The Church of Eleven22 - Wk 2: Soul

Episode Date: October 13, 2019

The shiny things of this world will never satisfy our empty souls. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” – Jim Elliot

Amen. Amen. Good morning, church. How's everybody doing? Good. Good, man. It's so good to see you. Thanks for being here. I'm sure your campus pastors told you that we are in the second week of a teaching series called Loving God with All. And this is a part of a journey that we've been on as a church over the last two years. And so for those of you, I don't know, my name is Pastor Ryan Britt, and I'm excited to be here every now and then. They let me come out from the back and play on the stage when Pastor Job is away. So I'm excited to dive into God's Word with you today. This series we've been on loving God with all. We've been asking the question, God, what does it look like to love you with all of our heart, with all of our mind, with all of our soul, and with all of our strength? This journey, this discipleship journey we've been on as a church, and we've been asking the question, God, are you the one thing that drives everything in our lives? And what does that look like?

The heart of this is rooted in the scriptures found in Deuteronomy chapter 6. Verse 4 and 5. And if you've been here for any amount of time, you've heard it hundreds of times. God gives Moses the command, but really what he's doing is communicating his heart for his people. In Deuteronomy 6, it says this. It says, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength. And you fast forward a couple of thousand years, and Jesus, the God man, is walking around,

on the earth and somebody walks up to Jesus and says, Jesus, what is the most important commandment? What is the most important thing that God has ever said? And Jesus answers him this way. It's at the top of your journals on page 19 found in Mark chapter 12. Jesus answered this way. He says, the most important is this. Hero Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. And the second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. This is the most important thing in the world, says the most important human that's ever lived. And so for us to ask as a church, God,

what does this look like? It is something that God has invited us into that can be extremely transformative to us for generations. But before I dive into the text that we're going to spend most of our time in today, I do want to give us some handles like a brief overview of what we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks. What do we mean when we say love God with your heart, with your mind, with your soul, with your strength? What are we talking about biblically in context when we say words like heart? Last week, Pastor Jobi talked about what it means to love God with our heart. And in part, what it means is to that our heart would realize the forgiveness that is ours so that we can be in right relationship with God through Jesus and that when we

receive the forgiveness that God gives us, we are people who pour forgiveness out. That being, the forgiveness sets us free from bitterness. It sets us free from things that would chain us up or hold us down. And so we have a heart. And that forgiven heart forgives people. Pastor Jobi did that last week. When we talk about the heart biblically, we have to ask two questions. What was it created for? And then what comes from that. Well, the heart biblically was created for three things. It was created for hope, for happiness, and for health. Ultimately,

the heart wants to realize, through the context of relationships, it wants to find hope. It wants to find something to believe in. It wants to find something or someone to trust. It wants to be committed to something greater than itself. And when it finds these things

to believe and to trust and to hope in, it begins to experience positive emotion. This is happiness. And so the heart's quest is one for positive emotion. And so the heart is looking around for positive emotion, trying to receive positive emotion. And it does it very, very well. And when it receives negative emotion, the heart's design is to reject that. And so it's looking to be fueled by positive and to reject negative. And then when we get our life filled in the context of relationships with things that we can trust in and we can be committed to and that we're happy and positive emotions happening,

that's where we find points of health. And this cycle is happening all the time inside of us, and ultimately what comes from this part of our life is habits. The pattern of positive emotion reception, negative emotion rejection, this forms repeated patterns of behavior. And these repeated patterns of behavior are habits. When this gets upside down, when it gets broken, this is in part how addictions can be formed.

They're habits. the repeated patterns of behavior grabbing for something to feel better for, to medicate something or to help feel better. And so in the attempt to try to find something that is positive, we grab onto it and then we repeat it over and over again. And when this is inverted or we're grabbing onto the wrong things, addictions are formed. When it's healthy version, it's habits. So this is the heart.

