The Kingdom of God and Financial Provision

There is a nation called South Sudan in North East Africa. This small country had a civil war and so South Sudan is sort of a new country. But in this country, their population is very distressed. The average income for the citizens of this country are $360 a year. The country has a crime rate that's very high. On the national, on the international scale of crime index, I didn't know there was such a thing until I found this, 50 is considered the average amount of crime in a city or country. South Sudan has 85% crime index. Now they have a government, but the government doesn't have very much power and authority. So they're not able to do the job that a government ought to do. The power that a government has and the authority they ought to have should provide for a living for their families in the city and towns and nation in which they live. They should be able to provide protection from criminal elements that are available in that country or city or county or country, but they can't. The power they have and the authority they have is so limited they can't even really do their job. When Jesus was in trial before Pilate, Pilate was discussing with him his own circumstances and what was taking place. And he was challenging Jesus, and John is a book I want to read from, chapter 18. He was challenging Jesus as to who exactly he was. He had heard different stories about Jesus and who he was, and he wanted to hear from Jesus himself. I want to begin reading at verse 33 in chapter 18 of the book of John. Pilate was an agent of the Roman government. He had the power of life and death over Jesus, and he had the authority to do what he needed to do. They brought Jesus, claiming he was king of the Jews, which means that Jesus would have had power and authority over the Jews as a ruler. So Pilate went back inside the palace, summons Jesus, and asks him, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus said, is this your own idea, or did others talk to you about me? Do you think I'm a Jew, Pilate replied? It was your people, your chief priest who handed you over to me. What is it that you have done? Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place. You are a king then, said Pilate. Jesus answered, you're right in saying I'm a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. Jesus was challenged about who he was. Do you claim to be a king? If you were a king, then you would have power and authority. Why are you then under the subject of other Jews instead of being in charge of them if you have power and authority? So Jesus tried to explain to Pilate exactly what it meant to be the king as he was king. I am not a king exercising power and authority as you have with armies, soldiers, and the death penalty. My kingdom is of an entirely different nature. Most of the world looks at Christ, looks at God, as if they have no power and authority. They feel like they can live any way they want, do whatever they choose, because there is no consequence from the authority or power of God. For those, though, who see Jesus as the Lord and the King and the ruler of the universe, our view is quite different, because the kingdom of God allows Christ, allows God to exercise power and authority in an entirely different way than human governments exercise it. We find out about what the kingdom of God is really like and the power that God has when Jesus started his ministry in Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount we call it, where Jesus was talking about how his power is exercised in the lives of people. And I want to read from Matthew chapter 6 beginning with verse 23. Jesus is talking about people who come into this world and are distressed about financial circumstances. Larry's testimony is appropriate for what we're talking about today, because he's described how God has power and authority in the area of financial things, far different than human governments. Human governments would exercise their power and authority by either lowering taxes or raising them or giving you grants and jobs that you have or businesses that you might have. God does it in an entirely different way, but he has power and authority. Chapter 6 verse 25 of Matthew, Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, and he's talking now to his disciples gathered to hear him, what you will eat or drink or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and your body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to this life? In the material world, the government deals with how much money you have or don't have, whether you have clothes or you don't have clothes, whether you have food or you don't have food. God is not concerned about those things. He's guaranteed them to his followers in his kingdom. I will provide for you. And why do you worry about clothes? See the lilies of the field. See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin, yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. So do not worry, saying, what shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? The pagans run after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. What Jesus was describing is what the kingdom of God is really like. God makes promise early in the Bible to Abraham, all the way through the Bible, saying, I will be your God if you will be my people. If you will do the things I tell you to do, I will be your God. And by being your God, he means to us that he will guide us in all the choices that we need to make. He will provide our needs, he will protect us, and he will make our life a great impact on the world. Here Jesus takes one of those elements and shows how he exercises his