Seek First the Kingdom - Part 1: What to Seek

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 6:33

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Well, this morning we are coming to verse 33, which is a very pivotal point at the end of chapter 6 here in the
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Gospel of Matthew. This is what we've been driving for several weeks now, driving toward verse 33.
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From verses 25 through 32 over the past four messages, we've considered this larger theme of the
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Father's care and how Jesus is charging His disciples not to be worried, not to be suffocated by the cares and needs of life, not to seek those cares and needs as the
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Gentiles seek, but to entrust themselves to the Father's care, which is as abundant as observation will allow.
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When we look at the blades of grass beneath our feet or the birds of the air and everything in between, everything above and below, and so noticing our
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Father's care, then we are freed to devote ourselves to our Father's will. That brings us to verse 33, which is to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
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And so we said verses 25 through 32 is essentially boiled down to don't worry.
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And then here in verse 33, be holy. And we'll look at verse 33 for not only this morning, but the next two
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Sundays as well. This will be a three -part focus on verse 33. So this morning, our goal is to answer the question, what?
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What are we to seek first? Of course, the answer is the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
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My goal this morning will be to review some of the things we've already learned from Matthew in times before in Exodus on the kingdom of God, to review that briefly, and also consider how that relates to God's righteousness.
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And the goal in all of this is to hold together a lot of the things we've already seen in Matthew 5 and 6 up to this point.
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This is a single sermon. Of course, it's easy to forget when we're picking apart verse by verse, week by week.
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But this is all one message, and when you start to see a lot of the flow and the connections, you see the beautiful symmetry and wisdom that Jesus had to teach with.
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And so this morning, we're going to answer, what is the kingdom we are to seek first? What are we seeking first?
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And then next week, we'll consider, how do you seek the kingdom and His righteousness individually?
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How do you as an individual, how do you in your station, season, circumstance, role, how do you seek the kingdom and God's righteousness individually?
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And then we'll close verse 33 in the third part with, how do we seek first the kingdom and God's righteousness?
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In other words, how do we seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness together? How do we do that corporately?
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So that's where we are, and that's where we'll be going. Let me begin by reading
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Matthew 6, beginning in verse 31. Therefore, do not worry, saying, what shall we eat?
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What shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? After all these things, the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly
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Father knows that you need all these things, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
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So we noticed last week the repetition of that phrase, all these things. Also the repetition of this central verb, seek.
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Seek first. Seek what? The kingdom of God and His righteousness. Now Jesus' whole focus was the kingdom of God.
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If we read Mark's Gospel, we see from the very beginning of His ministry, Jesus was proclaiming the kingdom of God.
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When we're looking at Matthew, we not only have the activity of the kingdom coming near to those who were in bondage to the evil one, who were in the darkness to which a great line had shown, but we also have the message of the kingdom.
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And then in Matthew 13, we have the parables of the kingdom. And so the whole Gospel is laden with the issue of kingdom, and how are we to understand the kingdom of God?
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Now of course, we're here in chapter 6, we're returning to that theme of the kingdom.
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In chapter 5, we saw that as a constant repetition, but the phrase was the kingdom of heaven. Scholars debate exactly over the significance of that phrase, so unique to Matthew and used so consistently by him.
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I think the safest answer is that he's primarily turning our attention to the origin or to the source of the kingdom.
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This is not that which comes horizontally or grows from the dirt, as it were.
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This is that which has come down from the Father through the Son and by the Spirit. So speaking of the origin or the source, perhaps
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James keying into that, every good thing coming from above. But chapter 5 was turning our attention to the kingdom of heaven.
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And of course, within that, we have this idea of the kingdom to which we are called into, a kingdom that we are part of, but also a kingdom that we are yet to inherit.
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So there's something present and now about the kingdom, there's also something yet to come about the kingdom.
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The kingdom is something that we are, that we are a part of, something that we are advancing, and yet it's also something that we await to inherit.
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So you have to see, as we've said in times past, that the kingdom is a rather difficult concept. You have to be rather flexible as you come across it in various passages.
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And of course, the whole focus of Jesus was the kingdom of God, and He says, if you're
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My followers, your whole focus will be the kingdom of God, and therefore you won't be like the
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Gentiles. In other words, you won't be like those who aren't following Me. If you're following Me, your focus will be
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My focus. My focus is My Father's will. My focus is His kingdom and His righteousness.
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If you're following Me, that will be your focus, which means you will seek that first and you won't seek the things that the
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Gentiles seek, even the very things that your Father knows you need. The Gentiles did not have a concept of a
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God who cared for them, who invited them to cast all their cares upon Him, but that's our
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God. As we said, your Heavenly Father knows you, and He knows what you need, as we said last week.
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So if I could frame the way that we're leaving behind, don't worry, and heading in to be holy,
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I'd frame it in this way. You need your
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Father's care to do your King's mission.
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That's how I would frame it. You need your Father's care to do your
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King's mission. It's a very helpful way to understand it. We're now turning away from the constant provisions of our
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Heavenly Father to this talk of the Kingdom and what
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He's requiring and what He's seeking to do, the work that He is currently bringing about on the world.
