A Different Perspective Official Podcast

When we hit the odd bump in the road, it's great to know that there's someone that we can call on. Someone that we can depend on. And that's why it's so important to understand exactly who God is.
There are times in life when we need to know that we're safe; times of turmoil, times of uncertainty, times when we're down or alone, times when we need help and advice. That's not to say that you or I are a bunch of losers, that we can't look after ourselves, not that but it's a simple acknowledgement that we can't do it all on our own.
And no matter how strong we might be, some days we need some assurance. That's why last week and again this week on the program, we're taking a look at some promises. Promises that we can depend on, promises from God.
Last week, we looked at five awesome promises from God about what He would do for us. And this week, we're going to take a look at some more promises from a bit of a different angle, promises about who He is and they're important because at the end of the day. If you and I are going to trust anyone, that trust is rooted in who they are isn't it? And the more we know who they are, the more we know whether or not we can trust them.
Now you may have heard me, in the past, talk about a man called Graham. This man had a huge influence in my life. When I was serving as a captain in the Australian Army, he was a colonel, a set over me, he was my boss. I got to know him and eventually we both left the army and together with another man, a guy called Mark, we formed a consulting business in the Information Technology industry.
Now Graham is 20 years my senior and he mentored me for the best part of 2 decades. The man was perfect by no means but then again, you're not and I'm not but he was probably one of the smartest and wisest men I have ever known. And Graham had the patience to invest in me.
Now, I used to talk over the top of people, he had to teach me to be ahead of the game, he had to teach me to think ahead as a leader, to anticipate, to collaborate, to deal with difficult people. And much of the practical stuff I share on this program from day to day has it's genesis in the mentorship and the guidance that Graham gave me and invested in me over almost two decades. Now 5 or 6 years ago we sold that business, he's retired now and I'm in full time ministry doing what I'm doing right now and where, back then, he was the head of our organisation, I was his pupil, today I'm the head of an organisation, this ministry that I'm involved in, Christianityworks.
Now, over that time I got to know him really, really well. We each have our different approaches, we each have our different styles but I would trust this man with my life and I still call him for advice and input and to talk. If he came to me and made a promise, you know I would trust that promise implicitly because I know, through experience, who he is, I have experienced him.
There are other people though, people I know who would be at the complete opposite end of the scale. Why? Because I've seen them in action, I know what's in their heart. I know one man who cheated on his wife while she was dying of cancer. I know a woman who says one thing in public but behind people's backs says something quite different. If either of those people came to me with a promise, how much value do you think I would place on it?
I can think of another man, the pastor of my Church. I have just started attending a new Church in the last few months. Now I think this guy, Warwick, is an awesome man. He has this wonderful mix of strength and compassion, he's humble yet he's clearly an anointed leader. He's a great teacher and he's a man I have enormous respect for but I hardly know him. I don't know him through 20 years experience as I did Graham. I haven't served with him in the trenches yet and so, as much as I respect and admire him, his promises yet wouldn't carry quite the same way as Grahams, makes sense doesn't it? It's obvious.
I want to look today at the story of Moses. Moses is one of the "A" list in the Old Testament; he's an Israelite who grows up in Pharaoh's house in Egypt. He kills a man, he flees to the desert, he's an old wreck in the desert, he's tending some sheep, he's 80 years old and God comes to Moses and says, "go tell Pharaoh to let My people go".
That's daunting, so Moses comes up with five excuses. He has a defence like, "leave me alone to tend my sheep, I'm a burnt out old wreck" and the first one, the first defence is, "well the Israelites would never listen to me, who am I? Who will I say sent me?" That's not an unreasonable thing to say, lets have a look at it, Exodus, chapter 3 beginning at verse 11:
Moses says to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" He said, "I will be with you and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt you shall worship God on this mountain." But Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and I say to them, 'the God of your ancestors has sent me to you' and they ask me, 'what is His name?' What am I going to say to them?" And God says to Moses, "Tell them I am who I am." He said, "Further thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you'.
