Let's be remembering Brother
Cody Henson. He's in San Diego this morning
preaching for Brother Kevin Thacker, and pray the services go well
there and the conference in Ashland that Brother Kevin and Brother
Chris Cunningham are preaching in. We pray for them. Next Sunday
will be the first Sunday of an even month, and we'll have fellowship
dinner, so prepare for that. All right, let's have a word
of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we
come to you, truly bowing and humbling ourselves in your presence. And Lord, we pray that if you
would be willing, you would receive us this morning, Lord, would
you enable us to worship you and receive our worship? Lord,
would you please let us be near to you? Would you let us focus
on you and would you allow us to give you all of the honor
and glory and praise for all things? Lord, would you teach
us this morning and would you Encourage us. Would you reveal
yourself to us, Lord? Show us more. We want to know
more of you. We pray, Lord, that you might
bless your word, bless the preaching, send your spirit. And not only
would you come into this place and meet with us, but Lord, every
Dear congregation of believers that are gathered wherever they
are, we pray that you'll meet with them. Pray for all of the
men who will stand this morning. Please help those men. And all
the brethren who will hear, Lord, we need just as much of your
power and spirit and ability to hear as we do to preach. So
Lord, let the preaching go out with clarity and let the hearing
be heard in clarity. Lord, would you quicken us, quicken
our bodies, our minds, our hearts, Our ears, Lord, make us ready
to hear. We pray for the children in their
classes downstairs and the teachers, and we pray for the gospel in
this community and everywhere you send it all over this world,
Lord. Bless it according to your will. Help us, forgive us, for
Christ's sake, amen. Turn with me, if you would, to
Matthew chapter six. Matthew chapter six, we looked
at the end of this chapter last Sunday night, last verses in
the chapter. But before we leave it, I want
to focus our attention one more time on verse 33, Matthew six,
verse 33. It says, seek ye first the kingdom
of God and his righteousness, And all these things shall be
added unto you. Now this Bible study is gonna
be a little bit different. And the reason is because the
thought went through my mind. We finished these verses and
I just kept looking back at that verse. That's an important verse. That's a verse that I use a lot. whenever we give gifts to young
people and things like that, we'll put that scripture in there. That's a go-to scripture. And the thought went through
my mind. I thought about teaching the older kids Sunday school
class today. I was just gonna go in there,
let one of the men cover this one out here. And I wanted their
undivided attention. And I felt it would be beneficial
for all of us, so I didn't do that. And one of these days I
might, I just might do that. But I pray the Lord will bless
it. I don't wanna single out the young people, but I do want
you all to know that this is for you, all right? This is prepared
for you. It's beneficial for me. And we
can all listen in on this. But I have prepared this as though
we were going to be in that room together and I was just going
to be speaking to you. Okay. This is so important. I feel very burdened and very
passionate about this Bible study. Okay. So I want you to really,
really pay attention. All of us need to pay attention,
but I want these young people, these teenagers, older kids,
um, those who are, or will soon be young adults really pay attention
to this. And I pray that the Lord will
bless this. All right. The Lord right here
is talking about in, in the end of Matthew six, he's talking
about food and clothes, and he's talking about the necessities
of life. And he said at the end of verse
32, he said, your heavenly father knoweth that you have need of
all these things. He knows, but he said in verse
33, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things shall be
added unto you. Now you all are growing up. We're
all growing up. We were teenagers and young people
and now we're adults and we're all, we're all growing up. I
am speaking to all of us, but you know, these kids there, you
all are coming to a place where you're about to make your way
in the world. It's not going to be long at all. It's not going
to be long at all. It just is so quick. We're, You're
going to make your way in this world. Okay. And what I want
each of you to know is there is only one way that will be
truly blessed of the Lord. And there's only one way that
will be a blessing to you, a true blessing to you. And that way
is the way of seeking the kingdom of God first. The kingdom of God comes first. And if we're going to seek the
kingdom of God at all, our Lord has to make us seek the kingdom
of God. If we're going to do that, he
has to make us do that. The only way that we can seek
him is if he says to us, seek me. That's the only way he has
to. do that to us and do that for
