Matthew, chapter number 6, and I would like us to read verse 19 through to verse number 34. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness. 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. Father, we come to You as our heavenly Father, the One who cares for us more than we know. And we ask You, Heavenly Father, that You would send the Spirit today to help us see You in all Your glory and that You might lay hold of our hearts by the Spirit's power, that our minds will be lifted up above the earthly perishing and that we would look toward heaven and see the glories of the kingdom above. O Lord, I pray, empower and anoint us to receive the word, and may Your name be glorified in Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. I've had a bit of a break now through this series on spiritual depression, but I'm not done yet. So I have a couple more things that I want to communicate to you from God's Word, particularly today on anxiety, maybe next week again on anxiety from a different point. But I think it's important that we continue to labor and work on our soul that is so often troubled in this dark and difficult world. And last time when we got together to look at God's Word, we considered anxiety as a disproportionate fear that contains a measure of reality but is exaggerated. And the way that we were to deal with anxiety was that we needed to recalibrate our thinking. We needed to have a God-entrenched worldview so that when we look at the troubles around us, we will look at them not as an isolated thing that's exaggerated above what's actually real, which is that God is enthroned in heaven and He is in control of it all. And so we considered Matthew chapter 6, primarily from the angle that we have a heavenly Father who cares for us. And if He cares for birds and He cares for lilies of the field, how much more for us who are His children? Basically, Jesus's argument is there is no cause for us to have anxiety and fear about our own lives when we have a heavenly Father who is in control of the universe, who cares for us. Now, this morning, I want us to consider the idolatrous nature of anxiety. And the problem in how we approach usually verses 25 to 34 is that we approach them in an isolated way. Verse 25 to 34 is the portion of scripture that you've heard most commonly when it comes to anxiety, and fair enough. This is a passage directly that deals with anxiety, right? Verse 29, "Therefore, do not be anxious." You know, about your life, what you shall eat, what you shall drink, what you shall put on. And you read all the way to verse 34. But the problem of this approach of just handling verse 25 to 34 alone is equivalent to jumping in midway conversation. Have you ever done that before? Yeah, it can be quite embarrassing by the time you get to the end of the conversation, and you think you know exactly what they're talking about, but they're actually talking about something that related to something in the beginning of the conversation that you weren't there for. And so yes, you understand, I'm not saying you don't understand anything of the conversation, but it's really insufficient, isn't it? To derive maximum benefit and understanding and help from that conversation, you really need to understand the whole. And the Sermon on the Mount is really one big sermon that Jesus is is teaching and preaching, and you will see that it that it all ties in together really at every point. And so when we come to a passage like this and we think about anxiety, we think primarily about, yes, God is our heavenly Father, and yes, He looks after us. But there's more of a challenge at the heart of what Jesus is getting at. And the challenge of this entire section is actually primarily addressing our heart's affection and our heart's preoccupation. You see, Jesus says in verse number 19 to 21 that there are two treasures. There is this perishable treasure, and there is this heavenly treasure. You know, there is those that lay up for their treasures on earth where it's all just gets corrupted anyway. And there are those that lay up their treasures in heaven where those things last forever and they're not corrupted. And Jesus goes on to explain in verse number 19, or verse number 20, that you should lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. That's where there is, you know, eternal work. That is where the true kingdom really is all about. But He goes on in verse number 21 to explain something that is actually quite challenging because He says, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." He essentially is telling us in this passage that the treasures, how you lay up the treasures, serves as a litmus test to where your affections really lie. It actually reveals to us what we're truly preoccupied with. So, if the kingdom of God gets the leftovers of your time, of your energies, of your efforts, of your finances, if little thought goes in to God and His kingdom, and God does not get the first fruits, as it were, well then Jesus says that your mind is too materialistic. You care too much about the earthly. You care too much about the perishable. You care too much about that which is vanishing away. And then Jesus goes on in verse 22 to 23 to talk about there's two kinds of eyes, or two kinds of vision that someone can have. There is in verse number 22, the vision of the healthy, or the healthy eye, which results in your whole body being full of light. And then there is the evil eye or the bad eye where your whole body then is full of darkness. And Jesus then basically helps us understand that the eye is the lamp of the body. And just as a lamp projects light into a space, so your eye, right, what your eye is set on, projects that into your life. Okay? And He's tying it back with what He said previously. The healthy eye is the eye that is generous. It's also translated as singleness and or or or or single. And the idea meaning that it's got this sincerity