We are called to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, not our own. When we prioritise God’s kingdom, we discover a true blessedness: a joy and contentment that comes from Him. As we pursue His will and trust in Jesus to produce His fruits in us, we can be confident that He will add to us all the practical things He sees we need for life.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:01] We’ve been for a year or so away from the task we started of going through the Gospel of Matthew and we’re getting back to there now. Part of the reason, not the total, but part of the reason was the Beatitudes were such an enormous thing to get one’s head around and I confess as not knowing quite how to preach through that period of Scripture in Matthew chapters 5 and 6. It talks about, it looks like a swear word, doesn’t it? It says blessed. It’s only a modern thing today that we sarcastically take a word that means just the opposite and use it as a swear word. But when it says blessed, it’s actually a translation from the Latin version of the Bible where it has beatus or something very similar to our coining of the word beatitudes.

[00:01:02] And the beatitudes are actually statements of God’s blessing as a consequence of us discovering what it is to have his righteousness in us. And the righteousness that God gives creates a tremendous sense of what we now use in our English words of blessing, a sense of joy, of privilege, of being under the hand of God, to be having a sense of the joy of the Lord. That’s what that word blessing means. It’s actually when you have the Beatitudes, you know there’s two sides to it. There’s one side that says the condition that you’ve gotten into to cause there to be the blessing and the other side to be God’s reward for how you have lived his way. And that reward is different depending on the different circumstances, but it’s why there’s all these statements,

[00:02:04] blessed are you who this, that and the other is what the Beatitudes are about. Now we’re going further this morning and we’re looking at something in Matthew chapter 6. You’ll see the verse that’s up there on the screen. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things, they’re practical matters of the needs of life, all these things will be added to you. Now I’ve just got three points, three things to say and the first one of course is the prioritisation that this set of scriptures, Jesus’ speech that he gave to his disciples, is calling us to make and it says seek first the kingdom of God. And there is no discovery of the blessedness of the Christian life until you in your sanctification can get a hold of the fact that you need to prioritise putting God’s kingdom first.

[00:03:08] Last week or was it the Sunday before, but we were looking at the statement in the Lord’s Prayer and how we often in church services have that saying of the Lord’s Prayer and a part of it is where we’re asked to pray and to pray for God’s kingdom to come. And I was pointing out how in the Greek language of the New Testament, as it was first written, they put the verbs first, the doing word. Come, thy kingdom. Or come, kingdom come. Now we turn it in English and put may your kingdom come or thine be the kingdom or we put the word kingdom. And first, we don’t put it quite the same as in the Greek. The Greek put the verb, the action, come the kingdom and come what God wants to do. But it highlights the fact, the way it originally was written in the original language, that it’s a prayer,

[00:04:16] a prayer for God to have his kingdom make itself felt in force. And when we pray, may your kingdom come, we’re actually asking for the kingdom that’s always been there because God is a ruler all the time. But we’re asking it to be manifested in our lives. And then as we go further, we find now here in this verse in Matthew 6, 33, some of the conditions whereby that appearing of the kingdom working in us and through us will be happening if we put that kingdom of God as prior, as important. Seek first the kingdom of God. And that’s my first point to say, that if you put it prior, then it’ll be a case in your story of there being evidence of God working in such a way that you’ll end up with that experience of joy and blessedness that is what these Beatitudes are promising.

[00:05:20] I’ll not forget going down to Tasmania to do what I call my best job I’ve ever had because I got to drive around Tasmania in my car all the time. And because I was there as a state evangelist to go and to drop in on different churches and to preach the gospel, that was the joy of my life. And also to get to know a whole lot of Christian people in the state and to join with them in their adventures. And so in Tasmania, it was interesting that I ran into a young man who’d become the secretary of the church and he was the same age as me. I was young back then and he was in his early 30s, the same age as me. But in his younger years as a Christian, he’d chosen to spend quite a few of those years overseas in London. And he’d chosen to seek to live the joys of being free and the happiness that there’s present

[00:06:26] by just, you know, not getting weighed down with labour and problems. And then he came home again and he ran into me and he wanted to be involved in God’s kingdom. But he told me he was jealous of me. And he said, and when talking, I was curious to know a person would say that. But he said, you’ve got your degree. In fact, I had two master’s degrees by then. He said, you’ve been ordained. And he was then looking at Michelle. He wasn’t married and he saw that I was married and that I was there doing the Kingdom of God because of that training had opened that door. And he told me that basically, he was saying he wished he had have made the kingdom of God prior. He didn’t use those exact words but I could read just how he was reflecting on the fact that he didn’t seek first the kingdom of God.

