Hope Church LV Sermons
Security :: The Key
-Can I honestly trust God? -How can I feel safe? -Where can I go for help? -Does God genuinely care about me? -Is security really possible? -Where can I go to find the answers? -Over the last month, together as a church family, we have been studying through a passage of Scripture that is probably as relevant to Las Vegas in 2011 as any passage of Scripture we could read. It's a passage of Scripture that is as current as the headlines in this morning's newspaper. For the last month, we have been studying as Jesus has been teaching us about security. Specifically, Jesus has been teaching us about security as it pertains to material possessions. A little over a year ago, we began a study together through the Sermon on the Mount. It's the longest single recorded message of Jesus that we have in the New Testament. It's three consecutive chapters, Matthew 5, 6 and 7. And we've just been walking verse by verse through that message that Jesus delivered on that afternoon to those that were seated there listening to Him. And in the middle of this message, Jesus begins to deal with this issue of security. It's a place that, if we were to be honest this morning, every one of us have been living in the last 18 to 24 months here in Las Vegas. Dealing with issues of material possessions, material wealth and the insecurity and the instability of the times that we have been walking through in our city. It's been all over the country, but particularly here in our city, what we have been through. And the words of this text of Scripture are so applicable. It's as if Jesus had spoken them this morning. And Jesus, in the verse that we're going to focus on this morning as we finish this series on security, will bring chapter 6 of this message to a close and begin in chapter 7 in just a couple of weeks after we look at this series on small groups and connection. But as we focus on verse 33 this morning in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus gives us the key, the key to security. If you and I, in the midst of instability, in the midst of insecurity, if you and I are going to know security, the key is in verse 33. I want you to take your Bible, open it to Matthew chapter 6. I'm going to begin reading in verse 25 to give us the context, and then we're going to focus on verse 33 this morning. We looked at verses 25 through 34 last weekend, and we dealt with the issue of worry. If you weren't here over the last couple of weeks, you need to go back and catch up because there have been a lot of biblical principles that I think are very applicable for us that you need to get caught up with. But let's start in verse 25. Says, "For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life as to what you will eat or what you will drink nor for your bodies to what you will put on, is not life more than food and the body more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air that they do not sow, nor do they, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?" And then I told you last weekend, we get to see a little bit of Jesus' sense of humor in verse 27. And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life, Jesus saying this. How's that worry in working out for you? Is it helping you a lot? Verse 28, "And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow. They do not toil, nor do they spend. Yet I say to you that not even Solomon and all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, we didn't get to focus a lot on that last week. We just let that sink in. If God is taking care of the grass, what are we worried about? But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow stone into the furnace, will he not much more, clothe you, you of a little faith? Do not worry then saying what do we eat or what do we drink or what do we wear for clothing. We've all had those conversations around our kitchen table in the last year and a half. What are we going to do? Verse 32, "For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things." Again, we didn't get time to focus on it. But when he uses the word Gentiles here, it's a reference to people that do not know God. That's the context with which he's using that word. He says here, when you worry about material possessions, you know what you're doing? You're acting like people that don't know God. He said a distinguishing mark of being a child of God is you don't have to worry about that stuff. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Verse 33, this is where we're going to focus this morning. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow. For tomorrow we'll care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. We're going to focus this morning on verse 33. I want to try to ask and answer four questions to help us understand the key to security. Here's the first question. What is his kingdom and his righteousness? It's very important if we're going to unlock the key that is found in these verses. It's very important that we understand what his kingdom and his righteousness is. First of all, Jesus uses the word kingdom. Now the word kingdom was an everyday word that was used in everyday life in the time that Jesus lived. It referred to the rule of a king over his people. It was a kingdom. It was a royal dominion. But in the New Testament and in the teaching of Jesus, this term kingdom took on a uniquely spiritual meaning and actually became a dominant theme of the early church. As a matter of fact, as you study through the New Testament writings, the word or the phrase kingdom or kingdom of God is used over 100 different times in 16 different books of the New Testament. I would say that's a dominant theme. It became a major part of the teaching ministry of Jesus in Matthew's gospel alone. