Stay At The Top of The Righteous List

This Great Reset that's coming, you know, and you read about it

all over the place. And I'm not saying that there's

nothing to it. I'm sure there is.

You know, you see headlines about how to prepare for the

Great Reset and what you can do to be financially prepared when

all of this stuff happens. And I was joking.

I told my wife, I said, you know, if, if there is a great

Reset, that would be fine with me because we'll be getting a

big raise. But you know, the, the, the,

everybody's, you know, going to be on the same level financially

and all the money is going to be, you know, I mean, almost

like communism or or socialism that's coming in and we see it.

I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to downplay that at

all. But you know, I was joking when

I said that with to my wife. But but then I did ask the

question, what are we going to do if that does happen?

What if there is some kind of great reset and everything goes

back to zero and all of your money is worth nothing now?

And you know, you've got you got bank accounts that are, that are

full, but it doesn't count for anything because you can't use

your money. Or what happens when, you know,

the government takes over and everybody's bank accounts are

digital and they don't like what you're talking about.

And so they just cut your funding off and now you have no

money until you comply or starve.

Then what do you do, right? What, what happens after that?

When the, when the, the great reset or whatever else that they

have planned? I, you know, there's so much of

the global elitism and things that are going on and so much

stuff that happens behind the scenes.

And I suppose that if they were allowed to do some of those

things that would have already happened.

I don't know what's holding it back other than God's hand of

mercy. But almost as soon as I asked my

wife that question, what are we going to do when that happens,

the verses from our text this morning came into my mind.

And it's pretty clear in this text that that we should not be

worried about anything the Bible says in Matthew chapter 6 and

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

verse #25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your

life what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, nor yet for

your body what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat,

and the body more than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for

they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns, yet

your heavenly Father feedeth them.

Are you not much better than they?

Which of you by taking thought, can add 1 cubit unto his

stature? And why take you thought?

For Raymond? Consider the lilies of the

field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin.

And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory

was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore if God so clothes the grass of the field which today

is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall we not much more

clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or

what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed?

For after all these things do the Gentiles seek.

For your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these

things, but seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His

righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the moral, for the moral shall

take thought for the things of itself.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

I think this is interesting because Jesus addresses the

heart of what we think is the most important things to worry

about, right? He wasn't saying don't worry

about your retirement account. Don't worry about your

portfolio. Don't worry about what you're

going to drive or where you're going to live.

Don't worry about how you'll be able to take your next long

vacation. It's interesting that he said

don't worry about what you're going to eat.

Don't worry about what you're going to drink.

Don't worry about what you're going to wear.

To those of us. I think to to us, those things

are of ultimate importance. We may not worry about a

retirement or a car or house or a job or those kind of things,

but we all have to eat and we all have to wear clothes.

And those are things that we spend our life focusing on.

How are we going to pay for the next meal?

How are we going to how are we going to be able to buy the

clothes that we need to wear? And yet Jesus tells us not to

focus on those things at all. And what a what a great

illustration he uses in in both cases, he said, think about the

birds. They don't have barns that

they're filling up with all the stuff that they're trying to

save up for. They just go about their life

and guess what? God takes care of them.

He feeds them. They don't have to think about

what they're going to eat. He just puts the food out there

and they go grab it, right? Think about the lilies, the

flowers in the field. Are they going out and, and

working to try to array themselves and things that make

them look beautiful? No, they just grow and God takes

care of them. And in fact, so well that even

Solomon didn't look like a Lily in the field.

And get and get this. Birds are going to be here for a

short time and then they're going to die.

Grass, flowers, they, they last for a little while, but then it

dies. You throw it in the oven and

burn it. And yet, if God is willing to

take care of those things, don't you think He's going to take

care of you? What an amazing thing.

But he tells us that our focus should be on one thing, and that

is the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Turn over to Psalm 37 because with within just that that that

short conversation with my wife, I had formulated a plan of what

we would do when everything collapses and I hope it doesn't

happen, but it might and what what's the plan when everything

collapses and I and I think that with any good plan.

It all starts before you have to have to actually enact it.

And this one. Has to start now because if you

wait until everything starts falling apart, it's going to be

too late. And the plan is very, very

simple and it's so foolproof, I think that even.

Somebody with a very limited brain capacity can figure it

out, and the fact is based on a Bible truth that I think is laid

out pretty clearly here in Psalm 37 and verse #23 The steps of a

good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his

way. Though he fall, he shall not be

utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.

