SEEK FIRST (Part 1)

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness”  Matt. 6:33

Lately God has been pressing me about my motivation.  He has been showing me how deeply ingrained my own desires are.  Sometimes we can look so good on the outside that we even convince ourselves how carefully we are following God’s plan of us.  But underneath it all are secrets that divert us from seeking His kingdom first.  This human tendency is so subtle that I believe only God can dig it out.  It’s like breaking ground for a garden.  First you have to get rid of the obvious stuff.  The old stumps, the rocks, crabgrass and weeds – things we see on the surface.  It might be a wrong relationship or a deliberate lie.  Maybe it’s my recurring anger or a secret lust.  If we are serious about God’s rule in our lives, we can pretty easily pick out these things.  They are surface blights.  They stick out.  Some of these “sore thumb sins” have been in our lives a long time.  God brought them to our attention over and over and for whatever reason, we still hang on to them.  No garden can grow well, if at all, with all these old brambles in the way.  So, when God finally gets through to us, we need to deal with them.  Fortunately, God has a way of doing a little weed killing on His own.

Paul keeps a rather good list of these obvious deterrents to growth.  Envy, strife, jealousy, anger, drunkenness, immorality, impurity, sensuality, disputes, carousing, theft, fraud, homosexuality – we could add more from his letters, but most of us get the picture.  When we really didn’t want to listen to God, even after we knew that God wanted us to hear Him, we tried to ignore this list.  We might have been careful not to let it show, or we might have tried to keep it under control, or we might have just tried to avoid the prickling sensations of conscience when we acted like this, but now we have given up the excuses.  God got us by the neck and turned us around.  This stuff had to go.  Of course, it hangs on for a long time.  After all, we conditioned ourselves to live by these behaviors, so they don’t get erased instantly, but their power has been stripped.  God sees to that.  All we really have to do is keeping giving up our illusory “rights” to ourselves whenever the urges come around.  That isn’t always easy, but it can be done.  God also sees to that.

Now things are better.  The rocks and stumps and thistles have been removed.  The ground is being broken up for planting.  We are starting to feel like life is taking a new turn.  Then something very subtle begins to happen.  We discover that this newly overturned dirt is full of spider roots.  They aren’t weeds yet, but they will become weeds if they aren’t pulled out too.  The problem is that a lot of them look just like the roots of flowers.

Jesus addresses one of the varieties of spider roots in these verses found in Matthew.  It’s subtle stuff.  It’s about motivation.  Jesus has been talking about inner righteousness.  He tells his followers to give close attention to what is driving their behavior, even if that behavior seems clean as a whistle.  Jesus doesn’t say, “Now straighten out your lives and live according to God’s rules”.  Instead he addresses the man who is already demonstrating good behavior on the outside.  He says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men so that you will be noticed and acclaimed”.  This warning wouldn’t make any sense at all to a man who was living a life opposed to the moral code.  Such a man doesn’t care about practicing righteousness.  He’s into sin.  Jesus is talking to a different crowd altogether.  He’s talking to the church-going, right-living, moral majority.  And he’s telling them that motivation is more important than behavior.  God looks at your inner intentions, not your outer actions.  But we already know this, don’t we?  Nothing new here.  We already know that God’s sees why we act the way we do, and it matters, even if we’re acting according to all the outward appearances of virtue.  Just one thing is worth mentioning.  Notice that Jesus does not say that the actions of people who are wrongly motivated are not good.  Quite the opposite.  They are following the moral code.  They are upright, they tithe, they pray, they go to church faithfully.  But they are doing it for the wrong reason.  And this creates a problem for us because we can’t see the inner motivation like God can.  We might think that everything is fine when it really isn’t.  So, who is Jesus really talking to here?  Well, he can’t be talking to the ones who are observing all this good behavior.  They can’t tell the difference.  He has to be talking to the actors themselves.  And that means – you and me.  He’s talking straight to the ones who say they are following God.  Us!