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus uses the phrase kingdom or kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven. Jesus uses it 46 different times just in the gospel of Matthew. It was a concept and a principle that literally dominated the thought. It dominated the teaching of the early church. Now the fact that the principles of the kingdom are seldom ever even mentioned in the modern church is a tale, tale, sign of just how far we've drifted as followers of Jesus from his teaching and the context in which the church was born. I've got to be honest, I've been in church since nine months before I was born. I mean, I've been in church a long time. I don't remember hearing a lot of teaching. I listened to teaching on the radio and on television on the internet and have done that for years. I've not heard some, but not the dominant theme of the church is the kingdom of God. And yet Jesus, all he talked about is the kingdom of God. And in the opening pages of the book of Acts, it tells us that the last 40 days Jesus was on the earth. He only talked to about one subject to his followers and it was the kingdom of God. It's all he talked about. And yet I'm afraid today, not only do we not talk about the kingdom of God, but we don't even understand what the kingdom of God is. And I'm confessing back up in my life about 10 or 11 years, if you'd have cornered me and said, hey, explain the kingdom of God, I wouldn't have even known where to begin. I might could have given you some definition out of seminary that I'd learned, but I didn't understand. And it was actually the principles of the kingdom that God first began to birth in my heart that ultimately relocated my family 2,000 miles away from home to land ourselves in Las Vegas, Nevada to be involved in joining in what God was doing to launch a new church. And over the last 10 years, we've kind of developed a working definition of the kingdom. And I want to give it to you, but then I want to take it apart a little bit. Here's the kingdom of God. It's God's sovereign activity in the world. Resulting in people being in right relationship with himself. The kingdom is God's sovereign activity in the world, resulting in people being in right relationship with himself. You see, the kingdom is big. And we tend to look at the kingdom of God through the lenses of our local church setting. And we tend to get all about the local church and it becomes all about us. But when we understand the principle of the kingdom, the church, what we have here called Hope Baptist Church, is just a very, very small part of the big picture of the kingdom of God. You see, God is alive and at work all over the world this morning. And we are actually living in some of the greatest days in the history of the kingdom of God to be alive. There are more people coming to faith in Jesus Christ in our generation on a daily basis than in any other single time in the history of Christianity. God is at work all over the world. Let me give you an example. Let me tell you the story of Bishop Peter Injovu. Peter Injovu is a man who God used to start a church in Lusaka Zambia in March of 2001. Now, 2001 is a significant year to us at Hope. Our church began in September of 2001. So their church has been in existence six months longer than we have. In March of 2001, of all places, Bishop Peter Injovu started a church in Lusaka Zambia inside a Chinese restaurant. If you can wrap your head around that. So in a Chinese restaurant in Lusaka Zambia, March of 2001, brand new church begins. In the last nine years, they've reached thousands of people with a gospel. They now run over 2,000 people in their church every weekend there in Lusaka. They have started 236 churches in 12 countries surrounding Lusaka Zambia. They have started 92 Christian schools with 165 different teachers that now on a weekly basis provide Christian education for over 13,000 children in Zambia that would have no education where it not for the ministry of Bishop Peter Injovu in the Bible gospel church of Africa. In addition to that, they have also, this week, I was on the phone with him this week, if you'll remember, now I was elected to serve our denomination by putting on a pastor's conference in June of next year in Phoenix, Arizona. And we're gonna have a phenomenal time down there to be about 9,000 pastors from our denomination come. We're inviting speakers from all over the country and all around the world. One of the speakers that's gonna come is Bishop Peter Injovu. He's going to come and speak and we get an extra blessing. He's gonna stay over after the conference and he's gonna preach for us and our services the following weekend. So you're gonna get to meet him and get to hear him teach God's word. But Peter Injovu, this week when I was on the phone with him, they just commissioned 200 people out of their church this week who are going to the nine provinces of Zambia and will spend the next 30 days going door to door, sharing Christ and planting churches and all nine provinces of Zambia. What's my point? Listen, God's activity is bigger than what's happening here in our church. God's activity is bigger than