PRIORITIES: First Things First

August 22, 2010

PRIORITIES: First Things First
Matthew 6:33

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

PART 1
Identify the Current Issue

Since we were little, we’ve been learning the order in which to do things. We learned to count – in order. We learned the alphabet – in order. We learned how to put the letters of our name - in order. We learned how to get dressed – in order. But we’ve also learned that in other cases, order doesn’t really matter as long as everything comes out alright in the end. It doesn’t matter if you eat your carrots or your peas first as long as you clean your plate. It doesn’t matter if you study your spelling words or your multiplication tables first as long as you learn them both.

Does order matter in these examples?

3 + 2 = 5 or 2 + 3 = 5?
Julie or uJeil?
Shampoo + Conditioner or C + S?
Dessert + Salad or S + D?
Plug in computer and turn on or turn on computer then plug in

PART 2
Discover the Eternal Principles

As we’ve seen from the examples above, order serves different purposes in different contexts. Sometimes it is completely necessary, sometimes not at all. Other times, order helps you be more effective. And still at other times, order is a matter of tradition.

The question today is does order matter with our faith? Does it make a difference if we eat before we pray? If we complete our workday before we have a devotional? If we seek a certain salary or job location before we seek a call to ministry? According to Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:33, order matters. Order is everything. He gives an explicit order of things to His disciples concerning their priorities.

"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

The context of this passage is a conversation with Jesus and His disciples. They are concerned with what they are going to eat, what they are going to wear, and where they are going to sleep. After all, they’ve left their jobs, families, and homes to follow Jesus. Jesus assures them that if God takes care of the birds and the flowers, then He will also take care of their basic needs. When Jesus says “all these things” will be added to you, that’s what He is referring to. Notice that He didn’t say that once you’ve sought the Kingdom of God, then you are free to seek your basic needs. He says, instead, that if you seek the Kingdom of God first, these things will be added. It doesn’t say by whom, but the passive voice implies that they will be added by someone other than us. We can assume that ultimately they will be added by God.

Teaching point one: Order matters. Seek the Kingdom of God first.

Fortunately for us, Jesus’ words are clear in this passage ... sort of. He tells exactly what we are supposed to do first – seek the Kingdom of God, but what exactly is the Kingdom of God and how do we go about seeking it? It would be a lot easier if Jesus had said, “seek ye first a good education” or “seek ye first 10% of your salary in a savings account”, but He didn’t, so we had better get to figuring out what He means by the Kingdom of God if seeking it is to be our first priority. Our goal in this lesson is to know what the Kingdom of God looks like when we see it – and when we
don’t.

Teaching point two: The Kingdom of God is the small thing behind the big thing.

Jesus never directly answered the question, “What or where is the Kingdom of God?” Instead, He tried to explain it using analogies. When we look closely at His analogies, we learn that He is more concerned about describing how the Kingdom of God works than defining what it is. If we look at the original Greek word used for “kingdom” in Matthew, we find the word basileia. The definition is royal power, kingship, dominion, rule, not to be confused with an actual kingdom but rather the right or authority to rule over a kingdom.

This helps us understand why Jesus doesn’t explain what the Kingdom of God as if it were a place. Since it is instead a power or authority, He tries to show the disciples what it looks like in action so they’ll know it when they see it. Listen now as Jesus’ compares the Kingdom of God to a pine nut or pine seed.

Read Luke 13:18-21
Then Jesus said, "How can I picture God's kingdom for you? What kind of story can I use? It's like a pine nut that a man plants in his front yard. It grows into a huge pine tree with thick branches, and eagles build nests in it."

The above verses are from Eugene Peterson’s modern translation of the Bible called The Message. In the original Greek text, the original story is about a mustard seed and mustard tree because those would have been familiar to the 1st Century audience. Peterson changes the example to use a pine nut and pine tree instead because we are more familiar with those.

In this passage there are four “characters” – the man, the pine nut, the pine tree, and the eagles. They each play different roles. Jesus is comparing the KOG to the pine nut, so let’s focus on it.

[Q] If the Kingdom of God is a kind of authority or power, what do we learn about it from the pine nut?

[Q] What is the pine nut’s purpose? How would you describe the change in the pine nut?

[Q] What happens to the pine nut at the end of the story?

[Q] How are the tree and the pine nut related? What’s the difference between them?

[Q] On the surface, which “character” in this story looks powerful?

[Q] Why does order matter in this analogy? What would happen if the order were reversed?

Teaching point three: The power of the Kingdom of God transforms rather than duplicates or multiplies.

