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All right, well, you can remain seated. I guess if you were standing, I was going to have you remain standing. I just realized that I'm going to have you sit already. If you turn to Matthew chapter 6, Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 24, we'll read some text. 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.

You cannot serve God and money. Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or 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. Are you not of more value 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? 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 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 but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. That was a reading of the word of God. In fact, that was a quotation of the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ which doesn't carry particularly any more weight than the rest of Scripture considering it's all inspired by God, but it's notable at least.

We're completing our series on the Ten Commandments and we are on the Tenth Commandment which regards coveting. It regards forbidden desires. And as with each commandment, there was both a negative prohibition given in pretty much each commandment, but there was also, in some cases, even though the commandment read as a negative, there was implied and hashed out in the rest of Scripture a positive commandment as well.

So whereas the Bible says you shall not steal, we recognize that that is expanded by Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and the whole of Scripture teaching us that one of the ways that you don't steal is that you work so that you will get your things that you need that way. And it's implied in the commandment. Well, with coveting, there are implications for what we ought to do.

So I could come up here and say, hey, don't desire anything you're not supposed to have. And that's true. And I, in fact, preached on that topic the last two weeks. But what I want to give you is that direction where you should be going now. So if you're sitting there thinking, okay, now I know a lot of my desires are sinful. now I know a lot of my desires are not inherently sinful but sometimes I can make them sinful by desiring something too much right like a desire to work is a good desire but you can work too much right to the detriment of other things so I want to give you the positive at least start to give it to you which will include additional negative, not negative in a bad sense, just meaning there's things we don't do and there's things we do do or are expected to do to obey the 10th commandment.

Our catechism tells us that what required in the 10th commandment is full contentment with our own condition. And there's more there with a right and charitable frame of spirit toward our neighbor and all that is his. And what's forbidden in the 10th commandment is all discontentment with our own estate. And there's a little bit more there. But the point being for this week, I want to give you the impression that contentment is something God expects of you.

And we're not talking about a resigned contentment. like, oh, well, this is just my lot in life, I guess. And so I guess I'll just quit complaining because, well, no one will listen anyway. Or complaining doesn't help, so I'll quit. You can go to a self-help section of a bookstore if you want that kind of advice. Or you can search YouTube for help on contentment.

And you could probably find 98% of the hours that have been spent teaching contentment It will help you to be able to simply ignore the difficulties of life and say you happy anyway because well that what the world kind of wants you to do Now the way that you find contentment in the sense of Christianity is that you need to actually be content Meaning you need to actually find the peace, contentment and happiness that God, I'm going to say, offers. right now it's not like God's it's not like God's a waiter and he's kind of standing there with a tray to see if you you know if you want the hors d'oeuvre but he kind of waits for you to take it's not like that but it's that this stuff is out there it's provided God has an abundance of goodness and grace Edmund Clowney who if you're not familiar with him I encourage you just look up Edmund Clowney, and just listen to anything the guy ever did or read anything he ever wrote. He said, regarding the envy that's forbidden in the Tenth Commandment, which is one of the sins forbidden in the Tenth Commandment, Edmund Clowney said, the envy this commandment forbids is not only a desire for something that belongs to someone else. he says it is our desire for anything that would draw us away from contentedly serving God wherever in his good providence he has placed us so I'm going to repeat that because it's worth repeating in fact I'm going to talk for 45 minutes and that may be the best sentence I'll say the whole day so I'll just say it twice the envy that's forbidden by the commandment is our desire for anything that would draw us away from contentedly serving God wherever in his good providence he has placed us in some sense that elevates the idea of what it means to obey the 10th commandment now when I say it elevates it I mean it elevates it in our minds it was always God's intention when Jesus came and he explained the commandments he didn't elevate the meaning of them he explained what was already there the entire time and yet people were too dull to hear it and Clowney did the same for us so if you turn to Matthew 6 which hopefully you're already there I want to look at one section of scripture where Jesus is dealing with anxiety but I'm just going to put it all under the blanket of contentment it's all under the umbrella of this is you being happy with the providence of God in your life even though and hear me on this one, every single one of you is dealing with difficulties. Everyone in this room is dealing with effects of the curse alone.

