Have you not read
The most repeated question of Jesus was “Have you not read?” That wasn’t a question of physical activity. OF COURSE His audience had read! In New Testament times, every Jewish male was required to memorize the first five books of the Bible, and those training to be Pharisees had to memorize the entire Old Testament! The question wasn’t actually, “have you never read…,” it was how have you missed the point! The truth in what you HAVE read and the heart and authority of the Author?
The Christian experience is first yielding your heart, (that’s salvation), and then yielding your life, (that’s sanctification). The fact that someone yields their life to Jesus is the proof that someone has yielded their heart in the first place. And, intriguing and more encompassing (truer) than any of us know, a life yielded to God is everything we were designed to be… It IS our full potential. (Jesus put this on perfect display.)
The serpent undermined and swept this out from under our parents… Took away our function. Introduced waste and regret and frustration and everything that comes with being abused. To be used in such a way that isn’t procedurally correct, that is misuse… Another word for misuse is “abuse.” Let me throw this out there then…, an element of my or my life or what comes from me or from my life that is not yielded to God is a misuse of my function and the result is abuse proceeding from my life…
None of us lacks access to any of the promises of God. What we lack is the awareness of the access that we have…
I want to talk today about a very well known, well claimed, well quoted verse and Biblical principle. In fact, this is the verse that we started our church upon, and today, this is and will remain the verse that supports and directs everything we do in the work of the ministry.
Matthew 6:33 says, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Almost all Christians know this verse. Almost all Christians know what this verse says but almost no Christians know what it’s saying. (“Have you never read?”) That is a huge issue in the church, why? Because anyone can read it. It is a work of the Spirit for someone to understand…
Anyone can be given the Word of God, but until you give yourself to the Word of God, you don’t know what it’s actually saying…
If you don’t know what the Kingdom of God is and you’re seeking it, if you find it, how will you know you’ve found it? A lot of people are looking for something today sincerely and with great fervor but they don’t know what it looks like so when they find it, they keep looking, they miss it or because they don’t know what it is in the first place, we have made our own ideas about it, when we find it, we actually reject it! And all things never get added… (This was the state of God’s people at the time of Jesus, and super sadly, this is widely the church’s state today)
This is a real problem for us. A real challenge… Because we have grown up in a country and in a culture that is of the people, by the people and for the people, but in a kingdom, it is of the king, by the king and for the king…
The fact is, we will never experience what Matthew 6:33 is saying if we never lock in on where and what and how we enter into the Kingdom of God…
“Kingdom” is compound word. It is the word king and the word dominion put together. So, the kingdom is the king’s dominion. Dominion means realm or jurisdiction. So, the Kingdom of God is the realm over which the King reigns. So, check this out, get this right, this will change everything…, the Kingdom of God is the realty realm over which the King reigns!
The first part of the model prayer that Jesus gave us is entirely revelatory. Almost everyone, even believer and nonbeliever alike know what the Bible says in what’s erroneously referred to as “The Lord’s Prayer,” but almost no one knows what the Bible is saying. Jesus said in Matthew 6:9-10, “In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done…”
Those words are not a request…, the request part of the model prayer comes later. We are still in the acknowledgement section of the model prayer. Your Kingdom come is an acknowledgment of God being the King in our lives.
If I’m not looking for God to run my life, then I am not seeking the Kingdom of God. So, seeking the Kingdom of God is actually yielding/surrendering my heart, soul, mind and strength (this is the greatest of commandments as told to us by Jesus), yielding/surrendering my life to God as the sovereign King of MY life!
Now check this out. Here’s where it gets less doctrinal and more practical. God is the sovereign King. Agreed? I hope so because that is a fact. As the sovereign King, God has all authority. Jesus said in Matthew 28:18, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth…” Jesus is the all-authority King. King over and in everything with all authority. And so, if He rules over YOU with sovereign authority, perhaps better said…, if you step into the stream of His sovereignty, then whatever it is you are facing, you face with the authority of Jesus Himself! Does that make sense? I sure hope it does!!
