country is Great Britain, is England. This great hymn, The Church's One Foundation, emerged from a ragged and wearing controversy that threatened to tear asunder the Church of England. In the mid-1800s, the liberal views of German theologians drifted like a poisonous fog over Anglicans worldwide. In South Africa, which is interesting since South Africa is now the African Church, Anglican Church is actually the Bible-believing, but in South Africa, Bishop John William Colenso Influenced by the German higher critics questioned whether Moses had really written the first five books of the Bible. He also took liberal views toward Paul's book of Romans denying the doctrine of eternal punishment. Colenso had been a tireless missionary bishop serving the Zulu people and Northeastern South Africa with laudable passion, but his emerging liberalism, that means denying the scriptures, liberal means denying the scriptures, when you talk about theological liberalism, his emerging liberalism sent shockwaves through evangelical Anglican leaders. Evangelical means Bible-believing, historically, and liberal is the opposite. Liberal means don't believe the Bible as written. So Moses didn't write the Pentateuch, and it didn't happen as it said. You know, it ain't necessarily so, that idea. In 1853, Bishop Robert Gray of Cape Town, defending the historic faith, removed Colenso from his post. Colenso fought the order and was reinstated by a London court of law. The resulting conflict shook the Anglican Church to its foundations. One man on the side of evangelical truth was Samuel Stone, the curate at Windsor in the shadow of Windsor Castle. In 1866, he wrote 12 hymns based on the 12 articles of the Apostles' Creed. The church's one foundation was based on the ninth article of the Creed, which says, I believe in the holy Catholic, which just means universal, not Roman, just universal, church, the communion of saints. the next year. And that's a testimony to the universal church, not the local church. That's the local expression of members of the universal church in an assembly committed together. That's a local church. Baptists like to emphasize that. But there is the universal church. And I'm glad that this song was written about that. The next year, Anglican bishops from around the world assembled for a theological enclave that became known as the First Lambeth Conference. The tone of the proceedings was set by Stone's Hymn, the church's one foundation, which had been set to music by Samuel Wesley, the grandson of Charles. Wesley became the processional for that conference and has been one of the church's best-loved hymns ever since. Not all the verses, however, are sung today. Here's a stanza you may never have sung, but which helps us understand the passion of Samuel Stone as he wrote in defense of the integrity of Christ's holy church. It says, "...though with a scornful wonder men see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed, yet saints their watch are keeping, their cry goes up, how long and soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song?" a new song. That's a great encouragement to me, given that today's Anglican Church, the Episcopal Church, is in a horrible shambles. There's a horrible tendency away, if you see Episcopal or Anglican, tendency away from believing in the Scriptures. There are still some evangelical Episcopal or Anglican pastors and believers, but it's by far not the mainstream, and it's a troubled denomination for sure. But that's the nature of, in my view, the nature of denominationalism. The sentiment of the church as one foundation is not to us a particularly Anglican sentiment. It is a Christian, back to the historic Christian faith sentiment. I wanted to share another thing with you while we're experiencing a little bit of technical stuff and I will share the word in just a moment. There we go. Yeah, our internet works fine. Trying to find the article where it talks about Chinese oppression of the Christians. Oh, we're back on. Hey, wait long enough and it'll happen. What? We're live, yes. I'm sorry, no, it's not right now. I'll have it later. No. Oh, I can't find it now. See, these news articles come up and then they disappear. I do encourage you to pray for the underground church in China, for all those who are prisoners of conscience whose organs are being harvested by the communist dictatorship of China. And I am in the United States of America and can freely say that, even if I'm not correct, even if my news report's not accurate, I can still freely say it. Now, that's the way our current mainstream media works, is a lot of not accurate things they can just freely say, and everybody's bled the soil red on foreign wars to make sure that that's possible. But see, communism, which is the ultimate goal of socialism, goes to totalitarian dictatorship. There's always a Stalin, there's always a Mao, there's always a Xi Jinping, there's always a Pol Pot. It never goes to what the socialists claim, which is the real dream of communism and everyone experiencing equal benefits, because it's a broken world with broken people. You'll never get that utopian dream that Satan keeps dangling in front of young generations who are dissatisfied with the troubles of angsty, hormonal teenage life. It's hard to grow up and there's no solution for it. But certainly the solution is not totalitarian communism. First hour, we had a good time talking about my trouble and my response to my trouble. Those are two different issues. And I'm trying to make this very explicit to you. The problem that you're facing is very different from the way you deal with the problem. But if you deal with your problem sinfully, you make your problem worse. You increase the magnitude of the trouble to become morally compromised. When someone opposes you, when someone hurts you, when someone attacks you, for example, when a lie in China results in a global pandemic, For example, and the US economy is hamstrung because we're trying to protect the baby boomers and the people older than them, the generations that will be most hurt by this virus. When this happens, that's the trouble. It just is what it is. Your response to it can either be sinful, arrogant, rebellious, hateful, bitter, these things, or it can be responsive to God and you can think the truths of God's Word. And this is very hard for us because in arrogance we think we are the answer. without thinking about it at all. We just feel like we've got this handled. We will solve it. We can deal. Our feelings will be the appropriate response. But it's not true. You need a little bit of the benefit of doubt about your own goodness in dealing with problems. Not Jesus' goodness, but your own goodness. We, because of having the Spirit in us, do not become just exponents of God's word. We don't just happen to just start speaking the truth and whatever occurs to us isn't necessarily so. And so learning to deal in this life with the inner temptation to sin from our flesh and the outside pressure of trouble is really a huge part of our sanctification. And as we grow in the Lord, as we grow in the word, as we respond to hardships in this life, Without arrogance, without pride, without rebellion, with submission to God, we grow. In the book of James, in chapter 1, which we've heard a marvelous exposition of the book of James. I challenge you to go back and check the archives in our website and watch those videos