That alone is enough to say I'm unhappy, right? Everyone in here knows a loved one who has passed away as the result of the curse. Elijah's got a father who's in extreme pain lately. people have lost children and babies in this room. Some of you are suffering the effects of somebody else's sin in a very direct way right now. I hesitate that I even brought it up, because maybe on this Sabbath you had gotten your mind off it and you were not focused on it.

But the point is this, the contentment that God commands you to seek in the 10th commandment is not contextual. It doesn't say, well, once things are good. If that was the case, then it would be, well, once I'm in heaven, I can obey the 10th commandment. There will always be difficulties in this world. You will always be a difficulty in this world. You realize that there's somebody out there that thinks you're the most difficult person alive?

At least for most of the adults, and probably for the kids that have siblings. There's somebody that thinks that about you, okay? No matter how great you are. So, keeping that in mind, that you will suffer. You will suffer unjustly. There will be times that you suffer because of your own sin and your own bad decisions.

There will be times that your suffering will seem greater than what your bad decision even deserved. Jesus commands you to be content with the providence of God in your life. And I'll spoil the ending for you. He gives you the key to the whole thing in verse 33. So I'll start there. We'll tell you what the answer to the whole question is.

And then we'll go through and talk about the question. Verse 33 tells us, But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Your command, I'm going to say, as part of commandment 10, which I think I could show you somewhat exegetically by looking at the Sermon on the Mount, you will notice that Jesus goes through the commandments in the Sermon on the Mount, and everyone thinks he just kind of stops and then chapter 6 starts.

In chapter 6, he's talking about religious duties and our duty to not be covers. I don't think you change topics all of a sudden let me put it that way seek his kingdom you're told in verse 9 pray then like this our father in heaven hallowed be your name he says your kingdom come your will be done what do you think you saying when you say your kingdom come Your will be done Catechism gives us a hint. What do we pray for in the second petition?

In the second petition, which is thy kingdom come, we pray that Satan's kingdom may be destroyed. and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it and kept in it, and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened. You're praying for more people to be saved. But you can't pray for the kingdom to come without also, in effect, praying that the king would be there, right? and if there's a king there's a lord over your life who he gets to say how you're supposed to live and act so when we say thy kingdom come and thy will be done you're actually supposed to be asking god to conform your heart to his will that you may start acting differently than your nature would have you act when you say thy kingdom come think about that i have no problem if you pray the Lord's Prayer every day, but just don't do it vainly and repetitiously.

Use the catechism to help you even know what Jesus is teaching. What do you pray for in the third petition? In the third petition, which is thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we pray that God by His grace would make us able and willing to know, obey, and submit to His will in all things, as the angels do in heaven. Some of you look forward to the day that you will be redeemed in your flesh.

And you will have a new body and you will no longer be able to sin. And that's a wonderful thing to look forward to. But some of you may look forward to that day that you're not doing anything in the current day to fight against it. You're not acting like someone that actually wants it to go away. You just can't wait till God deals with it. That's why the old joke is don't pray for humility.

Maybe God will give you a situation that really humbles you. We all want humility. We just want God to grant it to us. Just give it to me. Don't make me learn it. Well, it's just not how God tends to work.

God doesn't traditionally, at one time he made trees. But for the most part, God takes decades to grow a tree still. and he'll take time to grow you into what you're supposed to be. So I'm telling you not to fight against it. So, verse 24, no one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other and he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

And then he applies this. He says, you cannot serve God and money. Probably the most common problem that people have today, the root of all kinds of evil is the love of money. in fact your need to feed yourself and feed your family will cause you to do things that you otherwise wouldn't do Proverbs even says we wouldn't even be mad at a guy that stole bread because he was starving you know we kind of say well we understand you know our desire to feed ourselves our desire to clothe ourselves to be warm when it's cold to be cold when it's hot you live in Ohio and you can't live without air conditioning and heat I don't know how you would it'd be unheard of at this point you need a house you need a shelter you have a refrigerator so you can have food to last more than a couple days you have a freezer so you can buy a half a cow or a quarter of a cow and you can eat on it for the whole year and things of that sort we do things because it's important that we take care of ourselves.