us. So before we even get into this, I want to make it clear
to everybody that salvation is of the Lord. I'm not saying salvation
is in our hands. Salvation is of the Lord. It's
His doing. It's in His hands. But every
person that He saves, He says to them, seek me. Every person
that He saves. So if we seek Him, We're not
doing it to be saved. We're doing it because we have
been saved. It's because He has called us
to seek Him. We're doing it because we belong
to Him. We're doing it because He has
commanded us to, and we're doing it because we want to be obedient
to Him and to His Word. We love Him. We love Him and
we want to seek Him, all right? So I pray that He'll make all
of us seek the kingdom of God, and I pray that He'll make us
seek it first. All right? First. Now, what does
that mean? What does that mean? May the
Lord let us forget about that dog, right? That's the Lord's
dog. All right? He'll bark as long as the Lord
wants him to bark. What is the kingdom of God? Alright, what's
he telling us to seek? Turn with me to Mark chapter
1. Mark chapter 1, look with me
at verse 14. It says now after that John was
put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel
of the kingdom of God. It is the gospel of the kingdom
of God. What is the kingdom of God? It's
the preaching of the gospel. And if somebody is truly preaching
the gospel, that person is preaching Christ. That means the preacher who is
preaching who Christ is and what he has done for his people is
preaching the kingdom of God. All right, now who is Christ?
He's God. He's God, God almighty, God manifest
in the flesh. What did he do for his people? He gave his own blood to save
them. That's what he did. God came down and gave his own
blood to save his people. And he saved them by himself. Fully. Completely. I want all of our children to
know this. Christ, who is God, came and
saved his people alone. fully, completely. He shed His
blood, made that payment, and it's done. It's done. And because
of Him, we're safe. That's why we have so much rest
and so much peace. We're safe. We belong to Him. All that the Father gave to Him
are His people. And as His people, we worship
Him, we pray to Him, we gather together to praise Him. That's
why we're here, to praise Him and give Him thanks. We hear the preaching of His
Word so that we can know more about Him. That's what we're
doing here. To seek the kingdom of God is
to seek Christ. It's to seek being with Him. We want to be with Him spiritually
right now so that one day we can actually be with Him physically
in the presence of His kingdom, His actual kingdom. So it's to seek Christ. It's
to seek being with Christ. It's to seek being with His people.
This is the kingdom of God. That's who the kingdom is made
up of, His people. So it's seeking and desiring
to have Christ and His Word and His gospel and His people and
His Spirit and everything that pertains to Him, the kingdom
of God, everything that pertains to Him. And our Lord said, seek
everything that pertains to Him first, not later, not one day. Right now, Today and every day
after. Tomorrow, seek Christ first in
everything that pertains to Him. And then the next day, seek Christ
first in everything that pertains to Him. Put Him and His importance
first. Make Him your priority. We know what priorities are.
We have priorities. This takes priority over something
else. Make Him your priority. Seeking the kingdom of God and
His righteousness, which is Christ. Christ, His perfection. You know, everybody who is missing
Christ, they're trying to earn their way to heaven. They're
trying to get their own perfection. Christ is our perfection. He
is our goodness before God. He is our worthiness. He is our
acceptance. And we need to seek Him and everything
that He is first. And the Lord said, if we'll do
that, and this is important, the Lord said, if we'll do that,
everything that we still need on this earth will be taken care
of. And I'm telling you, there are
things that used to be said to me, and I used to think from
older believers and pastors and things like that, and I would
say, how do you know? How can you say that so confidently?
I'm telling you through my own experience now, it's true. It's
true. What the Lord is saying is true.
The Lord will provide all your need. He will. Just focus on
Him. You just focus on Him and He'll
take care of everything you need. Your parents, you think about
the fact that, you know, you young people, your parents are
literally providing. I guess at some point you get
to an age where you go get a job and you start making some money,
but up until that point, they're providing your clothes. They're
the ones putting food on your table. They're taking care of
all your need. And that's how it is with our
Heavenly Father. We are His children, He'll take care of all of our
need. Now, I have five things that I wanna tell you. I have
five things that I so, so desperately want to tell you and I hope you
hear it and I hope you retain it. I realize that these things
may not mean much to you right now. I realize that. I want to tell you these things.
