Kingdom Perspectives

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of New Testament studies from Matthew 6:19-34.

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I said at the beginning of this series that during these last four of the series, I will take a bit of time at the beginning of each talk to talk about the Sermon on the Mount in relation to some other part of the New Testament. Since last week, we considered thinking of the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew, and as recorded in Luke, and examine some of the problems that people raised in this connection. This week, partly because we’re so near exams, I have changed my mind just a little on what I was going to do at the beginning. Someone came up to me, you see, last week and said, “You know, you changed that part about not praying repetitiously, but what about Luke 18 where Jesus tells us to pray importunately, that is without giving up, again, and again, and again.

That sort of question has been brought up to me after the talk repeatedly on various issues. What it raises is the question of, to what situation Jesus is speaking. In Matthew 6, where he is forbidding vain babbling, he is preventing that sort of repetitious talk that this…it occurred in the presence of God for its much speaking. In Luke 18, where he is condemning, it’s that sort of praying, which has no firmness no [inaudible 00:01:29]. Now we’re coming to a section that deals with worry. And in exam time, worry, if I simply said what has to be said in each chapter about worry, I think I could lead some of you to the [inaudible 00:01:50] of a nervous breakdown. And so I’m going to try to place what Jesus says in this chapter within the broader context of what the New Testament has to say about worry as well. And because it comes up in the passage anyway, in a few minutes, I will postpone that [inaudible 00:02:07] until we come to those verses.

Now, last week, we examined verses 1-18. We concluded that the crucial factor in eliminating religious hypocrisy, [inaudible 00:02:22] its simply wholehearted desire to please God is not meant. In other words, the questions raised whose approval do we seek? But there are other ways of looking at this question of kingdom perspectives. In fact, not only the question whose approval do we seek, but what do we ourselves seek? What do we really want? Where are we really heading? What do we dream about? In what direction do we want to go? Because around our goals, the rest of our life is oriented. And therefore, if our goals are biblical goals, our total perspective, our total orientation will be lining up increasingly with the biblical orientation. But if we get our main goals, our main love, our main aim ary, then all of our perspectives are aligned with God’s word.

The crucial text in these verses, verses 19 to 34, [inaudible 00:03:30] verse 33, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things already mentioned will be given to you as well.” There are two principles that are laid out in these verses. First, the need for unswerving loyalty through the values of the kingdom. Versus 19-24, unswerving loyalty to the values of the kingdom. And second, uncompromised trust in verses 25-34. The first point is brought home by three metaphors.

1. Unswerving Loyalty

A) Earthly Versus Heavenly Treasures

First concerning treasure, verses 19-21. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will be also.”

Treasures on earth, here, obviously, includes typical rich, ancient Oriental garments, the sorts of things that moths just love to make nests in. And the ancient Orient didn’t know much about mothballs. The rust, the word that is used for rust could be rust that confused metal, but it could also be something simply that eats away and corrodes, whether corroding diamonds or corroding a supply of grain. And indeed, only the commentators view the first part of this verse 19 as a picture of a farm and its supply being eaten away, just eroded, corroded, destroyed.

But in addition to these sorts of losses, the treasures of Earth can be stolen. They can be things which perhaps can’t be corroded but which can be stolen. Thieves break in and steal, literally dig in and steal, they dig through. In the ancient abodes of Palestine, no brick was used and with a good sharp shovel, you could dig through the wall and steal whatever you could get your grubby little hand on. So these things are treasures of Earth, anything that is valuable, but which is perishable, which is lose-able.

In principle, the verse speaks of anything that destroys wealth. In our own time, one of the things that destroys wealth is inflation, and in principle that is included as well. By contrast, we are to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven where moths and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. These are the things which bring divine approval, and they’re bestowed upon the believer in the consummated kingdom. This is not a question of earning reward in the sense of chalking up merit. The Bible has a wonderful way of dealing with both sides of this issue. On the one hand, it exists in the [inaudible 00:06:52] for example, that the one who acts responsibly is rewarded. And on the other, it insists that the person who acts responsibly acts responsibly by God’s sheer grace. And there are many passages in the Scripture that bring the two together.