Jesus goes on.  It’s quite important that before he gets to the subject of money, he first talks about prayer.  In fact, he teaches his disciples the only prayer Jesus ever taught, the one we call The Lord’s Prayer.  It really isn’t his prayer.  His prayer is the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, the prayer where he submits his entire existence into the Father’s hands.  This prayer is really “The Believer’s Prayer”.  Jesus taught it to us so that we would clearly understand what prayer was really about.  In this poem (it really was a rhyme in Aramaic), Jesus gives us a theology of life.  (We can’t go into all of it here, but trust me, it is extremely powerful).  After he sets the stage for a proper theology of life, he talks about outward appearance.  What he says is basically this:  if God rules your life, let your appearance show your trust in Him and His grace to you.  What God is taking you through in terms of your motivation is His business.  It is the secret part of His development of your life.  Don’t let your spiritual humbling become a public announcement of suffering in an attempt to win human sympathy.  God sees your commitment and He will honor it.  Keep it private.  It’s safer that way.  You don’t risk getting the wrong motivation.  The man who stands in front of the public, proclaiming the blessings or traumas God is putting into his life, has his reward, says Jesus.  He wanted people to see how religious he is.  He was not motivated to seek God’s will, he was motivated to hear human accolades or human pity.  God is not interested in media exposure.  His Neilsen ratings are entirely internal.

Now, after warnings about religious publicity, after discussion about the proper perspective on prayer, after counseling on God’s secret development of your inner attitudes, now Jesus turns to money.  There is no point in talking about money unless these other topics come first.  Jesus is working his way to the core.  First comes the obvious – all those good deeds that look like credit in God’s bank.  Then comes the orientation of our lives – the reason for praying and praying for a reason.  Then comes the difference between looking like God is doing some serious work on you and being glad that He is.  From the public image, to the heart attitude to the reflection of that attitude.  Now, says Jesus, let’s talk about money.

Jesus makes some very logical points.  Money won’t save you.  Money won’t keep you healthy.  Money can’t buy you love (refrain).  Money can always be stolen or lost.  So,  why put so much value on it?  Don’t you think that God knows you need money to live?  He takes care of the whole earth, the plants, the animals and the birds.  Isn’t it obvious that He can take care of you?  Why do you worry so much about tomorrow?  God knows what you need.

Jesus’ discussion about money attempts to uncover motivation.  He is pointing out the logical contradiction of the believer who espouses God’s sovereignty, goodness and grace, and at the same time tries to build financial walls of protection around his life.  Remember that Jesus is not talking to those “sinners” whose only goal in life is profit and wealth.  He is taking to the good folks, the saved, the believers.  The ones who do good deeds, who pray, who take God seriously.  He is pointing out that if you really understand Who you believe, you will conclude that your worries about money are misplaced.  If money is your motivation, God can’t be.  It is as simple as that.

Now we come to the famous verse:   “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness  . . . and all these things will be added to you”.  When we read this verse, we probably have the tendency to focus on the last part – “all these things”.  That sounds nice.  If I seek God’s kingdom, then God promises to give me all the things that I really wanted in the first place.  I’ll be rich, famous, known for my good deeds, a great warrior of the faith, in good health.  I’ll have everything that I want.  All I have to do is seek God’s kingdom.  Opps!  If we start down this path, we are discovering spider roots.  This thinking draws us back into negotiating blessings from God.  Hey, God, I’ll seek after you.  I’ll do all the right things.  Then you can bless me with all the stuff I want.  What a deal!

Motivation.  Jesus sees that even our “religious” intentions can be laced with poisonous motivations.  We never really meant to try to bargain with God, but then we discovered this great promise.   If I seek His kingdom, then He promises to add all these things to me.  Before we let these spider roots take hold, we’d better understand what Jesus is really saying.

The first thing to ask is this:  What are “all these things”?  What usually comes immediately to mind are those things that we had to give up when we started letting God take over.  Fortune, frame, health, friends, family.  Perhaps we add a few others to the list.  But we are already taking this verse out of its context.

Jesus mentions “all these things” in the framework of how God takes care of the birds and the flowers.  He is not talking luxury, bank accounts and fame.  He is talking about life’s necessities.  God provides what we need.  Food on the table, shelter for living, clothes to wear – these are the things Jesus refers to.  He is not promising anything more.  What he says is that God will provide our daily needs.  Remember that he has just taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”.  If we believe that paying attention to God’s direction will return all the possessions, fame and fantasies we previously entertained, we have missed the point.  The illicit gospel of wealth proclaims the God richly rewards those who follow Him with precisely those things that the world values.  This is the “follow God and get rich” doctrines that are travesties, degrading real value by measuring Christian discipleship by the very things that Jesus says will turn us away from God.  No wonder Jesus cautions us about money before he teaches us about God’s care taking.