power in this area of financial matters. The promise I've made, Jesus is saying, I said I would provide for you. Now, when I make this promise, I'm saying, if you place the kingdom of God as the ultimate priority for your life, what we would say is submit to the authority of Christ. Say to God, I give my life to you, I surrender my life to your will. I will live my life from this moment on in obedience to you. That's what he means by seek the kingdom above all other things. If you've made that commitment, here's my promise to you, I will provide for you. Now what you'll find around you is all the pagans are worried about their money, they're worried about their finances, they're nervous about circumstances. It's not going to be that way for you. For my power and my authority will provide for you in the financial arena. So I want you to look around you. Look at the flowers. They don't worry about tomorrow. They're not anxious about anything. Look at the splendor of them. They have colors and beauty that none of your clothes will ever have. So if God takes care of the flowers that are totally dependent on him, will he not take care of you because you're totally dependent on him? Look at the birds of the air. They fly around, seem disinterested in everything, yet they have enough food. They do exactly what they're supposed to do. So if you will enter the kingdom of God and you will do exactly what God wants you to do, submit your life to him, live for him, he will care for you like he does the birds. That's how God cares for his kingdom. He cares for those who trust him. Now whenever you trust your life to Christ and you begin to worry about your clothes or your food or the financial matters in your life, you have chosen either one of two issues about yourself to expose. One is, you've either exposed that you're no longer doing the things financially that God wants you to do, and so God has removed his promise to take care of you. That is, if you've turned to stealing or if you've gone in some kind of illegal activity with your life, you'll discover God just backs off. If you're doing things that you shouldn't do, God removes his promise from you. Remember, it's a promise made to those who seek first the kingdom of God, which means you seek first God's instructions for you. The other side of that is, you've either failed to believe that God will actually keep this promise. That's the only reason a person should have worry about finances if they've surrendered their lives to God. Either you've failed to be obedient to him, or you really don't trust him. If you were to put this in human terms, let's say Bill Gates called you and said, I have a job in Great Bend I want you to do, and here's the job. You say, well I can do that. He said, now here's your salary and I hope it pays for everything that you need. It should be generous enough. And you say, well yes it is. He says, now if you run into any kind of difficulties or problems that come up, and you fall short of your finances in doing this job I have for you, give me a call and I'll make sure you have enough. Well he has enough money to take care of that promise. He's given you the job that you're supposed to do. All you have to do is do the job. He's paying you well. Then one time something happens, sickness, some kind of reverses, you get in that tight spot. You remember the promise that he made. So you just call him and say, Bill, I've got a difficult situation. He says, yeah I know, you've been doing a good job for me, what do you need? You tell him, he sends you a check. Now you might have to call him and say, you know, I started out doing this job, but it just took a lot of my time, so I'm not doing very much with the job, but I'm having financial problems. He said, well, you know, I promised to pay you when you did the job. He's not going to send you the money because you're not doing what he told you to do. So your failure would come because of your own failure to do what you're supposed to do. Not a failure on his part. If you were doing everything he told you to do, you would expect him to keep his side of that deal and you would have no financial worries. God is richer than Bill Gates. He has far more financial and material power than Bill Gates. He says to his disciples, you trust your life to me and I will provide for you. If you have a doubt, go outside and look at the birds. They make it. I care for them. They do what I tell them to do. Go out and look at the flowers. They do what I tell them to do. I provide for them. And if you will do what I tell you to do, you will find that I'll provide for you. It's that simple. So don't worry. And don't be anxious about your finances. Instead, be anxious about submitting to the authority of my kingship. Do what I tell you to do. And all these things will be taken care of. Now you look around you and you'll see that the pagans that are around you are scrambling financially. They're struggling financially. They're worried about finances. But it's not to be that way for you. Because they live in the kingdom of economic finances. You live in the kingdom of God. God provides for his children in very unusual ways, sometimes beyond our own ability to understand. Larry talked about that. How is it that God can do this? We don't always know. But he made a promise to us. This is what I'm going to do. And he has the power and authority to do it. Now Jesus was saying to Pilate, I don't operate the way you operate. If I was a king like you're a king, and your soldiers came to get me, I would ask my soldiers to fight your soldiers. But I didn't do that. Because my kingdom is not of the world like yours is. You see in the world, whenever