Seek First the Kingdom of God

Let's pray. Father God, we just thank you for your love upon us Lord here this morning. We just thank you for this gathering of your people.

And I just pray Lord that you would turn the light on in our hearts today and let we would just open up our lives to you. Bless Jeremy as he shares your word and shares what you have shared with him. Give him courage and help him not to be afraid, but to just speak what you have in mind for us today.

We love you, Lord. We want to serve you in this dark age, Lord, that we live in. We want to be that light that's on a hill that's shining bright and giving hope to the world around us and share the good news.

In Jesus name we pray, Amen. Good morning. Greetings in the name of Jesus.

Thank you, brother Glenn. You said something in your prayer that confirmed what the Lord has in my heart. You said, may we be a light on the hill.

And I want to talk about that today. I want to talk about the kingdom of God, something that, um, you know, we think of the word gospel, the good news, and, uh, you know, we've been raised up in this country and we know we have thoughts that go through our minds when we think of the word, the gospel, the good news. We might think I get to go to heaven.

I don't get, I don't have to go to hell. That's good news. Uh, we might think that Jesus died for our sins and forgave us.

That's good news. But what is interesting, if you just pick up your Bible and read through it, what the gospel, the main focus of the new Testament of what the gospel is, the gospel was the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom of God. And when Jesus came on the scene, it's actually what his first words were preaching when we see him in his public ministry.

The first thing we see is him preaching the kingdom of God. He says, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. It's near.

It's right about to happen. That was his theme. That was John the Baptist theme before Jesus even came on.

Repent the kingdom of God. The Jews were looking for this kingdom. They were waiting.

They didn't know what it was going to look like, but they were waiting in anticipation for the Messiah to come and to set up a kingdom. And so sometimes we forget how important this idea, we hear the kingdom of God. You know, we come to sermons, we hear church things, kingdom of God.

Yes. What is the kingdom of God? And, and, and why was it so important? Why was it mentioned 86 times in the new Testament? Why did the Lord's prayers start with the kingdom of God and end with the kingdom of God? Why did the sermon on the Mount start with the kingdom of God and end with the kingdom of God? Why did half the prayer of the Lord's prayer seem to be about the kingdom of God? Thy name be glorified. Thy will be done and thy kingdom come.

Somehow in Jesus' mind, the kingdom was important. In fact, he told his disciples, I must preach. I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities for, therefore, am I sent? I'm sent for this purpose.

God sent me, my father sent me to this earth for the purpose of preaching the kingdom of God. Jesus told many parables, many stories to illustrate the kingdom. He said, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God is like this.

It's like a mustard seed. It's like a five wise and five foolish virgins. He was constantly trying to get people to understand the kingdom of God.

He told Nicodemus that unless he was born a second time, he couldn't even enter into the kingdom of God. We all know the term. You must be born again.

Well, that was all in context of entering the kingdom of God. He said that the law and the prophets, everything we know of the Old Testament and all of the old prophets and Moses and Abraham and all the stuff that happened, the law and the prophets were until John the Baptist. But now something new is happening.

The kingdom of God is happening. Well, for to understand what the kingdom of God is, first thing you think about what is a kingdom. You know, we live in America and we don't have a king, really.

Maybe maybe our president's starting to act like one, but but we don't really understand what a king is like. But a kingdom has to have four elements. It has to have a king, obviously, just like our country has to have a president.

A kingdom has to have laws. A kingdom needs to have citizens and the kingdom needs to have boundaries. We all know where the United States starts and where it ends.

And Jesus told us all these things he filled in the blanks for all of us. First of all, in Acts, it says that Jesus was the king. They preached saying there is another king, one Jesus.

So we can all look and say Jesus is the king in this kingdom of God. Citizens, who are the citizens? Well, Paul wrote in his book, our conversation. And what's very interesting about this word, it's an old English word conversation.