what's happening in our country. God is alive and at work all over the world. The kingdom of God, it's big. But the kingdom is not just about what God is doing over there. It's about what God is doing all around us. I took a study a few years ago by Henry Blackabee called Experiencing God. And I want to show you a verse on the screen that Dr. Blackabee really emphasizes. It's Matthew, or excuse me, John chapter five verse 17. Listen what it says, my father is working until now and I myself am working. You can literally translate that phrase. My father is continuously working. My father is always working. And here's the principle. God is at work all around us all the time. That's why when you get up and go to work tomorrow morning, you are on mission with God. When you are taking the trash out on the street and you see your neighbors, you are on mission with God. Every moment of our life, God is at work all around us so that we can get up every day with anticipation of joining in what God is doing. And let me illustrate what I mean by that. You got any idea how I met Peter and Jovu from Lusaka Zambia? Because of a car wash in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm not making it up. When our church started, one of the things we did was we wanted to just serve the community. So some of you that were with us in those early days, remember we went to about five locations and we held free car washes. We wouldn't take any donations. We just said we want you to know there's a new church here. We love you. We want to serve you. We want to be a blessing to you. And we did a car wash somewhere over here near Windmill and that area. And we held a car wash there. And after that car wash, a couple months later, we sent a mission team for the first time ever to Africa. Our church was just about a year old. We go to Africa and some of us then went up into Zambia. We stayed some days in Lusaka. I'm in a grocery store in Lusaka, Zambia. And when I say grocery store, it's not what you're thinking, all right? But I'm in a market there in Lusaka, Zambia. And I hear somebody behind me go, hey, aren't you the pastor of that new church in Las Vegas? What? I turn around and there's a man named Michael Divine who lives in Las Vegas. And Michael said, man, I came to a car wash a couple months ago where your church washed my car. I said, man, what are you doing in Lusaka? He said, I have a friend here whose name is Peter and Jovu. Now, I didn't know when we were washing a car that God was at work planning the 2011 pastors conference of the Southern Babies Convention. [INAUDIBLE] Come on now. That's what was happening. Now, we were just washing a car. But God was doing something bigger than that. You see, God was preparing a message for 9,000 pastors from the other side of the world so that they could understand the kingdom of God is bigger than them. Now, we were just washing cars. What's the point? The kingdom is God at work all around us. And we have no idea what God is doing sometimes. But we can know for sure that everything God is doing in my life locally is connected to the big picture of what He's doing globally. So let me give you a simplified definition of the kingdom for this weekend. Here it is. The kingdom is His activity around me. That's what the kingdom is. It's God's activity all around me. His righteousness. Another great biblical word. Righteousness is a word that has to do with conduct and conformity with the standards of God. And for the believer, there are two dimensions or two applications of righteousness. First of all, there's positional righteousness. Positional righteousness, listen, is who I am before God in Christ. That's positional righteousness. It's who I am before God in Christ. The moment-- oh, this is so good. The moment you and I trusted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, God declared us to be as righteous as Jesus Christ Himself. Here's what that means. When God looks at me, He doesn't see me as Vance Pimpman, trying to do the best He can. He doesn't even see me as Vance Pimpman, a center that's been saved. When God looks at me, He sees me as righteous as Jesus Christ, Himself, not because I deserve it, not because I've earned it. That is the message of grace. Let me show it to you in the Bible. Look quickly. 2 Corinthians 5, 21, He made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin. To be sin on our behalf so that we might become the what? Righteousness. This is important righteousness of? Hey, not my best righteousness, not me on my best day, but the very righteousness of God. Here's what that means. When you've been in heaven for 10,000 years, you won't be any more righteous before God than you are right now as His child. That's how He sees us, positional righteousness. But then there's practical righteousness. Positional is who I am before God in Christ. Practical is who I am before men through Christ. You see, what God has established in my life positionally, He is now working out in my life practically. On a day in and day out basis, He is conforming me to the image of Jesus Christ. Now here's what that means. I may not be all the man that I'm supposed to be, but thank God I'm not the man I used to be. I am in a process of being conformed to the image of Christ. The righteousness that He has established positionally, He is now working out in my life on a day in and day out basis. Practically, let me show it to you in the Bible. Hebrews 12, verse 11. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Is there a truer phrase in all the Bible? It doesn't seem good. Feels bad. But afterwards to those who have been trained by it, it yields the peaceful fruit of what? Righteousness. You see, I'm righteous before God. And what God is doing is He's changing me and making me to become righteous before men. Not my righteousness. No, His righteousness being pressed out through my life. In Matthew 633, Jesus is talking about practical righteousness. Practical righteousness. Let me give you a life-changing principle. Because you see in this verse, Jesus connects His kingdom and His righteousness. Here it is. Look at it on the screen. You may want to write this one down. Everything God is doing through my life kingdom, He will accomplish out of the overflow of what He's doing in my life. Righteousness. You see it? Everything God's going to do through my life, which is what? His kingdom activity. All around me. Everything God's doing through my life, He will do out of the overflow of what He's doing in my life, which is what? Righteousness. You got it? If you got it, nod your head at me. All right. You'll have to listen faster. We got three more questions. Number two. What is my responsibility to His kingdom and His righteousness? He tells us, "But seek first." Not a whole lot of ambiguity there, right? He didn't say, "Hey, make it a priority." "Hey, put it in your top ten." Every once in a while, make a big deal about this. He said, "My work through you out of the overflow of my work in you is to be the number one pursuit of your life." Jesus is not here describing a pursuit in my life. He is describing the pursuit of my life. Let me say it another way. If this one is first, every other pursuit in my life has to come after it. Everything in my life should revolve around, and the tense here is an ongoing continuous, and it's an imperative. It's a command meaning that everything in my life is continuously to revolve around pursuing God at work in me, that God may work through me, for His glory. So let me give you that in a statement. Here's the life application. I am to pursue His kingdom, His activity around me, by pursuing His righteousness, His activity in me, above everything else in my life. That's Matthew 6.33. I'm to pursue His kingdom and His righteousness, above everything else in my life. Now I'll be honest, that's enough for us to go home with and chew on for a while. What's the greatest pursuit of your life? You see, if we're not careful very subtly, this becomes a pursuit in our life. Even for the best of Christians, a pursuit. We also have the pursuit of establishing our retirement and developing our career and getting our kids through school, and college education, and those are equal pursuit. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, listen, there's one pursuit, His activity around me, out of the overflow of His activity, through me, and everything else is secondary to that pursuit. Now, if that's not convicting enough, it is very interesting that Jesus unfolds this principle in the middle of a context of Scripture where He's dealing with material possessions. I mean, Matthew 6.33 could be anywhere in here and be powerful by itself. But I read you the whole context this morning so you wouldn't forget the context in which He said it, because listen, when we're teaching and preaching, God's Word, listen, you need to know as a team, when we're preaching and we're teaching God's Word on a week in and week out basis, we spend sometimes 15, 20, 30 hours a week diving in and digging in to expound the Scriptures, because we understand the reverence with which we should hold this task of taking the Word of God and placing that into the lives of people. This is a very holy experience that we get to be a part of every weekend as we take the Word of God and unfold it. And if you're going to study and teach God's Word, there's a principle that you cannot forget. You must always interpret Scripture in light of its context. A lot of people on television don't do that, but you've got to be careful because you can take the Bible and you can make it say anything you want it to say. For example, there's one place in the Bible where it says Judas went and hanged himself. There's another place where Jesus said, "Go thou and do likewise." Now you can take those two verses out of their context, you can build just sermon, right? Now there won't be many people in church next week. That's when you thank God you're preaching to a Baptist church, because they're not going to do half of what you say anyway, right? What's my point? My point is you've got to interpret Scripture in its context. You cannot take Matthew 633 out of the context of all these verses about material possessions. How would Jesus tell us that the number one pursuit of our life is to be His activity around us out of the overflow of His activity in us right in the middle of talking about material possessions? Here's why, because the way we manage our material possessions is a great indicator of whether or not that is the number one pursuit of our life. You want a good thermometer? Look at how you manage your material possessions. Oh, here's the third question. How do I practice this pursuit in my life as it pertains to material possessions? How do I seek first His activity around me and His activity in me when it comes to material possessions? Some steps, three of them, first confess everything I have