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And so we turn to our Heavenly Father to find this abundant care at every turn, but that's not to send us on our merry way, that's actually to enable us and equip us to fulfill the mission of our
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King, to advance His Kingdom. That's what we'll be looking at for the next three weeks.
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Our Father knows what we need, therefore we don't fend for ourselves. We don't seek what the Gentiles seek in the way that they seek it.
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We seek first His Kingdom, His righteousness, trusting that He will provide for all that we truly need.
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Every care and concern will be provided for. So this morning, we're answering the question, what? What are we to seek?
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And we've already said, we're to seek first the Kingdom of God, that's part one, and His righteousness.
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And when we get to that second part, I hope you'll understand why we must hold these things together.
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We have to hold together the whole context of what we've come through in this Sermon on the Mount, and particularly, we dare not separate the
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Kingdom of God and God's righteousness. That's a really important point that we'll develop in the second part this morning.
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This is a little more introductory, next week will be a little more detailed. So, the
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Kingdom of God, largely this is review of things from the past. One of the ways we primarily thought about the
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Kingdom, and Matthew 13 gives us many different handholds and footholds to think about the Kingdom, but one of the ways that in the past we've looked at the
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Kingdom is from Matthew 13, beginning in verse 31. Remember, the Kingdom is a pearl of great price that transcends all the riches of this world.
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The Kingdom is like leaven that works its way through the dough. The Kingdom is like a dragnet that's cast out into the deep and brings forth all sorts of treasures to be sorted.
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The Kingdom is like a field comprised of wheat and tares awaiting to the threshing floor of judgment.
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There's all sorts of ways and angles to understand the Kingdom of God, but we focused in past on this one, one of my favorite ones,
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Matthew 13, beginning in 31. Another parable Jesus put forth to them saying, the
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Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds, but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, and the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.
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This is primarily focused on the growth of the Kingdom, not the origin of the
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Kingdom, not the end of the Kingdom as some of the other parables liken, but the growth of the
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Kingdom, the advancement of the Kingdom. So what shall we like in this Kingdom in terms of its growth?
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Why is Jesus giving this sermon to His disciples? What is He expecting them to do with it?
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He's expecting them to be a part of the Kingdom work, to seek first the Kingdom and God's righteousness and that means they will grow and they will be enlarging the
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Kingdom as they do so. That's the idea. All the buds and branches beginning to sow spread out into the sky that even the birds of the air, most likely a reference to the
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Gentiles in context, come to nestle into its branches. This is an in -gathering kind of growth.
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If you were at our Sunday night study, this is a second century kind of growth. It's a mustard seed.
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Jesus says this little mustard seed, it begins as something you couldn't even notice. You could hardly find it.
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It's less than a crumb. If you ever go to a deli and get a sandwich with whole grain mustard, you know, you can barely get a toothpick to get that little mustard seed out.
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But that little seed, when it sprouts, Jesus says it will dominate the garden.
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And so as we've said in times past that the problem is that we think of our faith as a mustard seed and we never think of how that connects to the
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Kingdom. And so what we do, and when I worked at a Christian bookstore, we used to sell these things by the box.
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We take a little mustard seed and we put it in glass and we make a little lapel pin out of it. There's my little mummified faith right there on my chest.
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It hasn't grown in 20 years. That's not a good image. The whole point is it's meant to sprout, explode, dominate, grow.
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That's the emphasis. And so as we said, the Kingdom is not like the mustard seed.
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The Kingdom is what happens to the mustard seed. The Kingdom grows and it grows and it grows until it permeates and dominates everything.
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And this is the whole focus of Jesus on the Kingdom of God. So when we come to Mark 1, again, as I mentioned at the very beginning,
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Jesus is preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God. One of the things that we have done largely in the past century and a half is we've disconnected the gospel, the good news, from the
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Kingdom. For early Christians, in Jesus' teaching, these were inseparable.
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What is the good news? It's the good news of the Kingdom. What is the good news?
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The Lord, all victorious, has conquered death. He did it by receiving the punishment due for our sins on the tree.
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And though He was buried in the tomb of wrath, He broke forth victorious.
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And now He's a mighty conquering King. It's the good news of the Kingdom. There's one who knows the way out of the grave.
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There's one who is empowered by the very Spirit of God, who's shedding light into the darkness, whose glory will soon suffuse the entire cosmos.
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That's the gospel of the Kingdom. He does that in the lives of His followers. He does that by bringing about a new birth in the mystery of the
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Spirit's regeneration. He does that by creating something entirely new out of what had been formerly, making
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His followers as it were new creations. Why? They're denizens of this Kingdom. They're subjects of His reign.
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They're part of the growths that are enlarging this dominating presence of the Kingdom. And they are heirs of its everlasting glories.
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The very word gospel is already a kingly term. An evangel is a proclamation.
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It's a decree. In the first century,
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Augustus was sending out evangels, as we mentioned in the very first Sunday evening of our church history study.
