Welcome to the River City Church podcast.
And a message by our lead pastor, Jason Powers.
Our prayer is that this message would inspire and encourage you,
build your faith and point you to the life changing love of
Jesus. May you enjoy the goodness of
God as you follow Him today. Our confession is his church is
that we are badly broken. Yes, you are grace and peace to
you. I hope you experienced that and
feel that today we're continuing in Proverbs and just like we
kind of just talked about in the same way that the the goal of
our gathering together. Isn't just to sing songs and
then go, it's to talk about truth and then align with it.
That's what wisdom is. And that's what the proverbs
have been leading us towards and guiding us towards wisdom is.
And the proverbs are a path that lead us on the life with Jesus.
They're not rules and promises, but if you do this, then God
will. Then God is duty bound to do
this. It's like signs on a path that
say if you walk this way, if you live your life in this direction
before God, then there will be fruit in your life.
The wisdom, the proverbs are about relationship.
It's about a posture. And again, we said last week,
relationship is important. It's just, it's simply how two
things or two people are positioned towards each other.
So the wisdom is about being positioned and being in
relationship towards God, either tumbled and submitted before him
where we say, listen, God, there's a lot of things that I
don't know. There are some things that you
say that I don't understand and that I don't like.
But I am either positioned towards you submitted or I am
positioned towards you in rejecting your way and saying,
yeah, I think I hear what you say, but I'm going to do my own
thing. I'd rather just do it my way and
we'll see how it goes. And the thing that we've seen as
we've talked about speech, right, like our our speech, the
words it comes from a. Heart.
That heart that says either I'll take you under advisement, O God
of the universe, and I'll decide.
I'll make the decision about what's best for my life, or I
will hear you and humble myself and submit to your way.
That is a posture, and if our words will reflect that heart,
Jesus said. What is brewing in our heart
bubbles over. Out of our word.
And last week we saw how that is cumulative, how that builds up
in our lives, and it's expressed through our relationships.
If we can look at our words and say, man, my words are hurtful
or divisive or angry or constantly saturated with grief
and fear and sorrow, we can acknowledge that those things
are in our heart. And we can also begin to look
around at the quality and the nature of our relationships, the
things that we surround ourselves with on a day today.
So let me just also acknowledge, as real as those things are.
And I don't in any way want to take the steam out of those
things. They can kind of be hard to put
a finger on, right? They're subtle.
We, we recognize it. Like I may run, just go, man,
I've got this anxiety kind of thing and it kind of flows out.
But I haven't really thought about it in terms of my
relationships or my speech. So we acknowledge it when we're
talking about it, but we may not.
Feel it on a day-to-day basis. My guess is this week isn't
going to be like that. My guess is that this week is
something that's going to touch most of us in places right where
we live. We're going to talk about this
week about security, about what makes us feel safe.
And necessarily when we talk about security, we talk about
provision. Where does the stuff that I have
come from ultimately. And when we talk about security
and when we talk about provision, we're certainly
talking about what. Work and when we talk about
work, we're talking about what money like I knew it.
If you're here for the first time, I just want you to know
the Lord LED you here. You're here.
Here's the thing that we want to that we want to say walking in
wisdom bears predictable fruit when you when we just say like
that's the idea behind the sign, right?
Not every time and once and for all that we can kind of
manipulate God and say, well, I did this and and listen, that's
why this idea of talking about money and the church can be so
weird and. Goofy and I know This is why
some of you have been really hurt by this message.
I'm going to say from the beginning is man, I'm sorry.
That's not the heart God's heart like listen, God owns the cattle
on 1000 hills. He doesn't need my 5 bucks like
he doesn't or all of it right. And so if you've been
manipulated by money and, and, and someone told you that they
that you know. They they need and God needed
you deserve or if they manipulated you and told you
that if you'll just give this, then God is obligated to give
this that I. That ain't it, and we're not
going to go at it like that today.
But what we are? Going to say is our posture
towards these things, towards what makes us feel secure about
what gives us hope, about where we think our provision come,
what we believe in our head and in our heart.
It bears fruit in our lives, and it's predictable in the same way
ignoring wisdom bears predictable fruit.
If we see what God says and we begin to bring our lives into a
line that alignment with that, we'll see it.
If we ignore what God says about these things that will bear
fruit too. So the idea when we the big
thing, this is like got to fund this got to be underlying
everything. And This is why when you were.