belongs to Him. First I'm to confess everything I have belongs to Him. We talked about this a couple of weekends ago. This idea of acknowledging it all belongs to Him. The word confess means to say the same thing as. It means to agree with. Jesus has already taught us in these verses as we've looked at them. This principle that God owns everything we own nothing. And the starting place for seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness is to acknowledge God everything I have belongs to you. It's not mine, it is yours. Here's the second aspect, give out of what He's given to me. Confess everything I have belongs to Him. And secondly, I'm to first give out of what He's given to me. Jesus began this pericopy of Scripture in verse 19 talking about do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth but to store them up in heaven. How do we store up treasures in heaven? By giving as an investment in the kingdom of God. You see, giving is God's invitation for you and I to invest in what He's doing in the world in me and through me. As I give, I get the opportunity to join in God's activity. And if I'm managing my possessions in a way that I'm seeking first the kingdom, then giving will be something on the top of my list. Let me give you a principle. God's people have always regularly given a portion of what God has given to them. All the way back to Genesis in the beginning of God's covenant relationship with man Abraham. All the way through to the New Testament, call it what you want to. God's people have always regularly given a portion of what God has given to them. Let me show you some examples. In the Old Testament, Deuteronomy chapter 16, look what it says, "Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which he has given you." In the Old Testament, the principle was, "Hey, look at what God's given to you. First and foremost, out of that, decide in your heart before God. This is what our family is going to give as an investment. And before we do anything else, we're giving to God out of what he's given to us." But that wasn't just an Old Testament principle, look at New Testament, Acts chapter 11 verse 29. The Bible says, "And in the proportion that any of the disciples had means," it literally could be translated, "According to what had been given to them, each of them determined." The word "determined" is a word that deals with a heart response. They decided on the inside to send a contribution for the relief of the brethren living in Judea. You see, before they ever gave with their hands, they gave with their heart. There was a heart surrender that said, "I'm going to seek first the kingdom of God. I'm going to seek first His righteousness." And that's going to be demonstrated in the way that I manage my material possessions. I'm going to set aside first and give as an investment in what God is doing. You see, I think oftentimes we have a wrong perspective about giving. Here's our attitude about giving, "Well, I'm a Christian, I have to give." Let me give you a better perspective. Because of my relationship with God, I've been invited to lay up treasure in heaven. You know what you really got? We got an insider tip. You've been given a tip because of your relationship to God, on the only investment that will last forever and never experience a downturn. And God, because of His relationship to us, has invited us to get in on it. Let me give you a new thought when it comes to giving. Giving a portion is not a requirement of the law, it is a privilege of the relationship. It's not a requirement of the law. Giving is seeking first His activity with my heart and His activity through me as I invest in His work. Now, the question comes, where do I start? If I'm going to give first, if I'm going to seek first, how do I start this? A lot of people that have never practiced this principle struggle with where to start. And I'll be honest with you this morning. If you would ask 20 different people that question, where do I start on this arena of giving them to what you're going to get, about 10 different answers. Because there's a lot of different and varying convictions when it comes to this principle. So I want you to know upfront what I'm about to share with you is my personal conviction. You must get along with God in your heart and determine in your heart your personal conviction about a starting place. But if we don't do this, here's the way we treat giving. We take care of all of our stuff, we make sure all of our things are taken care of, and then we say, okay, how much we got left over at the end of the month? All right, now when we got that much left over, how much of that we want to give? Is that seeking first? No, not at all. That's saying, God, let me see what I got left over. And the principle Jesus is giving us right here in the middle of material possessions is meant before anything else. I need to establish in my heart before God. This is what me and my family, this is how we're going to live. For me, my personal conviction is to borrow the same pattern that started in the book of Genesis with Abraham. It went through the Old Testament law and it carried into New Testament days and Jesus talked about it as the principle of the tithe, 10%. The starting place for me is 10% when Christian I first got married, we'll be married 19 years in May. We first got married, my father came to our house, I say house. We were living in the married student apartments at University of North Alabama. It