or check out those MP3s of Jack Hayes teaching through James. He's doing a phenomenal job. I'm so thankful for him being a deacon in our church, being just part of the work here. And if you're part of our church, you know Jack, and you know what an encouragement he is. Every conversation with Jack goes back to the Bible. He's always going to bring it back. And he can talk about other things, and he's glad to, but he's always going to season the conversation. with the Word of the Lord Jesus, and I'm so thankful for that. It's such an incredible witness in my life, and I miss them, and I pray for them, and I know it's mutual. But the Apostle, or James, not the Apostle, but the Elder. Apostle James was killed by Herod Agrippa, but James the Elder says, My brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. He just said that the trouble is what it is. He just said that this trouble is trouble. But he said my response to it needs to take into account God's word on the topic, not my feelings about the trouble, but God's word about the topic of trouble. And it says your response is to be joy. Consider it all what? Joy, when what? When you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect or mature result, so that you may be perfect or mature and complete, lacking in nothing. You want to grow spiritually through the hardship. That's what the Bible consistently teaches, that God puts us through our paces. He hasn't given you the Holy Spirit so that you can be this trust fund kid that doesn't do any work for the organization, for the company. Your dad, who owns the company, has begotten you, not by adoption. People do not understand the biblical doctrine of adoption. They say, well, Israel's a natural-born child, but we're adopted as Gentiles. That is not the biblical doctrine in the New Testament of adoption. The biblical doctrine of adoption is based on Roman adoption, and it begins with the fact that you have been born again into the family of God. The royal family of God is your new birth, and you are a naturally born child into God's household. That is the new birth when you first trusted in Christ. Adoption is an image Paul uses in Romans and Galatians to express inheritance. The child born in the Roman household does not necessarily inherit the family business and all the holdings. But you, born again in Christ, do stand in Christ to inherit all things as the successful adult child would in a Roman household. That's the doctrine of adoption in the New Testament. And it is your birthright to trust in God through the hardship. It's my birthright to look at the pain and look at the suffering and look at the trouble. And then before I give vent to my sinfulness and my sinful emotional responses of anger, bitterness, dissatisfaction, all those self-pity, all those things, I am charged by God, because He's given me the Holy Spirit and His Word, to think. I'm supposed to think about what this means, about what it's for, about what God has said on the topic. James 1, just read it. Read it in the King James. Read it in the New King James. Read it in the NIV. It's going to tell you the same basic message and it is that when you suffer, God is doing something with it. It has a purpose and we need to trust Him about it. And that's the opposite move to what we tend to do with our trouble. But if any of you lacks wisdom, Let him ask of God who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. So not only are we to think and consider it all joy, my brethren, in James 1-2, we're to pray in James 1-5 for specifically wisdom. but not with doubting, verse six. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. but the brother of humble circumstances, the glory in his high position. And the rich man is to glory in his humiliation, because like flower and grass, he will pass away." This is saying whatever your circumstance, it is what it is, you are to take God's word in with you as you respond to your circumstance. That's the mindset of the Christian who's walking by faith, not by sight. walking by faith, not by feeling all that hurts. So I'm going to be a pile of jello. I'm going to be just act like an unbeliever, which is what an immature believer will listen. An immature believer will do. Pastor Dave, where in the world would you get out of the New Testament scriptures that we who have the Holy Spirit and can't lose him, we who are born again to this new life you just mentioned, where would you get the idea that we as immature believers would act and think and respond like unbelievers? How could you ever say such a thing? 1 Corinthians 3, right after developing the concept of the Corinthians as carnal, or spiritual, and that the spiritual man appraises all things, and he is receiving the Word of God that Paul has been given as inspiration. In 1 Corinthians 3, I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of sarks, of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink and not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you're not yet able. You're babies and you cannot eat the steak that Paul wants to serve up. For you are still carnal, that is characterized by the flesh, your sinful nature. For since there is jealousy and strife, these are sins that unbelievers live in. Among you, are you not carnal and are you not walking like, and here's where he says it, men, like mere men. You are walking, acting, behaving like unbelievers with your sinful default setting, even though you are infants in Christ. Let's don't build our categories from our experience. Well, I had an emotional experience at church, so I must be, you know, really set apart and now I'm not going to be like an unbeliever. If you're a spiritual baby, the slightest attack, the slightest challenge, the slightest weight that you're asked to bear to serve the Lord and to count it all joy, you will struggle, you will struggle with not being angry and responding in sin, sinfully to your trouble. We're talking today about painful external factors and our response to them. The painful external factors of the looming financial collapse, Coming health problems, people troubles that you may face, these are always going to be a problem, but they will become worse as people are put under greater pressure. Sometimes you get too much attention, sometimes not enough, and then there are these destructive internal responses that you might have. This is where you sin as a starting point when you receive a little bit of challenge, a little bit of pain, a little bit of oppression from these external causes of stress, these stressors. So you could be a worry ward if that's your hang up. You worry about the future, you borrow trouble, and then you borrow trouble. And then once you've processed that, you borrow some trouble some more. We said that's the hamster wheel. You're just spinning your wheels and doing nothing. You can be a compulsive, proud person. You can compulsively insist on having your version of you that you don't want anyone to tell you the truth about that breaks your little fantasy that you've made about yourself. You know, it's like when you look in the mirror and you just get exactly the right angle and you think of yourself as that snapshot. You don't think of yourself as a three-dimensional you that everyone else sees and deals with. And so we think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. And we want to tell ourselves this story. And so we fight for our