Interesting response from God. Where does your certainty come from? Where does your protection come from? How will Israel know? Well tell them, "I am who I am sent you". Why would that make a difference? What benefit is that odd response? God is relying on His very character; God is relying on who He is. And see, sometimes the problem is, we don't know who He is. Of course we know the story; probably God did use Moses to bring His people out of slavery through the Red Sea, through the 40 years in the desert into the Promised Land. Over and over after that, you read in the Old Testament, God saying to His people:
I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be slaves there no more. I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.
"This is who I am, this is why you can trust me, this is why when I make promises to you, they are promises you can depend on, I am who I am." And that is why getting to know God and who He is and the promises that He makes about who He is, that's why getting to know that is so important. That's why my life has been transformed and continues to be transformed because I've taken the time to get to know the God who reveals Himself to us in His word, the Bible.
Now that may seem to you perhaps like an incredibly old fashioned thing to do, read the Bible, but in those pages I discovered the God whom I can depend on. You discover what He's like, you discover what grace means, you discover what judgement means.
It takes time, I told you about my friend and mentor, Graham. Now that relationship goes back now almost a quarter of a century with that man and I have a deep trust in who he is because I know who he is and it's the same with God; it takes time.
Now you see people bobbing around like small boats being tossed on a stormy ocean, grabbing for this and grabbing for that when the anchor that they need in their lives is God Himself. But if you don't know about the anchor you can't use it and if you don't know God, you can't rely on Him and this is not something you can lay hold of by not knowing Him.

One day – your time on this earth will be over. Then what? If God is God – how are you going to fare when you stand before Him? I mean how can you be certain that He will forgive you?
For such a long time you know, I poo hooed any notion that I needed God's forgiveness. I mean, give me a break! If you'd asked me, back in those days, about what I thought on that whole subject, I would have given you quite a mouthful. But deep down, underneath that confident bravado I was running away from God. Now you stand back and you think that through and you realise how stupid it is to kind of run and hide from God, if God is who He says He is. I was running away because frankly, I just knew that the stuff I was into was plain wrong.
I was greedy, I was selfish, I wasn't frankly a particularly nice person and then when I came face to face with this Jesus, who claimed to be the Son of God, my biggest concern was, well that I wasn't good enough. And even after I accepted Him for who He is, I still, for a long time, would try and run away from Him because of the deep sense that I had, that I simple wasn't deserving of His forgiveness.
Now I don't know where you are in your life, maybe you're where I used to be and if you are I completely understand. But, but let me encourage you just to join me over these next few minutes and let me share something with you about this forgiveness thing.
My hunch is that the sense that God wouldn't or couldn't possibly forgive me for what I've done is more widespread and prevalent than we might think or admit. Many people like me push it away and you try not to think about it but when I talk to people, who believe that there's a God, and I ask them, "so what's stopping you from living your life for Him? What's stopping you from drawing close to Him?"
The answer that comes back, time and time again, is this sense that, "God wouldn't forgive me. I'm not good enough!" Now it comes in all sorts of different shapes and sizes and forms in which people reply but you boil it down, what they believe is that they are simply not good enough for God. And you know, it goes for people who've believed in Him for years as well as for people who have been avoiding Him for years.
Lets just assume for a minute God is God, there is a heaven, there is a hell, sorry John Lennon but there is. And one day, you and I are going to stand before Him and have to give an account for our lives. How can we be certain that it will go well? If I asked you right now, as you live out your life day by day, how certain are you of that day, that eternal future? How would you answer? You know, most people are actually pretty uncertain. They might be able to verbalise the right response but deep down they're not sure at all.
I want to take you to another of Gods unbreakable promises today. That's what we've been looking at over this week and we'll be looking at them again next week on the program. Promises that you and I can depend on because when we have those promises written on our hearts, it changes our lives. God is a dependable God and His promises are so important, particularly in the storms of life because Gods promises give us peace.
