Transcription
And um, I paid for it in cash, thinking it wasn't going to be tracked. I arrived back in O'Hare and I was taken to a side room for a discussion about why I went into northern Iraq. I thought I didn't buy that with electronics. I just paid cash at the airport for the flight. But they knew, and they were tracking me. When I came back to Chicago, I had to answer for why I was in northern Iraq when ISIS was running around there. So, a lot of things are tracked these days without us really realizing it.
So, we have an economic reset taking place. There's a digital reset taking place. I would encourage you to start looking for the ID 2020 alliance and start paying, paying, paying, uh, careful attention to the roll out of digital IDs because it's happening in front of our eyes in many countries around the world.
So, let's then talk about the heart reset. Because how do we respond to all of this stuff that's going on around here? Well, um, Jesus [clears throat] says this in Luke 21:25-28. He says, "There'll be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth, distress among nations, confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now, when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads because your redemption draweth nigh."
So, when people's hearts are failing them for fear for what is coming upon the world, we are to be prisoners of hope, as Zechariah 9 and verse 12 says. And God has given us a prophetic voice and message in these end times. So, we are not to walk in darkness and gloom, but we are to walk in the light with hearts filled with hope. It's hard to do that when we see what is happening in our world today, but that is what God is calling us to do.
In Luke chapter 19, uh, Jesus goes on to say this. He says this to the children of Jerusalem. He says, "As he came nearer and saw the city, he wept over it and said, 'If you, even you, that is Jerusalem, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave within you one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.'"
And so, Jesus outlined, um, he gave this pronounces judgments upon the people of Jerusalem. And the disciples, they see that Jesus says that not one stone will be left upon another. And in Matthew 24, the disciples are troubled by this because to them, the temple was the center of planet Earth. The temple was the meeting place between God and mankind. The temple is where forgiveness was found in the sacrificial system. So, to them, the temple was the, the, the nexus of God's plan for humanity's salvation. That was where God met humanity in the worship service there. And so, when Jesus says, "Not one stone is going to be left upon another," the disciples were concerned about this. What is Jesus talking about?
And so, Jesus was talking here about the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. Sister White talks about it in Great Controversy, page 25. She says this, speaking about this passage and parallel passage Matthew 24, she said, "Christ presented before them an outline of the prominent events to take place before the close of time, that is the second coming of Jesus. His words were not then fully understood, but their meaning was to be unfolded as his people should need the instruction therein given. The prophecy which he uttered was twofold in its meaning. While foreshadowing the destruction of Jerusalem, it prefigured also the terrors of the last great day."
And so, in Luke 19 and then in Matthew 24, Jesus gives these prophecies that ostensibly deal with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 by the Romans and the end of the Jewish nation as an independent entity at the time. And he, he co-mingles that, intermingles that with his discussion about the end of times before Jesus comes again. And in particular, you can go through Matthew 24 verse by verse and identify, "This is the fall of Jerusalem. This is the second coming of Christ." But he uses similar imagery to relate to refer to each of those two catastrophic events.
And so, in Matthew 24, Jesus uses one phrase. And then, if you compare scripture with scripture, um, in Luke 21, we find an explanation. So, in Matthew 24, Jesus says to the disciples, "So when you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy place, as was spoken of by the prophet Daniel, let the reader understand, then those in Judea must flee to the mountains." And Jesus is speaking here about the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, who invaded in AD 66 and they destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70. And the parallel passage in Luke says, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out of the country must not enter it."
And so, when, when you, when you ask yourself, "What is this desolating sacrilege or abomination of desolation?" some translations say, in Matthew, Luke explains it: "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by these are the Roman pagan armies, and they're standing in the holy place." Now, that holy place is not the holy place in the temple. Outside the walls of Jerusalem, there was an area known as the holy place. And that was where the Romans first came in AD 66. And when they came in AD 66, they came to the city of Rome, of Jerusalem. And they almost surrounded the city. But then the Roman general, named Cestius, he set up his his pagan banners on that holy ground outside of Jerusalem. And this is what Jesus is speaking of in these two passages.