Manipulated like like they missed it the proverbs and
consequently the logical issue. What we believe about provision
isn't just a matter of what we do Monday through Friday.
It's a matter of what we believe 24/7.
What we do reveals what we believe.
So there's a diagnostic question that we can see around all this
and you don't have to answer it out loud.
In fact, I would advise you and encourage you and hope that you
don't answer it too quickly, but they will take it home and look
and just say the answer to this question bears.
Fruit in my. Calendar in my checkbook, in the
way that I spend my time, the things that trigger me and send
me over the edge. The question is, what do I
believe actually keeps me safe and holds my life together?
And what I'm going to say is, man, you're in church.
We know the right answers, right?
Like you heard the Sunday school story, right?
Sunday school teacher asks a kid and eight-year old kid and just
says what has what is brown and has a furry trail, furry tail
and hides in trees and likes to eat nuts.
And the kid goes, it sounds like a squirrel, but I'm going to say
Jesus, right? We know the church answer what
holds our lives together, and knowing that is really
important. But aligning our lives to that
is even more important. And so when we talked about this
idea of safety and security and provision, it raises some
important questions. Why do we stay at jobs that we
hate and that drain our souls and that steal our time?
Why are we quick to confess even with a laugh?
Sometimes we laugh it off and we're I'm such a control freak,
but we never make the connection in the association.
Maybe that's why we're so anxious.
All the time. Maybe the reason we're scared
and we're anxious is because we're trying to control a world
that is just bigger than us and that is out of our hands.
Maybe that's why we're angry all the time, because we're afraid
that things aren't going the way that we want them to, and we're
really kind of just worried that someday, someday soon, it's all
just going to get away from us. Why are we sometimes willing?
Why do we see it so often? People us willing to fudge on
our character or give a little bit to our conscious if it
promises economic stability, why do we just chalk it up to, well,
that's just. The way that you have.
To do it, you're what you say. It works great in the church,
but out in the real world you got to do it different.
You got to be what? Responsible.
Why do we think responsibility and economic stability are
opposed or just don't have anything to do with the way of
God? Why are we silent about things
that matter to us? Why does how, whether or not we
are checked in or checked out or leaned in or leaned out, why do
those things so often depend on the circle that we're a part of
or the group that we're a part of, or the places that we go and
the people that claim us or that we claim?
We saw that last week about proximity and we see how it
shapes us and how it's how it forms us.
I just, you know, I've got teenagers and, and my son
Jackson is going to be 20 years old in May and he's already
looking towards like, what is my career going to be?
What is the job that it's that it's going to be?
And my two daughters, as they start contemplating college now,
where do I need to go to to get what I need to live?
And I just want to say, with all the confidence in the world,
none of my kids dream of being a slave to the machine.
None of my children dream of working for 40.
Years in the hopes that someday their four O 1K will allow them
to have a comfortable five years, 10 years, 15 years.
We don't dream of that, and yet many of us are.
Many of us carry that burden of lives and jobs and work that we
don't like, that don't fulfill us, that don't seem to have
anything. To do with.
What's in our heart and what's in our life and what's in our
dream. And we do it, and we call it
responsibility. We call it something.
The Bible calls it misplaced trust.
The Bible calls it putting faith and something that can't and
shouldn't hold that. And that is why we have that
ache. That is why there is something
in us that yearns and longs for something to for something
different. That's why we're willing to give
up all manner of margin. For just a little bit of the
thing that promises to keep us safe, promises to keep us
secure, promises to give us a good life.
And we haven't seen it yet. We believe that if we just give
a little more, do a little bit more, go a little bit farther,
try a little bit harder, a few more hours, and we give up all
of that. Then someday, someway, somehow,
when we're almost dead, we'll have a fleeting glimpse of the
good life, Henry David Thoreau said.
Most men lead lives of what? Quiet desperation.
Oof. We are barely alive, waiting for
the other shoe to drop. And when I say we, I'm talking
about me. I'm talking about all the fears
and anxieties that sneak into my life, too.
And what I want to say is if you're here today and you've
just kind of accepted this idea that life in the West in the
21st century just means living with some kind of sense of low.
Grade. Panic and fear and anxiety about
work and money. If you just accepted that that's
what life today has to mean. I want you to know that you're
probably responding to your life in one of two ways.