Now this particular promise we're going to look at today begins at a really strange dinner. Some people refer to it as the Last Supper, you maybe familiar with it. It's the night that Jesus was betrayed to be crucified and they celebrated, if you can use that word, the Passover meal with His 12 disciples. Jesus washed their feet and, have a listen. This comes from Matthews's gospel, chapter 26, it begins at verse 26:
While they were eating Jesus took bread. He gave thanks and He broke it and He gave it to His disciples saying, "Take it and eat it. This is my body." Then He took the cup, He gave thanks, He offered it to them saying, "Drink from it all of you. This is my blood, the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not eat or drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom.
Of course that's the first communion service, Christians the world over celebrate that regularly but pay particular attention to one thing He said:
This is my blood, the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
What's a covenant? It's an unbreakable promise of God. When God makes a covenant with people He never, never breaks it. The wine, Jesus was saying, symbolised His blood being poured out which it was soon to be when He died on that cross not 24 hours later,"…for many for the forgiveness of sins."
And then, you want an explanation of that? You go an have a look at the book of Acts, chapter 10, verse 43 which says that:
... everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.
You put those two together and there you have the unbreakable promise of God that, whoever believes that Jesus died for them, to pay for their sins, will be forgiven. EVERYONE who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name. Now that would be hard to believe if not for the blood which was poured out. Jesus also said:
No greater love has anyone than to lay down his life for his friend.
This unbreakable promise is born out of a love of God. The one thing, the barrier that separated us from God is removed, not just from Gods side but from ours. From Gods side, because He's holy and perfect, because His perfection, His goodness, His love is, it's so far beyond anything that we can attain and our sin keeps us from Him. And from our side, because our sense of guilt, our conscience keeps us from going to Him as it did me many years.
See God invented double sided book keeping, this is a double sided transaction, this "forgiveness" thing; God's side and our side. You and I are forgiven, that means God lets us into His presence, that means that we can start living our lives as though we are, because we are.
What does that mean? It means absolute certainty, freedom, no more condemnation, no more guilt, an incredible joy. I have been forgiven by God not because of what I did, what I did led to me needing to be forgiven. I've been forgiven because I could never meet His standard of complete perfection but because I believe that His perfect Son, Jesus Christ, died and rose again to pay for my sin and give me life, I have been forgiven.
I am free, I have no guilt and you know, every time I stumble and fall, every time I fall short and I do, every time my pride or my ego or my selfishness gets the better of me, hopefully less now than they used to, I don't have to live under condemnation. I go to God, I say, "God, I believe in Jesus. I ask for your forgiveness. I believe with all my heart Jesus died for me."
The whole point of this double sided transaction of grace is that I'm not good enough, that's the point, and this forgiveness is a promise that I can stand on, every moment of every day of my life. Do you see how liberating that is? Do you see how freeing that is? Man, it's amazing, complete certainty. On that day that I stand before God, on that day when I look Him in the eye, in my heart I will know that I am forgiven. I will stand before Him as though I had never sinned in the first place, as though I had never rejected Him or rebelled against Him in the first place because I believe in Jesus. Why? Because Jesus gave me this unbreakable promise:
Whoever believes in Me (He said) will be saved.
That's it - unbreakable!

There are times in our lives when we need protection – from other people or from ourselves or from circumstances we can't control. But where do you get that sort of protection?
Now there are times in our lives when we need protection. Sometimes its from our enemies, sometimes its from situations we find ourselves that we can't control and sometimes it's from ourselves, our own short sightedness or selfishness or the consequences of our mistakes. Now kings and presidents and prime ministers, they all have body guards around them to protect them but you and I, we don't have those sorts of body guards in that way. But that doesn't mean that we still don't need them sometimes. But in those times, when we need protection, often there's not a body guard to be found.
In fact, in those difficult times, so often the people, who should be there for us, just aren't. Now let me ask you, where do you turn to? Who do you turn to? Some would say God but the problem for many is well, you can't see God. You can see your enemies, you can feel the fear, you can look at the calamities around you but, but how do you know that God is in that place and how do you know that He'll protect you? See, if God is going to protect us in those times, we need to know it, but how?