And all of us think of, you know, a nice little talk we have after the meeting. But it actually was an old English word for our life. But it comes.

It's a Greek word that we get our word politics from. Interesting enough, in fact, the root word of conversation is citizen in the King James. But this is a little bit bigger of it, so the root version.

So you could also translate the citizenship, our citizenship, our life, our conversation, our citizenship is where it says is in heaven. For once we look for our savior, the Lord, which is very kingly words. The Lord, the king, Jesus.

So these citizens that enter into this kingdom by being born again, count their lives as their citizenship in heaven, not here on earth. They don't get wrapped up in all of the things in the politics here. They get wrapped in the politics of heaven.

And it has laws to Jesus. He's left a lot of laws and, you know, those laws are not easy to fulfill. How do you love your enemy? I mean, truly, how do these guys who are up in the hills evacuating their houses from the fire coming down past the sheriff's and then they're hearing there's looters going up there and stealing their things, taking, taking their things.

How do you love somebody like that? How do you love when you go up to the shelter and all these people have donated thousands upon thousands of dollars to feed these poor people? And you hear there's people going around the parking lot saying you need to pay twenty dollars to stay the night here. Or they walk in and they fill their baskets up and they're not even an evacuee. How do you love people like that? It's not going to come naturally, and the law is called in Romans the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

That's what gives us the ability to follow the laws. Jesus told us the law of the spirit of life. So the kingdom has a king and has citizens that have their citizenship in heaven.

It has a law, the law, the spirit of life, or as James wrote, the perfect law of liberty. Or is this written in Hebrews that God will write his laws on our heart? And it has boundaries. Even Jesus himself said it's in the middle of you.

It's not in you, but in the midst of you, he told the Pharisees. In other words, it's right here. You can't see it, but it's right here.

Isn't that an interesting concept? I don't think any of us could go find the start and end of the kingdom of God today. And in fact, most of the world can't even see Jesus. And where are they going to see his laws if it's written in your heart? But they can see one thing and they can see each one of you citizens as lights.

Jesus said, your good works will be lights on a hill that they will then glorify the father. So the one thing, the one way of this kingdom for the world to see is everyone sitting in this room right now. And Jesus told us, he said to seek this thing first.

He said, seek ye first the kingdom of God. Now, have you thought about that? I, if you're like me, I think that's a great verse, but what does it mean in shoe leather? What does it really mean to seek first the kingdom of God? Does that mean all of us should quit our jobs and go be missionaries? Maybe become a full time pastor. What does it mean to seek first the kingdom of God? I much appreciated brother Bob's sermon last week about desires.

And this word here is desire. He talked about how do you change your desire? The way we change our desire, he said, was by what we feed it. Right here, you could put this word in place of seek desire first, the kingdom first means in time, in place and in rain.

So what Jesus told us to do here was we were first in our time, first in its place and first in rank, we are to seek or desire the kingdom of God. How do we do that if we want to be called citizens in this kingdom? In context, we could all turn there if you could turn to Matthew chapter six right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Let's just read it in context together.

Verse twenty four, 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 he will despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon or I could put money there. Therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life.

Or we could put don't be stressed out or anxious about your life, what you'll eat, what you will drink for your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Behold, the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly father feeds them and you not much.

Are you not much better than they? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature or which of you can add one inch to how tall you are? And why take you thought for clothes? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not more clothed you? Oh, you have little faith. Therefore, take no thought saying, what shall we eat? What shall we drink? Where shall we go clothes for all these things to the Gentiles? Seek with a desire for your heavenly father knoweth that you have need of all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

And I underline the word his. And all these things shall be added unto you. Take, therefore, no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow shall take thought for the things of itself sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

So Jesus tells us that our one desire, our one passion should be the kingdom of God. Our number one in our life, I want you to think about that this last week in your life, if you ever met anybody that's passionate about something. I was sitting there this morning thinking about people I know that are passionate about things.