I have been young and now I am old, David says.

Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed

begging bread. If the righteous are not

forsaken or found begging, then that's the perfect plan.

Stay at the top of the righteous list.

That's what I told my wife the plan was, and that's what I want

to share with you for a few minutes this morning.

Stay at the top of the righteous list is not a fancy message by

any stretch this morning. I don't have alliterated points.

They're not all perfect and trimmed and everything else, but

I think it'll be help to us this morning if we're willing to

listen. Let's pray and ask for God's

blessing on this message. Father, again, we thank you so

much for your goodness to us. Thank you for an opportunity we

have to be here this morning. I pray, I thank you for bringing

everybody here safely. I pray that you'd give us what

we need to help us today. And again, we thank you so much

for all that you do for us. In Jesus name, Amen.

Here's my first point. And I think you'll understand

that it's not a fancy message. Number one, I'd rather trust my

future to God than to myself, to my government, or to chance.

The government has proven many, many times that they are, they

have no ability to run my life. Well, I don't understand why the

government wants to run my life. But they try and they keep

trying and they keep trying and they keep trying.

And they proven over and over and over again that they have no

idea what they're doing right. But the bureaucrats in

Washington that want to control every aspect of your life prove

over and over and over again that they have no idea what

they're doing when it comes. To trying to run my life.

Right. Everything they touch, they mess

up, and they're continually doing just that.

And it seems to be getting worse every single day.

Why would I put my faith, my trust, my hope in a government?

Well, if everything falls apart, there's always welfare and the

government's just going to be there to catch us when we fall.

And the government's just going to be there to protect us.

And the government's just going to be there to bail us out when

we need it. And many times that's the case.

I mean, look what happened in 2008.

They bailed everybody out. You know, people end up on the

street and they got a house for them and, and hundreds and

hundreds of dollars in grocery, you know, money that they can

just go buy the fancy food if that's what they want, right?

The government's just going to take care of us.

But hey, they've proven over and over and over again that they're

not very capable of doing that. The the the.

Incompetence is the very least of my worries.

There's something much larger at stake than just incompetence.

I think they're they are intentionally trying to make us

fit in with with what is eventually going to be a one

world government that's going to bring the Antichrist in to rule

over the entire world. It's, it's a calculated plan and

it's happening. The Bible says that that the

whole world is going to be ready for the Antichrist to come.

How do you think that's going to happen?

Not going to happen because the president of the United States

stands up and says, I'm the Antichrist.

You're going to listen to me. I'm not saying the president's

the Antichrist, but I'm saying this whole one world government

is going to start coming together and everything's going

to be globalized and all of that kind of stuff to, to bring in

the Antichrist. And I'm like, Christ can come

back today and everything that God says is going to happen

could easily happen, right? I'm not saying that oh, he can't

come today because all of this stuff has to happen before it

does, right? He could come back today and

everything that he talks about in the Bible that's going to

happen in the end times could happen tomorrow, right?

But all of these things that we see happening in our world are

just pushing us more and more and more to that.

It's not it's not that they're incompetent.

They know exactly what they're doing and they're pushing us

away from God and more toward evil.

And they're, they're bringing in all of these things that God

says is going to happen and making a way for the Antichrist

to come in and be the savior of the entire.

World and bring peace that that the Bible says it's never going

to come by the way, all of this stuff that President Trump is

trying to do over there in the Middle East, it's it's for

nothing. Right.

They cry peace, peace when there is no peace.

That's what the Bible says, right?

Bring in all the board, the peace that you want.

It's not going to happen. It's not going to the Bible says

that it's not going to happen. So I appreciate what you're

trying to do, but you're going against what God is saying is

going to be in the end, right? And that's what I'm saying.

I'm not saying that Trump is the Antichrist or that Trump is

bringing in all of these things on purpose.

But but the, but the, those who are at the top, the global

elites are all working toward this one world government.

They would like nothing more than for everybody to be on one

system of currency that they can control all of these other

things. And I'm not, I'm not a

conspiracy theorist by any stretch, right?

But open your eyes and look at what's happening in our world

and everything is lining up with what God says is going to happen

in the end. Christ could come back today and

it and it shouldn't surprise us, right?

Everything that needs to happen has already happened.

He, I hope he comes back today and gets us out of this mess.