You are either clamping down on control and you're trying to
make everything work just. The right way and you're trying
to make everything just go and then every once in a while
something. Happens.
You have a heart attack. I had.
I bought my first house in San Antonio two months before the
economic collapse of 2008. I did.
Everything I was supposed to. Do and the bottom fell out.
So we either try to control everything is that you?
Are you the one that does that? There's no shame here, right?
But let's diagnose it. Or we withdraw and we avoid.
This is what addiction looks like.
We're going through the motions, but we take a pill or we spend a
dollar or we go to a website that will just make it not hurt
and not be quite so heavy for quite so long.
We avoid. We stop talking to the people
that love us. We stop identifying our feelings
because our feelings are too big, they're too powerful,
they're too scary. And what if they get away from
us now? The reality is the actual.
So this is basically a fight or flight thing, right?
My flight mechanism is broken. I want to.
Fight all of it, all the time, every way, right?
Some of you may lean right. The the reality is there are
there are hints of all that, but you probably default to one or
the other. And how you default under duress
and stress becomes a deeply formative thing in your life.
It becomes something that shapes the way.
That you respond to your kids and your spouse and your
coworkers and the economy and politics and your neighbors.
Do you know which one you default to?
The Proverbs describe it in Proverbs 6, starting in verse 6
says take lesson from the ants. You lazy bones learn from their
ways and become wise. OK, so lazy bones is wild.
It's a wild to read that in your scripture.
But like the older translations, if you have like a new American
standard or King James or something like that, there's
even better word. It uses the word sluggard.
So I feel a little weird. Saying lazy bones.
So I may say sluggard throughout, we may use those
interchangeable, right? But the this is this is the
idea, right? So when we read about the when
we read these problems, I want you to know this whole series is
about teaching us us learning together how to read the
proverbs, right? Because we're not touching every
problem. We're not touching on
everything, but what we are doing is seeing these things
that show up over and over and over again.
Throughout the scriptures. And what we saw last week,
remember you guys did great with your English literature lesson
where you knew like. Like a metaphor.
That uses like or, as is a simile.
Right. And we?
Use that to identify this is a different metaphor and what what
we can tend to do when we read this is get real moralistic
about this. What this is not saying to us is
you need to go be like the. Ants.
Nope. Nope.
That's that's not what that is, right?
What it does say is exactly what it says.
Look at it. Take a lesson from the point of
the proverbs is to slow us down, which is exactly the thing that
our culture doesn't want us to do, is it?
That's exactly the thing that it removes from us.
We don't have time to slow down. We got to work more.
We got to be better. We got to meet, we got to meet
deadlines. We got to meet thresholds.
And if we need that threshold, then we got to get to the next
threshold. And what the problems do is
invite us to step back and say, hey, specifically in this
instance, if your tendency is to try to control things, take a
look at how things operate out there when things aren't being
controlled. And the solution to write some
of us that the fight or flight, like the control avoidance
thing, the solution isn't to somehow find the exact middle
spot where I'm appropriately controlling and appropriately
avoiding. The idea is to take the whole
scale and just throw it out. And opt into something totally
different. And the way that the proverbs
illustrates that is by nature by looking at the world it created,
specifically in this case the ants.
To look at what God has. Created and see how he how they
deal with So what does it say about how they deal with it
Starting in verse 7 take a lesson from the ants.
They have no Prince or governor or ruler to make them work.
This is what the people of Israel saw in Egypt when they
were slaves in Israel. In Egypt, Pharaoh got to make
bricks for my houses. Oh, got to make more bricks and
more bricks. Now you got to gather your own
materials. This is about the slave driver
at work who doesn't care about your family.
He doesn't care about where you come from.
He only cares about production. And you are as valuable to him
or to her, to them as as what you have produced in the last
quarter, He says. The ants.
Aren't like that. They don't have rulers that make
them work. And yet.
They labor hard all summer, gathering food for the winner.
The Ant works appropriately in season, without having to be
driven, and also without fear and panic and without anxiety.
What the? The scripture and the example of
these. Ants are shown is they just do
what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it and
they don't worry about anything else.
The Bible calls that faithfulness and in Scripture,
wisdom is faithfulness. Faithfulness.
In this example, the counterpoint to faithfulness
would be hustle. We love hustle, right?
We don't actually love hustle. We think we love hustle.