sense of personal dignity when we're challenged by these various hardships. And we start thinking of, well, if God loves me, then I shouldn't have to deal with this. Or it's me, after all, and I shouldn't be challenged this way. Or whatever the hardship that you're facing, and arrogance kicks in, and you're off to the races. And then you have also. We get dominated by disappointment. I'm calling it dominant disappointment with the past or present. Do y'all know what dominant means? Dominant means it rules. It rules. Think of a little kid who is told, your birthday party is this Friday. Your birthday party is this Friday. We've invited your five best friends and they're gonna come spend the night at the house. What an awesome idea. Thursday afternoon, we detect the first radon sensor goes off we have the guy come out and they say this house has to be evacuated and you need extensive radon mitigation nobody can live in this house no one can spend a night another night in this house i don't know if that happened with radon but let's just say that it happened or your septic tank backs up and nobody wants to stay there so now the party has been at least postponed, possibly canceled. The little kid who's expecting his five friends and the best day of his life as he sees it has just been told, no, you're not going to have that. That is what it is. It's an external thing and it's a disappointment. Can you see how hard it would be for a kid that's been building this up in his mind as this great hope, how hard it is for him not to be dominated by that disappointment? The more you have fixated on something, the more you have made it this thing you're looking forward to, the more its cancellation will dominate you in terms of your disappointment, and you have to snap out of that petty little view that, oh, this Friday was my life. It's not. It's just a day. It's an event. It was just six hours of fun. six hours of fun and then a lot of getting in trouble because y'all wouldn't go to sleep in the tent and then Somebody had to call their mom and go home and all the stuff that really happens on an evening like that now Here's what happens. Here's what happens we zoom out We we have to train the children do this we zoom out We look at the big picture of eternity and our life in Christ and we start with the big thing first you have Jesus Do you even know what that means? You're worried about having some friends come over. You have fellowship with God and start looking at this in terms of the biblical perspective and what God is doing. And He's working with you in this and He wants you to trust Him. And this is a test and all the rationale for God is in control and He loves you. And James 1, we're counting this joy even though we're going to suffer a little bit. Can you see how zooming out and adopting that perspective and working that will defeat dominant disappointment about the present situation or the past that has led up to the present? So either I'm going to just dither in constant Eeyore, dominant disappointment, or I'm going to worry, worry, worry about what the future might hold, or I'm going to rest my present In Christ, my past is I've been crucified with Christ, and I've been buried with Christ, I've been raised with Christ, and I'm seated presently in glory at the right hand of the Father in Christ. There's no room for dominant disappointment in that hopeful reality and that eternal truth. And then I'm also going to look at my future and say, I'm actually going to be physically resurrected and physically rule with the Jesus Christ and his physical kingdom that is coming. And you start, and see, if you don't have this truth in your heart, if you don't believe in this, if you haven't learned this and trusted in God on his revelation, you don't have access to this perspective. You can't grab the future that he's promised and hang on to it and say, even though this hurts now, this is what's coming, and I can trust him. You don't have any skill. And so that's the baby that's like, well, I don't know what to do. And that's the problem. Christians, if you're a new believer, If you're a new believer, the language is birth and growth. And that's awesome. And there's nothing more delightful than a newborn baby, you understand, in the flesh. There's nothing more exciting for a family than a newborn baby. But the horror is the baby that's nine years old and still nursing. Right? Still nursing and not really growing. Just surviving. We have to grow up. That's our goal. And it's not like physical growth where if you just, well actually it kind of is like physical growth if you eat. and you use what you've eaten, and you do a little exercise, you grow strong. And if you eat and you sit around working your thumbs, you don't grow strong, you grow weak. You grow, but you grow up weak, and your body's weak, and your bones are weak, and your muscles are weak. Right? You grow by eating and using, and eating and using, and that's what needs to happen. And so if you have this truth of God's coming kingdom and your role in it as the church with Jesus Christ, if you know your destiny, then you're strengthened for the present disappointment and the worry that you might otherwise entertain about the future. And you're not going to roll around in all of these mental attitude sins and you're not going to fantasize and evade your problem and make it your life's pursuit just to avoid the pain of whatever you're facing. I believe our culture is facing an epidemic already, a pandemic in Western rich civilization. We're facing a pandemic of children that are growing up running from boredom, running from the hard reality of life. They're spending all their time and energy, any pursuit, anything to avoid the boredom of learning to do your work and appreciate the privilege of doing it. Learning the joy of hard work and the reward that it itself is. Our children are learning to go after this thing until they're bored of it and then switch to this thing until they're bored of it and switch to this thing. And it's all play and it's all waste, it's all silly. Paul says, when I was a child, I played with childish things. When I grew up, I put away the childish things, he says, in 1 Corinthians 13. And this is true. I mean, kids have always had their little play and diversion. But we have to let them learn, rather than evading the truth that life is work, and that's where our joy is in serving God and His provision of strength and capability and giftedness and skill through His word to do the work that He wants us to do. That's where the joy is. That's where the real fun is. The little goo-gahs and the toys and all the little screen stuff is a counterfeit It's a fake that doesn't really satisfy. There is real joy in the industry, in the labor God wants us to do. Now, these words may fall on deaf ears, but they aren't wrong just because we don't have an appetite for the word. That's the question. Do you have that appetite? Can you grow by taking in God's word? The solution to your problems is not sin and pretending that you haven't sinned and evading the problem, pretending that it's not there. This is not the solution. By the way, the way God does problem solving by challenging you with a problem and then you have to respond to it, it doesn't take the problem away for you to respond correctly. A lot of people think Christian problem solving is, if I apply the doctrine correctly, then the problem