This is what we mean when we say love God with your heart. And then we have our mind. Our mind is created for two things, information and intimacy. The mind is an unbelievable part of creation. Do you have any idea how complicated your brain is? Yep. Of course, how many words a day do you say just between your ears? Let's say you're a conservative talker.

You don't talk much. You like to keep to yourself and you do maybe 8,000 to 10,000 words a day. Right? Some of you're putting in like 150,000 words a day. And honestly, you've got to cut us some slack. You know, let us breathe a little bit. take it easy but all that to say the conversations going on in our mind are incredibly complicated they're happening all the time at rapid speed what the mind is doing is it's processing information all

the time this this synaptic process is happening all the time and what it's doing is assessing and assigning value it is assessing and assigning value and that's what the mind does it wants to be challenged it wants to it wants to reason it wants to logic it wants to to connect. The mind wants to stretch. It wants to have imagination. It wants to reach and to see things that it hasn't seen before and have experiences it's never had before. The mind is incredibly complicated and incredibly beautiful, but all day, every day, your mind is assessing and assigning value. When it finds something that it deems valuable, it begins to draw close to that thing looking for intimacy. It wants eyeball-to-eyeball connection. It wants face-to-face interaction.

It wants to go deep. It doesn't want to stay on the surface. It wants to dig, and it's looking for intimacy. And what comes from this created design, ultimately, is idols. When the mind gets fixated on something and assesses and assigns value, eventually, it will find something that it assigns supreme value to. The superior value, and whatever the mind assigns as its highest value, that is what our worship goes toward.

It's ultimately how idols are formed. So that is our heart, that is our mind. And then we have our strength. The strength, the body. The body was created for protection, provisions, and play. The body wants a roof. It wants shelter. It wants food.

It doesn't want to be sick. The body wants to drink. The body wants to feel safe. Have you ever had that physiological response out of fear where maybe you almost get into a fender bender or maybe even something worse, and physiologically your body responds and your adrenaline starts to pump. And things that are happening well beyond your control is just happening. It is responsive.

This is the body's desire to protect itself. It wants to feel safe. It wants to feel secure. It wants to feel supplied. And then it also wants to play. It wants to recreate or to have recreation. This is why exercise makes you feel good. This is why when you go on vacations and you rest, you feel good because the body needs to rest.

You can't push it beyond its limits. And so you have your heart, your mind, your strength. And when these things are at work, these created things within us, what they do is produce appetites. Appetites are the rhythms or the language of the body. Now, I will say this. Side note. When I wrote this, I was thinking, man, I got some serious alliteration going on here. You know what I mean?

Like ages and eyes, and then I got to strength. I just couldn't think up a good P. I love a good alliteration, mostly because my brother from another mother, Pastor Stone, our Bay Meadows campus pastor, he is a boss when it comes to alliteration, and I want to be like him. And so I went to alliteration.

This is true story. I do this. I'm like, appetites. Because I can't think of the word. After last service, Pastor Stone, he texts me. He goes, hey, man, the word is passions. Oh! He got me.

He got me. All right. Anyway, appetites, urges, wants the body. wants what the body wants. It just does what it does. And so we have heart, mind, strength, and soul. Today we're going to spend the majority of our time talking about the soul. We all know that we have a soul, that we are a soul. What does it mean to be created as a soul? The soul is looking for something. It was created for something. It was created for significance, deep, meaningful belonging. It wants to feel significant. It wants to be

connected to things that ultimately and eternally matter. It wants to be satisfied in these things. It doesn't want to be angst-filled and frustrated all the time. It wants to be satisfied and to be fulfilled. And the truth is the soul is supernatural. The wantings of significance and the wantings for satisfaction, these are supernatural wantings. The soul can never be satisfied with the things in the temporal or in the temporary because it is supernatural. And Genesis chapter 1 verse 27, God talking to himself, the triune God, father, son, and spirit. He says, let us make man in our image. And then it says this really interesting phrase. It says, he fashioned them after himself. Male and female, he created them in his image.