But if he doesn't, I'm not relying on the government to

bail me out. They're incompetent and they

want what's coming. They want what's going to

happen. I've proven to myself over and

over. That I have the ability to

really mess up my life when I try to take things over, do

things in my own strength. And I could tell you stories and

you know, stories of upon stories of of the ways that I've

done that. And it hasn't worked out so well

for me. I don't need my government.

I don't need myself. I don't need chance.

When everything falls apart, the only thing left then is to trust

our future to a God who is already there.

Turn over to Proverbs chapter 3, if you will.

Proverbs 3 · chapter mention

Wouldn't it be great if we had someone who knew just exactly

what was going to happen tomorrow and the next day and

next year and we could sit them down and we could ask them, hey,

what do I need to do today? So that I that I, because you

know exactly what's going to happen next year at this time,

what do I need to do today? And they could tell you, well,

I'll tell you exactly what's going to happen one year from

now. This is what the world's going

to look like. And if you want to be prepared,

then this is what you need to have.

Wouldn't it be nice to have something like that?

Wouldn't be great if somebody could predict what was going to

happen in our economy and you could get into the right stocks

and you could buy the right things and they knew exactly

what was coming. And you could be in the right

job for the next huge thing that's coming along, and your

family could be set for life. Be wonderful if somehow they

some way we could just stop worrying about it all and let

someone else take care of that for us.

Await there is Proverbs chapter 3 and verse #5 says Trust in the

Proverbs 3 · chapter mention

Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own

understanding, and all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall

direct thy paths. He's already there in tomorrow.

He already knows what's going to happen a year from now.

How do you, how do you handle everything when the world falls

apart? You trust the one who knows

what's happening. Let him direct your paths.

I don't need to be the one that's in charge.

And I, and I think that's what happens with so many of us so

often is I got to, I got to be prepared.

I got to know what's going to happen tomorrow.

And I'm not saying, listen, I'm not, I'm, I'm not trying to tell

you that you shouldn't prepare if you can prepare, right?

If the, if the world starts falling apart and you're the one

with all the food, then you're in a good spot, right?

I'm not saying don't prepare for those things.

You should prepare to take care of your family.

But all I'm saying is that's not what you should be relying on.

And what happens when you've got 25 years worth of food stocked

up and somebody breaks in and finds out that you got it and

the whole world knows you're the one with food and next thing you

know, you've got two days worth of food left.

Then what? Then what are you going to do,

right? You're relying on yourself.

You're relying on the government.

You rely on all of these other things.

No, my hope, my trust, My faith should be in the Lord.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine

own understanding and all thy ways acknowledge him, and he

shall direct thy paths. That's where we put our faith

and our trust and our hope. I've been to the dead.

Sea and seen it and and it is way way way lower than it used

to be. I mean by hundreds of feet

lower, you, you, you drive along the main highway and you're

looking way down at the Dead Sea.

But they have a line on the rocks along the edge of the

highway to show where the where the level of the Dead Sea used

to be. And it's the lowest point on

Earth. And so everything flows into it,

but nothing flows out of the Dead Sea.

And supposedly a guy was walking along the edge of the, of the

shore of the Dead Sea and he lost his balance and he fell in

the water and he couldn't swim. And so he started thrashing

around. And I, I don't know what, what

must have happened to that guy because I made a little splash

and I got a little bit of it on my, on my lip.

And I, I, I bought, died when I was in the Dead Sea.

It's so salty and so acidic that you can't, you know, they said

that if you drink 1/8 ounce glass of water from the Dead

Sea, it's enough to kill you because of how salty it is and

how acidic and everything else. And so they said no splashing

whatsoever. If you get some of that in your

eye, it's going to burn like crazy.

Well, I did and it burned. And I say, you know what?

I just want to, I'm not going to drink it, but I want to see how

salty it really is. So I just I dip my finger in it

and and. And licked it, it was so bitter.

So if a guy that falls in and can't swim and he's thrashing

around, I don't know what would have happened to this guy.

But either way, he finally, he finally got to the point where

he lost all of his strength because he was thrashing so hard

and he stopped trying to save his life.

And the next thing you know, he was just floating on the top of

the water. It's so the water is so buoyant

because of how much salt is in it.

And we did it. If anybody would sink in the

Dead Sea, it would be my wife. But even she floated, you sit

down and you just completely let go and you just float right on

the top of the water, arms and legs both up out of the water

and your body just floats because of how how much salt is

in there and how buoyant the water is.