We love hustle because it feels like hustle is going to give us
more. But we don't see.
From the ants as the ants trying to get 2 days worth of
production out of one day's experience.
We don't see the ants leading hard over there and and kind of
manipulating their Co workers to do a little bit more, to go a
little bit further. We don't see the ants.
We don't see the red ants and the Gray ants in competition
with it, with each other to see who can build the biggest hill
or have the deepest tunnels. We don't see the ants trying to
get maximum extraction out of the day.
We just see the ants understanding and realizing that
winter is coming and today is an opportunity for us.
Practice what we're supposed to do.
I don't think we find the pictures and of the ants
collapsing in exhaustion. We don't see a lot of aunt
divorces because one aunt worked too far and went too much.
We don't have a lot of Ant childhood counseling because,
well, my dad wasn't there and he sure worked a lot and he
provided a lot. We don't see a lot of Ant
tension. What I do for my family is
provide. I don't have time to be with
him. Listen, there's no guilt and
there's no shame. There's no condemnation.
But I do want to acknowledge is what the wisdom and Proverbs
portrays in US is there's a cost.
There's a cost more always. Once more, you're never going to
run to the end of desire. You're not going to ever run to
the end of someone who has a bigger house or a nicer car or
bigger experience or a better vacation.
And when we make that the example, when we hold that in
front of us, it shapes us. It forms us.
The wisdom of the end is to simply do what is in front of me
today and then stop. There's a great practice that
we've been talking about. It's called the practice of
Sabbath. Sabbath was built into the
structure of the Israelite people.
Now listen, we don't observe Sabbath to to make God approve
of us. We don't observe the Sabbath.
That's part of the law by which we are saved.
We acknowledge that the Sabbath was before the law.
The Sabbath was built into creation in Genesis chapter 2.
God blessed the 7th day and He made it holy.
And we don't work on the Sabbath because he didn't work on the
Sabbath. And when we.
Stop when we get away from the Sabbath, when we put.
Aside that day of rest, what happens is we begin to believe
in our heart of hearts that we are what we produce.
That is exactly what God led his people out of Egypt.
He said you don't work for Pharaoh anymore.
It's not about the number of bricks that you can produce.
It's not about having better buildings or better any of that.
It's about you being a people who work, who are foreign and
shades, who have powers and guilt and gifts and skills and
abilities, but you're not defined by them.
And you certainly don't have to make your own.
Way so we practice Sabbath, one day of rest where we say I'm not
my job, I am not a widget maker. I don't have to earn the right
or the privilege of resting. Notice the ants.
Now he provides a contrast to that in verse 9.
But you lazy bones, how long will you sleep?
When will you wake up? As long as I can, right, is my
response. As much as possible can, right?
A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding
of the hands to rest. Then poverty will bounce on you
like a bandit. Scarcity will attack you like an
armed robber. OK, so we have that.
The picture is like the hustle culture, right?
Like we're just going to got to go, got to go, got to go, got to
run, got to do more, got to be more and we go and write until
we crash and we follow. The counter to that is lazy
bones. It is the slugger.
And what it doesn't mean is someone who just says I'm not
ever going to do anything. The reason the Sabbath works,
the command of the Sabbath is 6 days.
You'll do your work and one day you will rest.
That's a day that's holy. The Sabbath assumes that there's
going to be work. But here's the thing that I'm
going to tell you if you've never experienced anxiety and
depression and fear, there are some days that the prospect of
tomorrow is so scary and overwhelming that I can't get
off the couch today. And I find all kinds of ways to
justify it. I just need a little break.
I just need a little bit more time.
This is a picture of procrastination.
This is a picture of waiting to do the important things until
tomorrow. Today I'll I'll do a.
Little bit of this and I'm not really resting, I'm just simply
sitting on my couch and meditating on all the potential
horrors that are going to come tomorrow.
We call it paralysis by analysis.
Anxiety is paralysis by what if. What if what they say is true?
What if all the things that I can imagine in my head come
true? Anxiety and fear and, and all of
these, you know, insecurity about what's going to come.
They always see absolute destruction ahead, don't they?
There's no shame in here, but we can see that.