is no longer a problem, it goes away. Well, no, that's not how it works. The pain is still there, the problem's still there, I just grew, I'm just bigger and able to handle it better. It's still just the same thing it was, but before, to me it was overwhelming, and as God becomes overwhelming to me, and I grab hold of him by faith, I am expanded to where that problem becomes manageable. Oh, it still hurts, and it's still really bad, but I've got my eternal life in perspective, and I'm able to handle, I'm able to manage this, whatever the problem is. Well, I wanted to go with you to the ultimate problem solving. not sin, we need to do all these things, and we're not capable of doing any of these things, as we said first hour. We can't break our fixation on the fear of future troubles. If I tell you, stop worrying, all you can do for me is basically feel guilty that you're worrying. The only thing you'll be able to do with me when I tell you stop it, stop that worrying, is basically unless you mix your faith with God's Word, unless you think God's thoughts and you trust Him, you're going to still be worrying. You're just going to feel bad about it. And you should. You should feel guilty in a sense. You're wrong if you're worrying when you have Christ. That's an appropriate response. if we're fixated on present disappointment. I can say, stop that being disappointed. Stop that feeling sorry for yourself. It's good advice. You shouldn't stop it. But unless you're equipped with God's word to think it through, I'm just giving you something your conscience should be or possibly is already doing for you. You need to avoid the sins that follow on with a fixation on worry in the future or disappointment in the present. You need to avoid those sins. Stop being bitter. Well, yeah. But how did you get here is the question. You do need to stop it, and you need to confess it. But there is a process that I suggest can be very helpful to reignite your thinking. When a jet engine goes out, I've been really enjoying the story of the Cold War. As told by Bill Whittle in the podcast, I heartily recommend to everyone that I know, especially my Marxist loved ones that think that the best thing for us is a stronger government, you should check out what we saw, The Cold War by Bill Whittle. It's ingenious. It's so great as a summary of the last, well, the second half of the 20th century. And in it, he talks about various experiences people had. And he did one earlier on NASA and the Apollo 11 mission and getting to the moon, which we actually did. And the Earth is round and all that. And he talks in one place about the idea of a jet pilot whose jet flames out. and having to restart it, having to restart a jet engine while you're flying and what's involved with that. And it's basically you have to get air back through it to reignite it. And so there's a whole procedure you go through to reignite. And it's a thought process. Imagine you're in this jet airplane, which is designed only for flight. It's not designed to glide. It's designed to fly with stability with the jet engine running. And so if it goes out, what do you do? Well, you have to start thinking through procedures. And if you've learned them well enough, then you can kind of feel your way through it because it's so much who you are. But it's a thought process. And Americans are not good these days at thinking. I hear reports of people that do surveys and tests of Ivy League graduates of higher learning and with their bachelor's degrees and the ability to critically think is not there. There's just a lot of repetition of the group. Think of what's said. And we're not critical thinkers today. And we need to learn to be critical thinkers, not just parrots that repeat things, but thinking things through. Why do you believe what you believe? Why do you think this way? And that's hard to do because we want to feel. We want to feel excitement or rage or whatever. These are delightful things that we feel alive when we feel. So we want to feel our way along and the whole racism industry is built on this. It really is. It is the idea that someone makes a living by telling you those people of that skin color hate you because of your skin color. So now you feel a deep-seated sense of rejection by everybody from that skin color. So now you, in feeling that rejection, that has caused angst, that's caused bitterness, that's caused anger, that's caused a sense of righteous indignation that they hate you for your skin color. And so now because you feel hated and oppressed because someone told you you were, without you ever talking to someone of that skin color about it, Now you hate them before the fact. I hate you for hating me. And it's a retaliation for a sin that hasn't necessarily been committed. But imagine the power of telling someone they hate you. They want to kill you. If you're told that, and that's formative for who you are, then it's true whether it's true or not. It's the environment you have been raised in. And I'm not saying black and white. I'm saying any group. Where you have this opposition because of difference, and arrogance says we're right because it's us. You're going to have this stupidity that develops, which is the sense of immediate rejection. I want to challenge you. If you'll treat people as individuals, if you'll treat a person, a man as a man, a woman as a woman, if you'll treat people as humans made in God's image, and not lump them into categories that someone told you, oh, this is the way to think about that category, but think about individuals. you will be doing God's work toward other people. But this is just one of these problems that people have. They feel this pain. And so they react sinfully to the pain instead of thinking what God thinks about that other person. Hey, what if they do hate you for your skin color? I've been hated for my skin color plenty, and I know that one's justifiable because of privilege, I'm told. But it's not sin is sin. If you're individually sinning, I don't care who your mom and dad are, I don't care where you're from or your genetics or anything. If you're sinful on your choices, that's on you. And that's not white talk or black talk. That's just reason. That's just the scriptures. You are responsible for your choices. You're an image bearer of God's image, and that's awesome. So what do you do with this problem? What do you do with this problem of someone hating you for your skin color? Well, you can either feel that rejection and respond with emotional, if you will, sin of responsive hatred, of bitterness, of malice, of all that It is understandable that you would respond that way, or you can think God's thoughts, and you can see God's image in that other person, though tainted by sin, and you can say, this is what that person needs, because God says, they need eternal life that only comes through Jesus Christ. They need the love of God that is expressed only through Jesus Christ. They need him, and I can either share him, or I can pray for them to receive him, but I can be invested for that person that hates me. just like Jesus was for all those people that hated him, who endured such hostility at the hands of sinners against himself. And I can keep entrusting myself to God the Father who judges righteously. And that's the way you think through what otherwise would be just this emotional ball of sinfulness. And that's what we're talking about. You don't want