I want you to get a hold of them, but I'm telling you these things
now because I want them to stay with you wherever you go. I want these things to stay with
you. It is important to me that these things stay with you and
that when a critical moment in your life comes, you remember
these things. Okay. I can remember a few occasions
in my life whenever I was, you know, young, y'all's age, and
I was told some very, very life-altering, life-changing things. I had it
in my mind that I knew what I wanted to do. I grew up in Nashville,
Tennessee, and I knew what I wanted to do. And I was set. And I had some people tell me
some very life-changing things, and they didn't really mean anything
to me at the time. And I didn't even really want
to hear them. The stuff they said to me, I did not want to
hear it. I thought, I do not like the fact that you're telling
me that right now. But here's the thing, I still remember those
things to this day, all those years later. And I'm telling
you that I am so glad that somebody told me the truth concerning
the things of the kingdom of God. I'm so glad that somebody
told me these things. So I'm gonna tell you these five
things and I pray you'll take them to heart right now. I pray
you'll get ahold of them and say, okay, that's right. But
I also pray these things will stay with you and you'll remember
these things the rest of your life. Number one, seek Christ
and not this world. Seek the peace and the rest of
Christ and not the trouble and turmoil of this world. You'll
get plenty of it along the way. You'll get plenty of man's days
are few and full of trouble. You're going to pick up plenty
of trouble. You're going to pick up. Don't go seeking. the trouble
and the turmoil of this world. Solomon said in Proverbs 15 verse
16, he said, better is little having just a little with the
fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith. It's better
to have just a little bit and the ability to worship and serve
the Lord than to be rich and to have so much responsibility
with all those riches, all you have time to do is manage your
riches. He said, it's just better. It's
better. Turn over to Mark chapter 10
with me. Mark 10 verse 23, it says, and Jesus looked round about
and said unto his disciples, how hardly shall they that have
riches enter into the kingdom of God. And the disciples were
astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again and
saith unto them, children, how hard is it for them that trust
in riches to enter into the kingdom of God? It is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
into the kingdom of God. Now, why would he say that? It's
because to become truly rich in this world, you have to give
yourself to this world. You really do. You have to serve
the world. You have to serve the world to
gain the world. If your desire, your inner desire
is to gain the world, then you have to give yourself to the
world and you have to serve the world. And when we're giving
ourselves to and serving the world, we are not giving ourselves
to and serving our Lord and our Master and our Creator and our
God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who said that He would freely provide
all these things. There are very few ways that
a person can really pile up money. And I do want to say for everybody
to know, I'm not talking about an honest man's salary. I'm not
talking about that. I'm not talking about providing
well for your family. I'm talking about piling up riches. I'm talking about going after
this world. There are very few ways that
you can do that and give yourself to that and still have anything
left to give to the Lord, to worship the Lord, honestly. The priority of life is worshiping
Christ. I know that doesn't mean anything
to the flesh. It takes a long time to start
to enter into that, but I'm telling you, may God plant this seed
in your minds and hearts. The priority of life You know,
people want to know what's life all about. Well, get all you
can before you die. That's not it. The priority of
life is worshiping Christ. It is worshiping the Lord Jesus
Christ. If we go after the riches, the
fame, or the glory of this world, it will cost us our relationship
with Christ. It just will. If our priority,
if we go after and we make our priority to become a sports star, or a rock star, or any kind of
star on this earth, if that's our priority and what we go after,
it will cost us our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's
going to. Nothing is more valuable. than
a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing. All right,
so I don't have time to take as long on the other ones, but
I'm not going to. That's the first thing I wanna tell you.