Perhaps the most noticeable is the one was in Philippians 2 where we are told that we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who’s working in us to will and to do what pleases Him. But these treasures that come to us, in the new world, these are wonderful things, these are things that the language of Scripture simply exhausts itself trying to describe, sometimes in marvelous metaphors and sometimes, instead of extrapolating the wonderful things of this life into that life, there will be perfect seamlessness. There there will be love on the baby. There there will be the challenge of responsibility because of fatigue of overwork. There the sorrows will be taken from us, and God Himself will wipe our tears from our eyes. [inaudible 00:08:02] all that sort of reward, all that sort of perspective, all that sort of goal against the few things we can collect for our [inaudible 00:08:12] before they too are eroded, corroded, stolen, disappear, condemned.

These treasures of heaven are not assailable by corrosion or by theft. This does not mean that God is condemning all wealth, nor all clothes. He’s not condemning things, He is condemning the love of them. He is condemning making them our treasures. In Ecclesiastes, the writer turns goal after goal over in his mind and in the time that it were, and he dismisses each goal as vanity and vexation is fair. If I understand that difficult book [inaudible 00:09:04] it is not suggesting that the things themselves are worthless, but that they are transient and therefore they are vain. They are temporary. They are a curse with temporality if you will. It is not that money itself is evil, but it’s transient. And so therefore, why should we commit our most ultimate goal, our most ultimate loves and affections with that which passes away? When I die, I take out with me exactly what I brought in, nothing, absolutely nothing. And therefore, we are warned now to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven where nothing can be taken from us.

There is a course I learned in Sunday school as a child and it still comes back to me again and again, with eternity, values, and You, Lord, with eternity, values, and You, let me do this day’s work for Jesus with eternity, values, and You. If I may speak of eternity in the categories of time, how important will our temporary transient values be to us in 50 billion trillion years? When we start asking ourselves questions like that and try to see how we are lining up our goals, the things we treasure in the light of eternity and the temporariness of these things might cause us to hang our heads in shame. But there is another way still of looking at this treasure, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Everyone sets his heart on what is most important to him. And he heads himself toward what is most important.

The heart, in biblical plot, is a man’s innermost being. It includes his mind and his orientation and his affection. And what is his treasure will be where his heart is. That is why the first commandment, in Jesus’ words, is to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like unto it, to love our neighbors as ourselves. If that is where our heart is, if that is where our over-consuming desire is, then we move toward God. Whereas if our overwhelming desire, it concerns our career, or our finances, or our home, then that’s the direction in which we move, and God remains on the periphery.

It’s a funny thing about heading toward goals. I come from Canada, in Canada…I’m sorry, past life. Most of my life is lived in Canada, my illustrations must come from Canada. In Canada, we sometimes have lots of snow. And if you haven’t had the pleasure of walking across a field, half a mile square completely untouched by any creature after a snowfall and making your own mark in that white stuff 2 or 3 feet thick, oh, you just don’t know what you’re missing. But there are several ways of going about this. You can, you look at your feet and try to cross the field. And if you look at your feet and carefully place one foot in front of the other and try to cross the field, I guarantee you will not make it. You will make the most incredible path. There would be no known formula that could describe, it would take two computers to work it out. But you will not cross that field, no way.

If, on the other hand, you take one particular tree on the other side of the field and you walk toward it not looking where you place your feet but looking only at that tree, when you get there you will look back and your path will be straight as an arrow. But another experiment to try is to try looking at that tree over there on my left while I walk over this direction about 35 degrees. I care not how many times you try to compensate, you will swerve towards that tree, you’ll swerve towards that tree. And I’ll speak of the sheer stubbornness, you overreact and swerve the other way. But there is no way you’ll walk in a straight line.

My fiancé and I last year occasionally took long bike rides on the towpath down by the river. She’ll have a few words with me afterwards for telling this. And we would be riding along the towpath and she would look at me to tell me something and I would have to slam on the brake to avoid going into the river, she just swerves right over. The point is the same in each case. Where we focus our attention, that’s where we move. I had an aunt who learned to drive in Canada. She had this painful habit of watching approaching cars and driving towards them. But it is equally true in our spiritual life, we see this great vast ceiling of unbreaking snow and we see God opening up direction and we walk toward it and look over there instead and we swerve off, we swerve off every time.