about it. It's not ulterior in its giving, as it were. It lays up treasures in heaven in such a way as thinking not what I'm going to get in return. It's it's quite liberal in its giving. It's free. It's not stingy. It's this kind of outlook on life that sees the kingdom of God and sees things greater than just, you know, building up bigger barns, as it were. And so the generous eye gives with singleness and sincerity of heart and not seeking its own returns. This Jesus is building on from something in the Old Testament. In Proverbs chapter 11 verse 25, it says, "The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself." Now, the generous soul is also translated in another version in the ESV as, "whoever brings blessing." The generous soul is one who's set on bringing blessing. He has this single focus of, I want to bless. And that word "generous" in the Greek translation of the Old Testament is the very same word translated in chapter 6 verse 25, or verse verse, sorry, 20-22, as "healthy." It's this eye that is generous. And in chapter 22 verse 9 of Hebrews, it says this, "Whoever has a bountiful eye," literally in the Hebrew, a good eye or a healthy eye, "will be blessed for he shares his bread with the poor." And so a healthy eye, a generous eye, a good eye is an eye that is not seeking its own returns but is giving with a simplicity and singleness and sincerity of heart. Wanting to bless. But the bad eye is the opposite. And this eye, once again, appears, "bad eye," literally that word appears in in Proverbs chapter 23:6-7. Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy, or quite literally, evil-eyed. Do not eat the bread of a man that is stingy. Do not desire his delicacies. Now listen to this. For he is like one who is inwardly calculating. "Eat, drink," he says to you, but listen to this, "his heart is not with you." You see that? His heart's not single. It's not simple. It's not sincere. He He says, "Eat and drink," but his heart's not really with you. Why? Because his eye is evil. He's stingy. And so he gives with strings attached in order to see what he can gain. What is it revealing? Well, his bad eye reveals the condition of his heart. His heart is set on earthly things. Whereas the generous man with a healthy eye, his eye is set on heavenly things. He is thinking, "How can I be a channel of blessing?" Not how can I be a reservoir that holds all of it in and lets none of it out? And whatever the condition of your eye, says Jesus, so shall you entirely be. Okay? The eye is metaphoric for the heart's longing, for the heart's fixation, and if your eye is healthy, Jesus says, "Your whole body will be full of light." But if your eye is bad and evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. And what Jesus is simply saying is you cannot have these two hearts operating in the same space. If your heart is set on on heavenly things and on the kingdom of God, then you will be of that generous spirit. But when your eye is considered on earthly things and set on earthly things, then you will be of this spirit of stinginess. And the result is one is full of light, which is freedom of conscience, a confidence, and a clarity of mind, and the other, the bad, is full of darkness, which is marked by obscurity and confusion. And Jesus goes on to explain this in verse 24, that you cannot have both a a healthy eye and a bad eye because it says, "No man can serve two masters," doesn't he in verse number 24? 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. This is emphatic. You cannot. It is impossible to serve God and money. This is a matter of your devotion or your despising. You either despise one or you are devoted to one. This is a matter of love versus hate. This is a matter of God versus money or mammon, which is literally means material possessions. Now you can see why Jesus said at the end of verse 23, "If the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness." You know, because if you think you can serve both, if you if if you if you deceive yourself so as to think that you can have two treasure laying up treasures in two places, that you can live with your eyes set on two different things. He says you're kidding yourself. If the light in you or what you perceive to be light in you, that is darkness, well then how great is the darkness. And isn't that crazy what Jesus is saying is you can live a life where you think that you're serving God, but you're really serving yourself. And it really happens, doesn't it? There are people that says, "Oh, we're all for the kingdom of God," but it's really about bigger pockets. Right? And so Jesus is concerned about this confusion that exists in the hearts of God's people. You are either all for Jesus or you're not for Jesus. You're either serving God or not. Your heart is either is is set on God, by which you will have light and clarity, or you will be in darkness. Now you say, what does all this have to do with anxiety? Well, Jesus reckons it does, so let's find out, right? In verse 25, it it says, "What's the first word of verse 25?" Can you say it together? Therefore. Let's say it together, verse 25 says, Therefore. Therefore I tell you. Okay, verse 31, what does it say? Therefore. Verse 34 says, Therefore. In verse 30, 25, verse 31, and verse 34, we have the command, "Therefore, do not be anxious." All the commands to do not be anxious in this passage are tied with the word "therefore" and are functioning as a conclusive statement, saying, "You should therefore not be anxious," okay? And that's tying us back to what he's been saying in verse 19 to 24. Now the word "anxiety" quite literally means to be divided in your mind. To be distracted, to be pulled in different directions, to be pulled apart. The anxious mind is a divided mind. And if you look at what this passage is saying, Jesus is saying, "Don't be anxious about what? Life, food, drink, clothing, or tomorrow." Now, shouldn't we have any measure