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The evangel, the good news that Augustus, the son of the Divine, has brought peace into this world.
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These would be inscriptions at several Roman cities that Paul was ministering to. No, that's not good news.
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And that's the wrong empire. We'll tell you the real good news. We'll tell you the real Kingdom. We'll tell you the real king.
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We'll tell you the real peace. And we'll always testify to the cost of that peace.
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The bloody cross that has made peace between man and God. So that's the whole context.
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Again, we can't disconnect the gospel from the Kingdom. The gospel is good news, but that doesn't mean the good news is like the advice of Jesus Christ, or the meditations of Jesus Christ, or the philosophy of Jesus Christ, the ten spiritual laws of Jesus Christ.
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The good news is a Kingdom proclamation. There's a new king in town.
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That's the evangel. There is a Lord over all. That's the evangel.
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Do with us as you see fit. We'll rise again. You can't stop this Kingdom. That's an evangel.
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So this explains why Jesus' whole focus, His whole orientation, His whole mission is the
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Kingdom of God. It's why He came. It is what
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He taught. It is why He lived a perfect life. It is why He died a sinner's death. It's why the grave could not hold
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Him. It's why He is yet to come. It's why there is a continuing work of the ingathering of the
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Gentiles until the fullness has come. And so all Israel is saved. It's why the saints gather and sing,
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Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son. Endless is the victory Thou, or death has won.
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He has fulfilled the Gospel of the Kingdom in His life, His death, His resurrection. He's still actively bringing about this
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Kingdom. The Gospel is simply the proclamation of this whole Kingdom endeavor. First proclaimed to the woman in Genesis 3 .15
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in the promise of a seed. And carried forth by Father's steps until the fullness of it was realized in the person and work of the
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Son. And is now being actively brought to rot by the presence and power of the
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Holy Spirit. So when Jesus says, seek first the
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Kingdom of God, you have to understand all of the weight and force and momentum of redemptive history, both contained in Scripture and ever since.
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That's all bearing down upon them. Jesus says, my whole life is oriented toward this mission.
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This is what I'm seeking. Do you want to follow Me? Don't put your hand to the plow and look back.
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You're going to have to pick up your cross and follow. But what it will look like if you're Mine, if you're following Me, is you, like Me, will seek first this
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Kingdom reign of God. This dominating growth that comes about by faith and word and spirit.
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For a century and a half, the Gospel's been disconnected from the Kingdom. No wonder
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Christians don't seek first the Kingdom. For a century and a half, more or less, the
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Gospel has been reduced to a little ticket out of hell that someone can tuck in their pocket.
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That'll come in handy in about 40 years. I've been living literally like a demon for 30 years, but when
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I was 12, I went up to the anxious bench at a summer camp. That's got to count for something. No.
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No, in fact, that condemns you even more. It doesn't count for anything. The Gospel has been disconnected from the
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Kingdom, and as we'll see this morning, in many ways, for that reason, the
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Gospel has been disconnected from righteousness, Kingdom righteousness. This was many decades ago, and perhaps one of the major reasons there's been such an effort to recover these things, what we call the
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Lordship Controversy, and the whole idea that one could be a carnal Christian rather than a spiritual or pneumatical
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Christian. The idea there is we receive Christ as prophet. We receive Christ even as our great high priest, but we don't view
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Him as Lord. We don't view Him as a king. That's such an American reaction.
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You know, what are the protests that are out there almost every year? No king. That's such an American reaction.
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We don't know what it's like to have a king. We don't live under a monarchy. In fact, we fought a war to make sure we wouldn't have to live under a monarchy.
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You disconnect this idea of a mission, of a will, of a growth and advancement.
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You separate a king from the Kingdom. No wonder you have a category like carnal
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Christians. You can't make any sense out of what Jesus is teaching here in the
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Sermon on the Mount. And so the concern here is that we decrown the
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Gospel. We take the Kingdom right out of it. It becomes something very private, inward.
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No one can speak to it. No one can see it. It's in my chest pocket. It's my get -out -of -hell -free card. It has nothing to do with my life, my relationships, my calling, my tasks.
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The grass under my feet and the birds in the air, it doesn't actually touch on any of that. And Jesus says it's all about that.
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All of life is oriented toward that. That's why we've spent so many weeks now looking at don't worry, and now we're getting into be holy.
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You'll hear this name more next week as I give a little more, I think, detail from really helpful distinctions.
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I have a stack of books on my shelf from the missiologist of the last century, Leslie Newbigin, who's a minister and a missiologist, an evangelist, a church planter,
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Anglican. And where he was in his time, certainly I would have some significant disagreements.
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But in terms of understanding the evangelical identity crisis, he was there at ground zero.
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And he could see the difference between the West that was hurtling toward postmodern relativism, where you have your truth and I have my truth, and we'll all just kind of go along to get along.
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And he could see the difference between that kind of watered -down, privatized, crownless gospel versus the mission fields in unreached places where the gospel was taking root, and there was absolute loyalty and allegiance to King Jesus.
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And he could see the difference. And so he said that Jesus and the kingdom had become disconnected in this 20th century, again, the past century.
