Where Are You Laying Up Your Foundation?

Thank you very much. Very beautiful. In fact, we wish we could have heard more.

I guess that's an action, isn't it? Though of music, always keep them wanting more.

But anyway, a very beautiful and very meaningful song.

Well, I don't think you could look at the news this week without hearing the two words, fiscal cliff. I'm sure that is probably hammered in your brain by now. To me, at this particular point, when I hear the words fiscal cliff, I usually turn the TV off because I've already heard that. I've already heard about the fiscal cliff.

And of course, we knew that these things were going to happen in the church. We were warned that the way the United States was going, that we were headed in this direction. Of course, now we are $16 trillion in debt, probably more than that, in this country. What does that represent? It represents tens of thousands of dollars that are going to descend upon each American. Our future generations are going to have to pay the debts and likely will not be able to do so. We find that in this country, a lot of wealth has eroded.

It's gone by the wayside. A lot of people have their homes, they may own them, but they're underwater. They own far more on the homes than maybe their worth. And so, something that maybe they've worked for all of their lives, that they consider to be a part of their wealth, that is gone. And of course, if they had 401ks or 403b's, retirements, those have been eroded too. And, you know, you probably, if you've seen the financial pages, you've probably seen how the stock market has soared recently.

We shouldn't really think that somehow, boy, the economy must be doing a lot better because the stock market is up. What the government does not tell you is that the Federal Reserve is putting $30 to $50 billion a month into the stock market. So that's what keeps the float. And so, if you find yourself just wondering, well, maybe I should go and buy some stocks on the stock market because, I mean, everybody else is, you might find that, no, that's not true.

The government is, but maybe everybody else is not. And sooner or later, it's going to catch up with the United States, or we're going to see the stock market just plummet. And it's going to be a horrible time when it occurs because people are going to lose so much if they're tied into the stock market. And most people are with their retirement funds, by the way. Most people really are because of the stocks that are owned by their retirement plans.

But, you know, there are parts of the world, quite frankly, that, you know, are not like the United States. It's amazing how we can be more impoverished in this country, and yet we're fairly wealthy. You know, we still have a lot from the physical standpoint. On my trip to Thailand a number of years ago, I found the people there to be very friendly and very humble.

And to them, what is important is not material things. What is important to them is family. Family is what is important to people in Thailand and in Asia. And they have a high sense of honor as well. Honor and integrity is very important. The worst thing for them would be to do something which would dishonor their family name. They would not want to do that. They would not want to dishonor their own family name. You know, the average Taiwanese member of the society over there makes about $200 to $300 a month. So that's the average. And imagine, recently Americans found out that when they open their paychecks, some haven't received their two-week paycheck yet, but they found that their social security went up appreciably $100, $150 a check or $300 a month.

Imagine this, Americans lose $300 a month and they start crying murder. But in Thailand, if they make $300 a month, they're thankful. They're thankful. So they have quite frugal types of lives in the Oriental world. They simply don't have much. Of course, the Chinese are beginning to increase. And even, again, with our losses that we have in this country, things are different in the United States because we have been blessed with so much material wealth.

But unfortunately, we have been fixed on as a people on materialism in this country. And the economy, as the economy continues to slide, people have to greatly adjust what they have and do in their lives as their cost of living increases and their buying power diminishes. They have to greatly reduce their standard of living. And yet, for so many people to see their materialism, to see their wealth begin to diminish so much, so many people, that is their life because their lives are wrapped up in the monetary.

Their lives are wrapped up in things. They're wrapped up in materialism. And to a large extent, in the United States, people's happiness rises or falls based on what they possess, what they have. Brethren, how about you? How about you? Does your happiness in life rise and fall based on how much money you have coming in? Is that the way it is for you and your life? I know that's the way it is with many people in this world. Let's go to Ecclesiastes here to begin the message today in this introduction. In Ecclesiastes 5 and verse 10, let's notice here, a couple of verses. This is what Solomon says, and he, of course, was one of the richest men that ever lived, if not the richest man who ever lived.

But in verse 10, it says, he who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver. It used to be you could buy silver for about four dollars an ounce. It wasn't very long ago. In fact, you could buy it for that. Now, I think silver is it up about 40 or 50 dollars, isn't it? Announce. Gold is 1600 to 1700 an ounce. But he who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver, nor he who loves abundance with the increase. And it says this also is vanity. It's useless, the building up of physical wealth.