Where our heart is, where our treasure is, those places are one. This is as much true, as painfully true in the realm of spiritual experience as in simple navigation. No wonder Paul says, “Set your affection on things above.” Set your affection on things above.” It is not something we are to allow ourselves to drift into, but it is something for which we are responsible before God to fasten our affection on internal and heavenly things for where our treasure is, that is where our heart will be also.

B) Light Versus Darkness

The second metaphor concerns light. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness.” The eye is the lamp of the body in the sense that it enables the body to find its way. It provides the orientation and the distancing, the direction for the person’s body. But the eye is good most probably suggests singleness of purpose, individual loyalty, perfection in that sense. There is an ambiguity in the original, but that is the most likely meaning.

To have a bad eye, therefore, or an evil eye, means an eye that is focused on evil. Where a person looks, what he takes in determines his direction in life. The whole body here is an Aramaic expression for you yourself. The eye lets in light. And if the eye is good, it determines you yourself the direction in which you are going. But if your eye is evil, it is focused on evil, then what you take in will only be blackness, only be darkness. To be full of life is a lovely expression, it doesn’t just mean that a person has some sort of inner knowing, some sort of inner intuition. The word also means it includes the idea of giving off life.

You’ll recall that in Chapter 5 in the introduction, Jesus has already said, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.” Now Jesus says if your eye is good, if with single-eyed commitment, with protection in that sense focused on that which is good, your whole body will be full of light in the sense that it will also give off light. Here the idea is again, unswerving loyalty to the value of the kingdom. It embraces so many ideas, this metaphor. A man is, in part, what he thinks. Proverbs 23 puts it that way, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” I recall a man telling us at a pastors’ conference once, “You men are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.” And he’s right. It’s not just a question of what we do and what we say but what we think.

And so if what we are taking in is evil, then we are just darkness, we are showing no light. That is why the New Testament puts so much stress on what we think. You recall those well-known verses at the beginning of Romans 12, the 2nd verse says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” by the renewing of your mind. And Philippians 4:8, the apostle tells us of all the good things we are to think of.

C) No Two Masters

The third metaphor concerns slavery. “No one can serve two masters, either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” The idea of serving here does not make immediate sense in the 20th-century setting until we remember that Jesus does not have employers in mind but slave owners. A man may serve two employers, but no slave can be the property of two owners. The hate-love contract is a strong semitic way of saying, I much prefer this one, I will go this way. For example, elsewhere when Jesus said that the believer must love God and hate his parents. He’s not to follow the children of God and taking that literally. That is the children of God as a group not the children of God as the Bible uses the term.

Rather it’s a significant way of speaking, that is my first allegiance, my first love must be to God, not to anyone else, including my parents. So also here, it just means that ultimately in the final pinch, there’s going to be a divided loyalty which will come down on one side, and so therefore you can’t have two sides. If it comes to a conflict of allegiances, therefore necessarily in the crunch, one side is kind of dominant, one side will be preferred, therefore men cannot have two slave masters. We aren’t going to be slaves, Jesus assumes, but who will be our master?

The word translated in this version, money, there’s been many versions translated, not translated, just transliterated mammon. The root in the original literally means that in which we have confidence. That it is used throughout the Jewish writings to mean money, wealth, profit. No man can be simultaneously devoted to God and to money. I suspect that most of us as Christians think that we’re not so divided until we come to apply for a job and discover that this job offers more than that job. And perhaps this job which offers a little more may not have quite as many opportunities for Christian work and growth and service, but it does offer more. Or perhaps we come to a situation where we have to decide about how we’re going to use our money, how much we’re going to give away, how freely and willingly we share, or how much we think that we need a new and improved high [inaudible 00:22:59] first.

And then gradually these things begin to rub at us, and rub at us, and we begin to see that maybe our allegiance toward God is not quite as symbolized and untarnished as we thought it was. That it’s so easy to be double-minded in this particular area, especially with materialistic wealth. Contrast the genuine piety of Matthew Henry. When he was robbed, he wrote in his diary when he came in that night, “My Father, I thank you that I have never been robbed before. I thank you too that although they took my money, they spared me my life. I thank you in the third place, but although they took all my money, it wasn’t very much. And between me, Father, I thank you that it was I who was robbed but not I who robbed.” What a perspective.