to react to your circumstance with just whatever occurs to you emotionally. You want to think through, on the basis of God's Word, a principle, a thought that is undeniably your responsibility, and then trust in Him with that principle, and then watch Him fill you back, backfill you, not the filling of the Spirit, but the work of the Spirit in you, to have the kinds of feelings that go with knowing you got it right, you're doing what God wants you to do, He has hold of you, so you have that confidence, all that comes with Christian passion, or Christian, I should say, affections. You deal with each matter in its place biblically. And I want you to turn, please, to Matthew 6. When you're sinful, you don't say, I'm not sinful. You say, I committed personal sin, and you confess it to God, and you have to do self-assessment. When you have believed Satan's lies, like God doesn't want to protect me, like I'm going to have to sin in order to feed my family, like I'm going to have to disobey God in order to obey God, all these are sins of lie. All these are lies. And you get into personal sin a lot of times by justifying it through a lie. We tell ourselves a story we want to believe, Because really, we just want to serve our sin nature because it's how we feel. And so I'm really parsing the distinction between the default feelings we often have, which are sin patterns. Your emotions aren't sinful, don't misunderstand. Your emotional patterns of sin are sinful. So I'm just saying you're a whole person. You've got your thoughts. You've got your feelings. You've got your inclinations. You've got your conscience. There's a lot going on in you. And there's nobody, no one's ever drawn a picture of it, by the way. No one has successfully diagrammed the soul. I know people have said they have, but they haven't. There's no lobes of the soul. That doesn't exist. There's lobes of your brain. For example, just for one example, a beloved example, but a bad one. Now, here's what I'm trying to show you. Inside you, there is the way you feel. You might not like what I'm saying. You have a feeling about it. It's true. It's how you are. Don't pretend like it's not true. You're not the machine that you might have been told you are. But the feeling is just your response. It's just the sense that you have that is touching on your affections. Doesn't mean what is. It's not the fact. It's just the way you feel about what you're receiving. What you need to do is put that aside and say that is what it is. Now let's talk about what is true. Not my truth. That's just emotionalism. The truth. What does God say? What does He want? And that's how we deal with lies. One of the great lies is how you feel is what matters most. It's not true. How you feel will have a heavy impact on what you choose if you're not careful. But usually, if you're making your decisions on the basis of just how you are emotionally kind of feeling in the moment, you're probably going to make bad decisions. And that's probably why your life is a mess. If it is, it's probably a lot of emotional decisions you've made. And now you're in this mess and you feel just horrible. So now what decision are you going to make? Something bad, probably. It's time to put that method aside and start thinking. And that's the whole point of today. To deal with lies, we tell the truth. That's a thought. That's a proposition. That's a principle. And Americans should be able to do this. We've learned math. We've all been through Algebra 2. Some of us, it was a bloody affair, but you did get through and you learned. If you just memorized the quadratic equation, that's probably Algebra 1. But if you just memorize the equation and you figure out where the stuff is, you'll get it right. You've learned that there are principles that are so, and it isn't so if I feel like it, it just is so. And that's what math is, or math is just logic. And so I'm not telling you that you're going to reason your way through your problem. I'm telling you that you're going to reason your way according to God's word as you trust him with what he said through your problem. And God will support you with the necessary responses in your affections if you'll start with what he said. I like to say that the Bible you have in your hand, if you've got one, is not a blister pack of pills that if I just take a pill, you know, just open the Bible, pop me a pill, take it, now I feel better. If it was about how you felt, that's what it would be. You know, these are not rolling papers for hippie lettuce for you to... for you to feel something or have some sort of religious Rocky Mountain High experience. That's not what this is. The Bible is a set of propositions written in poems and stories and history, historic stories, and genealogy tables and mustering charts for the military. And all that you have in the scriptures, that's what the Bible is, and it calls you and me to think. So to deal with lies, we tell the truth. And in Matthew 6, you have what a wonderful truth. Hey, Joel, will you tell me what the ticker says on this recording? Time-wise, about where we're at? I'm looking at the clock, but... 40 minutes. I have reserved a little bit of time for us to walk through Matthew chapter six. And some of you have done this with me probably more than once. And in that case, you're probably ready to teach this. So just evaluate, just use this time to evaluate. See if I get it right. See if you don't get refined a little bit on your approach to the Sermon on the Mount and how it applies to the church age believer. Jesus historically is talking to Israel, telling remnant of Israel, his disciples it says, What is the platform for the kingdom? What does the righteousness of God look like as expressed in the law? That's Matthew 5, largely. Matthew 6 applies that in several ways. And in this case, we've just had the prayer, and now we're going to talk about fasting and trusting in God. and how you work out and live out your righteousness before men. And so, Matthew 6, verse 16, see if you can trace the themes as we consider the truth that puts the lie to this claim, I've got to sin in order to do God's will. I've got to disobey God in order to obey God. I have to worry about the future, even though God told me not to, because there's problems in my life. You don't, you have to not worry, and here's what we do. Whenever you fast, that's to deny yourself food. Do not put on a gloomy face, as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance, so they'll be noticed by men when they're fasting. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. The theme that's being developed is reward for service to God, and who is watching, who is giving you the reward, what is your reward? That theme is developed here, and it processes through the next 17 verses. 18 verses. So the theme is the reward for what you're doing as unto the Lord. And how do you get the reward? The reward for the person that fasts, that noise is making it through the microphone. Yeah. The person with the reward is able to see where His reward comes from in v. 16. You have to understand that. Truly, when you do something to impress other people and they are impressed by you, that's the reward. Self-promotion, is what he's talking about, is the reward and you're done. That's your reward for that work. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face. That means do it in secret. The fast person who is going about, oh I haven't had a shower in weeks because I'm fasting, is impressive in his fasting. And everyone's impressed and so no. No, you don't want to do it so that people are impressed by you. Now, we're going to practice our righteousness before men to encourage them. We're going to do it to represent Jesus Christ. That's another concept elsewhere. It's not a contradiction. But here, you don't want to do it so that people see it because you're not trying to impress people with your holiness. And this resonates with believers and unbelievers alike. Unbelievers that are fed up with Christian self-righteousness, take note, Jesus doesn't like it either. He's not a religious instructor. He's the life. He's the source of life, and we all need Him because we're all sinful and broken. But you, when you fast, anoint your head, wash your face." That means do your hygiene. So that your fasting, in verse 18, will not be noticed by men, but by your Father who's in secret. And your Father who sees what's done in secret will reward you. So where do you get your reward for doing something for the Lord? You either get it from men and whatever they can give you, or you get it from God. You can't have both. So pick one. Let your dad pay you or let man pay you. Pick one. Let's pick the Lord. He's better at it. Our God, our Father, is a really, really good dad and He's standing by with the real bank account. So stop picking up pennies. Stop looking for self-promotion. That's the point. V. 19, Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. What? Doesn't Pastor Dave teach that we're supposed to be capitalists, which is basically the protection of private property? That's what I teach. I think capitalism is basically the consequence, for good or ill, of protecting private property. And where'd I get that idea of the protection of private property? I got it from the Mosaic Law. Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet. There's no theft, there's no communist Marxist revolution permitted by scripture. So confiscatory taxation, let's call it what it is. It's confiscatory taxation. It's immoral. It's unrighteous. The idea of redistributive change is unrighteous. It is unbiblical. It is the claim that there is no God. And it's interesting, the people that do it will often say they're doing it for Jesus. But he says, your father is going to reward you, so don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth. What this means is not that it's wrong to have private property. It's not a Marxist passage. It has nothing to do with that. It's saying you need to think about what you treasure. It's your thoughts that he's after, and it'll bear out as you read. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but rather," verse 20, "...store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where neither thieves do not break in or steal." Does God believe in property? Yes. Is He telling you, think it through about where you have your property stored? That's the whole thing he's saying, and he's not saying, if you really serve me, you'll get in. So you work your way up to being righteous or something in some ridiculous satanic lie about this passage. He's not talking to people that need to earn righteousness. He's talking to people who have been declared righteous who need to walk as disciples of Jesus. And so think about where your property is. That's the point. So you don't want your storage to be on earth. That was a waste of those resources. Use freely your resources to transfer them to heaven by using them for God's purposes. That's the point that he's making. store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in or steal." Humans can reward you or God can reward you. You can have your storage in your treasure house on earth or you can have your treasure house in heaven. You pick one. That's the idea. That idea is why they have Billy Graham's people with a fully functional state-of-the-art medical hospital in Central Park in New York. It's a ministry called Samaritan's Purse. It exists because Christians have read this and said, I want to store up my treasures in heaven, so we're doing this work together. The Samaritan's Purse means that the good Samaritan had resources and he used them for God's interests. That's the point. Verse 21, where your treasure is. This is the point. This is the big point of the message. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. This is the truth that combats our lie, where we're worried about the future because of financial troubles. I'm not going to be able to feed my family. I'm going to have to do something extraordinary. Don't store up treasure where moth and rust can destroy, but store it up in heaven, for where your treasure is, that's where your attention goes." And now he's going to connect your heart to your eyes, because the heart is the inner you, and what you're looking at determines what goes on in your heart. The eye is the lamp of the body, so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. Now he's saying, The heart needs to be attentive to its treasure. So put your treasure where your heart should be. Colossians 3.1, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of the Father. So you need to put your treasure and value the things of God and have your attention there. And if you're looking therefore at the light, then the windows are flooded with light. So you are enlightened, illuminated. But if your eye is bad, that means it's looking at the wrong thing, or it's not receiving light. In other words, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, if the window that is supposed to provide light for the inner person is darkness, how great is the darkness? See how it started with, I just wanna feed my family, so I'm gonna mass wealth to take care of people and myself and really get whatever I want. And it went to, no, no, no, no, no, you make sure your treasure is eternal, parlay that treasure to eternal treasure, or pick the treasure that rots and dissolves. And then he says, because where you're looking determines what's going on inside. So if you're looking at earth, at what men think about you, then you're not looking at heaven, at the things of God and what your father thinks. And so you're just darkness. You're just darkness. But if your treasure's in heaven, then it's illuminated. You see what he's doing. And then he says, No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, he'll be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and earthly perishable treasure. If God is your treasure, if you value what really matters, then you recognize your infinite wealth, and you reckon it, and you think of it, and you consider it, and sometimes you're weak and you don't think that way, but You do believe that and you come back to that thought and you come back to that thought and you keep about your father's business because you believe that he is the real treasure. Delight yourself in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart. If you delight yourself in the Lord, what are the desires of your heart? Him. And so were taken right out of this worldly thought process where I'm gonna send an earthly consideration as a petty little person stuck in this little ball, you know, circling around the sun. I'm gonna be real petty about life and think that all there is is whether I get lunch today. and whether I enjoyed it or something. And we're going to forget the