What does it mean to be created in the image of God? Well, primarily it means to be created as an eternal being, that you will live forever, that there is a part of you that will live on and on infinitely. This is what it means to be created in God's image is to be created eternal. The eternal part of you is your soul. It's the part of you that lives forever. It is the part of you that is searching for something well beyond anything that we can taste and see and touch in this world. And ultimately, what the soul wants is rest. In Genesis, chapter one, verse 31, God looks at all the things he had created, the pinnacle of which is humanity. He looks at all of the things that he's created. And he says this. And it says, and God looked at

what he created and saw that it was very good is what it says. This word, very good, is the Hebrew word, shalom. And what shalom means is abundant rest. It means an overflowing, unending peace. that God created us with a soul and that our soul's deepest desire is that it would be at rest or that it would experience shalom. And so today we're going to spend our time digging in layer by layer into the soul

trying to answer the question what does it mean to be at rest in God. So if you have your journals, page 19, we're going to dive in to Luke chapter 12, starting in verse 13. Starting in verse 13. It says this. and someone in the crowd said to him,

Teacher, this is talking to Jesus. Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But Jesus said to him, man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you? All right, what's going on here is that the first part of Luke chapter 12, Jesus is just laying it down on what it means to be a follower of his. He is making some of the most pointed and strong statements he makes in all of his teachings, Ultimately, at the beginning of Luke 12, Jesus says this, if you deny Christ before men, then Christ will deny you before the Father. But if you accept Christ or confess Christ before men, then Christ will confess you before the Father.

And Jesus is just pushing and pointing and making these really, really strong statements about the miracle of the confession of faith and to be a child of God, what that looks like. And this brother, hearing Jesus talking, he raises his hand. He was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus, but, will you tell my sorry old brother to give me my money? That's what's going on here. It reminds me of this time that I was preaching at this college conference in Alabama. Now, that statement alone is just wrought with problems. And so I'm preaching at this college conference in Alabama. It's about 800 people there, and they had asked me to talk about relationships.

And so I'm talking about holiness and purity and what it means to be in a God-centered relationship. and how that's good for your soul. And I'm just talking really ultimately about the glory of God as revealed through our relationships. And this guy stands up, maybe three rows in, and let's call him 20 years old. And he stands up, and he stands up, and he raises his hand. And he's like, preacher, preacher.

And in my mind, I'm thinking, security, you know. But there wasn't any security at this conference, so I had to deal with this guy. And I'm like, yeah, okay, what do you need, man? And this is what he says. Hand raised 30 minutes into the service. sermon now. He raises his hand up and he's like, hey, I got a question. Should women wear makeup? What? What are you talking about right now? And so I won't tell y'all what I said to him because then I just have to repent all over again. But all of me, it's just like, bro, what are you talking about? That's what's going on here in Luke chapter 12. This guy just out of nowhere, it's like, Jesus, this thing matters more than whatever it is you're saying. Tell my brother, give me my money. And Jesus says, man, who made me a judge?

or arbitrator over you. And then Jesus said to them, take care and be on your guard against all covetousness. What kind of covetousness? All. What does it mean to covet? It's the 10th commandment, thou shalt not covet. But coveting, covetousness is not a word in common usage in our culture. It's not something we talk about a lot.

What does it mean to covet? Well, ultimately, the biblical description of what it means to have covetousness is this. Covetousness is the desire to have what you do not possess. I'm not talking about the momentary fleeting thought of it'd be nice to if. It'd be nice to go there on vacation or, man, I'd be great if I had or it would be, oh, man, wouldn't that be so cool? I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when the it'd be nice to turns into a desire. When it settles in.

It's not just something passing through your mind, but it settles into a want, to a desire, repeated, ongoing want, the desire to have what you do not possess. Now, we don't call this covetousness anymore. What I have named it in my life and what I have seen it be many, many, many, many times over and over again is this. I call it the myth of there. The myth of there. And here's the story, as this played out in my life time and time again. And maybe you'll resonate with this.

