This Great Reset that's coming, you know, and you read about it
all over the place. And I'm not saying that there's
nothing to it. I'm sure there is.
You know, you see headlines about how to prepare for the
Great Reset and what you can do to be financially prepared when
all of this stuff happens. And I was joking.
I told my wife, I said, you know, if, if there is a great
Reset, that would be fine with me because we'll be getting a
big raise. But you know, the, the, the,
everybody's, you know, going to be on the same level financially
and all the money is going to be, you know, I mean, almost
like communism or or socialism that's coming in and we see it.
I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to downplay that at
all. But you know, I was joking when
I said that with to my wife. But but then I did ask the
question, what are we going to do if that does happen?
What if there is some kind of great reset and everything goes
back to zero and all of your money is worth nothing now?
And you know, you've got you got bank accounts that are, that are
full, but it doesn't count for anything because you can't use
your money. Or what happens when, you know,
the government takes over and everybody's bank accounts are
digital and they don't like what you're talking about.
And so they just cut your funding off and now you have no
money until you comply or starve.
Then what do you do, right? What, what happens after that?
When the, when the, the great reset or whatever else that they
have planned? I, you know, there's so much of
the global elitism and things that are going on and so much
stuff that happens behind the scenes.
And I suppose that if they were allowed to do some of those
things that would have already happened.
I don't know what's holding it back other than God's hand of
mercy. But almost as soon as I asked my
wife that question, what are we going to do when that happens,
the verses from our text this morning came into my mind.
And it's pretty clear in this text that that we should not be
worried about anything the Bible says in Matthew chapter 6 and
verse #25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your
life what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, nor yet for
your body what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat,
and the body more than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for
they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns, yet
your heavenly Father feedeth them.
Are you not much better than they?
Which of you by taking thought, can add 1 cubit unto his
stature? And why take you thought?
For Raymond? Consider the lilies of the
field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin.
And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore if God so clothes the grass of the field which today
is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall we not much more
clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or
what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed?
For after all these things do the Gentiles seek.
For your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these
things, but seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His
righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.
Take therefore no thought for the moral, for the moral shall
take thought for the things of itself.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
I think this is interesting because Jesus addresses the
heart of what we think is the most important things to worry
about, right? He wasn't saying don't worry
about your retirement account. Don't worry about your
portfolio. Don't worry about what you're
going to drive or where you're going to live.
Don't worry about how you'll be able to take your next long
vacation. It's interesting that he said
don't worry about what you're going to eat.
Don't worry about what you're going to drink.
Don't worry about what you're going to wear.
To those of us. I think to to us, those things
are of ultimate importance. We may not worry about a
retirement or a car or house or a job or those kind of things,
but we all have to eat and we all have to wear clothes.
And those are things that we spend our life focusing on.
How are we going to pay for the next meal?
How are we going to how are we going to be able to buy the
clothes that we need to wear? And yet Jesus tells us not to
focus on those things at all. And what a what a great
illustration he uses in in both cases, he said, think about the
birds. They don't have barns that
they're filling up with all the stuff that they're trying to
save up for. They just go about their life
and guess what? God takes care of them.
He feeds them. They don't have to think about
what they're going to eat. He just puts the food out there
and they go grab it, right? Think about the lilies, the
flowers in the field. Are they going out and, and
working to try to array themselves and things that make
them look beautiful? No, they just grow and God takes
care of them. And in fact, so well that even
Solomon didn't look like a Lily in the field.
And get and get this. Birds are going to be here for a
short time and then they're going to die.
Grass, flowers, they, they last for a little while, but then it
dies. You throw it in the oven and
burn it. And yet, if God is willing to
take care of those things, don't you think He's going to take
care of you? What an amazing thing.
But he tells us that our focus should be on one thing, and that
is the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.
Turn over to Psalm 37 because with within just that that that
short conversation with my wife, I had formulated a plan of what
we would do when everything collapses and I hope it doesn't
happen, but it might and what what's the plan when everything
collapses and I and I think that with any good plan.
It all starts before you have to have to actually enact it.
And this one. Has to start now because if you
wait until everything starts falling apart, it's going to be
too late. And the plan is very, very
simple and it's so foolproof, I think that even.
