Turn back in your Bibles to where
we read Matthew chapter 6. Matthew chapter 6. This is the first Sunday of the
year. It's also the first month of
the year. It's even the first day of the
week. And as somebody said once, it's
the first day of the rest of your life. The words that are spoken in
this text that I want us to look at this morning are the words
of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are a command from the God-man. And they are the instruction
of Him who is the all-wise teacher. And they are the admonitions, the encouragements from the one
called the Beloved. And they are vitally important
at all times. And it seems especially important
at this time as we stand here on the threshold of the new year. We're at the first. And it is a time that we tend
to make many resolutions. We resolve to do some things. And we make many of these resolutions
according to our own wisdom and our own feelings. But the Lord Jesus Christ says
that this is to be our chief resolution. Look down with me
at that 33rd verse again. Rather than doing what we all
do by nature, he says, but seek ye first the
kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you." This is basically what Paul says
in 1 Corinthians 2. He speaks in a word of resolve. And he says, "...for I determined,
not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." If you look at this verse in
its parts, we have not ever been able to read this verse and apply
it to somebody else. When he says, seek ye first,
he's saying, you seek first. He says that to me, individually,
personally. He says that to each one of you,
individually, personally, who read that verse. You seek first. And if you notice here, his command
to seek has to be taken with a little bit of knowledge and
understanding as to the whole of Scripture. Every verse is
to be weighed in light of the first. And the truth is that
no one, not one single person, no one by nature and of themselves,
apart from Almighty Grace and the very power of God's Spirit,
no one ever of themselves seeks God. I don't care what these
preachers say. Paul writes in Romans chapter
3 something that was stated also in the Old Testament. He says,
"...there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after
God." But the truth is, this inability
does not alter this command. It does not make us less responsible
to perform it. That's something that people
often get confused, I'm afraid, willingly, deliberately. And that is a command which is
issued by God, where in another place He tells us we're unable
to do. We say, well, if I'm unable to
do it, I'm not responsible to do it. Not so. God gave that law on Mount Sinai. Those commands which those people
were at that very moment disobeying. They were not without responsibility. And it does not mean that we
are to excuse or justify our failure to seek. And it is the
same as we read in John where he tells us, no man can come. You read that, haven't you? He
said, no man can come. That has to do with ability. And yet he turns at the same
time and says, yet him that comes to me, I'll in no wise cast out. You say that's confusing. No,
it's not. It's only confusing if we fail
to realize the ability of God in light of the inability of
man. No man can come, and yet some
do come. And here is this matter of ability
and willingness to do so which must come from God alone. The psalmist states it, I believe,
very concisely in Psalm 27 when he says, When thou saidest, Seek
ye my face, my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I
seek. In other words, when we read
the book, And we comprehend what is being said with the natural
mind. We have no ability to perform
it. But when God speaks this command,
join with His enabling power. That's what the psalmist is saying. Lord, when Thou didst say, Seek
ye my face. That's very personal and individual. When you said that, when you
spoke that in power to my soul, My heart said unto thee, Thy
face, Lord, will I seek." And the truth is, there are many,
many commands in Scripture to seek the Lord, and many blessed
promises to those who do. Listen in Psalm 40. He says,
"...let all those that seek Thee rejoice and be glad in Thee. Let such as love Thy salvation
say continually, The Lord be magnified." Here is a people
that obviously seek the Lord. Again, in Psalm 105, he says,
"...Glory ye in His holy name. Let the heart of them rejoice
that seek the Lord, seek the Lord, and His strength, seek
His face evermore." Not only does he identify people here
who are brought to seek the Lord, he says they rejoice. They benefit,
they are blessed. In Proverbs 8, he says, I love
them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find
me. This is not a contradiction.
This is a command which God issues forth, and when He issues it
forth in power to His people, guess what they do? They seek
the Lord. In Isaiah 55, He says, "...Seek
ye the Lord while He may be found. Call ye upon Him while He is
near." He says in Jeremiah 29, "...and
ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with
all your heart." And I promise you, there's not a sinner anywhere
that ever does such apart from Almighty grace and power. But seek here also means something
like this, it signifies a being absorbed in the search for. Be absorbed in the search for
these things. And there is a persevering and
a strenuous effort that is to be exerted in order to obtain
them. Somebody said, well, salvation
is all of sovereign free grace, isn't it? Absolutely. And that
will be demonstrated by God's enabling His people to do these
things that He expresses here and commands us, and He'll cause
them in a strenuous effort, if it will, to seek after them. He says, seek. Seek. In Matthew 13, he says, and again,
the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man seeking goodly
pearls. That is, be constantly seeking. That's the command here, be constantly
seeking. And he says in Colossians 3,
he says, "...if ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things
which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of
God." That's the first thing stated here. You are to be absorbed
with and constantly, diligently, always looking toward these things
that He is now about to describe. Seek. And then if you notice
also, He gives us some order or priority in this matter. He says, Seek ye first. Seek ye first. That has to do
with giving God the priority that is due Him. He will not
play second fiddle to anyone or anything. Paul says, while
we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which
are not seen. For the things which are seen
are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. We're to seek first those things
not seen. The things he talks about first
in the first part of this chapter, they're things that are seen.