But then what happened was, I'm sure you know the story here. For some reason, still unknown to historians, the Roman general withdrew his armies back to Damascus. And the Christians, listen to this warning by Jesus. And the Christians fled Jerusalem. And they fled across the Jordan to a city called Pella, just south of the Sea of Galilee, modern-day Jordan. And it's believed that not one Christian perished in the destruction of Jerusalem. Like the Christians took seriously Jesus' warnings. So, if Jesus, if not one Christian perished in that the destruction of Jerusalem where hundreds of thousands perished and those who survived were all sold into slavery, then maybe we should be paying more attention to these prophecies of Jesus as well. Because the Christians who listened, they survived. And the Christians who either didn't know or didn't care or couldn't be bothered to read it, they, they didn't survive.
So, Sister White writes about this. She says, "When the idolatrous standards of the Romans were set up in the holy ground, which extended some furlongs outside the city walls, then the followers of Christ would find safety in flight. When the warning sign should be seen, those who would escape must make no delay." She goes on to say, "After the Romans under Cestius had surrounded the city, they unexpectedly abandoned the siege when everything seemed favorable for immediate attack." That was in AD 66. The besieged, despairing of successful resistance, won the point of surrender when the Roman general withdrew his forces without the least apparent reason. But God's merciful providence was directing events for the good of his own people. The promised sign had been given to the waiting Christians. Now an opportunity was afforded for all who would to obey the Savior's warning. Without delay, they fled to a place of safety, the city of Pella in the land of Berea, modern beyond Jordan.
And so, the Christians at the time of the, uh, the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, they knew the warnings of Christ in Luke 19 and Matthew 24. And when they saw the Roman standards outside the city of Rome and the Romans withdrew, the Christians didn't wait for a letter from the Sanhedrin to say it's time to leave. They knew the teachings of Jesus and they fled.
So, why am I talking about this? Sister White, we're talking about money, monetary resets today. Sister White says, "It is not, it is no time now for God's people to be laying up their treasures in this world. The time is not far distant when, like the early disciples, we shall be forced to seek a refuge in desolate and solitary places. As the siege of Jerusalem by the Roman armies was the signal for flight to the Judean Christians, so the assumption of power on the part of our nation in the decree enforcing the papal Sabbath will be a warning to us. It will then be time to leave the large cities, preparatory to leaving the smaller ones for retired homes in secluded places among the mountains."
Now, we're all familiar with this, I think, as Adventists, this kind of, this kind of idea that we're talking about here, that when the papal Sabbath, that is a Sunday, is enforced in the United States, that's a warning to leave the larger cities. Now, I don't know what your definition of a large city is. Uh, when my wife and I, before we got married, I used to live in the city of London. And when I drove to my apartment in London, it was my four hours of driving through heavy built-up conurbations to get to my apartment. I felt like I was driving into a cement jungle. And if I wanted to see greenery, I'd drive for three or four hours on a Friday afternoon to get out of the city to see the green fields again. And so, to me, London was a big city of 10 to 12 million people. And then when my, I married my wife, we were living, um, in, in the, went to move, live in a city called Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, which had many, many Soviet apartment blocks. And we were living in a big city with a metro and so forth. And, um, we lived in the city and you have the rumble of the metro under your house at night. And then when we came to America, we, we came to small-town America in southern Minnesota. It was a town of 50,000, and I was used to living with 12 million, then 2 million. I came to 50,000, thought, "Man, this is kind of like, you know, small," says, "This is very small here." So, yeah, I guess it is. And then when we moved from there to northern Minnesota to 12,000, said, "Man, this is getting smaller still." And then we moved to Berrien Springs in 2011, a town of about 3 to 4,000 people plus students. Let's say 8,000 in total. We thought we were entering the wastelands. Like, "Do people even live here?" Like, "There's no Walmart. How can you live with no Walmart?" The only redeeming factor was there was a Taco Bell, but then that, that closed down. So, it was really bad news. So, we went from large city to smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller places. The point is, your definition of what a large city is may vary depending on where you're living now. Like, I have friends who live at work at Loma Linda and they live opposite the valley in the country, which is a heavily built-up area in the foothills of the mountains there. That, to them, is countryside, and to me, this is a heavily urbanized area. And so, everybody has a different definition of what it means to leave the large cities. But I would say this, if, if, if you choose to, to move to a large American city these days, you need your head looking at because unless you are compelled to go somewhere for health or employment reasons, people are trying to leave the cities in America. Even in the pandemic, people were fleeing California, they were fleeing New York, they were fleeing Maryland, and they were buying in Texas, Florida, and Tennessee. And secular people were moving out of the large cities because they saw that social cohesion is breaking down. So, if even secular people can see that social cohesion is breaking down, I mean, honestly, who goes for a romantic walk in downtown Portland at night these days? Nobody. You may get mugged or smashed over the head. You know, the violence is on those streets there. It happens night after night after night. Nobody's moving into the cities by choice. People are moving out of the cities, even secular folks.