Somebody with a very limited brain capacity can figure it
out, and the fact is based on a Bible truth that I think is laid
out pretty clearly here in Psalm 37 and verse #23 The steps of a
good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his
way. Though he fall, he shall not be
utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.
I have been young and now I am old, David says.
Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
begging bread. If the righteous are not
forsaken or found begging, then that's the perfect plan.
Stay at the top of the righteous list.
That's what I told my wife the plan was, and that's what I want
to share with you for a few minutes this morning.
Stay at the top of the righteous list is not a fancy message by
any stretch this morning. I don't have alliterated points.
They're not all perfect and trimmed and everything else, but
I think it'll be help to us this morning if we're willing to
listen. Let's pray and ask for God's
blessing on this message. Father, again, we thank you so
much for your goodness to us. Thank you for an opportunity we
have to be here this morning. I pray, I thank you for bringing
everybody here safely. I pray that you'd give us what
we need to help us today. And again, we thank you so much
for all that you do for us. In Jesus name, Amen.
Here's my first point. And I think you'll understand
that it's not a fancy message. Number one, I'd rather trust my
future to God than to myself, to my government, or to chance.
The government has proven many, many times that they are, they
have no ability to run my life. Well, I don't understand why the
government wants to run my life. But they try and they keep
trying and they keep trying and they keep trying.
And they proven over and over and over again that they have no
idea what they're doing right. But the bureaucrats in
Washington that want to control every aspect of your life prove
over and over and over again that they have no idea what
they're doing when it comes. To trying to run my life.
Right. Everything they touch, they mess
up, and they're continually doing just that.
And it seems to be getting worse every single day.
Why would I put my faith, my trust, my hope in a government?
Well, if everything falls apart, there's always welfare and the
government's just going to be there to catch us when we fall.
And the government's just going to be there to protect us.
And the government's just going to be there to bail us out when
we need it. And many times that's the case.
I mean, look what happened in 2008.
They bailed everybody out. You know, people end up on the
street and they got a house for them and, and hundreds and
hundreds of dollars in grocery, you know, money that they can
just go buy the fancy food if that's what they want, right?
The government's just going to take care of us.
But hey, they've proven over and over and over again that they're
not very capable of doing that. The the the.
Incompetence is the very least of my worries.
There's something much larger at stake than just incompetence.
I think they're they are intentionally trying to make us
fit in with with what is eventually going to be a one
world government that's going to bring the Antichrist in to rule
over the entire world. It's, it's a calculated plan and
it's happening. The Bible says that that the
whole world is going to be ready for the Antichrist to come.
How do you think that's going to happen?
Not going to happen because the president of the United States
stands up and says, I'm the Antichrist.
You're going to listen to me. I'm not saying the president's
the Antichrist, but I'm saying this whole one world government
is going to start coming together and everything's going
to be globalized and all of that kind of stuff to, to bring in
the Antichrist. And I'm like, Christ can come
back today and everything that God says is going to happen
could easily happen, right? I'm not saying that oh, he can't
come today because all of this stuff has to happen before it
does, right? He could come back today and
everything that he talks about in the Bible that's going to
happen in the end times could happen tomorrow, right?
But all of these things that we see happening in our world are
just pushing us more and more and more to that.
It's not it's not that they're incompetent.
They know exactly what they're doing and they're pushing us
away from God and more toward evil.
And they're, they're bringing in all of these things that God
says is going to happen and making a way for the Antichrist
to come in and be the savior of the entire.
World and bring peace that that the Bible says it's never going
to come by the way, all of this stuff that President Trump is
trying to do over there in the Middle East, it's it's for
nothing. Right.
They cry peace, peace when there is no peace.
That's what the Bible says, right?
Bring in all the board, the peace that you want.
It's not going to happen. It's not going to the Bible says
that it's not going to happen. So I appreciate what you're
trying to do, but you're going against what God is saying is
going to be in the end, right? And that's what I'm saying.
I'm not saying that Trump is the Antichrist or that Trump is
bringing in all of these things on purpose.
But but the, but the, those who are at the top, the global
elites are all working toward this one world government.
They would like nothing more than for everybody to be on one
system of currency that they can control all of these other
things. And I'm not, I'm not a
conspiracy theorist by any stretch, right?
But open your eyes and look at what's happening in our world
and everything is lining up with what God says is going to happen
in the end. Christ could come back today and
it and it shouldn't surprise us, right?
Everything that needs to happen has already happened.