This is something that you will not sort out tonight in this meeting. It is something you will sort out every month, every year of your life. It’s something that comes back to us again and again and again and makes us ask deep and searching questions concerning our love. There are no hard fast rules here about what you can or can’t buy. I don’t want to degenerate this passage into near and cheap [inaudible 00:24:53]. It is even more profound than that, it’s going after your heart. You cannot serve both God and money.

2. Trust Without Compromise

The second main point of this passage is an injunction to trust without compromise.

Verses 25-34, “Therefore, I tell you,” Jesus said. Whenever you see a wherefore or therefore, see what it is there for. And there is usually some logical connection if the translation is an accurate one, and so there is here. “Since transient Earthly treasures do not satisfy and do not last,” verses 19-21, “since yearning for evil things blurrs mental, moral, or spiritual vision,” verses 22-23, “since the choice must be made between God and money,” verse 24, “therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat and drink.” But there is a deeper connection even than that.

Jesus has just been putting down the significance of material things. And you can imagine someone asking of his words, but musn’t I be concerned at least about material necessities? I mean, isn’t it a bit unrealistic not to ask about basics, not to be worried about basics like food and drink? That really is a bit much, master. So, Jesus takes it to the next level. Here it is not only a question of what you want to have, but whether or not you trust the ones who gives and provide. “Do not worry about your life,” he says, “what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”

Now, it is here that I want to break and give you a small exclusive on worry in the New Testament. Picture two people, one is a happy-go-lucky, unconcerned, irresponsible character who never gets anything done on time, doesn’t care about the next five minutes, let alone tomorrow, never wears any responsibility lightly and life is one big luck. Picture another person, the hyper-responsible person who takes every sin in the world upon himself, who takes every burden and every grief deeply to himself, for whom every conceivable responsibility laid upon him becomes virtually a crisis.

Biblically, both of those stances are rejected. That is why the problem of worry is a difficult one. I learned that when I was pastoring a church in Vancouver, where there was one brother at the back who was very, very sensitive to all his past sins, and if I spoke against any sin, he would begin to weep because he remembered his sins. But I wasn’t speaking to him, he had long since repented. He needed to hear more of the Lord’s grace and the Lord’s forgiveness. So a whole lot of other hardened people to whom I could speak all day, and they never thought that I was talking to them. It’s the same sort of problem in this area of worry. And we really must be careful how we get this thing sorted out in our lives.

Does Jesus really mean in this passage that we are not to worry about anything, not in any way, shape, or form, that we’re to be carefree and happy, flippant almost? Are we to go the route of the systematic hippie, is that what it is? Is it wrong if we have concerns and care for family and children? How about your exams? Should you be so unconcerned about them, so careless about them so I’m worried that you just give them no thought and slip through [inaudible 00:29:41]? Is that what Jesus means? Or to come much closer to home?

One of my colleagues in Tyndale House has just discovered that his wife has terminal brain cancer. Are you gonna tell me he’s not supposed to worry? When tragedy strikes like that, what do you tell people then? Let me put it in terms of two propositions. First, there is a sense in which worry is not only good, but the absence of it is biblically irresponsible. Paul, for example, in 2 Corinthians 11, bears the cares of all the churches, there’s a daily pressure of the cares of all the churches on him. He writes, in high intensity sometimes, with anguish if you considered what’s going on. He prayed for them constantly. The burden of the care of the church was upon him.

Timothy in 2 Corinthians 8 has the same earnestness. In 1 Timothy, that young man is exhorted to learn how to take care of the Church of God. Timothy is told again to fight the good fight of faith. In Ephesians 6, we’re told to be sober, to be vigilant, to wrestle with the host of darkness. Let me assure you, that pattern of Christian living which has all the emphasis on [inaudible 00:31:31] without any wrestling, and without any tears, and without any fighting, it’s just not biblical.

