“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).

This verse is toward the end of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. We have been studying this sermon the past few weeks in our weekly Tuesday Bible Study. Try to put yourself in the audience. This teacher, Jesus, is preaching a radical message, a new way of life to his listeners. His audience has been waiting for the Kingdom of God to set them free. Jesus is telling them that the Kingdom of God has arrived! They are being challenged to rethink their entire way of life.

Friends, as believers we are living in the Kingdom of God. Jesus poses a simple yet difficult challenge to us as well.

It is like this. If you live in Tennessee, you might be a Titans Fan. You wear a Titans jersey, a Titans ball cap. You watch the games and know all the stats and everything about the players. You might eat, breathe, and sleep Titans. And if you live in Pittsburgh, you might be a Steelers Fan and carry your Terrible Towel like a badge of honor. But what if you live in Tennessee while your heart is in Pittsburgh? Then, you should be a Steelers Fan because that is where your heart is. So, if you are Steelers Fan, you will collect Steelers memorabilia, you will watch them play whenever you can, and you will cheer them on, even when you live around Titans Fans who may not appreciate your allegiance to the other team.

The analogy is this:  As believers, our hearts are in the Kingdom of God, even though we are physically living in the earthly realm. The earthly realm calls us to earthly desires and to earthly ways of life. But Jesus tells us that we cannot serve two masters. “Either (we) will hate the one and love the other or (we) will be devoted to the one and despise the other“(Matthew 6:24).

Our human tendency is to try to have it both ways—to serve God when it is convenient, and to serve the earthly material realm any other time. We might even say that we are Steelers Fans except when they play Tennessee. But that will not work in our allegiance to Jesus. The Amplified Bible puts the second part of Matthew 6:24 this way: “You cannot serve God and mammon [money, possessions, fame, status, or whatever is valued more than the Lord].” It does not say you should not. It says you cannot.

The Bible is clear on the command to be focused on God. Jesus says in Matthew 12:30 “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” James equates double mindedness with instability (James 1:8).

This is a simple yet challenging command. It requires prayer and thoughtful discipleship; it requires making good choices about everything we think, do, or say. As humans, we are not perfect. We will fail in this. So, it also requires confession, repentance, and trying again.

The Apostle Peter quotes Leviticus when he says, “for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’” (1 Peter 1:16). He is writing this to the exiles who have been dispersed from Jerusalem in the persecution following Jesus’ ascension to heaven. They are away from their home, but he is assuring them that they are already experiencing the Kingdom of God. He goes on to say:

“Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For ‘All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.’ And this is the word that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:17-25)

In Christ,

Judy