Relax in the Kingdom of Heaven

Summary

A central theme is the contrast between living with clenched fists—symbolizing fear, anxiety, and scarcity—and living with open hands, which reflects a posture of generosity and abundance. Jonathan encourages a lifestyle that trusts in God’s provision and shares blessings with others. This openness leads to a life filled with the fruits of the Spirit, such as love and kindness, creating a community rooted in the kingdom of heaven

Transcript

I want to talk about what do we do in the midst of those sort of jumbled-up emotions and jumbled-up feelings in life. It is forming us, the Holy Spirit is forming us into the image of Jesus for the sake of the world, and prayer that then leads to good deeds. Good deeds is a very wide description. Good deeds can be making coffee for your loved one in the morning, or giving them an extra hand helping them out the door. It can be holding the door for a stranger, or offering a generous tip at a restaurant. It can be a word of encouragement for somebody. It can be volunteering at an organization that's helping the less fortunate.

Today is Back to School Sunday. I, to be honest with you, am having a little bit of a hard time today. First of all, wondering where in the world did summer go? I feel like that just last week we were planning for camp and executing camp, and now it's just gone, and we're back into school mode. Which is a good thing, certainly, but you sometimes wonder where the days go. And this year, my family is experiencing something new that we have not experienced. We have a daughter going to high school.

Kind of look back and wonder where the years went. That feels like just yesterday, she was going into preschool. So, but here we go. God is good, and we are excited for what is next. If you have children in the home who are getting ready for school, this is both an exciting time of year and also can be a very stressful time of year. There's a great anticipation for a new school year to begin, to go back to school, and to meet the teacher who is in their classroom this year, to see their friends who they haven't seen in several weeks, to learn the rules all over again of how to interact with classmates and go through school. Usually, for a lot of kids, they get some either new shoes or a new fresh haircut or new clothes or whatever it is.

So there's all the excitement around that. But then there's also the stress and the worry and maybe the anxiousness. The first day jitters, having to end summer where you've been able to largely go at whatever flow and have to go back into a structured morning where you're waking up early and all of the things that go along with that and how are things going to go at school. And then there's the parents, right? You have a little bit of the same emotions. You're excited to get back into the groove of things, excited for another year, but then also with that excitement worried of how things are going to go. How are the things going to go for your kid as they're interacting in a new environment?

And all of that we bring together with us today. And to sort of sit in this moment together, seeking to allow God through the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us. I want to talk about what do we do in the midst of those sort of jumbled up emotions and jumbled up feelings in life. But before we do that, I want to offer a reminder for those of us who are regular attenders and participants here at Journey. This year, we have been focusing on primarily two things. That is daily prayer, prayer that is formative, prayer that forms and shapes and molds us. I like to think of it as like prayer where there is a sculptor that is sculpting us like a potter would a piece of clay.

It is forming us. The Holy Spirit is forming us into the image of Jesus for the sake of the world. And prayer that then leads to good deeds. Good deeds is a very wide description. Good deeds can be making coffee for your loved one in the morning or giving them an extra hand helping them out the door. It can be holding the door for a stranger or offering a generous tip at a restaurant. It can be a word of encouragement for

somebody.

It can be volunteering at an organization that is helping the less fortunate. It can be bringing somebody on your boat as you are fishing and

teaching them where all of the fish are for them to catch.

They can be small. They can be big. But we believe as followers of Jesus that if we spend time in prayer that is forming and shaping us, it will lead to good deeds and those good deeds will be a blessing for our neighbors. And so with that in mind, I want to offer a prayer and then we'll turn to the gospel passage for us today. Lord, we pray today that you would fill us with your joy, with the Holy Spirit, that you would lead us in your ways. In your name and for your sake. Amen. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been considering how we are grounded and rooted into the kingdom of heaven.

As we move through life, we no doubt are influenced by, as the Bible would talk about it, the patterns of brokenness. We live in a world that is broken and those ways crowd into our lives. They form and shape us in ways that we know and in ways that are unknown. And as people who are following the way of Jesus, it is our desire to plant our roots into the soil of the kingdom of heaven and to allow the Holy Spirit to nourish our lives with the way of Jesus and the patterns of Jesus and lead us forward in this kingdom that is here, but not fully here, as Jesus talked about it. Last week, we did a little bit of exercise with our bodies. We took our hands, we balled them up into a fist and it wasn't to slug your neighbor or to tell them to pay attention. It was a fist to represent the posture of brokenness.

