The Kingdom First 1975

I want to read today just one verse from Isaiah 33, verse 17. Your eyes will see the king and his beauty. They will behold a land that stretches afar.

All of us who have come into any kind of relationship with Jesus at all can look back on a time when it seemed that we were cured forever of ever becoming involved, tangled up with anything less than God again. When suddenly a hunger for money or sexual passion or this drive to get ahead in the world, stepping on anybody along the way or this anxiety about our own reputation or whatever else it was that got in the way of God, suddenly all these things appeared as just so many diseases in the light of God's glory. And only one thing mattered to us anymore, and that was to stay close to Jesus and to do His will.

We can remember a time when we first began to clean house and we started throwing out of our lives all those things that cluttered them, when we broke habits which had us chained for years, and when we cut our ties with any other obligation that competed with God. And we can remember that it was like coming out of jail. It was like receiving our sight for the first time after being blind for our whole life.

Now we had seen God and His beloved Son, and as we lived in the exhilarating atmosphere of His Spirit and kept our relationship clear and sought God's face every day and fed on His Word and went out and did His will, it seemed an absolute certainty that we would never again in any way get ourselves embroiled in anything other than God, because we had tasted what it is now to mount up on wings as the eagles, to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint. We had now begun to experience that power which we knew would keep us going on and on. And yet, as time passed, who can explain what happened? But one day we woke up and discovered that in spite of the fact that we were still doing all the right things, it seemed, our zeal for God was gone, and the love was missing, and our vision was blurred, and we were even a little depressed.

Mary, if you have trouble with her, you can take her to the nursery. You know, if you're having a problem, just take her. Whatever.

And we looked at ourselves and we finally said, well, I suppose everybody has his dry periods, and maybe I was working too hard. And so I had no choice but to just keep plotting on. And so that's what we did.

We just, in spite of the fact that we knew something was missing, and that there was a growing impatience in us toward everybody around us, especially all those other phony Christians, and in spite of the fact that we experienced a spreading of a sour attitude over our whole life, we continued plotting on somehow in the hope that the sun would come out again and things would clear. And yet, in many cases, this never happened. And for many of us in this room right now, if we're honest, we will have to admit that that freshness and zeal and that liberty in God and that authority and power we once experienced is no longer there.

Now, when Jesus says, Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, He is not saying this to people who are outside the kingdom. He's saying this to people who are already in it. You're in the kingdom, yet you have to continue to seek it.

You are the salt of the world, of the earth. But the salt can lose its favor. You are the light of the world, and yet the light can be covered with a bushel.

And if you're not careful, you can sink right back into the clutter and the chaos and the anxiety and the self-centeredness and all those other things that mixed up your life before. You have to go on seeking God's kingdom. Now, whenever we experience that lack of freshness and the absence of zeal and a lack of a vision and the absence of joy, this is always a sign that even though we may be doing more religious things than we ever did before, we are no longer seeking God first.

We're seeking something else first. Now, it may be that we've got tangled up with the thorns of the cares and the riches and the pleasures of this life, or it may be that we have made an idol out of our wife or our husband or our child so that this thing, this other love, comes first. But it may also be that we have taken some godly, some perfectly legitimate thing and twisted it so that instead of this thing now being the doorway to God as it was meant to be, it has become a wall.

For instance, maybe I get so filled with a love for God that I just throw my whole life into His work. And don't ever let anybody tell you there is not work involved. Jesus says, go work in the kingdom.

Go work in that vineyard. We must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day. See, but now, what I'm doing is becoming more and more work and less and less God.

Now it's my work, not God's. And now it becomes a barrier to God's kingdom, something standing in the way. Or perhaps, I become so taken up with God's kingdom, I get involved in all kinds of kingdom things, so that instead of praying, my kingdom comes, I'm trying to make God's kingdom come with my bare hands or with my brilliant mind.

And now I'm engineering the kingdom of God and mighty things perhaps happen. We set up a whole wonderful new church or we have a new movement spreading across the earth, but it's not God's, it's mine. Or perhaps, I become involved in the church, the body.

There's no such thing as becoming a believer in Jesus and not being a member of that body. That's true. But what happens is that in my involvement with the church, it soon becomes mine instead of His.

I forget that Jesus is the Lord of the church. And I begin to try to build it. I try to purify it.

I'm going to straighten it out. I'm going to cleanse it. I'm going to revive it.

And what I had then may look pretty good, but it's no longer His. Or perhaps, I've discovered how God answers prayer. For the work that we're involved in, we need 50 acres.

And so we pray for 50 acres and boom, they come. And now we need three buildings. We pray for three buildings and boom, there they are.

