Elementals

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

We love and fear the truth in this verse in equal measure. But I think there is more of fear than love. And that because the reality inherent in the same is scary, to say the least.

But have we ever sought to understand our Lord’s statement? Have we sought to internalise the message it contains? Have we sought to interrogate its implications on our daily lives?

What is God’s kingdom? What is God’s righteousness?

Therein lies the purpose and focus of this verse.

Understanding them is what will open us to the release it promises.

What is a kingdom?

It is an entity that has a king at its head.

OHMS (On His Majesty’s Service) describes the relationships the subjects have with their king.

In short, everybody and everything exists for the purposes and pleasure of the king in his realm.

Allow me, however, to share a common story to get us into the right ‘spirit’

There was this happily married couple, married for many years.

On their silver jubilee, as befits the occasion, the husband decides to serve his wife, besides other celebratory accessories.

But the wife, on seeing what was being served burst out into tears.

I can’t imagine all the spite you have allowed me to suffer all these years. Why do you remind me this on this great day? The wife screamed.

To say the husband was surprised would be an understatement.

What have I done? And what is this indignity I have subjected you to for twenty-five years?

The cause was very simple.

All the time, the husband used to butter the crust of the bread for his wife.

Where the husband came from, the crust was the best part of the bread and everybody fought for it.

On the wife’s side, however, the same crust was the worst, being treated like reject.

Whereas the husband thought he was giving his wife the best, even surrendering that best for the enjoyment of his wife, the wife thought that he was demeaning her by serving her the reject.

Incidentally, many marriages fail for such simple things

Allow me to flip this like Paul used to do and say that this is about the church and Christ, or about the relationship of a believer to God.

You see, we all love God. Or do we?

But do we care to know what kind of service we can give Him? Do we even care to know how He expects us to live? Do we know what acceptable service is like?

You see, just as in marriage your best effort might be construed to be the worst insult, it could just be that what you are offering God could be abominable to Him.

Saul was condemned and rejected for two things.

He sought to intreat God with a sacrifice when the priest delayed.

And second, he saved the best animals to give to God as a sacrifice.

Of course, his final act was fuelled by a desperation to hear God’s take on things, eventually seeking a familiar spirit to do so.

Is there anything wrong with offering a sacrifice before going to war?

Is there anything wrong with giving God the best?

Is there anything wrong with being desperate for God’s voice?

Of course not.

The only problem with those good things was that they went against God’s revelation.

They therefore became acts of rebellion.

We will many times hear arguments around someone’s heart being in the right place.

But the reality is that it does not matter where the heart is.

You simply cannot please someone on your terms. You cannot offer them pleasure on your terms.

And that is what Saul sought to do, something we do all the time.

And in marriage that is disastrous because a continual persistence on the same becomes irritation.

Allow me to give another story to illustrate this.

A rich man had a huge tree on his compound. And the same tree shed very many leaves on a daily basis.

He employed a worker whose duty was to ensure that there were no leaves under the tree.

After working that job for some time, this guy became ingenious and dealt with that menace conclusively. He cut the tree down.

When his boss came back, he was beaming, expecting a great reward for his forward thinking move.

Do you think he was rewarded?

Of course not. And it was simply because he had presumed his boss, serving him very creatively, but on his terms.

Again, we do that all the time in our marriages and faith, thinking that we will be applauded for our inventiveness.

We think that God really needs us, the same way many in marriage think that their partner would be unable to live without them.

Did God create man to complete Himself? Of course not.

Did God create Eve to complete Adam? Of course not

He actually took something out of Adam to create Eve

The word God used for the woman was helpmeet, a suitable helper.

Not an assistant, not a supervisor, not a vision bearer; just a suitable helper.

By the time Eve was brought, Adam had already named the animals and received his orders concerning how he would exercise dominion over creation.

And this still concerns the kingdom.

Do you realise that almost all of Christ’s parables and lessons were about kings and kingdoms?

It means that the issue of God’s kingdom ranked very highly in His scheme of things.

Even the Gospel is called the Gospel of the kingdom.

Allow me to look at some of those parables.

Remember the parable of the talents?

I do not know whether you realise that the wicked servant was more prudent and watchful over his lord’s resources.

You see, putting money to work opens you to the probability of losing it since even farming is no sure investment as I remember I lost all my money due to the El Nino floods of ’97. Businesses fail all the time.

This character feared to suffer loss if he put the king’s money to use, especially since he did not know when the king would be back.

The only problem was that he forgot the order he had been given, occupy till I come.

He was not told to ensure that the gift multiplied or even increased. He was only ordered to put it into use.

The profit and loss dynamic of that occupy was not his responsibility.

That is why the ones who occupied were rewarded irrespective of how much they produced.

He was punished for refusing to obey the king’s order.

I am sure he would not have been punished had he put the money to use and experienced loss.

Let us examine another parable to glean a few other things about God’s kingdom.

Remember the parable of the steward who was being sacked for impropriety?

Does it not surprise you that his cunning was commended by his lord?

This guides us to another aspect of the kingdom.

His boss commended him, not because he reduced the debts owed to the king but because he exhibited the ethos of his kingdom.

A king does not trade for the purposes of profit since everything and everyone in his kingdom belongs to him.

Apart from expanding his kingdom, nothing else excites a king than satisfied subjects.

And as believers we fail in this big time because we forget that simple truth.

Ministers fail because they look at their occupation or even calling as jobs to earn a living or run a spiritual enterprise. That is why pastors are nowadays called CEOs of churches.

That is why churches and ministries are closed for the simple reason that they have become ‘insolvent’.

A pastor who is unable to grow his congregation is called a failure since he does not have adequate return on investment.

We forget that Jeremiah ministered for over forty years and had nothing to show for it.

I will develop this farther in future posts.

I realise I am constrained in some way since my children are home from school and so I am not able to sufficiently build on this in time.

Incidentally, that is the parental dynamic that we should be prudent about since we are accountable to God for how we run it.