Scripture: Matthew 6:25-33
Probably many of you have seen this illustration before or heard of it. I decided to go ahead and do it right here because it is a powerful illustration. First, I take an empty jar and fill it with these rather large rocks. Is the jar full? Well, it is full of rocks, but it not full. Next, I add some pebbles that fit into the spaces between the rocks. Is the jar full? It’s fuller, but really there is still quite a lot of room in there. Look how much sand I can pour into the remaining spaces. Is the jar full? It really does look full now. But watch. Quite a bit of water can still fill the spaces between the grains of sand!
So, what’s the point? When this illustration was first presented to a classroom, the first answer that one student blurted out was, “No matter how full your schedule looks, there’s always room to squeeze in a little more!” That’s a natural conclusion from following the steps in this process. But the actual point of this illustration is about priorities. If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in there at all. One of the most important things we should think about in life is, what are the big rocks? How do we decide what really are the most important things that we must do first?
This sermon is not about “do not worry.” We all know we are not supposed to worry. This sermon is about the cure for worry. The only cure for worry is to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. That’s the command we are given here. Then all the things we are tempted to worry about will plain and simply be added to us, no problem.
Make the seeking of the Kingdom of God your top priority. That should be the biggest rock in your life. It’s a good rock. It needs to be the first thing, or at least the most important thing you put into the jar of time you have available each day so that you definitely take the time to seek the Kingdom.
But the next question to ask is, exactly how is that we are to seek the Kingdom. It’s not like you can just open your window and look up in the sky. It might be nice if it was that easy. We won’t find it if we go for a walk or travel to the far country where we may imagine it resides. The Kingdom of God is not a visible place, yet.
In Luke 17: 20-21, the Pharisees were asking when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” Or in the King James version it says that the Kingdom of God is within you. I think in your midst is better because there was Jesus, representing the Kingdom of God, standing in the middle of the crowd. But I don’t think Jesus would have wanted to say that the Kingdom was within the hearts of the Pharisees. They were against it, not embracing it. What they did have in them, in their hearts and in their minds, was a different idea of the Kingdom of God than the one Jesus was trying to tell us about.
In several places Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God was coming near or is near. In one place where a seeker answered Jesus’ question wisely, Jesus said, “You are not far from the Kingdom.” And of course, in the prayer that Jesus taught us we regularly pray, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. So where is this kingdom of God? It exists anywhere that God’s will is being done by his obedient servants, that is to say, when the children of God, the believers in Jesus Christ, the Church, the body of Christ, is living the way God wants it to. And since Jesus lived it perfectly, the Kingdom of God was present everywhere he went, even in the midst of Israel and the unbelieving Pharisees.
If God’s Kingdom is in our midst that way, why do we need to seek it? The answer is that God’s Kingdom is not obvious to our senses, and in our sinful nature we actually resist comprehending it. Awareness of or discovery of God’s kingdom is not automatic. And God does not force himself upon us. We have to seek it in order to find it and be aware of it. But he is eager to share himself with us and that is why we have the promise that if we do seek it we will find it.
So, then, how do we really seek this kingdom? What should we spend our time doing so that we end up living the way God wants us to? The answer my friends, is to hang out with the King by reading his Word, meditating on it, and praying about how we ought to apply it to our lives. That is why Psalm 1 serves so well as the call to worship today. It clearly tells the difference between those who are seeking God’s Kingdom and those who are working against God’s Kingdom.
There we get some instruction, “Blessed is the one…whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law, day and night.” The only way to know what the King wants is to read his laws and decrees that are given to us in the Holy Bible. We know that obeying the Law can’t save us. Salvation is the free gift of God through our faith in Jesus. But that is really just the beginning of our life in Christ. All such believers are to think of themselves as disciples, and disciples need to be taught to obey everything that Jesus commanded. That’s what the great commission says to us in Matthew 28. Verses 18- 20 read:
“Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
If Jesus has all authority, that makes him the king to be obeyed. To make disciples is to proclaim the gospel, baptize those who believe, and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded. He commanded us to bow the knee to him in faith. He commanded us to proclaim the gospel and make more believing disciples. Most significantly, He commanded us to love God and to love one another. And as we live this way, he has promised that he is always with us. And since he is the King of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of God will always be with us.