He, I hope he comes back today and gets us out of this mess.
But if he doesn't, I'm not relying on the government to
bail me out. They're incompetent and they
want what's coming. They want what's going to
happen. I've proven to myself over and
over. That I have the ability to
really mess up my life when I try to take things over, do
things in my own strength. And I could tell you stories and
you know, stories of upon stories of of the ways that I've
done that. And it hasn't worked out so well
for me. I don't need my government.
I don't need myself. I don't need chance.
When everything falls apart, the only thing left then is to trust
our future to a God who is already there.
Turn over to Proverbs chapter 3, if you will.
Wouldn't it be great if we had someone who knew just exactly
what was going to happen tomorrow and the next day and
next year and we could sit them down and we could ask them, hey,
what do I need to do today? So that I that I, because you
know exactly what's going to happen next year at this time,
what do I need to do today? And they could tell you, well,
I'll tell you exactly what's going to happen one year from
now. This is what the world's going
to look like. And if you want to be prepared,
then this is what you need to have.
Wouldn't it be nice to have something like that?
Wouldn't be great if somebody could predict what was going to
happen in our economy and you could get into the right stocks
and you could buy the right things and they knew exactly
what was coming. And you could be in the right
job for the next huge thing that's coming along, and your
family could be set for life. Be wonderful if somehow they
some way we could just stop worrying about it all and let
someone else take care of that for us.
Await there is Proverbs chapter 3 and verse #5 says Trust in the
Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own
understanding, and all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall
direct thy paths. He's already there in tomorrow.
He already knows what's going to happen a year from now.
How do you, how do you handle everything when the world falls
apart? You trust the one who knows
what's happening. Let him direct your paths.
I don't need to be the one that's in charge.
And I, and I think that's what happens with so many of us so
often is I got to, I got to be prepared.
I got to know what's going to happen tomorrow.
And I'm not saying, listen, I'm not, I'm, I'm not trying to tell
you that you shouldn't prepare if you can prepare, right?
If the, if the world starts falling apart and you're the one
with all the food, then you're in a good spot, right?
I'm not saying don't prepare for those things.
You should prepare to take care of your family.
But all I'm saying is that's not what you should be relying on.
And what happens when you've got 25 years worth of food stocked
up and somebody breaks in and finds out that you got it and
the whole world knows you're the one with food and next thing you
know, you've got two days worth of food left.
Then what? Then what are you going to do,
right? You're relying on yourself.
You're relying on the government.
You rely on all of these other things.
No, my hope, my trust, My faith should be in the Lord.
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine
own understanding and all thy ways acknowledge him, and he
shall direct thy paths. That's where we put our faith
and our trust and our hope. I've been to the dead.
Sea and seen it and and it is way way way lower than it used
to be. I mean by hundreds of feet
lower, you, you, you drive along the main highway and you're
looking way down at the Dead Sea.
But they have a line on the rocks along the edge of the
highway to show where the where the level of the Dead Sea used
to be. And it's the lowest point on
Earth. And so everything flows into it,
but nothing flows out of the Dead Sea.
And supposedly a guy was walking along the edge of the, of the
shore of the Dead Sea and he lost his balance and he fell in
the water and he couldn't swim. And so he started thrashing
around. And I, I don't know what, what
must have happened to that guy because I made a little splash
and I got a little bit of it on my, on my lip.
And I, I, I bought, died when I was in the Dead Sea.
It's so salty and so acidic that you can't, you know, they said
that if you drink 1/8 ounce glass of water from the Dead
Sea, it's enough to kill you because of how salty it is and
how acidic and everything else. And so they said no splashing
whatsoever. If you get some of that in your
eye, it's going to burn like crazy.
Well, I did and it burned. And I say, you know what?
I just want to, I'm not going to drink it, but I want to see how
salty it really is. So I just I dip my finger in it
and and. And licked it, it was so bitter.
So if a guy that falls in and can't swim and he's thrashing
around, I don't know what would have happened to this guy.
But either way, he finally, he finally got to the point where
he lost all of his strength because he was thrashing so hard
and he stopped trying to save his life.
And the next thing you know, he was just floating on the top of
the water. It's so the water is so buoyant
because of how much salt is in it.
