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Sermon

Again, if you’re visiting us for the very first time or maybe you’re rejoining us after the holidays, thank you for choosing to spend your time with us this morning.

We’re in a new series called Resolved where we’re looking at some Biblical ways that we can make 2019 a better year than 2018.

We’re leveraging the reality that many of us are thinking: how can this year be better than last year and in what ways do I want to grow as a person and as a follower of Jesus.

You can open your bibles to Matthew 13.

So to sling into that idea of this year being better than last year, I want to start off with the story of a kindergarten teacher up North.

It's winter time and she sees a little 5 year old boy that is just really wrestling to get his snow boots on.

So she offers to help him and she can understand why he was wrestling because she broke into a sweat wrestling those boots on his feet.

He said they’re on the wrong foot.

So she muffled a whimper and she managed to squeeze those boots off and then wrestle them back on the right foot when he said these are my brother’s boots.

It was all she could do to stifle a scream of “Why didn’t you say so?”

So one more time she pulled those boots off and he said “my momma told me to wear them today.”

Ugh.

She kept it together.

She wrestled and got those boots back on those feet one more time and said “now, where are your mittens?”

He said “I stuffed them inside my boots.”

Here’s the moral of that story: we make life harder than it needs to be when we get things out of order.

So the first of the year is a really good time to remember what should be first.

Some of you are already ahead of me.

You’re thinking of Matthew 6:33

where Jesus said seek first God's Kingdom and what God wants.

Now some of you are thinking “Preacher, you just used one of those church words.

What’s Kingdom?”

Good question.

Kingdom is any place where God is in charge.

Kingdom is where God’s will gets done.

Kingdom is any part of your life where what God wants is what’s happening.

Now here’s the thing for us: Most of you are not struggling with putting God in your life in no place.

Our struggle is not that God has no place.

Our struggle - for most of us - is that there are parts of our lives where God does not have first place.

Now, if we’re going to follow Jesus - and that’s the goal of our church.

Our mission is to make and grow followers of Jesus - to follow Jesus means we want what God wants first and most.

It shapes every choice we make, it shapes every prayer that we pray.

We don't pray for what we want, we pray for what God wants.

That's what Jesus said in the same chapter in verse 10. “May your kingdom come and what you want be done - here on earth as it is in heaven.”

So this year we’re praying for the kingdom to come, but that doesn't mean it hasn't arrived.

What Jesus is saying is “Pray for the Kingdom to come.

Pray for what I have started to come to completion.” because Jesus came to bring the Kingdom.

We see His favorite sermon theme many times like in Matthew 4:17: Change your hearts and lives.

Here comes the Kingdom of heaven.

There are a few things about the Kingdom I want you to learn today.

Here's the first:

God's Kingdom is here.

It came in Jesus.

Please know God’s kingdom is eternal.

When we celebrated the birth of Jesus last month, we were not celebrating the fact that the Kingdom was brought into existence.

We were celebrating that God's Kingdom has come within reach.

Jesus, by his coming, made it possible for us to be a part of the Kingdom of God.

He didn't just come to save us from, he came to save us into.

So Jesus says “now, here's the good news: it is possible now for you to live a life where God is running your life.

Which is good news because you don't run your life so hot.

We don't make very good sovereigns.

But now it’s possible to put first in every part of our lives for what God wants to be first, but you have to do something: You have to change your hearts or some versions say you have to repent.

When we hear repent, we all too often hear stop doing bad stuff.

Stop cussing.

Stop looking at porn.

Stop having so many arguments with your mate.

Well, yes, you should do those things.

But when Jesus said repent, it wasn’t just stop doing bad stuff, it was to start letting God be first in all of the good stuff in your lives.

Let God be first in your job.

Let God be first in your marriage.

Let God be first in your finances.

Let God be first in your sexuality.

It doesn’t matter what part of your life it is, let God be first.

This is really good news.

Surrender your Kingdom.

Let go of your Kingdom.

And embrace God’s kingdom.

There’s a problem we have with that: Before I’m let go of my Kingdom, I have to know that God’s kingdom is real and sure.

So we’re just going to start early this year in addressing the single question believers get more than any other from people who are struggling to build their faith and struggling to trust God: If God’s Kingdom is here, why is the world so messed up?

If God is on the throne and God’s in charge, why is there so much evil in the world?

That is a good question and that is a fair question.

And Jesus took it on.

He told a parable.

It is a really interesting parable.

It is the only parable He told where the disciples came back and said Hey, explain that one to us.

So I want to read it to you.

It’s in Matthew 13 starting in verse 24.

Folks, this is a real problem.

Historically, Roman laws prohibited sowing tares together with the wheat of enemies.

Now.

most of us didn't grow up on farms.

If Jesus had talked about cars or planes or iPhones, we would have understood his metaphors better.

But Jesus lived in an agrarian society and everybody he talked to understood this metaphor because the chief food source of their day was bread.

That means the chief crop was wheat.

And you wanted a good wheat crop.

And back in Jesus’s day, there was a plant that grew called a tare.

It was a poisonous rye grass.