One of the most often memorized verses in Scripture is Matthew 6:33 which reads:

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Matthew 6:33 (ESV)

This comes at the end of a section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus it talking about trusting that God will meet the believer’s needs. Jesus is saying that rather than worrying about food and clothing, we should seek God’s rule in ourselves and others and seek to pursue his righteousness.

Due to the fact that Jesus felt the need to highlight this concept in his sermon, I am confident that I am not the only one who needs to be frequently reminded about the priority that I should have.

The verb “seek” is a command. Jesus is not making this optional for the believer. And we are not only to seek but to seek first, before anything else. Jesus’ reign and sovereignty on earth should be my first priority. But truthfully, I often function in a way where Jesus’ kingdom is not my first priority.

I often fall into the trap of pursuing what I think will provide for my physical and emotional needs. This, despite Jesus telling me that I don’t need to worry about these things.

When I fail in prioritizing Jesus’ reign, I find that I focus on the wrong things, and this misplaced focus strains my relationships, especially with those closest to me. My stress level goes up, and I put stress on those around me.

Falling into this trap does damage to those around me and also does damage to me.

There is a part of me that feels that I should be able to stay out of the trap of misplaced priorities. After all, I’ve been a believer for a long time now. But alas, I frequently do indeed get this wrong.

But the feeling of “I should be farther along in this” is an error in itself. The whole point of the gospel is that my heart is sure to go wrong without the guidance of the Holy Spirit and his support in pursuing the right path.

The only way to recover from misplaced priorities is to repent and seek forgiveness for my selfish focus while trusting that God can heal the damage that I do to others when I fail.

I have written more than a few posts which catalog how much of the church has become unhelpful to those who are pursuing true spiritual growth. While it is easy to point to things that are wrong in the church, I have struggled to say what the church should look like in 2021.

To better answer the question of what the church should look like, I have decided to pursue a reading program of works that might help me answer this question.

Recently, I saw a reference to a book by Richard F. Lovelace that I had read many years ago and decided to read again. That book is Dynamics of Spiritual Life.

In the opening chapter, I ran across a paragraph which summarized some of the thoughts of Jonathan Edwards with regard to true revival and what the church should be about.

I share the paragraph below for two reasons.

First, it shows that the problems being experienced in the church are not new. Edwards struggled with them in the early part of the 18th Century.

Secondly, it is a good comparison of the traits of false spirituality with those of a true work of the Holy Spirit.

“Edwards was especially concerned to make clear that fallen human nature is fertile ground for a fleshly religiosity which is impressively “spiritual” but ultimately rooted in self-love. High emotional experiences, effusive religious talk, and even praising God and experiencing love for God and man can be self-centered and self-motivated. In contrast to this, experiences of renewal which are genuinely from the Holy Spirit are God-centered in character, based on worship, an appreciation of God’s worth and grandeur divorced from self-interest. Such experiences create humility in the convert rather than prided and issue in the creation of a new spirit of meekness, gentleness, forgiveness and mercy. They leave the believer hungering and thirsting after righteousness instead of satisfied with self-congratulation. Most important, their end result is the performance of works of mercy and justice.”

Richard F. Lovelace in Dynamics of Spiritual Life

When I attend church on Sunday, I should leave the worship service more focused on God, who is to be the tangible subject of the preaching, rather than being impressed with the skill of the preacher and how he held my attention.

This is not to say that there should not be skill displayed in preaching, but the focus should never, ever be on the preacher.

If I remember the cool hairstyle, the trendy fashion, the slick cultural references, the touching illustrations, or the easy manner of the preacher, but don’t come out with a sense of my own need of Christ and an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the grace that has been given to me, then I wasted the entire morning.

Focus on the “worship experience” can reinforce my own self-centeredness rather than challenge it. Making stars out of the worship leaders or preachers can do damage to their souls because such false worship will likely promote pride in them.

There is much more that can be learned from the paragraph quoted above, but I will leave it to you to gather your own conclusions. Feel free to share them in the comment section below this post. (For those of you who get this by email, click on the link in the title to go to the post on the web, and then you will be able to comment).

“Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?

Matthew 15:12 (ESV)

I recently received a copy of a new study Bible for which I will write a review in the next week or so. To prepare for the review, I thought I would use it as I do my daily Bible reading and assess the helpfulness of the notes as I go through each passage.

Looking at the notes for the passage cited above, the commentator referred to this as a “non-issue” for Jesus. Jesus was not concerned at all about offending the Pharisees, even though they held significant influence in society at that time.

We need to face the fact that sometimes the truth is offensive. Sometimes what we need to hear is the opposite of what we want to hear. In a fallen, broken world, we cannot escape this.

When the doctor tells me that I need to change my behavior or face health consequences, he is not being intolerant even though he is telling me something that I don’t really want to hear. I don’t like it, but I know it is true, and it is in my best interest to act on that information.

In the popular religion of our society, we are asked to never give an offense. We are asked to never call any behavior wrong. We are asked to accept any and every belief as equally true. We are asked to offend our own conscience for the sake of not offending someone else’s.

In our societal religion, the definition of tolerance has morphed from being willing to let someone else hold a different opinion to accepting every opinion is equally true.

Unfortunately, this societal religion has crept into the church.

When the discussion of church leadership moves away from how we can lovingly communicate the truth of the gospel, and focuses on being inoffensive on a Sunday morning, we have succumbed to societal religion and have started down a path that will lead us away from Jesus Christ. When the leadership of a church takes down the cross because someone might be offended by it, that church has begun moving away from following Christ.

Certainly, we want to be good communicators of God’s love. We follow Christ out of our gratitude for the grace we have been given. We want to present the beauty of God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. We should accurately reflect the attitude of Jesus who welcomed all to come into relationship with himself. In doing this, we should do it in a way that accurately represents who Jesus is and how he loved humanity.

But Jesus did not shrink from conveying to humanity that those who reject him will face consequences. Nowhere can you find Jesus indicating that ideas don’t matter and any belief is acceptable as long as it is firmly held. On every page of the gospel accounts, Jesus says something that is deemed intolerant by our society.

Let’s face the fact that Jesus was divisive. He had a narrow view of truth.

Therefore, if our desire to be inoffensive interferes with our ability to present the truth that apart from Christ there is no salvation (Jesus said that, it is not me making this up), then we have ceased being the Church and have become just another social club that is nominally religious.

Two things that I know we need to be cautious about doing are pulling verses out of context and being overconfident in our ability to interpret prophetic statements.

I’ve always been a little suspicious of those who, with great confidence, provide a detailed description of how prophecy will be worked on on the world stage. So, I’m not one to connect any particular prophecy with any particular event.

As we learn in the gospels, inspired writers have applied Old Testament Scripture in ways that were surprising. So, we need care before expressing any certainty about interpretation unless corroborated by New Testament Scripture.

But there are statements in the prophets that seem to have universal application from which we can derive great encouragement.

One such passage I read this morning:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.” This is the Lord’s declaration. “For as heaven is higher than earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For just as rain and snow fall from heaven and do not return there without saturating the earth and making it germinate and sprout, and providing seed to sow and food to eat, so my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.”

Isaiah 55:8–11 (CSB)

In my previous post, I lamented the behavior of those who abuse the sheep rather than care for them. But with this passage, I am reminded that none of this has escaped the notice of Almighty God. And since he is almighty, the behavior of mutton-eating shepherds cannot derail His plan.

God’s word will accomplish what He pleases, despite any effort to keep it from happening. I can’t accidentally derail God’s plan and no one can intentionally derail it either.

This is good news that can encourage us today when so much seems to be going wrong in the world.