But I think what a great, what a great lesson, what a great

picture for us when you try to do.

Everything to save your life and when you try to do everything to

make it on your own, you're thrashing around and.

It's for nothing, because when you just stop doing all that and

put all your trust and all of your faith and all of your

weight on Christ, you realize He's enough.

All that thrashing around in the Dead Sea counts for nothing.

Because you're not doing anything anyway.

The water's holding you up. You might think you're the one

doing all of it because you're thrashing and trying to keep

your head above water, but you're not doing any of it.

The. The sea is what's holding you

up. And the same is true when it

comes to our lives, when it when it comes to doing everything on

our own. We're thrashing and doing all

this stuff to try to keep our heads above water, and boy, I'm

a good thing. I'm a strong swimmer.

It's a good thing I can handle all these things because look at

me, my head's above water and I'm doing OK.

What happens when you can't do that anymore?

What happens when you lose your strength?

What happens when you just can't go?

On anymore and you have to let go.

Then what? Well, you weren't doing it in

the first place. And then you realize that God's

the one that's actually holding you up.

So why not just let him do that from day one?

That's my point. But how do you prove your trust

in God? How do you, how do you show him

that you're relying completely on him?

How do you let him know that your faith in the future is in

him? How do you just let go and let

God worry about your future? How do you get to that point?

Well, his number 2, and again, very, very simple #2 that the,

the plan is very simple. Live righteously.

Live righteously. Turn over to Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

I don't know, you might be thinking, well, that's, that's,

you know, that that's too simple.

Well, it worked for Elijah and the woman, the widow woman of

Zarephath and her son. They, they were down to nothing.

And yet for 3 1/2 years during the drought, God sustained them

because they were relying completely on Him.

It worked for Job when he had lost everything.

It worked for Paul living righteously, worked for Paul as

he traveled on his missionary journeys from church to church.

In fact, it was a command from Christ himself that we're not to

be worried about the things of this life.

Luke chapter 10 and verse #1 After these things the Lord

Luke 10 · chapter mention

appointed others 70 also, and sent them two and two before his

face into every city and place, whether He himself would come.

Therefore, said he unto them, the harvest truly is great, but

the laborers are few. Pray ye, therefore the Lord of

the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.

Go your ways, Behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves.

Carry neither purse nor script, nor shoes, and salute no man by

the way. See, our job and our

responsibility is to put the Kingdom of God first.

Live righteously first and let him figure out the details.

Stop trying to do it on your own.

Stop trying to figure everything out.

Stop trying to to make all the plans that are going to set you

up financially for the rest of your life in the next 10 lives

if you need it all. Right.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart.

Put it on. Him stop thrashing around trying

to keep your head above water and just let go and let him hold

you up. So here's the last point that I

want to give you this morning. And there's a couple points

underneath this, but we're not going to be long number #3 how

do you live righteously? How do you live righteously?

Such a simple message this morning.

But if you'd get a hold of this idea, if you get a hold of this

idea of just living righteously before God, it would change

everything about your life. The first thing is this, confess

all known sin. It's simple.

I wish we could just say, all right, I'm confessing all my

known sin and and be done with it, you know, but it only makes

sense that you cannot be righteous if you're harboring

sin in your life. There is no righteousness mixed

with sin, and there is no sin mixed with righteousness.

You cannot be righteous and have sin in your life.

You cannot be righteous and have sin in your life.

You might think you're righteous.

You might think that you're doing OK.

You might think that you look good to everybody else, and you

might. But you cannot be righteous if

you have sin in your life because those two don't mix.

Think about. If you were going to make a cake

and you followed that recipe to a tea, now I can follow the

recipe of a cake to a tea and it still is not going to come out

right. But people who know how to cook

and bake and all of those things can follow a recipe and it comes

out and it's good. But let's say that we followed

the recipe for making this cake to AT everything that it said,

we put it in there, we measured it out exactly with the

measuring cups and spoons and all of those things.

And we got it exactly the way that the recipe said to do it.

But we decided before we stick it in the oven, you know what,

I'm going to put 1/4. Of a cup of sand in this cake.

You could follow that recipe to AT, but I can tell you this,

when that cake comes out, it's going to be inedible because

it's got 1/4 of a cup of sand in it and it makes it impossible to

eat a cake that's full of sand. And yet we do the same thing

with God. God, I'm going to.

