on the back end of like flying and so you're already flustered and frustrated, you get to the Hertz counter, there's 500 people, one person working. So when I've had a rental car, can I just tell you what I've never, ever, ever even thought to do, drive it through a car wash. Never crossed my mind. We do have one person on our staff named Gordon Walls who I know has actually done that. That's a diagnosable thing right there. I don't know what that's all about. But there's never been a part of me that's gotten in the car and thought, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna put new rims on this thing. Put some new tires on him, we get a new paint job, like I'm gonna get a nice sound system installed in here. Why? Because in a few days I'm gonna bring this mid-sized SUV that smells like a combination of weed and body odor back to y'all with as little investment as possible. Like I don't even want to pump gas into this thing. I don't want to spend anything more than I have to on this. You have never checked into a hotel room and thought we should redo the bathroom.

Called some contractors to the Marriott, you know? Because you're there temporarily. So why would we invest so much into temporary things at the expense of the eternal? And so the question becomes like, what would it look like to invest in eternal things? And to get there, we first and foremost have to wrestle with this very famous thing Jesus said. This is just a fact for where your treasure is, that place where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be also. That's just true, like if you actually wanna know, like don't, a lot of times, let's just be honest, we don't really wanna know reality. We'd rather close our eyes and pretend that something else is true other than what is true, but if you actually wanna know who or what is first and foremost in your life, there's actually a way to do that, and all you have to do according to Jesus is look at the receipts, where your money goes, reveals what you and I believe to be the most important thing in our life. That's facts. Our friend, Joby Martin, says it this way. What we do with our money, both reveals and in fact, steers our hearts. So not only does it diagnose where our hearts are, it reveals it, but it continues to steer where our hearts go every time we make those deposits.

That's the distinction between real money and monopoly money. It has a massive impact on our souls. See in the American framework, we have basically three different ways that we have a tendency to view money. The first way that we have a tendency to view money is simply this, what's mine is mine? That's called greed. That's called selfishness. That's the man in the parable. What will I do with my stuff for myself so that I, I, I, I, I, it's all for me. The second paradigm in America is simply this. What's yours is mine? Know what you call that? Stealing, that's called stealing. When the government does it, we call it socialism, all right? That's another sermon for another day. See, I told you politics, we'll get there, all right? But listen, that's just government-funded stealing. That's what that's called. Here's, here's what the Bible prescribes. What's mine is actually God's. What's mine belongs to him. And the reality is the way we view God first and money through the filter of him will actually affect and infect our souls at literally every level. That's what Jesus goes on to say next. And this is interesting because if you just poached,

like if you take these verses out of context, you're like, Jesus, what in the world are you talking about? But in the context of this sermon where he's talking about money, this is what it means. He says, the eye is the lamp of the body. It's the filter. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? The way you view God and the way you view money in light of who God is and what he's done will affect and infect everything in your life. And then Jesus lands this little section of his most famous sermon with some more famous words. No one can serve two masters, facts. Either you're gonna hate one and love the other or you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. But you cannot serve both God and money. My pop-all who I've told you so much about, when I was a young man, he used to take me fishing down at Lake Cumberland and Laurel Lake all the time. He had a little fishing boat. One of the first things he ever taught me was Scott, you get both feet in the boat or both feet on the dock. But don't stay in that place where you got one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat.

Why? 'Cause you'll fall in and you'll get crushed between the two. And some of us, that's our story. One foot on, one foot off. And you are currently getting crushed because the reality is you cannot serve both God and money. Money makes an awesome servant. Makes a terrible God. It's a terrible task master. The pursuit of money above all else, let's just put the pretense down and let's just get real. How many of us, if we were raising our hands, we don't have to do that today, but how many of us would have to admit? Yeah, we've lost marriages because of money. We've lost friendship over money. We've lost businesses over money. We've lost relationship with children over money. You don't have a relationship with your grandkids because everything's been sacrificed on the altar of money. Money is a false God and like all false gods, it lies. It doesn't deliver on its promises. Here's the fundamental lie of money. Get more of me and I'll satisfy you. Get more of me and I'll satisfy you. I give you all kinds of examples. do you need and his response was simply this, just a little more. Have you noticed that dynamic in your life? The number that you thought, oh man, if I could ever just see that in my bank statement,