So, Sister White says here that just as the, the Roman armies, their arrivals, the signal for the flight of the Judean Christians, so that the, the papal Sabbath in the United States will be a warning to us to leave the large cities for the smaller ones and eventually for secluded places among the mountains. So, there is a progression that she talks about here. In that papal Sabbath, she says there [clears throat] Sunday, this is from the Catholic Record, September 1, 1923. Somebody asked me a question about this earlier today. This is the quote I had for you. "Sunday is our mark of authority. The church is above the Bible. And this transference of Sabbath observance, that is to the Sunday, is proof of that fact." So, that is why we call Sunday the papal Sabbath. And you find that in the Catholic Record, September 1. But you, if you also look in the catechism where it discusses the Ten Commandments, there is some discussion there about the Catholic authority to change the law of God.
But Sister White talks about this and she says, as we, as we're living through this time, she says, "Instead of instead of spending our means on self-gratification, we should be studying to economize. Economize. She says, 'Our missions must be sustained, and new missions must be opened.'" I read somewhere once that the Adventist church opened more institutions in the Great Depression than any other decade in American history. Like, when the world was falling apart economically in America, we were investing in mission. And in the pandemic, when I was in Germany, I noticed there that over three years in the pandemic, more lifestyle, uh, wellness centers opened privately than at any other time in German Adventist history. The people were moved. They saw what was happening and said, "We must be about our Father's business." And so, when other people are kind of restricting and closing down and shutting down, faithful Adventists were saying, "In times of crisis, that's precisely when we step forward. We step out in faith and we see what God is going to do for us."
And so, Sister White says this, "Instead of spending our means in self-gratification, we should be studying to economize. Our missions must be sustained. New missions must be opened. Houses of worship are needed where the people may be invited to hear the truths for this time. For this very purpose, God has entrusted a capital to his stewards. Let not your property be tied up in worldly enterprises, so this work should be hindered. Get, get your means where you can handle it for the benefit of the cause of God. Send your treasures before you into heaven."
And if you see that last scene in the movie Schindler's List where Oscar Schindler, he realizes that he saved all these hundreds of people from the Holocaust. And as he's standing there, he looks at his ring, his decorative ring on his finger, and he's, he's trying to tear it off. He says, "I could have saved somebody by giving up this ring." And he's looking at his fancy dress and his nice clothes, his stylish dress, and he realizes that the things that he thought were important were really unimportant when it came to saving somebody from the, the Holocaust. There's a very powerful scene at the end of Oscar's, that movie Schindler's List. Well, how much more for us when we realize when we get to heaven, how many people could have been saved, had we been focused on sharing the gospel? And had we been focused not on building earthly kingdoms, but on building God's kingdom, the kingdom of grace today and the kingdom of glory tomorrow.
And so, Sister White says, "We are to send your treasures, send our treasures before us into heaven." And that parallels what Jesus says in Matthew 6:19-20. I've put the word "treasure" in red there, uh, just to kind of emphasize it. She says, "Jesus says, 'Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourself treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.'" Otherwise known as politicians debasing your currency. "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
So, why do we accumulate material goods? We generally accumulate material goods because material wealth represents physical security. We, we accumulate material goods and wealth because it reflects an underlying fear and uncertainty about what the future hap, what may bring to us. We're basically prepping for the future. We often save for a rainy day, yes, we use that expression, which means we know that bad times are coming and we want to cushion those bad times by saving today. But Jesus teaches us in the Matthew chapter 6 in the Sermon on the Mount that it is the possession of material wealth is often a source of anxiety rather than a means of escape from anxiety.