And it says when goods increase, they increase who eat them. And that's the truth. You know, the more you make, it's amazing how fast it is that the more you can spend. And the more that seem to come around, they eat it up. So what profit have the owners except to see them with their eyes? In other words, they see what they have, but it goes out. You know, you open your wallet and the dollar bills fly out. You know, the five dollar, you know, if you have five dollars and ten dollars in your wallet, I usually don't have much of anything in my wallet.

You know, but usually end up using a credit card if I need something. And of course, we always pay it off, so we don't have to pay any interest. They hate us, by the way. And that's the best policy to do that. But it talks about verse 12, the sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of the rich will not permit him to sleep. He's got to sleep with one eye open all the time. I'm afraid somebody's going to take from him what he has. Verse 15, as he came from his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came. So naked, you came into the world, and that is the way you go out. That's what Solomon says. And he, it says, shall take nothing from his labor which he may carry away in his hand.

Many people have tried to do that. Some people have been buried with their gold. Some have been buried with their Cadillacs. They love their Cadillacs. I heard a man that was buried in his Cadillac a number of years ago. And he loved the Cadillacs so much, that was his coffin, and how he was buried. But Solomon is observing here that money and abundance don't truly satisfy us in our lives. A rich man, again, has to sleep wondering who's going to take what he has away from him.

You know, we're not called in the church to a cynicism. God did not ask us to wear sackcloth and ashes all of our lives. But, you know, God doesn't expect us to be stoics, because God wants us to enjoy what we have. He wants us to enjoy the physical accoutrements of life. However, some multiply to excess in their lives the physical things that they have. And they think that makes them happy. And that becomes their mission in life to do that, to have more. And, you know, there were people who saw Jesus Christ during his ministry. And remember when he multiplied the fishes and the loaves, the bread was multiplied, then he had more followers that came around. You know, because he was able to increase the bread. But remember what Jesus Christ told those that came afterwards? He said, labor not for the meat. Don't labor for the food, he said, which perishes, but for that meat which endures unto everlasting life. That's what you better be laboring for. You better be working for that. You know, Jesus Christ was telling people that were his disciples of his day. In another place, Jesus said, don't lay up treasure on earth, but lay it up in heaven. Put it up in heaven. Don't put it upon the earth. Well, brethren, as we begin this new year, this is the first Sabbath of 2013 that we are in here on this particular Sabbath, the first Sabbath of the year. I want to ask the question of you, brethren, is, where are you laying up your treasure in your life? Where are you laying up your treasure in your life? And furthermore, brethren, what is your treasure? What is your treasure? Most of us don't think that we have treasures. We think that pirates are the ones that discover treasures. You know, the pirates with the patches over their eyes with a treasure chest on Treasure Islands. But we have treasures as well, brethren. Strongs, in fact, the word for treasure is the thesaurus, which means a deposit. That is a wealth, literally or figuratively, or treasure. So what do we consider it a wealth, brethren, in our life? Well, it increases in our lives. Is it our money? Is it our real estate? Or heirlooms that we may have? You know, one time I had a cup that my father used to drink his coffee out of, and the cup somehow fell and broke all the pieces. And I glued it together. I took the time to glue it together, and it was broken into many pieces. And I had that on my desk for many years. I think it finally broke apart, completely broke apart. But it had sentimental value to me. It was worth about nothing. I mean, it was worth nothing to no one else. But to me, it was worth something. Also, I had an orange hat my dad used to wear, his hunting hat. And every time I would smell that hat, I could smell my father. And I still have that hat, by the way. No, I don't go around smelling it all the time, but, really. Unless you think that I've got that sort of a fetish about myself. But, you know, in a way, it's a treasure to me. I also have a shotgun my father, belonged to my father. And I intend to pass it on to his grandsons. And, you know, I have an old, you know, power gun that he gave me as well. I have two guns. Now, I don't shoot them very often. In fact, I have a brand new Browning I haven't shot since I was down in Alabama, back in 1985. It's been a long time. And the reason I haven't shot is I haven't found any place to do it. Quite frankly, that was convenient enough for me to do it. But it has sentimental value to me. It's a treasure.

But there are things we value. But I don't put them in a chest anywhere and save them that way. But it is a treasure to me. Let's go to Matthew chapter 5 and see what Jesus Christ says. Matthew chapter 5. Matthew 5.