that right there, that would be what, enough to do what, satisfied. And when you got that number, were you satisfied, was it enough? And the answer is no. The problem is some of us are on the front end right now going, well, I haven't actually lived that yet. I think I will be the exception to the rule of all of humankind that I'll be the first person that when that number says that, I will be fully satisfied and you won't. This doesn't matter if you're a spender or a saver. By the way, if you ever wonder if God has a sense of humor, here's what God does. I don't know if you know, let's do more crowd participation. How many of you, by nature, you're just more of a spender? You're like, my hands up. And you might as well raise your hand because the saver sitting next to you is going to point you here in a second. So how many of you are a saver? Yeah, so proud. I'm godly. I'm godly. If you ever wonder if God has a sense of humor, here's what he does. He finds a spender and he finds a saver and he makes them fall in love so they can fight for 50 years, right? If not, yeah, amen and amen. My wife is a saver. I am a spender. We're going on 26 years of marriage. She has wanted to murder me more than 26 times, a lot of times. Many, many, many, many, many times. When we were first married, we were so poor, we were living in this little duplex downtown off Waller Avenue, had paper thin walls. Our landlord lived on the other side.

She was a chain smoker who worked in the pulmonary of the hospital. That's always fascinating to me. She loved soap operas. So we could hear days of our lives all the time and smell cigarettes and it was infested with mice and we were super poor. So what we would do if we wanted to take a date night is we would actually take wedding gifts that we had been given. Some of y'all have done this and we would return them to like Target or wherever. We get the money back. So thank you to some of you because you gave us like a vase or something. Thank you. I appreciate that. And we would take that money and this was a great date night for us. Some of you are going to amen this one. We would go to Applebee's for half-price appetizers back in the day. And if you had a little bit left over, you could hit up Blockbuster, rent a movie and go home. That was heaven right there. Eventually, saving enough money to get this little starter home. And the way this works back in the 1900s, some of you, you would have to balance your checkbook. And so my wife was in charge of balancing the checkbook and which meant I had to turn in my receipts to her all the time. This is a very demeaning thing. I didn't like it, all right? Turn in my receipts and so she would always do that in the kitchen. I'd be in the living room because I didn't want to be in the room and she would inevitably yell at me. And so she yells at me one day, "Hey, what did you spend $50 on at the coffee shop?" And my response from my recliner, I think I was watching football, was like, "Nothing.

I didn't spend $50 on anything at the coffee shop." She said, "Well, that's funny because I got a receipt right here that's $50 that you spent at the coffee shop." And I said, "Well, clearly they gave me the wrong receipt." And she said, "That's also funny because this has your signature on it." So now I got to get up and I go in and I do what dumb men do, I double down. I went, "Obviously, they overcharge me because all I got was a pound of coffee." And I said, "Give me that receipt." I hopped in the car, literally hopped in the car, driving to the coffee shop. I think to myself, all right? I'm like the fool in the store. I think to myself about myself, I'm like, "So I call ahead to tell them that they have committed such a grievous offense against me, that they have charged me too much so that they can be prepared to get in the tiller, give me the cash that they need to give me when I get there." And so I call and go, "Hey, I'm in there all the time. Y'all accidentally charged me too much for a pound of coffee the other day. I just need to come in and get my money back." And they're like, "Oh, so we're so sorry. What did you get?" And I said, "A pound of coffee. That's it. That's all I got. It was a pound of coffee." They said, "Well, what kind of coffee did you get?" And I said, I looked at him and said, "You're making Blue Mountain coffee right here." And there was this silence and then she said, "Well, sir, it's $50 a pound." So here's the thing about me. And this is actually true to this date. I couldn't tell you what the price of gas is.