All this to say, that to seek the Kingdom, we need to spend lots of time in God’s Word, day and night, as it says in Psalm 1. And not just in Psalm one, but in many psalms and lots of places in Scripture we are told how good and how important it is to read the Word, meditate on the Word, and use God’s Word to shape our prayers. Reading God’s Word every day is one of the most important things you can do to seek the Kingdom of God. Everything you need to know about God’s Kingdom is in this book. So, if you want to seek the Kingdom of God, look into this book first!
And just as important is, pray! I heard one person say that prayer is the talking or communicating part of our love relationship with God. Put that way, it seems pretty obvious that prayer must be important. How could you love someone you never talk to? And also, of course, communication has to go both ways for there to actually be a loving relationship to speak of, right? So, prayer is not just us talking to God, but giving God space and time to talk back to us. Here is some good news. God most clearly speaks to us through his written word, the Bible. That means we can put these two big rocks, Bible reading and prayer, together in one time slot out of each day. I recommend you make it as generous of a time slot as possible. Martin Luther put the bar pretty high when he once said, “I have so much to do today! If I don’t spend the first three hours in prayer I won’t get anything done!”
Prayer can be done wrong. For example, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day thought that prayer was one the activities of religion that would show that they were good and were worthy of his attention if they did it well and did it regularly and did it eloquently. That kind of prayer is a part of salvation by works, being good enough for God. I think in our day Christians have that kind of prayer work in mind when they make excuses for not praying by saying that they are not very good at it.
But prayer is not something we have to do so God might listen to us. Prayer is something we get to do because, through Christ, our Heavenly Father has invited us into his royal courtroom. We are God’s children! He loves his kids and wants to hear from us! He cares about us so much. He cares about you so much that it is as if you can walk into the royal court room, see God sitting on his heavenly throne and you run right up to him and jump in his lap for a hug! He will never push you away from that. He always has time for you!
You know even, babies pray. They pray without words, you experienced parents begin to interpret your child’s cries. You know when they are hungry and when they need to be changed. Each time they cry, they are praying for you to comfort them. So that shows you that prayer does not require eloquence. It requires you to pour your heart out to God, even if you can’t find the words for it.
Prayer is not a duty. It is a wonderful privilege to commune with God. And it should be as natural as talking with your best friend. You can pour your heart out and nothing that you share will shock God. When you come in the name of Jesus, in faith that he has cleansed you and covered you with his righteousness, nothing is so horrible that he will push you away from his holiness. All he sees is a child he adores, forgive and loves!
At the same time, prayer is the main tool we have to get the work of the kingdom done in our world. That is why it is in prayer that we say, “Your Kingdom come. Your will be done.” To that end, I intend to spend the next four weeks after this one talking more about prayer, how it works in our lives and help us to get more comfortable with communicating with our loving heavenly father in ways that bless us and honor him.
So, there you have it. We have to seek the Kingdom of God first before everything else, because as we do that, then everything else falls into place in proper order. This huge rock of seeking the Kingdom is made up of two smaller pieces, your loving relationship with God and your prayer life of seeking that Kingdom. God tells you that. God implores you to make it a priority so that you have nothing else to worry about.
There’s another really big rock closely related to the first. That is loving your family. Everybody knows this. Everybody wishes they had more time to spend just enjoying healthy family relationships. We’ve heard this sort of thing before. At the end of your life, if you have any regret, it won’t be that you wish you had spent more time at the office. It will be that you wish you had spent more time with your spouse and kids.
Here’s a bit more good news. God thinks it’s a really great idea to combine these first two big rocks in one time slot. Spend time reading the Bible and praying, with your family! God approves of this concept so much that he mentioned it twice in Deuteronomy 6:7 and 11:9. Spend time with your kids talking to them about God and his wisdom. “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” In other words, any time the kids are around, try to love them and put in a good word for how much God loves them too.