In that, I'm sorry, Matthew 6. Did I say 5? Sorry. I knew what I was saying with my tongue, but my brain. I knew what my brain was saying, but my tongue said something different. Let's see. Matthew 6 and verse 19 here. Just a simple statement by Jesus Christ. It says, in red letters here, brethren, do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth. And he said, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

So our treasure on earth is not very secure, is it? It's quite insecure. No matter how we try to secure it, you know, you could put it in a vault if you want to. But it's still not secure. Precious things can simply deteriorate. Somebody gave me a book a long time ago. I've kept it in a plastic bag. It's a very old. It's called, it's the last of the Mohegan. So it's an old book, very old book. And I put it in that bag, and it was from, it was a plastic bag. I put it in, and inside the plastic bag it has turned yellow, even by doing that. I, you know, I don't have a room where the temperatures get to a certain level, like the Smithsonian. But they did deteriorate over time. And finally, the pages get brittle, and they fall apart over time. You know, fires and other natural disasters can destroy what you have. You know, I, they're, they're, my parents did not have a picture of me when I was a baby.

And the reason was, is because we had a fire when I was a, you know, a little boy, and all of our pictures were burnt up. And I was thinking about this the other day. Before I came to the church, my parents moved out to this old house out in Oklahoma. My dad was something of a horse trader, by the way. And he was a trader, and he would trade one property for another property. And we, we lived in the role in Oklahoma, that great cultural capital of Oklahoma. And, you know, and we decided to step up a little bit. So we moved to Maldro. You've all heard of Maldro, of course. Almost like New York. No, no, it's quite, but anyway, we moved from a property, it was like three-quarters of an acre to a place that was 19 acres. So my dad was quite a horse trader. But the old house was out there on that property when we moved into it. I mean, it was a rickety old house. You ever seen, you've gone out in the country and seen these houses are leaning? That's the kind of house it was. Well, and my dad always intended to tear it down, but that house burnt down as well. My dad was outside, and he was cooking something on the kitchen stove, and it caught on fire when he was out there, and the house caught on fire. And everything burned down. But, you know, every book I had from North, Northeastern State University, where I was going to school, everything I had was burnt up in that fire.

And that was the year I went to Ambassador College. Remember the dream I told you I had one time about, you know, before I was baptized, I said I dreamed I was on an island between two bridges, one bridge going back into the world and in this dream, and the other bridge leading to the kingdom of God. In my dream, you know, I burned the bridge to the world. That's before I was baptized and started going God's way of life. And so it happened, not only in my mind, but it happened in one sense as I look back again from a physical sense that everything was burned from the past. And so I had to start all over again with everything. So again, things like that can happen. A fire can destroy all that you have, that you consider near. Or it can be stolen. And these days, it can steal your identity. I don't know who would want to be me, but there are people, I guess, who would want to be us. You know, your retirement can be wiped out in one day. Your house can be devalued to where you're underwater and bankrupt. Your health can deteriorate so quickly that nothing matters. Nothing, quite frankly, matters in your life. And you know, I've gone through that. The only thing that really mattered to me, you know, back in February, frankly, was my family. Hoping somebody would take care of them, or that I'd done enough to prepare for them to be able to take care of themselves. And I, of course, wanted to be around to help to do that. But what was most important to me then was being in God's kingdom. But so all of these things, what I'm saying, brethren, it can disappear. It can go to the wayside, whatever it may be. Now, the Bible doesn't tell us, again, we're supposed to be ascetics in our lives. The Bible, in fact, tells us we should work for food, clothing, and shelter in our lives. If a man doesn't work, neither should he eat. That's what the Bible says. So we should work in our lives. But, you know, staking our future on those things is a poor investment in our lives. I've always said that your best investment, brethren, is in the church, in the kingdom. That's your best investment. It's quite unwise to stake your future in the physical, you know, in the mundane of this world, because it is all so insecure. In the end, when we die, what do we have that we take with us to the grave, even as Solomon said? We've got nothing. We came into the world, and somebody spiked us on our rump. And the only thing that will be different when we go out is nobody, hopefully, will spank us on our rump.

That'll be the difference.

Verse 20. Let's read on what he says.

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. And so Jesus said, Lay up your treasures in heaven, because there they are secure.

No one could break into heaven and take from you what you have. So, brethren, what treasures are you laying up right now in heaven?

What are you laying up? You know, I'll tell you, if your life ever comes into jeopardy, you will think about this. I guarantee you.

You know, if you think that your life might be over from a physical standpoint, and that you're going to be in the grave, and the next split second you're going to know is you're going to be in the kingdom, you're going to think about what is my future going to be. And that's going to be the most important thing to you. Let's go to 1 Peter chapter 1. 1 Peter chapter 1.