And we did it. If anybody would sink in the
Dead Sea, it would be my wife. But even she floated, you sit
down and you just completely let go and you just float right on
the top of the water, arms and legs both up out of the water
and your body just floats because of how how much salt is
in there and how buoyant the water is.
But I think what a great, what a great lesson, what a great
picture for us when you try to do.
Everything to save your life and when you try to do everything to
make it on your own, you're thrashing around and.
It's for nothing, because when you just stop doing all that and
put all your trust and all of your faith and all of your
weight on Christ, you realize He's enough.
All that thrashing around in the Dead Sea counts for nothing.
Because you're not doing anything anyway.
The water's holding you up. You might think you're the one
doing all of it because you're thrashing and trying to keep
your head above water, but you're not doing any of it.
The. The sea is what's holding you
up. And the same is true when it
comes to our lives, when it when it comes to doing everything on
our own. We're thrashing and doing all
this stuff to try to keep our heads above water, and boy, I'm
a good thing. I'm a strong swimmer.
It's a good thing I can handle all these things because look at
me, my head's above water and I'm doing OK.
What happens when you can't do that anymore?
What happens when you lose your strength?
What happens when you just can't go?
On anymore and you have to let go.
Then what? Well, you weren't doing it in
the first place. And then you realize that God's
the one that's actually holding you up.
So why not just let him do that from day one?
That's my point. But how do you prove your trust
in God? How do you, how do you show him
that you're relying completely on him?
How do you let him know that your faith in the future is in
him? How do you just let go and let
God worry about your future? How do you get to that point?
Well, his number 2, and again, very, very simple #2 that the,
the plan is very simple. Live righteously.
Turn over to Luke chapter 10.
I don't know, you might be thinking, well, that's, that's,
you know, that that's too simple.
Well, it worked for Elijah and the woman, the widow woman of
Zarephath and her son. They, they were down to nothing.
And yet for 3 1/2 years during the drought, God sustained them
because they were relying completely on Him.
It worked for Job when he had lost everything.
It worked for Paul living righteously, worked for Paul as
he traveled on his missionary journeys from church to church.
In fact, it was a command from Christ himself that we're not to
be worried about the things of this life.
Luke chapter 10 and verse #1 After these things the Lord
appointed others 70 also, and sent them two and two before his
face into every city and place, whether He himself would come.
Therefore, said he unto them, the harvest truly is great, but
the laborers are few. Pray ye, therefore the Lord of
the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.
Go your ways, Behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves.
Carry neither purse nor script, nor shoes, and salute no man by
the way. See, our job and our
responsibility is to put the Kingdom of God first.
Live righteously first and let him figure out the details.
Stop trying to do it on your own.
Stop trying to figure everything out.
Stop trying to to make all the plans that are going to set you
up financially for the rest of your life in the next 10 lives
if you need it all. Right.
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart.
Put it on. Him stop thrashing around trying
to keep your head above water and just let go and let him hold
you up. So here's the last point that I
want to give you this morning. And there's a couple points
underneath this, but we're not going to be long number #3 how
do you live righteously? How do you live righteously?
Such a simple message this morning.
But if you'd get a hold of this idea, if you get a hold of this
idea of just living righteously before God, it would change
everything about your life. The first thing is this, confess
all known sin. It's simple.
I wish we could just say, all right, I'm confessing all my
known sin and and be done with it, you know, but it only makes
sense that you cannot be righteous if you're harboring
sin in your life. There is no righteousness mixed
with sin, and there is no sin mixed with righteousness.
You cannot be righteous and have sin in your life.
You might think you're righteous.
You might think that you're doing OK.
You might think that you look good to everybody else, and you
might. But you cannot be righteous if
you have sin in your life because those two don't mix.
Think about. If you were going to make a cake
and you followed that recipe to a tea, now I can follow the
recipe of a cake to a tea and it still is not going to come out
right. But people who know how to cook
and bake and all of those things can follow a recipe and it comes
out and it's good. But let's say that we followed
the recipe for making this cake to AT everything that it said,
we put it in there, we measured it out exactly with the
measuring cups and spoons and all of those things.
And we got it exactly the way that the recipe said to do it.
But we decided before we stick it in the oven, you know what,
I'm going to put 1/4. Of a cup of sand in this cake.
You could follow that recipe to AT, but I can tell you this,
when that cake comes out, it's going to be inedible because
it's got 1/4 of a cup of sand in it and it makes it impossible to
eat a cake that's full of sand. And yet we do the same thing
with God. God, I'm going to.
