LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1981, Page 87

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To get at our topic for the day, we want to look at five

- basic passages of Scripture—five foundation passages.

.. The first one is in Christ’s great Sermon on the

: Mount—in Matt. 6:33: “Instead, be concerned above
” everything else with the kingdom of God and with what
. He requires of you, and He will provide you with all

these other things.”
. To be concerned with the kingdom of God above

- everything else means to put God first in our life, others
~gecond, and ourself third. It means to worship God
” faithfully each Sunday in His house, each day in our
house. It means to support God’s kingdom via our

financial gifts and our Christian service.
You and I are also to be concerned about what God

- yequires, about “His righteousness,” as the King James

Version puts it. This is spelled out for us throughout the
Sermon on the Mount. For instance, in 5:16 we are told

to let our light shine before people so that they may see

the good things we do. In 5:21 and 22 weare told not only
to refrain from murder but also from anger and name-

- galling. In verses 27 and 28 Christ tells us not only to
. refrain from adultery but also from lust. In verse 44 He

tells us to love our enemies and to pray for them. By the
way, the best way to destroy your enemies is to make
friends of them. And you'll do just that when you begin
to pray for them.

In 6:2 and 3 Christ tells us to engage in personal
charity. In verses 5 ff. He says to be sure to pray. And the
best prayer you can come up with is the Lord’s Prayer.

In 7:1 Jesus tells us not to judge others. Let God serve
as the Judge. In verse 12 He gives us the Golden Rule.
And in verse 15 He says that we should beware of false
prophets. There are plenty of false prophets in the
world. I’m sure you have them in your community just
as we have them here in our community: the Moonies
and the Mormons, the Christian Scientists and the
Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Unity School of Religion.
The Unity School of Religion, by the way, features fine
Christian psychology but is deficient in Christian theol-
ogy.

Let God’s Word be the first and last word in all the
areas of your life. Then you will be performing His
requirements and His righteousness. And then you can
be assured of all these other things—all the necessities
of life. Perhaps you won’t have the luxuries of life, but
you will have the necessities, for instance, food and
clothing, house and home. This is a promise of God. And
when God makes a promise He always keeps it. You and
I sometimes break ours, but He never breaks His.

One of the interesting accounts to come out of the
Second World War is told by a sailor who spent some
time on an island in the South Pacific. The natives there
have a unique and sneaky way of trapping monkeys.

I
Our Stewardship of Life and Time

87

ESSAYS ON STEWARDSHIP

They take jars with long narrow necks and tie them to
the lower branches of trees. They fill the lower part of
the jar with grain. At night the monkeys come down
from the higher branches and reach into the jars for
grain. But when they try to pull their hand out, they
can’t because their fist filled with grain is now too big.
All they need do to go free is let the grain fall from their
hand, but this they won’t do. They would rather lose
their freedom than their grain.

Like those trapped monkeys there are many people
in our day and in our land who would rather lose eternal
life than their temporal possessions. They hold onto
their possessions and money as though their very life
depended on them. They have not learned to ‘“‘seek first
the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these
things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33 KJV).

Let me urge you to put God first in your life and in
your love. You will enjoy the best of both worlds—the
temporal world and the eternal world.

* * *

Matt. 16:24: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If
anyone wants to come with Me, he must forget himself,
carry his cross, and follow Me.’”

The cross was a necessity in the life of Christ, and it
is a necessity in your and my life too. Many people do
not agree with this, however. They do not believe the
cross is really vital. Consequently they delete it from
their religion and from their life. The real problem is
that it is too demanding and too disturbing.

It was disturbing to Peter too. He is the one who
prompted these words on the part of Jesus Christ. Peter
loved Jesus so much that he wanted to save Him from
the cross—and from all the shame and pain that would
go with it. Love, however, is sometimes sadly mistaken,
sadly misdirected. This is the case when a wife urges her
husband to spare himself rather than give time to
church and charity. This is the case when well-meaning
parents try to dissuade their son or daughter from going
into the full-time work of the church, because the
teaching and preaching profession is too demanding
and also too little rewarding financially.

We hardly expect Satan to show up in the love and
solicitude of family members and friends, but as in the
case of Peter here in this passage, Satan is not at all
choosy. He works in whomever and through whomever
he can.

There is a good deal of misunderstanding abroad
about taking up the cross. Some people believe every
kind of misfortune is a cross. A woman with a severe
case of arthritis says, “This is my cross. I must bear it.”
Aman who has lost his business says, “This is my cross.
I’ve got to take it.”