1 Peter 1 and verse 3.

You know, here he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who according to his abundant mercy have begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith by salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. How long will that be? I don't know. How long will it be when Jesus Christ will return? He talks about the clouds opening, the sky opening like a scroll, and Christ with the angels behind him. You know, coming in his great glory. He says every eye is going to see him when he returns. And he says he's coming and his reward is with him. His reward is with him to give to those who are going to receive those rewards. Brethren, hopefully that's you and me. That we're going to be able to receive those rewards.

And it says, in this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by curious trials. That the genuineness of your faith, that's what God's trying to find out about us, brethren, when we have trials, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it be tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

So the testing of your faith, brethren, your belief, your confidence in God, is much more precious than gold. You know, Peter is saying here, so, brethren, this is the treasure that we should be laying up. How genuine is your faith? How much do you believe God?

How much do you endure, brethren, for the sake of the gospel?

You know, what causes you to rise up in the morning and go to, before you go to bed anymore, you're thinking about the trying of your faith as more precious than gold. Your treasure, again, is better than gold if you have a tested faith.

And when Christ appears, He will reward the saints for their faithfulness, as it says in Revelation 22, verse 12, when He returns, His reward will be with Him to give to every man what His work shall be. This, brethren, is a secure future. We will be given salvation with eternal life, which is a free gift. And then we'll be given the chance to be rewarded in a rule with Christ, you know, whether it'll be over five cities or ten cities or whatever it may be. Maybe a mayor over the city, or you could be a governor for all that, depending upon what you've done in this life, how you've applied yourself. But notice, let's go back to Matthew 6, Matthew 6. So, brethren, this is the secure future that Jesus Christ was talking about. This is what our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said when He came. That was the most important thing. He told those people that came after, you know, that He had turned the bread, you know, He had multiplied the bread and the fishes.

To feed, you know, those 5,000 men, as it talks about, probably 15,000 or more when you include women and children in that. He said, don't labor for the bread. Don't labor for the meat.

You know, those things perish. You only eat one time, you know, if you buy a loaf of bread. But notice in verse 21, for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. Where is your heart, brethren? Is your heart, again, in the treasure that, in fact, you consider important now in this life? Where your heart is is where your treasure is. And God, brethren, is much more concerned about your heart than He is about the treasure in your life.

Where do you set your affections, your hopes, your dreams?

Is your hope in the Kingdom?

Are you willing to endure anything, brethren, for eternal life and this physical life? Are you willing to go through that? Are you willing to go through anything in your life, brethren, that you can be in that resurrection? All was willing to do it.

Remember, He gave up a rather industrious kind of life. He was a young man really coming up in Judaism. He was going to be probably a very potent force in Judaism, but He gave it up. I've met other people in the Church, by the way, who there's not many nobles that have been called, but there have been a few people that have been of noble birth, by the way, called into the Church. It had to more or less leave that behind them, that kind of lifestyle it means behind them, and to pursue God's way of life. But again, what do you set your affections on, your hopes and your dreams? If our hearts are on earthly treasures, the Bible says we're foolish, because we will end up with nothing, nothing at all. If we treasure heavenly things, then what we have is incorruptible, undefiled, and will never fade away. And you know what? Nobody can take it away from you. Somebody wants to take your life from you, you know, and they think that they're taking your most prized possession. Not that we're going to laugh in their faces, but we could. We could say, that's not what I prized the most, and you can't take what I prized the most away from me, no matter what you do to me. You know, but we know that God could take it away from us, but but he's not going to do that if we have our faith in Him, and we're not looking to the physical, the physical and the mundane of this world, as so many people are. Let's go over to Hebrews 10. Hebrews 10 in verse 32. Hebrews 10 in verse 32. But here he says, but recall the former days in which after you were illuminated, after the light went off in your head, and literally for us, when we began to see the truth, the light goes off in our head when we see it. Do you remember when that happened to you, brethren? That you you really begin to understand things.

You know, I don't know how many people over the years I've stood up, and when I've done public lectures, I look at people, and you know, there's nothing, nothing there. It's like a, you know, it goes over the head, somehow or another. But every once in a while you see somebody, and their light goes off in their head, you know, and their eyes change, and it's a different story altogether. I know over the years when we've gone in and visited people, and you've had people that, I mean, just were so eager. I have to tell this story. I think I may have said this to a group here locally at another time. Mr. Mickelson and I used to work together up in the Boise area, and we moved up there from Alabama in 1985, and I think that the Mickelson's were already there, and he was assisting the pastor there. And anyway, so I wanted to get to know Mr. Mickelson better, and so we started visiting together. And I asked him to come over, and maybe we'd meet at 11. We're going to go down to a little town called Burns, Oregon.

