The Kingdom Has Priority 10/22/44
Scripture: Matthew 6: 22-34
Text: Matthew 6: 33a; “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness ....”
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness...” “The Kingdom Has Priority.” That was a text and the sermon subject which Howard C. Ackley, a Methodist minister in New York state recently announced. He said that it seemed surprisingly easy to put the two together and to start in the preparation of a sermon that began with a considerable sense of virtue. He even felt elated. Good text! Good theme! Ought to be a moving sermon!
But he found that he had no peace of mind over it. Tranquillity fled. He felt as though he himself were being subjected to some spiritual examination which included questions that were serious indeed. And the preaching of the sermon, when Sunday came, was not a matter of getting or giving pleasure. It became a searching occasion.
I suspect that this experience is familiar to most preachers who really try to present the gospel in vigorous, worth-while terms. How can anyone face the straightforward, vigorous teachings of Jesus with complacency? And who is able to advocate the grace of the infinitely good God with any sense of adequacy of his own?
I have said more than once that I never preach a sermon, that proves to be any good, that doesn’t in some way strike me like a boomerang. If lay men and women feel now and then on a Sunday that the minister’s sermon has certainly talked to them that morning, you may be assured that some of the same sermons talk to the minister just as directly. Sometimes the word is one of comfort. Sometimes it is very disquieting.
For much of the gospel that we receive and preach is a command to know better and to be better.
Now I propose to use the same text and the same theme as those announced by that Methodist minister. They embody a great idea, though not necessarily a comfortable one.
1) We should first take fair warning that the business of seeking the Kingdom is a precarious undertaking! We hear, and talk, much about “security” in these testing times. It is no light matter to expect freedom from want, from fear, from disease, from the curse of warfare. It is quite right for us all to strive for such freedom. We ought to be bending our efforts toward the struggle for such freedom. But the achievement of that ideal is not wholly a thing that may be grasped, at will, by man. God has something to do with it. And the struggle for it has something to do with the need, not just of ourselves, but of all people for the same freedom. In the light of God’s ways and his demands, freedom from want, fear, disease, warfare becomes not necessarily an “immediate,” but surely an “ultimate.”
A careful re-reading of New Testament scripture throws sobering light upon the search of some splendid people for the Kingdom. They were earnest and devoted people. They were true seekers, and workers, for the Kingdom. They had given up comfort, possessions, what security they had - everything, for the Kingdom. And yet the record (in the words of Paul to the Hebrews [11: 37,38]) says that they were mocked and scourged, they were fettered and imprisoned. “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” And, though they gained God’s approval and a serenity of soul by reason of being true to the convictions He gave them, yet they did not receive the promise of the Kingdom. Many of them had expected it to come, then and there, during their lifetime --- and it didn’t come.
Not every good and God-fearing person has had that experience -- but some did! And some do.
It is sobering and disillusioning to those of us who expect immediate dividends on our life investment. We look for the rewards, and an account like this turns everything sour. If we’re looking for a jackpot, this simply isn’t interesting! It doesn’t even hold the promise of a pay check at the end of a 48-hour week or at the end of a 4-week month.
And yet, in Jesus’ sermon on the mount, a clear priority is stated: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness.” That statement seems to mean: if you are in earnest about seeking the Kingdom, don’t waste time and attention on the pay envelope or the dividend check; don’t be coveting the rewards. Abandon your life preoccupation with pay and reward, “success” and bargain-making, and concentrate on the Kingdom. Forget what you think you’re going to get out of it; concentrate on what it calls for and what you can put into it. Nobody is actually seeking the Kingdom who is preoccupied with compensation, or status or reward. The Kingdom is not at the bargain counter.
This is the risk we must run if we want the Kingdom to come “on earth as it is in heaven.” We are to be seekers for whatever God will reveal as true, good and possible.
There is nothing new about this. Every day, men offer everything they have, are or hope to be, for that ideal that is their country. And some pay just that extreme price for a country which their survivors may enjoy, though they themselves shall never see it again, in the flesh. The Kingdom of God is to be gained at no lesser cost.
You see we deal with no easy text and no comfortable theme from the point of view of people who love ease and security! The search for the Kingdom is hard and, to our mortal minds, uncertain.
2) It would seem, further, that we are to recognize this priority regardless of whatever may be human conditions. The night is black; triumph and agony are mixed among its stormy sounds. Like panic-struck sailors we cry for light and calm.
We want to understand, we want to see clearly - (at least I do, and I think you do) - we want a trail blazed; or better yet a paved road. We may even hope, in some magic way, to arrive at the destination without taking the perilous journey! We find it easy to put everything at ease first and to say “Well, bye-and-bye the Kingdom.”
Some young people were discussing certain of Jesus’ great teachings - some of which are hard to quote and harder to face and fathom and trust. Someone mentioned “loving your enemy”, and another “going the second mile when compelled to go one,” and someone else “turning the other cheek.” The leader of their meeting inquired, “What about them?”
