Seek First: The Great Commandment

Be together, isn't it? Well, if you're a guest here today, my name is Josh and I'm glad you're here. You need to know you just walked into a room full of broken and imperfect people. So if you are perfect, please exit out the back. You will not fit in here.

But if you are broken like the rest of us, if there is some good that the Lord has needed to be to you, some redemption that you have needed or still need, we welcome you here today. If you want to connect any further with Whitewater after the service today, the best first step that you can take is to go out to the information desk out in the foyer. We've got a great team out there. They'd love to answer any questions you have, get you connected, and help you take a next step here. Now, if you've been watching online or in the room over the last few weeks, you know that we've started this process of looking ahead at the kind of church we believe that God wants us to be.

And we've started this process of all the thinking and actions it's going to take for us to get there. And at the white hot center of all of this is what Jesus tells us to do in Matthew 6:33, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Now, last week we reminded ourselves that there are only two kingdoms. There is the kingdom of God where what God wants done is done, and there is this kingdom of this world where what Satan wants done is done. And to accept the terms of entry into God's kingdom is also to accept the call to deny ourselves.

Jesus says, if you want to be my disciple, you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.

This kingdom does not just come with benefits. It also comes with the expectation that we will begin a whole new way of living and thinking. And yet, the most common pattern I see among most of us who call ourselves Christians is that after we've accepted this salvation from Jesus, we settle into a life of. Of living pretty much just like everybody else for the most part. The only real difference is that we carry this little bag around with us that has a Bible in it, some Jesus quotes, and some good behavior.

But this is not the kind of life that we as Christians are called to live. We are called to live a very different life. We are called to seek his kingdom from first. Now, today, my aim is to help us kind of examine our lives, pull back the curtain and see ourselves as we actually are so that we can adjust course and start living lives that are more in line with seeking his kingdom. And if we're going to actually seek his kingdom first, we're going to need a lot of help in this process.

That help comes from three key things. First, it comes from the Bible. The Bible is our foundation in this process. It is what everything else is wrapped up in. It is our source of truth and our source of the ways that we should be living and thinking and acting.

Second is Jesus. Jesus is our example in this process. He is the one that we look to to know how to live and how to act. And third is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our guide in this pursuit.

He is the one who helps us to understand what it means to seek the kingdom first and empowers us to do it. Now remember, the kingdom of God is the will of God in action. It is where what God wants done is done. So to seek the kingdom, to seek for something at all means to look for it everywhere. Seeking the kingdom is to look for God's will to be enacted and accomplished everywhere.

That sounds great, but does anyone else in the room struggle to know what God's will is? Anybody? Any? Come on, be honest. Look around.

This is a very common struggle that's on repeat through decades of ministry. I've talked with people over the years and they say, I just. I would do God's will, but I don't know what God's will is. I'm asking all the time and I don't feel like I know what it is. Why is it so elusive?

I'd be happy to do it if this is what it is to seek the kingdom first, to seek his will to be done everywhere. How could it be so difficult and complex for us to know the will of God? Well, the answer comes to us from the Apostle Paul in Romans, chapter 12. Paul says that there is a way to be able to discern God's will. But there's also a serious barrier that gets in the way of us discerning his will.

Romans 12:2. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is. His good, pleasing and perfect will. He says, you want to know how to discern the will of God first.

Don't do this. Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world. That verb conformed is interesting because it is in the present passive tense. This means that it's an action that is constantly and regularly happening and it's being imposed on us. It's happening to us, we don't do it.

It's a force that's acting on us. Paul is saying that the world is constantly working on us to deform us into its likeness. And instead of becoming conformed to this world, we. We are to be transformed by the Holy Spirit. Now, this word transformed is metamorpho, which is where we get our word metamorphosis.

We're familiar with this process. A caterpillar gorges itself on nutrients. It wraps up in a chrysalis, and then miraculously, over a period of time, it transforms into a new form, into a butterfly that has completely different, completely different body, eats completely different food, has a completely different travel method. It flies. And because it can fly, it has a completely different perspective of this world than it did when it was a caterpillar.