There was a couple of visits we had down there, and you may wonder, what do you mean? You go that, it was like 150 miles or more down there. It was a long way. And between Ontario and Burns, by the way, there's nothing, nothing there. There is one station placed there on the way you could stop at a restaurant, and the Basques had a little community down there, but it was nothing of a place usually to stop. It's a greasy spoon restaurant type place. And anyway, we drove down, and I explained to Mr. Mickelson, I said, well, usually when I go out, I try to get back at least by 10 or 11 at night. So don't worry about, you know, we're not going to be out too late. Well, there was a family down there. I mean, they were hitting on all eight pistons. They were brand new, and we started talking to them. I mean, they wouldn't stop asking questions. And we tried to get out of there, and finally I had to say, I'll tell you what, we'll come back tomorrow and see you. And so I think we left about two in the morning.

And we drove up in the Mickelson's, you know, their driveway. I think it was like four in the morning. I told them I was going to be back by 11. You know, we were getting there at four in the morning. I apologized profusely. I said, look, we don't often do this. I'm just sorry. I said, we do need to go back down tomorrow. But I said, listen to me at around 11 again, and we'll make it a point to make sure we get back early. We went down. We had a couple of visits down there again.

And the family that we had talked to the night before, I mean, they had questions. It wasn't right. I said, oh, I mean, oh, and believe it or not, it was like three o'clock before we got out three o'clock in the morning, by the way. Not three o'clock in the afternoon. It's three o'clock in the morning. And you're trying to pull out, you know, get out of there. And we pulled. I had apologized. I said, we'll be back early tomorrow night. We got home, drove up in this driveway, it's five o'clock in the morning. And after that, I said, all bets are off. We don't ever know when we're going to get home if we go visiting. But, you know, that's the way some people are. They begin to, their light goes off in their head, and man, you can't shut them down, you know. And you don't want to. Many a time when we go visit with people, I know my wife and I have walked it, and we've been walking out. I said, you know, that visit changed their lives from totally. That transformed their life because now they know things they can't, you know, they can't forget. There's a lot there in the brain. And when that happens, usually you know whether or not that person's going to come along and be in the church. By the way, those people that we visited, I don't think they ever came into the church. Never began to attend. And if they understood anything, which I really do believe they do or did understand it, they never followed through with it, even though we had spent all that time.

But, you know, I think God will reward his ministry for their efforts to go down and help them. And someday, hopefully, they'll remember that two men came and visited with them and told them the truth and they had their chance or the opportunity. Maybe they'll take up the gauntlet a little bit later on. But, you know, we, brethren, should be as God's people enduring great things because we want a reward that's going to be secure. We want treasures that are secure in our lives. So, you know, when we go through difficulties and problems and so forth, it's to really to cause us to... so that we'll have a reward for the future. We'll have a treasure for the future. In verse 33 here, Hebrews 10 and verse 33, it says, partly while we were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated. For you have compassion on me in my chains and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods. You know, they were willing to give, in other words, to Paul. And it says, knowing that you have a better and enduring possession for yourselves in heaven. In other words, they didn't hang on tenaciously to their physical things of their lives, but they helped others with it within the church. In this case, Paul, because they were looking to the future. Their treasure was in the future. And in verse 35, therefore, do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. Don't cast it away. You know, Paul was telling them, brethren, and let us, rather, not cast away that reward that we're working toward in the kingdom that is so secure. You know, Jesus Christ talked about how the storms of life sometimes can come in our lives. He told the parable, remember, talking about how one man built his house on the sand, and another one, you know, built it on the rock. And the floods came, and the man who built his house on the sand, his house was washed away. But the one who built it on the rock, the floods came and could not wash his house away. And in this case, brethren, his rewards, what was truly important for him, were never washed away, could never be taken away from him. And your rewards, brethren, my rewards can never be taken away from us if we endure the end. We know that there's a solid treasure laid up for us in heaven.

You know, we as God's people, by the way, need to remember this. You know, the context of the teaching on laying up treasures that we read about in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus Christ gave, the context of it had to do with prayer and fasting, by the way. That was the context of that story of laying up treasures in heaven. We do it, brethren, by prayer and fasting.