[inaudible 00:31:39] the concern that will come from the great commandments that we’re to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves? This entails some concerns and worries for our residents. Then there are worries and concerns about our sin. The Psalmist speaks of being full of anxiety because of my sin in Psalm 38. But note, in each of these cases, the worry is not a selfish one, that’s the first point, the worry is not a selfish one.

Second, in each case, the Biblical words, for lack of a better term, are God-oriented. That is to say, they are looking at things from God’s perspective. Third, they all have to do with personal responsibility, my accountability before God, what must I do. All of them have to do with that. The whole thing may be summed up in terms of 1 Corinthians 10:31, whatever we do, whether we eat, drink, whatever we do, we are to do all for the glory of God, that is our responsibility. And for that, we must apply thoughts and care and attention. And if that’s what you mean by worry, that worry is not only licit, it is required.

The converse proposition, there is a point in which worry is not only evil, but its presence signifies unbelief and disobedience. There is a sense in which worry is not only evil, but its presence signifies unbelief and disobedience. You recall Jesus, in the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany, there is Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet drinking in instruction from the master. There is Martha pottering around the house getting dinner ready. It was quite licit to eat. It’s quite licit to pot around the house, but she was ratting about her pottering, she was ratting about her work. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things, but only a few are necessary, really only one, and Mary has chosen that good part.”

Or consider the parable of the sower in Luke 8. Here we are told a seed that is dropped on thorny ground and thorns grow up quickly and choke the good plant. And then Jesus explains the parable. And he says these thorns are the worries and riches of the world, and the seed is choked with these things. In this passage before us, as we shall see in a few moments, the worry concerns food and drink, and clothes, necessities of material things. And then there are a few sweeping passages, for example, 1 Peter 5:7, “We are to cast all our cares on God because He cares for us.” Romans 8:28, “We are to trust God to believe that all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose.”

Then there is one which I direct your attention in Philippians 4, and I’m going to spend just a moment on that. Philippians 4:6-7. Philippians 4:6-7, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” You see, there is a sense in which we in this generation are perhaps called upon to worry about something that our forefathers haven’t been called upon to worry about, partly because there is an increase in communication. Nowadays, a few shots can be fired anywhere in the world and you’ll see the whole thing tonight on the 10:00 news.

There is a sense in which Christians are called upon now because we know more of what’s going on in the world to worry about some of these broader piece of things. And there can be either a depressing sort of worrying about even those things, or there can be a worry about pressures of just daily life. The pressures of examinations, the pressures of doing well in a competitive society, the pressures of getting ahead and forging ahead and making our way, the pressures of pleasing our peers and our parents. We live in a high-pressure society, there’s no doubt about it. I know what I speak, I have a younger brother who at, age of 19, cracked up under pressure. It took him two years to get over it. You can’t live for three years in a university like this one without knowing personally people who have cracked up under pressure.

Our problem is that we hear this injunction of the Word of God here not to worry. “Be anxious for nothing,” it says here. And we grit our teeth, and we clench our fists, and we say, “All right, I won’t worry.” Then you begin to worry about not worrying. And yet this passage here gives us a remedy, as well as a diagnosis. It says, “Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God.” This is what the Spirit of God would have us know, our worries are to be taken individually and brought before the throne of God’s grace and presented to Him.

The pressure that you’re facing, your exams, maybe your financial statements, maybe uncertainty about the future, have you taken that before the Lord in prayer specifically and laid it out before Him [inaudible 00:38:12] His promises and His ways and so stayed with Him and with it until you were certain that He loved you and He knew what He was doing even if you didn’t yet?

Indeed, we are not only to present our petitions to Him, but we are to do so, this text says, with thanksgiving. Thank you, Lord, for this pressure. Thank you for this problem, it teaches me a little more faith than I would have the other way, Lord. I wouldn’t really want it any other way. I don’t find it very comfortable. I don’t like not knowing where I’m going, but thank you, Lord. Thank you for your sovereign ways and knowing where I’m going even when I don’t. I want to know what is right, I want to do your will, I want to do you, lead me in the right way out of this one. Time alone and stand before God, there is no shortcuts, none.

“Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take

The clouds you so much dread

Are big with mercy and shall break

In blessing on your head

And ye fearful saints, fresh courage take

The clouds you so much dread

Are big with mercy and shall break

In blessings on your head

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense

But trust Him for His grace

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face

His purposes will ripen fast

Unfolding every hour

The bud may have a bitter taste

But sweet will be the flower

Blind unbelief is sure to err

And scan His work in vain

God is His own interpreter

And He will make it plain”

Almost [inaudible 00:39:51] but very profound, very profound. It was Horatius Bonar who penned the lines, “I stand upon the mound of God with sunlight in my soul. I hear the storms and veils beneath, I hear the thunders roll, but I am calm with the, My God, beneath these glorious skies to the height on which I stand, no storms, no clouds can rise. Oh, this is life, oh, this is joy, my God, to find me so. Thy face to see, thy voice to hear, and all they love to know.”

Or again put here,

“Drop Thy still dews of quietness

Till all our strivings cease

Take from our souls the strain and stress

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy peace

Breathe through the heats of our desire

Thy coolness and thy balm

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire

Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,

O still, small voice of calm”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I’m not advocating a dream-like existence of a theory of spirituality. I’m reading the promise of God, present your needs, your prayers, and petitions with thanksgiving. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. I have the rich privilege of coming from a godly home. In the last three or four weeks, my father has been in and out of the hospital critically ill. There’s been two or three times when I thought of going home. Each of the letters I received from my mother, she appended to the bottom of the letter, “But God is giving us rich [inaudible 00:41:49],” or some such words.

This is not dreaming, this is simply the promise of God. He cannot lie. Before you see these sorts of worries come under this sort of category. One, most of them are selfish, their worry is bound up with temporal categories, like Martha’s. Two, all of them indicate a lack of trust in the providence of God and that lack of trust is dead. Three, the one case where there is an injunction not to worry in a spiritual matter seems to be the instance where Christians are told not to worry about giving an account when we are called up before magistrates and whatever in Luke 12. It’s the only one to my knowledge in the Scriptures.

What it suggests to me is that even in the area of spiritual objects of concern, it is possible to worry in an illicit way. It is possible to worry, for example, about how I will approach people, what they will think of me. For example, if I begin to worry about the preparation for this evening, I must worry about my own preparation or the time I’m devoting to it. I must devote myself to it and enjoy the study and preparation thinking through the Word of God. But if I begin to worry about what you’ll think of me, it is an illicit worry. So, even spiritual concerns can be illicit.

A) Do not worry about the soul.

So then let us come to the specific emphases made by the Lord Jesus himself in Chapter 6 of Matthew. “Do not worry,” he says, [inaudible 00:44:05] take no thought for your life is wrong.” The verb literally is do not worry. Do not worry about your life. The word in the original is soul and it can mean many things, here it simply means life, that potential vitality in you which is sustained by food and drink. “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or on the other hand, about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes?” This is a fortiori argument, very common in the New Testament. If this, then surely that.

The New Testament is full of them, perhaps the best known is in Romans 8:32, says, “God has not spared His own son but freely gave him up for us all-how shall He not with him also freely give us all things?” So God has already given us the best gift so there’s no reason why He won’t to give us everything else. In this passage alone there are a number of these. For example, in verse 30, “If that is how God clothes the grass of the field with the lilies, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you?” Or again in 7:11, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more with your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?” It’s the how much more argument.

Here the argument is this, He even provided us His life and body, He would surely also provide us with the lesser things, food, and clothes. How much more? The general principle is driven home with two examples in verses 26-30. First concerning life and food in verses 26-27. “Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? These birds are noted not for idleness but for their freedom from worry.

I live in Tyndale House. At the back of Tyndale House, there’s a lovely big garden. And the birds come every morning when the cat is not out and peck away and peck away and eat and chirp, and come back through the day and eat and chirp and peck. They’re always really rather busy, not idle, but they just seem to be so carefree about it. It is that that is noticed here by the Lord Jesus. “Are you not much more valuable than they?” Or again, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” You will find every conceivable translation of this passage.

