The Order is Everything

Reading

Matthew 6:33 (NIV)

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

The Order is Everything

Introduction

I enjoy cooking! Is there anyone else that enjoys cooking?

One of the things that has been a great help is the amount of recipes that we have access to. I grab a recipe and I am the King of the Kitchen!

But how many of you know that the order matters. If you get that order wrong, it changes everything, right? You have to put things in the right order so that the food will come out exactly as expected.

In the same way, there is an order to the Kingdom of God that Jesus is establishing and our verse today talks to that.

Text

In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount he is giving his audience his Kingdom Manifesto. He is explaining to the growing crowd that His kingdom was not like any other kingdom of their time.

The Sermon on the Mount is to be studied and lived by those who call themselves followers of Jesus. It’s impossible to say that you follow Jesus and to be ignorant of his teachings in this sermon.

And in this sermon, he drops a bar.

It’s a one liner that absolutely changes everything.

I believe that many of us don’t understand the weight of it because it has been misrepresented. It’s been washed out with such bad theology and such bad teaching that we read past it and think, “Yea, I’ve heard that one before!”

So we need to get this verse back into it’s proper context. Because just like last week we established that stewardship is requisite for Overflow in our life, this verse is much bigger than you think.

Formation Wars

I want to begin by opening your eyes to what is happening all around you at every moment of the day that you might not even be aware of.

We are all being formed into something.

Many of us just go through life completely unaware that it is happening, but everything that we consume is forming us. It is shaping us.

You ever heard the saying, “You are what you eat?”

I know thats a weird saying, but there’s so much truth to that, right?

We know that if we’re putting good stuff into our body it’s going to make our bodies healthier and stronger and last longer…

In the same way, our consumption is shaping us. It is forming us.

The shows that we watch, the music that we listen to, the people we surround ourselves with…

And I know this can start to sound real legalistic when I start putting together a list like this, so let me say it this way, The things that we are giving our time to are either forming us.

Now, this wasn’t lost on Paul when he wrote a letter to the church in Galatia. Listen to what Paul tells them about formation.

Galatians 4:19 (NIV)

My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you,

Paul, uses a crazy analogy here to measure his desire to see Christ formed in the church. He said the pain that I am in is like the pain of child birth.

Paul, what do you know about child birth?

Strange as it sounds, as their Spiritual Father, that’s the only thing he could use to reconcile the depth of his desire to see Christ formed in them.

When Jesus said to “Seek first the Kingdom of God…” he wasn’t just talking about making God our priority, he is giving us the blueprint on how we are to order our lives.

If you think this is just a wise saying you are missing the depth of the words of Jesus. He is saying that you need to order your life around making the Kingdom of God your priority.

And in a minute, I’ll give you applications on this, but we need to see that Jesus is trying to give us words that will order our lives so that it impacts EVERYTHING about us.

[Transition]

So what is the challenge? What is the issue? This sounds pretty straight forward…

Counter Formation

We have an enemy who has figured out that he doesn’t need to lead us into a great life of sin, he just needs to distract us.

Counter formation (deformation) is the result of a distracted life.

Not a sinful life, but a distracted life.

You see the enemy knows that to counter form you, away from the image of God, he only needs to start getting your attention away from what should be first.

What is first? Seeking the Kingdom of God.

So if he can just get you distracted with other things, counter formation begins, and it ends when your distraction has consumed you to the point that you don’t even know who you’ve become.

Jesus addressed this in Mark:

Mark 8:36 (NIV)

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

What these verses are telling me is that it’s possible to get distracted with secondary things to the point that they take me away from the primary things.

The primary thing is order my life in such a way that I seek the Kingdom of God first. To make Him my priority. To make my relationship with Him the reward of diligently seeking Him.

The Ordered Life

So let’s bring us back to the text, and hopefully some application that you can carry home with you.

Why is Jesus focused on what is first?

Because he wants your life to be ordered. When your life is ordered, you will not be counter formed by the distractions around you.

That’s the point.

That’s the big idea.

So we have to put first things first.

Transition

Now I want to give you some areas of application today because we need to put this into practice.

Faith is not meant to just be believed, but to be lived.

I want to give you ways to oder our lives and be formed into the image of God so that we can live in the Overflow.

The First of Me

Jesus wants the first of me.

He wants me to surrender my life to Him. Not part of my life. Not Sundays only. He wants all of me.

We first see this ordering of our life in Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 (NIV)

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

When this command was given to the people of God it was given to brake their idolatrous ways that they had picked up in Egypt. Israel went into Egypt to escape a famine, but in the process they began to lose their culture and took on Egyptian culture. When God brought them out of Egypt the first thing that he had to reorder was their worship.

