All right, let's look at Matthew
chapter six. The lesson today, the message
today is entitled Seeking God's Kingdom and Righteousness. This is part one. I have two
messages that cover verses 24 to the end of chapter six, verse
34. And the reason I divided it up
this way is I'm gonna spend most of the time this morning on verse
24. where it says, no man can serve two masters for either
he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold
to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Now the theme of this section
of the Sermon on the Mount is found in verse thirty-three.
The theme. And here it is, here's the positive
encouragement and exhortation from the Lord to his people. And he says, but seek ye first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be
added unto you. That's the theme. And what it's
talking about is the children of the kingdom, the people of
God, having our priorities set by God himself. Seek ye first
the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Now, anytime you see that term
righteousness, you know you could say justice. His justice. And that justice, that righteousness,
can only be found in its perfection, in its glory, as we look to Christ. And so when he says, Seek ye
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, The only way
you're going to find the Kingdom of God and His righteousness
is by looking to Christ as the Lord our righteousness. In other
words, if Christ, as He is identified and distinguished in the Scriptures
here, if He's not the object of your search, seek ye first,
and the object of your faith, then it's nothing. You understand? Now that's the theme. of this,
and so I've entitled both lessons on this section, Seeking God's
Kingdom and Righteousness, part one today and part two next week.
Now, verse 24, though, the reason I wanted to spend a whole lesson
on that is because it lays the foundation of this theme, of
this message. And when he says, for example,
and as I said, our one main concern as the people of God is to be
the glory of God revealed in the person and finished work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Somebody said one time, said,
well, it shouldn't be our main concern, it ought to be our only
concern. Well, you know, you can get bogged
down in words and language, and people like to do that, and they
like to divide and get upset and all of that. Listen to me.
You have a lot of concerns in your life. Now, don't you? Don't
deny that. I have a lot of concerns. We're
concerned, well, this time of year, we're concerned about our
health. I mean, you don't ignore that,
do you? I hope you don't. If you hurt, you go get medicine
or whatever. You're concerned about your family.
Some of you may be concerned about your jobs, your schooling,
or whatever. We have a lot of things we have
to take care of because, and really you have to understand,
you know, God commands us to be good stewards of his grace. The things he gives us, we're
responsible to be concerned with them. So when somebody says,
well, you know, if Christ is our only concern, not to the
neglect of all other concerns, but here's what he's saying.
Here's what he's saying, whatever I'm engaged in, in life. My one main concern, even in
dealing in these issues of health, jobs, or family, all of that,
even these, my one main concern is that whatever I do, I go through
it in a way that sets my priorities straight, knowing that it's all
about Christ. Okay? I want to honor Him. If
I'm dealing with my family issues, I want to honor Christ. If I'm
dealing with my job, or if I'm dealing with my health, whatever,
I want to honor Christ. Now, we don't always do that.
I mean, you know, last weekend, I was planning on preaching here
Sunday morning. I got up, I couldn't hardly talk,
and my first thought is, why me, Lord? That's not very honoring
to Him, is it? Well, that's what we are. We're
sinners saved by grace. And I thank God that Mark was
able to, on the spur of the moment, to really step up and preach
the gospel to you. So I'm glad to be back. Today
I didn't say, why me, Lord? But I want to honor him in all
things. And that's what he said. Our life here on earth as children
of God is a continual looking to Christ as the Lord our righteousness. Well, all right, he says here,
look at verse 24, he says, no man can serve two masters. Now here's the issue. Am I going
to serve God or am I going to serve me? Now that's what the
issue is. We can talk about a lot of people,
you know, idols, people say, well, that person makes such
and such, his job, his idol. Or that person makes his, Sports
his idol, you know, whatever it is. Well, you know what's
happening there, don't you? It's not the job, it's not the
sport, it's self. That's what it boils down to.
A person who is materialistic, for example. We read over in
the parable of the seed and the sower in Matthew chapter 13.
about the thorny ground hearer, you remember that? He gives you
the four types of hearers there. The wayside hearer has no concern
at all for the gospel, for the things of God, the kingdom of
God and his righteousness. That's just not in their folder of life. Well, they're
serving self, whatever they're doing. If you're not serving
God, you're serving self. Whatever you're engaged in, you
may have a talent, and you may give yourself to that talent.