And having contact with God, brethren, in praying is like laying up the treasure, like laying gold bars up in heaven. In fact, something more valuable than gold that is being laid up in heaven. You know, we do that privately, don't we, when we pray and when we fast? But the Bible says God's going to reward us openly. Remember Jesus himself also in Matthew 6 gave us the model prayer. They talked about entering into your closet and talking to God on a personal level. Don't do your alms, he said publicly. He talked about how they have their reward because they got the public accolade. But he said if you enter in to your closet, you're going to be rewarded openly if you do your alms privately. In other words, nobody knows about it, except God. If you fast and you don't show people that you're fasting, you know, you don't have that forlorn look on your face and downcast and somebody says, what's wrong with you? You say, I'm fasting. Worst thing in the world to do. You don't want to keep those things private.

And that way God can reward us openly. So how can we live treasures in heaven, brethren?

We do so by prayer and fasting. Are you praying, brethren, on a regular basis in your life? How much do you pray every day?

What is the quality of your prayer that you pray every day? Are you giving God your full attention when you pray? Never underestimate, brethren, the value of your prayers before God. The prayers of the saints we're told in Revelation 8 in verse 4, ascend to God as a sweet-smelling incense into the nostrils of God. So our prayers make a big difference. They really do. Jesus did not say, if you pray, but he said, when you pray. He did not say, if you fast. He said, when you fast. You know, we don't do it for other people to see. We do it, in fact, the lay of treasures in heaven. Let's go to Matthew chapter 6 over here, because again in the context of prayer, you're talking about prayer in Matthew chapter 6, the model prayer between verse 9 and on down to verse 15 there that Jesus Christ gave. But let's go down here a little bit down in the chapter. In verse 4, here he says, No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mamma. So you can't have two masters. You know, you can't be dedicated to materialism, in other words, with all your heart, and dedicated to God. You just can't. You have to have one master. You know, we have to put our focus on God. So we make God our master through prayer in fastie.

And the word master, by the way, by definition, demands loyalty, doesn't it? If you have a master, you're loyal to your master. And Christ says you can't please two masters. Maman, by the way, is an old, aromatic word that simply means riches or wealth.

That's all it means. And we must choose whether our master is God or Mamma. In the Western world, Mamma is man's God, for the most part. And when wealth is coveted, brethren, it becomes a priority in people's lives.

We must place God first in our lives as our master if we're going to be laying up lasting treasures in our lives. And we do so, again, through prayer and fasting.

Jesus was the creator of all things, and he created the human eye, didn't he? He made the human eye. Let's go to verse 22. It says, the lamp of the body, Matthew 6 and verse 22, the lamp of the body is the eye. If, therefore, your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.

Now, if the physical eye can focus clearly on one solitary thing, it is healthy. Can you see me up here, by the way? You see me up here? You have fairly good sight, then, huh? And it's working. Do you see any pink elephants up here? Because if you see pink elephants, there might be some other problems here. But, you know, in other words, if you see pink elephants, your eyes might not be quite healthy, and your mind might not quite be healthy. What are the problems that can happen, though, with the eyes? Well, we can have myopia, can't we? You have a problem, and that's nearsightedness. You can't focus on distant things, so you have to have glasses to correct that. My glasses, by the way, I can see you fairly well, except when I wear glasses. My eyes have to adjust to you now, because you look a little blurry. But eventually, my eyes would clear up, and I can see you. Yeah, there you are. But I need these to read.

And we know that people have nearsightedness, and they have farsightedness. Farsightedness is hyperopia. You can't focus on near things. And 25% have this, and they need reading glasses, and I'm one of those people that need that.

There are other diseases. There's presbyopia. You can't focus range at all. There are also other problems of the eye. Glaucoma, cataracts, retinitis pigmatosis, night blindness, tunnel vision, and, of course, blindness itself. Now, you can have spiritual problems, by the way, with all of these. Sometimes you can't see things right in front of you. You can't see the forest for the trees. Then, you know, you can't see things the other way. You can't see the tree. But you can see the forest, which is good. You'll be able to see the forest. Then you have a problem you can't focus on either. And in which case, that's a real bad problem. And or blindness. You know, we can have, again, short-sightedness. We can have near-sightedness. We can have far-sightedness, which is not such a bad problem. But we can have blindness. We can have tunnel vision. We can focus on things and leave out the things that are really important in our lives. If we're not careful. But all these physical ailments affect what we can see. What we can see. What we can see.

But Jesus applies this to us spiritually, as we do and we often do in the church.