Have you ever been in that place in life where you think, if I could just get there, then I'll finally be happy. If I could just get there, then I'll finally be fulfilled. If I could just get that raise, if I could just get that promotion, if I could just get that respect or that relationship. Whatever there is, we get our eyes set on there, and we think if we can just get there, then we'll finally be happy. My experience is that every time that I get there, whatever there is in my affections,

whenever I get there, do you know what I find there? Me. I find me there. You know what me wants? Me wants lots of things that there seemingly just can't satisfy. And this is the myth of there. this is covetousness. It's powerful. It's powerful. We can covet a talent or a position, a possession, a feeling, a relationship. Ultimately, it's to desire, it's a perceived way of living. And it's serious.

In the Bible, this word covetousness is used more than 20 times, and every time it comes with a warning. Why does it matter? Why does it matter that we know this and we take this captive? Well, Jesus tells us this. He continues with this. He says, it matters because one thing. life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. Now, you know this. You know this and you believe it. You know that you are more valuable than the stuff that you own than the things that fill up the world around you, that you are more valuable than that. We teach and preach this phrase here all the time and there's a ton of freedom in it and there's a ton of gravity in it. And the phrase is this, that no one can give you what God has not and nobody can keep you from what God has for you.

nobody can give you what God has not and nobody can keep you from what God has for you. The question we have to ask ourselves, and we do ask ourselves over and over and over again as Christ followers, is not, will I trust God when I get there? If I ever get there, will I trust God? That's not the question we have to ask ourselves. Every day we have to ask ourselves over and over and over again, not will I trust God when I get there, but will I trust God right here? will I trust him right here?

This is what Jesus is beginning to dig into layer by layer, and he does so in Jesus fashion with a parable. Now, a parable is a story with a point. Jesus told 29 parables. Of the 29 parables that he told, 11 of them, he used finances to dig deeper. And so this was a common thing that Jesus did. We did it last week. We studied it, and this week is the same thing in a different parable. Why does Jesus use finance?

as an illustration so often into things that are deeper. Well, one, I believe, is because finances are a common human experience. Everybody has them. Since forever, trade and commerce and money has been a part of life. And so it's something that every human has a relationship to, and every human understands in some form. The other reason Jesus goes after this is because Jesus named money as his number one competitor for the human heart.

And so money has power. not just common, it also has power. And so Jesus uses it in this parable, and he says this. He says, The land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. Now, this brother is experiencing some rich stress. You ever had any rich stress? I'm like, mm-mm. Yeah. I mean, you ever been there? You're like, what am I going to do with all this money, right? No, I have never been there either. I can testify. Maybe you have good for you, but that's what this brother's going through. He's got some rich stress going on. It's important to note that the parable starts this way. The land of a rich man produced plentifully. Now the truth is

that producing is good. Crops are being produced. The land is fruitful. Producing is good. Earning is good. Investing is good. Profits are good. Job creation is good. Hard and fruitful labor. These are good things. These are, in large part, what it means to be trusted to steward over creation to have dominion is to produce, is to multiply, is to grow. Producing is a good thing. Jesus is not challenging what comes in. He is asking, what are you doing with what comes in? And what do those behaviors say about the condition of your soul. And so Jesus continues. And so the man, he's just banging down crops out of heaven. He's feeling all good about his life. And he says this, I know, I know what I'll do. I will do this. I will tear down the barns that I have and I will build larger ones. And there I will store all my

grain and all my goods. You know what I'll do? I'll tear down the stuff that I've had that's worked for me for a long time and I'm going to build bigger stuff. He's the millionaire that has a multi-million mansion and then he has too much furniture and he has too much food for his pantry and so he goes and builds another multi-million dollar mansion to house his furniture and his food for his pantry. Now let's just say what Jesus is pointing at here, he's beginning to point at excessiveness. And I'm not going to run down the road long on this, but I would challenge you. Just go home and Google storage units in Jacksonville and just see how many business listings pop up. Side note, I heard this a really good business.