And the reason is this, the word for life in the original can either mean stature or age. For example, in Luke 19, Zacchaeus was little in stature, the same word. Or in Hebrews 11, Sara was past the age of conceiving children, it’s the same word. Now then, the passage says, “Which of you by worrying can add a single qubit?” A qubit is a linear measure about 18 inches long. Which of you by worrying can add a single qubit to his…now what do you choose? If you choose stature, to add 18 inches to your stature, that [inaudible 00:48:04] point. I mean, if he’d said half a millimeter, it would be a good argument, but it just doesn’t “seem to go.” If on the other hand, you say age, oh well, have you ever heard of anybody adding 18 inches to his age?

But is it probably not a mixed metaphor, actually. Probably the question is simply this, who of you by worrying can lengthen the pathway of his life by even a qubit? It’s that sort of thought. For example, in North America, I don’t know if you say the same thing here, but we might speak at a birthday of coming to another milepost. Well, we don’t literally mean we’ve come to another milepost, but we’ve got to another stage and the metaphor has become linear.

So also here, a person on the pathway of life, he’s going along and God determines when he dies. And when he dies, he dies, he can’t go 18 inches farther, that’s it, finished. And no matter how much you worry about it, you can’t change it. Jesus comes in this way very clearly in Luke 12 concerning the rich fool. He said, “I will tear down my barns. I will build bigger barns. And then I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, take your rest.’ Thou fools. Thou fools. This night thy soul shall be required of thee.” And no matter how much he thought about it he couldn’t add 18 more inches to his life. His past had come to an end. Contrast the Psalmist attitude in Psalm 39, “Lord, let me know my end and what is the nature of my days. Let me know how sleeping my moments are.”

B) Do not worry about the body and clothes.

The second example has to do with the body and clothes. Verses 28-30, “Why do you worry about clothes? See who the lilies of the field grow, they do not labor of spin yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you oh ye of little faith?” The verb for consider or see how the lilies of the field grow, that verb consider or see, is used only once in the New Testament. There’s a carefully chosen word that has to do with examining closely with a view to learning. Look at them, think about what you’re looking at. We’ll see the significance of that in a moment.

The word for lilies is an obscure word and probably simply means wildflower. In verse 26, he spoke of the birds of the air, in verse 28, he speaks of the wildflowers of the field. “Look how they grow.” Here, the emphasis is on easily, without toil, and yet splendidly, gorgeously. You can’t array a monarch of [inaudible 00:51:18] wealth and distinguished prestige with the splendor of a green field with many wildflowers his glory pales in comparison. Now then, if that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, oh you of little faith?

The argument that Jesus gives to us here is an argument based on biblical cosmology. Let me explain what I mean. In a strictly scientific universe, in a universe that is to say that is governed strictly by the current presuppositions of modern science, you have what is called a closed universe. Everything happens within the system, everything is caused and its cause produces an effect. And the system is entirely enclosed without outside supernatural influences. That is a closed system. Without a closed system, in some sense, you could not have science. Unless there are causes and effects that follow rules that can be examined and discovered, you cannot conceivably develop science.

In a primitive society, like that in which my sister worked for a while in New Guinea, in the highlands, where the technology of the people is still pre-Stone Age, they live in an open universe. There, nothing is predictable, it depends on the whims of the demons. There are demons behind the trees and demons behind the stones, and demons behind the rain, and demons behind the sun. And if you can just keep all the demons happy, your life will go along [inaudible 00:53:19]. And so therefore, if you’re a little short of rain, you do something to [inaudible 00:53:24] the demons. So that’s an open universe. The system here has no cause and effect that you can really trust, you have to [inaudible 00:53:31] the demons that are outside the system.

The Christian cosmology is neither open nor closed, it is controlled. That is the case. It is a system that God has made, which does follow certain rules, and that’s why we can have science. But even in the operation of those rules, God never relinquishes control. It is not that God has started the watch going and it’s ticking away quite nicely, thank you, and God can just keep in His own little corner. No, no, the Bible can speak of scientific things happening. The Bible also knows that the water cycles, water that runs to the sea and comes up again. But it also speaks of God sending the rain, and God sending the hail, and God sending the sun, and God making the flowers grow, and God clothing the fields, and God giving the birds enough to eat.