Verse 23. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? Now, it is interesting, isn't it, that I can take these off, these glasses, and if my eyes are adjusted back, and I can put my Bible under the light. I mean, highly illuminated. I can read it just as well as if I had these glasses on. What's lacking is light! And for a long time, I didn't night I needed glasses. It was the light that was going bad. And I don't think I'm the only one that ever did that, by the way. A lot of you did it, too, right? The older you got, you thought, oh, it's not. I don't need any glasses. I don't need any of these dumb glasses. And I found I did. I needed something. But it's the light that is the issue. You need more light.

Or if you don't have the light, you can magnify it a little bit, and it helps. But if some darkness is in the eye, then how great is it? And hopefully the point is, is eventually you have no darkness in your eyes. In other words, you see completely. But I'm afraid none of us completely see you.

No matter how brilliant we may be, or how much of God's Spirit that we may have, we're probably still only scratching the surface. And how great is the darkness in us? We won't ever fully know, until we are fully illuminated in the kingdom. We know that if we were to go before Jesus Christ, Christ and the Father shine like the Son, it would be blinding to us. And, assuming, Lee, we're going to do that ourselves. We won't be like the Father and the Son, but we're going to be like brilliant in terms of our, you know, our countenance will be brilliant like the Father and the Son. We'll be like minor stars, as it were, you know, minor sons. But one of the things we do, we need to do, is make sure that we keep our eye good, because we can only serve two masters. And we need to keep focused on the right master. Don't, you know, get nearsightedness and begin to focus on another master. But keep your eye on the right master. And that master, of course, is God the Father in Jesus Christ. And we do so through our prayer, brethren, and our fasting. Again, ask yourself, how much of those are you doing, and to what degree are you doing in your life? You know, not that we should necessarily time our prayers, but are we praying five minutes? Are we praying 30 minutes? Or are we praying an hour? Or two? You know, I would suspect that none of us are going to two or three hours. I think eventually you get to the point where you've maybe gone overboard. You know, you start, you know, doing that. Like you say, God did not call us to be stoics and monks. You know, but we need to have a prayer life, and we need to be fasting. We need to be drawing close to God. And we need to keep our eye good.

Keep our eye good. Jesus gave that metaphor of keeping your eye good. The eyes are a reflection of what is in your heart. And the word good, by the way, in the Greek, means simple, single, and uncomplicated. Keep focused, like I said, on the Master. Keep focused on the Kingdom. When we're baptized, we have to come to repentance where we are totally surrendered to God.

Then we have to promise that we would obey God. Then God revealed His plan of salvation through the Holy Days to us, brethren. And now, brethren, we need to be pursuing that Kingdom in our life.

We came to see, hopefully, that we couldn't conform to the world. We couldn't be like the world, but we had to be transformed according to God's Word by renewing our mind, by changing the way we think, and living a way of life that is against the current of this world, and going God's way in our lives. Let's go to 1 John 3. 1 John 3. 1 John 3.

Okay, 1 John 3, toward the end of the book, over here. In verse 1, we'll begin in verse 1, go down to verse 6. It says, Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God. Therefore, the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. The world doesn't know God's people. We're a small, rag-tag group of people that the world does not know. Beloved, now we are children of God. It has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, when Christ returns, in other words, we shall be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. Right now, we could not look upon Jesus Christ and live. We couldn't look upon God and live. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies Himself just as He is pure. Whoever commits sin or commits lawlessness and sin is lawlessness. So sin is the transgression of the law. And when we commit sin, brethren, if we do it recklessly and we're practicing it, we are committing lawlessness. In verse 5, and you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. And so what John is saying here is if we're keeping God's way of life, then we are not practicing sin. You know, we're not, on a regular basis, breaking God's laws. You go through, again, the Ten Commandments. We're not breaking the Sabbath. We're not breaking the laws concerning marriage and morality. We're not breaking the laws concerning integrity. We're honest people, letting our yay be yay and our yay be nay.

And by doing so, brethren, what we're doing is keeping our eye focused. We're keeping our eye good. It means we're purifying ourselves and we're not practicing sin. We're practicing God's way of life. And we're striving to overcome from the heart. Let's go to Proverbs 23 now. Proverbs 23 Now, Solomon wrote these words, and Solomon, in Proverbs 23 and verse 6, it says, Do not eat the bread of a miser.

In your King James, I think it says, Do not eat the bread of someone with the evil eye.

You'll hear that phraseology very much anymore, do you? But here he says, The bread of a miser, nor desire his delicacies. For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.