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And this was his insight. Evangelicals emphasized the person of Jesus in their gospel, but neglected the kingdom that he proclaimed.
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Again, there's nothing wrong with emphasizing the person of Jesus. We ought to sing and fully mean it, more, more about Jesus.
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Tell me more about Jesus. I have a little wall post, or I'm not even on Facebook, but whatever those people make with words on it of Conrad and Bewe, I keep it right in front of me on my screen.
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And it's just a little excerpt from a conference where he said, you know, pastors, tomorrow your people are coming, and even if they're not saying it with their mouths, their hearts are crying out, sir, we would see
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Jesus. We would preach Christ and Him crucified. The problem is not with any of those things.
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The problem is when we preach a Jesus, that's not a king. He doesn't have a crown. When we preach a gospel, that's not actually part of the kingdom.
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A gospel of the kingdom. It's when we, in other words, have a king but no kingdom.
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Which is to say, there's sort of a, sort of personal relationship.
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It's privatized. Jesus, take the wheel, as we said last week. So there's this reduced relationship.
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It's a personal relationship. It's something so private, so internalized, so compartmentalized.
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It's just one little tiny grain of my life. It's a mustard seed encased in glass, never to grow.
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So tiny. There's nothing bursting, nothing dominating about that, nothing advancing through everything that comprises my life, you see.
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That's what Newbegin was keying in on. Neglecting the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed, and so the invitation to the gospel was not an invitation into His kingdom, which is largely what the
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Sermon on the Mount is doing, but rather an invitation into some sort of privatized, on -your -terms relationship with your buddy
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Jesus. Now, I would venture to say, I don't like doing hypothetical history, but I would venture to say, if that kind of reductionistic gospel was what was taught and held and catechized in the second century, we wouldn't have a church history study on Sunday nights.
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The Roman Empire wouldn't have had mustard seed branches shooting through all of its institutions, uprooting them and turning them inside out.
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Don't disconnect the gospel from the kingdom. Don't have a king without a kingdom.
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Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and you're not doing my will? What does it mean for me to be a lord, a master?
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You're not doing my will, Jesus says in Luke 6. Don't have a king without a kingdom, a king without a will or a mission.
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That's what a kingdom is there to accomplish. But also don't have a kingdom without a king.
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The other thing that happened in the last century was you had sort of an ecumenical drive and a sort of social gospel tradition.
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And everything was about kingdom mission, but kingdom mission meant donate blood and create soup kitchens.
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And well, show me where Jesus said that. That's just what Paul said. And essentially that was the rival, the counterpart to a reductionized
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Jesus, a personal relationship with Jesus without a crown. Or you can focus on the kingdom like Walter Rauschenberg, but that just means be a good citizen.
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It doesn't actually mean fight for the faith, contend for the faith once we're all delivered. What does it mean that Christ is presently enthroned?
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We cannot even get the story of Jesus right if we disconnect it from kingdom. In other words, if you're just being biblical in how you share
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Jesus and present Jesus, you have to share it in terms of his kingdom. You have to.
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You cannot understand the person and work of Jesus as far as sharing
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Him unless you share Him in the context of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God being the very hope and course of redemptive history from Genesis 3 all the way forward.
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The kingdom of God is that which was given and revealed to Israel and was God's desire through Israel for the sake of the nations.
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This was the whole redemptive orchestration of the kingdom of God until they stumbled at the stumbling stone as indeed they were designated to do so that the true son, the true seed, the true
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Israel could come and accomplish all that God had promised in Him. All the promises of God are yes and amen.
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And so that's why when even just the birth of Jesus is announced. In Luke 2, the angel appears to Mary and says,
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Behold, you'll conceive in your womb. You'll bring forth a son. You'll call him Jesus. He'll be great.
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He'll be called Son of the Highest. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His Father David, and He will reign over the house of David.
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And of His kingdom there will be no end. You can't even get the birth right if you're not giving it in context of the kingdom.
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Why do some of our carols have lines like, Jesus, Lord at Thy birth. What is
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He Lord of? He's Lord over His whole kingdom. What's the kingdom doing? It's advancing and conquering until it dominates everything.
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That's the mustard seed of Matthew 13. That's why
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Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 15, Well, when Adam all died, but in Christ all will be made alive, each one in the order.
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Christ is the first fruits. Afterward, those who are
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Christ, in other words, those who believe upon Him at His coming, and then comes the end when
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He delivers the kingdom to God the Father. You see, this work of salvation, this work of conversion, this work of global mission, this work of trying to share a little bit about your testimony to a co -worker, or trying to be faithful even though it's really awkward and difficult with that certain relative.
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This is all still part of the gospel of the kingdom. And every little piece and facet of these things corresponds to what
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Jesus will hand over to His Father at the end. Here is the kingdom You have given to me and I have accomplished all, and therefore
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I bid it back into Your hand. And what's the result of that? There's an end to all rule and all authority and power.
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There's no more powers and principalities. Now every knee and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is
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Lord. And what does Paul say in verse 25?