These things that he's describing here, they're the things of faith. They're the things that are not
seen, but that doesn't mean that they're of lesser value. They're
the only things that are valuable. They're eternal things. He said, seek first these eternal
things. And to do so is to do so before
all things, and above all things, and instead of all things. An old writer had this to say
about this condition. He said, the condition demands,
first of all, that we seek the kingdom first in point of time. We're always bad about putting
off, putting off. He says, some propose to secure
a competence, and after they have gained it, they'll serve
God. They're going to get some ability.
They're going to get some competence. They're going to do something
in order to do what God commands them to do first. He said, secondly,
we must make it first in importance, everything else must give way
before its demands. Everything. Everything. And then he said, thirdly, it
must be first in our affections, have our whole hearts, we must
love the Lord our God with the whole heart. Why? Because he said, thou shalt have
no other gods before me. The Lord God is a jealous God. The Lord God will allow no rival. He says in that Old Testament
passage, thou shalt have no other gods before me, but then he follows
it in even a clearer statement in the New Testament. He says,
seek ye first. Listen. He says, if any man come
to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot
be my disciple." What does that mean? It means
to regard them so as to hate them comparatively. compared to how we are to love
the Lord God with all our heart, to seek Him first, how we love
our family or our closest one, compared to that is like hating
them. And I dare say, if we do not
do such, that's how we're acting toward them. Because the most
dangerous thing in this world for any child of God is to put
someone in the place that belongs only to God. and whosoever doth not bear his
cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. So likewise,
whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot
be my disciple." He said, seek ye first. How many times are we so guilty? of not obeying that instruction
and that command and giving to everybody and everything that
priority and preeminence which belongs only to God in Christ. He says, seek ye first. And then when He says that, He
begins to show us that which we are to seek. He says, seek
ye first, and He gives us the object. He says, seek ye first
the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And He says that by way of contrasting
those things with all those things He's already talked about. Look
back in verse 25. Therefore I say unto you, take
no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall
drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not
the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?"
Is that all there is to life? Is what we put in our belly and
what we put on our backs Look down also in verse 31, Therefore
take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we
drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these
things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth
that ye have need of all these things." He's not teaching neglect
of responsibility. He's contrasting that which is
eternal and essential with that which is temporary, material. And He gives these two things
which are in themselves inseparable. He said, Seek ye first the kingdom
of God and His righteousness. You see, in that we are, in the
first part maybe, to seek the gospel which is called the gospel
of righteousness. And not only that, but also many
times described as the gospel of the kingdom. Men have a real tendency to try
to take a phrase like the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven
and make it in some mystical way a kind of fantasy. But it's
a reality. It's a reality that is set forth
and revealed through the gospel. I say, seek the gospel because
it says that the gospel is that word wherein the righteousness
of God is revealed. Did you notice how he stated
those objects? He didn't say, seek the kingdom
of God and righteousness. He said, seek the kingdom of
God and His righteousness. Men hear what they already want
to believe by nature from most preachers. And that is, if you'll
get busy seeking, you'll attain righteousness. That's not what
he's saying. He says, seek ye first the kingdom
of God and His righteousness. And Paul said, I'm not ashamed
to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to either Jew or
Gentile, because therein, that is in the gospel, is the righteousness
of God revealed. So you can't separate either
of these things, not only from each other, but from the gospel. Paul, in the latter part of Acts,
it says that he dwelt two whole years in his own hired house
and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom
of God and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus
Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him. He preached the gospel of the
kingdom. And to preach the gospel of the
kingdom is to preach the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because
we are in this as we seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness. If we do so, we'll seek the Lord
Jesus Christ. He's the King of kings. He's
the King of glory. He is described also as the King
of Righteousness. And more than that, He is described
by His people, according to the Spirit of God, as being the Lord
of Righteousness. In Hebrews it says that the Father
saith unto the Son. He says something to the Son.