And I thought of my brother, my brother Derek, he is passionate about one thing. And that is health and working out your body. He loves to go around the world.

Did I say Darryl? Derek, my brother, Derek, he loves to go around the world in these things called Spartan races. And these things are where they will say, OK, you'll have to climb up this log and you'll have to roll over this thing and you'll have to climb up this fence and you'll have to go down this hill and you'll have to roll this thing up this over here and and and everybody's going through this. And he works and he works and he works himself, works himself out, works himself out.

Every time I meet him and see him, he's talking about what is my diet? What am I doing? How am I? He said, he said, food is fuel and nothing more. And so he's skipping all these appetites to eat fat pills. Shocking, but he's got a passion.

He has a desire. Everything he does in his life revolves around it. You know, he still has a job.

He doesn't run Spartan races every day. He still drives a car around and puts fuel in it and all of that. But everything he does is driven by a passion.

And that is this one goal in his life to to win a Spartan race. And there's other ones that he does, too. I don't even know all the names.

He travels to Switzerland, I heard, to be in these races and in these championships. He has a passion. And this is what Jesus is talking about.

He's asking you, what are you passionate about? Where do you spend your time and your money? You know how to ask, what are you passionate about? Just just ask what you talk about. Think through your life last week. What did you talk about? What were the things in your life that that got you talking excitedly when you were talking to that person? That got you amped up.

What kind of things do you like? Oh, I love to talk to that person because we talk about this, this and that. That's probably your passion. Jesus said your passion as a Christian should be the kingdom of God.

Your main point of focus should be the kingdom of God. So what is the kingdom of God? How do we make the kingdom of God our main focus? That's the question. I mean, I could preach a great sermon all about, you know, make it your focus.

But then you go home and go, how do we do that? How do we make the kingdom of God our focus? I want you to turn to Romans chapter 14. The Bible and Paul in particular gives us a definition of what the kingdom of God is. Now, many would have you believe that the kingdom of God is only something to come in the future, in the millennium.

We were reading in Revelation today. And so everybody has this idea that, you know, someday the kingdom of God will come. But for now, we're just in this poor wretch of a place.

But interestingly enough, Jesus said himself that some standing here will not die until they see the son of man coming in the kingdom of God. Jesus said some are not going to die standing here until they see the kingdom of God coming. Jesus himself said the law and the prophet were told on and now the kingdom of God is preached.

So I would say, according to what I read in the Bible, there's an element of the kingdom of God happening right now. Now, and what Paul tells us in Romans 14, he gives us a description. I don't even know of a clear description of somebody saying this is what the kingdom of God is.

Romans chapter 14, verse 17, for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but it's righteousness and peace and joy. In the Holy Ghost. Now, in this context, these brothers are fighting about doctrine.

They're fighting about the law. They're fighting about if they can eat this kind of food or that kind of food. They're fighting about knowledge.

And Paul is trying to put them straight and say, no, that's not what the kingdom of God is about. That might have been the old covenant. But in the kingdom of God, it's about these things, righteousness, peace and joy.

And then it says something in the end there that's very critical in the Holy Spirit. So the kingdom of God is about the Holy Spirit producing something in his people, righteousness, true righteousness, true peace and true joy. So I think this gives us a pretty good way to learn how to seek the kingdom of God first in our lives.

Let's dissect these three things. First of all, righteousness. Jesus said, seek the kingdom of God first.

And then what does it say? And what? Anybody complete that for me? And notice it said his righteousness. See, we can try to seek our righteousness without the Lord, and we're not going to get very far. In fact, if you turn to Romans chapter 10, we're very close.

Let's just read that. And this can be a very misunderstood verse, verse one, Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer for to God for Israel is that they might be saved for I bear them record that they have a zeal, they have a passion for God, but it's not the right thing to do. According to knowledge, how many of us can have a zeal, but not according to knowledge? OK, so did these Israelites, for they being ignorant of God's righteousness.