But we have a lot of stuff. Nobody's going to deny that. We have a lot of stuff. We have units just thousands and thousands of units full of just stuff. So what Jesus is pointing at is excessiveness here. So the brother says, I'm going to build bigger barns. And when I do, the parable continues, I will say to my, what's the word? Soul.

I will say to my soul. Soul? You have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax. Eat, drink, and be merry. See, this is the quest. This is the soul quest. The eternal journey of the eternal self. This is it. The soul wants rest. Eat, drink, relax, be merry. The soul wants rest. the truth is, here it is, you are a soul made by God, made for God, and made to need God, which means that you were not created to be self-sufficient.

You are not just a self, you are a soul with eternal longings, and your soul is sticky. The Velcro of the soul is what the Bible calls desire. And the apostle Peter says that we have sinful desires warring inside of us against our soul. The Bible best defined sin as the addiction to self-sufficiency or the appetite for self-glorification. That self is at war within us is what Peter says. And what happens is that we get these urgings or these wants, this desire to self-satisfy and it begins to disorient our soul. and it begins to disintegrate our soul by disorienting our mind, our will, and our strength. And things start to get out of line.

And they start to get two degrees and three degrees off. And then all of a sudden we find ourselves in these places where we're like, how did I end up here? How did I end up here? And the truth is the way we got there is because the soul is sticky. And it has these desires. And James, it says that when we're divided in our thinking, when we're double-minded in our mind, heart and strength, This creates an instability. It makes a man unstable in all his ways is what Jesus' brother says.

The soul is sticky. Our soul is fragile. It is vulnerable. And it is completely designed to find its home and to find his rest far outside of us and something far greater in the God who made it. Your soul is the most precious thing about you. In John Ortberg's incredible book called Soulkeeping, he writes this about the soul.

He says, this. The soul seeks God with its whole being because it is desperate to be whole. The soul is God smitten and God crazy and God obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols. My heart may be enslaved to habits. My body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it finds rest in God. Your soul is longing for shalom. In this parable, this man is saying, I figured it out. My soul will finally find its rest once I have secured for myself all this stuff. All these things will finally leave me fulfilled.

But God says to him, the parable continues, God says to him, fool. This night, your soul is required of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? Now, can you imagine a worse situation than to be in a meeting with God and for him to look at you and go, fool? Go! Like, God, you don't even ask me how I'm doing? Like, you're not even, you're not, you're full? Like, that would cut like a knife, right? Before I moved here, I served at a church for a few years in Atlanta, and for the first year that I was serving there, my older brother Jason and I, who's also in ministry, my older brother Jason and I, we served at the same. church for about a year before he went on to be a lead pastor. And I was there for about six months, and one day I'm sitting at my desk, just minding my own

business, and I get the email, the email, where I got a meeting invite to be in a meeting with all the head honchos. I thought, this is it. They have seen my talents. They know what I bring to the table. And they are in just short amount of time. I've been there like six months. in just a short about of time.

They are inviting me into the inner sanctum. And I am forever going to have incredible influence. I was pumped. So the day comes, and I'm sitting in the meeting, and there's about seven of us in there. And the head honcho, El Hefe, the boss, he's talking about something really important, I'm sure. And I wasn't listening to hear.

I was just waiting on my turn to talk. And you don't ever do that? You only listen to hear. You don't ever listen to respond? Anyway, that's a whole other thing. But I'm listening, waiting on my time to talk. And sure enough, he comes around and he's like, all right, he points at me. He's like, all right, you, little Jason, what do you think?

Oh, he called me my brother's name. He called me by my brother's name. He couldn't remember my name. And so he called me little Jason. It cut deep, man. That's a soul wound. I was humiliated. I was embarrassed.

