What really matters in life according to the Bible?

Look at the case of Solomon, He wrote, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10). Wisdom without the fear of the Lord is not the wisdom that is “better than rubies.” Without the fear of the Lord the very A.B.C. of wisdom has not been learned. A man may be accounted wise in the learning of the schools, or in diplomacy, or in military strategy, but if he has not the fear of the Lord, he has no true wisdom. He is out of touch with what really matters. He has not adjusted himself to God. He is building on sand and not on the rock. His efforts end with fitful time, and enter not into eternity.

The Lord Jesus said, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. What had He been speaking of just before? Of what ye shall eat, and put onthat is the necessary things for our earthly life. Those are necessary things, but, dear brethren, in view of those very necessities, our Lord deliberately says, Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Are we hearkening to this word? What is first in our souls?

The Lord Jesus said, "seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." What had He been speaking of just before? Of "what ye shall eat, and put on" — that is the necessary things for our earthly life. Those are necessary things, but, dear brethren, in view of those very necessities, our Lord deliberately says, "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." Are we hearkening to this word? What is first in our souls?

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness" This is the matter of real importance. God's interests in that sphere of subjection to His authority (His kingdom) should hold the greatest attraction for us. "His righteousness" is added to this, for everything in the world is contaminated by man's unrighteousness, and it requires purpose of heart to seek the purity of God's righteousness in such contrary circumstances. This does take time and thought. All of these instructions of the Lord in the sermon on the mount are basic in regard to what God's righteousness really is. They are worthy of diligently applied thought and study.

This is why the Lord Jesus draws his disciples' attention to the essential thing in the centre verse of this paragraph: 'But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.' (verse 33)-With this positive invitation he shows the goal at which the disciple should aim first of all. It is the kingdom of God and his righteousness. The Lord Jesus does not say: 'Seek ye only the kingdom of God..., but: Seek ye first the kingdom of God...', for he does not want us to forsake our other duties. Nevertheless he clearly points His disciples to what ought to be first in their lives.

But the Lord having done what the Pharisees, adversaries of the Sadducees, could not do, the curiosity of the Pharisees is excited, and they were gathered together (v. 34) One among them questions the Lord; but his demand 'has for result that Jesus lays the true foundation of the law and the prophets, and then establishes clearly the situation of things, the question of the moment, as God regarded it. Which, asks the lawyer, is the great commandment in the law? A question much debated among the Jews, for whom each commandment had a special value, the observance of each of them gaining, as in an examination, so many good marks from God. The Lord seizes the occasion, offered in the ways of God, to establish the fundamental principles of the divine law. To love God with all the heart, such is the first commandment. The second is like it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. All in man hung on these two things. It is the summary of what man ought to be, the root and the measure of human righteousness. It is not in any way a revelation of divine love; it is not at all a question of grace, nor of an open way for the sinner to come to God; but it is the perfect rule of what a man should be, a divine compendium of the substance of the law, the law on which the prophets insisted in seeking to recall the people to its observance.

Such is the text, and now we come to the exposition. Moses sums up in two brief sentences what the law implies in its first table. First, the unity and immutability of God: "Jehovah our God is one Jehovah" founded upon this, His claim to the undivided allegiance of man, — "Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." If there be but one God, there is none beside to divide the heart with; and Jehovah claims in the most absolute way the whole of it. The words stand for the inner man, with all his affections, and in their full energy. And this is the reasonable claim of the Creator to the full answer of the heart to Him who created him, and in whose service alone all his faculties find their full occupation, rest, and satisfaction. All freedom apart from this is only slavery. All slavery here is only freedom as he knew well who could say, "To me, to live is Christ," and who in his epistle to the Romans signs himself His "bondsman," — "Paul, bondsman of Jesus Christ." (Rom. 1:1, Greek.) Yet none can insist more earnestly that "we have not received the spirit of bondage." (Rom. 8:15.) To live in love, and serve Him who is love, is indeed the opposite.

I feel sure christian life is not what it ought to be. It will be seen in the end there was nothing else worth living for but Christ.

Eternity is out of sight when these and such like things are filling the mind. They are Satan's toys given to the child of God to play with, in order to make him forget who he is, and whither he is going. How little is eternity before even true christians as a present realisation! How little laying hold of that which alone is really life!

After all, what is truly life? The transitory things of the hour: the questions of the day, babblings, contention about men, fame and honor, and money and worldly glory? No, the eternal life only — the present delight of which, is the fellowship with the Father and the Son, and the prospects of which, are glory with Christ on high.

If it were impossible for our thoughts and hopes to reach beyond the time-sphere, and if the enjoyment of material things were the only good, if pleasure, ease, and an unruffled life in this world were the highest things to which men might attain, and to lie down in an eternal sleep the lot of all, then these days were dark indeed, the war an unmixed evil, and the God who permitted it were not the friend of humanity. But the truth is that men have immortal souls, that they have been made for eternity, and in comparison with their existence the longest life in mortal flesh is but as a vapour that disappears before the wind; that there is no lasting satisfaction in material things, and that GOD ALONE IS SUFFICIENT TO FILL THE SOUL WITH GOOD.