Now, in this language, caterpillars can't know the will of God. Don't be a caterpillar. Right. The only way to break through this blindness to God's will is to gorge ourselves on the truth of his word, wrap ourselves up in righteousness, this breastplate of righteousness, Christ's righteousness, and allow the Holy Spirit to do the miraculous work of transforming us into something completely different. Now, the good news is this verb metamorpho is also present, passive, which means that it's something that is being constantly and continuously done to us.

It's an outside force being placed on us. And if we allow ourselves to be constantly and continuously transformed by the Holy Spirit, then we will be able to test and approve God's will. Only the transformed, only the butterflies, so to speak, can know and test and approve God's will. So if we're having a hard time discerning God's will in our life, then Paul would argue that we have been conformed or are being conformed to the pattern of this world rather than, or at least more than, we have been transformed by the renewing of our minds. To be transformed by the renewing of our minds requires change, surrender.

It requires laying down our lives, our rights, and becoming servants to righteousness. It requires death to self. It requires us to be deeply rooted and to know deeply the thinking and the ways of the kingdom. And as long as we live in this world, there's this constant tug of war, these two forces being imposed on us. We one for deformation and one for transformation.

The enemy is actively working to deform us again and again. C.S. lewis puts it this way. He says there is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split Second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.

To combat this, we must stay in the word. We must stay in Christian community. We must stay in prayer and stay in the spirit. Because we are at war. We're at war just like a canoe on a river.

If you're in a canoe on a river and you're trying to go upstream, it requires nonstop effort and work. Otherwise that river is going to pull you right back downstream. We've got to allow the work of the Holy Spirit and to be pushing us up the river in greater measure than we are allowing the river to drag us away. Now let's look to our example, Jesus. There's this moment with Jesus that we read about in the Gospels where a teacher of the law comes to him and he says, hey, Jesus, you say you're the son of God.

You say you're so significant and so, so important. What's the most important commandment? What's the most important commandment? What's the most important thing of all the things that God wants us to do that you say is the most important thing to do? This is his answer.

In Mark 12, starting in verse 29, Jesus answered, the most important is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.

So Jesus answer to this guy. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5. This would have been such a familiar verse to anyone of Jewish upbringing. Any Jew would know this because this was a foundational text from the very earliest days of their childhood. Deuteronomy 6.

5. And then the guy kind of regurgitates back to Jesus. I think this is what you're saying, he says. And Jesus says, you get it? And then Jesus says something very important.

He says, you are not far from the kingdom. That's the thing we got to seek first. And Jesus says, we are not far from the kingdom when we seek God's will to be enacted and accomplished everywhere by loving the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. And even though the guy didn't ask for a second most important one, Jesus gave it to him anyway. Love the people around you as you love yourself now.

Heart, soul, mind, strength. You notice what's missing from Jesus list. What part of us is missing from that list? The answer is nothing. Nothing is missing from Jesus list all of our heart, soul, mind and strength is the whole of everything that we are.

There's a massive implication under this Jesus, our example says, love God with all your desires, with your deepest inner being, with the way that you think, with your body and with all your effort. That is everything. Jesus says that the highest form of obediently seeking the kingdom is to look for God's will to be enacted and accomplished through loving God with every aspect of our being and self and expressing the same love to everyone around us. This is what it means to seek the kingdom first. And he says, when we do these two things, we're not far from the kingdom.

Now let's go back to Romans 12 because the verse before the verse that we read cracks this thing wide open and should expand our understanding of things. Romans 12:1 Paul says, Therefore, which always makes you ask, therefore what? What are you talking about, Paul? He's referring to everything that he has set up through all of the chapters of the book of Romans up to this point. The short version of that we covered last week.

All have sinned. Sin equals death. But God, that's what he's talking about. Paul says, with all that in your mind, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, that word urge is I beg of you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.

Paul says that the appropriate response to what God has done for us is to participate in true and proper worship by offering our entire lives as a living sacrifice. This is where Paul and Jesus come right in line with one another. Jesus says that the most important way this is expressed is through loving the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, mind and strength. The great commandment. This is what it means to seek the kingdom first.