Not so that the Son will find it out, but so you and I can
hear it. And He says, but unto the Son
He saith, Thy throne, O God. Uh-oh. Do you have any lesser
view of Jesus Christ than Him being God or very God? You have
missed it. To the Son, He says, Thy throne,
O God, is forever and ever a scepter of righteousness, is the scepter
of Thy kingdom. Here's a king. He sits on a throne.
He has a scepter. And that scepter He's had designed
to signify something great about Him, something that characterizes
His kingdom, or His victories, or something that says something
about Him, who He is, and what He's done. Listen to what God
says is the scepter of the King of glory. It's a scepter of righteousness. Christ is the Lord our righteousness. God says, seek ye first the kingdom
of God and His righteousness. His is the only righteousness. You and I don't have any of ourselves. That means bow to the King. That
means submit to His rule. You see, the thing that makes
a kingdom, if you stop and think about it, is the king. No king,
no kingdom. But if there's a kingdom, there's
a king to bow to and honor and worship. Which is to believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. You see, by faith, We live and
we rejoice in the realm of His grace and His power. He says, seek ye first the kingdom
of God and His righteousness, which means that we are to cease
from seeking favor with God and acceptance with God by trying
to establish our own righteousness before God. That's what believing is. Believing
is a ceasing from self-works to please God, to establish righteousness,
to gain His favor. It's ceasing to do that and to
seek it only in Christ. It means to repent of all your
righteousnesses. Why? Well, number one, because
they're not really righteousness at all. And number two, because
God describes them as simply being filthy rags. This is to receive the King's
robe of righteousness, a righteousness that He gives as a gift. The righteousness that He says
He imputes to believing sinners, and by it makes them the righteousness
of God in Christ. It means to seek to be righteous
before God in that way that He has ordained and established
and given, and that way in which He only will accept us. Hold your place and turn back
over to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Now what does he say? He says,
seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That means the righteousness
of God. That doesn't mean a standard
that's anything lower than that, not the standard of man, or religion,
or whatever it is that they call righteousness. But look here
in the last verse of 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21. He says, For he, who's that? That's God. That's God Himself. For He hath made Him, that is
Christ, to be sin for us who knew no sin." Christ knew no
sin. And the only way that He could
be made sin for us is if He knew no sin Himself, if God imputes
to Him all the sins of His people. But notice what it's for. that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him." Not some kind of mere creature
righteousness. He says we're to seek His righteousness,
and this is the one in whom that is, and God alone in grace has
made Him to be so to us. He says that we might be made
the righteousness of God. Do you think God will accept that? I think God, the righteous God,
will wholly and completely and gladly receive and confirm and
be pleased with the righteousness of God in Christ. That's how we're to be. We're
to constantly be looking to God in the Lord Jesus Christ. He says we are to cease from
going about to establish our own righteousness. You know,
it takes grace for us to be able to say of our own family and
people and friends what we know to be the truth according to
God's Word. Paul said of his own people,
of his own nation, He said, they have undoubtedly a zeal toward
God, but it is not according to knowledge. It's not according
to the truth. How do you know that, Paul? Because
they're going about to establish their own righteousness. And have not submitted, do you
see that word? That has to do with bowing to. This is the gospel of the kingdom. There is issued forth this command
to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And what is that first
word of description we meet in His glorious name? He's the Lord. First of all, He's the Lord. He's not some little Jesus boy
that we can take and, like a piece of silly putty, make Him whatever
we want. We don't lord our so-called free
wills over Him. We don't manipulate Him. We don't
alter the success of His work in any way. He's the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so we're believing on Him.
We cease from going about to establish our own righteousness,
and we submit to the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. We look to Him alone. If you
remember when Adam and Eve sinned and fell in the garden, God, in order to show mercy to
them and grace to them, sought them out where they hid from
Him. He sought them out and by His
power brought them into the light and it says that He clothed them
and made for them tunics or coats of skins. What did that mean? It meant that some innocent victim
had to die in order for their nakedness before God to be covered. And in that one moment there
in the early hours of time, God Himself, the old theologians
used to call it God being the Proto-Evangelist. He's the first
one to herald the Gospel. He's the first one to show how
God can be just and justify a sinner. He's the first one to see where
righteousness really comes from. A God-provided sacrifice for
our sins. Something had to die. A sinless
perfect victim had to die in our place. for God to righteously
show us grace and mercy. And all who are born of God,
they receive the kingdom as a gift, this righteousness as a gift,
and yet the new principle which God puts in them causes them
to work and to continue and to work out their own salvation,
because it is God who works in them both to will and to do His
good pleasure. You say, seek ye first the kingdom
of God and His righteousness. Well, they'll get so heavenly
minded, there'll be no earthly good. There are already no earthly
good. There's none that doeth good. But I'll tell you what they'll
be motivated to do on a totally different principle. And that is out of love and grace
and faith. They'll seek to do His will,
glorify His name, trust His promises, pray to His holy throne, spread
the gospel of His glory, and do good works to others in order
to glorify God. And possessing the righteousness
of God in Christ, The grace of God teaches them
something. Paul writes to Titus and he said,
the grace of God to a people among the Jews and
among the Gentiles has been shown and demonstrated, but it has
not only been shown and demonstrated in Christ, it's taught them something. Teaching us that denying ungodliness
and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and
godly in this present world. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness. His righteousness is Christ. And then notice what he says, "...and all these things shall
be added unto you." Now that's where we have our problem, isn't
it? Things. These things. These things that
most of them won't even last as long as we do in this world. Things! He said, in all these things. You say, what does that mean?