And now, watch out. We're so involved in telling everybody about our 50 acres and our three buildings, and we're so involved in the electrical work and the plumbing that needs to be done in the three buildings, and we're so taken up with this that we're no longer looking at the one who gave them to us, but we're looking at the things we've got. Your eyes will see the King in His beauty.

They will behold a land that stretches afar. Now, the question is, do my eyes see the King in His beauty? And am I satisfied, lifted up in worship, filled with awe by what I see as I look at Him? Do my eyes behold that land which stretches afar, that sweet and blessed country? What is it that has come in between? And whatever that thing is, that's what I'm seeking first. Now, it may not be any of the things we've mentioned so far.

It may not be the idol. It may not be the thorns, the cares and the riches and the pleasures. Or it may not be any of those things which seem to be legitimate, but which we've twisted.

But it may be, and often is, a spiritual problem. For instance, I'm having trouble loving my neighbor. Not my next-door neighbor, my neighbor.

And isn't it true that Scripture says that if I don't love my brother whom I have seen, how can I love God whom I have not seen? And isn't it true that these people, these church people, who walk around talking about how they love God but have bigotry in their hearts, can't possibly love God? Surely that's all so. And yet, where does the power to love come from but from God? So if you're having trouble loving, seek God. Drop everything else, everything else, and seek God.

Don't say you love God because you don't. You can't love God if you don't love your brother. But seek God.

And keep seeking Him until your eyes begin to behold the King in His beauty. And when they do, and they will, there will well up within you a spring of love which does not come from you but from God. And the more clearly you behold the King, and the more truly you seek to be obedient to Him and please Him, the more freely will that spring flow.

Seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all the things you need, including the power to love, will be added to you. But I'm having trouble forgiving. And is it not so that our Lord fangs away at this constantly that we can't possibly live in God's forgiveness if there's one person whom we refuse to forgive? And let's say there is this person.

I just can't get down there and forgive. This group that I can't accept. I try and I try, but nothing seems to happen.

Well, who but the King Himself can enable us to forgive? Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Who else can teach us to forgive and who else can take this heart of stone and melt it? So if you're having trouble forgiving, bring that stony heart to Him. Admit what it is, and admit what you've been doing, and cry out, and He'll give you the power.

Or let's say you just know that you have to get out there on a venture of faith of some kind. You have a sense that God is calling you to get out of your rut. You're in a rut.

But I just don't seem to have the guts to get up out of that rut. I can't get up over the edge of it. And the answer is, okay, so you seek the Lord down in the bottom of the rut.

You'll never get out of the rut unless He pulls you out of it. Peter was in a rut, a fishing rut. All he ever did was get up, have something to eat, go fishing, come home, have something to eat, go to bed, get up, have his breakfast, go fishing or his supper or whatever it was, and on and on this went until Jesus lifted him out of it and made him a fisher of men.

Or you say, but there's this need in my life that just absolutely consumes me. I'm lonely. Or I have a financial problem.

Or I'm sore by my circumstances. Or I have a bad marriage. It's my wife's fault, my husband's fault.

So what do you do? You take that need, just like Hezekiah took that letter from Seneca River, that deadly letter, and he just spread it out before God, and that's what we do. Take that thing, whatever it is, better still, throw it down at the foot of the cross and start to worship God. And as you do, God will fulfill your need for Him, which is the basic one, anyway.

Then He will add to that the fulfillment of every other need, whatever it is. Now, there was never a person on the earth, I'm convinced, who experienced the desolation that Job did. And he was alone in this.

He had no company. Nor could anybody, any human being, fault him for complaining. Only God could do that.

And Job did plenty of complaining. But once Job saw God, once he beheld the King in His beauty, his complaining stopped. I have heard of Thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees Thee, and I abhor myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.

See, first, the Kingdom of God is a command not to so-called worldly Christians, but one which is especially directed towards spiritual Christians, who allow spiritual things, beautiful and lovely things, and even these profound spiritual problems, to get in the way. Don't be satisfied until the vision comes in Isaiah, is fulfilled in your life every day. Your eyes will see the King in His beauty, and they will behold that land which stretches afar, if you see the King of the earth.

And when you see the King in His beauty, you will receive more than enough of everything you need to get to that land which stretches beyond. We're asking again today, Father, that you would so deal with us by the power of the Spirit that every lie that we tell ourselves and every phony excuse that we give for doing everything but speaking your faith, every rationalization, and whatever else may cover up the truth, may be ripped away by your loving and merciful hand, that beholding, first of all, what we are in the light of your glory, we may see you, and for ourselves, and repent. We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.