(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Man, the title of my sermon this morning is, serving God will cost you something. Serving God will cost you something. Today, Christians often want to have a religion that costs them nothing. They don't want to sacrifice anything to live the Christian life. They want to have basically everything that the world has to offer and just add Christ into that without giving up anything, without it actually costing anything, without having to pay any kind of a price for serving God. Now the good news is that getting saved doesn't cost you anything. Getting saved is a free gift. We're saved by grace through faith and if it's by grace, then it's not of works, lest any man should boast. And so, we don't have to pay for it, we don't have to work for it. It's a 100% free gift. It will cost you nothing to go to heaven. It will cost you nothing to be saved, but if you want to actually serve God and be used by God and be a great Christian and do great works for God, that is going to cost you something. Now in the story that we just read, David has committed this sin of numbering the people and I'm not going to go into a big long thing about that, but the Lord was angry with Israel and so he's punishing Israel, he's punishing David. And the Bible picks up in verse 21 there, if you're there in 2 Samuel chapter 24, and Aaron has said, Wherefore is my Lord, the king come to his servant? And David said, To buy the threshing floor of thee, to build an altar unto the Lord, that the plague may be stayed from the people. So God has sent a plague to punish Israel and David's going to build this altar to end the plague in order to make supplication to God. This is what the prophet has commanded him to do, to build an altar in a certain place unto the Lord. And Arana verse 22 said unto David, Let my Lord the king take and offer up what seemeth good unto him. Behold, there be oxen for burnt sacrifice and threshing instruments and other instruments of the oxen for wood. All these things did Arana as a king give unto the king. And Arana said unto the king, The Lord thy God accept thee. And the king said unto Arana, Nay, but I will surely buy it of thee at a price. So when David comes to the place where he's supposed to build this altar, and this place is going to become the site of the temple that is built by Solomon. When he gets to this place, he goes to Arana the Jebusite and he wants to buy the place so that he can build this altar to the Lord. But Arana just says, Hey, I'll just give it to you. I'll give it to you for free. Not only that, but I will give you animals for burnt sacrifices. You can even take all of my wooden tools and instruments and burn them for wood. You know, whatever it takes, whatever God wants. So Arana is very generous and wanting to give everything he can to the Lord's work. But David says no. He says, I will surely buy it of thee at a price, verse 24, neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which does cost me nothing. See, David here actually wanted serving God to cost him something. And this is the exact opposite of a mentality that says, Well, I don't want to pay for anything. I don't want it to cost me anything. I want to have my cake and eat it too. Now if you would go to Matthew, chapter number 6. Matthew chapter number 6 in the New Testament. The title of the sermon is that serving God will cost you something. If you're actually going to live for God, if you actually want to win souls to Christ, if you actually want to do something great for God, if you want to be in the will of God, it's going to cost you several things. Number one, the first thing that it's going to cost, here's just the obvious one right on the surface, is it's going to cost you money. Now the Bible says in Matthew, chapter 6, verse 19, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye, if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light, but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. And mammon is referring to money as a god. And so he's saying you can't serve God and mammon. You can't serve God and money. Don't lay up for yourselves treasures upon this earth. You will either hate the one and love the other, or else hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot love God and love money at the same time. The Bible tells us in 1 Timothy, chapter 6, that the love of money is the root of all evil. And that's very consistent with what we see here in the words of Christ, because he says that the light of the body is the eye, and if your eye is evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness. And in context, what he means by the evil eye is coveting things that don't belong to you. The eye that looks at the fancy cars and the fancy houses and the fancy clothing. That eye that lusts after the riches of this world will fill your entire body with darkness. And the love of money will replace the love of God in your life, according to the Bible here. And so it's going to cost you something to serve God, well, it's going to cost you money. You say, how in the world would serving God cost me money? Well, I can think of a bunch of different ways that serving God could cost you money. Number one, obviously, the obvious one is, if you're tithing to the church, if you're giving one tenth of your money to the church, well, that just costed you money, because you gave a tenth unto the Lord, number one. But even beyond that, obviously, it's going to cost you money just to put gas in the tank and drive to church to put gas in the tank and go drive out soul winning, maybe to travel to do a missions trip somewhere. But here's another way that it could cost you money is that there are a lot of dishonest ways to make money that you would forego as a Christian. You're not going to be stealing or conning or doing things in a dishonest way. And that could cost you some money in the short term, because you're only willing to make money by doing something that you believe in, doing something with integrity. Not just doing anything to make a buck. There are some people in this world that are very rich because they do dishonest work or because they're stealing or because they're selling drugs or whatever they're doing, whatever immoral activities. It's going to cost you money to serve God, because obviously, when you're taking the time to