Thesis 59 We must seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness.
It’s a pretty simple concept that we let slip too easily out of our hands, because it reveals our weaknesses. The concept is this- when the Bible warns us against something, there’s a pretty good chance we’ll be tempted to do just that. The point is not that we are so contrarian that when a new rule comes to us we just have to break it. Rather the point is that the Lord does not waste His holy breath on things we are not prone to falling into. He warns us against real dangers, that are dangerous to us.
In His Sermon on the Mount Jesus takes the time to redirect our priorities. He warns us,
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’” (Matthew 6: 25-31).
There is plenty of encouragement for us here. We’re called to trust our Father, to rest in the glorious truth that we matter to Him. There’s a gentleness in this warning from Jesus, but it is a warning, a rebuke even. We worry about the things we ought not to worry about and fail to worry about what we ought to worry about. Francis Schaeffer suggested that the god of this age is “the god of personal peace and affluence.” And, like our fathers before us, we are masters at melding together the worship of the living God and the worship of the god of the age. Jesus is telling us to stop. He’s telling us to tear down the idols we have set up and serve, and to devote ourselves single-mindedly to the making manifest the glory of the His kingdom, to pursue obedience.
Reformation requires of all of us that we reform our value systems, that we toss overboard that which weighs us down, that we break through every barrier, including those that reside in our hearts. Reformation, in other words, requires that our hearts be re-formed by His Spirit, for His ends and to His glory.