Unless what I want to hold up is if you've been there, if you're
walking in that right now, what I want to invite you into is it
begin. Maybe today all you can do is
begin to begin to believe that God has something different for
you. That the plan in the path of the
Proverbs is not to lead you into more hustle or into a world
that's so scary that you can't possibly figure out how to get
it. Let me promise you as a part of
fully Orthodox theology, the God who created all things by his
word is not wondering what's going to happen tomorrow.
The God who created you and called you by name is not
worried about whether the economy is going to turn or what
the return on your 4-O1K is going to be.
The God who created light, who created sky, He's not that
impressed with your hustle, your extra 40%.
He's not that interested in that.
What He is interested in is you reflecting the life and the
freedom of the Godhead in your life and in your world.
He's interested in you being faithful, doing the thing that's
in front of you and letting Him do all the rest of it.
So this is weird though, right? Like if we do this like a little
bit extra sleeve, a little more slumber, and then what it says
is poverty will pounce on you like a bandit.
It's real important, right? Like some places will use this
and they'll take this and say, if you don't do what you're
supposed to do, if you're not active enough, if you don't go
to enough small groups, if you don't do that, then God's going
to make you poor. The you know, the converse of
that is that if you do all the right things that God will make
you rich. Notice this.
This isn't saying that God does this.
This is a consequence. This is a natural effect.
Here's the thing. If you keep putting on until
tomorrow what needs to be done today, someday the bill is going
to come due and we'll be stuck and we'll be caught.
If I'm so afraid of what comes tomorrow that I ignored today,
tomorrow should be scary. But if I simply say tomorrow is
unknown to me, I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring.
I don't know how it's going to turn out.
I think I do. But that voice of fear in my
head is a liar. The voice of God says I've
created tomorrow. I'll take care of it.
You do your piece today and then tomorrow when you wake up, you
do that. But listen, when the bell, some
of you are bosses and you're here and you're just like, no,
listen. When the bell rings at 5:00, you
go home to your family. They're waiting for you.
More than that, they need. Your best We're raising
children. We're raising kids to either be
paralyzed by fear and anxiety and insecurity by whatever the
loudest voice on the TV tells them they need to be afraid of
today, or they're able to look into the goodness of God and see
his provision and take care of what needs to happen today.
Poverty is simply and listen, I this is so like, here's what I'm
not saying. I'm because, listen, statistics
would indicate that there are people in here that that that
covers. And what I want you to hear, I
want you to hear me say like, you didn't do anything wrong.
Maybe I mean, if you gambled it all, you shouldn't have done
that. But the idea here isn't that God
is going to punish you if you do too much or too little.
The idea here is an invitation to live wisdom.
Wisdom participates faithfully in today without fear of
tomorrow. Wisdom is able to stand at the
end of the day and just say not everything's done.
When is everything going to be done?
Never right? But what wisdom is able to do is
go to work hard, to show up on time with a good attitude to
work, to make your your coworkers better, to make your
boss as successful as they can be.
And then at the end of the day, five o'clock 6:00, whatever,
it's time to stop and say that's enough for today and to go home.
Your boss isn't going to like that.
But listen, your boss, listen to some of your your bosses.
You have an opportunity to not be like this, right?
Your boss wants you to think that they are your provider
because then they can control you.
A person who's not afraid is dangerous, and the best way you
know why. Can't control them, can't
manipulate them. The person who just says, yeah,
no, I did my work today and yeah, there, no, there will be
work tomorrow. I call this job security.
I'm going to do just what I can today to make sure that when I
show up tomorrow there was something else.
And I trust that God is going to provide for me for that.
See what happens there? What when you start, when we
start walking in that and we just start saying, no, I'm going
to be faithful with what's in front of me and then I'm going
to go do the other things that are in my life.
What happens, what begin to see, is called margin.
This isn't fundamentally a passage about economics.
This isn't passage about margin, about space between what we have
and what we consume. And the more that that gap
shrinks, the more our anxiety spikes.
We're living right on the razor's edge.
But something happens when we begin to live in margin, when we
begin to say, I've done enough and if I'm working in a place or
if I'm giving my life to a place that always needs more and
always wants. I'm not telling you, you need to
go get a new job, But I'm telling you, you may need to go
get a new job. Because something predictable
happens when we begin to have margin in our life, margin in
our time, margin in our checkbooks, margin in the things
that we do. Right here's here's what it
looks like. Proverbs Chapter 11.
We'll start in verse 24. Give freely and become more
wealthy. Be stingy and lose everything.