go to church, taking the time to go soul winning and read your Bible, obviously, that could cut into your money making time as well. Which leads me to my second point, number two, it's going to cost you time, right? It's going to cost you some time. You need to be willing to sacrifice some time for the work of God. Oh, I'm too busy for that, you know. But isn't it amazing the things that we will make time for in our week? I mean, it's 168 hours in the week, and there are all kinds of things that we could be doing. And we could work a full time job, sleep eight hours a night, and still have plenty of time to read our Bible, to pray, to go soul winning, to go to church, and still have time left for ourselves if we would make the things of God a priority. But serving God is going to cost you some time. It takes time. I mean, you're sacrificing your Sunday morning to be here in church right now instead of being out doing whatever, either working or being out just doing recreation somewhere. You've made a sacrifice to be here, a sacrifice of your time. Make a sacrifice again on Sunday night to come back to the evening service. It's a sacrifice to show up on Wednesday night. It costs you something. But see, today we've got churches that have scaled it back to just one service a week because they know that the vast majority of people in their church, probably to the tune of 90%, only want to do the minimum when it comes to serving God or being in church. And frankly, some of these churches, the services are so boring, I don't really blame people for not wanting to go more than once a week. But the point is that going once a week as an absolute minimum is what a lot of people are interested in doing today. That's what your typical mega church member is interested in doing. And that's why I remember I used to go to a church that was a liberal church when I was a teenager. And it had about 2,000 people on Sunday morning, but their Sunday night services were dramatically smaller than our Sunday night services at Faithful Work. Because we typically have around maybe 225 people on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights. We're pretty much always above 200, I believe. But these people had like way less than that. And they're running 2,000 on Sunday morning. So we typically drop from say 325 to 225 from Sunday morning to Sunday night. But I'm saying this church would go from 2,000 to like 100, maybe 85 or something. I remember it was this giant auditorium and they were all just using the first four rows. And the pastor, he wasn't even behind the pulpit, he was just standing in front of them because it was just such a small group. And I only know this because I went to Sunday night service four times in the two years that we went there. Because guess what? We weren't really that jazzed about coming back for that evening service either in that church. But the reason that we showed up is because it was a special series on Bible prophecy that we were interested in. And so we made a point to go down there. And I remember just being shocked because I just assumed it was going to be a huge crowd just to see barely anybody there. But now we've got Fundamentalist Baptist following suit and hey, let's scale it back to just one service a week just for the Sunday morning glories. And then not only that, but sometimes they'll even give an option to come do it on Saturday night because they don't want you to sacrifice your Sunday. And look, I'm all for making things convenient, but it's a mentality that just shows that people don't want it to cost them anything. I mean it's a challenge just to drag them out there to a service once a week to just sit in church for one hour once a week. That's like a big sacrifice. Can we move that to another time? Because of the fact that these churches are filled with Christians who don't want it to cost them anything. And so we shouldn't have that mentality that isn't willing to give up some time for the Lord and sacrifice some time and say, you know what? I'm going to make time to go to church. I'm going to make time to read my Bible. I'm going to make time to pray. And look, I'm not down on you if you're a Sunday morning only, but here's the thing. A church that's only offering one service a week? What about the people that are more mature in the Lord, that are more serious about church, that are zealous about getting down here three times a week? It's like you're not even trying to cater to them at all because I'll tell you this right now. When I was looking for a church throughout my life, I never would have even considered a church that only had one service a week. I would have seen that one service a week and just said, forget that church. I'm looking for a serious church, a full service church. Okay. So I would have just looked at that and just brushed it aside as being like, well, this church isn't that serious because they're only having one service a week. This is doing the minimum type of a church. They're not really offering much here. I want three services a week. When I first started the church, the advice I was given was start with Sunday morning only, do that for three months, then do three months of Sunday morning and Sunday night. And then, you know, after six months or after a year, you introduce the Wednesday night service and then you'll be doing three times a week. But here's the thing about that, you know, I was hoping to absorb some serious Christians from day one. And like I said, I wouldn't have even considered a church that had one service a week. Of course, we didn't absorb serious Christians from other churches day one or pretty much almost any day thereafter because 99% of people at our church are not people who transferred from another independent Baptist church, contrary to popular belief. The vast majority of people in our church did not go to an independent fundamental Baptist church before. There are some, and I'm thankful for those that have transferred in from another church, but it's very, very few. But it's going to cost you something, yeah, it's going to cost more gas, more time, more energy to come back for the Sunday night service, to come back for the Wednesday night service. But you know what, it's probably worth it even if you already know everything and even if you are already a zealous, mature Christian, just to get your family