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[0:00] This sermon serves as a segue back to our study of Hosea.

[0:22] We'll be back in Hosea in January. Obviously, this time of year, we focus primarily on the incarnation of Christ. And so this sermon serves as a segue. If you remember, the last sermon I preached in Hosea was about the king that we need.

[0:38] And if you remember back then in Hosea, they were realizing that their human kings were horrible, that they were no good. And they were realizing that the king that they need was God.

[0:49] And in Jesus Christ, we have the king we need in God himself, Jesus Christ. And so here, the title of this morning's sermon is, Where is the King? And it's going to take us from our focus on the incarnation back to our study of Hosea on this thought of the reality that we have a king.

[1:09] And the king that we need is Jesus Christ. But that often we fight that because we would rather be our own king. And so that will be the focus of this morning's message.

[1:20] But before I continue, will you take your Bible and turn to Matthew 2? If you haven't already, stand with me as we honor the reading of God's word together. And I'm going to read verses 1 through 12.

[1:30] Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who was born king of the Jews?

[1:46] For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired to them where the Christ was to be born.

[2:01] They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for it is written by the prophet, And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

[2:15] Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, Go and search diligently for the child.

[2:27] And when you have found him, bring me word that I may come and worship him. After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was.

[2:42] When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother. And they fell down and worshipped him.

[2:55] Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

[3:06] May God add a blessing to the reading of his word. Would you please be seated? Generally speaking, Americans don't like kings.

[3:22] We had a king once. And if you remember from your history classes in school that that didn't go so well. We didn't really like having a king.

[3:33] In fact, I would say that Americans are repulsed today by the idea of ever having one person having that much power and control over the rest of the nation.

[3:47] And if you don't believe me on that, just think for a moment. Imagine if a sitting president attempted to overturn the 22nd Amendment, right? Which limits a president's term to eight years.

[3:59] Imagine if either our current president or our past president, most previous president, had tried to do that. There would be outrage in our country over such an attempt to have so much power.

[4:14] So in our culture, when many of us hear the word king, typically one of two things comes to our mind when we think about that. The first is the thought of a king being a distant tyrant.

[4:28] A king who rules from afar. And as a result of that, he's disconnected from the people whom he rules. Not only that, he mistreats them and he robs them.

[4:40] Similar to King George during the American Revolution. He was that kind of a king to us. The second image that people get in our society when they think of a king is that of a powerless figurehead.

[4:57] Someone more like Queen Elizabeth. Who has the title, but she doesn't truly have any authority. She has influence, sure.

[5:07] She's admired, absolutely. But she has no real power. She doesn't truly rule her kingdom. But when we speak of Jesus Christ as our king, we are not speaking of either a distant tyrant, nor are we speaking of a powerless figurehead.

[5:31] No, in fact, we are speaking about a perfect, a righteous, and a loving king. A king who is absolutely sovereign in his authority and absolutely eternal in his reign.

[5:45] And as such, he is aptly called the king of kings and the lord of lords. If you'll remember when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her that she would give birth to Jesus, this is what he said to her in Luke chapter 1, verses 32 through 33.

[6:02] Elsewhere, Jesus is referred to as the king of the Jews, Matthew 1, 2.

[6:27] In Mark 15, he's referred to as the king of Israel. In 1 Timothy 6, 15, Paul says the blessed and holy sovereign when he describes Jesus.

[6:39] In Revelation 19, 16, it says there that he is the king of kings, and he is the lord of lords. In Ephesians chapter 1, verses 20 through 22, the apostle Paul tells us that Jesus is right now as we meet and as I speak at God's hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and dominion, and above every name that is named, and not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

[7:11] And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things, the church. And so this is the main idea for this morning's message. The Bible says that we have a king, and his name is Jesus.

[7:27] He is not just a king, but the king. He possesses all authority and dominion over all things. Many receive that news either as a great threat or with great joy.

[7:48] Case in point, Mary, the mother of Jesus, when she receives the heavenly messenger and she receives this news that her son is the long-promised Messiah, that he would be this king of kings, this lord of lords.

[8:07] You remember that her response is to ponder these things, but she treasured them in her heart. And she says to the angel, let it be so according to your word.

[8:20] She received this tremendous responsibility with great joy in her heart. Then we have Herod, who reacts in a much different way.