I'm going to. Follow your plan to a tee.
I'm going to live the way that you want me to live to a tee.
But I'm just going to do these couple other things over here
that are that are part of my plan.
I'm just going to do it my way for a little bit.
And I'm just going to add a couple of these things in here
because this is what I want to do.
And this is the way that I think I should live.
And these these are things that you know, I'm giving you most of
it. I'm doing almost everything that
you want me to do. But these few things here, those
are things that you can't touch. Those are things that I'm just
going to keep doing. You can't have those.
You messed the entire thing up. You make it unusable because
righteousness and sin cannot coexist.
If you expect to be righteous before God, you've got to get
the sin out of your life. And the problem that I find with
most people is not that they don't know that they're sinning,
it's that they know that it's there and they're just not
willing to get it out because either it's been there for so
long or either they've always done it that way, or they've
always been able to hide this. And, and they don't always go to
it. And so they can, they can hide
it from the people that are around them the most.
You can hide it from the church, you can hide it from the pastor,
you can hide it from your family.
Because I'm only doing this every now and then.
I'm not addicted to it. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not
drowning in that sin. So I'm just going to keep this
over here in the corner and I'll just go back to it from time to
time. God can't use that.
That's unconfessed sin and if you have sin that is in your
life that is unconfessed, you cannot live righteously.
First John chapter 1 and verse 9 says this.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins and to. Cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. We use first John One often when
we're trying to lead somebody to Christ.
But as I've said many times, first John is written to
Christians. We are the ones that need to
confess our sins, but God cannot forgive a sin that you will not
confess. God's not just going to come
into your life and make you clean everything up.
Now he can, he can bring trials, he can bring difficulties, he
can bring hardships into your life to, to point you in the
direction of, Hey, I'm, I'm chastising you because you're my
child and you need to get this right.
He can do some of those things, but he's not going to come in
and just clean everything out unless you confess it and
forsake it. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from.
All unrighteousness. But there's an if at the
beginning of that verse, and it depends on what we do with it.
If we confess he is faithful, he's going to do his part.
He's going to do everything that he said that he was going to do,
but you have to do your part. You cannot be cleansed from all
unrighteousness until you are ready to confess the sin to Him.
Turn over to James chapter 1. James chapter 1.
This takes it, I think, a step farther.
Now obviously confessing our sins and forsaking those sins is
is the key to getting forgiveness and the key to
having Christ cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
But living in righteousness requires confessing all that
known sin, because the Bible says in James chapter 1 and
verse 27, pure religion and undefiled before God and the
Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their
affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
That's a difficult thing to do. You know how hard it is to walk
through the mud and not get a little bit of that mud on your
feet, not get a little bit of that mud on your?
Clothes. That's a difficult thing to do,
right? But what happens when you do get
some mud on your feet? Do you just walk in the house
and just traipse through the whole house with all that mud
and then walk back out and oh, well, I guess I'll fix it later?
No, most of us wouldn't do that in our houses, right?
You get the mud off your shoes before you go in the house.
You'd keep it out, all right? And yet we walk through the mud
of this world and we collect all of it and we let it.
We let it collect on us. And then, Oh well, I guess one
of these days somebody will come along and clean it up.
That's not the way that it should be.
Pure religion is to keep yourself undefiled, keep
yourself unspotted from the world.
That's what God expects us to do.
Back in 1818, there was a guy who was a Hungarian Dr. by the
name of Ignaz Semmelweis, and he was a well, it just just a
regular, a regular doctor. But back then, the doctors did
everything pretty much. But he was born into a world
that was that, that really they didn't understand anything about
germs. And so the, the, the, as he, as
he got into the hospitals and delivering babies and things,
one out of six women died while they were in the hospital during
childbirth. One out of 6.
And what these doctors would do is they would spend the mornings
down in the morgue cutting up the bodies and doing all their
dissection and autopsies and trying to figure out the cause
of death for all these people. And then they would go up in the
afternoons and they would rotate and go up and deliver babies and
they couldn't figure out how all these women were dying.
Doctor Semmelweis and and he had a little bit of a personality
from everything that I've read about him that was hard to get
along with. And so the doctors that were
there in the hospital with him didn't really like him, but he
figured out that in 11 years and delivering over 8500 babies, he
only lost 184 mothers. That was a that was just an
astronomical number of of births without deaths compared to most
of the doctors of that day. And so he argued.