I have recently experienced great financial loss.  Nearly all my financial resources have been stripped as a result of a crime.  There is no guarantee that I will ever get it back.  My life’s priorities are being severely tested.  One of my friends was talking with me about this situation.  He tried to be consoling, saying, “Next year, we’ll be standing here and you will have it all back and more.  You’ll be back on top”.  I know he is trying to encourage me.  But I wonder if being back on top is what God wants for me.  When I had so much wealth, it was easy to let my security shift from God Himself to the blessings He gave.  The Giver and the gifts are not the same.  I wasn’t being careful enough about Jesus’ warning.  It is very difficult for a rich man to enter God’s kingdom.  It’s just too easy to let the money become the security blanket.

So we wake up a little.  We forgot that the values in God’s kingdom are not the values of the world.  We see a lesson about motivation.  Perhaps secretly we still thought that God would come through with all those extras.  Now we see that there was never any promise about those things at all. God is interested in far bigger issues than the “easy” life.  He has a much longer-range perspective.  What I must come to terms with is that even my dreams, fantasies and desires need to be placed under His control.  I can’t seek His kingdom first if I am still holding on to the hopes that all those other symbols of worth will still be mine.  It isn’t just real money that I have to re-evaluate.  It is the motivation that money engenders in my life.  Some preachers have called this “the love of money”, but I don’t believe this is quite right.  It’s not money that I love when I am caught up in this sort of motivation.  I am caught in the external valuation that wealth brings me.  The motivation is really “life on my terms” or “self-sufficiency”.  The reason that Jesus warns us that it is impossible to serve both God and money is not because money has no worth in God’s kingdom.  Money is important to all of us.  Without it, life becomes very difficult indeed.  It’s not the vehicle of exchange that matters, it’s the treachery of believing that money will provide my security about life.  Notice that Jesus’ remarks never say that money is unimportant.  What he says is that money cannot provide real security.  It can be lost, stolen, destroyed.  If that can happen, how can it really take care of you?  Jesus is pointing us to the question, “Where does your real trust in life lie, with money or with God?”  If your real security is in God, then everything else will take care of itself because you live your life on God’s terms.  It is useless to try to use God as a means to get money.  Believing you are secure with one excludes the other.

I am finding this very difficult to accept.  I don’t have too much problem with the idea expressed by Job:  God gives and God takes away.  When I lost all of my actual possessions, it was a sad day, but one that I got through with God’s help.  The reality started to sink in when I saw the exotic cars loaded on trucks for their new owners.  I watched the bank account balance hover near zero until we scrambled to sell other assets.  I tried not to worry about the lack of income.  I felt fairly secure that the God I served was Job’s God too.  I remembered that Job got it all back and then some.  So, even though I was losing everything, I kept holding on to the secret hope that God was just testing me and I would soon get it all back.  Even though the actual things were gone, my dreams about possessing them were still motivating me.  I still placed my value on these things.  The only difference was that now they were motivating me as potentials.

Then God pushed me to examine this motivation.  I began to realize that I was still holding on to the hope that if I straightened out my life, God would bring all my losses back.  I was OK with loosing it all as long as I had the hope of seeing it return.  Now I realize that this is false hope.  God doesn’t promise to bring back all those things that I had.  They became roadblocks to our relationship.  In fact, since these possessions were hampering my relationship with Him, I need to realize that I have to let them go completely and forever.  I need to turn over this soil too, and let these weeds be uprooted.  This is very hard for me.  I am not sure what my life will be like.  I counted on these things.  Of course, that’s the real reason that I need to re-evaluate them.  I need to clearly understand that there is no certainty except this:  God knows what He is doing.  I surely don’t.  Suddenly the risk factor has gone way up.  All of those plans and dreams and hopes are being dealt with, fading away or being torn away.  I am a lot shakier then I was when the money disappeared.  Now I am starting to realize that unless I put all my trust in Him, I am still living on the basis of negotiated terms.  It all comes down to what I am really after.