[8:34] Instead of seeking to worship Jesus, he seeks to kill Jesus, because he perceives him as a threat to his kingdom. Now those of us who consider ourselves to be followers of Christ, we can also be tempted into believing that we are fully submitted to his lordship over us.

[8:54] And we can be tempted into believing that we are truly pursuing his kingdom with our lives here. But upon closer inspection of our daily lives, it may reveal a completely different story.

[9:10] And so that's what I want to talk to you about this morning. And that is my hope, that as we pursue this new year, as we go into this new year, that you will pursue 2019 and beyond that with a passion to pursue Christ's kingdom, not yours.

[9:34] And to understand that, first we've got to understand that in Matthew 2, 1-8, there is a threat of Christ's kingdom. Christ's kingdom is a threat to many.

[9:48] Now imagine, when you walk into the palace of the king, and he's sitting there in his place to rule, and you ask, where is the king?

[10:04] That's going to create a very tense moment, is it not? Especially for the man who is sitting on the throne. That's exactly what happens here.

[10:15] The magi walk in, they know that Herod is the king, but they still ask, hey, where is the king? We are expecting, we are searching for another greater than you.

[10:27] If you know anything about Herod, you know the history tells us that he was a very violent ruler, even by the standards of his time.

[10:37] Men were violently ruling back then, but Herod was one of the ones that was right there at the very top. This was a man who had killed anyone, who he deemed to be a threat to his position as king.

[10:51] That included members of his own family. That included his own sons. He would murder them so that he could remain as king.

[11:03] His whole identity, his whole sense of purpose and worth was wrapped up in his position as being the king of Judah. And so in this man's demented mind, he thought that if I'm not king, then I'm nothing.

[11:20] I'm not going to be nothing. I'm going to be the king of Judea no matter what it costs. His self-worth was found in being the king.

[11:34] And he couldn't stand, he couldn't bear to share that title with anyone else, even his own flesh and blood. And so this was a man who sought to eliminate any and all competition to his throne.

[11:51] And as I was thinking about that this week, I was thinking about in college when I was on the baseball team. And, you know, you work hard as an underclassman.

[12:02] Some underclassmen come in and they start right off the bat because they're just that talented. But others of us like me, we've got to earn our way to get more playing time. And so finally, when you get that playing time that you coveted, that you desired, you know, each year we would have a freshman class come in with transfers from junior colleges.

[12:22] And so I remember every year at the beginning of the year when we all got together, we were all kind of looking each other over, you know, we'd be kind of like, hey, what's your name? Where are you from? What position do you play?

[12:33] Right? Okay, you play second base. No problems. We can be friends. You're a pitcher. I'm glad you're here. Right? But I got my eye on you.

[12:45] And so we would have this competition with one another and it was good to an extent, right? Because it would make us want to be better. You would push yourself to be as good as you could be.

[12:55] But sometimes, unfortunately, it would carry over into the season. And you'd be rooting against your teammates that they would play poorly so that you could take their place.

[13:08] Now, a team with players that have that kind of feeling towards one another, guess what? They're not going to be a very good team. It's not going to be a very good season.

[13:19] Because you know what? That kind of attitude defeats the whole purpose of being on a team, does it not? We win together. We lose together. It takes all of us playing our best to win.

[13:34] Unfortunately, though, I think that we often carry that same kind of attitude to the church. when we see new people coming in, we can feel threatened by their coming.

[13:53] Threatened that maybe they're going to take our place. Or threatened that maybe they don't understand the rules here. They don't know how we like to do things and they're going to upset what we have going on.

[14:08] And what we're doing is we're really feeling threatened that they're going to attack our own little kingdom that we've built in the church. We do this.

[14:20] Not here, but all churches. This is my little place. This is my thing. This is my little kingdom. Right? This is my instrument.

[14:32] Nobody else can play it. This is my pulpit. Nobody else preaches behind my pulpit. Or we say, this is my kitchen.

[14:44] This is my coffee pot. This is my classroom. This is my gym. These are my friends. This is my parking space. And we could go on and on and on, couldn't we not?

[14:58] Because this is what we do. We're tempted to do it everywhere we go. No. Not just in the church. But doing this, especially in the church, defeats the purpose for our being a church, doesn't it?

[15:18] We're pursuing and building our own little kingdoms, and that's taking away from our purpose to build Christ's kingdom. Right? What is our purpose as a church?

[15:31] Why do we gather? What are we here to do? Well, to worship? But we've been given a purpose. Go make disciples.