All right, I wanted to really lay that down. Seek Christ first and not this
world. Here's the second thing I wanna
tell you. The gospel is not everywhere. Don't move away from it. It's not. You say, well, there
are churches everywhere. I know that. But the gospel is
not everywhere. Don't move away from it. The
scripture says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves
together. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't move away from it to go
to college. Don't move away from it to get
a job. Don't move away from it to be
closer to family. Don't move away from it. If you
go somewhere, if the Lord leads you to move somewhere, that's
fine. Just move to a place where there is an established congregation
of believers with a pastor who preaches the truth of God's word. Here's the reason why, all right?
Here's the reason why. It's because you are sinners
just like we are. And I'm telling you, I'm telling
you, if you move to a place where the gospel is not, you might
really enjoy being away from it. I'm just being honest. You might really, really enjoy
being away from it. Your sinful flesh, just like
ours, just like ours, might really enjoy thinking, well, I can't
go to worship Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night,
there's nowhere for me to go. Not around here, gospel's not around
here. I would, I would if it was, I'd go, but this is just
my unfortunate lot in life. No, it's not, move. Move. Pack up your stuff and move.
Find you a different college, a different job, or a different
family, move. This flesh is so sinful. It is
so selfish. It may fall in love. It just
may fall in love with the worldly freedom of being able to do whatever
it is you want to do during those times. And you may not come back to
where the gospel is. You just may not come back. That's not a good thing. Solomon
said, Ecclesiastes 12, I didn't write it down, but he was saying,
before the evil days draw nigh and your heart says, I don't
have any desire for these things, seek the Lord right now before
it's too late. And here's the point, don't put
yourself in that position. Just don't, you won't hold up. You won't hold up. I wouldn't
hold up. I'm just telling you. Don't do
it to yourself. Don't put yourself in that position.
So when it comes to the desires of your heart, what you want,
seek Christ first. Seek the kingdom of God first.
When it comes to where you're gonna live, seek the kingdom
of God first. Christ, the gospel, his people,
Here's the third thing I want to say to you. Seek a job that will let you
put worship first. Seek out a job. Seek a job. Go on a hunt for
a job. that will let you put worship
first. Kids, I'm telling you, young
adults, I'm telling you, the Lord will bless it. I'm telling
you, the Lord will bless it. He will provide the very things
that you're seeking after in these jobs that may pay a little
bit more. You can get more stuff if you
earn more money. All right. He'll provide the
very things you're seeking after in these jobs that pay a little
bit more, or maybe just, uh, appeal to your liking a little
bit more or whatever that may be, but don't allow you to worship
those jobs that don't allow you to worship. If you have a choice
between a job that pays more and you can't worship or a job
that pays less, but you can worship take the job that pays less.
Take the job that pays less. You won't suffer for it. You will not. The Lord will still
provide everything you need. Everything you need. And you'll
have the comfort. One of these days, you're gonna
need, if you belong to Christ, you're gonna need the comfort
and the contentment that comes from being able to worship Him.
You're gonna need it. Most people think that job moves
need to be determined by how much money you make. That's not
so. Job moves need to be determined
by how it affects your worship. So if a job opportunity opens
up where you can make less money and worship more, take it. You say, well, I won't be able
to give as much. Give less, take it. You will not regret it. You will not regret it. You say,
and that'll be easy street. Nope. Hard times will come. You will not regret it. Here's
the fourth thing I want to tell you. The scripture says in second
Corinthians six, verse 14, don't be unequally yoked together with
unbelievers. Marry a believer. Marry a believer. Marry someone who has a heart
for Christ. You say, how will I know if they're
a believer? They will have a heart for the Lord Jesus Christ. They
will believe on Christ. They will love His Word. That
Word will say to them, you're a filthy, rotten sinner. You
can't do anything for God. You can't bring anything to God.