The generous will prosper. Those who refresh others will
themselves be refreshed. And again, some of you have
heard a prosperity preacher say, you just got to give me your
10%. If you give me 10%, then God
will bless you. Probably not today, but maybe
tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow.
Not tomorrow either, or someday. I remember last week when we
talked about the prophet who wants to come tell me what God
is saying to me. But I asked them, well, who does
God say to you? I want to ask the prosperity
gospel. Teacher, who are you?
Giving 10% to. Who are you?
Investing in. But what happens is when we
begin to put boundaries, appropriate boundaries around
our lives, and we begin to create margin.
The fruit of that is generosity. The problem is sometimes
generosity. Pastors handle generosity like a
cudgel, right? Like I'm just standing here and
I'm going to beat you into giving what I think that you
need to give. We don't have to do that.
That's why we don't pass a plate here.
I don't want you to feel manipulated by that.
Some of you don't have two nickels to rub together right
now. What I would say to you is when
you give generously, it produces fruit in you, God for God.
God shows up and God delivers. But I'm not going to use
generosity to beat you. What I am going to say is when
we live with margin, when we say and what margin looks like is I
have enough. When we live with margin
generosity, natural flow naturally.
Flows. It just leaks out of us this
isn't a prosperity doctrine principle.
This is an invitation. Watch how faith and fear and.
Trust work because when I give when I when I give, I don't
whatever the words of my mouth are, when I give to something to
A cause, to a person to alleviate some suffering, what I
implicitly saying is I have enough my needs are met, I
listen I can afford to give and the problem is we're.
Just like Oh well, say them, they give a. $1000 Well, I don't
care what you give. You know Jesus celebrates on the
Scripture a woman who puts a couple of nickels.
He stops the worship service. The point at this?
Huge. Gift of faith.
I want you to know I don't know what you give.
I don't know what I don't because I don't care.
It's not about it's not about the number of dollars that you
that you put in. It's about are you living with
enough margin in your life to know that I don't serve this
world. I have the ability to do good in
this world. I have enough and I trust that
what I need tomorrow God will provide.
And I want to be real careful too.
And all the love to say that that God doesn't promise to meet
my lifestyle demands. Sometimes getting Marge in our
life says I need a smaller house and a smaller payment.
I need to buy a used car, right? Because here's here's the thing
about, you know, when you buy that new BMW after about six
weeks, that's just the place that you throw your McDonald's
wrappers. You can throw a McDonald's
wrapper in a 1997 Camry. Listen, I watch Camry on TikTok
like those. You get 808 hundred, 1000 miles
out of a Camry if you take care of it, right?
But in the same way that generosity says it's a
demonstration, I have enough to give.
And I want to just say, you might not even believe it now.
You might just go, I don't have enough, but I'm going to give
anyway. Then I'm going to see.
And what happens is when you give and then you step back and
you're just bracing and you're just waiting, And then guess
what? You go to sleep and you wake up
the next day and you just go, I didn't die, I'm still here.
It trains our heart to be generous.
But when I withhold, there's no listen, there's no hammer here.
What I want to do is hold up a mirror and I want to ask is, are
you living? Like coming up with everything
that you have is up to you. Do you believe that God desires
to give goodness even if it comes in a smaller house or an
older car? Withholding is the declaration
that if I give anything, I won't have enough for tomorrow.
And what I lovingly want to point out to you is you don't
know what tomorrow brings. It's designed that way.
The point of it is so that we will trust God.
God's desire is that his people would live in the world
generously, wisely. Able to contribute to the things
that matter, the things that are in your heart, able to do good
not just with your time for someone else, but with the
produce of your life, the things that you give your life away
for. And listen, I know there are
people, there are stories of people that you see on this
stage that aren't me. And I know they sell their house
and downsize so they can take jobs that don't demand as much
of them so that they can be present to each other.
And I'm not telling you that you need to do that.
I'm asking you what kind of life do you who want to lead and what
has the world told you you have to provide for yourself and what
is the. Cost of our marginalist
existence because margin is the space where generosity happens
and generosity trains our hearts to trust Jesus.
He said it this way, right? This is important, right?
Every week when we just say we talk about the Proverbs in the
Old Testament, but every week we want to bring back.
And I just want you to know the Proverbs, the wisdom in the Old
Testament doesn't end in the Old Testament.