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He's speaking to the church at Corinth, this ragtag group, mostly slaves, a few rich, but he says not many in 1
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Corinthians 1, not many wealthy, not many wise according to worldly wisdom. A lot of fools and ragtags and factions.
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You can't get anything right. And he's giving them again this evangel of the kingdom. I want to remind you what you're part of and where this is all going.
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And he says in verse 25, He must reign until He's put all His enemies under His feet. If your gospel doesn't have a place for 1
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Corinthians 15 -25, I would say you've decrowned the gospel. Christ is reigning.
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He is reigning until all of His enemies are being put beneath His footstool. When He puts an end to all powers and principalities.
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When His name and the glory of our triune God alone is replete through all that God has made.
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Unto ages everlasting. Out of His mouth comes a sharp sword.
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He strikes the nations. He is ruling them with a rod of iron.
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He's treading a winepress of wrath of the Almighty God. He has on His robe and on His thigh a name.
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It's written, King of Kings, Lord of Lords. I can't think of a more tragic blasphemy than to remove the kingdom from the
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King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I can't think of a worse possible outcome for God blessing
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His church for over a century and a half of global mission and unreached peoples and translated scriptures than to give them a privatized
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Jesus and a mustard seed frozen in glass. Rather than the very hope and stay of the early church when they gathered to pray as Jesus taught us in Matthew 6, your kingdom come.
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Your will be done. And that animated every aspect of their life when they looked to their
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Father's care so that they could be free to seek first His kingdom. Your kingdom come was the all -animating prayer.
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And what was the follow -up? Amen to that prayer. Even so, Lord, come. Maranatha. Your kingdom come.
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Even so, Lord, come. We know you're the firstfruits. We know we'll be raised at the end. Your kingdom come.
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We're seeking it first. Even so, Lord, come. To pray your kingdom come is to pray for the
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King of Kings and Lord of Lords to vanquish His final enemy and give all over to the
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Father. To whatever degree you're not recognizing your own place as an individual, which we're going to next week, as part of this great kingdom purpose in redemptive history,
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I would say you've just been imbibing the atmosphere of late 20th century evangelicalism.
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Jesus, take my little steering wheel for a moment. Life is getting tricky. If we have a kingdom orientation, seek first the kingdom, then out of that is going to flow a certain transformation.
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And this is now really the second and last part of our time this morning. Jesus does not just say to His followers, seek first the kingdom of God.
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It is very important that we understand Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
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Very important we understand that. For the same reason that we can decrown the gospel, we can also take kingdom ethics out of the kingdom.
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And if you want to ask me a good category or label for the Sermon on the Mount, it's a sermon, at least in chapter 5, it's a sermon about kingdom ethics.
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Kingdom values. And so, here in Matthew 6 .33,
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we're really coming full circle to a lot of what we've already seen. Jesus' concern has been to how
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His peoples conduct their lives from the very beginning. We opened with the Beatitudes. He described
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His people in almost perplexing ways. Meek? Poor? Weeping?
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Mourning? Persecuted? Lord, I don't know if I want to be your follower. I know,
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Jesus says, if you want to follow me, you have to carry that cross. You will look like that, but that will actually be the sign that you have been blessed.
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Blessed are you when you look like this. Blessed are you when your life looks like this.
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Blessed are you when you live this way. And we came to Matthew 5 .21,
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an all -important verse. Jesus clarifies that all of this corresponds to our relationship to His commands, and He clarifies those commands against all the ways that they had been confused and maligned.
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And so, He clarified, you have heard it said, but I am telling you. And the all -important verse in Matthew 5 .20
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and 21, He warns that those who do not have a righteousness that exceeds the
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Pharisees and the scribes will never enter the kingdom. So we come through the
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Beatitudes, the elaboration and clarification of the law, and Jesus says with central significance, if you're not living a righteous life that exceeds the righteousness of Pharisees and scribes, the holiest, most devout and pious men in the first century, you'll never enter the kingdom of God.
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Interesting that He connects righteousness with the kingdom of God there in Matthew 5.
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And then here in chapter 6, Jesus began by perhaps helping us and clarifying a little bit.
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If in chapter 5 He says you must have an exceeding righteousness, then in chapter 6
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He begins straight away by saying, your righteousness should not be done for the eyes of men.
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In other words, your righteousness needs to exceed even the Pharisees and the scribes, and then in chapter 6, don't be righteous toward men.
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Don't be righteous in the sense that you're trumpeting your achievements on the street corner.
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Don't be righteous, scare quote righteous, in such a way that actually you receive nothing from God because you were never doing it unto
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God. In that way, you're not actually seeking first the kingdom of God. You're seeking your own reputation.
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You're seeking a certain effect or impact. You're seeking a certain maintenance of your status.
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That's not seeking first the kingdom. That's actually seeking the praise, the reward of men.
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And Jesus says you'll get it in full, but you'll get nothing from my Father. You'll be just like a Pharisee. Pharisees love the best seats in the synagogue.
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They love greetings in the marketplace. They love their reputation more than life itself. They love for their works to be seen by men, and they won't inherit the kingdom.