I'm going to. Follow your plan to a tee.

I'm going to live the way that you want me to live to a tee.

But I'm just going to do these couple other things over here

that are that are part of my plan.

I'm just going to do it my way for a little bit.

And I'm just going to add a couple of these things in here

because this is what I want to do.

And this is the way that I think I should live.

And these these are things that you know, I'm giving you most of

it. I'm doing almost everything that

you want me to do. But these few things here, those

are things that you can't touch. Those are things that I'm just

going to keep doing. You can't have those.

You messed the entire thing up. You make it unusable because

righteousness and sin cannot coexist.

If you expect to be righteous before God, you've got to get

the sin out of your life. And the problem that I find with

most people is not that they don't know that they're sinning,

it's that they know that it's there and they're just not

willing to get it out because either it's been there for so

long or either they've always done it that way, or they've

always been able to hide this. And, and they don't always go to

it. And so they can, they can hide

it from the people that are around them the most.

You can hide it from the church, you can hide it from the pastor,

you can hide it from your family.

Because I'm only doing this every now and then.

I'm not addicted to it. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not

drowning in that sin. So I'm just going to keep this

over here in the corner and I'll just go back to it from time to

time. God can't use that.

That's unconfessed sin and if you have sin that is in your

life that is unconfessed, you cannot live righteously.

First John chapter 1 and verse 9 says this.

1 John 1 · chapter mention

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us

our sins and to. Cleanse us from all

unrighteousness. We use first John One often when

we're trying to lead somebody to Christ.

But as I've said many times, first John is written to

Christians. We are the ones that need to

confess our sins, but God cannot forgive a sin that you will not

confess. God's not just going to come

into your life and make you clean everything up.

Now he can, he can bring trials, he can bring difficulties, he

can bring hardships into your life to, to point you in the

direction of, Hey, I'm, I'm chastising you because you're my

child and you need to get this right.

He can do some of those things, but he's not going to come in

and just clean everything out unless you confess it and

forsake it. If we confess our sins, He is

faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from.

All unrighteousness. But there's an if at the

beginning of that verse, and it depends on what we do with it.

If we confess he is faithful, he's going to do his part.

He's going to do everything that he said that he was going to do,

but you have to do your part. You cannot be cleansed from all

unrighteousness until you are ready to confess the sin to Him.

Turn over to James chapter 1. James chapter 1.

James 1 · chapter mention James 1 · chapter mention

This takes it, I think, a step farther.

Now obviously confessing our sins and forsaking those sins is

is the key to getting forgiveness and the key to

having Christ cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

But living in righteousness requires confessing all that

known sin, because the Bible says in James chapter 1 and

James 1 · chapter mention

verse 27, pure religion and undefiled before God and the

Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their

affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

That's a difficult thing to do. You know how hard it is to walk

through the mud and not get a little bit of that mud on your

feet, not get a little bit of that mud on your?

Clothes. That's a difficult thing to do,

right? But what happens when you do get

some mud on your feet? Do you just walk in the house

and just traipse through the whole house with all that mud

and then walk back out and oh, well, I guess I'll fix it later?

No, most of us wouldn't do that in our houses, right?

You get the mud off your shoes before you go in the house.

You'd keep it out, all right? And yet we walk through the mud

of this world and we collect all of it and we let it.

We let it collect on us. And then, Oh well, I guess one

of these days somebody will come along and clean it up.

That's not the way that it should be.

Pure religion is to keep yourself undefiled, keep

yourself unspotted from the world.

That's what God expects us to do.

Back in 1818, there was a guy who was a Hungarian Dr. by the

name of Ignaz Semmelweis, and he was a well, it just just a

regular, a regular doctor. But back then, the doctors did

everything pretty much. But he was born into a world

that was that, that really they didn't understand anything about

germs. And so the, the, the, as he, as

he got into the hospitals and delivering babies and things,

one out of six women died while they were in the hospital during

childbirth. One out of 6.

And what these doctors would do is they would spend the mornings

down in the morgue cutting up the bodies and doing all their

dissection and autopsies and trying to figure out the cause

of death for all these people. And then they would go up in the

afternoons and they would rotate and go up and deliver babies and

they couldn't figure out how all these women were dying.