This is what Jesus said. We need to search for and seek for. They go about to establish their own righteousness and they have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes. Now, that that verse could be used in a lot of different ways, but I believe what it's saying is in this new kingdom, Christ is the end of the law, as it says in Romans eight, if we through the spirit do put to death the deeds of the body, you shall live. And so Christ, as we wait on him, as we walk in him, as we abide in him, he's no longer it's no longer by just trying to do it in your own way, it's by through Christ, it's by a relationship, it's by waiting on him.

So one of the attributes of the kingdom of God is righteousness, true righteousness, not just something written in heaven, but a real righteousness that people can see. Remember, Jesus said that your light will shine and they will see your good works, but they will glorify God. So the good works are is really righteousness.

Righteousness. Peace is the second thing Paul tells us. Peace, and I think if we think about this, Jesus himself said, I'm going to leave you a peace that the world will not be able to give you.

He says, do not let your hearts be troubled or stressed or anxious. Paul tells us, actually, Peter tells us to seek this peace and ensue is the King James word, which could mean follow, seek, look for peace. And then when you find it, follow it.

OK, so the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace. Now, I believe we can break this piece into three different sections. First of all, peace with God in the new covenant.

The kingdom of God has made a way that you can have peace with God. As Jesus has died now, this is where it gets a little bit strange. And we've been in we've been around this where people will say it's about the cross and it is about the cross, but there's a much bigger picture than just about the cross and Jesus dying to forgive you your sins.

It's about Jesus dying to forgive you your sins so that you can now be in his kingdom, right? Because it's the kingdom of God. He ushered in the kingdom. He gave the long awaited promise of the spirit that can now bring peace into your life that can be light to then go out and be little lights in this world.

And so peace with God. First of all, it says we have been justified by faith and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So as we put our faith in him, that he has shed his blood, that he has forgiven us.

And we truly believe that we can have peace with God. We can go around no longer guilty and people can see that on your face. They can see you're no longer guilty of your sin, that you have a light on your face because you've been forgiven.

In fact, this is an amazing verse. It says in Hebrews chapter. No, first John, chapter four, it says, listen to this.

Our love is made perfect that we may have boldness in the day of judgment. This is how much peace we can have that we can when Jesus comes and he returns, we won't shrink back. We will have boldness to walk towards him because we've been walking in his kingdom.

So we can have peace with God, we can have peace with circumstances. Now, this is I want you to be asking yourself, do I have these things? If you don't have these things, then you're not seeking the kingdom of God, at least not in that moment. Right.

You know how many thousands of times a day we get offered a chance to seek the kingdom of God? You know how many times this morning I got offered a chance to seek the kingdom of God? Many. And we'll go into some illustrations in a minute. I don't want to use up all the time right now, but we can have peace with God, with our circumstances.

Paul tells us in Philippians to be careful or anxious for nothing. Now, I want you all to think back this last week. Was there a time you were stressed out about something? Yeah, I felt it trying to find my shaver, little guard.

I was we were going to be late. Sunday mornings, I'm always like preaching, typing my sermon up right to the last minute. And I'm OK, I need to go in and shave like I'm going to look like a mica boat.

I don't shave underneath. And anyway, anyway, so long story short is I went in looking for that little guard and I couldn't find it. And I felt it coming up.

Right. I wanted to have words with one of my sons. And but then the Lord reminded me, peace.

You know, this is your opportunity to seek the kingdom or destroy your testimony to your children and to those around you. This is your opportunity to seek the kingdom of God when you find it, that peace pursue it. And so I said, yes, Lord, I won't yell at any children.

And anyway, so we need to be peaceful in our circumstances. And in Philippians, he said, be careful for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known unto God and the peace of God, which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds.

OK, so if the kingdom of God is peace. And you're offered the opportunity to seek it, what is going to rob your peace? Stress, anxiety. The scripture said.