It's really hard you know when people plot against us. They talk behind our backs, they plan and they scheme. It is really hard when we're in danger, when someone is looking to do us harm either physically or emotionally or to harm our reputation, whatever it might be, it's really hard.
Over these last few days we've been looking at some promises that we can depend on, you and I. God's promises and today, today I want to look at His promise of protection and I tell you, there are so many instances of this promise throughout His word but I want to look at them today through the eyes of a man called King David. We'll see it as he experienced it, on the run for his life from his predecessor, King Saul. You know, David was anointed king while Saul was still king and Saul figured out that everyone was looking to David to be king so Saul tried to kill him and so David spent a long time on the run.
Now have a listen to what David writes about those dangerous years, you can read it actually in Psalm 18:
I love you Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take refuge. He's my shield, He's the horn in my salvation, He's my stronghold. I call to the Lord who is worthy of praise and I am safe from my enemies. The cords of death entangle me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me, the snares of death confronted me but in my distress I called to the Lord, I cried to my God for help.
From His temple He heard my voice, my cry came before Him into His ears. The earth trembled and quaked and the foundations of the mountains shook and they trembled because He was angry. Smoke rose from His nostrils, consuming fire came from His mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down, dark clouds were under His feet, He mounted the cherubim and He flew and He soared on the wings of the wind.
He made darkness His covering, His canopy around Him, the dark rain clouds of the sky. At the brightness of His presence, clouds advanced with hail stones and bolts of lightening. The Lord thundered from heaven, the voice of the most high resounded. He shot arrows, He scattered the enemies, great bolts of lightening routed them. The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth lay bare at Your rebuke O Lord at the blast of the breathe from Your nostrils.
He reached down from on high and He took a hold of me, He drew me out of the deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster but the Lord was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me.
Beautiful isn't it? Typical sort of Hebrew picture language; the Jews loved to speak in pictures. What's David saying here? See, all the time he was on the run for his life and it strikes me where he talks about his enemies who were too powerful for him. And he says, "all the time I was on the run for my life God, You protected me."
Now that's something we don't expect, Gods protection. See, He didn't wrap David in cotton wool, He didn't take David out of that situation, He didn't smite Saul and kill him on day one. God did none of those things; what He did was He kept David safe and it's the same thing with us.
What we expect is for God to instantaneously end the threat; for God, instantaneously to beam us out of that place; for God, instantaneously to save us from that situation but so often it's not what He does. David was on the run for years, living in caves, always looking over his shoulder. God was teaching David through those times to rely on Him. They were important lessons for David because when David ultimately became king of Israel and had to fight large and powerful enemies who were much larger and much stronger than Him; David knew that his God would protect him. God taught him this in his own experience, He taught him to believe in this promise.
Have a listen to the promise of God. It comes from Deuteronomy chapter 33, verse 27:
The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will drive out your enemy before you saying, "Destroy him!
So when people are looking to stab you and me in the back or to defame us or to get rid of us, can we trust God? Absolutely! That doesn't mean that sometimes we're don't have to live through some pain, it doesn't mean that sometimes we don't have to get the sack or to take a step backwards or to go through terrible things. What it does mean is that it will turn out just fine even if Gods definition of "just fine" isn't quite your definition or my definition. Have a listen again to this from Psalm 31, verse 20:
In the shelter of Your presence You hide us from human plots. You hold us safe under Your shelter from contentious tongues.
See there are promises like this all the way through Gods word:
In the shelter of Your presence You hide us from human plots.
People plot behind our backs sometimes; people have contentious tongues and speak about us behind our backs. All through Gods word you see God being the protector of the people who love Him and honour Him and sometimes really bad things happen, Jesus remember was nailed to a cross. Not particularly His first preference as we learn from His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. And so far as we know, each of the 12 disciples was martyred, the apostle Paul was martyred.