I just go, put this plastic thing in and I get gas out of it. Like that's the way that works. Some of you are sweating right now. And that's how it went for my wife. She's like, "Well, I guess you're going to have a coffee stand on the side of the road to earn back the $50 that you just spent you full." Now here's the thing. Spenders to just money, what we look to is what money we think can give us. So we looked like food and experiences and stuff and we think that it will give us satisfaction. So spenders tend to look to money for satisfaction. Savers, that's not what you do. You look for it for safety and security. The problem is, I don't know if you've noticed this or not, there's no amount of money in your bank account that can buy off cancer or a flood or a fire or buy back its child who doesn't wanna be in relationship with you, that's not the way that works. Savers tend to look to money for security. Here's the truth that counters the lie that we have a tendency to believe about money. The truth is this, money can't give you ultimate satisfaction or security. It cannot deliver on that promise. Money lies to us. But we have to have a relationship with it, right? 'Cause we're not out here trading in furs and animal skins, like that's not what we're doing.

We have to have a relationship with money. So how do we have a right relationship with money so that we can invest it in eternal things and actually be rich toward God and it begins with a theological framework that is so important. So this is where I should hear the pages of Scripture's turn in right now. It's a Colossians chapter one. This is so important. Colossians chapter one beginning in verse 15 says this. It's talking about Jesus. He, Jesus, is the image of the invisible God. Do you wanna know who God is and what he's about? Look to Jesus. He's the full revelation of who God is and what he's about. He's the image of the invisible God. He noticed these words is the firstborn of all creation for by him all things were created and heaven and on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he watch is before all things and in him all things hold together. He's the head of the body, the church. He's the beginning. He's the firstborn from the dead that in not some things, not most things, but in everything he might be circle, highlight, underline.

Put a star next to this word and memorize it. He is preeminent. You know what that means? That means Jesus is first. It means he's first, he's foremost, he's best. It literally translates unshared supremacy. Jesus is not willing to share the throne of your heart, your mind, your soul, your body with anyone or anything. He is not applied to be your co-pilot. He is first and he is best and for him to settle for anything else would be to violate his essence and to violate his character and to betray his love for you because he's literally, look right at me, he's the only one who can satisfy. He's the only one who can provide you with what you desperately want and desperately need, whether that be satisfaction or security, our satisfaction and our security is only found and always found in Jesus. It's never found in any counterfeit, including money, which brings us to this vital question. If money is something that according to Jesus can so easily usurp the throne of our heart, what do we do to fight back actively against that? And it begins with embracing this reality that he is first, but not only is he first, but listen to me, he went first. While you and I were still sinners.

This is the gospel while we were dead in the ditch on the side of the road, unable to do anything for ourselves. He moved towards us before we could ever move toward him and at great cost to himself, he bound up our wounds and set us free into a new life abundant with him. That's what he did. That's amazing grace. Jesus is first and Jesus went first. So the reality that we want to live out of is those two things. He's first and he went first. So what do I do in response to that? And we cannot over-spiritualize it because look at this reality that a lot of us like to ignore or do you not know, follow Jesus. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you. Who you have from God. So your body was given to you by God. You are not your own for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. So listen, if it's true that if I'm a father of Jesus, I can't look at Jesus and go, my body, my choice, hands off my body. keep your hands off my money? It's all downstream from this reality that he is first and that he is best. We just got to be honest. A lot of us are sick of tip culture, as I like to call it. You go somewhere and you go through the line and you're like, "How much do you want to tip?" I'm like, "I don't know. I haven't even gotten the food yet." But if we're honest, a lot of us, we've been tipping God. Like if things have been good, throw a little money in there. If it's been a good month, things are going well, "Here God, you've done a good job.