And this is what he he, he wrote.
He said perpetual fever is caused by decomposed material
conveyed to a wound. I have shown how it can be
prevented. I have proved all that I have
said. But while we talk, talk, talk,
gentlemen, women are dying. I'm not asking anything world
shaking. I'm asking you only to wash,
wash your hands. What he figured out was if you
came up from the morgue and washed your hands.
They didn't know anything about germs.
He didn't know why it worked, but he knew that if you wash
your hands, women live and the babies live.
The other doctors didn't figure that out.
They didn't know they they, they didn't know anything about the
the transfer of germs from a decomposing dead body to a woman
who is giving birth. And these women were dying.
And he begged them, please, I'm telling you, you will save lives
if you will just wash your hands.
They didn't like him and they didn't like him telling them
this Hungarian Dr. coming into America, telling them what to do
in their hospitals. And so they ignored his advice.
And at 49 years old, he died in an insane asylum because he went
crazy. He could not believe that these
doctors would just not wash their hands to save the lives of
these mothers. And after he died, everything
went back to normal. They had been doing this for
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
Why do we need to change anything now?
But then along came the germ theory of disease.
And they realized that germs are transferred from decomposing
dead bodies to wounds. And they put two and two
together. And they realized, you know
what, all you have to do is wash your hands.
And we can save the lives of these mothers.
How often do you wash your hands?
Hopefully it's often, but even more, how often do you wash your
heart? You go out into the world and
get all that filth all over it, and then you want to come and
live a holy life. And it doesn't happen because
you haven't washed. You have not as David did in
Psalm 51 verse 10, he says created me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
There are things that we see, things that we hear, things that
we do that are not pleasing to God and going on about our lives
without stopping to clean our hearts from those things is
going to harm us spiritually. And you may not die spiritually
from it, but it's going to cause you a lot of harm.
And there are going to be a lot of people who actually die
spiritually, just completely give up on everything, run back
into the world, give up on anything that has to do with
with spirituality and godliness. Because they got some of that
dirt on their hands that they just were not willing to
cleanse. You want to live righteously?
Confess all that known sin #2 if you will turn over to Mark
Chapter 9 #2 confess your lack of faith in him.
I told you this was a very simple message.
These are not things that you don't already know.
In fact, they're things that you've heard many, many, many
times if you've been coming to this church for any length of
time, because these are things that I point out often.
But Mark Chapter 9 and verse 23, the Bible says this.
Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are
possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of
the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe,
help thou mine unbelief. When you are afraid that
righteousness alone is not going to sustain you, then you are
proving your lack of faith in the promises of God.
And again, I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to be
prepared, not saying that you shouldn't try to provide for
your house. I'm not saying those things.
But so many of us have the mindset that, well, I'll, I'll
trust in God, but at the same time, I'm going to do everything
I can to make sure that everything is taken care of.
And if all of that doesn't work, then I'll put my faith in God
and trusted Him to help me through these things.
Psalm 84 and verse #10 The Bible says for a day and night courage
is better than 1000. I had rather be a doorkeeper in
the House of my God than to dwell in the tents of
wickedness. For the Lord God is a son and
shield. The Lord will give grace and
glory give this. No good thing will he withhold
from them that walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the
man that trusteth in the No good thing will he withhold from them
that walk. Uprightly, you want to be taken
care of when everything falls apart.
Stay at the top of the righteous list.
No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.
I've been young and now I am old, David said.
Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
begging bread. Do all the things that you can
do to plan and prepare and everything else.
But in the end, those things could all be worth nothing.
If you're not living for the Lord, you're not living the way
that He wants you to live. The truth is that trusting God
alone and living for Him can sustain us through any difficult
time. We just have to confess our lack
of faith in Him and determine going forward that we're simply
going to rely on Him as we live in righteousness.
And here's the last thing that I want to say this morning about
how do you live righteously? First of all, you have to
confess all that known sin. If you got sin in your life, God
can't bless it #2 confess your lack of faith in Him and #3 very
simply just do right. Just do right.
I know it's, I know it's easier said than done, but
righteousness is, it simply involves just doing right.