You will love me with all your heart and with all your soul and with all of your strength.

What does this look like today?

This looks like giving your life to Jesus and then committing the rest of your life to being formed by his life and his teachings.

This is giving the Lord your first.

My life is ordered on giving to God all of me.

After that and from place I am able to order my life with my wife, my children, my church, my work, my hobbies, etc.

But it starts with Jesus. It has to start with giving Him my me first.

[Transition]

And, if there is anyone here today who has not yet made a decision to give yourself to him, we will give you that opportunity at the end of our service. We want that for you and we know that your best is yet to come.

The First of My Time

The second way that we honor God with our first is to give him to first of our time. We give Jesus the first of our time…

This looks like giving him the first of our day. Your day should begin in prayer and in the word. Prayer is us speaking to God, and the word is God speaking to us.

Some people will say, “God doesn’t speak to me…” and that’s not true because He speaks to us through the Bible. The word of God. It is God’s words to you.

And if you say, “No I want to hear him…” than my response is read out loud.

So we begin every day in prayer and in our word because we give to God the first of our day. Form that, it orders the rest of our day.

We see this modeled in the life of Jesus.

Mark 1:35 (NIV)

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.

Whenever I have failed to let God be first there are other things that are reordering my day. And I want you to hear me, there is nothing that the enemy would want more for you than for your day to be reordered away from God and into anything else.

This could be the news, sports teams, social media, whatever. Anything that take the first of your time is reordering you away from the order of God.

We also have a practice here at Lighthouse that we fast during the first 21 days of the year. We give the first part of our year to Christ! Why? Because whatever we give to God first is ordered by Him.

We give our Sunday’s to the Lord. It’s the first day of the week. I want my week to be blessed, so I am going to order my week around making the church a priority for me and my family.

All of this is the principle of giving God the first of our time.

God, I will not allow anything else to be before you. You will be first in my time, always.

The First of my Finances

Last week we began to talk about stewarding our finances. If we can all agree that our finances come from God, and that they are to be stewarded, then what does that look like?

I give to God first.

That means, as soon as my wife and I are paid, we give to God before we give to anything or anyone else. I don’t pay my mortgage or my rent first. I don’t give to SDG&E first. I don’t give to my insurance, investments, savings, etc.

With what my wife and I have already determined to give to God, we give that to him first.

We give online so that makes it really easy. If you are a person who gives by check, then go ahead and write that check first. I know it’ll sit for a few days, but that act of writing that check first is an act of an ordered heart. God gets what is first. If you give by cash, do the same. Set that cash aside. Put it in an envelope before your cash goes anywhere else.

That is a literal act of worship unto the Lord. I am going to give to God first. That is the act of stewarding all that I have. It is the act of ordering my life around the Kingdom of God.

In the Old Testament, that practice of giving God first was a command. Let’s read this verse.

Deuteronomy 15:19 (NIV)

Set apart for the Lord your God every firstborn male of your herds and flocks. Do not put the firstborn of your cows to work, and do not shear the firstborn of your sheep.

So the act of setting apart and giving to God what is first is bringing God’s order to your finances.

I want to really challenge you in this area, church. We can’t give God was is left over and say that we’ve invited God into our finances. If we’ve invited God to bless us in all of these areas of our life, and into our finance and resources, then make your offering the first thing that you give. This is ordering and seeking the Kingdom of God first in a major area of our life.

Conclusion

Now, as I said just a minute ago, these are practices. These are disciplines.

But as you commit to doing them, I believe you are going to find that they are life!

You can add more disciplines and practices such as the first of your working time, praying before you eat a meal, giving God the first of your time at home. They are outward and active actions that reveal the order of your heart. A heart that is ordered on seeking first the Kingdom of God.

And today, I want to make a few calls. The first will be a call to surrender your life to Christ. I said I would do this, and so we will do this first.

I’m going to ask you all to join me, and join with others who right now in the sacred moment are going to order their life by giving it to Jesus; their Lord and Savior.

[Salvation Prayer]

Call

Now, the next thing we are going to do is make a challenge to everyone here to make a commitment to reordering some parts of your life. That could be reordering your life on starting your day in prayer and Bible reading, this is a commitment to ordering your finances and bringing your offering to God first, or it can be another area that I might have mentioned. But if you are feeling that there are areas in your life that are not in order I want you to set those in order today, and then I’m going to ask you to come forward for prayer.

In the Old Testament they would bring a sacrifice to the altar.

In the same way, your reordering of your life is a living sacrifice, and you’re going to bring that living sacrifice up to this altar and we’re making a commitment to reorder our lives.