Now, I don't know how about you, but I've met many wealthy people in my life in the course of my various responsibilities. And some of them have the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 running on a screen in front of their desk. And their emotional state goes up and down with the Dow Jones and the S&P 500. Literally, you go up 500, the world is a great place. You drop 200, the sky is falling in on us. What are we going to do? Don't ask me for anything today because we just dropped two and a half percent. I lost a quarter of 1% of my investments today. And so, the wealthy are often consumed by fear of loss. And the poor have no fear of loss because they have nothing to lose. So, when I go to a place like Namibia, where everybody's like dirt poor, and you think, "Well, you don't need to check the Dow Jones because it doesn't affect anybody out here ever." Everybody's got a little plot of land, they've got a goat, a few chickens, a cow, and they go and hunt some food, and that's how they live. And if the Dow Jones goes to 100,000 or 100, it doesn't affect them in one way at all. So, the, the poorest in society don't care about what happens. And the wealthy in society are consumed by fear of loss.
And so, where do we fit into that equation? Jesus teaches us that every material possession is affected by depreciation, debasement, or decay. Has any of you ever bought a new car? Then somebody kind of nicked it. How did your feelings change towards that new car? It's just a new, it's just a car. Yes. It's your pride and joy, and somebody nicks it, and now it's just a car. Is that right? Somebody please say yes to that. Or, or you buy yourself a new suit, and then, um, you're rushing to church, and your 2-year-old vomits over it. Okay, it's just a suit. I'll put it in the dry cleaning. I'll go back to my old suit. You see, material things don't have their luster for very long. They degrade very, very quickly. And when they decay, when they decay, degrade, we kind of lose interest in them. Um, so many people, they have their wealth, but then they're consumed and paralyzed by fear of loss, spending much of their time managing or preserving their wealth. And I've noticed when I was in Minnesota that there, so many men had so many toys that they spent from, you know, September and October was basically Sundays were spent winterizing all their toys. There were a lot of toys to winterize. I have to drain the engines, drain the fluids, put the carport, the tarps over it. I need to shrink wrap this boat. I need to do this, this. I mean, there are all kinds of stuff. And I was astonished at how much time is spent just managing our stuff.
So, Jesus says, "Store up for yourself treasures in heaven." Says, "Christians are not to be anxious concerning the material necessities of this life because of our confidence that we have a heavenly Father who knows our needs and He's going to provide for us." That doesn't mean that we become lazy. We are to work to provide for our needs. 1 Thessalonians 4:10 says this, "But we urge you, beloved, to do to, but to do so more and more, to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands as we directed you, so that you may behave properly towards outsiders and be dependent on no one." The Apostle Paul goes on to say, "Those who do not work should not should not eat."
And so, we have a responsibility, as we saw in our first talk this morning. When it comes to physical security, we prepare and we pray. And for our daily survival, we work and then we trust in the Lord. We do what we can and we trust in the Lord to make up whatever shortfall that there may be. So, we are not to be anxious like the people of our world. We're not to, um, follow the Dow Jones as if it's, you know, we're addicted to this thing. My father used to get the Financial Times once a year. That was on New Year's Eve. That's the main financial newspaper in England. It's comes on pink newspaper for some reason. And my father would look at, uh, the stock market and he'd look at whatever savings funds he had, and it would say it's gone up like 7% this year. And that was the only time my father would look at that from year to year to year. He said to Connor, he said, "There's no point worrying about it." That's right. >> When you retire, if it's there, it's there. If it ain't there, there's nothing you can do. It's too late. So, I'll just, I'll just have a passing, once you check it out, see where it is. But I'm not going to be consumed by this because I, I, I used, for instance, I used to work for Avant Frontier Missions. They're my employer, but God is my provider. And I may live on social security, but God is my provider. And I may work for the state of Oregon. They're my employer, but God is my provider. And He knows my needs, and He's going to take care of me.
So, in all the economic reset we've been talking about and the economic crisis that's coming our way and the loss of our savings and all the digital stuff that's coming and digital ideas and the forces of this world collaborating to to exclude those who are faithful to God, our provider is our Heavenly Father, and He knows our needs, and He says, "If you seek first My kingdom and My righteousness, I'm going to take care of all these other things for you." >> Amen. >> So, it's an invitation to trust in Jesus. Uh, heaven. The investments that Jesus wants us to have are treasures in heaven. Such treasure, according to Jesus, is permanent. It's unaffected by thieves or the IRS. It is unaffected by government-induced currency debasement like the big beautiful bill or the COVID expenditure. Is unaffected by rampant inflation. Is unaffected by physical decay or the ravages of time. These are heavenly investments guarded by God for His faithful children to receive when Jesus comes again. >> What a beautiful prospect.