you want to win, you have to beat the other person. And in a battle, you have to win the battle. And so in our lifestyle, in our pagan lifestyle, our human nature, if somebody hurts us, we want to hurt them back. If somebody offends us, we want to get even with them. If somebody treats us bad, we want to get even with them and make sure we do. And if we don't, then we get angry, we get bitter, we get resentful. I've known people who've carried resentment and bitterness in their hearts for 40 or 50 years. And every time you'd mention the name of the person that hurt them 40 years ago, you could see the anger build up inside, the resentment build up inside. They were possessed by this. They had the attitude that in this world, if you don't win, you lose. And so they were determined to win. And when they couldn't win, they were bitter about it and angry about it. Jesus described for us exactly how he deals with conflict and how he gives us the victory in conflict. He wanted us to understand what his purpose was and how he would achieve the purpose that he had for us. In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus said, You have heard it said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. He meant, you know, in your world, people say if somebody knocks out your tooth, if you can knock out the same tooth of the guy that knocked out your tooth, then you would say, okay, the deal is settled. Haven't you heard people talk about marriage saying, you know, it needs to be 50-50? You get as much as they get. You have to have as much as they have. If they've done something to you, you get to do something to them, settle it up like that. That's the pagan way of having peace, 50-50, divided in half. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your coat as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to the one who asks you and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. What happens when someone injures you or steals from you is you think, well, I must get it back. I must pay them back. And if you can't do that, what builds up inside of you is a sense of things not being fair. I have been cheated and I can't settle this. I can't stand it because I've been cheated. They need to get what they're giving to me. That's our human nature. Jesus says my kingdom is different than that. The kingdoms of this world match power with power, battles with battles, destruction with destruction. But it's not that way in the kingdom of God. What I tell you to do is, trust me, I am the judge. I will settle all the scores and I'll pay evil its payback. What I want you to do is forgive and turn the other cheek. When someone slaps you and you say, boy, that really hurt and they shouldn't have done that, then I want you to say, God, here is a person who's hurt me. I don't know why they did it or what their purpose is, but I trust that if there's something they did wrong, you'll settle it because you're the Lord. As for my part, I'm going to turn loose of it and say, okay, I forgive you. I'll turn the other cheek. If you need to hit me again, go ahead. It doesn't matter. God's going to settle his score anyway. I don't have to get even. So what the person does when he's been hit on one side and hit on the other, he just turns loose. I don't have to settle this score. And he walks away from this battle with peace inside. I'm not mad. I'm not angry. I know someday down the road God's going to settle his score and he can do it much better than I can. So what God's kingdom gives is peace. Now when people are hit one way and they hit back, what they're looking for is peace. I want to feel satisfied. I want to feel like everything's okay. The world says you'll get it if you give back to that person exactly what they've given to you. Have you ever been in one of those arguments in your home, you know, and no one ever thinks they win? Because if you do, say on a scale of one to ten, two to me, and I try to do two back to you, it always feels to the other person like it's two and a half. So they think, I owe you a half. So they try to give you a half and it ends up feeling like it's one and a half. And then you think, okay, I've got to give them one and a half and it ends up feeling like it's two. And before it's over, you're both at ten. Angry, separated, resentful, and bitter. That's the way the world settles things. You just watch it on the world scene. If one country's in a battle with another one, they never settle those. One may win, but they keep in the back of their mind it isn't over. You can drive through the South now and pick up trucks. On the front of it, it has a picture of a Confederate soldier saying, hell no, we ain't forgetting. It's been over 150 years, they're not forgetting. We didn't get our share of the fight. That's the way the world handles this. So the Kingdom of God, God says, here's my deal. I will give you peace. See, nobody has peace who loses in this country's battles. They always feel like, I've got to get even. God says, I want you to forgive them. Forget it. Walk away. And trust me, I'll take care of it. So you can live your whole life without any resentment and bitterness. So you see Jesus hanging on the cross and these people making fun of him, crown of thorns in his head, they drove the nails through his hands and feet, they're making fun of him on the cross. Most people would be boiling with resentment and bitterness and anger. He said, Father, I know you're going to settle this score, but be easy on them. Forgive them. They don't understand the seriousness of what they've done to me. Stephen, one of the leaders in the church at Jerusalem, was stoned to death. They were stoning him. He had