The One Thing Necessary - Part 1

Some things come naturally. You can look at children around the world and observe them doing similar things.  For example, they all like to build forts or find little nooks or crannies to hang out in. Do you remember doing that? This simple activity is good for you. It brings the world in, making it smaller. As a result, being in a fort or little nook makes children feel safe, makes life manageable, and is fun.

We need to do the same thing as grown-ups. We need to develop practices that help us bring life in so it is manageable, safe, and even fun. We need to prioritize what's essential. It is going to be both hard and easy. (1)

As C.S. Lewis explains,” The Christian way is different: harder, and easier…You have noticed, I expect, that Christ himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, ‘Take up your cross’ - in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden light.’ He means both.” (2)

We see this in the Sermon on the Mount. We learn that there is one thing that is necessary that leads to life, and it is both hard and easy, and it will take a minute to both talk about it and live it.

Before diving into the one thing necessary, we must prepare ourselves. You can find this one necessary thing throughout the Bible. (3) The best Bible teachers and experts, the scribes and the Pharisees, knew about it. But hear what Jesus says to them: “You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, yet they testify about Me. And you are not willing to come to Me so that you may have life.” (Jn 5:39-40, HCSB)

God is here. We need help seeing and experiencing the reality of God’s presence.

Maybe you feel like Elisha’s assistant. At a crucial point in Israel’s history, the king of Syria was pursuing the prophet Elisha. His young helper stepped out one morning and saw that the Syrians surrounded them. Elisha told him not to be afraid: “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them,” he said. Then Elisha went a step further. He prayed: “O, Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of Elisha’s servant, and he saw that the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” (2 Kgs 6;17)

God wants us to have eyes to see Him. In the Old Testament, we read that the Israelites sought God eagerly, and He was found by them. (2 Chron 15:15b). Don’t you love that! God allows himself to be found by us!

After Jesus spoke to Paul and the entire course of his life changed, Paul stood before the people in Athens and said: “ The God who made the world and everything in it…did this so that we would seek him and perhaps reach out and find him, though he is not far from any of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring. ’ (Acts 17:24-28)

Jacob also said, “Surely the Lord is in the place, and I did not know it” (Gen 28:16). Jacob needed new eyes to see God, a new perspective, and the ability to live differently without deceit and cunning con games.

After experiencing God, Jacob started to want new things. You know you are changed when you seek God first, like the psalmist: ”Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thought. See if there is any offensive way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Ps 139:23-24)

Jesus sees the hearts of many of the people who have been following him. They are the people who know him and call him Lord. They are people who have been casting out demons and performing miracles, yet Jesus tells some of them, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.” It seems that those folks were quite something and doing amazing things for the cause of Jesus, yet he plainly tells them, “ I never knew you.” (Mt7:21-23)

It is possible to go forth in God’s name and do God’s work without knowing Jesus. Motives may be wrong. Aims and attitudes may be in the wrong place. If the experts and some of the best leaders are missing it, how do we find it?

That is the message of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus points beyond our actions to the source of our actions—our character. Jesus’ teaching can become a part of us and change who we are. We can become the kind of people who live out what the Sermon on the Mount means.

For example, we can become the kind of person who lives without worry. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses the word worry six times. It reminds me of Martha. Remember Jesus told her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed - indeed only one thing is necessary.” Mary chose that one necessary thing.

When Jesus visited Mary and Martha, Mary put aside everything else and focused solely on Him. She made Jesus her priority. She made a little fort around herself and Jesus, if you will. She did not worry about her sister running around the house making preparations. She did not bother herself with Martha’s demands to get busy and help. Mary sat at Jesus' feet. Mary took her place under him. She gazed up at him. She listened to him. She loved him. He loved her.

I love a little verse in Ephesians that says, “Find out what pleases the Lord” (Eph 5:10). I think this is what Mary aimed to do. This is what you do when you love someone.

God said: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jer 29:13)

This is the one thing that is necessary.  If we want to be with Jesus and live life with him, we must: Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. (Matthew 6:33)

How? Notice there are two parts. First, we seek him and his kingdom. Then we seek his righteousness.

Seek first him and his kingdom.

To seek him and his kingdom first is to pursue a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus. Remember, Jesus began his ministry saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” You can experience it, like Mary.