was a little bit about 500 square foot apartment. I mean, we were packed in there and it was just, I mean, you could turn around and touch all four walls at the same time. My dad comes over, we sit down at the table there and he brings a blank ledger and he begins to talk to us about how to manage your finances as a young couple. And my dad began to talk to me about this principle and he taught me this growing up, but now as a couple, he wanted to just come and pass this legacy and this heritage on. And he came and began to sit down and talk to me about this principle of the 10% the tithe, there's a starting place. My dad taught me that kind of what Randy Alcorn says, that the 10% principle is kind of like training wheels on a bicycle. When you start riding a bike, you put training wheels on to learn how to ride. Now, once you learn how to ride, what do you do, you take training wheels off, right? You don't need that anymore. That's kind of this principle of 10%. It's a starting place. I learned, God lets us learn this principle of generosity. He lets us learn this principle of trust by giving us this standard to begin to follow. And my dad taught me he said, "Vances," and I know there'll be times in your life and we were living in one of them right then. I mean, we were so poor in that moment that my last year and a half of college, we could not even buy textbooks for me to go to school. I just had to go to class and take good notes. We didn't have the money to buy textbooks. So we were at one of those stages in life where there was ever reason to justify, hey, doing something different, this was it. But my dad said this, he said, "Vance, there'll be times in your life when you'll think you cannot afford to tithe." But he said, "Vance, after a lifetime of it, let me tell you what I've discovered. I can't afford not to." So he laid that principle down in our lives. And now for 19 years in good times and bad, my wife and I have lived out this principle. And I got to be honest, it's been a long time since we've had a conversation about 10 percent because we moved way past that a long time ago as God began to teach us these principles that we can trust him. We can trust him. If we'll seek first the kingdom, we can trust him. You know what's amazing when things get tight is when we start thinking, you know, maybe we could just take this month off. Listen to me. If you don't hear anything else else, I hear this. You will never experience God's peace with your plan. You will only know God's peace with God's plan. We want to fix it ourselves. So we figure out a way we can manage it better than what God said. You'll never know God's peace with your plan, ever, ever, ever, ever. We only experience God's security with God's plan. We're to give. The third thing is we need to manage the rest to honor him, manage the rest to honor him. If we're going to seek first, we first confess it all belongs to him, then we first give out of what he's given to us. And then thirdly, we first manage the rest to honor him. To honor God, that's what the writer of Proverbs talked about in Proverbs chapter 3 and verse 9 when he said, "Honor the Lord from your wealth and from thee." You hear it? First of all, your produce. Honor the Lord from your wealth and the first of all your produce. Well, how do we do that? How do we live out this principle of honoring God? Well, let me give you three quick words, and I don't have time to expound on them, but I just want to give you these words to characterize how we honor him. Number one is the word wisdom. Put that word up there for me, the word wisdom. We're to manage what he's given us to honor him with wisdom. How do we do that? Budgeting, saving, planning. Here's the principle. Now budgeting and savings and planning and all that stuff, that's now spiritual. Because when I recognize everything God's given me belongs to him, when I'm sitting down to do my budget, guess what I'm doing? I'm not managing my stuff, I'm managing his stuff. That's now spiritual exercise. If you're somebody that would like some help in this issue of wisdom, budgeting, planning, savings, when we dismiss this morning out at the kiosk, there's a place you can sign up to be a part of a crown financial class. It's a class that we offer here occasionally that will help give you some tools and some principles. Listen, if you've never been through it, I strongly encourage it. It'll give you some handles that will help you begin to approach finances and budgets and planning and all that in your life from a biblical perspective to help you begin to seek first the kingdom of God when it comes to material possessions. That words the word integrity, integrity. If I'm going to honor him with my finances, I need to honor him by handling my finances with integrity. Listen, how do you handle your financial decisions when nobody else is watching? Let's just get real on this. We're getting up on tax season. Are you honest? You're managing his stuff. We need to do it in a way that represents him. The word honor means to demonstrate God's worth by the way I manage what he's given to me. Here's a third word, generosity. Hearing what he's given to me means wisdom, integrity, generosity. You say, "Wait a minute, didn't we already do the give first?" Yeah, we did, but then you know how I'm to live? It's not that I give this part and then all the rest of its mind. I give that part and then everything else I still hang on to, I hang on to it loosely. Trusting God that when he desires for me to give, I'm ready. I'm looking for opportunities to make a difference in somebody else's life. Let me ask you a question. When you think about your personal financial management, how do these three words resonate? Wisdom, integrity, generosity. Are you controlling and managing your finances or are they controlling and managing and dictating you? See, this is seeking first the king. He gave us the principle right in the context of material possession. Fourth and final question, how does this impact my personal security? How does this impact my personal security? What's the verse saying? Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things. What are these things? In the Greek, these things is literally one word. It's the word this, all this. What's this? All this he's been talking about. What was he talking about? Clothing, shelter, necessities, provision, taking care. Here's what he said. You pursue my activity around you by pursuing my activity in you above everything else in your life. Here's what God said. You can trust me to take care of the rest. Let me tell you what that will give you. Security. You see, my security is not based on what happened on stock market this week. My security is found in Am I seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness? And then trusting him. Now, know this, Matthew 633 in every sense of that statement is a conditional statement. You don't get the last half, right? If your life is seeking eighth, the kingdom of God and his righteousness, don't expect the last half to be there. That's what I mean when I say you can't get God's peace with your plan to know the security. And I share this with you this morning as a testimony. My wife and I for 19 years, thank God for my dad who sat us down and taught us these principles. But for 19 years, sometimes in prosperity, sometimes with nothing, sometimes with no job, there's never been one day of our life that God wasn't faithful to his promise. Never one day. Never one day. We can trust him. I'll close with this quote by William McDonald. Look what he said. The Lord therefore makes a covenant with his followers. He says in effect, if you will put God's interest first in your life, I will guarantee your future needs. If you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then I will see that you never lack the necessities of life. Listen to me, that is the key to security. Let's pray. God, would you speak to us now as we come before you? As you sit quietly there before the Lord, in your time of just talking to him, I want you to just right now, just go before God. We're not going to stand and sing like we do sometimes at the end of our services. I wanted this to be a time you just reflect before God in your heart. I want you to wrestle with these truths. Is that the number one pursuit of your life, is it obvious in how you manage your finances? I'm going to ask you to do something this morning. I'm going to ask you to make a covenant with God in your heart. I'm going to ask you to make a covenant with God in your heart that for the next month, you'll just be very intentional about applying these principles in your life. We've been talking about it for a month, but I know it's where a lot of you are living, and I'm just telling you this morning, the principles that we have shared in the last month that Jesus gave us are the key to you beginning to walk in security before God. I want to challenge you to make a covenant with God this morning in your heart to take the next month, and you wrestle with these issues in your heart before God. When you leave this morning, the ushers are going to be at the door, and we're going to give you a little card that has that security logo on it, and on the front it's going to have that principle that I shared with you this morning. On the back, it's got Matthew 633 in those three statements, confess, give, manage. Maybe today you need to go home with your family, and for the first time in a long time you need to get in the living room of your home, and join hands, and just acknowledge before God, it doesn't belong to you, it belongs to Him. You just need to agree with God and say, "God, it's yours, it's not ours." And Lord, we're sorry for treating it like it was ours. The greatest thing you can do for your kids and their future security is to help them understand these principles. You need to get alone with God personally or as a family, and you need to determine in your heart God, this is going to be our starting point, and Lord, we covenant with you to make that first, not at the end of the month, God, that's how we're going to start our month. And you need to seek Him about how you manage the rest with wisdom, integrity, generosity. You say, "Pastor, I hear some of the things that you're saying, and I'll be honest, it just doesn't add up to me." All I can tell you is you can trust Him. You can trust Him. Father, take these truths and change us. If you're here this morning and you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, when we dismiss our service in just a few minutes, you can stop by any one of the kiosks outside and go to them and say, "I need to talk to somebody." You can stop by the guest center in the lobby and say, "I need to talk to somebody." We'll show you how you can trust Christ and be saved. Lord, speak to us today. God have Your way in us. It's in the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]