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And if you want to inherit the kingdom, you better have a righteousness that's better than that. Not a self -righteousness, not a false righteousness, but a righteousness that comes from God.
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A righteousness born of His Spirit. So Jesus is very concerned about kingdom righteousness.
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Chapter 5, He's driving that home. If you don't have kingdom righteousness, you're not part of the kingdom. And in Chapter 6, you don't have kingdom righteousness if the righteousness isn't about the kingdom and done for the kingdom.
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So Chapter 5 is all about the righteous deeds that are done as salt and light. And righteousness here belongs to the kingdom.
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Kingdom values, why? Righteousness are the ethical dimensions of faith. I can't remember if we talked about this more on the separate study group or the
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Sunday night kind of general group, but maybe a little bit in both. We were discussing that the term religion is such a hard term to understand.
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That's still true today. It's so widely debated, but in antiquity the term, the
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Latin term, religio, anything that would be classified as a religion in Greek, threskeia, it was more about the cultic activity of religion.
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It was certain forms of piety. You would have household gods, this is true even in Hittite culture or ancient
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Israelite culture we have artifacts and evidence of these things. You may have, if you were unfaithful
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Israelites, household gods or forms of gods. What did Rachel have under her saddle? You have little household gods that are you give your devotions to, you burn incense to maybe, you give a little votive offering to, and really you have temples with priests that maintain the cultic activity, and that's all that religio is.
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Religion is just merely priest craft and cultic activity. What is good?
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What is a good life? Well, don't go to a temple to find that out. You're not going to find that out by burning incense or examining cow livers.
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If you want to know a good life, you need to find a philosopher. Those would be your first century ethicists.
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Someone who's actually meditating and dwelling through philosophy on what is good, and what is the good life, and what is virtue, and how can we distinguish virtues from vices, right?
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That's the domain of philosophy. But as we see from the very beginning, God, when He called Israel to Himself, didn't give them priest craft in a temple for mere cultic activity.
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He gave them a law that would comprehend the entirety of their lives. Every aspect of who you are as a human being would correspond to this faith in God.
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This desire, this redemptive activity He is bringing about. And so we said in the second century, the
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Romans really struggled to make sense of, who are these Christians? Is this some weird superstition?
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It's a foreign cult, but they're so concerned about how they live, so it's not really a cult. They don't even have a temple.
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In fact, they're atheists because they don't have statues and images that they worship. What is this weird group of atheists that are concerned about life?
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We don't know how to classify it. And the reason the Christians were so impactful is because they drew together what in Roman antiquity had always been separate.
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The very thing that Jesus is getting at. That every aspect of your life would be born out of devotion and loyalty to God.
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There's only one true God and He's gone over all that is and therefore the entirety of my life and everything that comprises it has something to do with God and something to do with His work in the world.
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And for the early Christians that meant there was an ethical dimension to their faith. Now that's obvious to us in a way that wasn't obvious back then.
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That's why Jesus is saying, don't just seek the kingdom through ritual. Don't just seek the kingdom as though you can go do a few votives.
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Seek the kingdom and the very righteousness of God. This is how you will be salt and light.
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This is what Israel was meant to do to be a light to the nations. That their devotion to God would actually transform their lives ethically in such a way that they would be so distinct from the nations of the world that those nations would be drawn to that light.
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That's essentially what's taking place in the early centuries of the church. The ethical dimension of our faith.
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When God calls Abram to himself, out of his loins speaking according to the flesh, Israel would come.
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And he speaks in this way, I have chosen Abram so he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the
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Lord. How are you going to do that? By doing what is right and just so the
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Lord can bring about what Abraham to Abraham what he has promised. Do you see? There was an ethical concern.
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Righteousness has to be done in order for the kingdom promises to be advanced through Abraham. And so election,
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I chose Abram, I called him for this reason. Ethics, so he will do what is right.
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Mission, so I can bring about what I've promised. It's all held together. Election, ethics, and mission are the three legs of the stool of the kingdom of God.
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Election, ethics, and mission. When God gave
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Israel his commands and revealed his will to them and gave them prophecies to animate their hope in the one who was yet to come, he was giving them not only great and precious promises and covenants to which he was faithful, but he was also giving them a priestly and holy identity.
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You are to be a holy people. You are to be a holy priesthood. A kingdom of priests.
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Why? Election, ethics, mission. You will be a holy priesthood to the whole world.
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Nations will come to the temples and enter through the courts that are arranged with the artistically designated pomegranate leaves and blades of grass, the starry host, the ocean -like basin.
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They're walking through emblems of the cosmos to recognize their coming to their creator.
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And you will function as a holy priesthood to them. As light in a kingdom way, as salt.
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They'll be drawn to know me and to worship me aright because of you. And so all of this is about the rule and reign of God being acknowledged by the nations.
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He makes his people, as it were, a display case. And that's what
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Jesus says, doesn't he? That they may see your good works.
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What is that? Your righteousness. And do what with that? Glorify your father in heaven.
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To seek the kingdom first and his righteousness makes us that kind of priesthood.