Another big rock is your personal health and fitness. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 say, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.” The Christian faith is not just a spiritual business. Jesus came in the flesh. We live in flesh as representatives of God’s Kingdom. We ought to hold ourselves accountable to represent it well.
One of the most important environments in which this all takes place is the gathering of the Church. So, our corporate worship is also one of the big rocks. We are told in the book of Hebrews, Chapter 10, verses 23-25, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
And let me say a little more about that word, “spur.” Of course, we take it to mean “encourage.” But the word is spur! You know what spurs are. They are used to train horses sometimes and spurs hurt! But they do encourage the horse to obey. And so, in our lives together, if we accept the proverb that iron sharpens iron, it follows that we should expect some sparks to fly sometimes. But that’s okay where there is also forgiveness and love and forbearance.
You know, in order to spur one another on, we each have to be open about how we’re doing, and we each have to know each other and care about each other enough to speak into each other’s lives. That’s a big rock too.
But it all starts with seek first the Kingdom of God. If you seek you will find. You will find that God loves you very much. That he gave his one and only son on the cross for the forgiveness of sin. In that faith relationship with God through Jesus the Christ we have access to the heavenly throne room where we can spend time with our divine Father who loves to lavish us with his good graces. In his perfect love, he will not spoil us or let us get spoiled. He chastises those he loves and admonishes us so that we grow in the image and likeness of Christ, truly becoming a child of God in the process.
So, as you consider these things this week. I pray that you will take some time to consider your actual priorities. You can tell what they are by looking at where you really spend your time. Perhaps you only need to make a few small adjustments. But if you need to, you can dump everything else out of your life and start over. Every morning you get a fresh new jar of time. Put the big rocks in first. Schedule them in on your calendar or day planner. Ask God to help you. He is very willing. And sometime, let’s let each other know how that’s working out. And God will bless!
And now we turn to the Lord’s Supper, or Communion Service. This is another form of welcome in to the heavenly Kingdom. God has spread a feast before us, his royal family. Communion is an amplified version of communication. In this we do not just listen to the word of God but we also taste and see that the Lord is good!
Probably many of you have seen this illustration before or heard of it. I decided to go ahead and do it right here because it is a powerful illustration. First, I take an empty jar and fill it with these rather large rocks. Is the jar full? Well, it is full of rocks, but it not full. Next, I add some pebbles that fit into the spaces between the rocks. Is the jar full? It’s fuller, but really there is still quite a lot of room in there. Look how much sand I can pour into the remaining spaces. Is the jar full? It really does look full now. But watch. Quite a bit of water can still fill the spaces between the grains of sand!
So, what’s the point? When this illustration was first presented to a classroom, the first answer that one student blurted out was, “No matter how full your schedule looks, there’s always room to squeeze in a little more!” That’s a natural conclusion from following the steps in this process. But the actual point of this illustration is about priorities. If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in there at all. One of the most important things we should think about in life is, what are the big rocks? How do we decide what really are the most important things that we must do first?
This sermon is not about “do not worry.” We all know we are not supposed to worry. This sermon is about the cure for worry. The only cure for worry is to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. That’s the command we are given here. Then all the things we are tempted to worry about will plain and simply be added to us, no problem.
Make the seeking of the Kingdom of God your top priority. That should be the biggest rock in your life. It’s a good rock. It needs to be the first thing, or at least the most important thing you put into the jar of time you have available each day so that you definitely take the time to seek the Kingdom.
But the next question to ask is, exactly how is that we are to seek the Kingdom. It’s not like you can just open your window and look up in the sky. It might be nice if it was that easy. We won’t find it if we go for a walk or travel to the far country where we may imagine it resides. The Kingdom of God is not a visible place, yet.
In Luke 17: 20-21, the Pharisees were asking when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” Or in the King James version it says that the Kingdom of God is within you. I think in your midst is better because there was Jesus, representing the Kingdom of God, standing in the middle of the crowd. But I don’t think Jesus would have wanted to say that the Kingdom was within the hearts of the Pharisees. They were against it, not embracing it. What they did have in them, in their hearts and in their minds, was a different idea of the Kingdom of God than the one Jesus was trying to tell us about.