And so, Jesus says, "Do not store up for yourself treasures in heaven." And the word there is thesaurus. There is there treasures, treasures, treasures. Um, that's the plural. This is the singular here. But we get the English word, um, this is thesaurus, theurus, theorus. Theor thesaurus. We get the word thesaurus from it. So, you know, the thesaurus is a book, and that's where the word comes from. It's a treasure book, and it tells you all the various meanings of similes for a certain word. So, Jesus says, "Do not store up for yourself theor thesauruses on earth, but store up for yourself treasures or thesauruses in heaven. For where your thesauruses, your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
So, what exactly does it mean to store up for yourself treasures in heaven? Where global digital IDs and the IRS cannot get their hands on it? What does that mean in practice? Well, in Matthew 2:1, the first gifts that were brought to Christ were the wise men. And it's the same word used then, opening their treasure chest. The word is the sororus. It's the same word that is used there as in Matthew 6. They offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Why those things? I think the reason they brought him gold, frankincense, and myrrh was because gold was a gift fit for a king. Frankincense was a gift for a priest. It was used in the high priestly sanctuary service. And myrrh was a recognition that one day he'll be a sacrifice. It's a preserving, um, embalming liquid. Thank you, sister. And that would have been used to embalm the body of Christ. When they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they were saying Jesus is a king. He's a priest, and he's our sacrifice. So, the mean, so these gifts have meaning. In ancient times, it was customary to bring a gift to a ruler as an act of homage and worship. Joseph's brothers brought him gifts when he was prime minister of Egypt in Genesis 43. The Queen of Sheba brought gifts to Solomon in First Kings 10. And so, we are to bring our treasures as an act of worship to the King of Kings.
So, how do we bring our treasures as an act of worship to God? Well, the first text I'd draw on is Romans 12 and verse 1, where Paul says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living, what? sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." So, therefore, how we treat our bodies, what we put into our bodies, the exercise we do to our bodies, the damage we do to our bodies is ultimately an expression of our relationship with our Heavenly Father. And the more we look after our bodies, and the more we take care of our bodies, and the more we live, you might say, according to the Adventist health message and the principles that have been given to us, they're going all the way back to the, the Garden of Eden for from there in time. The more we, we live according to these healthy principles, we are saying to God, "This incredible body that You've given me, I'm going to take care of it as an act of worship to You." If you give your child at the age of three a little truck for Christmas, and he looks at you and looks at the truck, and then he smashes it to the ground, what does that tell you about the relationship with your little boy? He's not very happy with you. Yes. But if somebody very dear to you gives you a little present, you treasure that for a long time. Not because of the gift itself, but because of the one who gave it to you. So, we honor God and we, uh, we, we give an act of worship to our Heavenly Father by taking care of our physical bodies. We discovered that during the pandemic, honoring your body honors your Creator.
Next passage I'll look at briefly here is 1 Corinthians 6:18-20. The Apostle Paul says there, "Shun fornication. Every sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you are bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body." So, when we steward our bodies, because our bodies are a gift from God, so we are stewards of the bodies that God has given us. We are to be stewards of our bodies in a holy and an honorable manner. We are to avoid sexual immorality in all of its forms, not just fornication, but adultery and masturbation and porn, etc., etc. We prepare our bodies to be the temple of the Holy Spirit by living lives of moral purity.
