At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness, and honour” (Prov. 21:21).
If we were to summarize the structure of this proverb, we could say that the person who pursues two things will find himself with three things, and one of those three things will be one of the two things he was initially after.
The one who pursues righteousness will find . . . righteousness. He also pursued mercy, but his finding of mercy is not mentioned. This does not mean that he did not obtain it, only that it is not mentioned by name.
What is mentioned in that he comes upon life and honor. In addition to the righteousness he sought, he finds life and he finds honor. Surely that is mercy enough.
Those who seek honor for its own sake will only find dishonor. Those who grasp at the things of earth will forfeit Heaven, and then will discover at the last that they have forfeited earth as well. At the end of the day, we lose whatever it was that we fashioned into an idol. At the end of the day, we are given back the things that we surrendered for the sake of the kingdom.
Scripture teaches that we reap what we sow. The Bible tells us that those who seek first the kingdom of Heaven will obtain a number of other things besides. God is the God who overflows. God is the God of superabundance. He is not a tight-fisted God.
What does it mean to pursue righteousness? “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6). The pursuit of righteousness must not be lackluster, but rather be the kind of thing that is characterized by hunger and thirst. At a certain point, hunger and thirst both become the predominant thing. Hunger and thirst are the kinds of things that grow to the point where you can think about nothing else.
And those for whom this is true will find three things at the end—life, righteousness, and honor.