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That kind of display case. The salt and the light that Jesus said we are to be as his followers.
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It's so that his rule, his presence, his kingdom and its ways and its hopes will become evident to the nations around us, to the peoples around us.
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That is Exodus in a nutshell. That is the New Testament church and her commission in a nutshell.
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Of course, Israel stumbled at that stumbling stone. They failed in the task. As we said, the suffering servant came to bring it about.
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Has that kingdom changed? Has the will of our king become derailed?
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Not according to the Sermon on the Mount. When Peter is writing to Christians, what does he say?
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As these Christians gathered, as it were, from all these different places. He says to them,
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You are a chosen generation. Election. A royal priesthood.
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A holy nation. His own special people. So that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
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Mission. Who once were not a people but are now the people of God. Election.
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Who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy. Election. Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.
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Ethics. Having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles. Ethics.
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So that when they speak against you as if you were evildoers, they may by your good works observe and glorify your
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Father in the day of visitation. You see? Election. Ethics.
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Mission. The kingdom has not changed. Christopher Wright, and I've mentioned him in times past, so helpful.
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I don't agree with a lot of the things that he says in different places, but in the long strides that he takes understanding the mission of God and redemptive history, it's absolutely crystalline.
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He says, if the law was given in order to shape Israel to be what it was called to be, a light to the nations, a holy priesthood, then it has become a paradigm for those who in Christ inherit that role.
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What does Jesus say we are? Salt and light. In the Old as well as in the New Testament, the ethical demand on those who claim to be
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God's people is determined by the mission with which they have been entrusted. Do you see what he's saying there?
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The way that God calls you to live is not arbitrary. It's actually what is required to bring about His will, to accomplish
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His mission. He puts it this way, another way.
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There is no biblical mission without biblical ethics. He's called you to conduct your life in a certain way.
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As Peter is saying, don't give in to your flesh. Fight against your lust. Don't ever lose heart in the battle between the spirit and the flesh, and do everything.
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Go the extra mile. Let your face be slapped. Do whatever you have to do to have your conduct be honorable among the
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Gentiles, even if you're called evil as you do so. Why? Because if you don't have that kind of ethic, you won't be able to bring about the mission.
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You won't be able to actually seek first the kingdom and accomplish God's promises. There is no mission without ethics.
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So often we try to fit the co -pilot version of Jesus into the little cockpit of our own ambitions and desires and needs.
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I want God to somehow fit into my life goals, my life vision, my comforts and needs, when
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I should be considering how does my life fit into this grand mission of God? It's entirely upside down.
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How does my life fit into this kingdom work that God is bringing about?
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That insight born by the grace of the gospel if you want to know how in the world people became
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Christians in the first three centuries. It's that insight, that acknowledgement, that faith, that mustard seed breaking the glass, spreading out, that causes someone like Ignatius to say please don't protect me from death.
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Please don't injure me by trying to spare my life. Please let me lay my life down in the arena and be consumed.
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Please! Peter says, I beg you, fight against the flesh.
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Recognize your election. Live in the ethics of the kingdom so that you can bring about the mission. And Ignatius is saying,
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I beg you, let me do that. Get out of my way. Here's the problem, brothers and sisters.
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In the modern day, we have emphasized accomplishment over character.
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I haven't done a study on this, but I would imagine that obituaries written in former days, in former centuries, probably had a lot to do with the character of the person who had deceased.
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What kind of husband and father he was. What kind of man he was. His greatest virtues and strengths.
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And perhaps toward the very bottom, unless he was some noble noteworthy, perhaps at the very bottom, if mentionable at all, would have been his vocation.
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Now what is being communicated about that person if that is true, if that holds to bear?
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If you go see an old gravestone that says, here is Jedidiah Wriggles or something like that.
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And you know just from the name, that's 1600s at least. 1600s, 1700s at the latest.
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They'll say something like loving loving father, loved husband, you know, patient with all, something like that.
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In the modern day, how do we write our obituaries? Jim Wriggles, 49, worked 30 years at the local...
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That's what we're going with? That's the first line under the name? Where he worked? Because in the modern day we think it's only what you've accomplished.
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That kind of mentality is, I know what I need, a bigger barn. An eighth car, a third pool.
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That kind of thinking emphasizes accomplishment over character. What Jesus is saying is, don't seek after what the
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Gentiles seek. You want to accomplish something? Seek first the kingdom.
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And if you're going to seek first the kingdom, you're not going to be striving for accomplishments. That's how the
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Pharisees carry themselves about. That righteousness won't do. You want to seek the kingdom? You want to accomplish something?
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Seek the kingdom and His righteousness. Don't detach election and mission from ethics.
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You want to seek the kingdom of God? Don't resist an evil person. Someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him.
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You want to seek the kingdom? When someone sues you and wants your tunic off your back, give him your cloak too.
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You want to seek the kingdom? When someone compels you, a soldier forces you to go a mile, say, well, let's go the second with him.
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You want to seek the kingdom? Love people that hate you. Love people that hate you.