What is what does he say in John chapter 14 verse #15 if you love
me, keep my commandments. You know what he's saying, Just
do right. You think that's so simple?
Nike built an entire empire on something just simple.
Just do it. Just do it right.
So simple, just do it. It seems like everybody can, but
they, they, they convinced everybody that if you wear a
pair of Nikes, you can do anything you want to do, right?
You can run faster, you can jump higher, right?
You can look cool while you're doing it.
Just do it. Just do it.
They built their entire Nike empire on that little slogan
right there. Why can't we make that work for
Christianity? Just live righteously.
Just do it. Just live righteously Easy, said
Hard. Done many times.
But that's the simple solution. That's what it comes down to
Just do right. Just do right.
How hard is it to just do right? I know we face the the flesh and
I know we face the the temptations of the devil, and I
know there's so many things in the world that distract us.
But how hard is it to just do right?
When you're presented with a with a temptation and you can
you have the option to do what God wants you to do, or you have
the option to to fall back into the same old rod that you've
always fallen into. How hard is it to just say, you
know what I'm just going to do right?
I'm just going to do right? Yes, it's difficult sometimes
because of those temptations are are are are they seem to be
overwhelming, but there hath no temptation taking you.
That is but such as is common to man, God will with the
temptation also make a way of escape that he may be able to
bear it. Just do right, just do right, do
what God wants you to do. Just live righteously, just just
do what he wants you to do in your life.
That's it. How do you how do you live
righteous? You just do right.
I wish sometimes, you know, when when our kids were younger,
especially and, and, and they getting in trouble again for the
same thing. Didn't we just have this battle
yesterday? Now you're back in the same spot
again. Just do right.
You want to grab them by the lapel and say just do right.
But I'll be honest with you. There's a lot of you that I wish
I could just grab by the lapel and say just do right.
Just do right. It would solve all of your
problems. It would take care of so many of
the issues that you deal with. I wouldn't have a job and that
would be fine. I only work 3 hours a week
anyway. I would love to go back to doing
nothing with my life. Just do right.
That's that's how you that's how you live righteously.
That's how you please God. That's how you make sure that
you are the righteous that is not forsaken and not begging
bread. That's how you please the Lord.
Just do right. If you love me, keep my
commandments, he says. It seems to me it's he gave his
life for us. Can we not just live for him?
Do you realize what is coming for you?
If you know Christ as your Savior, do you realize the the
blessings of heaven? Do you realize everything that
he's promised to them that love Him?
We have so much that he's given us.
And yet we're faced with a choice.
I can do right or I can do it my way and we're like my way.
Why do we do that? Just do right.
I hope that's the thought that
goes through your head every single time you're faced with a
decision and you're looking at I could do this, but I but, but I
don't have to. I could you know what?
Just do, right? Just do right.
Put that in a place where you can see it every morning.
Put it in a place where you can put it, write it on something,
carry it in your pocket. Just do right.
And we should put it on a coin and give one to everybody.
Just do right. It's, it's, it's that simple.
The the Christian life summarized brought all the way
down to those 3 little words. Just do right.
Everything would be pleasing to the Lord at that point.
In closing, I want you to turn to one last verse.
Turn over to Matthew chapter 5. How can we live in
righteousness? How can we make sure that we
have our names at the top of the righteous list?
In the Antarctic summer of 19 O 8 and 19 O 9, Sir Ernest
Shackleton and three of his companions that attempted to
travel to the South Pole from their winter quarters.
And they set off with four ponies to help them carry
everything that they were trying to take down their all the
supplies and everything that they were going to need.
And weeks later, their ponies were dead.
Their rations were completely gone.
And they were, they had turned back toward their base and they
had not reached the South Pole, but they knew that they could
not go any farther or they were going to die.
And Ernest Shackleton, obviously they lived, but he wrote about
this in a book called The Heart of the Antarctic.
But all together they, they trek for 127 days.
And in that book he wrote that the predominant conversation,
everything that they talked about on that journey back when
they were starving, when they had nothing left, they didn't
even have the ponies. They didn't really have most of
their stuff because they didn't even have the ponies to carry
their stuff. So they had to leave a lot of it
there. They'd eaten everything they
had. They were, they were just, they
were just doing everything they could to stay alive.
Almost the entire conversation, every single day when they woke
up and started hiking was about food.