Now, if a loud, large crowd like this, if this were a regular American crowd, probably 70% of the people here are regular consumers of porn. If this were a regular American crowd, but because it's an Adventist crowd, let's say it's maybe 40 to 50% of people here are watching porn. I've heard that. >> And I've met so many marriages where the wife is traumatized on a daily basis because if a husband commits adultery once, it's once and done, and she goes through the full emotional response. But if she knows he's watching porn on a daily basis, she's going through that whole traumatizing experience every single day. It's devastating for marriages. It's like cancer in the body of Christ. Now, I've spoken about this before, but if we are serious about offering our bodies as a living sacrifice to God, then we need to gain victory over these besetting sins that are only too prevalent even among Adventists. So, I won't say much more about that today on that particular topic, but I would say that porn is a, is a sin that keeps you out of heaven. Porn is also a neurochemical addiction, and is, is almost impossible to kick it on your own. And there are excellent programs out there. Puredesire.org is one. Um, conque.com is another. These are excellent programs out there where particularly men find freedom from pornography. And it's not just that you're feeding, finding freedom from porn, but in the process, you're restoring your marriage and healing your wife's heart. So, I'd appeal to you out there today, if you are engaging in this kind of stuff, fornication outside of marriage, adultery outside of your existing marriage, or self-harm or pornography, then listen carefully to the text, the word of God. It says, "Flee from fornication. Flee from it." That is actively flee from it. Have nothing to do with it in your lives because our bodies are to be the temples of the Holy Spirit. And when we engage in illicit sexual activities, we open our bodies to be the dwelling places of demons. So, it's something we need to flee from. I won't dwell much more on that today.
But 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20, the Apostle Paul says, "For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus that is coming? Is it not you, that is the church of Thessalonica? Yes, you are our glory, and you are our joy." So, this passage tells us that the treasure that Christ seeks above all else is the salvation of lost people. And Paul is saying that you, the church we've established in Thessalonica, a town in northern Greece today. He said, "You are our crown of boasting. You are our hope, and you are our joy, and you are our glory." It's not what we write that brings glory to God. It's the fact that souls have been saved that brings glory to God.
And so, from a Christian perspective, when we want treasures in heaven and we want glory and joy and a crown of boasting in heaven, the implication is we're to be actively involved in soul-winning and making disciples for Jesus. And so, we're united, we're invited in this passage here to become fishers of men, to unite with Jesus in His last work of redemption so that we can share with Jesus in the riches won through His death and resurrection. And so, laying up heavenly treasure in this verse means that we become actively involved in soul-winning here in southern Oregon. And yes, it's easy to complain about this administrator or that conference and all the rest of it. But what's more important is we become actively involved in soul-winning for our neighbors, for our families, and for those around us. I want to encourage you to be praying about this. Am I actively involved in soul-winning? Am I involved in Bible studies for somebody? Am I using the spiritual gifts that God has blessed me with? Am I sitting on my talents? Or am I, am I going to my local church and say, "I have a gift. I have a talent. Put me to work. I want to work for God's kingdom." I want to challenge you today to to be investing your time and your talents in kingdom ministry for the lost of southern Oregon. That is how we store up for ourselves treasures in heaven. Our crown of boasting in heaven will not be because we read the Bible through every year or the testimonies every year. Our crown of boasting will be those we've led to Jesus Christ.
So, if Jesus never looked upon the crowd anything other than compassion, so must we. And if Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost, then so do we. And if Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many, then so do we as well. That our mo, our mo, our purpose, our motivation is not our own glory. It is not our own aggrandizement. It is not our own advancement in the church. Our goal, our purpose is to see somebody saved for Jesus Christ. Amen. >> That is what this passage means about laying up treasures in heaven.
The Apostle Paul goes on to say in Colossians 2:3, he says, "I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love so they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God's mystery, so that in Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures," the word thesora is there, "of wisdom and knowledge." And so, Paul desires in this passage to lift the minds of the Colossian Christians in Greece beyond merely human ideas and speculation to who Jesus really is and the eternal truths of the mystery of the plan of our salvation in Christ. According to Paul in this letter, we can discover that all of God's purposes, what they are, and we understand that Christ came to bless humanity. Why then, says the Apostle Paul, to a church in Colossae which is worried about different angelologies? If you read the book of Colossians, that the, the Jews at the time, they had various speculations about intercessors and Raphael and Gabriel and Michael and and so on and so forth. They believed there were angels who were intercessors between man and God. And so, the Apostle Paul is saying, "I need you to lift your eyes above these human speculations and these human theories and focus on the person and the beauty and the ministry of Jesus Christ because that's where the treasure is."