of care for these things? Of course we should. But Jesus is saying, don't be distracted by them. Don't have your mind pulled in every direction by them. Now you can see how he's connecting them, right? Because anxiety is competing with your allegiance to Jesus Christ. Anxiety ultimately is completing competing with the preoccupation of your mind for the kingdom of God. Why? Because when the person is anxious, they are making the chief end of their existence the pursuit of the earthly, the material, the perishing, the things that don't really count for eternity. And Jesus understands that the heart that is singly focused on the kingdom of God protects itself from a preoccupation with the earthly which tends towards an anxious heart. You see, the problem with anxiety is that it robs God of His right to the preoccupation of your thoughts and of your life because they are taken up by the things that are earthly and the things that are worldly. And so the answer to this problem is twofold. Jesus says, first of all, you need to understand something, that you have a heavenly Father who looks after you more than he does for birds and lilies. He cares for you. What what that means is He will add everything that you need in this life to you. You don't have to be preoccupied with it. Now he's not saying don't work and be lazy, at all not at all, because if you look at the birds of the field, they're busy. They're quite busy, tree to tree, in our rubbish bins, the whole works. You think, "Do these guys ever sleep?" We've got the bats now in Harrington Park. I don't know if you want to call them the birds of the air or what they are, but man, those guys, they don't stop. Pooping all over the place. But you know, the reality is what Jesus is trying to say is not saying, "Don't work." Okay? But what he's trying to say is we don't have to be preoccupied with making sure that we live our lives for this life because we have a heavenly Father, and just like a father looks after the family, so God is busy looking after us. God doesn't sleep. You sleep, God's awake. And He doesn't sleep and He doesn't slumber, and everything that you worry about, He said, "I'm going to take care of for you." And not because you're a very good person and you're keeping up, no, because I'm your Father. Because I love you, because of what Christ has done in redeeming you. So, the first point is that Jesus is saying that our Father is committed to our care. And how much more does He not care for you if He cares for the birds and the lilies of the field? Now, the second thing that he wants us to get, which I want us to focus our attention on, is verse number 33. It says, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." You see, what Jesus is saying is the answer to the problem with anxiety is not only that we are to know what the heavenly Father is taking care of and how He cares for us, but He's saying, "You need to focus on seeking the kingdom of God." You need to make the kingdom of God your first priority, your all-consuming passion, and living for the glory of God as the chief end of your life. You need to be preoccupied, says Jesus, with laying up treasures in heaven. You need to have that spirit of generosity that is not thinking about gaining and getting and holding, but rather giving, blessing. And isn't that indicative of the anxious heart? Self-preservation. But when you start to give and release, you start to realize, "Wow, I can actually live without these things." And God takes care of me. Okay, so he's saying, "Seek first the kingdom of God. Be generous. Serve Christ. Serve God. Make your ambition, make your longing, make your pursuit in life to advance the kingdom of God. Give your heart and your mind and your life's preoccupation to advancing the kingdom of God. Proclaim Jesus Christ to your neighbors, to your friends. Tell tell His love abroad of His saving grace. Be concerned about those that are lost and are perishing and tell them how they can find out of the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Proclaim the kingdom of God. Advance the kingdom of God. Lay up treasures in heaven for the cause of the kingdom of God." But more than this, to actually love and cherish all that pertains to the kingdom of God. We should love the truth of God. We should love the scriptures. Jesus is saying, "Love God. Love the scriptures. Love His salvation. Love His truth. Love His people. Love His church. Love all that God loves. Seek first His kingdom." Love God's mission. And as you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you will soon learn that all the things that the Gentiles are preoccupied with, that you are tempted to be preoccupied with, God actually takes care of. He adds all these things to you. There's this hymn that says, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full and completely that is in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace." It's similar thing here. Seek first the kingdom of God and guess what? The things that you're so anxious about, the things of this life, they grow strangely dim. They really don't seem so important as you thought they were in your mind's eye. Seek first the kingdom of God and he says and His righteousness. Make it your ambition again. Make it your preoccupation to live as children of the kingdom of God. Ties us back right to the beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." And what he's saying is you need to just focus on being salt and light and being all that God has called you to be in the world and God will look after everything that you need. Seek His righteousness. Live for His kingdom. Live as those that that that that want to live as if we're not at the center of the universe but live as if God is king of the universe and I'm here to please Him and glorify Him and honor Him with my life. And Jesus says that's what we are to do as the children of God. And that's opposite to what the Gentiles do. The