In several places Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God was coming near or is near. In one place where a seeker answered Jesus’ question wisely, Jesus said, “You are not far from the Kingdom.” And of course, in the prayer that Jesus taught us we regularly pray, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. So where is this kingdom of God? It exists anywhere that God’s will is being done by his obedient servants, that is to say, when the children of God, the believers in Jesus Christ, the Church, the body of Christ, is living the way God wants it to. And since Jesus lived it perfectly, the Kingdom of God was present everywhere he went, even in the midst of Israel and the unbelieving Pharisees.
If God’s Kingdom is in our midst that way, why do we need to seek it? The answer is that God’s Kingdom is not obvious to our senses, and in our sinful nature we actually resist comprehending it. Awareness of or discovery of God’s kingdom is not automatic. And God does not force himself upon us. We have to seek it in order to find it and be aware of it. But he is eager to share himself with us and that is why we have the promise that if we do seek it we will find it.
So, then, how do we really seek this kingdom? What should we spend our time doing so that we end up living the way God wants us to? The answer my friends, is to hang out with the King by reading his Word, meditating on it, and praying about how we ought to apply it to our lives. That is why Psalm 1 serves so well as the call to worship today. It clearly tells the difference between those who are seeking God’s Kingdom and those who are working against God’s Kingdom.
There we get some instruction, “Blessed is the one…whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law, day and night.” The only way to know what the King wants is to read his laws and decrees that are given to us in the Holy Bible. We know that obeying the Law can’t save us. Salvation is the free gift of God through our faith in Jesus. But that is really just the beginning of our life in Christ. All such believers are to think of themselves as disciples, and disciples need to be taught to obey everything that Jesus commanded. That’s what the great commission says to us in Matthew 28. Verses 18- 20 read:
“Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
If Jesus has all authority, that makes him the king to be obeyed. To make disciples is to proclaim the gospel, baptize those who believe, and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded. He commanded us to bow the knee to him in faith. He commanded us to proclaim the gospel and make more believing disciples. Most significantly, He commanded us to love God and to love one another. And as we live this way, he has promised that he is always with us. And since he is the King of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of God will always be with us.
All this to say, that to seek the Kingdom, we need to spend lots of time in God’s Word, day and night, as it says in Psalm 1. And not just in Psalm one, but in many psalms and lots of places in Scripture we are told how good and how important it is to read the Word, meditate on the Word, and use God’s Word to shape our prayers. Reading God’s Word every day is one of the most important things you can do to seek the Kingdom of God. Everything you need to know about God’s Kingdom is in this book. So, if you want to seek the Kingdom of God, look into this book first!
And just as important is, pray! I heard one person say that prayer is the talking or communicating part of our love relationship with God. Put that way, it seems pretty obvious that prayer must be important. How could you love someone you never talk to? And also, of course, communication has to go both ways for there to actually be a loving relationship to speak of, right? So, prayer is not just us talking to God, but giving God space and time to talk back to us. Here is some good news. God most clearly speaks to us through his written word, the Bible. That means we can put these two big rocks, Bible reading and prayer, together in one time slot out of each day. I recommend you make it as generous of a time slot as possible. Martin Luther put the bar pretty high when he once said, “I have so much to do today! If I don’t spend the first three hours in prayer I won’t get anything done!”
Prayer can be done wrong. For example, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day thought that prayer was one the activities of religion that would show that they were good and were worthy of his attention if they did it well and did it regularly and did it eloquently. That kind of prayer is a part of salvation by works, being good enough for God. I think in our day Christians have that kind of prayer work in mind when they make excuses for not praying by saying that they are not very good at it.
But prayer is not something we have to do so God might listen to us. Prayer is something we get to do because, through Christ, our Heavenly Father has invited us into his royal courtroom. We are God’s children! He loves his kids and wants to hear from us! He cares about us so much. He cares about you so much that it is as if you can walk into the royal court room, see God sitting on his heavenly throne and you run right up to him and jump in his lap for a hug! He will never push you away from that. He always has time for you!