You're not worshipping the talent, you're worshipping self. Okay? And then you have the stony ground
here, who calls the persecution over the word, leaves it. In
other words, that's a person who doesn't have the spiritual
fortitude to stand up for the truth. Now, none of us have that
by nature. You understand that? I mean,
we'd all cut bait and run if God lets us. But that's the stony
ground here, they're serving self. In other words, they're
more concerned about themselves than they are about the glory
of God. And then the thorny ground here, now that kind of fits with
what he's teaching here about serving God or mammon, and we'll
talk about mammon in just a minute. But a person who's materialistic,
who is just consumed with the things of this world and wealth,
what are they serving? They're not worshiping the almighty
dollar. They're worshiping self. And that's how they get to themselves. Somebody says, well, a reporter
once asked Howard Hughes about why do you have to have so much
land? Because he was buying up land
in Las Vegas. And Hughes told him, he said,
well, it's not that I want so much land. I just want what's
next to mine. And that's the way he was. He's
serving self. And that's what this is, when
he says, no man can serve two masters. You can't serve God
in Christ and serve self in any way, whatever form it takes.
So do we serve the Lord or do we serve ourselves? Now, serving
God has to do with seeking, seeking the Lord in His Word, finding
Him in His Word, and worshiping him as he reveals himself in
the Lord Jesus Christ by his spirit and by his word. I've
got in your lesson, it involves recognizing and living our lives
in the knowledge that whatever we have or whatever state we're
in in this life, we are still totally, totally, totally dependent
upon God for everything. In other words, I can't stand
up and quote that Invictus poem that says, I'm the captain of
my fate. I'm the ruler of my destiny. I know I've misquoted it, but
you know what it is. That's the autonomy that Adam
wanted when he rebelled against God. I want to be my own determinant
factor. I want to be my own destiny. You know, I determine it. And
people have a hard time seeing that because we know that our
choices have consequences. We know that. That's true. The
problem is that we're fallen. We're sinners. And we're totally
dependent upon God for everything temporally and spiritually. And so When he says, when he
talks about serving God and not serving self, essentially what
he's talking about is this. We must deny ourselves as far
as any merit or any goodness or any righteousness that would
earn salvation or any part of it, and we find our only merit,
our only worthiness, our only righteousness in Christ. That's
it. My right relationship with God,
if I have one, I can't attribute that to me. You see, I attribute
it to Christ and His merits, His blood. So living our lives
for the glory of God. Now look at verse 24 again. No
man can serve two masters. You're either serving the Lord
or you're serving self. And serving self can take a lot
of different ways to do that. For either he will hate the one
and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, now that
holding means clinging to, and despise, reject the other. In other words, there's no middle
ground here. You can't say, well, I'm gonna
ride the fence on this thing. To live for God, to serve the
Lord, is to reject totally living for self. And to live for self
is to totally reject living for God. And this is totally in line
with what the Lord taught back in chapter 6 about charitable
giving, about prayer, about fasting. For example, if you do those
things to be seen of men, which essentially means to find the
judgment of men upon you. In other words, I want you to
tell me I'm a Christian. Well, if you do those things
to be seen of men, you're serving self, even in your prayer, even
in your charitable giving. Let me give you an example. Let's
take a person who gives charitably, as we might say, to the poor. Let's say somebody who gives
away all that they have. There have been people who have
done that, do you know? Who give of themselves sacrificially,
we'll say. But in their minds and in their
hearts, they're thinking that that's going to contribute to
their righteousness before God. Now the world would say that
person is not serving self, but God says they are. You see, we
can't go by physical sight and human judgment, human standards. A person who gives to their church,
a person who gives their time, gives their money, even a person
who dies for what they believe, If what they believe is salvation
conditioned on the sinner and not on Christ alone, they're
serving self. They're not serving God. That's
what he's saying here. And when told these things, what
does the Bible say that we do? Well, we hate the light, unless
the Holy Spirit brings us to conviction of sin and righteousness.
Now, This thing of what Christ forbids here in his disciples
is the kind of self-love of this present life that results in
self-worship, self-idolatry, materialism, self-service, all
right? Let me say a few things about
that, and this is why, again, why I wanted to spend some time
here on this lesson. You know, We talk about hatred of self. And I've heard preachers say
this. They say, well, God does not require us to hate ourselves. What he requires us to do is
to love others as we love ourselves, because that's what the law says,
and it does say that. But let me show you some scripture.
