service is already tonight. All right. Now let's see if we can get some things organized up here a little bit and be ready to go. Take your Bibles if you would tonight and we're going to open our Bibles up together. We're in the Lord's house and it's prayer meeting and it's Bible study night so it's a good thing to have your Bibles and to open them up. And so let's open up to the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew tonight and we're going to find our way to chapter number six. Matthew chapter six In our primary text tonight will be a familiar passage. Once you see it, you'll understand why I say it's familiar. We've heard it before, but it is Jesus teaching, of course, and the passage will be chapter 6, verses 21 through 25. Now, I've titled tonight's message, for those of you who might be taking notes, now are you ready for this? I don't know if you might be ready for this or not. This might not be a typical, if you might call it a Baptist message title. I don't know how this is going to go, but I've titled the message tonight, Prayer, Care, and What to Wear. Yep. Prayer, Care, and What to Wear. Because whether we can immediately see it or not, these three things are quite intrinsically linked. Now if you think about that for just a minute, Make prayer and care and what to wear. How on earth did he come up with the fact that those three things are linked? Well, How these are interconnected might take a little bit of thought and consideration, but I do believe the key to it lies in the very first verse of our primary text. Look with me for just one moment at chapter number six of the Gospel of Matthew, verse number 21, which Jesus says here as he's teaching, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Now, if we consider also the wisdom that God gave to King Solomon. You remember when Solomon came and took over the throne? The Lord came to Solomon and he said, what would you ask for? And what was Solomon's response? I want all the riches and all the... No, absolutely not. Solomon says, give me an understanding heart because I'm a child. I don't know how to rule so great a people. I don't know how to go in and go out before them. And so he prayed for an understanding heart and God gave him wisdom beyond wisdom that anybody else ever before him or ever after him has had on this earth. So if we consider that wisdom that God gave to Solomon and his record as we have it in Proverbs chapter 4 verse 23 that reads, keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. Now it sounds like that kind of goes right along with our key verse here tonight, for where your treasure is there will your heart be also. So if we look at that we can begin to see how these things which we value, the things which we spend time thinking about and focusing on, Those things will shape our outlook and those things will shape our commitment to the things of the Lord in association with how we live our daily life. Now think of it this way. There are certain things which each one of us must do. We have responsibilities. There are certain things that we have to do on a daily basis. Whether that be working in a job. or whether that's cleaning the house or taking care of someone. Maybe it's an elderly. Maybe it's a child. Maybe it's even your pets. But you've got things that you have to do. Or maybe it's even running your errands to gather up the groceries or to pay the bills or to get the car worked on. Whatever it is, there are things that have to be done from day to day. Whatever it might be, these are necessary. Well, how then Do you or I spend any other time that is left after the necessities are taken care of? What do we do with that time? How do we spend it? Some would say, I don't have any time left. Well, you do actually. We like to say that we're so busy we never have time for anything except What did I say just a moment ago? Those things that we think about and actually do spend time on, those are what's going to shape our outlook and our commitment to the things of the Lord. Now let's call it our time, or maybe we can call it our down time, air quotes, right? Down time. It's our time. That's me time. Well, during these times, however long or however brief they might be, What is it that fills your thoughts and desires? What activities do you engage, whether it's physically or mentally or emotionally? What is it that you do in your my time? Now, I'm not gonna say, and I am not saying that it's a bad thing to have some hobby that you engage. It's a good thing to have things to do and to keep your mind and your hands busy. That's a good thing. It's good to have these things to do that help us to decompress, if you will, from the rigors of daily life. Now, when you get home from work, I'll confess and I'll testify that when we get home from work, when we get off work, we like to get home and we like to just sit and have a cup of coffee for a few minutes. That's just a time to sit and chat, just decompress from the workday. kind of download the day. How was your day? Oh, it was okay. How was your day? Well, it could have been better. But that's just time to decompress from whatever has been going on. I will say though that if you and I have accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior and if we desire to serve the Lord then our time, if you're going to do the air quotes for that, my downtime must be spent in most part in communion and worship and service to the Lord. Now if we do engage time with a hobby, I know that Clark at one point liked to go out and tinker with the cars. Maybe you still do from time to time. Not anymore. Well that's okay too. I know that was a great thing that you loved to do for very, very many years. There are folks that love to sew. There's folks that like to put puzzles together. There's any number of things. If we do engage our time with a hobby, let's just make sure that it is something into which we can also invite