But his heart is not with you. His heart is not with you. Here's talking about somebody with an evil eye. I can't remember what the name of the character is in that trilogy that Jackson did. Remember the one that has the ring? He loses the ring. What does he say? My precious? Where is my precious? You know, how many kids try to imitate that little guy on there? Oh, you took my precious from me. Well, he's like a miser. Give me my precious back. You're eating my bread. And you know, when every morsel of bread that goes in your mouth, he's not thankful that he can feed you. He wants it back in some way or another in his life.

Interestingly, the JFB says this about the word miser, about evil eye. Someone can have an evil purpose behind their eyes, an evil purpose behind their eyes. Someone has an evil eye, in other words, or as he says here, miser. Miser doesn't seem as bad, does it? As evil eye. You know, those are two different words. We love that kind of thing in the modern 21st century we live in. Oh, we don't want to call it sin. He just made him a sin. He just made a mistake. A faux pas, even. You know, let's go French with this. A faux pas. He didn't sin. He didn't have an evil eye. He's just a miser. He's a miser. But if the heart is evil, if it's full of the envy and covetousness, then it's filled with darkness. In other words, the eye is dark. And darkness means it has selfishness, it has wickedness, it has falsehood in it. And this is why Jesus warned His disciples, the guard about that which goes into the mind, He said. You know, and what our eyes tend to fix on. Because, you know, what can we have? We can have the pride of life. We can have the lust of the eyes. In other words, materialistic ideas behind us, behind our eyes. And, you know, Jesus Christ, again, warned us, you know, that out of the abundance of a man's heart, the mouth speaks. And that what comes out of the man is what defiles him. The envy, jealousy, lust, and greed that comes out of a human being is what defiles us. And if that's what comes out of his brethren, that's our eye. That's our evil eye there. And we need to keep, again, our eye good. Matthew of Mark 7, Mark 7, and verse 20. Mark 7 and verse 20. And I'll go ahead and wrap this up. I will not finish here, but I'll quit pretty soon.

You never finish a sermon, by the way. It's always another one. Mark chapter 7 and verse 20. Jesus said, and he said, What comes out of a man that defiles a man. From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thus covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye. Last for me, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within in defile a man. That's what we want to get rid of, brethren, to keep our eye good as God's people. And if we do that, we're going to have reward when Jesus Christ returns. If we do our part, brethren, God will do His part with us. Let's go back to Matthew chapter 6. Matthew chapter 6, Matthew 6 and verse 33. He talked about here in, again, this beatitude here that he spoke of in Matthew 5 and the Sermon on the Mount and all that. He talked about how the lilies of the field were taken care of by God, how in fact the fowl and the birds are taken care of by God. And then he says in verse 33, he tells his disciples, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you.

You and I, brethren, if we do our part, God will do His part. If you work hard in your life, keep your eyes on the kingdom. Keep your eye good. Fasten on the kingdom. Don't get caught up in the materialism of this world. But again, be a person that is a hard worker because of a man. You know, it doesn't work. Neither should he eat. So you take care of yourself and others that you may have responsibility over. God will do His part and take care of us. But keep your eye good if you want to lay up treasures in heaven that it will never decay and that God will reward you for. And so we ought to, if we're going to again, have reward in the kingdom, we've got to put God's kingdom first in our lives. Are we doing that, brethren? Are we keeping the kingdom of God first in our lives? Where is our job, number one? No. My wife knows that the kingdom is more important to me than she is to me, although I love her. And, you know, the kingdom is more important to her than I am. And I hope she loves me. Especially after this, I hope she loves me.

Couldn't get that boat started. But we have to put God's kingdom first. Let's go to Colossians 3 and we'll wrap up, because I've gone too long here. Colossians 3. No, we'll quit. We won't wrap up. Colossians 3. If then you were raised with Christ, Paul says, seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on earth. And so I think that's a good place to read the last scripture there. Setting our hearts and minds on things above, not down here, up on this earth, where Jesus Christ says that if you put your treasures here on earth, it's going to all be wiped out. Because you don't bring anything into the world, you're not going to take anything out. So, brother, let's keep in mind that we need to be about the business of laying up treasures in heaven. There they will be secure. There they will never tarnish or be lost by any means. They'll never be diminished by any means. And our God has secured them in heaven. And Jesus Christ is going to return. And every eye is going to see Him, and He's going to have His reward in His hand. And hopefully, brethren, He can give that reward to you. He'll look you in the eye and say, well done. Thou good and faithful servant. Stand for it. I want to give you the reward that you have labored for in your life. And those treasures, brethren, will be secure not only for the short term, but forevermore on out into eternity. So let's work for those things above. And I don't know those things here upon the earth.