Look over at Luke chapter 14. And I want us to see this issue
of godly love and hatred of self in light of the scriptures. What
do the scriptures say? Look at Luke 14, look at verse
26. Luke 14, 26. If any man come to me, Christ
says, and hate not his father, and mother and wife and children
and brethren and sisters yea and his own life also now that's
himself his own life also he cannot be my disciple now I've told you before we've
been we've been looking at this in first John chapter three and
I'm gonna continue going through that chapter on Christian love
one of the things that that false Christianity has skewed and confused
and denied and ignored is the real issue of what we call hatred
in the Bible, righteous hatred. Now, and the reason that we don't
like to deal with that is because it's such an unpleasant subject.
And the reason we find it so unpleasant is because we sort
of define the biblical righteous hatred in terms of our own sinful
hatred. And we shouldn't do that. First of all, the Bible commands
us, love our neighbor as ourselves. It is not right for us to hate
anyone in a sinful, selfish, prejudicial way. Our hatred is sinful because
it's a projection of self, selfishness. Wrong judgment. But when God
hates, now people don't like to think about a God who hates.
I told you about the sign up in Huntington, West Virginia
that I saw outside of a Methodist church that said, the God who
hates, we do not worship him. I said, well, you don't worship
the God of the Bible then. Because the God of the Bible
hates him. Men try to skew that. They'll say, well, you know,
all right, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. That just
means he loved Esau less. That is foolish. And that's not
what the word means. People will go to this Luke chapter
14 that we just read. They'll say, well, that doesn't
mean you're to really hate your father and mother and sister
and all that. You just love them less than you love Christ. No,
that's not what it means. But this hatred here is not a
sinful hatred. It's a righteous hatred. It's
not feelings, it's not emotion, it's not selfish. It's a hatred
that means to reject them. Reject them as being brothers
and sisters in the kingdom of God. That's what it means. In
other words, we're never commanded to hate our fathers and our mothers.
We're to love them, we're to honor them. But does that mean
that they're necessarily my brother or my sister in Christ? And the
answer is no. Remember Christ taught that in
Matthew chapter 12 when he was teaching in a home there and
his mother and his half brothers came and they stood outside and
they wanted to talk to him. Remember what he said? He said,
who is my mother? Who is my brother? Who is my
family? He said, them that do the will
of my father. Believers. We as believers, have
an eternal connection that can never be severed in Christ. But now my family here on earth,
and I tell you it's hard for us to even think about this,
but my earthly family here, my physical family, that connection
will be broken. That connection will be broken
because our eternal connection is with our brothers and sisters
in Christ. And so what he's talking about
here is this, he's saying, when he says, if any man come to me
and reject not his father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brethren, who are unbelievers, and his own life, even himself,
as far as having any merit before God, I reject myself when it
comes to having any merit any righteousness, any goodness that
would recommend me unto God. That's the self-hatred that he's
talking about. And then let me show you another
passage. Look at John chapter 12. John chapter 12. And look at verse 25. John chapter 12, verse 25, it
says, he that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth
his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. Now
think about that. What's he talking about? Well,
verse 26, if any man serve me, let him follow me, and where
I am, there shall also my servant be. If any man serve me, him
will my father honor. Now there are things in this
life that we love. We love our families. We love
other things. But as far as our right relationship
with God, as far as our salvation, as far as our righteousness before
God, as far as our merit before God, we reject it all, don't
we? Don't we? I hope you have a good
marriage. But a good marriage is not going
to get you saved or into heaven. I hope you're a hard worker,
the best employee that your boss has, but that's not going to
save you. That's not going to make you righteous. That's not
going to recommend you unto God. But I'll tell you what, to be
the best in these areas is honoring to Christ. Now, go back to Matthew
6. So that's what he's thinking.
Now, it's been a, you know, a lot of, I've had people over the
years ask me about this thing of self-esteem, all right? Self-confidence. And especially,
you know, I was a teacher in a middle school and a high school
for like 12 years or so. And I saw children come through
who had low self-esteem, who had low self-confidence, and
it hindered them. It hindered them in their grades.
It hindered them in their relationship with other people. Does Christ
tell us that we're never to have any self-esteem or self-confidence? And the answer is no. That's
not what he's saying at all. When it comes to our relationship
with each other, there's nothing wrong. Now, there's a lot wrong
with being too proud, a braggart, things like that, bragging about
yourself and putting down others and all that. That's wrong. But
there's nothing wrong, you know, if you have a child who goes
to school and makes good grades, there's nothing wrong with them
being proud of that. In fact, they ought to be. They
work hard, they study hard, and they get good grades. They get
into a good college. They get a good job. There's
nothing wrong with being proud of that. But here's what you
don't do, and this is what Christ is, you don't look at that as
recommending you unto God, as being part of your righteousness
or your salvation before holy God. You understand what I'm
saying there, making that distinction? I want to instill, you know,
our boys growing up, we want to instill in them self-confidence,
self-esteem in that way. And our grandchildren, we want
to do that. But we want them to know that when it comes to
salvation, when it comes to being right with God, We have absolutely
nothing, I mean nothing, to earn or merit our way into his favor. Can you make that distinction?