[00:07:26] I want to say that we need to understand that when the Bible tells us how to live it’s telling us something for our benefits and just the very meaning of the word blessed if you could track it down how it means to have that joy and contentment it’s not something that you have to work at it’s something that comes as a reward from God because you’ve sought first his kingdom and we need to attend to Jesus explaining to us how those blessedness can get to be ours and one of the frustrations to the plan of God one of the frustrations to the kingdom of God becoming powerfully seen is that we don’t prioritise to put it first, necessarily. That’s something that individually we need to learn to do but it’s also something as a church that is that which would cause the blessing of God

[00:08:24] to be apparent more and more in our fellowship. My second point is it doesn’t just say to seek first the kingdom of God. It’s worded with that next part and his righteousness. And part of the difficulty of interpreting the Beatitudes and maybe why I’ve been hanging off from getting back to them is to really understand what it’s saying causes the blessedness because it’s not trying to say what would be more an Old Testament style of living. When you do all the right things your obedience and your doing the right things as right as they are cause God’s blessing to come on you because you’ve got a righteousness. The subtle difference to what the story in the New Testament is that it’s his righteousness. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Now what’s the difference? Is who does it?

[00:09:27] The reality is that we being sinful being a part of a fallen race are still suffering the fact that we have sinfulness to contend with still suffering the fact that we have a disposition sometimes to put ourselves where we should put God and we sometimes can congratulate ourselves for our obedience and we can be people who are resting on the facts of our righteousness. It’s a subtle thing for very often the outward actions might look the same but it depends upon who’s the person who’s taking the credit and who’s the person on whom the reliance is to turn up with righteousness and the reality that all of us face when we become Christians and come to Christ and we find the forgiveness of sins we find what it is to be committed to Jesus we’ve secured an eventuality in heaven I don’t have any doubt

[00:10:28] Barnabas has gone to glory because he knew the Lord and it’s something when someone who knows the Lord has gone to be with him that there’s a different thing about it altogether and he was a fellow who loved the Lord but you know it’s true of us that sometimes our performance hasn’t gone through the progress remember I was telling you about the Bible being a book of progressive revelation hasn’t gone through the progress of getting from the Old Testament where there was a limited amount of revelation and a calling to people to understand God’s standards, correct and true they are, the laws of God. But nonetheless, without people getting through to what is a New Testament teaching, or would I better say a teaching that is made clearest in the New Testament after the introduction of the person of Jesus

[00:11:29] and what it is to have him as the one who produces the righteousness. And this verse says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and Jesus is the king of the kingdom, and the righteousness that we’re to seek is what it is to have sanctified our setup so that we’re trusting in Jesus to produce his fruits. And when you seek first the kingdom, that’s one of the things that locks you into more quickly being led to find God at work in your life which is the fruit of his righteousness in you. It’s not an easy thing and the reason why you sometimes when you travel around and have crusades and you call people to come to Christ not everybody who makes a response to answer the call in an evangelistic mission is actually coming to Jesus for the first time

[00:12:31] it’s actually known by those who organise such things or who are counsellors at such things that you get a sprinkling of people who’ve already made their commitment and found the Lord but they haven’t always walked too close with him and they come to an evangelistic meeting and there is something in the presence of the meeting of it really is the work of the Holy Spirit making Jesus to be visible or Jesus in his call to land home with people and sometimes when you give some opportunity for them to respond whether it is come and talk afterwards or whether it is come to the front and kneel every now and then we do it in our church of having a time we invite people to come and kneel down here I get off the platform and get people come and pray to God what they want him to do and go back to their seats