This is the work of looking for God's will to be enacted and accomplished everywhere. Denying ourselves, being transformed by the ways of the kingdom, living lives that are completely surrendered to God, heart, soul, mind and strength. Now this is counter everything we feel, it's counter to everything the world tells us. Everything that seems to be good for our own self promotion, our own self preservation, our own comfort and our own happiness. But make no mistake, this is the call when this means that every time we embody though the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control, that is not the fruit of Josh, that is not the fruit of self.

Trust me, that doesn't come out naturally. But when we embody the fruit of the Spirit, we are engaging in true and proper worship and seeking the Kingdom every time. Even though we're weary of parenting, we properly discipline our children and point them back to Jesus. We are taking part in true and proper worship and seeking the Kingdom. When we encourage someone or serve a hot meal to someone in need or or pray with a co worker, when we visit someone who's lonely, or rejoice with those who are rejoicing or share the gospel message with someone far from God.

When we use our abilities and talents to serve or we leverage our resources to generously be a blessing to others, we are engaging in true and proper worship and seeking God's kingdom first. Because every single act of denying ourselves and every single act of obedience to the Father, it isn't just rule following. It is an expression of adoration and worship and seeking the kingdom first. Obedience to the will of God is the proclamation that he is worthy of our obedience, that he is worthy to make the rules, worthy to set the boundaries, worthy to establish the truth, that he alone is one, worthy of our ultimate and complete allegiance. It's saying with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength that we trust him, that we love him, and we believe that whatever he asks is perfect and right and good, because he alone is worthy of all the glory, all the honor, all the obedience, all the sacrifice, all the praise, all, all the allegiance forever and ever and ever.

This is why true worship is not limited to singing or Bible reading, or being in a small group or giving or serving. Worship is actually every expression, every word, every action, every thought of our hearts, every action of our souls, minds and strength, and everything we can express. Everything we do is worship. But if everything that we do is worship, there's a very stark reality in this. It is either an act of worship toward the kingdom of heaven, or it is an act of treason against the kingdom of Heaven and an act of worship to Satan.

This should change the way we view our lives completely. I used to look at this and say, if God is on this end and if Satan is on this end, that my acts of affection are worshiped toward God and my acts of sin just kind of back me away from God a little bit. But there is more going on. It is a complete turning of self to an act of worship to the enemy. This is a big deal.

But most of us can't see it in our lives. So how do we start to see this in our lives? Well, archaeology, of course.

Archaeology is the human. The study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites, through uncovering and analyzing artifacts and other physical remains, they unearth layer after layer to kind of reverse engineer history and try to figure out who these people were, what mattered to them, what jobs they had, what technology they had, and so forth. Now, the most intriguing archaeological site to me is the site of Pompeii. Many of you will be familiar with this story. 79 AD Pompeii happens.

It's Mount Vesuvius erupts right near Naples, Italy, and almost immediately buries an entire city with volcanic ash and mud. Pompeii and all of its inhabitants and all of their stuff become frozen in time until it's accidentally rediscovered in 1549 and then was more purposely excavated starting in 1748. And actually, they're not even done excavating Pompe now. What's most intriguing to me about Pompeii as an archaeological site over all the others is that it isn't like the Egyptian sites, where very purposely curated items were placed in a tomb. It isn't what some emperor or king purposely left behind so that they could be known by.

Isn't the leftovers from a people or society that moved on, and it's not the leftovers from a group of people that was wiped out by war. No. What's unique about Pompeii is that on a regular Saturday, a whole city of people who had no idea that this was coming got encapsulated in history, frozen just as they were. No posing, no special arrangement of things, no time to leave behind what they wanted to be remembered by. No time to get rid of the things that they would embarrassed by.

Just a moment frozen in time as it actually was. And I ask you to imagine for a moment, what if there was some unexpected catastrophe like Vesuvius that could freeze us in time right now, right as we are, an ordinary Saturday routine, and 2,000 years later, we're being dug up layer by layer. What conclusions could they draw about us? What stories would our closets and storage units and attics and garages tell? What if they had access to our bank accounts, our calendars, our social media history, our search history, our emails?

Based on all this evidence, what could they conclude is most important to us? What could they conclude that we seek? First, let's take a minute to be our own archaeologist. Dig into your budget, and you'll see what you believe is most worthy of your money. Unearth your schedule and you will see what you believe is most worthy of your time.