under the preaching of God's word a little more each week. I don't know about you, but I want my children hearing three sermons a week. I want my teenagers hearing three sermons a week. I don't want them to just get one little 20-minute sermon on Sunday morning, which is by the way, at these churches that only have one service, they don't preach for an hour typically. It's 20 minutes, 30 minutes. One little 20, 30 minute sermonette each week is probably not going to be enough to get my kids zealous and living for God. I would much rather have my kids here three times a week listening to three hours a week of preaching. Hey, is it a sacrifice? Is it going to take extra time? Yeah, but hey, it's worth it. Whatever money or time it costs, it's worth it. But you know what, it's also going to take time just to go soul winning. I mean, carving out the time to go soul winning is a challenge. You've got to make time in your week to get out soul winning. You've got to carve out that time every day to read your Bible. You've got to carve out time to pray. I mean, time that you spend reading your Bible and praying could be spent on other things. So it's going to cost you that time. You've got to make that sacrifice and seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. All what things? The things that you want, the things that you care about. In the context, it's food, clothing, the things that we need to live. You know what, God will supply your need. God will take care of you, but you ought to seek Him first. Give Him the first of your time. Here we are on the first day of the week, Sunday, putting God first, starting off the week right by being in church, worshipping the Lord, right? Starting out the day thinking about God, reading our Bibles, praying, using our time for the Lord. The Bible says in Hebrews chapter 10, and if you would flip over to Luke 6. Hebrews 10 says, let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching. You see the Bible says that we should not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is. There's a tendency out there for saved Christians, not talking about the heathen now. Saved Christians to forsake the assembling of ourselves together and to somehow think it's not important to physically assemble and be in church because, listen to me, that's the only way to have church is to physically assemble because watching it on TV or watching it on the internet is not an assembly. That's not the assembling of yourselves together, just watching a broadcast. And so when he says assembling of ourselves together, he's talking about physically being down there and people have this attitude, oh, you know, I'm the church, we're the church, the church is the people, therefore we don't need to go to church. Wrong. When we say the church is the people, what we mean is that it's not the building, it's the assembly of people. But guess what? As soon as we leave and go home, we're not the church anymore, you understand? Like I'm not, me sitting on my couch isn't church. I'm not the church when I'm walking down the street. I'm not the church when I'm at work. No, that is wrong because the word church means assembly. Think about how foolish it would be for me to be sitting by myself on a stump somewhere, I'm the assembly. I am the congregation. Well where is everybody else? And because people have lost sight of what the word church even means, that's why they will say foolish things like that. Like well we're the church, I'm the church, you're the church, yeah, we are the church. When we're here assembled together, we're the congregation, we're the assembly, we're the church. You could say I'm a part of that church, yeah on Monday I would say I'm part of Faithful Word Baptist Church, I'm part of that church, but me by myself doesn't constitute the church, me and a few buddies doesn't constitute the church, going out to lunch with another believer doesn't constitute the church, it's when we're assembled together here in service that we are the church, okay? And so we are the church, yes, the people are the church, that means that we could meet outside and it would still be church. We could meet in a park, but by ourselves we're not the church. In a small group of a couple people we're not the church, we're the church when we're the assembly, the congregation, etc. And so don't forsake the assembling of ourselves together as a church, being together in church, as the manner of some is because there are all kinds of people out there who have a tendency to just want to be lazy about this and just stay home and watch it or listen to it or whatever. But exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching, what does exhorting one another mean? It means we need to tell other people, hey, you need to get in church, you should come to church, are you going to be in church tonight, right? That's exhorting one another, trying to encourage one another, motivate one another, get one another excited about going to church. And so much the more as you see the day approaching, do we need more church or less church in 2023? The closer we get to the second coming of Christ, we don't need to start scaling back the assembling of ourselves together. And it's interesting, as we approach the coming of Christ, we have more technology where it could be even easier for people to forsake the assembly. God obviously foreknew that and so he's saying, hey, so much the more as you see the day approaching, keep ringing this bell of assembling together because in the last days, less and less people are going to be assembling together because of technology, that's part of the reason. And just because people are maybe just getting lazy or they want a Christianity that costs them nothing and they don't want to give up any of their time to be here. Folks it's a worthy sacrifice to be in church. You say, well, I didn't like the sermon. But here's the thing, even if you didn't like the sermon, God still looked down and saw you in his house. And God still pleased that you were obedient and that you showed up and that you did what God had told you to do. And by the way, if the sermon's bad, then, you know, make up for it in the fellowship afterward. Have some great conversations afterwards since you're so much more interesting and entertaining than I am, you know, then get something interesting going after the