This sermon emphasizes the importance of putting God first in all aspects of life, particularly in money matters, and seeking His kingdom and righteousness above all else. It warns against the pursuit of worldly possessions and the dangers of being consumed by material desires. Repentance is highlighted as a crucial step towards turning away from a self-centered life and aligning one's mind and values with God's will.

My God is a real God, who rules heaven and earth, who says all the silver and the gold is mine. My dear brothers and sisters, the new covenant is the reality. If you're eager, you got to repent of your old way of life. The old things you pursued and say, Lord, I don't want to pursue them anymore. I want to turn around from that and seek your kingdom and your righteousness all my days. You will not be a loser. I tell you that, you'll be a loser if you seek after other things. Never get into debt. I can stand today and say in 67 years, I've never been in debt a single day of my life. I've never bought things on credit. If I can afford it, I buy it. If I can't afford it, I don't buy it. That's it. And I'm a very happy man. You tell me all of you fellows who are in debt for this, that and the other, whether you are happy, whether you can sleep peacefully at night. You can't. Because you crave for things you could not, you did not have enough money for. Ah, little more there, little more there. Oh, it's tragic. Have you heard that old Russian story of one of those Russian kings who one day said, I'm going to have a competition here that all those who start at sunrise and start running and cover a huge circle of land by sunset, they can have that land freely. Boy, didn't you like to take part in that race? And that was this guy who started running at sunrise to get as much property as he can. Ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and came pretty close to sunset. And there was that other bit of property also he wanted to get. I mean, he had already got square miles. He wasn't satisfied. He wanted that other bit of property. He was exhausted about to fall, drop down. He said, I've got to get that other bit. And he got that other bit just before sunset and dropped dead. And they say, how much land does a man need when he's dead? Six feet by about two and a half feet. That's what he got. I've seen people like that. That little bit more. That little bit more. You know what regret you're going to have when you reach heaven? Because you did not put God first. You did not put his kingdom first. Who are the ones who enter into the new covenant? Those who say, God, you're going to be first in my life. You're going to be first in my life. There's a verse in Deuteronomy. It's paraphrased in the Living Bible as God teaches you to tithe your income to teach you to put God first. To put him first in money matters. A man who has not put God first in money matters, let me say to any one of you, has not put God first anywhere. Don't fool yourself. Don't fool yourself that God is first in your life if God is not first in money matters. God is not the one who determines every area of money matters in your life. You're fooling yourself. When you say, but I go to church, so did the Pharisees, but I read the Bible, so did the Pharisees, but I fast and pray, so did the Pharisees. They all went to hell. There's nothing that tests our devotion to God like our attitude to money. There was no verse in the Old Testament that said you could not love God and money. That is a New Testament verse. It's a New Covenant verse. You can't enter into half the New Covenant and neglect other parts of the New Covenant. That's what Jesus said about people who've taken a new patch of cotton cloth, not shrunk. You know how cotton cloth has to be put in water and shrunk. You don't do that and stitch it to an old washed cotton pant or something and then you wash it, it tears because a new cloth shrinks. What Jesus is saying, you can't take... I like this part of the New Covenant. I like that in my life. And this other thing and I get four or five patches of the New Covenant and try to patch it to my life which loves money and wants things of the world. It doesn't work. Jesus said you've got to throw away the whole old garment and get a new one. I'll tell you, you won't be the loser. Your children won't be the loser either. No, you must be a living testimony at the end of your life that those who seek the Kingdom of God first have all other things added to them. That was my longing years ago. I said, Lord, I want to end my life demonstrating to an unbelieving generation that those who seek the Kingdom of God first and His righteousness have all other things added to them. And then as time went on, I had one more goal. I said, Lord, not only that. I want to raise up at least a few other people in my life before I die who also have that testimony. Not just me. Who also can say I sought God's Kingdom first and His righteousness and things went well in my life and my family. I began to see a little bit of it. I say to all of you young people, make that your goal. Don't make it your goal to be the biggest person in the world or the richest person or any such stupid thing. But that at the end of your life and you're beginning your life now and if you don't have the right goal now, you'll go astray like some of the older people you see around you. Don't just drift along in life. When I was in the Navy, you know, there used to be strong currents and winds in the sea. We used to see sometimes a big piece of wood lying in the sea. It had no sense of direction, but it was moving. Sometimes it would move this direction and then the waves would change and move in the other direction. And that reminds me of a lot of Christians. They're moving, but there's no sense of direction in them. It's like a bit of driftwood. Here, there, everywhere. You don't know where they'll be tomorrow. You don't know which shore they will land on. I don't know. But our ships were not like that. We didn't let the ship drift here, there, everywhere. No, we'd be in a collision. We determined, I've got to get there and I've got to get there by tomorrow evening at 4 o'clock. That's it. And we got there by the next evening at 4 o'clock. Because we decided we are going to fight these winds and waves and get where we want to go. The new covenant is for people like that. Not those who are just drifting along with the currents of the world. You know, whatever people say and all. No. You must have a sense of purpose in your life. Repent means you turn around from that selfish, self-centered way of life and say, Lord, you're first in my life. The other thing I want to show you in Matthew chapter 3, there are two things I want you to see in that verse 2. One is repent. Repent means turn around. You see, unfortunately, this word repent, it's not understood properly in English because we don't use that word much. Most people don't know what repentance means. You ask the average Christian what repentance means. Oh, I should feel sorry for my sin. I must weep a little. I must feel bad. No, no, no. That's all the extras. But what is real repentance? What is at the heart of it? What is at the core of it? Even the Malayalam translation is not good. The Hindi translation is not good. The best translation I found is in Tamil. Mananthirambal, which means your mind must turn around. That is repentance. You have a different direction your mind is thinking. You think in a different way now. About sin, about God. It's a 180 degree turn. That's repentance. And if we... You know words like this repentance, baptism and all. We don't understand what it means because it doesn't... We don't use those words in regular language. Do you understand the word immersion? We all understand that. That is baptism. They should have translated it like that. But they didn't. And that's another story of religious deception practiced from the 17th century onwards to promote sprinkling of children. I won't go into that now. But these are words, repent. It's another word like baptism. Most people don't understand. What does repent mean? Have you seen it? See it today as an about turn. 180 degrees, not 90 degrees. 180 degrees. All those values I had are changed. How do you know what your values were? Your values are the values of the world. Look at any worldly person and see what he is eagerly seeking after.