Examine your emails and your text messages and see what you believe is most worthy of your conversations. Reflect on your emotions to uncover what you believe is most worthy of your love or trust, but also what is most worthy of your anxiety, most worthy of your fear. Reveal where your worship is directed. Because all of this shows us who truly sits on the throne in the kingdom in which we are functional citizens. No matter what we say, where we are functional citizens.

Now, I described this earlier. Imagine this number line. And on this far end of the number line is the almighty creator of the universe, God himself, seated on a throne. And on this far end of the number line, Satan is seated there. Another throne.

If we evaluate the number of minutes and hours spent each week, the amount of dollars, the amount of energy and resources we expend each week, the amount of practices and habits that express our worship and affection and obedience and allegiance to one throne or the other, where would we find ourselves on this number line?

Be really honest for a minute because I think for many of us, the practices and behaviors that are on the God's side of the spectrum mostly consist of an hour on Sunday morning, a quick prayer at a mealtime or bedtime. And maybe if we're good Christians, we might also have the Bible app on our phone. Maybe we give God a financial tip every once in a while, serve at the soup kitchen. Maybe we're in a small group. Maybe we're in a Bible study one night during the week.

Now don't get me wrong, those are good and beautiful and right things. But if they are the only markers of our allegiance to God's kingdom, then there are countless hours, dollars, resources, countless energy flowing in the opposite direction. Nothing is neutral. Now this isn't about piling up more activities for God to counteract the many activities on the other side. That's not what this is about.

This is actually about allowing the Holy Spirit to transform what we're already doing into things that are aligned with the kingdom, kingdom values, kingdom thinking, kingdom actions. Because we all know that we can do things that look like beautiful expressions of worship to God, we with all the wrong heart. And it isn't. And we know that there are lots of things that look pretty neutral and normal and they can be turned around and expressed in praise to God. Because if everything we do, every resource we expend, every thought we meditate on, every hour we give is an act of worship, is the thing that's proclaiming what we find most worthy, then everything matters.

Everything matters. Paul says, therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy in view of what he's done. Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and property. It is properly aimed.

Worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world. Literally, do not allow the world to conform you to itself, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. Then we can seek the kingdom first.

So how do we take a step in the right direction? Here's the simple challenge today, this week, pray Every day, every morning, every evening, every time you think to pray, ask the Holy Spirit to show you one area of your life, just one area of your life that needs to be turned back over to the kingdom to move from the world side of the number line to God's side of the number line. It might be how you spend your time, it might be the words you speak, it might be a relationship that you need to reconcile or one that you need to cut off. The beautiful reality is that the Holy Spirit is constantly offering to constantly work to transform your life and that his power is available right now. It's available right now to bring that change.

So this week, let's lean into the Holy Spirit's work. Let's surrender one thing today, one thing this week, let's start to think of this number line in our lives and view a decision of sin not just to be stepping back from God, but to turn towards Satan and and showing our affection and value and worship to him.

We need to gorge ourselves on the truth, wrap ourselves in Christ's righteousness and allow the Holy Spirit to transform us into something completely new, ever increasing likeness to King Jesus, so that, like him, we can love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, because he alone is worthy. Now, if you question whether he alone is worthy, there's this great section in the book of Revelation, and the writer John gives us this glimpse into a scene that's happening in heaven and, and all of heaven is watching what's happening on the earth. And they're convinced in a moment that sin and death and Satan are winning and they're grieving. And there's this scroll with seven seals. And the scroll represents God's reconciliation plan for the world, but no one can open it and they're weeping.

Let's pick up in Revelation 5, starting in verse 2, John says, I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll. But no One in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or even look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, don't weep. See the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David.

Christ himself has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals. Then I saw a lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb.

And they sang a new song, saying, you are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals because you were slain. And with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God. And they will reign on the earth. Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels numbering thousands upon thousands and 10,000 times 10,000.

They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice, they were saying, worthy is the Lamb who was standing slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise. Will you stand? And we're going to join thousands upon thousands and ten thousand upon ten thousand angels declaring his worthiness. His worth.

Let's read this together. Worthy is the Lamb. You ready? We'll get it on the screen here. Worthy is the Lamb.

Maybe.

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise. Let's read this again. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise. Amen.