Most of these thoughts are captured in the verb in this verse – seek.  The Greek word is zeteo.  This root word has several different meanings.  It can mean “to strive after”,  “to look for”, and “to try to gain “,” to endeavor “,” to desire or wish “,” to expect, require or demand or to search for.  It is a verb of action.  This is not passive resignation.  It is used to describe looking for something that was lost, hunting earnestly for it until it is found.  It is used for tracking down someone to kill.  This word describes forceful, deliberate, concentrated effort.  Seeking means work, and lots of it.  Winston Churchill got it right when he said, “Never, never, never give up.”  That is seeking.  You get a hold on what you’re after and you just don’t let go no matter what.  The antonym tells us something too.  The opposite of seeking is neglect.

“Seek” is the perfect verb for a discussion about motivation.  It describes someone who is tenacious, whose motivation just doesn’t quit.  Whatever they’re after, they’re going to get.  No question about it.  They just won’t stop until it is theirs.

Let me give you an example of this kind of seeking.  You’re ready for the family dinner.  You call the kids.  Everyone comes inside except the three year old.  She was just there a second ago in the backyard.  You just saw her through the window, playing with her two brothers.  But now no one seems to know where she went.  What happens in a parent’s heart when their child is missing?  Every mental and emotional alarm goes off at once.  Nothing else matters!  No circumstance gets in the way.  You SEEK that child without stopping, without hesitation, without consideration for anything else until she is safe in your arms again.  You never, never stop until you have her back.

This is the kind of intensity that Jesus is talking about when he says we must seek first God’s kingdom.  It must be the overwhelming, all-consuming passionate desire of our lives.  Is this the way we approach God’s kingdom?  Are we pursuing His righteousness with fervent, unflagging effort?  Are we hanging on to His holiness with a grip so tight it can never escape?   It’s about motivation.  If I want something so badly that I just can’t live without it, nothing will get in my way.  I’ll overcome every hurdle, every roadblock until it’s mine.  Jesus tells us that when we have this kind of motivation for God’s kingdom, life pretty much sorts itself out.  Giving us this measuring stick of motivation is just another way of saying that we fully comprehend what we recite when we say, “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”.

There are other implications in this word.  One is that we are able to do this.  Jesus is not saying, “Well, look now.  Get out there and try your best and maybe, if you are lucky, you will get there.  Maybe not, but then, who knows?”   No, it’s nothing like this.  Jesus is saying that “Yes!  You are able to put God’s Kingdom before everything else in your life.  You can do this.  But you’ve got to want it so badly you can taste it”.  Jesus comes back to this demand for total commitment many times.  Another example is found in the first Beatitude (see my study of Matthew 5:3).  In that verse, Jesus also says that God’s Kingdom is the result of those who are “beggars” of God.  They know that if they are going to survive today, they will have to have God’s grace to do so.  Seeking is something that I can do.

This verse also implies that seeking will unconditionally be rewarded.  If I come after God’s rule in life (thy will be done on earth) with an intensity that just won’t ever let up, Jesus’ guarantees that I will find what I am after.  There are very few things in life that carry a divine guarantee.  This is one of them.  Get your motivation straight, go after it for all your worth, nothing standing in the way and you are guaranteed success.  Once you see this connection, you can trace the pattern through one life after another in the Bible.  God always shows up when we’re ready to meet Him.

Motivation, ability, guaranteed results.  Not just for the greatest athletes, the smartest scientists, the most powerful business people, but for anyone.  God’s greatest victories are seen among those of us who are the weakest examples of human ability.  It doesn’t take years of training, advanced degrees or special connections to find God’s kingdom.  It takes absolute commitment of the heart.  You take care of your motivation and God will do the rest.

Lord, thank you for giving me only the task that I can do.

Thank you for not overwhelming me with rules, rituals and

regulations.  Thank you for promising to take care of my

life so that I don’t have to be distracted from the desire of

my heart – to seek your kingdom and your righteousness.

I have known the world of worry.  I have lived the life of

care.  Release me from those fruitless efforts to protect

myself from my fears.  I place my life in your hands.  You

are the only One Who can care for me without anxiety.

I will seek your kingdom without stopping until I stand

before you, rejoicing.