every reason to have thought, I've given my life to Jesus, I've served him the best I know how. Why am I here being killed with rocks? But he looked into heaven and said, Father, forgive them. Jesus died at peace and Stephen died at peace. And neither one died angry, resentment, bitterness in their heart. Paul spent his life doing the work that God called him to do. He was beaten so many times, he was put in jail, they tried to kill him. Every bad thing happened to him. We don't see in any of his letters a single incident of resentment and bitterness and anger. He was at peace. You can live your life from beginning to end and never be mad and never have bitterness and never have resentment if you will let God and all of his authority take control of the circumstance. He said, it's very simple, don't fight back. It's amazing how many times people get tired of hitting you if you quit fighting back. But they will. And God will give you peace. We say, well, boy, this is just impossible to do. Not worry about money and not to fight back when people around you are treating you so nasty. Well, there's a big secret to it. It's the power and authority of the kingdom of God. Jesus came to his disciples after his resurrection in Acts chapter 1 and he was talking to them about the kingdom of God. In his first chapter, he said Jesus spent 40 days and spoke to them about the kingdom of God. How do you live in this world where God is in authority and in control of you? And you're in a world where there are pagans in authority and in control. And you look at them and you want to practice life the way they do it. But you're in the kingdom. What is the kingdom like? Then he said to them, now, I've taught you about the kingdom of God and what I want you to do is go to Jerusalem and go up to this upper room that you have and stay there until the Holy Spirit comes to you. In chapter 2 verse 1, when the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. What they experienced that day was the presence of the Spirit of God coming into their life. Now remember, the Spirit of God was the Spirit that made everything. God said, let there be light and the Spirit made all the things that are out there. Let there be the earth and He made that. Let there be water, He made that. Everything the Spirit of God by His power made all of this. This is the power of God at work in the physical world. As they were sitting there, they were given this visual picture of a tongue of fire over each of their heads and suddenly the Spirit of God came into their lives. When they started speaking, they spoke languages they'd never learned or practiced. Can you imagine the shock of this? They went out in the streets of Jerusalem where there were people from all over the world speaking different languages and were able to go up and speak to people who were from Greece and speak the Greek language or communicate to them. The Romans, all the other languages, they discovered the power of God to make something happen that they could not do on their own. It changed their whole futures. They from now on never ever thought that there was anything that God could not do. You see, the secret to living this Christian life is to believe that God has the power to do anything He promises to do. Whether it is help you witness to someone else as they discovered in that city in Jerusalem or whether it is to provide your financial needs or whether it is to give you physically what you need, peace inside in the middle of the worst conflicts that you can imagine. God has the power to do that. Jesus said, here's the secret, in your life, when you order all the priorities of your life, you make the first priority, seeking first God's control of my life. So when you make your calendar, what are the things God wants you to do? Are the Bible studies He wants you to attend? The prayer He wants you to give? The time spent with Him and simply reflecting on what He said to you? What kind of service does He want you to give in the church and in the community? And those are the first things you put out. Then when you've given God His part, then you can put all the rest of the other things in place. If you run out of things, time, money to do things, you just eliminate them. Eliminate those on the bottom, not those on the top. That means putting first God's control of your life. It allows Him to exercise His power in you. But the biggest thing He wants is to change our character, to change who we are, the way we act, the way we think, the things that we do. Paul described in Galatians a perfect picture of what our insides are about. God wants to change the inside of us, that's what He's worried about, not the outside things that are around us. He said, the acts of the sinful nature are obvious. He means by that the acts of our human nature that God is not controlling, but instead the power and authority of Satan is controlling. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious. Sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. All of those are characteristics of people whose lives have been controlled by Satan's power and authority. We don't do those things because we want to be bad. We do them because we think in some way they're going to be beneficial to us. Why is someone involved in hatred, fits of rage, or jealousy? It's because we think if we have what that person wants, we'll be satisfied. That's the jealousy. If we pay back the people who've hurt us, we're going to feel good about it. Satan always causes us to think doing what he tells us will bring satisfaction. It never does. Now here's that kind of person, filled with all these things. That Paul says in the next paragraph, the fruit or results of the Holy Spirit's work in your life, he's talking about the same people up here who have all these problems. When the Holy Spirit takes control of their lives, they're characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. What he's telling us is the power of the Spirit is so great that he can take a person who's in the grip of the worst kind of sin in the world and transform them into a person like God. That's the power of the Spirit. I often talk to people who have problems like this and they say, but I can't do it. Well, sure you can. But the issue is, do you believe God could? You believe someone that made the sun could cause you to forgive somebody? Yeah. Do you think someone who created all the gold in the world could give you the hundred dollars that you need? See, if you have trust in God to allow him to take your life and do what he wants with it, he will transform it. So Jesus said to Pilate, my kingdom is not like yours, where you go out and fight to win. My kingdom is of the nature that the person who's in the fight and being abused can have perfect peace without getting even or without fighting back. My kingdom is of the nature that the person who doesn't have enough money to pay for his expenses or his needs can be confident that it's going to come even though he doesn't know how. So that he feels wealthy even though he has no wealth. He feels content even though he didn't win. That's the world of my kingdom. So I have to ask you, do you want to be able to feel financially confident that God is going to take care of you? It's not a matter of budgeting. It's not a matter of learning all these gizmos. It's a matter of saying, I put the kingdom of God first in my life and I will do everything God tells me and not worry about the money deal I trust him to provide, like the birds and the flowers. You have conflicts that seem to dog you all the time. You want to find peace. You say, okay, God, I will learn to forgive, turn the other cheek, not fight back. I'll learn that. You give me the ability and you will find peace. You won't always win, but then you won't care. Because you know that God is going to settle all evil scores. You don't have to. The reason this is so hard is when we try to settle the scores only God can, it's too big a job for us. We need to take care of the man-sized jobs that we can do to say, okay, God, I trust you. If you've entered the kingdom of God, you should have peace and you should feel confident that God is going to take care of you. If you don't, then you're not doing it right. Would you bow your heads? So I have to ask you about the kingdom of God. Have you entered it? Here's the way you enter. You simply say to God, I know you're bigger than I am. I know you're the ruler of the entire universe. I want to live my life the way you say is right instead of the way everybody around me lives it. And so I give my life to you. Whatever you want me to do, I will do it no matter how hard it is. I trust you to give me the ability. I'll put you first in all the things that I do. And I'll trust the power and authority of your spirit to make things right and to provide for me and to guide me and to make my life what you meant it to be. That's putting God as the Lord of your life. You may come to church a lot, but you have to be honest with yourself and God to say, is he really controlling my life? If he's not, then you're not in the kingdom. And it won't work for you. You have to stop and say, I give everything to you. When you say that, you think of things that you can't control. And you think, oh, I've got to get control of this. No, you don't. You just have to say, God, here's something I can't control, and I give you this part of my life. I will do whatever you tell me. And you listen. Read the Bible regularly. Pray regularly. Ask for his wisdom regularly. And do what he tells you, even though it seems and feels wrong. And you will experience his power. Maybe God's telling you you need to commit your life to him today. He may be telling you that you need to become part of the church. He may be telling you that there are some things in your life that need to be turned over to him. When the king talks to you, he expects you to say, yes. If you say, no, he's not your king. I'm going to ask the pianist to play this morning. In the process of this time, God may have put some things in your mind that you know is from him that he wants you to do. You may feel like a need to get up from your seat to come to the front and say, here's a promise I need to make to God, and we'll pray with you. The king is speaking. If you're his subject, you will listen, follow his directions, and then receive his power. Would you stand, please, in a moment of prayer together? Nancy, are we going to meet here for the evening? We'll meet in this part of this building for our evening report from our mission group, so I encourage you, invite you to be here for that. Father, we're thankful that we don't have to live in the kingdoms of this world alone, filled with its torn, ragged anger, hatred, resentment, and starvation. You've given us a new kingdom where we can live life as you intended us to live it. I ask, Father, for every person who hears me and who said to you, Jesus Christ, you are my king, that you will begin to direct them step by step as to how to live so that they can receive from you the power that you alone can give and the result that you alone can bring. We go into this world to show to everyone exactly what it means to live in your kingdom by the way we live, act, talk, that the world might see you and desire your kingdom. In the name of Christ, we ask for this power and authority. Amen.