I have no idea what I said next, but it must have been earth shattering because they never invited me back to the day. that meeting. And so, anyway, I didn't like, I didn't send HR an email or file a complaint. Ultimately, I got over it. But think about it. You're walking in a meeting with God. And God's like, man, you're being foolish. Like, that's what he's saying to this guy. Ultimately, what Jesus is saying is, wake up, man. You're living on the surface where things are not real and they are completely unsatisfying. Jesus says this in Matthew 16, for what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul?

Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? Your soul is the most important thing about you. And what you attach it to matters. Jesus says this in verse 21. So is the one. What he's saying is foolish is the one who lays up treasure for himself and does not rich toward God. I want you to underline that phrase, rich toward God.

What does that mean? evidently there is being rich and then there is being rich toward God and these are seemingly different things well something I've learned over the course of the last few years serving at this church is I've met quite a few people who are rich toward God and there's a couple of things that I see true in every one of their lives one thing that I see true in people who are rich toward God something that comes out of the life that is rich toward God is this is that they are grateful for God. They are grateful for God. Now, there is a God glorifying, God exalting, God honoring way to be grateful to God, meaning to be grateful to God for his mercies and his

kindness to be grateful to God for his provisions and for his protection, for the things big and small that we get to experience in life that come to us by the means of God's grace and God's efforts on our behalf, of course, there is a way to be grateful to God that means something and that matters. But there is a superior gratitude. There is a more supreme gratitude, which is to be grateful for God, which is to be grateful for who he is. That he is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. He is the I am that I am, the holy one, the infinite one, the one that did not start, the one that started start. God did not begin. when the beginning began, he began the beginning. He is God Almighty. This is who we're talking about

when God says a thing. God costs in a billion galaxies go into place. He is the star shaper, the life giver. Right now, right this second, in infinity, God is sitting at the center of all created things. Everything that has been created that we know about and the billions of things that we don't. All created things are spinning around the throne room of God. He is the center of every universe. And right now, angels that are on fire are swimming around him, singing and screaming in harmony. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with his glory. When we talk about God, we talk about the I am and we are grateful for him. We are grateful for him. The fact that we get to say his name. We get to speak the name of God. We get to speak the name of God.

And listen, he put a name for himself on our lips and in our souls. And do you know what it is? Father. He has come so near to us that he would allow for us to call him dad. This is God. We are grateful for him. So what does it mean to be rich toward God? It means to be grateful for God.

And the second thing that comes out of a life that is rich toward God is that they are generous because of God. it is to be generous because of him. Look, the only right response, when you catch a vision of God Almighty, when you catch a vision of who he is, the only right response is to take your life and to say, God, my life is a blank check. I'm putting it right here, you write it and spend it for your own glory. My life is a blank check.

You spend it for your glory, however you want. And here's the truth that I've learned time and time again. And every time I take my life captive and I lay it down on the table in front of God and say, God spend it for your glory. Do you know what I've learned? He will spend it better than I will every time. Every time. So Jesus ends the parable by saying,

Foolish is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. And then the parable's over. And Jesus starts to turn the page into a teaching. And what Jesus has done is he's used the parable to give the diagnosis. And the diagnosis is covetousness. And so he says, this is what is a soul that has got covetousness growing out of it looks like. And so the diagnosis is covetousness. And then he moves into the cure.

The cure for covetousness is contentment. And Jesus begins to teach us what it means to be content. And contentment comes from the soul that has found its rest in God. And so Jesus teaches on this. He says to his disciples, therefore I tell you, do not, be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on? For life is more than food and the body is more than clothing. Consider the ravens. They neither sow nor reap. They have neither storehouse nor barn,

and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? So this raven flies by. And Jesus says, you see that raven? That raven is a worthless bird. sorry if you're into ravens but that raven is a worthless bird and in Jewish culture almost certainly that raven would have been deemed unclean because of what it eats so that bird is unclean

undesirable and worthless and God takes care of that bird and aren't you of infinite more value to God than that bird? This is what Jesus is saying and so let's run with the illustration that Jesus gives us for a minute. I want you to look at your neighbor at all of our campuses

I want you to look at your neighbor and I want you to say this, if you were a bird, you would be a, and fill in the blank. If you were a bird, you would be a fill in the blank. Ready? One, two, three, go. All right, all right, no bird's name is that long, okay? All right, so come back to me. Here's what I would say.