Pasternize him, pat him on the head." We don't tip God. That's not reflective of his preeminence. Actually, we don't even give to God. Let's get technical for a second. What I actually do is I bring back to God what always was his, that he has entrusted me with to steward, but make no mistake, I'm bringing back to him what already belongs to him. So the phrasing is simply this, "I bring my first and best back to God." I bring my first and my best back to God. This is what we see all through the scriptures and the Old Testament is referred to as a tithe, which is a technical word. This simply means the first 10%. The first 10% of what God has entrusted to you, you bring back to God through the local church. That's what a tithe means. We've talked about it around here for years. We've talked about the 10, 10, 80 way of living your life. You take the first 10%, you bring it back to God through the local church. You put another 10, the next 10% in savings, and then you live off of 80% of your income. And you know what that's called? Peace and freedom. That's what that's called. And the reasons for so many of us were like, that is totally counter to the way our culture lives. I know the average American, depending on the year, lives 110% up to 120% above their income, above their means, which means the average American is in debt, which by definition, and you're living above your means and you're a slave to the lender, means you don't have peace and you don't have freedom. And if the idea of the peace and the freedom that living below your means and bringing back to God what belongs to him, if that sounds appealing to you, it should. Just telling you, from the moment that Ali and I got married, we just said, even when we were living below the poverty line, I didn't know we were living below the poverty line too many years later. I looked it up like, oh, that's cool. That's why we were in that place. We just said 10% is going back to God. And at this point in our marriage, 26 years later, it's more than 10%. And we've had all the things. We've had unforeseen medical things. We've had a bunch of babies be born. We've had catastrophic things happen to homes. We've had travel ball. That's catastrophic right there, right? We've had all the things that you've had sickness, all the things, but we never lacked peace because we live below our means. And I don't say that to beat my chest or to say, look at us. I say that only to do this. This is not theoretical. This is a fact. It's as true as the fact that the sun came up this morning and it will go down again tonight, Lord willing. This is the way that He has created us to live. So if peace sounds good to you,

I have good news. There is a path. And we want to walk you to that place. My friend, Quint, is going to be doing financial peace university across all of our campuses this fall. So all you have to do is text the word money to 40411. And you will get information about that. Write that down. Take out your phone. Take a picture. Please don't sit here and go, this is for me. This is the path. This could help bring peace in our lives so much and just ignore it by not responding to it. Peace is available and we can't wait to help shepherd you to that because we want that for you as well. Now, remarkably, whenever I've taught on this over the years, there will be pushback that usually comes from Christians that will say, oh, Scott, you've just missed it. We don't have to tithe like those Old Testament saints had to tithe. We're not under the law. And I always want to respond and go, oh, you're so right. What are we under? Grace. You're right. We've been restored. We've been redeemed. We've been set free. We've been ransomed, we've been given the immeasurable riches of His grace, empty tomb. We get to see all that those Old Testament saints longed for and yearned for, we shouldn't only tithe, we should give so much more." And then it always gets real quiet right like that, because that's the truth. Let me say it again, God doesn't need your money, man, but you need the peace and the freedom of bringing your first and best back to him. There's this thing that gets overlooked in Jesus' teaching, because he's railing against the Pharisees. He's actually, if you know me well, you'd be like, "Of course, this is your favorite." But Matthew 23, I just love it, because he's just yelling at the religious dudes the whole time, and he keeps saying over and over again, "Woe to you, woe to you, woe to you." And he says, "Woe to you, you scribes and you Pharisees, you hypocrites, you're actors for you. What do you do? You tithe." And literally what they tithe, mint and dill and cumin, they're in their spice rack getting 10% out, bringing it to the temple. And you've neglected the weightier matters of the law, things like justice and mercy

and faithfulness. That's what makes them hypocrites. Now, this is the part everybody ignores, these, you ought to have done. What's the these? Here's the these, justice, mercy and faithfulness, that's the these, and then everybody wants to ignore the next part. You ought to have done those without neglecting the others. What's the others? The others is the tithe. Jesus is saying it's both and tithing is a starting line, not a finish line. And of course you should progress beyond this and do justice and mercy and faithfulness, but we should not regress below it is what Jesus is saying. So let me be really clear as we land this plane today. Let me challenge everybody who is a follower of Jesus who calls south in their home to bring or begin bringing or get on a path to start bringing your first and your best, meaning at least 10% of what God has entrusted to you back to him through this local church. And if that's impossible right now, please get on the path toward that. And you just need to know this as as your church home, we more than live this out. This year alone, as a church, we are projected to give away to outside organizations that we partner with that are all about Jesus and all about reaching lost people and feeding the poor, $4.4 million approximately will be given away by the end of this year, which is representative of 17% of our annual operating budget. That's the church that you are a part of. So I can stand up here and confidently tell you it is our joy to partner with missions organizations like Musana, who some of you remember, we gave over a million dollars a couple years ago because they are the most efficient mission organization in the world. And some of you have been there to Uganda lifeline that we partner with, black box that we partner with, Ozark Christian College this past year, we gave over a million dollars to unleash young Christian leaders on the local church around the world adoption $400,000 set aside this year to help Christian families within our church take the words of Jesus's

