I always struggle with a title to my sermon. Last week I had no idea what I was going to preach on this week. I was concerned about last week’s message. Monday and Tuesday rolled around and I still didn’t have a scripture, still didn’t know what I was going to preach on. I said, Lord, I’m getting worried here. It takes me a month to really get my sermon together. I’m not used to this like Bob. Finally, I realized the Lord was telling me I needed to expound a little more on what I preached last Sunday. Last Sunday we realized that it is through Christ, through God, through his grace that we are saved. That is how we obtain salvation. But what after we obtain salvation? Then what? How are we suppose to be obedient under his grace? That was the title I had picked out was, "Obedience under grace", but I felt it was a little too theological, too much like a seminary title. So I was searching for another title. And on the way to the lumberyard, Friday, I am a contractor and I do a lot of construction work, and I was on the way, and I didn’t have God on my mind. I had lumber on my mind. I didn’t have the message on my heart at all. I put that away. That was coming that night. And all of a sudden, just out of the blue, driving down the road, the Lord gave me a title. And you know it is so powerful when the Holy Spirit moves on you in that way. That is what we need to strive for in our lives, is to be led by his holy spirit and to be receptive, be obedient, unto where we are called. The life he has called us in to. And the title came to mind, as I shared a little this morning, is that where your heart is there will your soul be also. And I thought this sounded familiar. And came Friday night, and my studies, and I know that is familiar so I looked up in my commentary and sure enough I found something real similar to what the Lord had laid on my heart. So I thought, well, now I am being a copycat of what Jesus had said in Matthew 6. It says, where your treasurers are, there will your heart be also. But you see, our treasures in this life, the things that are dear to us, are the things that we follow from our hearts. Those are the things that direct us and guide us. So you see, where your heart is, is where your following the desires of your heart, the desires of your life, the things that control you. So where your heart is being controlled, you will be in the mist of that very thing. Because our souls are either going to heaven or they are going to hell. One place. We have a choice to make in this life. It is were we serve with our heart, and the things we believe in, the things that direct us, that is where our soul will be. That is where we will be in the mist of. I am going to read a little bit from Matthew here this morning. I felt if the Lord directed my heart in this way, this is probably where I kind of ought to go a little bit and expound on. In Matthew chapter 6 starting with verse 19. These are the words of Jesus in one of his parables to his disciples and the surrounding people. 19. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. You see, the things we obtain in this life should not be precious. We are not going to take those things with us, those things we accumulate in this life. Where your heart is, there will your soul be also. 22. "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! 24. "No one can serve two masters. 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 both God and Money. You see, Christ has called us into a new life. We are to put the old life aside. If that light is within us than we will be living under God. We will be serving him, living into his spirit. We will serve him in spirit and truth. If we serve our flesh, we will follow the principality of the air, satan who is roaming around like a lion seeking whomever he may devour. These are the very same tricks he played on Eve in the garden. He put material things up in her face. He told her she would be like a god. You will be as god. You will be able to serve him better. You will be like him. Little did she know that as sin we are not to be like God, we are to serve God. And serve him in the way he desires us to. So you see, you can not serve the things in this life and truly serve him from your heart and serve God in the spirit. Because serving things in this life, serving things that you accumulate, you are going to find that is where your heart is. That is where your desires go to. God gets pushed out and left behind. You can not serve both at the same time. It does not work. We have a choice to make in this life. 25. "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26. Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27. Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life ? When we worry about things of this life, when we wonder where our next paycheck is coming from. I am an independent contractor. I know there are some others out here. You farmers, you depend on God. Are the crops going to be good this year. How am I going to do it if the crops are bad. If you are having a bad drought here, what am I going to do. How am I going to pay the bills. We can easily get wrapped up in this life about the concerns of how we are going to survive and how we are going to make it through. But all that worrying, it doesn’t add one day to your life. God gave us life and God also takes life away. Where your heart is, there will your soul be also. 28. "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30. If that is 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, O you of little faith? As Mark read, all the glory of Solomon. There was no man who had any type of riches in this way. Every thing that we had was gold. And every thing looked miraculous. And this is what he accumulated. But Solomon was a godly man. But you see, even in all the earthly things that we posses is nothing to what God has in store for us in heaven. He refers to the grass of the fields and the lilies. Look at the splendor that is in his creation. Everything in this earth belongs to him. It is all his. We should serve him in spirit and in truth. 