service. But be in church. It's not just about listening to the sermon. It's about singing the songs in a group, singing praises to God. It's about the fellowship. It's about being with other people. It's about checking a box that says I did what God told me to do. Now it's more than just checking a box, but you know what? I want to check that stinking box. I don't care how lame the service is. I want to check that box. That means if I'm on vacation and it's the lamest possible Baptist church ever, I'll be there. I'll be there because you know what? If I'm not doing it for them, I'm doing it for the Lord. If I'm not doing it for myself, I'm doing it for the Lord, you know, and maybe I'll just have to tune into some other live stream in a different time zone afterward. But I'm going to be there to check that box. Hopefully Faithful Word Baptist is more than just checking a box to you. But I hope that even if it's not, you'll still check that box because God does not want us to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. And so church takes time, soul winning takes time, reading your Bible takes time, praying takes time, fellowshipping takes time, you know, building relationships and friendships with people at the church, which is something that God wants us to do. So number one, it's going to cost you money. Number two, it's going to cost you time. Number three, it's going to cost you your friends. It's going to cost friends. Now it's not going to cost you all your friends, hopefully, unless your friends are all lame. It might cost you every last one of them if you have rotten friends, but that might not be a bad thing. But it's going to cost you some friends. Look what the Bible says in Luke chapter 6 verse 22. In Luke 6 22 it says, Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and watch this key part, and when they shall separate you from their company. What does that mean, they'll separate you from their company? That means that you might not be eating lunch in the cool group at the school cafeteria. You might be left out of the inner circle at school or at college or at work. They might separate you from their company. Why? Because you're just a little too Christian. You're a little too religious. You're a little too straight laced. You're just not someone that they want to be close with. And you know what? You might sacrifice some friendships and relationships of people that aren't interested in being friends with a godly Christian. And so when you're living for God, people are going to hate you. And they shall separate you from their company. And cast out your name as evil. They might talk bad about you behind your back. For the Son of Man's sake, for Jesus' sake, it's worth it. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy, for behold your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. Of course, the Apostle Paul said in 2 Timothy chapter 1, this thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me. Listen, was that because of any fault of his own? Was it because he had a bad personality? No, it was because he was standing up for the word of God and preaching hard and being thrown in prison that all that were in Asia forsook him. But then he turns around and says, the Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus, for he oft refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chain. So he said, Onesiphorus was my real friend, he was not ashamed of my chain. You know what that tells me is that the other people in Asia, they were ashamed of the chain. As soon as they heard that the Apostle Paul is thrown in prison, all of a sudden they want to distance themselves from the Apostle Paul, lest they face persecution. And so not only did the Apostle Paul have to pay the price of going to prison, but he then had to pay the price of everyone blaming him and forsaking him and not supporting him in that situation. He said in chapter 4 of the same book, Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed unto Thessalonica, crescents to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Take Mark and bring him with thee, for he is profitable to me for the ministry. He says later in the same chapter, at my first answer, no man stood with me, but all men forsook me, I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. And if you would flip over to Matthew chapter 10. So it's going to cost you something to serve God, right? You can't just expect to do great things for God and not to pay any kind of a price for it, not to have it cost you anything, but this is the expectation today among Christians. They're not willing to sacrifice time. They're not willing to sacrifice money. They're not willing to sacrifice popularity. They're not willing to sacrifice the things of this world that are just temporary so that they could do maximum for Jesus Christ. They want to be fully accepted of this world. They want to be the big man on campus. They want to be the coolest kid on the block. They want to be the one who everybody loves and they want to have all of the monetary success that the world teaches you is going to make you happy. They want to have all of the trappings of luxury and so forth. And let me tell you some of those things are vain and you should be willing to sacrifice them for God. But not only could it cost you friends, it could also cost some family relationships. It could bring a rift in the family. The Bible says in Matthew chapter 10 verse 34, think not that I'm come to send peace on earth, I came not to send peace but a sword. For I am come to set a man of variance against his father and the daughter against her mother and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a man's foes shall be they of his own household. Now I am really big on honoring father and mother. I'm a strong believer in that. I preach it all the time. I practice it. I love my parents. I respect my parents. I want to do everything I can to honor them and be respectful to them and lift them up and help them in any way that I can but you know there are some situations where we would have to separate from family because Jesus said I'm come to set a man at variance against his father. Now obviously this is a bad situation. Ideally we should strive, the Bible says, to be at peace with all men. As much as lieth in us, we should strive to be at peace with all men and that