brother James seriously to look after orphans in their distress so that we can help godly families adopt children into their homes. We gave millions of dollars to plant churches in our state around the country and around the world and it is our joy to do it. We are living out this reality that it is more blessed to give than receive. This church has always done that so well and all I'm saying today is let's just keep going. Let's just keep going. Everything we invest right down to every penny and you need to know the elders of this church are absolutely committed to stewarding every dime up to including the purchase of light bulbs to make sure it is to illuminate the name of Jesus to reach lost and broken people. We're building a resilient church to reach one more. Now every time I'm back in Colorado, if I'm anywhere near Boulder, here's what I'll do. I'll find an excuse to drive by this little place, it's called Mustard's Last Stand. It's been there a long time, I don't know how long this dude from Chicago put it in a while back, it's a Chicago hot dog stand, that's all it is. I used to take my kids there when they were little, it's right by Boulder Creek, it's right And so I would take my daughter, especially Landry, I would take her there on these daddy daughter dates on Fridays all the time. And when she was about three or four years old, she was, by the way, the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life. She had these little pigtails right here in these big eyes. She looked like boob from Monsters Inc. That's who she looked like. So go look that up later today. So I would take her, and so she's about three or four years old, and we're seated on the patio. You could hear the creak, the flat irons and mountains are shimmering in the sunlight, and we're eating hot dogs.

And it's packed out there. And she's sitting there just being all cute and everything. She's just picking at her fries and her little kitty hot dog. I got my bratwurst with onions and mustard and sauerkraut and all the things and french fries. And I just wolf it all down. And then she's just still being sweet and cute and picking at it. And so I start to reach over, snatch a fry. I did it three or four times. And then all of a sudden, my little angel gave me this demonic, side-eye glare and literally said, loudly, take another french fry and see what happens. [LAUGHTER] Everybody did what you just did. The whole place is like, did that just come out of her? Like, yeah, man, be gone, demon, you know? [LAUGHTER] And I'll be honest, as cute and funny as it was, there was a little part of me who was like, oh, you think those are your fries? That's cute. If I had reasoned with her, I'd probably go, hey, Landry, how'd you get those french fries that you think are yours? Last I checked, I paid the money to get those french fries that are on your plate right there. By the way, you got here in a vehicle that I drove you in that I paid for. And you came from a place that you're allowed to live in,

where I put food on the table and clothes on your back. Like, Landry, everything I have is yours, but make no mistake. It all came from me. See, it's real cute when someone's three. Not so much when they're 30. Everything we have is his, and make no mistake. It all came from him, which means we get to decide how we are going to respond to this reality. So let's pray. Father, I come before you right now. And we are so grateful that Jesus is first, and that he went first. We have been beaten up, broken down, left in our own mess. And he did for us what we could never do for ourselves. At great cost to himself, he sacrificed himself for us so that we could live a life abundantly, both now and into eternity. So Father, today our desire is to respond to that reality that he is preeminent. So here's our heart. Holy Spirit, would you move in power today? In Jesus' beautiful name. Amen. So as we stand and go ahead and stand across our campuses-- talked about this last week-- we have ways to respond to receiving the Word of God. Number one, we can praise, and we're going to do that. We're going to stand, and we're going to sing. And I would challenge you to change your posture, because changing your posture has an effect on your heart.

Remember your desperation for your father, and perhaps reach out to him with arms lifted high. Another way we can respond is to pray. These rugs are down front across all of our campuses from now on, because this is a sacred space where you can come. You can stand. You can kneel. You can bow. You can do business with the Father. If you have someone in your life that you want to keep praying for today, come on down front and pray for them. If you've got something in your life you've been convicted of, like if today you're going, he has not been preeminent in my heart, then this is a place where you can come and you can repent. And you can pray, and he will receive you back. We can also partake. This is an opportunity for us to take those cups that hopefully you grabbed on the way in, that have the bread and the juice, and take that bread and break it. And remember Jesus' body broken for us, and take that juice, and remember his blood poured out for us. And you may want to do all three of those things. You may want to come down front, and praise, and pray, and partake right here so that you can do business with the Father. No matter what, don't leave here today without responding to this reality. Jesus is over everything. Let's sing it now.

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