What Jesus says our priorities should be
Matt 6:33 “[speaking against anxiety about food, drink, cloth]: Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you”
Matt 22:37-40 “Thou shalt Love the lord thy God with all thy hear, and all they sould, and with all thy mind. This i the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: though shlat Love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
John 4:24 “God is Spirit and it is necessary for those who worship him to worship in spirit and in truth.”
How we can mess up
Ask the group
- Putting ourselves or others before God
- Letting the world choke us out (parable of the seeds)
- Feeding our flesh over our spirit
- holidays
- work
- relationships
- others plans
Awesome, I’ve got all that figured out (Lk 18:21)
First off, no you, we, I don’t. If you think otherwise, that’s pride. But, let’s humor and look at your, our, my walk then, shall we?
Too Much Truth
- We can get caught up in following this rule or that rule. Jesus says that what is important is Justice (greek: Kreses, decision - esp concerning right/wrong), Mercy (greek: eleos, mercy - kindness or good will towards the miserable and afflicted, joined with a desire to help them), and faith (greek: pestes, belief, moral conviction; hebrew: emanah - a sure covenant). That is, we should be generally mindful of right and wrong in our own lives and the lives of Christians around us but have compassion on the oppressed and lost, always remembering where we came from and the covenant of blood, the cross, that saved us.
Matt 23:23-24 “Whoa to you, hypogrite scribes and Pharisees, because you tithe mint and dill and cumin but you have canceled the more important things of the law: justice, mercy, and faith; but it was necessary to do these things but not to cancel those things. Blind guides, those who strain the gnat but swallow the camel.”
- Similarly, we can dig too deep into the word, looking for things that aren’t there or answers that don’t matter in God’s eyes.
1 Tim 1:3-7 “As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.”
- How else have you gotten caught up in truth?
Too Much Spirit
- Reading as if the Bible is for you and you alone; not a message that was written to a certain people with context and background that we can’t fully know. We must measure scripture against scripture
Acts 17:11 “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for the received the message with eagerness and examined the Scriptures to see if what Paul said was true”