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I was at a cookout yesterday and there were two men, one man that had been in and out of church and now he has this relationship with this man.
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They're sitting in a bench, churchgoers around all these tables, a fence and on the other side of the yard and they're just sitting there dejected, leaning on each other, obviously recognizing we're not approved.
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I made a point to walk up to them. How's your summer going? How are you? I don't know you. What's your name?
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He was practically trembling. He was so anxious around me. I was just making some conversation, just trying to get to know him.
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He's bringing up, I said, how's your father? I knew his father. I'm cleaning up the house.
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I'm finding a lot of old Bibles. I'm definitely going to hold on to those Bibles. Don't just hold on to them. Read them. It's not an easy thing.
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What am I going to say? When there's people that hate you and you're seeking to love them when you love your enemies and people are cursing you and they're out to get you and you're blessing them.
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That's actually seeking the kingdom first. When you pray for those that are spitefully using you, persecuting you.
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What are you like? You're like your father in heaven. You're like him. He sends rain on the just and the unjust.
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That's what he's like. If you only love those that love you, what reward do you have? Anyone can do that.
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If you want to seek the kingdom, Jesus says, be like God. You will be perfect as my father in heaven is perfect.
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That's the whole flow of Matthew 5. He comes full circle to it here in Matthew 6 .33.
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He says, if you're going to seek the kingdom first and you're not going to be like the Gentiles, you need to seek the righteousness of the kingdom.
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Don't seek accomplishments. Don't seek your name. Don't seek your ambitions. Don't seek your reputation.
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You want to seek something? Seek the kind of life that God wants you to have so that he can accomplish his will through you.
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That's how he called Abraham. That's how Abraham's promise was fulfilled. This is
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Christopher Wright. Please listen to this. Once you begin to understand
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I am part of this grand mission of God working throughout human history, then my life ceases to be about what kind of mission does
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God have for me? Hmm. I might try this. I might try that.
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I wonder what kind of mission God has for me. Rather than that, if you've understood
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Matthew 6 .33 rightly, you should think this way. Not what kind of mission does
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God have for me? What kind of calling does God want for me? But this way. What kind of me does
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God want for his mission? What kind of me? What character of me?
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What behavior and personality and attitude and good works does God want of me for his calling?
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It's his mission. It's his calling. It's his election. It's his sovereign orchestration.
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It's his kingdom. If you want to seek it first, don't carve out your own little niche according to your terms.
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Seek it with his righteousness. Be perfect as he is perfect. And you will actually bring it about.
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Amen? No wonder Jesus says you don't have to be worried about your life if you're seeking first the kingdom of God.
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If you're looking to the birds and the grass and the hills, you know that your Father is caring for your needs so that you can seek first his kingdom.
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You need your Father's care to bring about your King's mission. And since you're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
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I hope we're all cut to the heart as I am when I read of men and women like Blandina and Justin Martyr.
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We're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. So lay aside every weight, every burden, every care, every need, every anxiety, every fear, every wound.
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Lay it aside. It so easily ensnares us. So easily ensnares us.
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It distracts us. Gets us off mission. Decrowns the Gospel. Fouls and defiles kingdom ethics.
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Lay all that aside. I beg you. Put aside that fleshly lust that wars against your soul.
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And run with endurance the race set before you, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith.
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I want to carry a little ball -peen hammer in my pocket and smash every little mustard seed and clay and glass
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I come across. Let that mustard seed grow. Seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
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All these things will be added. Let's pray. Father, we thank
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You for Your Word. Thank You for Your kingdom. Thank You for Your calling. Thank You, Lord, that out of darkness
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You did call us into Your marvelous light. And You called us in this way,
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Lord, that we can cast all of our cares on You so that even as sojourners in pilgrims, we can have lives that reflect
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Your righteousness, Your character, Your mercy, Your love, even for enemies, even for the wicked.
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So that these things would correspond to Your very work in the world, Lord. Not bringing that work down into the little areas and locations of our lives and needs, but rather,
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Lord, surrendering and turning our lives over to Your work. As You put us in places and times and relationships that You see fit,
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Lord, may our whole emphasis be to seek Your kingdom and its righteousness. And to the degree we even put a toe toward that endeavor, we see how far short we fall.
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We see the besetting sins. We see the lust of the flesh warring against our soul. Lord, cleanse us in the blood of the righteous
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One that we may have kingdom righteousness. Clothe us with the righteousness that He has brought about for a sinful and woeful people.
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Empower us with the presence of Your Spirit who, though prompting gently like a dove, is able to conquer empires and kingdoms, thrones and dominions, powers and principalities.
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God forbid we remove the slightest grain of gold from Your glorious crown,
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O conquering Lamb of God. May the same faith, may the same prayer of Your kingdom coming animate our very hopes and lives, we pray.
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Lord, teach us. Teach us as individuals. Teach us as a church how to seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness.
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How to order our lives and our ways after this high and holy calling to be a kingdom of priests so that You can accomplish all that You've undertaken to do.
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That we would be agents and servants of this work rather than obstacles and pitfalls of it. We pray in Jesus' name.