[15:44] And not just that. Teach them. Help them to grow. Help them to become more like Christ. Christ. And so that's why we have the vision statement for our church.

[15:57] This is a disciple-making vision statement. We must go. So we engage each other.

[16:08] We engage our community. We engage our state. We engage our nation. We engage our world. We go. And when we go, what do we do?

[16:18] Well, we enlighten. We bring the gospel. We bring the good news of Jesus Christ wherever we go. This is why we're here. This is why we're doing this. It's because of the gospel.

[16:29] It's because of Christ and what he's done for us. And hopefully, in our doing that, we are making disciples. And then once we have that, then we've got to encourage them. We've got to encourage one another to continue to engage, to continue to be enlightened, to continue to grow.

[16:45] And then we're being equipped so that what? We can go back out and engage and make disciples. So a church should only have one goal.

[17:00] Because there is only one kingdom that we are pursuing together. And it requires each of us doing our part, using our spiritual God-given gifts to pursue that one goal.

[17:18] So in a sense, and that's not just for our church. I want to say that too. We're not in competition with other churches either. We want to pursue that goal with them. Amen? Because we need to do the work together.

[17:32] It's not us versus them. It's us together. Trying to reclaim ground from the enemy for the kingdom of God and his glory. So in a sense, King Herod's reaction to Christ is a picture of what all of us do in our heart.

[17:47] Romans 8, 7, and 8. There the Apostle Paul says, And so here, Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is saying that in its natural state, a human mind is hostile toward God.

[18:14] At the core of the human heart is an impulse that says this, No one tells me what to do. No one tells me what to do.

[18:25] Nobody tells me where to go. Nobody forces me to do anything that I don't want to do. And so we spend a lot of time teaching our children, don't we, to suppress these instincts.

[18:40] Don't act this way. And so we encourage them to cooperate. We encourage them to share. We teach them the importance of being a team player. And then when they act good, when they act nice, and sometimes, a lot of times, we have to bribe them to do that, don't we?

[18:57] But when they finally act good, we celebrate that. And rightfully so, because we know that they're suppressing all of those sinful instincts to be self-centered and to be a jerk.

[19:10] And so we celebrate it when they act right. And we encourage that of ourselves, or we want that for ourselves. Most of us do. We want to be thought of as a team player.

[19:23] We want to be thought of as somebody who cooperates with everybody else. And we're trying to suppress these instincts.

[19:35] It's like a beach ball in the water. You know, when you play with the beach ball in the water as a kid, maybe you still do it now as an adult, and that's fine, it's fun. You try to push it under the water, right? How long can we keep it under the water?

[19:45] But you know that eventually it's going to pop to the surface. And that happens to all of us. Eventually, those self-centered, self-willed, self-desires pop to the surface because no amount of education or therapy can remove those desires from our hearts.

[20:03] According to the Bible, the evil that we witness in the world ultimately stems from human self-centeredness, self-righteousness, and self-absorption.

[20:15] And it takes place in every human heart. Because each of us is born with this desire for the world to orbit around us. Born with this desire that we don't want to serve God.

[20:29] In fact, we don't want to serve our neighbors. As a matter of fact, we don't want to love them. We don't want to love our enemies either. Because I believe that in every human heart, there's a little King Herod.

[20:44] And he wants to rule. He wants to be in charge. He wants to call the shots. And he's threatened by anyone or anything that may compromise our need to be our own king.

[20:58] To be our own ruler. So there is a natural hostility in every human heart against the claim of anyone being sovereign over it.

[21:11] Over any attempt by anyone else to exercise their will over our will. The thing about Jesus, though, is that he claims to have this sovereignty, doesn't he?

[21:24] He claims to be in this position of authority. Jesus came to us claiming to be God himself. The one true king.

[21:36] And came demanding our allegiance to him above and over any other allegiance that we might have.

[21:48] Look at what he said. Luke 14, 26. Read these words. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, his wife and his children, his brothers and his sisters, yes, even his own life.

[22:04] He cannot be my disciple. Man, that is a claim to have absolute authority, is it not? But we've got to understand what he's talking about here.

[22:17] This isn't a command to literally become hateful of your family members. But what Jesus is calling for here is an allegiance to him so supreme that all other commitments that you have look weak in comparison to your commitment to him.