The point is that no matter what the outcome we can rely on Gods protection. Those men, those men are now with God; no if's, no but's, no maybe's. You know what I've noticed; there is no shortage of people on this planet who want to do me harm. To criticize me, to pull me down, to tell me I'm wasting my time. Sometimes I get things right and sometimes I get things wrong but my God protects me, even if it hurts sometimes because of what other people are doing and saying.
God is our protector, His heart is to hold us close and to keep us safe and you know and I know that unless Jesus returns first, we're going to die one day. We're going to breath our last breathe, through sickness or disease or accident or murder, they're all possibilities. In the mean time God is our protector, He will protect us if we put our faith in Him. The eternal God is your refuge, He is your strength, He is the place where you and I can take refuge and be safe according to His mighty plan for our lives.
This is a promise we can depend on!

There are times in life when we go through pain. When we mourn a loss. When we're lonely and afraid. What we need is someone to comfort us – but it seems that nothing anybody does or says can make it better.
I want to spend some time talking about comfort today. Not about the sort of comfort you get from sitting in a comfortable armchair but comfort in times of distress. It's an interesting concept. comfort. You know when we're children we fall over and we hurt ourselves and our Mum or our Dad picks us up, brushes off the dirt, holds us close while we sob and we wail.
What they're doing is they're comforting us and when we grow up, we still need comforting. I think it's about, well when you're going through pain or suffering, it's about knowing there's someone who cares, who empathises. Someone who feels our pain with us, someone who's not there to judge us or lecture us, just to hold us.
I think we've all felt that sense in our hearts when we see someone we love suffering, of wanting to hug them so hard that we can take their pain away even if it meant bearing their pain for them. That's comfort, my hunch is it comes from God, all good things inevitably do but sometimes, when we're hurting, it seems like there's no-one there to comfort us or we're hurting so deeply that nothing anyone says or does seems to make any difference.
I remember a time like that in my life, about 13 years ago. It was a time of deep distress and my whole being wept and I was completely alone on this earth. It was black, dark, fearful, lonely and the thing about the inky blackness is that it's like an impenetrable emotional barrier, a brick wall 3 foot deep. And no matter what friends and loved ones tried to say or do, nothing seems to be able to take the hurt away. Now the question is; what do we do in a place where we're desperately need to be comforted but it hurts so bad that nobody's able to comfort us?
Over the last few days and over the remainder of this week and next, on the program, we're taking a look at some of the promises that we can depend on. Promises direct from God, to you and me, ten of them in fact and today, I'm hoping to spend a few minutes with you looking at Gods promise to comfort us.
Now this word 'comfort' appears an awful lot of times through Gods word and more often than not its about God comforting us. In fact there's a promise Jesus made it during the Sermon on the Mount. He lists all the people to be blessed, 9 different groups of people and the second of those He says:
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
And He also said,
I'm here to bind up the broken hearted.
He said that about Himself. Now when we're in pain and hurt, it's so hard for anyone else to break through but what I've discovered is that God breaks through, God, God has this amazing way of doing that. I remember when I was alone night after night after night and I just sat in my favourite armchair and prayed on and off, as best as I could and you know, somehow the Spirit of God got into my heart and I discovered how blessed we really can be when we mourn and God comforts us.
The apostle Paul got it too, he had a tough life this guy, he was in and out of prison, he was shipwrecked, he was beaten, he was starving. People rioted, people plotted to kill him, he was on death row. I mean you and I wouldn't want Paul's life for anything, ultimately he was martyred. This is what he writes to his friends in Corinth, you can read it in his second letter to the Corinthian Church, chapter 1 beginning at verse 3, he says:
Praise to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with a comfort that we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives so also, through Christ, our comfort overflows. If we are distressed it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer and our hope for you is firm because we know just as you share in our sufferings, so you also share in our comfort.
Now, in that short passage Paul uses the word comfort 8 times. See this promise of God is something that we learn in our experience. Paul's been through a lot and yet he is able to talk amazingly about Gods comfort because Gods comfort is something that we can rely on in those times when we need comforting. Paul discovered it in dungeons on death row and when he was on the run for his life and when he was bobbing around in a stormy ocean when his ship had been wrecked. He discovered the comfort of God in those places.