It means there won't be anything lacking. It means that God will not withhold
from His people any good thing. Now the problem is, you and I
by nature, we don't know what a good thing is. If we need it, look at it, admire
it, wear it, drive it, whatever it is, that's a good thing to
us. Somebody will brag on it a little
bit, that's a good thing. No? It's still a thing. Still a thing. All these things,
food and clothes and shelter and every need, in verse 32,
He said, your Father, your Heavenly Father knows what you have need
of. How many times have we said this
week probably already, I need this or I need that. I can tell
you if we're a child of God. I don't know this like I ought
to, but I'm learning a little bit about it. If God hadn't given
it to me, I must not need it. And some of the things that I
thought I needed, I find out later I wish I never
got them. He knows what we have need of.
And I like that relationship that he speaks of there. We ought
to always remember this. He says you're a heavenly Father. He knows what you have need of. The loving Father, He knows what
His children have need of. Someone said, it is not that
we are to seek first the kingdom of God and then these things,
but seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you. He's not saying neglect your
work, neglect your family. He said a man that won't provide
for his own household, a person that won't provide for their
own household, he said they're worse than an infidel. But he'll provide. He'll provide all these things.
And while we're concentrating our attentions and affections
on God's kingdom and His righteousness, God's gift to us, our Heavenly
Father sees to it that we have sufficient food and drink and
clothing and shelter and every need. He promises it. He said, these things shall be
added. I remember reading years ago
about a man in England that the Queen called into her court and
asked him to do an important job or ambassadage for her. He said, Your Majesty, I'd just
love to do it, but I've got all this business and all these affairs
and all these things. And if I go, my business will
surely fail. She said, you go and take care
of my business. And I'll take care of your business.
And when he got through doing what the Queen had asked him,
he came back and his business and every aspect of his life
and his affairs had flourished. Much more than he could have
ever done. The great example is Solomon.
1 Kings it says, "...and the speech
pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked for this thing." Wisdom. And God said unto him, Because
thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long
life, neither hast thou asked riches for thyself, nor hast
thou asked the life of thine enemies, but hast asked for thy
understanding to discern judgment, Behold, I have done according
to thy words, lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding
heart, so that there was none like thee before thee, neither
after thee shall any be like unto thee. And I have also given
thee that which thou askest not for, both riches and honor, so
that there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee all
thy days. You can't out-give God. You can't
out-do God. You see, to seek God, to seek the kingdom of God and
His righteousness, is to believe God. To trust Him. To worship
Him. all through and in the Lord Jesus
Christ, and to continue to do so. You see, that's what characterizes
God's true people. They continue. That's not to
say they don't fall and stumble. That's not to say they don't
have fits of unbelief. But He picks them up. And they
continue on this path, ever seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And He adds to them all their
needs. Paul says that he is the head
of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that
in Him should all fullness dwell. Let this be our first and our greatest resolve. And may the Lord of all glory
and grace give us grace in our hearts to bow to this command. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness, And all these things shall be added
to you. Christ said, Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden. I'll give you rest. Then He said,
Take My yoke upon you. Learn of Me. For my yoke is easy. Easy. May the Lord help us do it. Seek
His kingdom and His righteousness in the Lord Jesus Christ. Father,
we pray this day that You'd help us weak, pitiful creatures as
we are. Stretch forth the arm of Your
power in our hearts and our minds. to cause us to seek that which
we would never seek of ourselves, to seek things that are spiritual
and eternal, the things of Your Word, the things in Your Son. Lord, help us to know and to
be assured as we do so of all that You promise to those that
do. rejoicing, protection, and surely provision. Bless your word to each heart
as it pleases you. Honor yourself in all things. For we pray in Christ's name,
Amen.