And I want to encourage you today to focus on the main thing in your Christian life. Yes, >> I mean, there are people out there who are pushing that the world is flat and square. I mean, I know I got family members who hold that idea. Um, I got family, not family members, but I've worked in churches who believe that we should keep the lunar solar Sabbaths so that whenever the new moon appears each month, you count seven days for the first Sabbath, and then seven days for the second Sabbath, another seven days for the third, and the, the, the 28th day, then wait for the next new moon to appear, which could be literally 10 days later. So, your Sabbaths are moving through the week. There are people who do argue for that. And then there are people who are arguing for that we must keep the feasts in order to be saved. Then we have other people who are arguing on definitions of the Trinity. Now, I don't want to open that can of worms here today, except Steven Haskell, one of our pioneers, said he said, "The doctrine of the Trinity is right, is, is correct," then he said, "if correctly understood." And that's, that's the kicker in that sentence there. I think probably the word Trinity is unhelpful in our fundamental belief. We better choose the word Godhead because the word Trinity is a loaded word for so many people. But the point about this is that it's easy to get distracted by these theological red herrings and rabbits. And we need to remember that we have one faith and one hope and one baptism and one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and one Father above all and one Spirit that guides us all. And so, the Apostle Paul is challenging in this here that in Christ himself are all the treasures, the theori of wisdom and knowledge. That is, get to know Jesus for yourself. Because as you come to know Jesus, you come to find those hidden treasures.
Jesus spoke about the kingdom of heaven is like a man who who discovers there's a pearl in a field. So he goes and he sells all he owns. Then he buys the land so he can get the pearl. Yes. And in that parable, the pearl, the kingdom is the pearl. But then he tells another parable. He says, "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of a fine, of a fine pearl." Different parable. And in that parable, Jesus is saying that when you go searching for the kingdom of God, that itself is the kingdom of God experience. Why is that true? Because if you're searching for something, that means you're moving, you're moving away from everything that was in your life before. You're moving forward. You're looking here, you're looking there. Your focus is on something outside of you. Your focus is on something that's ahead of you. And and you don't go down there, and you don't go down there because that doesn't apply to you. Your focus is on finding something of great value. So, there's the kingdom of God is both static. It's the pearl in the field. And it's dynamic. It's the process of searching for Jesus. So, as we have our daily devotions, I'd encourage you all, have your daily devotions. Have your quiet time with the Lord. However God speaks to you in music, in poetry, in scripture, in nature, devote that time to the Lord every day. It's in the process of searching for Jesus that is in itself, um, um, an, uh, you're living the kingdom of God. And you're moving away from this world and the gods of this world. And you're moving closer to the Savior in the process of searching. It's a dynamic process. And as we come closer to Jesus, we find in Jesus, um, all the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That Christ himself is the treasure house of wisdom and knowledge. As we come to know Christ for ourselves, we come to know some of the mysteries of God.
And so, Jesus spoke about this in Matthew 13. He said, he said to them, "Therefore, every scribe who's been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure," there's the same word there, "what is new and what is old." And so, in this, in this passage here, Jesus teaches us that His teachings are the treasure that is brought out by His disciples from time to time. So, how do you bring it out? Well, you store it up in your head. You store up the teachings of Jesus in your mind so that when you need them, they come out. So, we store up treasures in heaven by studying, memorizing, then basing our lives, our decisions, and our relationships on the teachings of Jesus Himself. And this is important because Jesus says, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Where your thesaurus is, there your treasure will be also."