31. So do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' 32. For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Why should we worry when we have Christ living in our hearts? We should have trust and have faith. That is a difficult thing to step out in faith when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from. When you don’t know where the next house payment is coming from, the car payment or whatever. But you know, God knows you have need of these things. He knows we need clothes. He knows we need to be fed. He knows we need to retire if he doesn’t come back. He knows we have to have money to sustain ourselves in this life. We need to have faith. Faith is a hard thing to step out on sometimes. That is being obedient onto God, is living your faith. This is the verse I was seeking to get to. Verse 33. 33. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Back in Colossians, chapter 3, starts out, 1. Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. We just heard from the words of Jesus back here. We are to seek the kingdom of God. But Paul is talking here to the Colossians, is we need to seek God’s kingdom. That is where Christ sits, is at the right hand of God. That is where all our blessings come from. That is being obedient unto the grace unto which God called us. Jesus is the grace. He is the mercy from God to mankind. It is by him that we have obtained salvation. We have been brought back to God from the sin we fell from in the Garden of Eden. We are brought back to God in Christ, through him. So we should seek the things he has to offer us. What are the very things Christ has to offer us? We know God gives us his peace. He give us his love and his joy. But what does he have to offer us to live an obedient life? Back in Colossians chapter 2 verse 3. 3. in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This is the wisdom, this is the treasure, that Jesus was talking about in Matthew. True wisdom and true knowledge. The knowledge that was on that tree in the garden that God knew we could not handle. He knew this flesh could not handle those truths of the knowledge of good and evil. He knew man would be evil if he ate of that tree. If he partook of that type of knowledge he would not be able to handle it. We need God’s holiness. We need his spirit within us in order to see the true knowledge which is spiritual wisdom and knowledge. That is the treasures we need to seek. That is what Paul is telling us. We have been risen with him. We have been born again, saved from death, saved from hell. We need to seek the kingdom of God. We need to live as though we are living onto God and not onto this world. This world is full of lust and hate and anger. Set your mind on the affections on things above and not on things of this earth. For you died and your life is hid in Christ, in God. This truth is so true when we become born again. I know all of my old friends, when I was born again, all I could do was to seek God. I looked for anyone I thought was a Christian, whether they were or not. And I tried to seek out, who is this God. Who is he? What is this life I am living all about? That is all I did, day and night, for months, was to seek him. Anyway that I could. And to my friends, I had become dead. They didn’t see me anymore. I didn’t go to the bars anymore. I didn’t go to rock concerts and sing about the devil and the highway to hell. I didn’t do that any longer because God saved me from that. He opened my eyes in salvation and showed me his spiritual knowledge. The way we are suppose to live to worship and serve him. It is so easy to get entangled in the things of this world today. We need to set or affections on heaven, on things above, on his kingdom and what is pleasing to him. And when he appears, we will appear in glory with him. That will be a wonderful day. Whether it is at death or it is at his second coming. We will appear with Christ in glory. We will see him as he is, and we will be like him. We will have a new body. We won’t live in this flesh any longer. We won’t have to struggle and fight any longer. Paul kind of switches gears here. He says, 5. Put to death therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication,.... Fornication is immorality. It is any kind of sexual lust. uncleanness... Uncleanness is impurity. It goes beyond the sexual sin act, it goes into the thought pattern of the mind. evil desire, and passion.... These two are similar. They also relate to the sexual lust. Passion is the physical side of this vice. The evil desire is the mental side. covetousness... Is greed. Paul relates all these things to idiolatry. Because, see, instead of serving God with that spiritual knowledge and wisdom, we serve our self. We end up getting trapped in the trap Eve did in the garden and falling in sin. We are all under sin. And the only way we can come out of that is through this knowledge that God has to offer us through Christ. The reason, I feel, that God has revealed to me that sexual lust is so wrong, why it is so bad to him, is because his holy spirit lives within us. First Corinthians chapter 6 verse 15-20 speaks about how we are the temple of God, that Christ lives within us. He says if we are joined with a harlot we become as one. We become as one with a harlot. But we are to be one with the spirit in Christ, in God. We are suppose to be one spirit with God. So if we are wrapped up in sexual lust and things, how can we be in the spirit with God if we are in the spirit with the flesh? And boy, don’t think we don’t deal with sexual immorality today. We talked a lot in Sunday school this morning. Just turn