Doctor Semmelweis and and he had a little bit of a personality

from everything that I've read about him that was hard to get

along with. And so the doctors that were

there in the hospital with him didn't really like him, but he

figured out that in 11 years and delivering over 8500 babies, he

only lost 184 mothers. That was a that was just an

astronomical number of of births without deaths compared to most

of the doctors of that day. And so he argued.

And this is what he he, he wrote.

He said perpetual fever is caused by decomposed material

conveyed to a wound. I have shown how it can be

prevented. I have proved all that I have

said. But while we talk, talk, talk,

gentlemen, women are dying. I'm not asking anything world

shaking. I'm asking you only to wash,

wash your hands. What he figured out was if you

came up from the morgue and washed your hands.

They didn't know anything about germs.

He didn't know why it worked, but he knew that if you wash

your hands, women live and the babies live.

The other doctors didn't figure that out.

They didn't know they they, they didn't know anything about the

the transfer of germs from a decomposing dead body to a woman

who is giving birth. And these women were dying.

And he begged them, please, I'm telling you, you will save lives

if you will just wash your hands.

They didn't like him and they didn't like him telling them

this Hungarian Dr. coming into America, telling them what to do

in their hospitals. And so they ignored his advice.

And at 49 years old, he died in an insane asylum because he went

crazy. He could not believe that these

doctors would just not wash their hands to save the lives of

these mothers. And after he died, everything

went back to normal. They had been doing this for

hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

Why do we need to change anything now?

But then along came the germ theory of disease.

And they realized that germs are transferred from decomposing

dead bodies to wounds. And they put two and two

together. And they realized, you know

what, all you have to do is wash your hands.

And we can save the lives of these mothers.

How often do you wash your hands?

Hopefully it's often, but even more, how often do you wash your

heart? You go out into the world and

get all that filth all over it, and then you want to come and

live a holy life. And it doesn't happen because

you haven't washed. You have not as David did in

Psalm 51 verse 10, he says created me a clean heart, O God,

Psalms 51:10

and renew a right spirit within me.

There are things that we see, things that we hear, things that

we do that are not pleasing to God and going on about our lives

without stopping to clean our hearts from those things is

going to harm us spiritually. And you may not die spiritually

from it, but it's going to cause you a lot of harm.

And there are going to be a lot of people who actually die

spiritually, just completely give up on everything, run back

into the world, give up on anything that has to do with

with spirituality and godliness. Because they got some of that

dirt on their hands that they just were not willing to

cleanse. You want to live righteously?

Confess all that known sin #2 if you will turn over to Mark

Mark 9 · chapter mention

Chapter 9 #2 confess your lack of faith in him.

I told you this was a very simple message.

These are not things that you don't already know.

In fact, they're things that you've heard many, many, many

times if you've been coming to this church for any length of

time, because these are things that I point out often.

But Mark Chapter 9 and verse 23, the Bible says this.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are

possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of

the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe,

help thou mine unbelief. When you are afraid that

righteousness alone is not going to sustain you, then you are

proving your lack of faith in the promises of God.

And again, I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to be

prepared, not saying that you shouldn't try to provide for

your house. I'm not saying those things.

But so many of us have the mindset that, well, I'll, I'll

trust in God, but at the same time, I'm going to do everything

I can to make sure that everything is taken care of.

And if all of that doesn't work, then I'll put my faith in God

and trusted Him to help me through these things.

Psalm 84 and verse #10 The Bible says for a day and night courage

is better than 1000. I had rather be a doorkeeper in

the House of my God than to dwell in the tents of

wickedness. For the Lord God is a son and

shield. The Lord will give grace and

glory give this. No good thing will he withhold

from them that walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the

man that trusteth in the No good thing will he withhold from them

that walk. Uprightly, you want to be taken

care of when everything falls apart.

Stay at the top of the righteous list.

No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.

I've been young and now I am old, David said.

Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed

begging bread. Do all the things that you can

do to plan and prepare and everything else.

But in the end, those things could all be worth nothing.

If you're not living for the Lord, you're not living the way

that He wants you to live. The truth is that trusting God

alone and living for Him can sustain us through any difficult

time. We just have to confess our lack

of faith in Him and determine going forward that we're simply

going to rely on Him as we live in righteousness.

And here's the last thing that I want to say this morning about

how do you live righteously? First of all, you have to

confess all that known sin. If you got sin in your life, God

can't bless it #2 confess your lack of faith in Him and #3 very

simply just do right. Just do right.

I know it's, I know it's easier said than done, but

righteousness is, it simply involves just doing right.