does not contradict what Christ said here. We need to think about both. We're supposed to always be trying to have peace as much as possible, as much as lieth in us to be at peace with all men, to be at peace with our neighbors, at peace with people at work, at peace in the church, at peace with family. We should not go to family gatherings trying to start stuff and create a problem where there is none. But let's face it, if you are serving God, if you are following Jesus Christ, you are going to inevitably be set at variance with certain people. Whether you try for that or not, whether you like it or not, David said I am for peace but when I speak, they are for war. See I don't have to go around picking fights with people. People pick fights with me just because they heard what I preached. And when people see you living for Christ, doing works for God, winning souls, preaching the word of God, you are going to face some opposition. There are going to be some people that don't like it. And in some cases, God forbid, but guess what? It can even put a man at variance against his father. Which is terrible, which is sad, but guess what? Sometimes it comes to that. And Jesus is not regretting that. Jesus is not like, oh man, I wish I hadn't set this man at variance against his father. I wish I hadn't caused a rift in that family. Oh I feel so bad that I put a split in the family. No Jesus said, no I came to do that. I came to put that rift in the family. I came to separate the sheep from the goats. I came to bring division. He said I came to bring a sword, I'm come to set a man at variance against his father. And again the sword there is not talking about physically fighting, it's a spiritual sword because if you look at the parallel passage, instead of saying I came to bring a sword, he says I came to bring division. And that's what he's talking about. I'm come to set a man at variance against his father and the daughter against her mother. Again what a terrible thing for there to be a rift between mother and daughter. But you know what? If it comes to serving Christ, if it comes to being saved and following Jesus Christ with your life and that causes your mother to separate from you or your father to separate from you or your children to separate from you, so be it. That's what the Bible says. Because look what he says in the next breath. Verse 37, he that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me. He's saying look, I need followers who are willing to put their back into it and lift up that cross and make a sacrifice for the kingdom of God. Carrying the cross is never going to be fun, carrying the cross is going to be a sacrifice. And he says look, if you do not take up that cross, you're not walking worthy of the vocation wherewith you're called. You're unworthy of Christ. That's not to say that you're not saved. Because guess what? None of us is worthy of being saved. We're all saved by grace in the first place. We never deserved it in the first place. But you know what? God wants us to walk worthy of that name by which we're called. I mean, carrying the name of Christ is a privilege. You know, to be able to say I'm a Christian, that should be a point of honor. Not like oh well, you know, I'm a Christian. I mean that's a blessing to be a Christian. I'm a Christian. That's something we should be excited about. And we should want to live up to Christ's expectation and be worthy. If we've been appointed as an ambassador of Christ, we want to be worthy. I mean what if we're appointed an ambassador to the United States and then we go embarrass ourselves in another country by acting a fool? You'd say well you're not being worthy of that responsibility that you were given. I mean it'd be a big honor. I mean what if the government came to you and said look, you know, we want you to be an ambassador. We want to send you to this country to represent the United States of America. I mean that would be an honor. That'd be kind of a big deal. Being an, I mean ambassadors are kind of a big deal. They're not nobodies. They're important people. They have a lot of power and they have an honorable position. You'd want to be worthy of that. Well guess what? Being an ambassador of Christ is way better than being an ambassador of any country. And so representing Christ is an honor, it's a privilege, and we should want to be worthy of that. Well here's the thing. In order to be worthy of that calling, you know what that means? That means that our walk with God has to come before any earthly relationship, any earthly relationship. Mother, father, children, spouse, friends, none of those are as important as our walk with God. Now we should always strive, if we can, to keep all of these people happy and to have peace with all these people. We shouldn't just be out to just, hey this is an excuse to just break things off with my parents or something. No, I mean we should always try the best that we can to have a good relationship with our parents. But when push comes to shove, what do we choose? We choose the Lord. Now when it comes to your spouse, this is obviously very important and very sensitive because of the fact that obviously our spouse is supposed to be our closest relationship, our most important loyalty, even closer than our parents because we leave father and mother and cleave unto our wife. And so that's the number one relationship. So when it comes to your spouse, you really need to do everything possible in your power to keep that relationship right. But not at the expense of denying Christ or something like that. But I've had people come to me and say that coming to Faithful Word Baptist Church was causing a problem in their marriage because one spouse just hated Pastor Anderson or whatever. And you know what, I told these people, I said, well you know what, I said God commands you to go to church and God is number one but God doesn't command you to go to Faithful Word Baptist Church. So if you can go to another church that actually is preaching the Bible, you know, the King James Bible, soul winning church, there are other churches in the Phoenix area that could fit that bill, if that's going to bring peace to your home, if that's what it's going to take for you to have a good marriage, well then that's more important so that you can serve God and preserve the relationship with your wife. So