If you just looked at your neighbor and your neighbor happened to be your spouse and you said, if you were a bird, you'd be a vulture, then I would like to invite you into our marriage, program. We will have people at the Connect Center after service and they will be happy to get you connected to folks who will walk with you through this next very difficult season. So, no, but Jesus, he uses birds. And so let's just run with it. Listen to me. God did not create birds in his image. He did you. God did not step out of the glory of heaven to redeem birds. He did that for you. God did not offer himself up to be brutally murdered on a cross so that birds could be forgiven of their sins.

He did that for you. God did not descend into the depths of death and the grave only to walk out three days later alive so that birds could share in his glorious victory. He did that for you. God is not currently sitting in heaven, preparing a place for birds so that they can enjoy the eternal riches of his grace. He is doing that for. for you. Let's just say to God, you're valuable. That's what Jesus is getting at. You have an

incredible amount of value to God because he put his image on you. And his image matters to him. And it gives you value. So Jesus continues. And he says, And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to a span of life? Let's try. Let's do it right now. Add an hour to your life. life. Some Bibles read to add a cubit to your stature. Okay, so you can't add an hour to your life, add an inch to your height. Some of you have gone to incredible lengths to try to add an inch to your height over the years. You can't do it. This seems impossible to us. Listen to what Jesus says next. If then, you were not able to do as small a thing as that. You see, what's impossible to us is

easy to Jesus. If you're not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. And yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so closed the grass which is alive in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world. Seek after these things and your father knows that you need them. Instead, this is it, church. Seek his kingdom. And all these things will be added to you. Seek his kingdom. You see, a kingdom is anywhere a king rules and reigns.

and what the soul wants is for our heart to be lined up under the rule and reign of the king what our soul wants is for our mind to be lined up under the rule and the reign of the king what it wants is for our bodies to be connected to the mission of the kingdom the soul wants the king it wants to be satisfied by god almighty revealed to us through jesus the son the soul wants to find its rest in God. It wants to seek the kingdom. And Jesus is saying, seek the kingdom. And all these things will be added to you.

This aligning of our lives, what the Bible calls this, this willful, habitual choice of being obedient and lining our life up with King Jesus in his kingdom. What the Bible calls this is worship. And so what Jesus is prescribing to us, he's saying, listen, the cure is this. worship is the remedy for worry. Worship is the remedy for worry, and worship is not a feeling. It's a choice. Isaiah, chapter 26, verse 3, it says this, that he will keep in perfect peace.

All those who trust in him, whose thoughts turn often to the Lord. And then Jesus says this. He says, fear not. Seek the kingdom of God and fear not. Little flock. listen, this is what you want to tune in. This is it. For it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that it is God Almighty's, the God we were just talking about, who currently the earth is his footstool, that it is his pleasure to give you the kingdom? It is his pleasure to give you the abundance. pleasure to give you the abundant riches of his grace, that it makes him happy to do so.

In Isaiah chapter 55, this language is, chapter 53, this language is used there as well when it's talking about the Messiah, Jesus, the one who would come, who would offer up his life for the sacrifice and the atonement of sins. When Isaiah writes about the Jesus who is

to come, this is what it says. It says that it pleases the Lord to crush him. that it brings pleasure to God to see his son crushed is what Isaiah 53 says. Pleasure. It's the same word that we're talking about that it is God's pleasure to give you the kingdom. Why? Why?