Money itself isn't the problem. The problem becomes when the money that we want to get becomes more than what God has provided for us. The problem becomes when we aren't content with where God has us. And there are times in all of our lives that we become anxious. We start to worry about what will happen. And God's command for anxiety is, I think, utterly clear. you're supposed to put it away.

God doesn't say anxiety is okay if a doctor told you it's okay. And I know this can get me in a lot of trouble with people, I guess. But the word of God is clear. Jesus says, therefore, I tell you in verse 25, do not be anxious about your life. What you eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. It's not life more than food and the body more than clothing.

He warns the people not to take too much thought about these things. That's the word. If you read the KJV, it's all about putting too much thought into it. And I think everybody in here knows what it means to be anxious. If somebody walked in here right now and had a gun, and they walked in the room and started shouting and we turned and saw the gun, we would instantly go into what's called fight or flight.

That would be a natural response. Your body would have physiological responses to danger that are actually built into you to protect you from danger. So there's a level of, I'll say, anxiety that's a normal physical response to things that you have to have in a cursed world. if you were so cold and cool and calm and collected no matter what happened my guess would be you'd also lack certain things like compassion for others and the ability to recognize if someone crying and give them a hug and stuff like that okay So I not going to criticize you if you almost in a car accident and your heart starts beating really fast That's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about the anxiety where you are unhealthily focused on the future that Jesus is speaking of here in such a way that shows that you are an idolater. that because your desire to try to figure out and control the future has now become so great that you have transferred from good prudence and planning and into trying to play the role that is God's role in your life, and that is to take care of you. If you read in Ephesians 5, when Paul says, we are not to associate with anyone who is covetous, he says, that is an idolater. I said it last week at the end of the sermon that your covetousness is an affront to God's sovereignty it's saying to God you have not given me all that I need or all that I want as if you deserve all you want when you covet you're saying you know better than God and it's a form of idolatry when you do that so is it wrong to want I'm trying to think of an example is it wrong to want a nicer car because yours keeps breaking down no, it's not wrong to want a nicer car and then to do the work necessary to get the car otherwise we'd never simply improve our lot in life, right? no one would ever make a change if you never just wanted that so we have to be able to distinguish between rightful desires things that are not forbidden and a healthy way to look at them trusting God with the present circumstances and then doing what is necessary for the future and I think that one of the problems we have is we've created a false dichotomy between trusting God and us doing stuff like you're either trusting God or you're doing something.

And I'm going to tell you that when you get up in the morning and you go to work to make money, you're trusting God. So the guy that says, I'm sitting on my couch waiting for God to give me a job, he's the one who isn't believing what God has said. He's not trusting God because he's not believing what God said about work. So get out of your mind the idea that I'm either trusting God or I'm doing something active.

Oftentimes, the way that you show that you trust God is by your activity. Do you think that we're trusting God when we go on the street and preach the gospel? Or is that our mode of not trusting Him? When you teach your kids the catechism and you teach them the gospel and you keep them at home and you take care of them and you educate them the way no one else can, frankly.

Let me just make that clear for a second. There's eight adults in this room and every single one of you is a better teacher for your own kid than anyone else in this room and anyone else in the world. Do you understand me? Nobody loves them like you do. Nobody knows them like you do. Nobody knows their needs like you do.

And when you do that for them, that's not you not trusting God with your kids. It's you trusting what God has told you your responsibility is to your kids. and trusting that God can work in their hearts through even those daily lessons that they seem to ignore. Through all the songs as they sit through and you don't see their lips moving and you wish that family worship would go a little better, they're hearing it and you're trusting God.