Gentiles are the pagans, those that do not know God. What do the Gentiles do? Verse number 32 of this passage. "For the Gentiles," what's that word? "seek after all these things. And your heavenly Father knows that you need them all." They seek. You know the word seek is a worship word. It's a worship word. And what I mean by that, it's a word that that I said it it relates to these verses 19 to to 24. It's about your serving, it's about your preoccupation, it's about your love, it's about your affection. "Seeking" is exactly those things. And you see what Jesus is saying? The children of the kingdom seek the kingdom. The children of this world seek the world. Their language is verse 31. "What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear?" They are at the center of their own questions. It's about me. How can I obtain the things of this world in order to satisfy me? What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? And Jesus says, "All that the Gentiles, that's how the pagans behave. They think in this way. Their mind is preoccupied with this. They're driven by this. They they live for this. They die for this. Everything that they they do is about me, my glory, my praise, my kingdom, my comforts." And this is exactly how the religion operates too. You know the pagans, how they worship? Their worship is all about materialistic self-indulgence. Their relationship to the gods are primarily what we would call utilitarian or what can they get from their gods. You want victory in battle? Just incense to Zeus, pray to Zeus, and he'll come to your aid with a couple of lightning strikes, see? You want marriage and childbirth? Well, Juno will take care of that. Oh, by the way, if you're traveling on the sea and you're afraid that you might get caught in a storm, Neptune and Poseidon, he's your god of the sea and storm who will help you out when you get yourself into trouble in the sea. And you want to succeed in business? Well, there's Mercury and Hermes and they'll help you in your business. The whole worship is self-centered preoccupation of what they can get from God. And their life and their hearts is all darkness, isn't it? Darkness, obscurity, and anxiety. What shall we get? You see, it flows out in their worship. But not so with the children of God. Our worship is fundamentally different. Although we ask things of God, we do not think that we get things from God because we're pestering Him. Asking is a means of receiving. No doubt, and we apply ourselves to the means. But we understand as the children of God that our heavenly Father knows that we need all these things. So we don't make it our life's pursuit in worship to get, to get, to get, to get. But we come to the heavenly Father and we ask Him, knowing that He's our heavenly Father, but knowing that He's going to give things to us. Sometimes whether we're asking Him or not because He cares for us. Now, the Bible does say, "You have not because you ask not." And no, no doubt, those that are lazy and do not apply themselves to obedience to God, God is not going to reward that kind of laziness. But understand this, God doesn't give you because you prayed three hours, therefore you get. God gives you because of your fundamental relationship to him. He is your Father. It is because of your filial relationship to God that you have any security that you're going to eat eat tomorrow and drink tomorrow and be clothed tomorrow. And so fundamentally, the Christian worship is about seeking God. And this is what Jesus is trying to say. Don't search and seek after God in such a way as it's utilitarian. God give me, give me, give me, give me, give me. No, understand that He is to be worshiped for who He is. Your Father. Trusted. Spend your time being preoccupied by the kingdom of God. Spend your time living for the God who loves us, although we do not deserve such love. You see, at the heart of anxiety is preoccupation with self-preservation. And anxiety has within its own nature this fear which leads to a flight or fight. That's what they that's that's essentially what is when you look up what anxiety is, it's it's this state of of of fight, flight. You know, and it's, "Do I run? Do I fight?" and you're in this intense. But with anxious people, what what the what the happens is they feel that when it's not meant to be felt. When the threat is not really genuine. When when that's not really their lives really aren't threatened. They feel and behave as though someone had them at a gun point, if I could put it that way. Sweating, anxious, heart palpitating. That that that that is quite normal if something very serious is is is happening and your life is quite threatened. But that is not normal when you should be about your daily business and there is no genuine threat. But the mind interprets these things in such a way as that it exaggerates them and makes you feel that there is no God, there is no one that cares, and I'm all alone, and this monster is right in front of me, but it's not really a monster. This is where anxiety comes in. But but what I'm saying is that in anxiety, it basically anxiety screams out to you, "Save your life." It's about self-preservation. "Save your life." But the call of Jesus through the gospel is, "Come, lose your life in God." What Jesus says to us in Mark chapter number eight, and calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his own soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?" You see what Jesus is saying? Don't be preoccupied with the things of this life because some people by doing so perish. In fact, all people by doing so perish. But come and die. Come and die and live in God. Don't live for self-preservation. Give your life to God. You see the difference of the call? The call of the gospel is, "Come, follow Me." The call of anxiety is, "Preserve me. Save me." But Jesus says, "Come, follow Me. Come, follow Me to a cross. Come, follow Me in worship. Come, follow