[22:35] This is his claim of absolute authority on his part. A summons to our unconditional loyalty to him. And it inevitably triggers deep resistance within our hearts.

[22:50] Because no heart, unaided, will surrender to Jesus Christ's authority over it. And this is what I think the Apostle Paul is saying in Romans 3, verses 10-12.

[23:02] As it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless.

[23:12] No one does good. Not even one. Now, some read that statement and they think, well, that sounds like a major exaggeration there, right?

[23:25] No one, not even one does good. Not even one person is seeking God. Look, I have the statistics. And they say that in the United States of America, despite all of the efforts to remove God from society, that still, in our country today, over 80% of people believe in God.

[23:49] So how can you say that no one is seeking after him? Well, I want to explain what the Apostle Paul is talking about here. You see, many people want the things of God, the things that God can offer them, things like love, things like help and support, strength and encouragement, forgiveness and happiness.

[24:13] They want those things from him, but they aren't actually, truly seeking him. Just the things that they think that he has to offer.

[24:25] And in a way, they're behaving like gold diggers. You guys know what a gold digger is? Somebody, it can be a man or a woman, who marries or befriends people because of the money that they have.

[24:38] What they can get from them. They don't truly love the person. They don't truly appreciate the friendship as much as they say, you know what?

[24:48] You got what I want. And so I'm going to pretend to love you, to like you, so that I can get what you have to offer. But once all that dries up, guess what? They're gone.

[25:00] Because they didn't really want the person. They wanted the things they could get from them. And I know that, unfortunately, I can speak from experience of seeing many people who called themselves Christians, but who left the church because they were upset with God that a prayer that they had prayed didn't get answered in the way that they thought it should.

[25:24] Or they endured some kind of suffering that they didn't think was fair. And so as a result of that, they said, you know what? I'm out of here. While many people say that they believe in God, if you get more specific with them and ask them if they believe in the God of the Bible, the God who came down to Mount Sinai in fire and in smoke, the God who says, I will in no way clear the guilty, who tells human beings that if they were to approach him in his glory, that they would die on the spot.

[26:03] Far fewer people would say that they believe in a God like that. And so like Thomas Jefferson, remember Thomas Jefferson, what he did?

[26:13] He took his pen, his knife pen, and he cut out all the passages of Scripture that he didn't like because he didn't like to think of God in that way.

[26:25] Many people do that to God in their heart, saying, that doesn't sound like God to me. King Herod's lust for power led him to commit all kinds of acts of atrocity.

[26:40] King Herod's lust for power led him to commit all kinds of acts of terror. He was threatened by the wise men and their question. And he had to have been thinking, what do you mean?

[26:51] Where's the king? I'm right here. Can't you see me? I am the king. And so he went to great and horrific lengths to secure his power, killing all threats, even if that meant exterminating all of the infant children of a community.

[27:10] Could you imagine that? Giving the order to send your soldiers into a community and telling them, pull out all children, males, two years or younger, rip them out of their mother's hands, take them out to the street, and slaughter them before their eyes.

[27:25] I don't care. Because nobody's going to take my place. And he thought he was justified in doing it.

[27:38] Because after all, in his own mind, he thought, this place, this throne, this kingdom truly belongs to me and nobody else. Where is the king?

[27:49] That question is the most disturbing question possible to ask a human heart. Since I believe many of us are like Herod, and we want at all costs to remain on the throne of our own lives, willing to accept God, but only on our terms.

[28:10] treating him more like an elected official who needs our vote of approval to remain sovereign ruler over our lives.

[28:22] There's a threat to Christ's kingdom, and it's real. But man, let me tell you what also. There is a joy of Christ's kingdom.

[28:32] Verses 9 through 12, we see this. The magi leave. They follow the star over the place where the child was.

[28:43] And it says there that they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. I mean, that's pretty exciting, is it not? We rejoiced. We exceedingly rejoiced. And not only did we exceedingly rejoice, we rejoiced with great joy.

[28:55] They were pretty happy about the fact that they had found the true king. And when they came to him, they offered him gifts. And they bowed down and they worshipped this infant.

[29:08] Because they knew that he was special. That his kingdom was special. The joy of Christ's kingdom means that in Jesus, we don't have just a king.

[29:24] We have a Messiah. Messiah is a Hebrew word, and it means anointed one, or it means chosen one. And the Greek equivalent for Messiah is Christ.