Why is that true? Well, when we bless others, we open ourselves to God's blessings. Sister Dwight talks about this thought amount of blessings. She says, "He who gives money or time for spreading the gospel enlists his own interest and prayers for the work and for the souls to be reached through it. His affections go out to others, and he is stimulated to greater devotion to God that he may be enabled to do them the greatest good." So, let me put it this way. If you decide, rat, as a hypothetical example, if you decide to give $100 every quarter to the local dogs home, the dogs home. You have dogs homes here? >> Yeah. Shelter. Yeah. The humane place where we kill the animals. Yes. [clears throat] Okay. If, if you decide to give $100 a quarter to the local humane society, don't you then start to take more than a passing interest in the humane society? You want to read the reports? You want to see how things are going? The very fact that you give money means that your heart starts to go there as well. You become interested in it. You start to follow what's in the news. If they want to do an extension, you're following the extension and the approvals process. And if they're going to close down, you get emotionally very upset about it. Yes. So, when you give money to something, your heart follows. It's not that your heart goes somewhere and then you give money. It's that when you give money, your heart tends to follow. And when we give money to win souls for Christ, let's say a young person comes to your church and says, "I want to be a student missionary in Kenya for a year. Could you please help? I'll be working among the Maasai." Let's say you give a $50 donation to that young person. For the next year, you're going to be interested in the Maasai of East Africa, and you're going to be wondering about what happened to that young person who went out there, and was there any fruit for their work? And if somebody says to you, um, "We want to give out the Great Controversy in the southern Oregon valleys here," and you say, "Yeah, I could put $500 into that," and you give them the $500, then you're not just going to give the $500. You're going to eagerly wait for news of what happened to those Great Controversies, how they went out, who they, who received them, and what kind of results did it give? So, the very act of giving of your time or giving of your money to something means that your heart starts to follow there. And so, when we give our finances or our time to support gospel work, we are laying up treasures in heaven above. Because where your treasure is, your heart is going to follow. And so, the, the treasure in heaven above is the joy of meeting the souls who are there because of our sacrifices today. When you give for [snorts] the salvation of others, you start to become concerned about the eternal consequences of that, of your giving. You start to pray for that people group or that district in Grants Pass. You become concerned for their well-being, both temporal and spiritual. You wrestle with God in prayer over the spiritual battles that are taking place. As when God's kingdom advances, Satan's kingdom always pushes back. You put your treasure into gospel work, and your heart will naturally follow. And if you say, "I don't have a heart for gospel work," put your money there, and pretty soon your heart will be there as well. So, Jesus doesn't say, "For where your heart is, there your treasure will be also." He says, "Where you put your treasure, your heart's going to follow." You start giving for local ministry, you're going to be concerned about local ministry. You start giving for foreign missions, all of a sudden you're going to want to know about what's happening in foreign missions. So, wherever you put your money, as Jesus said, your heart is going to follow.
So, our time is up here. We need to come to our conclusions here. And Jesus says this, in a world of economic resets and digital resets and digital IDs and CBDCs and stable coins and currency debasements and all the rest of it. And the, the, the economic giants of this world are scrambling to hold on to their wealth in this world. Okay? They're scrambling to get as much wealth as they can before the system gets reset. We don't need to worry about those things because Jesus says, "Seek you first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." Currencies rise and currencies fall. Money inflates, it's debased, it disappears, or it's stolen. We have no control over these matters. But we can choose today where the treasure of our heart resides. So, seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness, and trust that God will take care of your material needs. Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven above. Store up for yourself an imperishable inheritance. Uh, I think I put the things up here. Store the word of God, the word of God in your hearts. [snorts] Live the teachings of Jesus Christ in your daily lives. Honor your bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit. Live lives of sexual and moral purity, as we were bought with an incomparable price. And let us invest our time, our talents, and our money in evangelism to the lost and sacrificial service to the hurting. And those who could never repay us in this world, one day we'll meet them in heaven above. So, seek you first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. These are some of the practical things we see in the New Testament on how we put that into practice. And God is going to take care of us materially in this world. We're not to run around like the Gentiles, our hearts overwhelmed with fear for what is coming upon the world. We're not to be worried about the movements of the stock markets and so forth, even though it's all around us. Let us focus on winning souls for Christ. And trust God, He's going to take care of us today. Share in the joys of the plan of salvation. Love [clears throat] others as yourself. And when Jesus comes again, you're going to get to meet people in that sea of glass who are going to come up to you and say, "I'm here today, and I have the gift of eternal life because you made a sacrifice somewhere down on planet Earth." What a joy that's going to be. Yes. What a joy that's going to be.
Our time is up now. There isn't a clock in this building. That's, that's really bad for a preacher because I have no idea what the time is right now, but I >> It's 3:30 already. All right. So, we've been going on for a long enough time here. Okay. >> So, I think the, I think the sermon is pretty clear. Yes. Uh, so if the Holy Spirit has moved upon your heart in these last, this last, all all through today, and the Holy Spirit has whispered to you and says, "Brother or sister, there's a change you could make. There's a new direction you may want to step out in." Don't quench the voice of the Holy Spirit today, but covenant with God beside your bed tonight that, "Lord, as You convict me today, I'm going to walk in that light from this day forward. I don't understand it. I don't have, know the end from the beginning, but You do. I'm just going to walk by faith." And if, Lord, if I can store up treasures in heaven and ease human suffering today, then thank You in advance for the blessing of following You. So, may God bless us as we shine for Him here in southern Oregon.