You know even, babies pray. They pray without words, you experienced parents begin to interpret your child’s cries. You know when they are hungry and when they need to be changed. Each time they cry, they are praying for you to comfort them. So that shows you that prayer does not require eloquence. It requires you to pour your heart out to God, even if you can’t find the words for it.
Prayer is not a duty. It is a wonderful privilege to commune with God. And it should be as natural as talking with your best friend. You can pour your heart out and nothing that you share will shock God. When you come in the name of Jesus, in faith that he has cleansed you and covered you with his righteousness, nothing is so horrible that he will push you away from his holiness. All he sees is a child he adores, forgive and loves!
At the same time, prayer is the main tool we have to get the work of the kingdom done in our world. That is why it is in prayer that we say, “Your Kingdom come. Your will be done.” To that end, I intend to spend the next four weeks after this one talking more about prayer, how it works in our lives and help us to get more comfortable with communicating with our loving heavenly father in ways that bless us and honor him.
So, there you have it. We have to seek the Kingdom of God first before everything else, because as we do that, then everything else falls into place in proper order. This huge rock of seeking the Kingdom is made up of two smaller pieces, your loving relationship with God and your prayer life of seeking that Kingdom. God tells you that. God implores you to make it a priority so that you have nothing else to worry about.
There’s another really big rock closely related to the first. That is loving your family. Everybody knows this. Everybody wishes they had more time to spend just enjoying healthy family relationships. We’ve heard this sort of thing before. At the end of your life, if you have any regret, it won’t be that you wish you had spent more time at the office. It will be that you wish you had spent more time with your spouse and kids.
Here’s a bit more good news. God thinks it’s a really great idea to combine these first two big rocks in one time slot. Spend time reading the Bible and praying, with your family! God approves of this concept so much that he mentioned it twice in Deuteronomy 6:7 and 11:9. Spend time with your kids talking to them about God and his wisdom. “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” In other words, any time the kids are around, try to love them and put in a good word for how much God loves them too.
Another big rock is your personal health and fitness. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 say, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.” The Christian faith is not just a spiritual business. Jesus came in the flesh. We live in flesh as representatives of God’s Kingdom. We ought to hold ourselves accountable to represent it well.
One of the most important environments in which this all takes place is the gathering of the Church. So, our corporate worship is also one of the big rocks. We are told in the book of Hebrews, Chapter 10, verses 23-25, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
And let me say a little more about that word, “spur.” Of course, we take it to mean “encourage.” But the word is spur! You know what spurs are. They are used to train horses sometimes and spurs hurt! But they do encourage the horse to obey. And so, in our lives together, if we accept the proverb that iron sharpens iron, it follows that we should expect some sparks to fly sometimes. But that’s okay where there is also forgiveness and love and forbearance.
You know, in order to spur one another on, we each have to be open about how we’re doing, and we each have to know each other and care about each other enough to speak into each other’s lives. That’s a big rock too.
But it all starts with seek first the Kingdom of God. If you seek you will find. You will find that God loves you very much. That he gave his one and only son on the cross for the forgiveness of sin. In that faith relationship with God through Jesus the Christ we have access to the heavenly throne room where we can spend time with our divine Father who loves to lavish us with his good graces. In his perfect love, he will not spoil us or let us get spoiled. He chastises those he loves and admonishes us so that we grow in the image and likeness of Christ, truly becoming a child of God in the process.
So, as you consider these things this week. I pray that you will take some time to consider your actual priorities. You can tell what they are by looking at where you really spend your time. Perhaps you only need to make a few small adjustments. But if you need to, you can dump everything else out of your life and start over. Every morning you get a fresh new jar of time. Put the big rocks in first. Schedule them in on your calendar or day planner. Ask God to help you. He is very willing. And sometime, let’s let each other know how that’s working out. And God will bless!
And now we turn to the Lord’s Supper, or Communion Service. This is another form of welcome in to the heavenly Kingdom. God has spread a feast before us, his royal family. Communion is an amplified version of communication. In this we do not just listen to the word of God but we also taste and see that the Lord is good!
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