look, I'm not saying, hey, sacrifice your relationship for this church or any church. But I would say this, you know, if it was the choice between not serving God at all and staying married, you know, and I had to say, well, I can only stay married if I don't serve God at all, you know, and whatever, hey, I would never leave my wife, I would never divorce my wife for any reason but let me tell you something, if my wife is going to leave me unless I just renounce Christ and just stop serving God, you know what, I would still follow Christ, I would stay with God, I would keep serving God. Now if it's a matter of switching from one church to another, you know, you do what you can to try to make everybody happy. At the same time, that's kind of a sad situation because the husband should be the leader, he should be the one picking the church, amen. And so hopefully he should have enough leadership in his family and enough power in that relationship to where he picks the church and, you know, he's going to pick Faithful Word, amen. But the point is that we love our parents, we love our children, we love our spouse, we love all these people in our life, but we should love God, number one. We should love God even more than we love our spouse. I'm not saying you should love a particular church more than you love your spouse, but you should love Jesus more than you love your spouse, period. It's that simple. So I want to make sure to clarify that and make sure that we don't get the wrong idea about that, but honestly, Christ must be number one in our lives. He just has to be. Otherwise you're not walking worthy of the name of Christ because Christ wants you to give your all, he wants you to take up the cross daily and follow him, and he doesn't want you to love other people more than you love him. He doesn't want you to put other people first. You know when Eli is rebuked by God, God says that he honored his sons above him. He said, you Eli, have honored your sons above me. And so you mothers out there, I know mothers, boy, they'll do anything for their children. Their children are everything for them. But let me ask you this, do you honor your children above God? Do you put your children before you put Christ? There are some parents that would not want their child to go to the mission field or they wouldn't want their child to go into the ministry because they're trying to be so protective of their child, but you know what, that child exists to serve Christ. And so you've got to put him first and his kingdom first and his agenda before your own personal agenda. You say, well, you know, you added spouse in there. It says father, mother, daughter-in-law, you added spouse. Well, no, because actually if you would flip over to Matthew 19 and Christ does include the spouse in this discussion. When he talks about being willing to give up whatever's necessary to serve God because serving God is number one. And again, you should never leave your spouse for any reason, should not divorce your spouse for any reason, should not separate from your spouse. You're married for life. It's till death us do part, okay? And I'm not on board with our culture in America where divorce is considered okay. It's not okay in the Bible. God hates divorce, okay? But what does the Bible say in first Corinthians seven, the Bible says though, that if a saved person has an unsaved spouse who doesn't want to live with them, doesn't want to be married to a Christian, refuses to be married to a Christian. It says if the unbelieving wife depart, let her depart. You know, you don't have to go chasing after her and bringing her back if she's leaving because you're living for Christ, you know, that's on her at that point. Now you should never divorce or separate from us and you would have to remain unmarried. It's not like, oh, my wife left. Now I'm going to go marry somebody else. Wrong. Look what the Bible says in Matthew 19 verse 27. Then answered Peter and said unto him, behold, we have forsaken all and followed thee. What shall we have therefore? Kind of an embarrassing question to ask, but it's saying it like that. And Jesus said unto him, verily I say unto you that ye which have followed me in the regeneration, when the son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel and everyone that had forsaken houses or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my name's sake shall receive a hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life. But many that are first shall be last and the last shall be first. Let me point out a few things about this passage. First of all, notice that the brethren are plural. The sisters are plural. The father is singular because you only have one father. The mother is singular because you only have one mother. The wife is singular because you only have one wife. You're supposed to only have one wife. There are people in the Bible who had multiple wives, but it was always wrong for them to do that. You're only supposed to have one wife or children or lands for my sake or the gospel. If you give up these things, if you give up having the things that this world has to offer, maybe the relationship with mom or dad or brothers or sisters or wife or children is ruined because of Christ, God will reward you for that and you will receive a hundredfold now in this time. Now look at the hundred, well let me, I'm getting ahead of myself. It says at the end of verse 29, shall receive a hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life. Now let's get some clarification on that hundredfold. Go to Mark chapter 10. If we go to the passage in Mark chapter 10, it's worded a little bit differently. We get a little clarification. I kind of stole my own thunder because I already told you what it is, but in Mark chapter 10, it says in verse 28, then Peter began to say unto him, lo, we've left all and have followed thee. Verse 29, and Jesus answered and said, verily I say unto you, there is no man that has left house or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my sake and the gospels, but he shall receive a hundredfold. And then look at this phrase that's in Mark that's not in Matthew. Now in this time, he'll receive a hundredfold. Now in this time, houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands, what's missing? You don't get a hundred wives, guys, okay? Because if you, if things