And so get out of your mind this false dichotomy. That's when you believe, well, it's either this or this, when two things can both be true. All right, trusting God is not about letting go and doing nothing because God's going to take care of everything. Trusting God is when you believe what God has said in His Word, in His revelation, the way He's communicated to us, and then you act accordingly.

I've met people, I said, are you looking for a wife? This was years ago. I remember a guy said, no, I'm just trusting the Lord to bring one in my life. Like, don't you think He could do it through you doing a little work to search for one? I mean, I get it, like, things happen that seem coincidental, and we know it was God. But to get that out of your mind, that false belief, Jesus says, don't be anxious about your life.

And then he gives us a couple examples. And he's speaking to his disciples here, specifically. He says, 26, look at the birds of the air. So he tells them, look at nature. So before you become Gnostic and think there's nothing in nature that's worth anything at all, Jesus seems to think nature is a pretty good object lesson for people of God's love toward them.

He says, look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap. So they don't do anything to feed themselves. They don't garden, basically. And he says, they don't gather in the barns either. So they don't do all the things we do to make food available to us.

And he says, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. He says, are you not of more value than they? He's trying to make a point. If God is going to feed birds, he's going to take care of you. Again, this isn't an excuse for idleness. This should actually be motivation to do things that are godly.

And in fact, it should be motivation to be a person who's productive and works. Right? there isn't a person in this room who wants your kid to grow up and live on your couch. I promise. If you think that now, talk to me. I'll try to get your mind off that idea. grow up and be productive. That's what you're training them for, so they can feed themselves.

So maybe one day they can feed you, right? Some of our hopes in life is that that's the retirement plan. Kids that will love you and want to take care of their own parents. If God takes care of the birds, He's going to take care of His people. And that doesn't mean that it's always going to be nice. there's been Christians throughout history who have suffered greatly.

There's multiple things that can be true at once. It can be true that God will take care of you and you shouldn't be anxious. And it can also be true that you may end up suffering difficulties. You may lose a job. You may lose clients. You may have a sudden unexpected expense that drains the bank account.

And some of the plans you had for that money go away. But God will always take care of you and he will give you what he knows that you need. And oftentimes, especially if you grew up in the United States, that may be less than you think you need. And it certainly may be less than you think you're comfortable with. But God is always the one who knows what you need.

And his concern is not so much that you get fat or that you have a nice meal and that you felt really good about it. His concern is that you're conformed to the image of his son. And he will do whatever is necessary to drive you to that and praise him for that. Because some of you had to come to a real low point in life before you actually repented and believed in Christ.

And you praised God that he let you get there or in fact pushed you into that low point. because you were too stubborn and too prideful to simply come to him. And you know what? Even as Christians, we're the same way sometimes. So the second example Jesus gives, I'll go back to 27 in a minute, is in 28. He says, why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

They neither toil nor spin. So they don't put their hand to the discif, right, like Proverbs 31 lady does. They don't make any clothing. And he says, I tell you, even Solomon, so like the richest king at the time of the most peace in the history of Israel, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If you know what a lily is, this is a beautiful flower.

God is able to make even the lilies look beautiful. he didn't need the lily to do any work he can handle it he wants you to recognize that he can clothe you don't be anxious about these things it really comes down to money for most people you want money usually not just because people like to stockpile money people usually want money so they can get something else and assuming you're not just a total pervert, you want money to buy things. A lot of people want money for some really wicked things in this world. When I'm talking to the church, we'll assume that if you're coveting, if you're thinking about money, if you're anxious about the future, it's simply because you're worried that you won't have a roof over your head next year, or you'll have to move to a different neighborhood you don't want to live in, or you'll have to wear clothes that are a little more worn out, or maybe they'll be scratchy.