The posture of brokenness is a clenched fist. As you move through life with a very tight fist wrapped around whatever is in front of you, this way of life leads to anxiety, it leads to animosity, it leads to fear, it leads to a mentality of scarcity towards the resources that we have. And fear of our neighbor. We talked about, in contrast, how in the kingdom of heaven, we learn to live with our hands relaxed, with our lives relaxed and opened. The open hand is the posture of the kingdom of God. And when we live with our hands open, it replaces in us an abundance of the kingdom of heaven. And the byproduct of this abundance is what Paul would call in Galatians, the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

These things become the way in which we move through life. Not perfectly, not without fault, but these truths nourishing the roots of our lives more and more each day. Also, what we receive when our roots are planted in the kingdom of heaven is an incredible reality. Not a pie in the sky thinking, not a some future moment this will happen, but a right now, true and real, the most true and most real reality that is made true in our lives, that is fostered in our lives by the presence of Jesus. And that's we live our lives sourced by the kingdom of heaven. So I want to read some words that Jesus offers to us as we spend time emphasizing the kingdom of heaven and how the spirit nourishes the roots of our lives. And as we read this, I want you to embrace wherever you are.

Maybe today you come and you are filled with worry and nervousness and anxiousness about the upcoming days. Maybe you come excited and with great anticipation of the next days. Maybe you're somewhere in between, but I want to invite you to wherever you are, embrace that in this moment and then hear these words spoken by Jesus. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap.

They have no storeroom or barn, yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable are you than birds? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? Consider how the wildflowers grow. They do not label, labor, or spend. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all of his splendor was dressed like one of these.

If this is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you? You of little faith. And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink. Do not worry about it, for the pagan world runs after all such things. Your father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.

Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out. A treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Last week we looked at the parable that comes just before this particular teaching. And the parable is about a wealthy farmer who plants his crop and has an abundant harvest more than what is usual or to be expected. And so the farmer then has a bit of a conundrum. He has to decide, what do I do with this abundance of crop? So he comes up with the idea, his barns that he has are insufficient to store whatever he has in abundance. So he does the reasonable thing, right?

He tears down the insufficient barns and builds up bigger barns in order to store the leftover grain. And then his plan is just to simply sit back and enjoy some merriment and live in a bit of self-indulgence for a while. Now what's interesting about this parable, as Jesus tells it, is that this man is forgetting one of the most common themes in Scripture. He's forgetting that God blesses people not to build them up as individuals, but so that through that blessing, the people then are able to bless their neighbors. It is the most common theme throughout Scripture from the very beginning to the very end. Jesus weighed in on it by saying, the greatest commandment, he was asked, what is it? Jesus said, love the Lord your God with your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

This farmer would have grown up memorizing much of the beginning of the New Testament, particularly the laws in Deuteronomy. Last week, as we read this parable, which Jesus told of a man who keeps everything for himself, even to excess, he would have read in Deuteronomy chapter 24, where it says, when you are harvesting in your fields, pass through one time and leave whatever is behind for the orphan, the widow, and the immigrant. And God gives the instructions. The reason for this is so that God may bless you. There is a direct correlation between blessing and the kingdom of heaven and how you leverage that for your neighbor. But for this man, for many of us, our brokenness might tempt us to hold on to what we have very tightly with closed fists. And for this man, even though he had bigger barns, which were full of plenty of grain, when his empire that he had built for himself was squeezed, what he had left was nothing.

We contrast that today with this beautiful invitation of Jesus to relax in the kingdom of heaven, to trust God and the way in which God works and provides and blesses to rest in the beauty of God's presence. And to receive and share God's blessing. Jesus says the Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Not the Father begrudgingly gives you the kingdom, not hesitantly gives you the kingdom, not partially, not gives it to you after you've proved your worth, but is pleased to give you the kingdom. And there is no need for us to find ourselves in a mentality of comparison or posturing. There is no need for us to scapegoat and withhold. We simply learn to relax in a world that is filled with God's grace and beauty, an abundance of God's love and a rhythm of peace as we root our lives in the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus said in Luke 12 32, seek his kingdom and these things will be given to you as well. And so we seek the kingdom of heaven, knowing that what we receive in our seeking is this relaxed life.

Would you pray with me today? Jesus, as we go through our lives, it is very easy to get caught up in the mentality of grasping on and holding tightly and squeezing, sometimes the life out of whatever is in front of us. But Lord, what you have invited us to something much different, a journey of letting go that we might be able to embrace your kingdom. God, help us to trust that you will provide for us. Help us to know that be it feast or famine, you are with us. Lead us, God, to a life of generosity and blessing where instead of being a dam that holds water into some sort of reservoir, we would be the spillway of your grace. That your blessing would rush through us and spill over into the lives of our neighbors.

And still in us, Jesus, today, your peace. We ask these things in your name and for your sake. Amen.