[29:38] So when we say Jesus Christ, we're saying Jesus, the Messiah, the promised one, the long-awaited one, the one whom we most need.

[29:49] Herod had been declared king of the Jews by the Romans for 40 years, but no one ever called him Messiah.

[30:01] Because Messiah means a long-awaited, God-anointed ruler, the one who was promised, the one who was promised, who would come and who would overcome all other rulers, all other people in authority.

[30:19] He would bring an end to it all in history. And he would establish his own kingdom, the kingdom of God, that would have no end.

[30:30] It would go on forever and ever. Now we don't know for sure how the Magi got the information that there was such a king who was to come, but it is clear that in Herod's interaction with them, he got the message.

[30:47] These men, he understood, were seeking more than just a king. They were seeking the king of kings. He knew that they were seeking the king who would put an end to all other kings.

[31:00] That included himself. Herod is aware of the prophecies of such a one, of such a Messiah, but he's unaware where he was prophesied to be born.

[31:14] So he assembles his team of scribes to do the research for him. And they find out that there in Micah 5, verse 2, the location for the Messiah's birth is in Bethlehem.

[31:26] Herod asks them where he was to be born, and he got his answer. But you know what he should have asked? Who?

[31:39] Where's he born? But who is he? And if he would have asked that question, it was right there before his face. They could have continued on reading, and he could have seen for himself.

[31:55] Micah 5, 2 and verse 4. But you, O Bethlehem, Ephrata, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel.

[32:10] And this is the who. Whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. verse 4. And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.

[32:30] And they shall dwell secure, for he shall be great, and great to the ends of the earth. Who?

[32:42] This king. He wasn't just coming into being as a result of being born in Mary's womb.

[32:53] No. He came in that way, but he has an internal existence. As John says in his gospel, in the very beginning, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

[33:09] And this king's realm would not be limited to Israel. No. It would extend to all the world. To the ends of the earth.

[33:22] That should bring us great joy. We have a king who is great. We have a king who became our suffering servant.

[33:34] We have a king who is unmatched in power, unmatched in his mercy, unmatched in his grace, and his love. We have a king whose kingdom will never, ever end.

[33:49] And because we have such a king, we should never fear. Because we understand that, you know what, our king is good. We don't have to fear him because he's good.

[34:02] And we don't have to fear him or anything else because our king is victorious. Our king has saved us. That should bring us great joy. I don't know if you were paying attention to any of the news this week as you were no doubt busy celebrating Christmas with your families, but Queen Elizabeth does an annual message to the English people or to wherever the United Kingdom expands to.

[34:30] And the purpose of the message is to bring cheer and to bring delight to her royal subjects with news of hope for the upcoming year, right?

[34:43] This is kind of her big pep talk. This year, in her message, she spoke about togetherness. She spoke about how important it was that they be united in the wake of Brexit and all the other things that are going on in their nation, many of the same things that we are experiencing in ours, but she received a lot of flack for it.

[35:07] And it's interesting why she did because as you watch this video, you see there she is and she's got this beautiful dress on, this big pearl necklace.

[35:19] In the back, she's in some room in her palace, one of her palaces, who knows, and it's just dripping with gold. But probably the craziest thing of it all is in the background, right behind, I think it's her left shoulder, is a golden piano.

[35:33] A golden piano. And what's ironic about it is here's this woman who's trying to relate to everyday people, trying to give them hope that, hey, yeah, you've got real life problems, but guess what?

[35:44] It's going to be okay. I've got my golden piano right behind me. Everything's okay with me. It should be okay with you too, right? Man, it struck the wrong chord.

[35:54] And to many, it came as a joke. This woman doesn't know who we are. This woman doesn't understand our struggles. She has no idea what it's like to live in the real world.

[36:07] Let me tell you, our king is not like that. He emptied himself.

[36:17] He left all of that behind to come be one of us, to come and dwell as one of us, the God-man, fully God and fully man.

[36:32] He came into our darkness to bring us light. He became our suffering servant. He was obedient all the way to the cross where he hung, bleeding and dying for our sins, where he was pierced for our iniquities.

[36:57] He died in our place. He was crushed by God's wrath towards our sins. Jesus, this is our Messiah.

[37:09] This is a king who doesn't listen to tunes being played on his golden piano while all the rest of us suffer and die. On the third day, our king was resurrected from the dead.

