Sermon Tone Analysis

Kingdom of God  Matt 6:33

 

 

*/Matthew 6:33/*

*/33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

/*

 

 

My son has a story about a castle where the most delectable muffins in the world were made.

People would come from far and wide to eat the muffins.

They were so tasty, they were really good news.

Unfortunately in that land there was a large dragon like creature who ate only one form of food – muffins!

Not surprisingly, he was called the Muffin Muncher.

Now one day the Muffin Muncher was in the vicinity of the castle and a whiff of fresh hot muffins filled the air.

He plodded over towards the castle just as a cart full of fresh hot muffins left the castle on its way to market.

Immediately the muffin muncher fell on the cart and devoured all the muffins.

Quickly the people ran back into the castle and pulled up the drawbridge.

The Muffin Muncher could not get in and so the people were safe.

However, with no way of getting the muffins to the market, the people soon stopped making muffins.

With no muffins to sell there was no income for the castle and the people could no longer afford wood to keep the ovens hot.

Slowly the castle fell into disrepair and the people instead of coming to buy fresh hot muffins at the market, began to move away.

One day the Muffin Muncher called out to the people in the castle, “Where are the muffins.

I’m so hungry!”

The people in the castle, though rather terrified of the Muffin Muncher explained that because he ate all the muffins they made, they could no longer afford to make any more muffins because they could no longer afford any wood for the fire.

The Muffin Muncher thought and thought and then he had an idea.

Being a fire breathing dragon, he would keep the fires in the oven alight so the people could make muffins and in exchange rather than having to buy wood, they could feed the Muffin Muncher instead.

This was a superb agreement.

The people of the castle were able to get back into production and once again the best muffins of the land were being produced.

People flocked back to the area to buy the muffins and once again the district became profitable.

It just goes to show that major problems in life can either be used as a stumbling block or as a motivation to change the way we look at a problem.

Now it should be becoming obvious that the castle is like the church.

We have a message of Good News to sell at the market place of life, but as the world has attacked us for our message, (just as the Muffin Muncher ate the good news muffins), we have retreated into the church and pulled up the drawbridge.

The church can stay locked inside its walls defensively justifying its position, or it can use the problems we face as the motivation to get us out of our complacency and back into the work for which we were called.

But this will not happen until we change our heart attitude; that is until we accept the purpose for which we exist and understand the capacity we have in Christ to fulfil that purpose.

Now let me turn the focus on to us as a local church.

We see ourselves as a church, don’t we?

When we see ourselves in this light we think of ourselves as belonging to a particular building where people of similar faith, ideas and values gather together.

People are welcome to join us and we love it when new people come along.

Church is a place where people come.

But we are often trapped inside our building unable to take our message out into the market place because we are scared of rejection, or scared of getting eaten or damaged by the muffin muchers who are unbelievers in our society.

Christianity is a difficult message to proclaim because it may get us offside with the world in which we live, because it will challenge people at the heart of their lives and call for a change.

If we are to move out from our church, we have to change the way we see things.

Today in Matthew 6:33, we heard that we are to seek first the Kingdom of God.

We are in an era when talking about being church has inoculated us against the truth that Jesus proclaimed.

Jesus did not create a church but a movement within the hearts of believers.

He did not say, “The church has come, repent and believe the good news.”

No!

Rather Jesus said,

“The time has come.

The Kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel.”

Mark 1:15

 

Jesus proclaimed a kingdom, not a church.

So what is this kingdom?

How do we enter into it?

What do we need to do be in the Kingdom?

The Kingdom of God is the rule or reign of God in the life of believers.

It is not a physical kingdom but a movement where Jesus is received as Lord, and the life of a believer is submitted to Jesus as Lord.

The Kingdom begins as a small seed of faith.

Jesus said it is,

like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field.

32 Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

Matthew 13:31-32

 

The Kingdom of God begins as a small seed of faith planted in our hearts that grows and grows affecting others around us.

 

Again it is like,

“…yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Matthew 13:33

 

The Kingdom when it is received into our lives is almost unnoticeable.

But it begins a work of change in our lives, working into every corner of our being causing change and turning our character into a reflection of Christ’s character.

But for Jesus to begin his work in our lives, we need first to enter into the Kingdom.

The prerequisite for entry into the Kingdom is found in Mark 1:15,

15 “The time has come,” he said.

“The kingdom of God is near.

Repent and believe the good news!”

The prerequisite for entry into the Kingdom of God is to “Repent and believe.”

From what do we repent?

Acts 3:19 states,

19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,

 

It is therefore from our sins that we repent.

Now that is half of the entry criteria.

The second half is to believe the Good News.

Now we may say, “I have repented and I do believe in the Good News that Jesus is the Son of God and that he has come with salvation for the world.”

So we are in!

But,  ….. and this is what we need to know, ….. there are things we need to do to remain in the kingdom.

Jesus said in Matthew 6:33,

33 But seek first his kingdom

and his righteousness,

and all these things will be given to you as well.

The key for remaining in the Kingdom is living in the righteousness of God.

What is righteousness?

Righteousness is the state of living in the condition that is acceptable to God.

It is living in a state of integrity, that is what we say lines up with what we do.

It is living a pure life, having a correctness of thinking, feeling and acting.

This means that when we are not living in the righteousness of God, when we are not living as God has revealed we should, we step outside the boundaries of the kingdom.

Jesus warns us that there are many who are among the people of the kingdom who will not be accepted into heaven.

See Matthew 13:41,

41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.

You see, to say we have repented and that we are now in the kingdom of God does not always guarantee that we can remain in that position.

To remain in the Kingdom of God requires that we conform our lives to the teaching of Christ.

The longer we live in the Kingdom, the more that is required of us as our awareness of the teaching of Christ grows.

In Ephesians 5:5 we read,

5 For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

It is impossible to hold together the ways of the world and the ways of God.

If we are to remain in the Kingdom of God we are to keep growing in the ways of God, to live lives that are pure and holy.

So God is interested in the formation of our Christian character, seeing our lives transformed bit by bit to reflect the glory of God himself.