go sour with your wife because of the gospel, you don't get another wife. You don't even get a single wife. You certainly don't get a hundred of them, okay? But God will repay you even in this lifetime, houses, brethren, sisters, mothers, children and lands, but watch this, with persecutions. So you don't think it's just a health and wealth gospel. You give a dollar, you get a hundred. You give ten dollars, you get a thousand, you know. You don't want to fall into that. He says it's going to come with persecutions. So you're not going to be living on easy street. You're going to have persecutions and in the world to come, you get eternal life. So he's saying like, well, what do we get? Well first of all, you're saved, you're going to heaven. Like that should already be enough, but you didn't have to work for that. You didn't have to earn that. You were going to get that anyway. You were going to get that no matter what, just by believing in Christ. But what you also get is in this lifetime, you get paid back a hundredfold for everything that you sacrifice for God and in the time to come, you're getting everlasting life anyway, which is obviously bigger than anything that this world has to offer anyway. Now how can this be true? How can it be true that you receive a hundredfold, like are Christians just going around with a hundred houses and just 300 brothers and 500 sisters and they're just going around with a hundred moms and a hundred dads? Like how does that work? Actually what the Bible is saying here is that you'll receive in this time houses, brother and sisters, mothers, children and lands with persecution. You know what? I promise you there are at least a hundred houses that I could stay in tonight if I needed to. There's probably a thousand all across America of people that would say, Pastor Anderson, you come crash our pad. So I'm never going to own a hundred houses. I only have one house and I'm only ever going to own one house because if you own two houses, then people can sue you and take away the other house and the IRS can take away your second house, but they can never take away your primary dwelling or your first two vehicles. And so I'm ready to be sued at all times and I ain't got nothing. I got nothing to lose. So go ahead people out there and sue me because I hope you win because I'm never going to pay and if a judge awards you millions of dollars, I will never pay and I will never have to pay and there's no such thing as debtors prison in the United States and as long as I never own anything, then I'll never have to pay you and I'm never going to be rich and I'm never going to own things except just my primary dwelling and first two vehicles. You know, I used to always jokingly say that the first thing I do if I get sued because my wife and I have one vehicle, I used to always jokingly say the first thing I do when I get sued is I'm just going to go out and buy a car the next day just to make sure I have absolutely no money and they can't take away either car or my house. But you know what's funny about that is that now we have teenage drivers and everything so we did just buy a more expendable car for teenagers to drive. So hey, but I could always just sign that over into my daughter's name and buy another one if I get sued. What do you think, marry them? But the point is that you know if you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. But look my friend, I've got all kinds of houses, brothers, sisters all over the world. You know because of the fact that I can go to churches that I've never even been to, you can go to churches that you've never even been to and it's not just because I'm a pastor. Even you as a layman, you walk into a church and boom, you're both saved, you have instant rapport with people, instant relationship, instant commonality. Have you ever noticed that you'll be with brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world that you've never met before and it's instant family? And you know what, you say well I don't really feel that way. How involved are you in the work of God? Because I'd be willing to bet you that the people who are mega involved, I'm talking about if I were to look around the room and think about the people that are going on the most mission strips, the people that are showing up to the most soul winning times, the people that are going to the events and the conferences and the people that are really into the things of God, they're probably like yeah, I do have a hundred people out there that I could crash with. Yeah, I do have a hundred friends out there that are like a brother or sister unto me. The more involved people are, I'll bet they feel that way and I'll bet they have that promise coming true in their life. And so my friend, here's what it comes down to. It's going to cost you something to serve Jesus. It's not going to come for free. It's not going to come without sacrifice. There are going to be times when you've got some really cool opportunity on a Sunday and it's like nope, can't do it. Got to be in church. You know, where something is getting between you and the things of God and you have to sacrifice this, sacrifice that so that you can really focus on the things of God. You're going to sacrifice time, you're going to sacrifice money, you're going to sacrifice friends. You might even sacrifice some family relationships. That's the bad news. But the good news is that God is going to give you more than what you sacrifice. Everything that you sacrifice, you're going to get repaid with interest. You're going to get repaid way more. Now not to say that you're going to have a life free from persecution. It's with persecutions. But you know, instead of just hanging on to that house that's so important to you or hanging on to that geography that's so important to you or hanging on to those relationships with rotten people that you know are toxic people that are wicked people that are stopping you from serving God, instead of doing what it takes to please them because they want you drinking with them or they want you partying with them or they want you doing whatever with them, you know, instead doing what it takes to please God and maybe losing friends in the process, maybe souring relationships with family, maybe ruining opportunities for yourself financially because you had integrity and did what's right, I