They talked about massive feasts and all the food that they were
going to eat when they finally got back to civilization and all
the things that they loved, all the food that they, they, you
know, everything they were, they were there.
They were trekking through this, through the just, you know,
blinding whiteness of the Antarctic.
All four of them had dysentery. They didn't know if they were
going to survive, but every hour was occupied with thoughts of
eating. That's the only thing that they
could think about. And Jesus, who also knew the
ravages of food deprivation, said this in Matthew chapter 5
and verse number six. Blessed are they which do hunger
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness,
for they shall be filled. I think we can understand
Shackleton's obsession with food.
Most of us have that same obsession and we're not even
starving, but that offers us kind of a glimpse into the
passion that Jesus intended for us to have with righteousness.
When you want righteousness as bad as you want to eat, and when
you want righteousness as bad as you want to drink.
Then you will have righteousness.
The problem is, most of us put an emphasis on all the things
that don't matter over living righteously.
When you hunger and thirst for righteousness, he says, you'll
be filled. You'll have the righteousness
that you want. So what are we left to say then?
The reason you don't have righteousness is because you
just don't want it bad enough. No, no, I want to live for God.
I want to be righteous. I want to be holy.
I want to be clean before Him. I want, I want him to be pleased
with my life. No, you don't, or you would.
You might say that you want it, and you might think that you
want it, and you might hope that you can have it, but you don't
really want it because if you really wanted it, you would have
it if you hungered and thirsted for righteousness.
The way that you hunger and thirst for food, you will have
it right. How many times does the Bible
even say, hey, when somebody's starving, you can understand why
a thief would steal a loaf of bread.
Doesn't make it right, but you can understand why you would do
it. Because he's starving.
He's going to go get something to eat.
When you want righteousness that bad, you'll do whatever you have
to do to have it. So why don't you have it?
It's because you don't want it bad enough.
You don't hunger and thirst for righteousness bad enough, or you
would be filled with righteousness.
When living righteously is all you can think about, when you
filter every thought and every action through that lens, then
you will live righteously. And the very verse that we
looked at in the beginning will apply to you as much as it did.
David, I've been young and now I am old, yet have I not seen the
righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread?
What do you do when the world falls apart?
What do you do when when there's nowhere left to turn because the
government's not there to bail you out and you've relied on
yourself so many times and realized that that doesn't work
either, and chance didn't help anything because you just can't
get lucky. What do you do then?
How about live righteous? The righteous are not forsaken,
and his seed will never be begging bread.
When everything flies off the wheel and the world's in an
upheaval, will you be taken care of?
I'll tell you this. I suppose that all depends on
whether or not you're living righteously.
Because the righteous will not be forsaken.
God takes care of His own. It just is a matter of whether
or not you're on the righteous list or not as to whether or not
you're going to be taken care of.
How do you do that? You got to confess that sin, get
it out of your heart, confess that lack of faith and just do
right. Just do right.
That's how you find God's blessing.
That's the, that's the best plan that you could put in place for
when everything falls apart. I'm just going to live, right?
I'm just going to do what God wants me to do.
I'm going to live to please him and let him figure out how he's
going to take care of me. He takes care of the birds.
Promise you that I can promise you this.
When the world falls apart, the birds will still be out there
singing and eating because God takes care of them.
When the world falls apart, there's still going to be
flowers. They're still going to be just
as beautiful as they always have been because God takes care of
them. And when the world falls apart,
those who are his, those who are the righteous, will not be
forsaken. He'll take care of them too.
Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you
shall drink, or what you shall put on.
After all those things do the Gentiles seek, but seek ye first
the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all of these
things will be added unto you. What a plan, what a plan.
Simple, simple, hard to do, but simple.
You're willing to do it. Are you willing to do it?
Let's pray. Father, again, we thank you so
much for your goodness. Thank you again for the
opportunity we've had to be here this morning.
I pray that you just help us all to get to the mindset where
we're just going to do what's right.
Just going to live for you. Just going to follow your plan
and live righteously. God, may you help us to not rely
on ourselves. May you help us to not rely on
the government. May you help us to not rely on
anything else but you. And may you help us to live for
you. Thank you again for all you do
for us in Jesus name, Amen. If you stand at your seats with
your heads bowed and your eyes closed, we're going to have a
time of invitation. The piano's going to play.
And as she does, if God spoke to your heart this morning, you
come.