Authority over your circumstance is inherently given to you, it is inherently yours because it is already under God’s authority which you are ensuring you are securely within. Why? Because you are seeking FIRST the Kingdom of God and His righteousness! Again, we don’t lack authority or access to authority, we lack awareness of the authority we have access to…
Your thing won’t yield to you because you won’t yield to God. That relationship stays broken, that career stays stagnant, that ministry stays burdensome… When you yield to God, I heard it said this way…, you get to be the king of your thing or the queen of your scene!
Folks try incessantly to do their own thing but the problem with that is you don’t have a thing to do! “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…,” all things are His. We don’t have our own thing… We actually aren’t doing our own things… People who think they are doing their own thing are actually doing the devil’s thing and that’s why things stay destroyed or stalled…
Removing yourself from God’s authority results in you having no authority. So, we look at our circumstances, we think it and they are the problem, but the reality is I’m the problem because I reject the idea of being under God’s authority. Or we say we are under God’s authority and receivers of His promises because we believe He is the King but we aren’t living like He is the King and so what we say is a lie and what we experience is used by the enemy to cause doubt in our belief of God’s goodness…
This is the temptation from the beginning! The serpent said to Eve that she would essentially come out of the authority of God and become her own god! Discerning for HERSELF what is right and wrong. Living HER truth… Genesis 3:4-5, “Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened (authority), and you will be like God (your own authority), knowing good and evil.”” Interestingly enough this is the thrust of religion. We will tell you what is right, not God… Not His Word…. Not His authority…
Matthew 6 shows us that Jesus came to restore God’s original intent that was laid out for us in Genesis Chapter 1. God created man and He did it differently. (This is so good!) God created mankind and He said, Genesis 1:26, “Let them have dominion over all the earth…” God created us to walk with Him, in the King’s dominion, and in that call and responsibility, in the continuous stream of God’s all-encompassing authority (His sovereignty) for us to have dominion over all the earth…
The enemy couldn’t have dominion in heaven, he tried but he couldn’t, so he has come to earth to usurp dominion here where he has been quite successful. Over the crown of God’s creation, specifically, humans made in the likeness of God. And one of his primary tools…, yikes…, has been religion. If you do this, you will be just like God. Religion… We have far too much religion and far too little Kingdom in the Body of Christ today!
What was the first command given to us? Genesis 1:27-28, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply…” The first command of us was to be fruitful. A fruit is something that has its seed in and of itself. So, to be fruitful this command it’s a leading for us to produce outwardly what has been done inwardly within us! Our purpose and the purpose of the church is to expand the Kingdom of God on earth… THIS is the meaning of life.
Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you… All what things? Well in context of Chapter 6, earthly resources… AND, what is far more important than earthly riches is eternal riches… Would you rather have unlimited earthly resources or have love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, long-suffering and self-control? Would you rather have $27B dollars or 27k days of strength, confidence and autonomous satisfaction? That’s our average lifespan… 74 years or 27k days…
Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and the original intent of your reason for being here in the first place will energize to the glory of God and to the expansion of the one true Kingdom…
Ima tell you this and then I’m through. This is the kind of Christian this world needs in these last days. Not some sort of harsh, self-righteous, callous, narcissistic, prideful brutal Bible expert… Jesus was never like that. But Romans 2:4 says that it is the goodness of God that leads to repentance. Real change. Real change we can believe in! Making America Great Again! A new way forward… All of those slogans will ultimately fail… What the world needs in these last days is Kingdom Christians… Matthew 6:33 Christians. To stop this religious pattern of self-righteousness and return to the humility of the cross. To live within the sovereign authority of the King of kings and the Lord of lords…
“Have you not read?” Have you not humbled yourself before the mighty hand of God that He may lift you up…? This is the crux of every issue, emotional, physical, spiritual in your life and in mine… The first step is to simply yield your heart… Folks are moving onto to step two without fully embracing step one… This was the reason for Jesus’ most repeated question, in almost personal disbelief Himself…, HAVE YOU NOT READ?