What is what does he say in John chapter 14 verse #15 if you love

John 14 · chapter mention

me, keep my commandments. You know what he's saying, Just

do right. You think that's so simple?

Nike built an entire empire on something just simple.

Just do it. Just do it right.

So simple, just do it. It seems like everybody can, but

they, they, they convinced everybody that if you wear a

pair of Nikes, you can do anything you want to do, right?

You can run faster, you can jump higher, right?

You can look cool while you're doing it.

Just do it. Just do it.

They built their entire Nike empire on that little slogan

right there. Why can't we make that work for

Christianity? Just live righteously.

Just do it. Just live righteously Easy, said

Hard. Done many times.

But that's the simple solution. That's what it comes down to

Just do right. Just do right.

How hard is it to just do right? I know we face the the flesh and

I know we face the the temptations of the devil, and I

know there's so many things in the world that distract us.

But how hard is it to just do right?

When you're presented with a with a temptation and you can

you have the option to do what God wants you to do, or you have

the option to to fall back into the same old rod that you've

always fallen into. How hard is it to just say, you

know what I'm just going to do right?

I'm just going to do right? Yes, it's difficult sometimes

because of those temptations are are are are they seem to be

overwhelming, but there hath no temptation taking you.

That is but such as is common to man, God will with the

temptation also make a way of escape that he may be able to

bear it. Just do right, just do right, do

what God wants you to do. Just live righteously, just just

do what he wants you to do in your life.

That's it. How do you how do you live

righteous? You just do right.

I wish sometimes, you know, when when our kids were younger,

especially and, and, and they getting in trouble again for the

same thing. Didn't we just have this battle

yesterday? Now you're back in the same spot

again. Just do right.

You want to grab them by the lapel and say just do right.

But I'll be honest with you. There's a lot of you that I wish

I could just grab by the lapel and say just do right.

Just do right. It would solve all of your

problems. It would take care of so many of

the issues that you deal with. I wouldn't have a job and that

would be fine. I only work 3 hours a week

anyway. I would love to go back to doing

nothing with my life. Just do right.

That's that's how you that's how you live righteously.

That's how you please God. That's how you make sure that

you are the righteous that is not forsaken and not begging

bread. That's how you please the Lord.

Just do right. If you love me, keep my

commandments, he says. It seems to me it's he gave his

life for us. Can we not just live for him?

Do you realize what is coming for you?

If you know Christ as your Savior, do you realize the the

blessings of heaven? Do you realize everything that

he's promised to them that love Him?

We have so much that he's given us.

And yet we're faced with a choice.

I can do right or I can do it my way and we're like my way.

Why do we do that? Just do right.

Just do right. I hope that's the thought that

goes through your head every single time you're faced with a

decision and you're looking at I could do this, but I but, but I

don't have to. I could you know what?

Just do, right? Just do right.

Put that in a place where you can see it every morning.

Put it in a place where you can put it, write it on something,

carry it in your pocket. Just do right.

And we should put it on a coin and give one to everybody.

Just do right. It's, it's, it's that simple.

The the Christian life summarized brought all the way

down to those 3 little words. Just do right.

Everything would be pleasing to the Lord at that point.

In closing, I want you to turn to one last verse.

Turn over to Matthew chapter 5. How can we live in

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

righteousness? How can we make sure that we

have our names at the top of the righteous list?

In the Antarctic summer of 19 O 8 and 19 O 9, Sir Ernest

Shackleton and three of his companions that attempted to

travel to the South Pole from their winter quarters.

And they set off with four ponies to help them carry

everything that they were trying to take down their all the

supplies and everything that they were going to need.

And weeks later, their ponies were dead.

Their rations were completely gone.

And they were, they had turned back toward their base and they

had not reached the South Pole, but they knew that they could

not go any farther or they were going to die.

And Ernest Shackleton, obviously they lived, but he wrote about

this in a book called The Heart of the Antarctic.

But all together they, they trek for 127 days.

And in that book he wrote that the predominant conversation,

everything that they talked about on that journey back when

they were starving, when they had nothing left, they didn't

even have the ponies. They didn't really have most of

their stuff because they didn't even have the ponies to carry

their stuff. So they had to leave a lot of it

there. They'd eaten everything they

had. They were, they were just, they

were just doing everything they could to stay alive.

Almost the entire conversation, every single day when they woke

up and started hiking was about food.