In Jesus’ first example, we learned that the Kingdom of God is the small thing behind the big thing, that it’s the first thing before the last thing. He then adds a second example comparing the Kingdom of God to yeast put into dough. Before we read this passage, we’re going to watch a video of dough rising. Jesus used examples that He knew would be very familiar to his audience. Since most of us don’t make bread on a daily basis, we need to be sure we are familiar with dough rising if we are going to understand His analogy.






Now listen to this description of what’s happening in the dough.

If you’ve ever taken a bite of bread you’ve made, you may wonder how simple ingredients like flour, salt and yeast can produce raised, sometimes wonderfully bubbly bread. It makes people a little squeamish to know it that yeast makes bread dough rise because it is a live single-celled organism. Specifically it is a fungus which is harnessed to eat, drink and be merry, before dying a quick death when exposed to oven heat.

Yeasts for bread dough responds to warm water, which begins to bring the little cells to life. Then when exposed to sugars in bread and in flour, it begins to eat, digesting portions of these sugars. This eating process goes on for a short period of time only. Eventually the yeast will die within a few hours, especially if the dough is allowed to grow cold or exposed to too much air.

It might be embarrassing to the yeast to have to admit that this rapid eating/digestion cycle makes it just a trifle gassy. As yeast is feasting, it begins to release gas bubbles of carbon dioxide, and small amounts of ethanol alcohol. These bubbles, trapped in the bread dough, cause the rising action with which we’re familiar. This is why bread making can be time consuming; you’ve got to let this fungus work for a couple of hours in order to sufficiently rise dough.

Once dough has been acted upon by the yeast, not all of the cells are quite dead. Putting the bread in the oven is relatively macabre, from the standpoint of the yeast (if it had a point of view). The heat from the oven makes remaining cells go into overdrive, madly munching away at the sugars and expelling carbon dioxide prior to expiring from the oven heat. This is why bread continues to rise during its early cooking stages, and then may deflate slightly as cooking continues.

Now that we have a better understanding of how yeast works in dough, listen to Jesus’ analogy.

Jesus tried to explain the KOG to His disciples again. "How can I picture God's kingdom? It's like yeast that a woman works into enough dough for three loaves of bread—and waits while the dough rises."

[Q] What else do we learn about the power of the Kingdom of God from the example of the yeast?

[Q] How does the yeast do what it does? What happens to it? What is its purpose?

[Q] Why does order matter in this analogy? What would happen if the order were reversed?

[Q] What is the difference between transformation and multiplication?

Teaching point four: Seek, not muster or try to create.

One of the things that separates us from the rest of the creatures that God created is that we too have the power to create. We have a substantial amount of power – certainly the most of any creature on earth. We’ve become very convinced by our own power to do things, so much so that we often forget that there is a greater power and that we might actually benefit from, and in fact need, that power.

One thing is for sure – we cannot muster up or create the power of God by any means we have. We cannot do it through a great education, through financial security, through precisely planned and executed worship services, through a perfectly order home, through any use of any power we have.

Like an unplugged computer, we have an extraordinary amount of potential, but until we seek the plug in the wall, we are nothing of what we are created to be. If we remain unplugged from our power source, we are merely a decoration or an example in a museum. However, as soon as the computer is plugged into the wall, “all these things” are added to it. All of its basic needs or functions are right there.

Jesus is trying to tell the disciples, and us, the same thing. Order matters!!! Get plugged in first and the rest will follow. Bill Gates knew that the computer would need Windows and Microsoft Word, and he made sure that once the computer was plugged in, those things would be there. Likewise, God knows our basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. He created us to need those very things. If Bill Gates made sure the computer had an operating system and software, then we can trust God to make sure we have food, clothing, and shelter.

PART 3
Apply Your Findings

[Q] Why is it so easy to get our priorities out of order? To seek our “operating systems and software” before we bother to “plug in”?

[Q] Have you ever experienced the power of God transforming you or something you were a part of? Have you ever tried to transform something with your own power and ended up with 100 pine nuts and no tree?

Whatever real power we have is completely dependent upon the power of God. Without His power living in us, sustaining us, guiding us, and emboldening us, we are nothing that makes any eternal difference. We are a metal box full of glass and circuits sitting on a table cluttered with software boxes. But with the power of God (His Kingdom), Jesus promises that we will do the works that He has done “and greater works than these.” (John 14:12) He promises that if we plug into the power of God that we will have lives that have the transformative power of Christ’s life. This may sound sacrilegious, even blasphemous, since His life saved all of creation. It is not blasphemous because it is Christ’s life continued in us – not our own. Paul writes to the Corinthian church: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” He may have also said if Christ is in anyone, he is a new creation. We are “born again” – this time into the Body of Christ to be His hands and His feet working in this world.
Seek this. One chapter later in Matthew, Jesus promises, “Seek and you will find.”