Maybe they won't be super soft on your skin all the time. Or maybe you'll have to eat food that doesn't taste as good. We are very spoiled in our country, and it's easy for us to kind of get lulled into our comforts. Seek first the kingdom of God. He'll take care of you. And praise Him that up to this point, He has allowed our country to prosper in ways that have provided people with amazing comfort, a lot of good technology that has allowed us to build even more technology to do wonderful things for people.

I mean, they literally go into women's wombs and do surgeries on little babies in the womb to repair problems that they have that they can repair then before it develops worse. I mean, this is amazing stuff that people can do. And it's good things. And that doesn't happen if everybody's just living in a hut trying to find clean drinking water. So it's okay to build good things for people.

It's okay to create comforts. You're not doing surgery in a non-air-conditioned hospital somewhere in the middle of nowhere with dirt and flies buzzing around, okay? We need to do these things. But verse 27, Jesus makes, I think, a salient point that we should remember. Which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to a span of life? So he's trying to make a point here. he's not saying everything will be roses in the future he's saying God will take care of you the way God sees fit and even if you could spend all your time mentally calculating what you need to do to get more money to get more clothes to get more status that's what half of the chapter is about is being seen by others as fasting and praying and giving money just pride even if you can devise all the plans in your mind you really don help yourself any All your little mental machinations add up to just a waste of that day.

And if any of you has ever lived with somebody who has anxiety, and I'm not going to say suffers from anxiety, because I wouldn't say suffers from adultery either. anybody who lives with somebody who commits anxiety, who lives in that way, you know what it's like to simply want something to be finished that day and it doesn't get done because the person is so worried about tomorrow. Some of you have family members like that who they can spend hours talking about what may or may not happen this weekend. I don't mean in your immediate family, I just mean maybe around your broader context. and you go to their house, and their house isn't clean.

One of the reasons is they're so worried about what might happen in two weeks with Ukraine or Biden, or who knows what people worry about. People will always come up with something. So Jesus wants you to put away anxiety, and he gives you the remedy. He reminds you not to be anxious about these things. And he tells you the Gentiles seek after these things.

So now he's making a point. and if you were a Jew at the time, this would have been like a pretty stark point, and I'd like to believe if you're a church person in 2022, it would be a stark point as well. And it doesn't feel like one sometimes, because we're so worldly, we don't even know it. It's like, what is it, when the guy looks at the fish and says, isn't this water salty?

And the fish is like, what water? He just swims in it. He doesn't even realize it. when Jesus says the Gentiles seek after these things, it's a rebuke. It sounds nice. You just read through it like, oh, Gentiles, Jews, okay. Then you get to verse 633, and a lot of people like that verse.

It's mockery to a person who's a follower of God to be compared to the exact opposite, which is the Gentiles. That's the use of that word here. do not seek after the same things that the god-haters seek after that's what he's telling them stop acting like someone that doesn't even know the sovereign god let them worry about what they're going to do in the future you don't have to this is why we have an entire nation of people including christians because we're supposedly still a christian nation to spend their whole day Saturday working or doing work, or just playing. Sunday, they do it too.

Sunday's the problem day. I said Saturday, my bad. Because most people can't take a day off because they're so afraid they'll lose the client, lose the job, lose respect, whatever it happens to be. It's their covetousness, it's their desire to be seen as righteous, to be seen as powerful, to be seen as whatever it is. The Gentiles do these things. Don't be like them.

Jesus says that a couple times in this chapter. Do not be like the Gentiles. Do not be like them. You can read chapter 6 later. He says your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all. God knows what you need.

Don't be anxious. Again, I didn't say sit on your couch and wait for food to show up at your door. Because you know what? If a man won't work, he shouldn't eat. And so faithfulness means you know you're supposed to work. Don't be anxious about it, though.

But get up and work. Get up and do what you have to do. And it might be hard. Did you know that it's totally okay for a man, if he has to do so, to work two jobs? It is. Nobody wants to.