They talked about massive feasts and all the food that they were

going to eat when they finally got back to civilization and all

the things that they loved, all the food that they, they, you

know, everything they were, they were there.

They were trekking through this, through the just, you know,

blinding whiteness of the Antarctic.

All four of them had dysentery. They didn't know if they were

going to survive, but every hour was occupied with thoughts of

eating. That's the only thing that they

could think about. And Jesus, who also knew the

ravages of food deprivation, said this in Matthew chapter 5

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

and verse number six. Blessed are they which do hunger

and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness,

for they shall be filled. I think we can understand

Shackleton's obsession with food.

Most of us have that same obsession and we're not even

starving, but that offers us kind of a glimpse into the

passion that Jesus intended for us to have with righteousness.

When you want righteousness as bad as you want to eat, and when

you want righteousness as bad as you want to drink.

Then you will have righteousness.

The problem is, most of us put an emphasis on all the things

that don't matter over living righteously.

When you hunger and thirst for righteousness, he says, you'll

be filled. You'll have the righteousness

that you want. So what are we left to say then?

The reason you don't have righteousness is because you

just don't want it bad enough. No, no, I want to live for God.

I want to be righteous. I want to be holy.

I want to be clean before Him. I want, I want him to be pleased

with my life. No, you don't, or you would.

You might say that you want it, and you might think that you

want it, and you might hope that you can have it, but you don't

really want it because if you really wanted it, you would have

it if you hungered and thirsted for righteousness.

The way that you hunger and thirst for food, you will have

it right. How many times does the Bible

even say, hey, when somebody's starving, you can understand why

a thief would steal a loaf of bread.

Doesn't make it right, but you can understand why you would do

it. Because he's starving.

He's going to go get something to eat.

When you want righteousness that bad, you'll do whatever you have

to do to have it. So why don't you have it?

It's because you don't want it bad enough.

You don't hunger and thirst for righteousness bad enough, or you

would be filled with righteousness.

When living righteously is all you can think about, when you

filter every thought and every action through that lens, then

you will live righteously. And the very verse that we

looked at in the beginning will apply to you as much as it did.

David, I've been young and now I am old, yet have I not seen the

righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread?

What do you do when the world falls apart?

What do you do when when there's nowhere left to turn because the

government's not there to bail you out and you've relied on

yourself so many times and realized that that doesn't work

either, and chance didn't help anything because you just can't

get lucky. What do you do then?

How about live righteous? The righteous are not forsaken,

and his seed will never be begging bread.

When everything flies off the wheel and the world's in an

upheaval, will you be taken care of?

I'll tell you this. I suppose that all depends on

whether or not you're living righteously.

Because the righteous will not be forsaken.

God takes care of His own. It just is a matter of whether

or not you're on the righteous list or not as to whether or not

you're going to be taken care of.

How do you do that? You got to confess that sin, get

it out of your heart, confess that lack of faith and just do

right. Just do right.

That's how you find God's blessing.

That's the, that's the best plan that you could put in place for

when everything falls apart. I'm just going to live, right?

I'm just going to do what God wants me to do.

I'm going to live to please him and let him figure out how he's

going to take care of me. He takes care of the birds.

Promise you that I can promise you this.

When the world falls apart, the birds will still be out there

singing and eating because God takes care of them.

When the world falls apart, there's still going to be

flowers. They're still going to be just

as beautiful as they always have been because God takes care of

them. And when the world falls apart,

those who are his, those who are the righteous, will not be

forsaken. He'll take care of them too.

Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you

shall drink, or what you shall put on.

After all those things do the Gentiles seek, but seek ye first

the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all of these

things will be added unto you. What a plan, what a plan.

Simple, simple, hard to do, but simple.

You're willing to do it. Are you willing to do it?

Let's pray. Father, again, we thank you so

much for your goodness. Thank you again for the

opportunity we've had to be here this morning.

I pray that you just help us all to get to the mindset where

we're just going to do what's right.

Just going to live for you. Just going to follow your plan

and live righteously. God, may you help us to not rely

on ourselves. May you help us to not rely on

the government. May you help us to not rely on

anything else but you. And may you help us to live for

you. Thank you again for all you do

for us in Jesus name, Amen. If you stand at your seats with

your heads bowed and your eyes closed, we're going to have a

time of invitation. The piano's going to play.

And as she does, if God spoke to your heart this morning, you

come.