[00:13:22] the method of the invitation is really not the thing under discussion I’ve been to other churches where they have a whole lot of people sitting out the front behind desks and then they get you, the preacher, to give a call for folk to come and they come down to the front and these other ones all then counsel them in front of everybody. There’s nothing sacred about how you handle that call for people to do business with Jesus and to seek his righteousness but I want to tell you that it’s not something that people have been doing steadily in their lives and often they get pricks. but they’re not really living out the righteousness of Jesus. In some cases, you can get legalistic churches where they’re living out the righteousness that they have set up for everybody to see

[00:14:10] and how you can tell the difference is who’s proud about the righteousness. When you found out that you ain’t got much yourself and you have to cry to Jesus to help you, you understand that when that help comes it’s his righteousness, not yours. And that statement, his righteousness, I hope that lands on us today. That what we’re to seek is to work our way through what it is to be a Christian who’s trusting Jesus to be working in you. It also means that you abandon some of your self-ideas as to where you’re going to go and how you’re going to spend your money and what you’re going to be doing in life. There’s always a temptation of God coming and leading a Christian but you balk at obedience and therein what you’re actually doing is living on your own righteousness and you’re someone who’s going to miss

[00:15:11] what the promise of this verse is. And all these things will be added to you is the third thing to say. One of these things, and actually in the passage you can look it up when you get home, you’ll find it is the natural needs of a human life, whether it’s clothing, whether it’s health, whether it is food, whether it is an opportunity to get a job that is fulfilling, whether it is a sense of fellowship and belongingness, you’d be surprised at our capacity to have a whole lot of lists of things that we need. And what the passage is saying to us, don’t put those things at the top of your list of things to achieve. Put them down the bottom where Jesus put them and all these things will be added to you. They’re going to come after the fact. I don’t know whether you’ve had any lessons from the Lord,

[00:16:11] I have, where I had other things that were important to me. you’ve probably heard from me my silly stories how I used to love cars and when I got to have my own money then I would be in for getting a better car and I always wanted to spend my funds on my wheels or on magazines that was about motor racing and all those sorts of things and it came as a part of the development of Christian life that I had an idol there was nothing wrong with the idol I still love cars I think they’re interesting and wonderful when they’re going I’ve got my little red one sitting out there now it’s almost totally finished it’s running well they didn’t put the top of the motor on you know it covers up all the parts so you hear a tap tap tap more than you should but once you get those turbos going it’s going and I still love cars

[00:17:17] but there came a day when God pointed out to me that they were idols and I had a cupboard full of magazines I felt led to burn and the strangest of things as soon as I burnt them all someone, a good friend of mine who actually bought a car so I could drive it he wanted me to race it but he put down my name for these two or three of magazines that he knew I liked I just burnt the whole cupboard’s worth not the cupboard but the whole cupboard’s worth of them and then they started arriving in the mail and I still love reading that sort of magazine I don’t spend much money on it these days it’s not such a big priority but God added them back again but they didn’t have any hold on me previously it was an idol but when I gave it back when I burned them I should say he gave back the things that I love

[00:18:30] but they haven’t got me his righteousness I got led into I always wanted to do certain things what young teenagers look to do and instead I’m here preaching to you and I’ve had a lifetime now of something that’s far more fulfilling God working and when you can get involved with something where you see it’s the hand of God you’re not the producer of the fruit you’re the one that’s being obedient to be there but he produces it I want to tell you the fulfilment that you get is what that word blessed means to have the joy and the sense of fulfilment and contentment that God gives as a reward because you’ve you’ve sown his righteousness not your own and when he steps in it makes fantastic I can remember the early days of Scripture Union we had Kieran telling us of this recent SMAD time and they came back all brimming