You can experience it like David. He shows us how in Psalms 27. David shares: “One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek - to be with the Lord all the days of my life.”

David says he wants to dwell with the Lord. He wants to gaze on the beauty of the Lord. He wants to seek the Lord. Like Mary, David shows us the importance of becoming aware of God and intentionally seeking communion with God. They both show us it is possible to have an intimate relationship, a friendship with God, where we talk to him, listen to him, and spend time with him. I love the old hymn line: "He walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own.” This is what it means to seek God and his kingdom.

But what about Martha and all those worries Jesus discussed in Matthew 6? It is not easy to make God your priority and seek him. Many things are vying for our attention. We have obligations that must be met. So what are we to do?

Jesus turns our gaze above, saying, “Consider the birds of the air.” (Mt 6:26) What do you see when you look up at the birds of the air? I have always loved birds. As a little girl, I wished I could be like them and fly. When you look up at the birds flying above, you see a sense of ease and freedom in them.

Consider the birds of the air. Don’t worry about your life - what you will eat or drink or wear. Don’t worry about the stuff of human life. These things are not the main thing. Is your life not more than food, and the body more than clothes? (Mt 6:25) Even if you don’t have these things, you can be blessed. Jesus is the one who has say over all things in heaven and on earth. (Mt 28:18)

When we consider the birds, we learn they trust God to provide for them. They know that God is in charge. I have a little birdhouse that I can see from our kitchen window. Every winter, when it gets below zero here in the Midwest and everyone is indoors because of the extreme cold, I see the chickadees and the sparrows by that bird house. They do not get weather alerts about dangerously cold temperatures. Each day seems the same to them; they dwell in a world where God provides for them. They come out in rain or shine, hot or cold, and have their breakfast. I only provide a little house, God gives them food and protection. A bird lives in the moment. The birds remind you not to worry about tomorrow. God will provide what you need.

Jesus also tells us to consider the lilies of the field. What do you see when you look at the lilies of the field? You see their beauty. You see them just standing there, glorious. Beauty is built into a lily. It comes ready-made in its seed. God made it beautiful and enabled it to grow, providing all that it needed to stand boldly, a splendor for all to behold. Jesus says, “If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and gone tomorrow…will he not much more clothe you?” (Mt 6:30)

The lilies in the field remind us that we are made by God and loved by God. Just as you look out and see the beauty in the flowers in the field, God looks at you and sees beauty, simply in who you are. The birds of the air and the lilies of the field live in the kingdom of God. They trust in God’s care and grow into who they were made to be. They live without worry. They live with God, here and now.

What is the one necessary thing?

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

To live out what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount, we must consider what it means to seek Jesus first. We can be like Mary, David, the birds of the air, and the lilies of the field. We can make Jesus our priority. We can trust him to be with us and provide for us and the world around us.

The way you make Jesus a priority matters.  If you seek a list of things you must do and follow, the things will become your focus. But if you come with the attitude of a lover wanting to love the Lord with all your heart and wanting to listen to him and trust in his ways, then the Sermon on the Mount moves beyond duty to privilege. (4) You live as one seeking to know and please God. You live as one who has Jesus at the center of your life. It involves seeing who we are and what we have in a new way. To seek Jesus and his kingdom is to find out what God is doing and get involved with it.

“We let God love us into people of love.”

John Mark Comer (5)

“Love the Lord your God,

Listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.

For the Lord is your life,

and he will give you many years

in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Duet 30:20

If you want to go deeper…

1. Read Matthew 6:25-34

2. Meditate on Psalm 145. What does it tell you about God?

3. Consider Eph 5:10 “Find out what pleases the Lord:

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1. You may be familiar with Dunbar’s Rule. It suggests that we are only made with the capacity to sustain 150 relational connections.

2. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

3. Mt 6:33 - see also: Jer 29:13; Deut 4:29; Lam 3:25; I Chron 16:11; I Chron 22:19;

2 Chron 7:14; Isa 55:6-7, Ps 27:4,8; Ps 9:10; Ps 14:2; Ps 34:10; Ps 40:16; Ps 63:1; Ps 105:4, Ps 199:2,-3, 10; Pro 8:17Ps 145: 18; Acts 17:27

4. E. Stanley Jones used duty and privilege in Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together, edited by Charles E. Moore.

5. John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did.