[37:27] Our king is victorious over Satan. Our king is victorious over death. our king has overcome our sins. He's reconciled us to God.

[37:40] The Bible says if we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead that we will be saved. And so we have a gracious king.

[37:55] And understanding all of this should bring us great joy. We should be exceedingly rejoicing, full of joy people.

[38:08] So like the wise men, our response to this good news should be to bow down and worship him. To ascribe all honor and praise and glory to him.

[38:20] To live our lives sacrificially for him. To advance his kingdom, not ours. God is so now the question is how do we do this?

[38:37] Well, I think it's by how you view him. By understanding that the treasure, the thing that we should treasure most in life are not the things that God has made.

[38:55] As great as they are, I love going there to Grand Canyon. Grand Canyon is beautiful. Big, beautiful hole. But I don't go there to worship what God has made.

[39:08] That the treasure that we should seek in life isn't even primarily the things that God has provided us, good as they are. Children, spouses, family, financial security.

[39:22] Those are good things. But those should not be our primary treasures. And we could go on and on. You know what our primary treasures should always be? God himself.

[39:33] God himself. In my personal Bible study time, I'm right now going through the book of Matthew. And I came to chapter 6, right there in the middle of Jesus' sermon on the mount.

[39:50] And I've read that passage many, many times. But in reading it again, I just had to stop and reflect upon what our Savior is telling us there about our motivations in life.

[40:12] And so as I was reading what he had to say, I was convicted with this question. when I wake up in the morning, what is my primary motivation?

[40:25] Why am I getting up? And as I'm getting ready, taking my son to school, heading into the church, what is my primary motivation?

[40:37] As I work, as I spend time with my family, my church family, what is my purpose for doing all of that? What is the goal that I am after? Is it money?

[40:49] Is it other treasures? Is it degrees? Titles that I can add to my name so that I can climb the ladder of success? When I come to church every Sunday morning, what is the goal that I am pursuing there?

[41:06] Is it to preach a good sermon so that people are glad that they heard it and they're so thankful that they come to church here? Those aren't bad things, but that's not the primary thing.

[41:20] Because you know what? If that's all that life is about, pursuing these other treasures and pleasures, what I read there and what I knew, but what God brought to my attention even more again, more loudly and clearly is this.

[41:36] What a waste of time. What a waste of time. Spending your life pursuing earthly treasures? earthly titles, earthly things?

[41:50] When we could be spending our time pursuing God? What a waste of time. And so again, I've read this passage many times, but I want to read it to you again this morning.

[42:06] Because my fear is that you, like me, are tempted to waste our life pursuing secondary treasures instead of God himself as our primary treasure.

[42:22] I want to say those other things aren't necessarily bad, but what Jesus is saying here is, we'll see, is there is one treasure you should be pursuing, and all these other things will come along with it.

[42:35] You keep your focus on me. Let's read. Matthew 6, 19-34. And take these words to heart.

[42:45] This is God speaking to you through his word, through his son. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys.

[43:07] Where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Verse 22, the eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, right?

[43:19] Because you're pursuing this main purpose and goal. But, if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness.

[43:34] darkness, no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

[43:47] You cannot serve God and money. You cannot serve God and anything else. therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life.

[44:01] What you will eat, what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on, is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them.

[44:18] Are you not more valuable than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing?

[44:31] Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you?

[44:51] O you of little faith, therefore do not be anxious, saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear, for the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them all.

[45:07] Understand this, right? This is what Jesus is bringing us to, but seek first, primarily, the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things that you worry about and all these things that you are afraid of not having, they'll be added to you.

[45:29] Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. So guess what? Let's pursue our treasure and our purpose to make disciples.

[45:43] And this is my question to you, this is what I'm putting forth to you today as a conclusion to this sermon is will you commit to putting an end to pursuing your own kingdom now and moving forward?

[45:56] That in 2019 you will commit instead to pursuing God and his kingdom and his purpose for you and his purpose for our church. And I'm telling you, if we will answer that with a yes, not just with our words, but with our actions, we will grow deep in this church.

[46:16] and as a result of that, we will grow wide. And I know that that's my prayer and I hope that you will join me in it. What a marvelous and wonderful king we have to serve, who gave his life, his everything for us, dying on the cross for our sins, for what we've done, raised from death, victorious over all enemies.

[46:46]  Our king of kings, our lord of lords, ascended at the right hand of the father and he is coming back. Thank you.