I hope you can. Our oldest grandson, he does
real well in school. Well, both of them do real well
in school, and we're proud of them both, and we want them to
be self-confident. But I'll tell you what, they're sitting under
the gospel up there in Kentucky, and the pastor's telling them,
he said, when it comes to salvation, we're sinners. If God ever gave
me what I deserve, I mean, I may be the best preacher that ever
came along. I don't think I am. I know this, I preach the best
message that ever came along, that's the gospel. But if God
ever gave me at any time in my life what I deserve or what I've
earned, it would be eternal damnation. That's what I'm telling you.
That's what it means to hate your own life also. That's what
it means here in Matthew 6, 24 about you cannot serve God and
mammon. Now that word mammon is a word
commonly used that was used in the ancient world to refer to
wealth and riches, material gain. It's common for people to look
at success in life as far as materialism and wealth as being
a blessing from the Lord, isn't it? Somebody, you remember the
book of Job. Job was a wealthy man, but he
was also a sinner saved by grace. A just man, the scripture says.
Upright. That means he was saved by the
grace of God in Christ, just like every other sinner saved
by grace. Job had no righteousness in himself
to earn God's favor, but he had righteousness in Christ. And
so here's Job in the lap of luxury, and probably the world would
look at him and say, boy, that Job must be doing something right.
Now, you know the philosophy, don't you? Well, no, all that's
a gift from God to Job. Well, all of a sudden, Job loses
everything. He loses his possessions, he
loses his family, and he loses his health. You know, the Jews
used to say, well, at least you have your health. Well, Job didn't
even have that. He loses his health. And so he's got three
friends who come along and what is their message to him? He called
them miserable comforters. And what's their message to Job? Job, now let's sit down here
and let's survey your life and let's find out what you've done
to bring this on you. Well, here's the fact. Job hadn't
done anything specifically to bring that on him. God was using
Job for his purposes and we find out in the end of the book. And
so the world says, Job, you must have done something bad to get,
well see, we reject that kind of thinking. Now, that doesn't
mean we don't realize that certain sins have consequences in this
life. How many times I told you, you
go out and get caught speeding, you're gonna get the ticket,
you're gonna pay the fine. I can tell you exactly what you
did to bring that on you, you sped. And then sometimes we suffer
the chastisements of the Lord without being able to connect
them with any specific thing. You know what the bottom line
on that issue is? We just don't have the kind of wisdom and knowledge
that God has. We leave it in His hands. But
here's what we know. Looking to Christ, We have everything
that God has freely and fully provided for his people for our
complete eternal salvation in Christ. And none of it can be
attributed to me. So I reject myself. That's what he's talking about.
I hate myself. Not that I don't have self-esteem
and self-confidence in areas of life as we go through here,
but when it comes to my salvation, it's all Christ and his righteousness
imputed. You understand that? His righteousness
imputed is the ground of my justification before God. His righteousness
imputed is the source of my life, my spiritual life. And in this
sense, too. You know, Christ spoke in Luke
16, 9, you can look at this later on, about the mammon of unrighteousness. There's the mammon of self-righteousness
where a sinner imagines he is rich in good works and righteousness
when God's word tells us that we have neither in ourselves.
You can't serve God in mammon. Mammon, which leads to idolatry. And so all of this is a matter
of putting things in their proper perspective. You know, think about it this way. If you're successful in life,
for example, a person goes out, they go to college, they get
a degree, they get a good job, they are successful in that job,
They make a lot of money. They have a good husband or a
good wife and a family and everything. All those things that we call
blessings. Here's what you have to understand
about that. There's nothing wrong with taking pride in doing good
work and being a good father or a good mother and all of that.
But do you know that every bit of that is a total unearned gift
from God? For example, who gave you the
brain and the intelligence and the work ethic and the opportunity
to get all those things? God did. I mean, think about
it. There are people who are born
in such dire situations on this earth, and we're born basically
in the lap of luxury, aren't we? And we didn't earn it, and
we don't deserve it. So, what's he saying? Seek ye
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these
things will be added unto you. We'll deal with that next week.