Let me try and explain what this comfort is like, well at least how I experienced it back then and how I've experienced it since then. Pain is like a dark storm, a tempest, a storm that rages in our souls. It's so deep that there simply aren't words to describe it, it consumes us and I know when I was consumed by it, it closes us off from everyone else. For me, I didn't have it in me even raise the eyes of my soul to look towards God. Over and over again I just whispered and sobbed, "God, God help me".
You know that story of when Jesus walked out on the water and the disciples were in their boat and the storm was raging and they were afraid of drowning and Jesus calmed the storm. No-one else could have helped them at that moment, no-one else on this planet could have calmed that storm, or in the universe for that matter. Only God Himself. And it was God, the Son of God, who walked into that storm and stilled it and that's what it was like for me. Now if you were to ask me, "what was it like"? I'd say it was like a warm fire on a cold night, it was like a soft light in a fearsome darkness.
Do you remember when Jesus did that, walking out on the water thing and calming the storm, Peter the apostle got out of the boat and put his trust in Jesus. But as he walked towards Jesus on the water, he got that sinking feeling because he took his eyes off Jesus and he saw the water and he realised what he was doing and he started to sink. And Jesus grabbed his hand and pulled him up.
I tell you, I had plenty of those sinking feelings but in that storm I met the God of all comfort, as Paul calls Him. You know something, as much as in those times He comes walking out on the water, right into the eye of our storm; we need to respond to that. See this is a promise, a promise to comfort those who mourn, a promise that calls us to walk out towards Jesus in faith. I'll tell you why; if we don't we just wallow in our sorrow. I've seen it over again, yes we all have sorrow and we all mourn and some people just want to stay there and be victims for the rest of their lives.
When we go through some bad stuff, for a time there will be grief and you don't have the strength but there comes a time, like Peter, where we have to step out of the boat into the middle of that ocean and walk out in faith and accept Jesus' comfort. It's not until we step out of the boat and put our trust in Him that He can reach out and grab our hand to stop us from sinking.
Here is the promise again:
Blessed are all those who mourn for they will be comforted.
It's a promise to tuck away in our hearts until one day when we need it and I'm sure, then God will bring it back to us. I want to encourage you, when He does, to step out of the boat and go and live in that promise. See, this promise is a promise that you and I can depend on.

Sometimes – money can be a real problem in our lives. So many people spend so much time worrying about their financial future. We need to know that it's going to be okay.
Have you ever been in a place where you don't know where the next dollar is coming from? I certainly have and so many people in this world are in that place right now. I mean, where I live, mortgage foreclosures by banks are at record levels, people are stressed out over money and there's real poverty in this world too. The sort of poverty that afflicts countless of millions across the globe and some of those people are listening today. And then there are those in wealthy countries who are feeling stress of financial pressures but the reality is that a very few of us really know what poverty's all about.
Nevertheless, financial stress is a big issue; it's a huge issue around the world. We human beings, we can't cope with that sort of stress particularly well because, not surprisingly, we like to know that we're financially secure into the future. That's why suicide rates among business people increase sharply when there's a stock market crash. So in those times of financial stress, who or what can we rely on? That's a good question.
You know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about financial stress. We've all been there, even the wealthy, you know! Even those who have it all, they're highly geared in debt sometimes, they're leaking money all over the place sometimes and all that creates stress and worry. That's why I want to take a look at a particular promise from God today that speaks right into that reality.
Here's where I'm coming from, not from religion as a crutch thing, no not that but just the reality that you and I need to experience peace in our hearts. We need rest and we can't live in stress all the time and some people are living in constant financial stress and it's exactly when we're under that financial pressure, we need to experience Gods peace. Instead of that, so many people, they just worry all the time.
Well there's a promise from God that I've discovered in my life. It's a promise that I've lived out for many years now and a promise that He's never ever failed to deliver on and I, today; I have confidence in that promise. Yes, I have to be wise with the money I have, I have to be a good steward of the money that Gods given me but I have a confidence that God will deliver on this promise when I'm in difficult financial situations.