And that person will cry, amen, to God be the glory. That person
will have a heart to worship Christ. Marry a believer. If you don't, your life will
be absolutely torn in two. It'll be torn in two. If two
people are not going through life focused together on the
only thing that needs to be sought for, if there are two different inner
desires and two different opinions on where we ought to live, and
two different opinions on what job ought to be taken, then there's
gonna be two separate people going two separate ways, and
it'll be absolute misery. It'll be absolute misery. But
when a husband and a wife are together, focused on Christ,
focused on His kingdom, focused on His righteousness, focused
on His glory and His honor and His praise and His worship, When
that happens, a husband and wife are not two. They're not two
at all. They truly are one. They have one mind, they have
one heart, they have one spirit, they have one goal, they have
one desire, and it's Christ. Christ first. First. So when it comes to your inner
desire in this life, seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness
first. When it comes to where you're
gonna live, seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness
first. When it comes to what job you
take, seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness first. When it comes to who you're gonna
marry, seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness first. And here's the last thing I wanna
tell you, number five. If you get married, All right. I pray that 10 years from now,
we don't have time for anything because we're just having wedding
after wedding. But if the Lord allows you to
get married and if the Lord blesses you with children, when you become parents, you
take the mindset that a man named Joshua took in the Old Testament. He said, as for me and my house,
we're gonna serve the Lord. As for me and my children, my
husband and my children, my wife and my children, we're gonna
worship the Lord as long as they are under your roof. Teach your
children that worship comes first. It comes first. Try to put them
in sports and extracurricular activities that don't interfere
with worship. Try to do that if you can. If
you can pick this one or that one, try to pick one that doesn't
interfere with worship. Whatever you teach them, Whatever
mindset you teach them, that's what they're going to do for
the rest of their life. Whatever you establish in your children,
that's what they're going to do for the rest of their life.
And I'm telling you the greatest blessing that a parent could
have on this earth is having children who grow up to be worshipers
of the Lord. true heart worshipers of the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's what I want. That's honestly
what I want. There are some things that we
all have desired, but if you get down to the heart of what
do you want? I want God to save my family,
myself, my wife, my children. And I pray that the Lord will
do the same thing for you. So in this moment, we call it
this chapter of your life, every chapter that follows. Seek Christ
first. Seek Christ in where to live.
Seek Christ in what job to take. Seek Christ in who to marry.
Seek Christ in how to raise your children. And I'll say it again,
that does not mean easy street will come. That's not a recipe
for a life of ease. It is not at all. But our Lord
said that if we will do that, He will take care of everything
that we need. He will provide, He will take
care of. If we'll focus on Christ and
His kingdom and His righteousness first, then we honestly don't
need to focus on anything else. Focus on Him and He'll take care
of everything else. And we can rest in the fact that
He'll do it. He said He'll do it and we can
rest in the fact that He'll do it. Now, let me close by showing
you this, okay? We're going to let all this be
put in the words of the Lord himself. All right, right here
in Mark 10, look at verse 23. We just read this. Jesus looked
round about and said unto his disciples, how hardly shall they
that have riches enter into the kingdom of God. And the disciples
were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and
saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust
in riches to enter into the kingdom of God? It is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
into the kingdom of God. And they were astonished out
of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved? And Jesus,
looking upon them, saith, With men it is impossible, but not
with God, for with God all things are possible. Now watch this,
verse 28. Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left
all and followed thee. You know, Peter left his boat,
his nets, his dad, his business, his livelihood. We have left
all and followed thee. And Jesus answered and said,
verily, and I love that word. Every time you see the Lord say
verily, he said, this is the truth. Verily I say unto you,
there is no man, and this includes women too. There is no man that
hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother,
or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake and the gospels. And in one of the other accounts,
it says the kingdom of God. Verse 30, but he shall receive
an hundredfold now in this time. houses, and brethren, and sisters,
and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions, and
in the world to come, eternal life." That's the truth. That's the truth. He said, anything
that is given up for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of
my worship, He said, you'll receive a hundred fold in this lifetime
and eternal life to come. And it's so, you know, you, you,
um, in the gospel, we have brethren, we have family, we have brothers
and sisters. I have so many mothers and so
many fathers. And you, you go somewhere and
let a believer know you're coming through. You have houses, you
have beds to sleep in. You need a bed. You got beds
to sleep in. You need something to eat. You
got, you got all you need. You have all you need. The Lord
will provide all you need. Me and you both. Let's keep that
with us. All right. Let's keep it with
us. Let's remember that the rest of our lives. All right. You're dismissed.