“But seek you first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (vs33)
If we seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness, then God promises that He provides everything else. If we make Christ first, then He makes an oath to us by His word that He will take care of us. We will not SEEK the Lord in vain. We will not call upon His name and be forsaken, but SEEKING the Lord and doing His will is HOW God cares for us.
Set your priorities in order, for you can only serve one master. We cannot serve God and sin, God and money, or God and anything else. You either serve Christ in His love, or you perish in unbelief.
And, for the BELIEVER, we must keep seeking Christ, rather than be DISTRACTED by this world. Plenty of people have walked the line between Christ and no Christ, and they have found always that they’ve gone too far into “no Christ” and the fruit thereof is vain.
Misery and sin come upon us because we don’t walk as commanded, thinking that we know better. So, He brings us to His word, causes us to confess “the Lord Jesus”, which is to say, “Your will be done. Perform in me what pleases You” (Matt 6:10).
God in Christ won’t let down those who depend on Him for everything spiritual and physical. He is your Father and cares for you. He counts it His glory to provide for you, as you look to Him.
1. Being redeemed, our life is about God’s glory in Jesus Christ the Lord, “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment” (Matt 6:25)? If we live so that God is known as gracious, then we are obedient to the Son, like John, who was a voice – “The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe” (John 1:8). We are not here for ourselves or our comfort, but for the glory of His great name, to spread the name to all the earth in deed and word.
2. We are valuable to God – “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they” (Matt 6:26)? We think of ourselves as unworthy and God as unseeing, but He who cares for EVERYTHING cares for us more than He cares for EVERYTHING else, so that all else, even the things of this nature shall be destroyed, while we shall enter paradise at the expense of His blood (II Pet 3:11). It is God’s CHARACTER to care for His people, and He counts it His glory to do so.
God will not give us more than we need or less; He will through faith give us enough.
3. Worrying never changed a thing – “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature” (Matt 6:27). God doesn’t say, “Make it yourself, survive, and care for your self”. He says that we’re to be CARED FOR, and it is His pleasure. We CANNOT care for ourselves, because all that we receive, even the thief on the cross, comes from Him. He controls the job, controls the stocks, controls the health, and controls everything else. If we are RIGHT with Him, then His love, wisdom, and POWER will give unto us what is best. We need not please men, groveling at their feet for acceptance, when we have Christ the Lord – “You are bought with a price; be not you the servants of men” (I Cor 7:23).
4. Even if we clothed ourselves, we can’t outdo what God does for us – “And why take you thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the filed, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (Matt 6:28-29). If we fight to acquire our own joy and peace, it won’t be as wonderful and beautiful as the joy and peace that God gives.
Seeking pleasure in the world will never give us the pleasure that God gives the obedient. He is able to make grace abound, satisfy the heart, and provide exactly what is good for us WHILE keeping our eyes upon Jesus, so that the storehouse is blessed, rather than cursed – “You are cursed with a curse: for you have robbed me, even this whole nation” (Mal 3:9).
5. “Little faith” is the problem, “Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the filed, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more cloth you, O you of little faith” (Matt 6:30)? We don’t believe, so we do for ourselves, which is the ERROR of unbelief, whereby I live my way because I don’t believe His word. But, if He who upholds the world purged me from my sins and sat down at the right hand of God, not because I believed, repented, or served, but by Himself, then I have assurance that He cares for my well-being, both spiritually and physically, providing as He is served, “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb 1:3).
6. There is enough evil that we don’t have to worry about tomorrow, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto he day is the evil thereof” (Matt 6:34). Worship God today, obey Him now, REST in Christ immediately, and tomorrow, we’ll have occasion to walk by faith again.
Don’t think this life is easy: cares will come, and difficulties will hit you. The brethren may have saved for a rainy day, but when they heard there was a famine, they gave (Acts 11:29). They didn’t say, “Who will care for me”, but being moved of God, they gave according to what they had, trusting God to provide for them in the future, as He provided today, “For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man has, and not according to that he has not” (II Cor 8:12).