Some answered, “Wait until everybody practices them.” Others said, “Live by them whether anybody else does or not.” What is the difference between the two answers? Does not the first seem to demand fulfilled promises before effort - the beaten trail, the calm, the light? What about the pioneers before there is to be any trail; what about storms and darkness - do we really live in a world where they don’t exist? Then does not the second answer simply ask for a chance to obey and take the risks, like an explorer thrilled with setting out over unknown land or sea?
Does not the larger truth lie with those young folks’ second answer? Whatever human conditions are - no matter how badly messed up we are in the tussle between right and wrong, the first thing we have to offer - even all we have to offer - is faithful obedience.
Shall we say, “just give me security; give me prosperity; assure my health; promise that I shall live to be 85 or 90 - let me have these things and then I will seek the Kingdom.”? Do we seek first the calm; first the security - then the Kingdom? It can’t be done! For the Christian, the Kingdom has priority.
3) But personal gains and comforts and rewards lie so close; it is hard to turn from them when we think we see them. What makes it difficult, is the rest of the same saying - “Seek ye first the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.” What’s wrong, then with asking for security before seeking the Kingdom? Can’t we make some sort of verbal contract with God about that, so that we will know what to expect? Didn’t Jesus expect the hospitality of his friends, the loyalty of his disciples, the shelter of common courtesies? When faced with his greatest danger, and evil men were about to close in on him in a garden at Gethsemane, didn’t he even ask, with bloody sweat on his brow, to be saved from the cruelty?
Yes, bless God, he did! We have a Savior who knew what it is to be human - to be tempted, and tried, and tormented just as all of us are! That is what makes him so lovable to us. We understand him at the point of human frailty!
But he also obeyed. He prayed at the end, and as a constant condition, “Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” [Luke 22: 42]. And he taught his followers, patiently, faithfully to say the same. At that point, our human affection turns to something like awesome adoration. Here is the divine side of one who recognizes God above everything else. And here he understands us best, in that he knows we too are made to be divine.
Two things can be said of the rest of that verse - “these things shall be added unto you.” One is this: “Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.” And the other is this: these “other things” are primarily God’s business, not ours. The “other things” belong to the Kingdom, just as we belong to the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is first. If we grasp this, our sense of values is straightened in conformity with God’s created order.
4) But why should we bother with the Kingdom? Is it not all right to risk whatever may be involved in seeking other things first? If we ask, “Why should we seek the Kingdom at all?” the answer is “Because it leaves its mark on our souls and on the souls of all men.”
Even of those saintly folk mentioned in the book of Hebrews who died “not having received the promise” it was nevertheless recorded that “they gained the approval of God.” The noble mark of their quest was written indelibly on their souls.
The same qualitative principle is true of an education. Many may seek an education for the increased income they expect to earn thereafter. There are even statistics compiled to show how much average increase in earning power a college education yields. And I have observed some college students who had this end primarily in mind. I have also observed that they seemed to miss the real point of an education. Education is not personal monetary gain. Education is a discipline of the soul - a matter of taste - a search for knowledge of the truth. It leaves its mark on the soul.
Once in a while it will be charged of someone that he or she joined some reputedly influential church for the business contacts or social prestige supposedly attached thereto. If, and when, that is true it means that someone has missed the point altogether. For a church is a fellowship of those committed to the effort to know God’s will and to do it. It becomes the “body of Christ” only as it fulfills this commitment. It is weakened and strangled if it seeks any other loyalty. Its very life is built, or destroyed, by the profession and purpose of its members. It exists for the Kingdom of God, and that Kingdom is primarily a spiritual enterprise from beginning to end.
5) And the Kingdom is not far away. Doors open upon it at every touch. We need not wait for some future day or some distant place or some auspicious occasion. The time it now; the skills are those we possess; the place is here.
The Kingdom was near Paul in prison. Chains, bars, guards, stone walls, locked gates all would say “not here!” Temptation would whisper “freedom first, then; ah then, the Kingdom!” But the great intrepid missionary preached the gospel to the soldier to whom he was chained. For him, the Kingdom was “at hand” and he proceeded to be about its business.
Harry Martin spoke last Wednesday of receiving Chinese refugees into the American mission compound and into his house. And then he spoke of receiving frightened Japanese women and children into a room of his house after they had seen their men folk killed in a brief turn of the warfare. For him the Kingdom was at hand. Probably it stood him in good stead later with Japanese officials. But it might just as easily have cost him his life at the hands of some resentful, infuriated Chinese. He could have said, “Well, we will try and find some way to get along with these Japanese after the fighting is over.” But he chose to show mercy on the spot, to suffering non-combatants, and made no “deal” with consequences.
The Kingdom is usually just as near at hand to all of us. Whether we find it depends altogether upon something quite simple, but vastly important, that happens to us, making us glad to say”
Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days;
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my silver and gold, my intellect, my will, myself - and let them be altogether for thee.
More important than building the Kingdom is seeking it. God will see to its coming.
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delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 22, 1944.