the Lord. What a concept that might be. Well, Lord, I've got a little bit of downtime here, and so I'm going to go and do my thing. I'll be back in a minute. That doesn't look good, does it? No. Invite the Lord along with you. Lord, it's my downtime. What should we talk about while I do my little thing here that I'm going to do? Have some time to talk with the Lord. Use your hobby both to decompress and to draw closer to the God at the same time. What would be the problem with that? Now this is where the direct statements of scripture that we find the first Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 17 comes into play. What does first Thessalonians 5.17 tell us? Pray without ceasing. Oh, well that means pray while we're working because we're not supposed to cease from praying. That means we pray while we're running our errands. That means we are to pray while we're taking care of others. It means we're to pray before and during our downtime. Jesus said in Matthew 26 verse 41 he's talking to the disciples and he said watch and pray for a very specific reason. Do you know what that reason was? He says watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak. All truer words have never been spoken. When we are not filling our time by including the Lord in all that we might do, even if that is to just sit and have a cup of coffee, rest a little bit, well, if we're not including the Lord in that, then we are opening ourselves to be vulnerable to wickedness, evil, and any number of things that directly oppose our communion with God and our reflection of Christ in our life. Let's read then the rest of our source text here, and we'll get into the rest of this message tonight. Matthew chapter 6, let's start again with verse number 21, and the Bible here says, Jesus says, 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. Verse 25 says therefore Which just means, because of what I just said, I hope you paid attention to what I just said, Jesus says, therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat and the body than raiment? That's our source text. Let's go to the Lord and we'll pray. Father God in heaven, as we look to this message tonight, I do ask that your Holy Spirit will fill us. Fill me, Lord, and help me to understand. Fill each one of us, Lord. Help us all to understand what you would have us to take home from this message tonight, Lord, that will encourage us for the rest of this week and for the days to come. May your will be done tonight. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, from our text, I suppose it's pretty easy to see where I got at least the last part of the title for this message. Remember I mentioned that I titled it Prayer, Care, and What to Wear? Okay, well, verse 25 talks a little bit about what to wear, and we'll come back to that in a few moments. Now what, though, does this passage have to do with prayer and care? That's a good question. Let's look at prayer first. We know from scripture, especially in Romans chapter number eight, that God has pre-set the goal for every soul that believes on Jesus and accepts him as their personal savior. Right? What is that goal? That pre-set goal, the Bible uses the words predestined. Hmm. Well, that preset goal for every soul that believes on Jesus and accepts Him as their personal Savior is to be conformed to the image of His Son. Now what is the one thing that God's Son did any and every time that He took time away from the activities of His earthly ministry? What's the one thing that we can think of that the scriptures tell us that Jesus did? Was it not that he went to pray? Absolutely. There's passages that says he went to pray and he prayed all night long to the Father. Yes, Jesus did work as a carpenter for some time in his life. Yes, when he began his ministry he was seemingly always busy. Boy, I tell you, you start looking at the works of Christ and you start looking at the ministry of Christ through the Gospels and I don't know that there's a whole lot of time where he was able to get away, but every time he took time away he would take it to go and to pray. When he had those times that he was not actively preaching and those were many. When he wasn't actually teaching and those were many. When he wasn't actively healing or feeding the multitudes and so on. The scripture says most often that he would go up or go out into a mountain to pray. That was his personal focus. That was his vision of what needed to be done for him to be able to continue his ministry. To be in communion with the Father. Now we've already seen that direct statement in Paul's letter to the Thessalonians. It says, of course, pray without ceasing. But it's not just, you know, if you look at it, it's Paul's letter to the Thessalonians. Well, is that really the inspired word of God? Yes, it is. But it's more than just a great apostle's letter to some folks that needed to be encouraged. Scripture tells us from early in Genesis, of the need of mankind to call upon the Lord. We see it already way back in Genesis chapter 4. that it was a time when men began to call upon the Lord. Now in the record of the first psalm of David, that is not Psalm 1 by the way, the first psalm of David is found in 1 Chronicles chapter 16. We find in verse number 11 where David writes, seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually. So it's not just a letter from Paul to say pray without ceasing. David, who had a heart for God, said we are to seek the Lord in his strength and seek his face continually. And again, David writes, and we do find in the Psalms, chapter number 55, if you will, verse number 17, David writes, evening and morning and at noon will I pray and cry aloud, and he shall hear my voice. Now, because prayer is so important in the life of every believer, God has recorded instruction throughout all of Scripture. And Jesus personally taught very much about prayer, and how to pray, and when to pray, and why we need to pray. Just as we saw when we looked at that in Matthew 26 when Jesus was talking to his disciples. Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation. It was that his prayer was Jesus' personal focus. That was his entire vision and means by which he existed because it was the means by which he stayed as a man on earth connected to his father in heaven. Do we have that eye? Remember the Bible here talked about in our text, the light of the body is the eye. Do we have that eye? That's talking about that vision, that focus. Do we have that mental acumen to say that we have to be in continual prayer to be connected to our Father, which is in heaven. In our text, verses 22 and 23, they tell us, let's look at it again. The light of the body is the eye. Therefore, if 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." Now the concept, I suppose, if you will, is that when we are focused, when our eye is single, when our vision, our outlook, our spiritual radar, if you will, When our eye, when our vision is single, the verse says, meaning that it's not divided by all the other hobbies and distractions and decompression methods that we may use. Remember we were talking about that earlier. We get home from work, we get home from the work of the day and we have decompression things that we like to do, something to help us relax. As long as our vision and our focus is not divided by those things, when our eye is single, then the Bible says that thy whole body shall be full of light. In other words, if we focus on our constant communion with Jesus, who is the light of the world, then everything about us will be filled with that which pleases the Father. What did Jesus say he did every day? He said, I do always that which pleases the Father. Why? Because his eye was single, his vision, his focus was absolutely to do nothing but the will of the Father. Now also keep in mind that Jesus is the Word of God. We know that from John chapter 14, in the beginning was the Word, or John chapter 1 rather, in the beginning was the Word, the Word is with God, the Word was God, and then later on in that same chapter, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, that is Christ. Jesus is the Word of God, so Jesus then is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. as we find in the New Testament as well, that the Word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. And the verse ends that is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. In other words, there is no fooling Jesus. There is no way that we can pull one over or hide anything from Christ. We must truly, as the Apostle Paul says, strive for mastery even when it comes to prayer. Why? Well, aside from being a commandment that we are to pray without ceasing, verse 23 of our text contrasts the condition of being singular, of having that right focus. Verse 23 contrasts that by showing us that if we are not focused correctly. If we allow for selfish me time, Lord I believe you, I love you Lord, but I'm just going to go take some time for me. I don't want to think about anything, I don't want to read my Bible, I don't want to think about a song, I just want to do nothing. I want to have absolute me time. If we're not focused correctly, if we allow for that selfish me time and emphasis on ourselves, he says, even as a child of God, the light that is in me be darkness. And how great. And that's not a good great. That great is how immense, how overwhelming, how unbelievable is that darkness. Now that doesn't say that Jesus is the darkness. What that says is that the light that is in me is overshadowed by that me time that I want to take apart from everything else. Because then within us, our focus is not on the Lord, but it's on me. And oh, that's not a good place to be. This is where so many professing believers are in a seemingly endless state of conflict and turmoil Anybody know a professing believer that just can't seem to get a peace or a victory over something in their life? It's because the eye is not single. They're not focused on spending their downtime with the Lord. Spending the time to pray without ceasing. Spending the time to seek His face continually. Friends, even you and I When we have had times of turmoil in our lives, can I ask you to think about it for just a moment and have you during those times spent adequate time seeking the Lord's face and strength. You see, this is one, this is a believer that cannot find the perfect peace that Isaiah speaks of in Isaiah 26 in verse 3. What does Isaiah 26 3 says? That's a great question. I'm glad you asked. It says, thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee. Do you trust the Lord? Well, yeah, of course I trust the Lord. Well, what about the times when you're not thinking about the Lord? Do you trust the Lord to take care of helping you to unwind? Do you trust the Lord in helping you to decompress? Do you trust the Lord to know how best to unwind from all the pressures of life? Well, yeah, but he's way up there in heaven and I'm down here on earth and you know what I got to deal with? Yeah, he does. God will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee. How is our prayer? Are we praying without ceasing? Are we seeking His face continually? That's a question between you and the Lord. I can't tell you that. Which brings us to care. Right? I said it was prayer, care, and what to wear. So it brings us to care. So often we will go to God in prayer and we will tell Him all about our burdens and our worries. And we will ask for His help. And we may even feel some relief when we pray, because we have prayed and we have cast all our care upon Him, as it says in 1 Peter 5, 7. But then how long is it until we can't seem to leave it alone? How long is it? Lord, you've really got to take care of this for me. I wonder what I can do to help this thing. Right? We start scheming, we start thinking