I hope not. I hope you all have wives where you're like, yeah, I want to see my wife more than I get to see her. You know, that's great. But there's nothing wrong with having to work a little extra hard in this world. It's a cursed world. It's part of the deal.

You may have to do things you don't want to do to provide for your family. That's okay. Wives, too. I know I mentioned men, but wives have to... Wives probably work harder than men in a lot of ways. We just deal with different things sometimes. but we all have to do these things so that we can take care of ourselves.

That doesn't mean you're not trusting God. Sometimes it means you're trusting God. If God said you're a slave to the lender if you're a borrower, and you don't want to be a slave to the lender, so you want to get out of debt, you may have to do things differently than you've done them before. so there's some interesting applications of being a anxious person or covetous but jesus tells you what to do he says seek first the kingdom of god and his righteousness part of how you show god that you trust him and that you're not coveting is that you seek his kingdom let me give you a few practical applications of this one of those is that you come to church on Sunday.

And on Sunday when most of the rest of the world including a lot of Christians think I got something better to do today Your decision is I can do anything better than this It not oh I so sad I have to miss a football game today because I've got to go to church. That's still coveting. It's, I'm so excited that the Lord of Glory, who's holier than I could even imagine, lets me come into his presence through the mediation of his son Jesus Christ.

And I wish I got to go to church every day. That's the attitude of the person that loves God. Part of how you seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness is by your giving. do you give to God's causes? And I'll say primarily the primary I'm not going to say only but the primary place where you are to be giving is your local church. Are you sacrificially giving to your local church in such a way that makes sense with the testimony of scripture? have you looked at your budget and found, wow, there's some things that I buy that I guess I could support missionaries instead with that money?

How much do you covet? I hesitate to use an example because I don't want to offend an individual. Let's say you like hats. So forgive me if you're the hat lover. I'm not trying to pick on anyone. but is it possible that someone could collect more hats than necessary and some of that money could have gone to a guy that's out laboring on the mission field or a woman that's out laboring on the mission field or just to a pastor and his wife so i'm not just talking about tithing and giving some to the church and trying to get at least 10 percent or what you know there's different people have different opinions on some of that.

That's not the point of this teaching. The question is, when you give it, are you giving it cheerfully? And even if it hurts a little bit, are you still cheerfully giving it? Would you rather somebody else have that than you? Because if you'd rather have it than them, and you think God's calling you to give it, it could be a form of coveting. I'm so convicted that, because I know so many people that want to be missionaries, and we have Dale now, who I'm talking to.

And Dale's one of the guys I think I would like to support this guy. You know? Let's think about today, about bringing up in the church even. And there's lots of people out there that need support. And if you read some missionary biographies from the past, the one thing you'll always see is there was always people that had to take care of that person. Because usually they go to a foreign land and they can't work.

Or even if they could, What do you want them to do? Just move far away so they can evangelize in their free time? Not when you send a missionary to another country that hasn't had the gospel. You send them there so they can labor for the gospel full time and not have to worry about where they're going to get their next meal. So are you seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, or do you just want to go to roosters again?

And I'm not just preaching to you guys, all right? I'm not saying never go out to eat. I'm not saying don't have anything nice. Don't hear that. But I think that we all can question our own motives in our spending and in our giving. Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.

He will reward his people. Maybe not in this life. But in this life, the reward comes from knowing that you were seeking his kingdom. That's the reward in and of itself. You could give all the money that you have today away to Christian missionaries. And I'm talking about legitimate ones here.

And you could never hear in this life of a single conversion, you could never get an email from them telling you how they're doing. The reward is knowing that you were seeking God's kingdom first and His righteousness. and you need not be anxious about your own life. If you turn to Philippians 4.6, I want to just point out one other antidote that God has given us to our covetousness, which often manifests itself as anxiety.