Me to sacrifice. Come, follow Me to surrender." And here in that place, when your eyes are taken off the things of this life and they're lifted up toward heaven and you see the kingdom of God, you will start to realize and understand that there is joy and satisfaction in God and there is light in the soul who has his gaze fixed on Jesus. And you will see that Jesus that calls you to come is the light of the world. And if you walk in his light, you will not live in darkness. It's amazing. We seek to secure everything for ourself and seek like the Gentiles do after the things of this life and we're more anxious about the things of this life, more troubled in our soul, more confused in our lives. Jesus says, "In God's kingdom, it's quite the opposite. Why? Because you have a heavenly Father. And he takes care of all these things. Just come and seek the kingdom of God. You want light in your soul? You want freedom? You want joy in your mind? Give your life to Jesus." Beware of the idolatry of anxiety. The worldly preoccupation with the things of this life, with self-preservation, with self-glory, with self-comfort, and self-success. We as God's people need to behold the kingdom of God. We must continue to look at the light. It was J.C. Ryle who said this, "There are thousands in our churches uncomfortable, ill at ease, and dissatisfied with themselves. And they hardly know why. The reason is revealed right here. Worldliness is a subtle, misleading, apparently reasonable enemy. It seems so innocent to pay close attention to our business. It seems so harmless to seek our happiness in the world so long as we keep clear of the open sins. Yet, here is a rock on which many make shipwreck for all eternity. They lay up treasures on earth and forget to lay up treasures in heaven. Oh, let us all be aware that we do not sink into hell by paying excessive attention to lawful things. Open transgression of God's law slays its thousands, but worldliness its tens of thousands." The subtlety of worldliness. The preoccupation with the things of this life, all fed and fueled by self-preservation of anxiety, when God says, "Come and die and live in Me." There are treasures in the gospel that we do not know of well enough. There are joys that do not fade away that only come to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. The soul's deepest distress can be soothed by a good look at Jesus. The forgiveness of sins, knowing that you have a heavenly Father because the blood of Jesus Christ has made you cleansed. The power to endure suffering all comes to us because of our single-minded commitment to the Jesus Christ as Lord and King. And we as God's people need to place our unlimited trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, to lean upon our God, we of little faith. We must come to the place where we realize that there before me is a Savior and a God who cares for me, and I can trust him. We must lean upon him, realizing that whatever we do in this world for earthly things will perish and will amount to nothing on the day of judgment. Do you realize that? The things for which you strive and are afraid of and work for and long for and don't sleep at night for, they are not coming with you to heaven. You're leaving them behind. And we toil and we think and we lay up treasures on earth. Jesus is saying that's just moth food. It's all gone. Gone to the dust with your body in the ground. But seek first the kingdom of God. There are treasures to be laid up in heaven, yes, with earthly goods, but lay them up in heaven. Live for the kingdom that is above. This is where true joy is, true satisfaction is. This is what life's about. Life is not about bigger better cars, better houses, and more comfort. Trust me, you'll get much more satisfaction of loving and serving Jesus Christ. And the church has been deceived by worldliness. Does God want us to richly enjoy all things? Of course, as they come to us from His gracious hand, He's given us these things. But where's your eyes? What are you seeking? Where's your heart? Where's your treasures? Because that's indicative of where's your heart. It was Leonard Ravenhill who loved this poem by Walden Parker. It goes like this: It will not make much difference, friend, a hundred years from now. If you lived in a stately mansion or on a river scow. If the clothes you wear were tailor-made or pieced together somehow. If you eat big steaks or beans and cake, 100 years from now. It won't matter about your bank account or the make of car you drive, for the grave will claim your riches and fame, the things for which you strive. There's a deadline we all must meet, and no one will be late. It won't matter then all the places you've been. Each one will keep that date. We will only have in eternity what we gave away on earth. When we go to the grave, we can only save the things of eternal worth. What matters, friend, the earthly gain for which some men always bow, for your destiny will be sealed, you see, 100 years from now. 100 years from now. Have you ever thought about what would be 100 years from now in your life? What will matter? What will matter? The kingdom of God and His righteousness. And all these things will be added unto you. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And he who has no money, come, buy, and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligent to me, says the Lord, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me. Hear that your soul may live. And I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader, a commander for the peoples. Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that you did not know shall run to you, because of the Lord your God and the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. Now listen to these words. Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways, my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts, your thoughts. Let us seek the Lord. Let us pray.