about it. I wonder what else I can do. You see, it isn't long until we can't seem to leave it alone. Rather, we start worrying about when God will resolve the issue. How is God going to resolve the issue? We fall back into that trap of, anybody ever said this? It's that trap of, well, God will help those who help themselves. So if I help myself and God will see that I'm trying and he'll help me too. Wrong. God will help those who put their trust in the Lord. God will help those who truly are seeking his help. We're not seeking his help if we go to him in prayer and cast all our care upon him and then try to figure out how to fix it ourselves anyway. We're not trusting. You see, we try to help God by the way we think our prayers should be answered. Charles Spurgeon said it this way concerning the care or the burdens that we cast or that we should cast upon the Lord. Spurgeon says, quote, he who cannot calmly leave his affairs in God's hand but will carry his own burden is very likely to be tempted to use wrong means to help himself. This sin leads to a forsaking of God as our counselor and resorting instead to human wisdom." Boy, that's a powerful statement if we think about that. Are we able to leave our burdens in God's care? Or do we have to think that, well, God, this really isn't a problem that's big enough for you. I'll take care of these little things. I'll bring you the big stuff. How's that? God doesn't work that way either. God wants to help every one of our burdens. Now look again at verse 24 of our text here in Matthew chapter 6. Verse number 24, the Bible here says, Jesus said, 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. What he's saying here, friends, is that we cannot be half-hearted in our relationship with God. If we only trust God sometimes, and only with some things, then we're really showing and telling God and we're showing all the others that we feel in some way superior to God as we will allow Him to help us with these things over here but not those over there. How dare we? We better find our place. We'd best come back to the Lord and say, oh God forgive me. And yet we try to convince ourselves that, oh yes, we love the Lord and he is the Lord of my life. My question is, does that leave me with any true peace in my heart when I behave that way with God? Maybe that's a question we ought to all ask ourselves from time to time. I don't know about you. Maybe you've got this all figured out and praise God if you do. The Bible tells me that there's no temptation hath taken man but such as is common. Which means to me that everybody deals with this from time to time. Do we have any real true peace in our hearts when we behave this way with God? God you can take care of that but I'll take care of the little things. I know you're a busy guy. God help us. Believer, it is a haughty spirit that won't give everything and leave everything in God's hands. What does the Bible say about a haughty spirit? Bible quiz. Proverbs chapter 16 and verse number 18 says a haughty spirit goes before a fall. The beginning of that verse says pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Thinking that we can handle those small things and we'll let God handle the big things is nothing but double-minded pride. It's double-minded haughtiness. Yeah, I know that there's things that I can't take care of, so those things I'll give to God. Yeah, I think I can handle these little things. How's that worked out for you so far in your life? I don't know. For me, it hasn't worked out real well. God's had to show me that buddy, you can't do with this what you think you can. I live a double-minded life sometimes. James chapter 1 verse 8 tells us what? James 1.8 says a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Oh, well that doesn't sound very good. You see it affects every aspect of our life and our being, friends. Well, we'll close then here tonight with verse number 25. I know we've got to get to our prayer time. Verse number 25 says, therefore, because of these things I've taught you, Jesus says, therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment? You see, Jesus is trying to teach us here that if we are so concerned over whether we might have the finest foods to eat. If we're so concerned about having reasonably fashionable clothing that you know at least keeps up with some of the Joneses, then we're missing what's most important. Look further down in Matthew chapter 6 down to verse number 33. What does Jesus instruct us here? He says, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things. the food, the raiment, all the other things that we worry so much about. He said all these things should be added unto you. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. You see friends, if God graciously provides for, well I don't know, if God graciously provides for steak and lobster and silk and cashmere, then praise God for that. But if God provides popcorn and polyester then praise God for that too because God knows what you have need of. What does the Bible tell us? Forty years. Forty years God provided manna. It's not glamorous. It's not steak and lobster. But it was sustaining. Nobody went hungry. For 40 years, there were no clothing and shoe stores in the wilderness. You couldn't go down to JCPenney or, I don't know, some shoe store or something. You couldn't go to Famous Footwear in the wilderness for 40 years, but God made it so that the clothes and the shoes didn't wear out. Has God changed since that time? Not one bit. If God knew how to take care of them then, Believer, God knows how to take care of us today. He still knows our needs and how best to provide. Believers, our focus must be to treasure our prayer, God's care for us, and even to treasure that which God provides for us to wear. Amen? Prayer, care, and what to wear. God takes care of it all. Praise the Lord for that. Amen. All right. Well, that's our message for tonight.