There's very few covetousness meters out there that are not external. So I can't look at Lindsay and say, hey, you're coveting. I just can't. If I tried to, actually it would be correct to rebuke me for unrighteous judgmentalism. But what I can do is I can look at what your behavior is and I can start to ask you, Huh, are you envious of this other person?

Are you covetous of these person's things? And we can start to see how covetousness manifests itself in our life. And one of the ways is anxiety. is when we are anxious about where we're going to get our next meal. In verse 5 of chapter 4, Philippians 4, Paul says let your reasonableness be known to everyone And he says the Lord is at hand So we talking about reasonability here Talking about right thinking sound minds And then he follows that up with, it's the same sentence in the English, it's a semicolon, it's not even a new sentence.

He says, the Lord is at hand, and do not be anxious about anything. Reminds me of where he says, do all things without grumbling and complaining. Which are forms of covetousness. They're symptoms of it, okay? When you have a cold, we don't know you have a cold until you have a runny nose. But your runny nose isn't the cold.

Your runny nose is the symptom. Do you understand what I'm saying? So your anxiety, your envy, your jealousy, your jealousy, these are the things that show that you're covetousness. The antidote antidote to your anxiety of being anxious about anything is in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God. Your primary sin when you're anxious about the future is you're not thankful for what you already have.

Most of you, if I said, are you an optimist or a pessimist? A lot of people say, well, I'm an optimist. Well, look at what God's already provided for you. He has provided abundantly. And when we look at what we're lacking, we can easily start to become anxious about it. But if we look at what we have and what God's given, we can keep our eye on the kingdom of God.

We can express thankfulness in our prayers for what He's already provided. And then you can ask Him, by prayer and supplication, hey, would you give me something else, but not my will, but your will be done. Lord, I want my wife to change. You can pray that prayer. I wouldn't need to, of course, but you other men, you can pray that prayer. Lord, save my son.

Lord, save my daughter. I'm not telling you to be happy if your kid is unsaved right now, but you need to be content with where God has them right now and then pray that He would do the work that only He can do. So there's a distinction between discontentment and honestly assessing the situation and praying for something to change. And you need to have some maturity and discernment to do that.

And that's one of the reasons Paul says, let your reasonableness be known to all. There's a reasonability factor that always comes in when we express our sinful anxiety. And so as part of the Tenth Commandment, anxiety is probably one of the biggest offenders. And if it's not the biggest offender, let me put it this way, anxiety is the most excused offender in our culture today.

You can experiment with this. You can ask a hundred people if anxiety is a sin in churches, and I bet you you will get 95 of them to say no. And matter-of-factly, no. Not even qualified. And yet we're told multiple times in scriptures not to be anxious. And so our world has perverted the teaching on it so that people might feel comfortable in living in persistent rebellion against God's command.

In the book of Matthew, the very first time that Jesus uses the word oligopistos, or oligopistuo, and it's the very first time the word was ever used in the history of the world. Jesus invented a word, Matthew 6, used five more times in the Bible. Six more times, technically, but there's a textual variant in one of them. Oligo pisto. Do you know what those mean?

Oligo means small. Pistos. Pisto. That's a word people should know. That means faith. So when Jesus says, oligo pisto to his disciples, he's saying to them in one word because he says oh ye of little faith which sounds neat and he's saying little faithers he's not saying something nice he's saying you're little faithers you have such little faith and so you and I in effect participate in being little faithers when we refuse to seek God's kingdom first, to thank Him for what He's given us, and instead to harbor covetous thoughts in our heart and we disguise them or we label them as something different.

And so the call today is repent. Right? We repent of particularly known sins particularly. And if anyone's sitting there thinking like, wow, how can this guy get up there and act like he doesn't covet? Well, I covet too, okay? It's the one sin, hopefully, we're all going to die with.

There's some outward sins hopefully we've all put away and we will continue to put away. We will all die with some covetousness left. And so I'm asking you today as members of Covenant Bible Church, repent of that which you know to be covetous. Confess it to one another that you might be prayed for. And so I'll stop right there. And I will ask...