Unthankfulness, not praying. Not bringing our supplications to the Lord so we can just say very clear if we're stressed out in a situation, if we're complaining in a situation, if we're unthankful, if we're discouraged and if we're depressed, then we are not walking in the kingdom of God. I don't know where we are, but we're not walking in its full entirety and you are not seeking it.

You and this is even worse. You are not a light. This is what's really bad for God.

Think about it this way. I saw this illustration of the earth and it's been filled at the beginning of time. It was filled with light and with fellowship with God and with peace and with all these things.

But then sin came in and it's filled this entire world with darkness and we live in the darkness. We hear about looting, we hear about antifa, we hear about all the things happening and it's just filled. It's getting worse.

I mean, I was thinking about like 30 years ago when people would be going into shelters and tricking people to take their things from them. But that's what we've come to. We live in darkness.

When Jesus came, he came and he would heal somebody. Sorry, this is not going to be as great. And he would forgive somebody's sins and he would do good, encourage somebody.

But now Jesus is not on earth anymore and he has left us as his ambassadors. He's left us as citizens in the kingdom. Now, which one are you? When you're going out into the world, sorry, I got some water, don't touch my skin.

Jesus has us as citizens here and we have many, many opportunities to seek this kingdom and be little lights as we go out. And like this little area is like a light away from the darkness that people can see the kingdom. They can see righteousness in your life.

They can see this guy has peace. Like that's what was so amazing about Jesus. When he was on the ship and the storms were coming in, people were shocked.

How can this guy be sleeping on a pillow? It's a pillow. And he was, he was at peace and he came up and he had everything under faith because he was trusting God. And so my question is, what are you? What are we? Are we this empty shell that the world just sees more darkness in and we just shame the kingdom of God? You know, the world is tired of this kind of Christian that has no light.

All he is, is a professing Christian. He just says, I'm a Christian, but there's no kingdom of God coming out of him, righteousness and peace. So are you at peace with your circumstances? And like I said, you have thousands of times a day that the kingdom of God is offered to you thousands.

And you can make a choice. It's your decision at that moment to say, I accept this. Why do we accept it? If we believe the Bible, it says this, he works all things together for our good.

So if this building just burnt down, we could complain and be unthankful, or we could say, thank you, God. Why do we say thank you? Because we know you allow this for some reason for our good. See that concept, that concept is we can be a thankful people because everything we know that comes from our father's hand that is allowed into our life is for our good.

And when we're that people are like, what what kind of person is thankful that the building burnt down? Because I trust my God and I know God works all things together for good. And that's his kingdom. And that's what Jesus was in everything.

We can also be peace with men. Jesus said, if you do not forgive men their sins. You will not be forgiven.

He said, even when you come here in the morning to worship God and you remember Brother Dennis remembers Brother Caleb has a something against me. You should get up and go outside and make it right. Because what's far more important than all of this is peace.

I'll tell you a little story. Yesterday, we had Dennis that we were going to go to the shelter. And so we were we were going to go.

And I I had three things I wanted to do. And they were all good things. Number one, my wife wanted me to wash the car.

Is that wrong? No. In fact, it might be in the kingdom thing. Right.

Number two, my wife thought I should be 10 minutes early because she had been there the day before and said, if you're there 10 minutes early, you can relieve the person at the shelter because it takes like 10, 15 minutes to sign in and then you're 10, 15 minutes late in there. So I'm thinking, I don't want to be mean to that guy. You know, the poor guy there, he's waiting to go home and I don't want to be the lazy one.

So then I even told Dennis, hey, I'll be there at this time. Well, you know, I'm out there washing the car and I'm starting. These thoughts are coming in like, why would my wife ask me to wash the car right before I need to leave? This is just like, can't we just wash the car another time? Like, who cares about all the bugs and the dust on here? We're different in this way.

And but now, what is that? That is, that is unthankfulness. That is not trusting God coming into my life, trying to take away my peace. Right.