It's embodied and. Expressed by Jesus.
Jesus. Is how we interpret the the
wisdom in the Proverbs, right? And so here's what it looks
like. Matthew chapter 6.
This is Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 6,
starting in verse 19. Don't store up yourself.
Don't store up treasures here on Earth where moths eat them and
rust destroys them. It didn't say don't do anything.
It says don't store them up. Don't.
Oh, I got to keep this because I don't know what tomorrow he's
like. Don't.
Don't put everything here. Some of you lost everything in
2008. Some of you are so afraid of
another financial downturn that you live angry and afraid.
And what Jesus saying is like, don't make that your ultimate
withholding because rust destroys them and thieves break
in and steal it. Instead, store your treasures in
heaven or moths and rust cannot destroy and thieves do not break
in and steal. Listen, whatever, wherever your
treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
I expect that to be different. I would expect to be where your
heart is, there your treasures will be.
But what Jesus says is you can train your heart where to go by
investing your your treasure. And that can be your time for
sure. For sure you should.
That's why I think this is such an important thing.
Listen, you don't need more of me in your life, right?
Like you just don't. But there's something about
saying there's a spot on my calendar, a weekly spot on my
calendar that is non negotiable, where I go and worship with
God's people and where I hear God's words spoken over me.
I want to go to a place every. Week when I'm in town, when I'm
around I want to go to a place every week where I can be
confronted with a beautiful gospel truth that I am badly
broken and I am deeply loved there's nowhere else in the
world that is going to tell you that and Jesus says where your.
Treasure is there, your heart will be.
Also your money and I don't say that to manipulate you or do
anything like that, but I'm also not going to back away from it
because for some of us, it's easier to just give our time.
Sure. Also, oh, you just want an hour.
Great. Some of you have been going to
an hour here for so long that you need to start serving and
give another hour. Some of you, it's time, right?
And you just go. Listen, I'm afraid if you're
afraid of the it's so afraid of the economy on the news that you
are mad and angry at other people, you need to start
disciplining your heart by making your money go somewhere
else. Is it scary?
Terrifying. Terrifying.
I know, because I'm afraid too. Every time.
I'm just like, all right, Natalie pries it out of my hands
and get rid of it like that. The Lord has always been
faithful. The Lord has always been
faithful and I don't think today is the day that he breaks that
streak. So he says put your treasure
where you want your heart to be. Do you want to die and have your
boss say, man, the best thing about that guy is he made me
rich. That same speech, Jesus goes on
verse 25. That's why I tell you not to
worry about your everyday life. And he describes it.
Whether you have enough food or drink or enough clothes to wear.
Isn't life more than food and your body more than closing
clothing? He's not talking about poverty,
existence. He's not talking about
starvation. He's talking about, listen, I
heard a statistic this week we throw away $160 billion worth of
food a year. The problem isn't that we don't
have enough food. The problem is it's ported and
it's not distributed. Well, as we're afraid says don't
worry about your life, what you're going to eat says look at
the birds. Remember, look at the ants,
Jesus said look at the birds. They don't plant or harvest or
store food in barns and your heavenly Father feeds them.
Now here's the question. Aren't you more valuable to him
than they are? That's the question.
That's the question that you've got to answer.
Do you think you're more important than the birds and the
ants? We think we're fundamentally
different. Like, yeah, but the ants don't
know. How do you know that's God
created them both? He created both us and the ants
us and the words. The difference is he's given us
his Spirit. He's created his image in us.
He's going to take care of us more and better than that.
He hasn't promised to make us rich because all the rich stuff
is going to go away. We're going to die and not take
any of it. And all that hustle is going to
do is speed that day up. And Jesus goes, you should have.
Checked out of that. Does it cause you to?
Worry, do you have anxiety become of that because of that
good news, You don't have to play that game anymore.
You don't have to live in that system, he goes on verse 31.
So don't worry about all of these.
Things. Fran, listen.
Are you listening? Don't worry.
That's a command from Jesus in Scripture.
Don't worry about these things saying what we eat or what we
drink, what we wear. These things dominate the
thoughts of unbelievers. Wow, that's heavy.
It's supposed to look different for us.
This is supposed to be one of the things that marks the
followers of Jesus, that we believe that our God cares for
us in practical and tangible ways.