riches we have in Christ. And that's the whole point that Jesus is doing. He's taking you from an earthly, petty, small, little hobbiton perspective, and He's expanding your whole world to, hey, you're on a mission that involves the destiny of the entire human race. And so you were really petty and worried about whether you're gonna get your pipe today, Bilbo Baggins, and then all of a sudden, no, you're gonna go be part of the freedom of the land from the great dragon Smaug. For this reason, I say to you, do not be worried about your life. So Jesus just commanded not to worry, and I take that as a command from my Savior, so that if I disobey God, I consider that to be personal sin. That's my understanding of one key definition for personal sin, is if God says not to do it, and I do it. Or if God says to not do it, and I, God says to do it, and I don't do it. Sin of omission. So this would be a sin of commission if you worry when he says not to. Do not be worried about your life as to what you will eat or what you'll drink, nor for your body as to what you'll put on, as not the life more than food and the body more than clothing." That's in this pile of filthy lucre. That's in this pile of earthly wealth. And notice that he said you can't serve God and wealth. It's one or the other. Pick one. Now he's attacking us on our one final justification, the one thing that we're still clinging to on the worship of wealth, and it is I have to eat, I have to provide the basic needs. I'm not talking about getting a sailboat. I'm not talking about having a second house or a third house or whatever Bernie Sanders has. I'm talking about just a retreat camp or whatever as a good communist. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just feeding my family. I just have to provide for my family. And you do and if you don't you're worse than an unbeliever says Paul But Jesus is saying this is not a justification for disregarding your father and his wealth It's not a justification for being off mission in other words Look at the birds of the air. They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you, by being worried, can add a single hour to his life?" You see, that's the hamster wheel I'm talking about. Worry about the future, Jesus says, is just a waste of time. It's like a hamster on a wheel. He's really not producing anything except noise pollution. And who of you, by being worried, can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow. They do not toil, nor do they spin. Yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today, tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith? See, He's calling out the attention. Are you looking at the world? Are you looking at God? He's calling out. Are you looking at earthly treasure or God's treasure? Are you looking at the way man judges you or the way God judges you? Are you looking at... What did He just say? what God provides you as your provider versus what you can provide yourself. And so it's very theological, it's very oriented on the things of God, and it really helps us think through what we're doing with our resources. Now, careful. It doesn't say that we're foolish. It doesn't say we don't plan. It doesn't say anything about not being good stewards of God's earthly resources. In fact, that's the whole point. Be a good steward of it and parlay it into eternal wealth as you're using your resources for God's work. That's what he's going to say. Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness. The whole context is how you use your resources. Now, I'm not trying to tell you that you need to give to the church. I'm trying to tell you don't waste your life by doing what amounts to earthly pursuit without seeing the eternal consequence of the mission God has given us. I have a question in terms of the use of resources. Is it bad to have resources? Don't store up treasures on earth. Is that what he's saying? Is it bad to have resources? Should you sell everything, go around naked? Is that what he's talking about? It isn't. Do not worry then, verse 31, saying, what will we eat, what will we drink, what will we wear for clothing? For the Gentiles, all the people, eagerly seek all these things, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. See, it's a Jewish context. He's talking to the remnant of Israel here about the coming kingdom. Your Father in heaven knows you need these things, but seek first His kingdom, and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. God is now saying, I am in charge of your provision. I'm in charge of your needed earthly resources. This isn't your goal. I got this. You be about my business and you keep your eyes on the treasure that I want to give you that's eternal. So it's a totally different way of thinking about our lives. And so we have to repent. We have to change our thinking when we fall into this hang-up of worry about the future. We also need to let God be God and stop worrying about our own dignity. You're in Christ. You have the dignity of Christ. suffered for you naked on the cross and ashamed and skinned alive for you. And so the dignity of Christ is beyond compare and you're in Christ. So stop worrying about getting your own credit, your own glory. You just claim Christ. He's our life for us to live as Christ to die as gain. And then you can't really fixate on the present or the past because you've been told what the future holds. The past has gotten you to this present where you're told what the future holds. So you're supposed to lay hold of that which is coming and get dithering about the past or looking down. I'm on the cross. That's not how you get through the suffering with any kind of endurance. Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will take care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of his own sufficient unto the day is the trouble there are the evil thereof says the King James. Now here's the thing, you just got told everything you need to do about every problem you'll ever face. You take it one day at a time, you connect it to God, you recognize he's in charge of your resources, he'll provide what you need to be busy about what he's about. Commit yourself to what he wants you to do. I mean, the whole package is right there in Matthew 6, verses 16 through 34. And I am applying what he's telling Israel about the coming kingdom that he's offering them. Repent for the kingdoms in your grasp. I'm right here. and they rejected the kingdom offer as a nation, but there is still this coming kingdom, and it still has an application to you all through what Paul talks about in Acts and elsewhere, Colossians 1, we belong to this kingdom that is not here, it is coming. We are the already recruited administrative body of the church that is going to rule with Christ in his coming future, not here now kingdom. And that's very important, I think, to grasp. It's exactly what Jesus is dealing with in Matthew. And this is how these things definitely apply to you. It's an a fortiori argument to me. If God says it to remnant Israel, then he's really saying it to you because you are in Christ. And for greater reason, a fortiori, for stronger reason, you can claim this for yourself, not by way of covenant, but by way of the baptism of the Holy Spirit union with Christ. All right, I got a question for you. I was going to ask it and see if you got it and see if we're tracking. When David, who was being set up by God