And at that moment, I walked in and I was like shuffling things and I didn't want to be late, like ruin my testimony to poor Dennis. And and I wanted to be on time up at the shelter. And so I walk in and I'm huffing, getting stuff in, you know, and my wife says, don't lose your peace over this.

And I'm like, and in my heart, first I thought, yeah, it was you that, you know, asked me to wash the car. And then I thought, wait a minute, step back from the greater picture of all of this. Like, I'm I'm trying to help my wife do a good thing.

I'm trying to be a good example to Dennis. I'm being on time and I'm trying to go up and help feed people. And yet I'm going to push the Holy Spirit out of my life and I'm going to now invite darkness into my life and saying some cruel thing to my wife and then probably say something mean to Dennis and then miss the Holy Spirit's voice at the shelter.

And what good was it? See what I mean? We do that. We do it so often. And what we're doing is we're not walking in the kingdom of God.

We're missing the opportunity for peace. So what did I do in that situation? I'm not always great at this, but. She reminded me of not losing my peace and you're right, and so I just accepted it.

So I was five minutes late and guess what? I even showed up on time. To where I was, we were, we were done signing in at the dot for twelve o'clock and I went to, we went and got my job position. And at one point during that time, I just sensed the Lord wanted me to ask this one guy a question.

And I asked him and he told me a testimony about how the Lord, he had been praying to the Lord and the Lord stopped the winds. And he was crying as he was telling me the story. He got all teary eyed and he was telling me about how he had prayed and then and they lost these three horses.

They were looking for the horse and he had prayed. And anyway, somebody found them down the road after they left. And anyway, it was neat.

I might have missed all of that. I might have missed the opportunity to fellowship with somebody who was excited about God because I was now had pushed the spirit out of my life. And that's the danger we are.

And then we're not alike. So we have peace with all men, so we have righteousness, peace with God, peace with our circumstances and peace with men. If we're harsh.

If we're unmerciful, if we're unforgiving, we are not walking in the kingdom, you are not seeking it and you are not being a light. And if anything, you're ruining your life. Not only are you not being a light, you're ruining the light, a little bit of light that there is.

And think of this world of how much hypocrisy it's seen, how much word only Christianity profession only it's seen. It's full of it. What it needs is people who are walking in the light.

And also, you're not helping your brothers. And your sisters stay focused. If you sit there and start complaining and then you cause the next guy to start complaining about something, maybe the Democrats did or whatever, you know, you are not walking and you're actually affecting the brother.

We're not sharpening each other. We're not. And that's what I want to get to.

Why do we even come together? I never got to joy. So let me finish that. And joy.

We're righteousness, peace and joy. See, in the Old Testament was just righteousness, right? And it was man's righteousness. With somber faces, you know, yes, we're going to fast and we're going to, you know, all of that in the new covenant, it's righteousness, but with peace and joy.

That's what it should be. It should be. It should be that when people see a Christian, they want what he has.

They want the peace and joy he has. They see the righteous works, but they also want the righteousness and peace he has in his life with God. Turn to first Corinthians chapter four, verse.

Twenty here is Paul giving us another definition of the kingdom of God, he says, for the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. So Paul tells us that you can have people who talk about the kingdom, who go out and give out tracts about the kingdom, who hold signs about the kingdom. But if it's just word, what good is it? It needs to come with power.

Now, what is the power? Well, I believe it's the righteousness, the peace and the joy of the Holy Ghost. It's the power of God. People see in your life.

That is what matters. And doesn't that line up with first Corinthians chapter 13? And though I have all knowledge. I mean, if you got up every morning at three a.m. and studied every doctrine there was and you knew the Bible from back to front and you did not have the power of God in your life, true love.

What good is it? If you came here every week and learned tenor and soprano and bass and tenor, I'm sorry, can you know what I'm talking about? All those four things. And you had the whole book figured out. But you didn't have the power of God.

It's all you.