Day by day, those things dominate the thoughts of
unbelievers. But your heavenly Father always
knows your needs. So seek the Kingdom of God above
all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything
that you need. So don't worry about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will bring its own worries.
Today's trouble is enough for its own.
Jesus is talking about movement. Listen.
Wherever you are, He starts with place.
Don't worry, stop that. Don't worry about tomorrow,
right? Put your hand on your chest.
I don't know what tomorrow it brings, but I am safe today.
That is a truth from Jesus. I don't know what tomorrow
brings, but today I am safe and I have enough.
Regulate that nervous system. Don't let tomorrow steal today
from you. But it moves on there.
Don't worry. And then look.
Here's why I don't have to worry, because look at God's
good creation. The sun rises and sets.
I went walking the other day and the golden hour was so
beautiful, almost took my breath away.
I didn't do one thing to earn that, I just got to experience
it. Look around at the goodness that
God gives all around you and then seek first the Kingdom.
Put people first, put righteousness first.
That's what freedom is. That's how we experience freedom
and from fear, freedom from scarcity.
But we face this moment authentically, as it.
Is and we let tomorrow be itself.
That's a lot to process, isn't it?
That's a lot. You don't have to get all the
way there today. You don't have to go all the
way, right? But each week we've had a couple
of questions that help us think through and process this, so I
want to put these up. Am I more inclined to try to
manage anxiety and fear by controlling something or hiding
from it? And.
Where did I learn that? Who?
Taught me that that was responsible #2 how much margin
in my is in my life and what has that produced in me?
Am I more patient and kind and gentle and loving or less
because of the demands of keeping up and 3rd and this
one's hard. What is fear and anxiety cost me
in my life? What have I lost or sacrificed
because I try to control or avoid the opportunity of this
moment. Now listen real quick.
We talk a lot at church about being saved, right?
And it's this real, like saved by Jesus, I'm saved.
I just want you to know that word means something.
It means saved from this. It means saved from having to
manufacture a life that I think is good enough or good enough
for someone else to recognize this issue of trust.
It's not just a financial thing. Jesus does not need your money.
Jesus wants your heart. Jesus wants your life.
So I'm asking you today, whatever you're holding on to,
will you let it go? That tight fist of grasping,
right? Your forearms are bulging and
veins are popping out, right? You can't receive goodness.
You got to let it go. Will you say to yourself?
I have trusted my own ability to provide for myself because I
haven't wanted to believe or obey you.
Jesus, we call that confession. It's confession.
That's how it starts. It's telling the truth, and I
want you to know that Jesus doesn't punish you for telling
the truth. He forgives you, but He
absolutely wants to lead you into something different.
He absolutely wants to lead you somewhere life giving.
That's repentance, the new life, the new direction.
A Christian isn't someone who believes in Jesus.
A Christian is a person who confesses that they have missed
the mark with their own life and spends every moment to the best
of their ability from this point forward, trying to follow him.
Not to earn his love, not to earn their salvation, but to
experience it. To be saved from a life without
Him. So we re aim our lives and our
hearts towards Him. Will you do that today?
If you haven't done that for the first time, I want you to know
Jesus wants to save you from a life of toil and hardship.
We pray with me, Jesus, There is nothing in our world.
There is no news station, newspaper, website, blog that
tells us this and that should be a tell.
I just pray especially for anybody in here today who is
worried, who is afraid even today, they're grieving what
they have lost to anxiety and fear in Jesus.
I just pray that you would meet them in that moment.
Lord, your comfort is emotional, but it is also very practical.
And Lord, I pray that your people would be alive with a
margin enough to be generous with the love and the grace that
we have experienced. So I pray that you would comfort
us today. I pray that you would lead us
into life, and in the wholeness I pray that pray that you would
lead us out of. A world where?
We have to produce to earn your love and where we can simply be
faithful with what you've placed before us today and experience
all of the goodness of your Kingdom on earth.
As in heaven, we ask these things.
Jesus, in your name and for your glory, Amen.
Thank you for joining us today. River City Church is all about
experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and
community, and we hope that you've been able to experience
that today. As grateful as I am that you've
spent this time listening in this morning, this podcast is no
substitute for full participation in a local church.
I love it when River City people listen to other pastors, but it
is those who show up week after week faithfully giving their
support and time and resources that make all of this possible.
If we can help you get connected to a local church, pray for you,
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Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you
in all grace and peace.