for the battle in the Valley of Elah, the battle with Goliath, he was set up for it. We heard in 1 Samuel 16 he's going to be the king. He was anointed over all his brothers. He and his family know he's going to be king, and his brothers apparently resent it. But that old crazy Samuel said he's going to be the king because Yahweh through Samuel said he's going to be the king. So we know it in 1 Samuel 16. Nobody knows who David is. No one knows who this shepherd boy working for Jesse, the eighth son of this man. No one knows what's going on with David except that King Saul uses him to play music because he's a really accomplished musician. Apparently he's very conscientious about his work in the sheepfolds and he's very artistic and creative. So David is this massively under-known, under-reported potential of genius, of the power of God, the Holy Spirit, of protective shepherding for God's people. And that's what God has seen in a man after his own heart. That's what God has cultivated in David. So when you get to 1 Samuel 17, I believe David carries out the attitude of the Lord Jesus in Matthew chapter 6 very consistently in the stories that we have in early David's life. Even to the point where he will not kill Saul, who's trying to kill him, in a fair fight, in a fair military engagement, he won't do it because Saul is the Lord's anointed. David is a man of integrity and valor and trust in God and faith. And what does he say, what does he say in summary to Goliath? Do you remember what David says to Goliath on the battlefield? Most of the story of 1 Samuel 17, most of the exciting part is dialogue between David and Goliath. There's no throwing of a spear on Goliath's part. There's one shot, one kill. David throws the rock and kills the giant. All right, but what is said is so vital when you get to 1 Samuel 17. Do you know what David says in summary? We're gonna study this in some detail on King David Wednesdays in chapel. Do you know what David says? You come at me with, let me paraphrase, with sword and shield or sword and spear, but I come to you in the name of the living God of Israel, and the battle is? The battle is the Lord's. The battle's the Lord's. The battle is the Lord's. So David holds his lightsaber straight up and down and begins to meditate, and then he's struck down by Darth Vader, right? And he disappears, and he becomes more powerful. No, that's not how the story goes. That's just Eastern mysticism. I hope these motorcycle guys are socially distancing. The story of David and Goliath is not David says the battle is the Lord's and then he stands there and waits and then God kills Goliath. That's not how it works. David has resources. What does David have in his possession? What are his resources? He's got a sling. How many stones? Five? It takes one. I'm going to say probably something like a 200 or 300 caliber rock. He's got a 300 caliber cartridge in his sling that's three inches. Something like a rock probably about the size of a baseball, I suspect. There's differing views on this, but it's all in the archeology. But something bigger than a 45 caliber sling, which we use today, more like a 300 caliber sling. And some of you will appreciate that. Caliber means hundredths of an inch. So three inch rock, he's got, and it's a smooth stone. Maybe it's smaller, maybe it's a 100 caliber. But the point is that David has this in his possession and he has the skill to use it. And he does. He employs it in faith in God. for the glory of God on the mission of God to defeat the enemies of Israel to God's honor. And David is acting in accordance with God's revealed will. David is filled with the Holy Spirit and he uses his resources that he has to advance God's interests and it isn't a sit around and God couch potatoes you along and you you just Accidentally happen to feed your family you use your resources to do what God said He wants you to do, but you do it in faith you do it for his agenda. That's why David is the great king of Israel, because he trusts in God and he uses his resources to advance God's interests. And so he is the greatest slinger probably in the world in his day, given what he does with Goliath there at Ephesdomim. And he does use his resources to glorify God by way of skull fracture of the giant Philistine. And with that note of encouragement, skull fracture of the giant Philistine, I challenge you, read the story, don't watch the movie, read the story of 1 Samuel 16 and 17 and see how God took his promise to make David king and then he made him the Medal of Honor recipient that the whole country loved because of one shot, one sling shot that he did in faith and the power God gave him using the resources at his disposal. Father, You have given us wonderful resources. We have enjoyed the fat of the land in this nation, this many generations. We have enjoyed freedom, and look what we've done with it. We've become fat like Jashar and Israel and kicked. We've become We've been insensitive to Your Word. We've disregarded You as a people. And we have said, what business does God have in the teaching of our children? What business does God have in the protection of our most vulnerable children. Father, what business does God have telling us how to live our lives? We've said that as a people and in general and in the secularization of this civilization. And Father, we did start with a good project and we see horrible potentials before us. I ask that you strengthen us not to fear, but to trust you, to fear you and therefore not what man can do or the collapse of the economy can do or any of the things that are looming before us. Rather, Father, let us take each day as part of the resources you've given us, not so that we treasure up and store up the day for ourselves or the time that you've given us for we can't, not that we waste it in pursuit of vanity, and mere pleasure to just escape the troubles that we're facing. Father, that we would use the resources, the time, the abilities, the strength, all the things that you've given us to advance your agenda. Father, we want to be on mission. We want to be useful to you. We want to bring glory to you. And in so doing, know that we're getting it right. Father, there are people in the hearing of my voice that have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. It is because they don't have the Spirit of God. It's because they don't know Jesus Christ as Savior. We pray for them, Father. We come to you humbly, fervently asking for their eternal life. Jesus paid for their sins on the cross. Please help our loved ones consider Christ. Please help them take the Son of God born to die for their sins and trust Him. Help them consider Christ and do what is necessary. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household. Father, thank You for sending Your Son because You loved us, all of us. Please help our loved ones receive that offered love gift, opening the present of Christmas by faith, believing in Jesus as their Savior. Strengthen our church family, Father, to share Christ. We rejoice with the new birth of Kathy, We rejoice with the good news that you're working. Father, strengthen us to do your work despite hardship. Draw us together in love. Let our hearts be knit together despite whatever we may be facing. Father, let us see the victories as we trust you and keep our eyes fixated on your son. Father, by your spirit, we ask for that strength in Christ's name, amen.