guarantee you God's got something better for you. God's got something better for you. You know, there have been some things that I sacrificed but God always had something better for me in the long run. Sometimes that I sacrificed because they were going to conflict with church. God had something better, you know, and so seek first the kingdom of God and I'll leave you with this thought from the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul said, what things were gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung that I may win Christ. You know, when you get later in life, you're going to be like the Apostle Paul. Whenever you gave up for Christ, you're going to be like, that was dung anyway. Can you imagine bragging about the fact that you gave up a piece of dung? I sacrificed my dung for you. I had a big fat bag of dung and I gave it up for you. It's stupid and the Apostle Paul is saying, yea, I lost everything, I gave up everything but I look back on it all and it's all dung compared to Christ, compared to serving God, compared to eternal things. What did Paul give up? I mean, Paul was a well-respected religious leader. So he had all the money and all the fame and all the respect. I mean, this is what the men of this world want, don't they? They want positions of power and respect and influence, fame, money, whatever. Paul had all that and he gave it all up to where he's in prison, he's hated, he's disrespected. I mean, honestly, if Paul hadn't have gotten saved, he'd probably be in the stinkin' Talmud right now. You know, arguing about what it means to work on the Sabbath, you know, and about whether he should have chicken with cheese. That's what he'd be arguing about, seriously. Because I mean, Gamaliel's in the Talmud, big time. He was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, I mean, he could have been the next Gamaliel and he could have written some stupid book that nobody reads. Think about it, how many people do you think read the Talmud? I talked to a rabbi in his 70s and said, have you read the whole thing? Oh, pfft, no way. I mean, he said, he said nobody has. And then he said, well, maybe, maybe people who devote their whole lives to study, maybe they've read it. Let me ask this, how many people have read the book of Romans? How many people have read the book of 1 Corinthians? Billions. Okay? Literally, billions. And I mean, even people alive today that have read something that Paul wrote, it's more than half the planet. What about, who read the crap that Gamaliel wrote in the Talmud? Anyone in this room? Not me, I didn't read it. Nobody cares. But at the time, Paul felt like, oh man, you know, he said that he advanced above all his equals in the Jews' religion. He's like, oh man, I'm giving up this position in the Jews' religion, so much respect and power and influence, now I'm on the run, now I'm in jail. Even my own converts to Christianity aren't even standing with me. Everybody in Asia has forsaken me. But you know, at the end of it all though, did Paul get repaid a hundredfold or not? Whatever position he had in the Jews' religion, I guarantee you, he's a hundred times more important than Christianity, probably a thousand times more important or a million times more important. So in the end, he didn't really give up anything, did he? And that's how it works with God. You know, you give things up in the short term and if you're carnal and if you're short-sighted, you might feel like, man, I'm making a big sacrifice to go to church here, I'm making a big sacrifice to read my Bible, oh man, I gave up this killer job, you know, to be in church or whatever. But when you get to the end of your life, if you actually follow through with serving God, you're going to say, wow, God gave me a hundred times that. Whatever I gave up, I got a hundred times as much as what I sacrificed. And so don't be afraid to pay the price. Have a David attitude that says, well, I don't even want to serve God in a way that costs me nothing. I want to pay a price. I'm willing to sacrifice. Let me pay for it rather than this attitude of like, well, I don't know if I want to make any sacrifices. You know, I guess I can carve out one hour just on Sunday morning to go to the liberal church that's right by my house. And that's another thing, you know, some people sacrifice by driving 30, 40 minutes to go to church and instead of just going to one right across the street. And you know what? I thank God that my parents frequently drove 30 to 40 minutes to get us to church because they always went to the best church that they could find. And they would drive us 30, 40 minutes. That's how I grew up. And you know what? My parents were teaching me without even using words, you know what they were teaching me? Church is important to us. We care about doctrine. We care about going to the best church. Like that meant something to them. And as a consequence, it means something to me. And so yeah, you could be a saved Christian without ever going to church just by believing in Christ as a free gift. And then yeah, you can just go, you can just go to Google maps and just type in Baptist church and just go to the closest one no matter what. You can show up once a week, sit through the closest church and say, well this doesn't cost me anything. Or you can be willing to pay a little more, put a little more gas in the tank, drive a little further, go to a better church, go to a church that's fired up for God, maybe even show up Sunday night, maybe even show up Wednesday night, show up for soul winning, read your Bible, pray, and actually give a substantial amount of your time to God. Is God going to give it back to you or not? He can make you live longer, He can make you healthier, He can just give you better quality of life, He can give you more opportunities, He can open all kinds of doors for you. He's going to pay you back if you have the faith in the short term to make some sacrifices for God. Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord. Thank you for this story about David and Iran of the Jebusite, Lord. Help us to follow his example of being willing to pay the price. Help us to be like the disciples of Christ who forsook all to follow Christ, and Lord, help us to do something big for you and to pay whatever price is necessary, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.