This one comes directly from the mouth of Jesus but first, first He deals with the whole problem, when it comes to money and it's a problem of faith. Have a listen, this comes from Matthews gospel chapter 6, beginning at verse 19:
Jesus says, "Don't store up for yourselves treasures here on this earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal. Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust can't destroy, where thieves can't break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. No-one can serve two masters, either he will hate the one and love the other or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can't serve both God and money."
What Jesus is saying here is, the problem is what you put your faith in. Money is so transient; I mean you might invest in a blue chip stock today. It's worth $20.00 per share today and you think, "wow, it's returning dividends, it's doing great" then all of a sudden tomorrow, there's a corporate scandal and it plummets down to $1.00. "Hang on, what happened? "See, you can't put your faith in money. Moths and rust and thieves, money is temporary, in any case we can't take it with us.
Come on, we all do this, we serve money the way we serve a god and because we take it so, so seriously it cause us so much stress. We have these expectations that grow higher and higher and higher and even chasing after things that we can't afford and things that we don't need. And even when we're in truly desperate straits, when we don't know where our next dollar is coming from, because I've been there too in my life, we behave as though, 'well the world would end if we don't get money' and that leads to worry, worry leads to stress and none of that makes any sense.
Now have a listen to the solution, a promise to you and to me from God. Jesus goes on to say, Matthew chapter 6, beginning at verse 25:
Therefore I tell you this; don't worry about your life, what you'll eat or what you'll drink or about your body or what you'll wear. Isn't life more important than food, the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air, they don't sow, they don't reap, they don't store away in barns and yet, your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you much more valuable than them?
Who of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to your life and why do you worry about your clothes? Look at the lilies of the field, they don't labour, they don't spin and yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of those. If that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow it's thrown into the fire, won't He much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
So don't worry saying, 'what shall I eat, what shall we drink, what shall we wear?' The pagans run after all those things and your heavenly Father knows you need them but first, first seek His kingdom and His righteousness and all these other things will be given to you as well. Therefore don't worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will worry about itself, each day has enough trouble of it's own.
Doesn't Jesus nail it here, He gets back to the reality. I mean look at the birds, look at the flowers, who put them there? Who looks after them? 'Come on, stand back', He's saying ' and look at the big picture with Me. And you, you worry as though worrying's going to change anything'. See, that's the crunch bit for me, the bit that worrying doesn't work:
Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?
I know people, all they do is worry; worry, worry, worry, worry! I used to be one of them, I have to tell you. But all that worry and that stress DOES NO GOOD! It's useless, it doesn't make the problem better, it makes it worse.
Look, God knows what you and I need, He knows we need food, He knows we need shelter. Notice Jesus actually talks about needs not wants. "Get our priorities right!" He says. Your welfare doesn't come from this world, it comes from where? It comes from God, every good thing that you and I have comes from God, He owns it all. First, get out there and seek out God, His reign, His kingship in your lives. "Come on, change your focus!" Jesus is saying, get off your "needs" and your "wants" and set it fully on God.
Well, what kind of answer is that Berni? What are you thinking right now? Well simple, there's a promise attached to that step of faith, a promise that is unbreakable because God made it and He never breaks His promises.
First seek His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.
What will be given to you as well? All these things - all, and that, that takes the worry away. I can't tell you how many tight financial spots I've been in, in my life. Some, in the early days, were my own doing and these days because I left a secure, high paying job, to get about Gods work by faith. Before I trusted in Jesus I had huge stress, I always had worry about money and these days, I guess I'm still prone to stress a little bit, my first instinct is to worry. That's why I need to come back to Gods promise, time and time again, I know that my focus is on Him, on His kingdom, on His righteousness, I seek Him out in my life day by day and that's why I can stand on this promise:
... and all these things will be given to you as well.
And each time I face that need, which you do when you're walking by faith; I come back to this promise. It's a promise from God!
First seek His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.
PROMISE!