your T.V. on and look at all the advertisements. Look at your billboards. Look at the little posters in the stores. It’s got a woman, nice dressed, nice looking woman sitting beside a refrigerator in this poster. Everything is sold with sex today. We face sexual immorality in our lives everyday. We are to walk in obedience under God, onto the grace he has called us. So we should separate sexual immorality from our selves as much as we possibly can. Paul goes on here, 8. but now do ye also put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your mouth: 9. lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, This old man that he speaks of is our flesh. It is what we are born into. We are born into a sinful nature. Born into a sinful knowledge, the knowledge that we physically can not handle. We need God’s spirit in order to comprehend the knowledge Christ and God wants us to live in. We are to put these things off because that is our character. When we live in this sin nature, before we come to Christ, we live in that nature. That is our character, is to be angry, to show wrath, to be malicious, blasphemy, which is slander, to slander people. It is all about self. When we live in this flesh, we are all about our self, what we can obtain. But this is not the ways of God. Where you heart is, there will your soul be also. You will follow the desires of your heart and that is what will drive you. And that is what Paul says we are to seek, the kingdom of God. We are to look above this earth, beyond this earth, and look and see what Christ has to offer us. We are to put on the new man. This put off and put on is like taking off your old clothes, your old dirty clothes. Discarding all of this old garbage that is in your life and put on the new life. Put on the new things. And these things are tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, you must do so, seven times seventy. How many times? Seven times seventy. Seven is like the perfect number in the bible. It means forever, infinity. It will go on forever. We should forgive and forgive and forgive. That is not easy to do. It is easy to say, but it is not easy to do. He says, 14. and above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness. Love unites us together. Love is what we are hoping for down here at the river revival. We are hoping to be bound together so we can be in one common bond in that unity. And that is Jesus Christ in him crucified, the salvation to everyone in the world. It is by him and only through him. See, we are called unto obedience. Not to sin and be okay, alright and going on to heaven. We are called onto obedience to him. Because without his grace none of us would be sitting here right now. I don’t even know if I’d be alive. 15. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to the which also ye were called in one body; and be ye thankful. God gives us peace, doesn’t he? God gives us peace in many different situations in our lives. It is contentment. He gives us meaning for living. The reason man was created was to serve God, to have fellowship with him, to be one with him. We lost that in the garden. But he has made provision for us. He has given us Christ. His death on the cross paid the penalty for our sins. He has reconciled us back to him. And our obedience is to search his will for our lives and be obedient unto him. 16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,... I always get excited about this because I have dealt with this ever since I was a Christian, about Christian music, about Christian rock music, contemporary Christian music. People, everything in this world that was created is of God. None of it belongs to satan. He takes what is God’s and turns it on us just as he did with Adam and Eve in the garden. He takes the things of God and turns them around and twists them to trick us and convince us. What is music? We have joy in music. We experience joy. What do you think satan is trying to do to the world? He is trying to show them a good time. That music that you can’t understand, you can’t hear the word to, is his purpose. He doesn’t want them to fully understand the meaning behind what they are saying and what they are doing. He has got them so busy in the joy in that music that they don’t understand what they are doing. They don’t realize that they are serving him in a lot of that stuff. I was trapped there myself. We all once walked in these things. You see, we need to serve God in the true knowledge. We need to understand who God is because he wants us to. He want us to serve him. He wants us to be obedient to him. We need to call the devil the devil. We need to call sin, sin. It is not the people. It is not the acts they are doing. It is that spiritual force working behind us. And it is satan. Even so, it should be Christ in our hearts. His holy spirit. We need to allow the holy spirit to work in our lives, guide us and lead us. And that is our obedience. Where our heart is there will our soul be also. And finally here in closing, it says, 17.And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, People, I have experienced it for many years, in my carpentry work, if I do that work as if I am doing it for my Lord Jesus, people will be satisfied. And if they are not, there in nothing more I can do. I serve a risen saviour that saved me from the depths of hell and my life that I was living in. There is nothing more we can do than that is to subdue everything that we do to glorify God. Not to glorify our paycheck, or to glorify our business, not the things of this world, we need to glorify God in all of our actions and all that we do. It is not always easy. The world tries to creep in and trick us to do things that are deceitful. We need to do all to glorify God. Where your heart is, there will your soul be also.

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