It stirs God up in all kinds of good ways when souls who are disconnected from their home, who are wandering, who are lost, who are pursuing the futile things of this world, things that will never satisfy when they have set their attention and their affections on things that are completely distracting and completely unfulfilling, when those souls that bear the image of God, when they return home through the finished work of Jesus Christ, when they place their faith in His Lordship, when they surrender themselves unto His kingdom,

and they find their eternal source of rest. When that happens, it makes God happy. It makes him happy. And he gives these children, these adopted kids, he gives them people who had rejected him and who had run from him. When they come home by faith, God gives them the kingdom. It is God's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

That, my friends, is simply unbelievable. And when we get this, when God sets this on us, it really is the only thing that matters. And Jesus says this, because of the kingdom, sell your possessions and give to the needy. is what Jesus says. What he's saying is, look, man, if stuff has got a grip on your soul, sell it. If covetousness has gripped your soul, sell it all.

That's what Jesus is saying. Sell your possessions. Give it to the needy. Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. And then he finishes with this, and so will we. for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. This verse gets quoted a lot.

You'll see it a lot. But a lot of times people reverse the words in it. A lot of times when you hear this quoted, they'll say, for where your heart is, there your treasure will be also. But that's not what Jesus says. What Jesus says is that for where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be. And this revelation of the kingdom of God,

this alignment with the king, the great I am. This is the invitation into the eternal created place of rest that God has for us. The God that our soul wants to rest in its place of rest is found nowhere except in God Almighty. So I want to ask you this question. I'm going to close with this. It's a simple question. Do you love God?

Do you love Him? When you take inventory of these different parts of your life, do you love Him with your heart? Do your habits agree? Do you love him with your mind? Have you assessed and assigned ultimate value to God? And is he sitting on the throne of your thoughts? Do you love him with your strength? Are you connected to the mission of God?

Are you active in what God is doing in our city and around the world? And do you love him with your soul? Is your soul at peace with God? Is it at rest? Is your soul, where's your soul filled with angst and frustration and hurry and worry? Maybe today, as we respond, we would allow for the Spirit of God to shine a light into all the closets of our soul. And we would say, God, here's my heart. Here's my mind and soul and strength.

Shine a light on anything that's not lined up in your kingdom. Shine a light on anything that doesn't have your kingdom first. Shine a light where there's anything growing, even in the darkest corners where there's, there's anything growing that is robbing me of the joy that is mine in Jesus. If there's anything that is robbing me of the rest that is shalom, God, will you shine a light on it and will you show it to me so that I can confess it, and so that I can repent, and I can lay those things down at your feet, and so that I can walk in the life that you've purposed for me. So I'd invite you to do that as we responded. All of our campuses, our

worship teams are going to come out, and we're going to begin to respond. But for the first couple of minutes of the first song, we just want to take two or three minutes and carve it out and just say, God, would you shine a light on me? Anything that's hiding in the dark, would you bring it out so that I can get rid of it so that I can lay it down so that I can surrender it? And so for two or three minutes, our teams are going to sing, and then our worship leaders at all of our campuses are going to invite us to stand and respond as we always do. Let's pray together. God, we love you. We thank you for your goodness in our lives. We thank you for your faithfulness. We thank you that you have given us a soul. We thank you that you have made yourself available to us. That's the satisfaction

for our souls. I pray for my brothers and sisters all across the city right now, Father. I pray that they would experience the peace of Christ. Jesus, you are the prince of peace and your kingdom is a kingdom of peace. And so I pray the peace of Christ would rule and reign in our hearts and our minds and our and through our strength, Father. That we would be at peace with you. We'd be at peace with ourselves, Father. If there's anything growing in me. If there's anything growing in us, God,

would you shine a light on it so that we can surrender it, so that we can lay it down and so that we can walk in the wholeness. We can walk in shalom. God, we love you. Thank you for loving us first. We trust you.

Thank you for adopting us. And we need you. Thank you for being available to us. We pray that you'd be glorified as we respond. We pray all these things in the precious and beautiful name of Jesus. And all God's people said, amen. Amen. Let's respond to him together.