[00:19:43] with stories to tell and of what God did that happens almost every year in our church actually for the winter SMAD provide a good proportion of the staff and we regularly see God at work and some of our young people have always done things like that like going down to the Gold Coast also when there’s a time for people finishing school and getting down there and witnessing or getting into the campuses Christian groups whether it’s up here at Griffith or at St Lucia or somewhere else or in some of the other places where people gather to be involved another example is Gideons when you meet up with people who are in Gideons they are full of joy when we used to have with us John John and tell me her name again I’m not good on names as you all know when John was with us and he went on that trip that Gideons put on out

[00:20:50] in the central parts of Australia and come back. What a lot of joys. Or when the Gideons went to schools which previously kept them out and then they prayed and God, some new headmaster or somebody who opened the door again. When you’re involved in these Christian opportunities I want to tell you that’s where the joy of life is as a Christian. If you don’t have any joy in your Christian life I want to tell you get with the kingdom. And get in Jesus’ righteousness and all these things the everyday needs that go for human contentment he will add it to you. Can you see in the verse the order? Seek first the kingdom of God including his righteousness and all the rest he’ll be added to you. Where did I see that happened for me? when I was teaching and earning money so I could go overseas

[00:21:55] and do the study that I’ve done over there. I eventually had enough well actually I went to the strength of my bank car but I had enough to pay the fees both in Dallas and then in Wheaton. You know what happened in those two places? I needed root wheels to get around and I found going quite cheap a second hand Pontiac 400 cubic inches worth only 30,000 miles and I bought this very cheaply little old lady owned it. then when I went up to Wheaton eventually actually I didn’t have any money to go to Wheaton I just booked myself in as a student because you get your meal ticket and somewhere to stay straight away and you have to find the money later. Then I had an accident in the car a wet day a lady on the brakes skidded across onto my side maybe I caused part of it to happen I won’t own up to too much

[00:22:59] and it was a write off and the company over there they were real quick to pay you out rather than bother with any of the fix up stuffs but the money that came in was only a few dollars I think six dollars different from what the fees were asking of me but I got help somewhere along the line got another car Chevrolet floor shift V8 motor I’d had a Chrysler Newport Custom great big long beautiful thing I was in a car loving kingdom over there and all of that God did and he provided all these things will be added to you people are different so what is a thing that’s big for you might be altogether different I’m a little bit ashamed of things that I aspired to in my youth because they were basic things where God has blessed me with things far more wonderful I remember going to the first Scripture Union camp actually Darrell was there and

[00:24:14] on this camp down on the Gold Coast we had to pay our own money to have a part of it for the food that they would need and we worked from six o’clock in the morning through to late each night I was in charge of the teenage tent you know and to have stay up late talking to them you came home wrecked but I wouldn’t have changed it for all the money in the world the joy the fellowship when you serve the Lord in some of these places some of these opportunities the fellowship is worth ten times a thousand times I should say what you might have spent in time and energy can I ask you the question are you comforted by Jesus beatitudes that blessedness and spontaneous joy that doesn’t need to be artificially stimulated that’s sort of what the word means if you’re not shift your priorities to put the kingdom first I’ve seen around Australia

[00:25:29] people who’ve been putting that priority first you’ve heard some of my stories of different people who decided just to serve the Lord instead of what previously were their human aims and God blessed them and there was such a fellowship in the work of the kingdom particularly if you love the gospel and can see people coming to Christ I want to tell you there is no better existence than to be able to pray may your kingdom come may your will be done in this earth as it is in heaven because you follow Jesus’ advice will you remember the one two and three priority of the kingdom his righteousness being what’s happening through you and letting him worry about the rest amen heavenly father help us to grasp the meaning of this verse and to put it into operation Lord if there are people here who need to change their priorities and let the kingdom come first

[00:26:44] if there are people here who have worries about meaning especially in this the climate of the economies at the moment and the way that costs go up all the time and Lord worrying how to do it in a time when back in the olden days one salary was enough to have a good house in Australia now it’s not always enough to even get a deposit oh Lord in these times when we need some of these things that you’ve got to add to us help us nonetheless to put the kingdom first, give us that strength we ask in Jesus name Amen