And so, the universe is a controlled universe. And for that reason, to Him, it is nothing particularly marvelous that He should simply supersede some of these temporarily established laws and do what we call a miracle, which simply means that the thing isn’t done the way He ordinarily does it, that’s all it means. Now, the point is this message is only learnable by those who have adopted a biblical cosmology. Those who adopt a biblical cosmology and see the way the universe operates look…these people look at the flowers in the fields and the grass and they do not think, this crop depends on the [inaudible 00:55:16] chlorophyll. They might be right, but that’s not what they see. They see God’s hands behind the chlorophyll. They do not look at the bird and say, marvelous aerodynamics there. Really, it’s remarkable what evolution has done, it is. Rather, they see God’s care for that little creature. God’s providential [inaudible 00:55:45], so that not even a bird falls off the heavens without God’s [inaudible 00:55:50].

That is why in Hebrews 1 we read of Jesus Christ, who is the perfect exerciser of all of God’s sovereignty. God’s sovereignty is mediated through Jesus. [inaudible 00:56:03] he is full of all things by the word of his power. Therefore, the failure to see this principle initiated by Jesus about his providential care for his own, the failure to see that lesson means that we incur the charge at the end of verse 30, “We are men of little faith.” Men of little faith. Then there’s the renewed [inaudible 00:56:44] in verses 31-32 on the distinctiveness of living as heirs of the kingdom with its perspectives and views. “So do not worry saying what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear, for the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.”

At the end of Chapter 5:46-47, Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? [inaudible 00:57:29] so unique, so aligned to the kingdom’s values so you stand out. The others will worry about these things, we needn’t. We know the Father and we may trust Him.” This seems that in our attitudes when we face difficulties, we must not come across as those who do not know the Lord.

Our worries must not sound like the worries of the world. So you think the pressure of exams, so you are under some financial hardships. When you [inaudible 00:58:11] your worries, therefore, do they sound like any non-Christian, any pagan [inaudible 00:58:16] his worries? The Lord knows you need these things. He knows that you need your sleep. He knows that you need your concentration. He knows that you need enough to eat and to drink, enough to wear. And therefore, Christians who have really come to grips with trusting the Lord every day, they will not sound quite so complaining. They will not sound so [inaudible 00:58:48], so doubtful, they will not sound so uncertain, so resentful. They will stand out and not be like pagans, away of secular thinking and Christian word.

Part of our problem in coming to a passage like this is that our worries do not have to do with food and drink and clothes by and large. If you see in 1st-century Palestine that wasn’t so, most workers, laborers, got paid by the day [inaudible 00:59:34] today, or if there was a surplus in the labor market, or if the laborers got sick, they missed their day’s pay, they couldn’t fall back on the welfare state. It might mean that the family would go hungry. I must say it seemed a little bit biased. And so the daily concerns of food and drink was very much uppermost in their minds. To understand the pressure of this passage, therefore, the way it speaks to us in the 20th century, do not relate its worries to our chief ones. I don’t know what your key worries are. I can guess at this time of year. But whatever it is you’re worrying about most, it’s that sort of thing that Jesus is going after here.

I was hesitating for a moment as to whether or not I would tell you another story from Canada, but I shall. And again, it concerns my father. We are all young here, by and large. Most of us have never really experienced real hardship. But our parents lived through the war years and before that, through the depression. My father was pastor of a church in a lower-class area of Montreal during the height of the Depression when the family was very, very young. I remember nothing of it. One Christmas, he collected all the Christmas parcels together that the church had gathered for the poor in the district and put them on a pity wagon and distributed them with others among these families. Then he went home. And those were Depression years. What you had on that December 25, less than a [inaudible 01:01:49] was a bit of bread and a can of beans, that’s what we get. And so my mother and my father, I found this out a few years later when I was 20 years old, got down on their knees and thanked the Lord for the provisions He had made. They told no one. Within half an hour a knock came at the door, and a family had invited us to Christmas dinner.

I don’t pretend to know what’s coming in the years ahead in this country. I’m not a prophet nor the son of a prophet. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we in the West face very grim years, years in part of God’s judgment upon us. Perhaps we will face things just like that. We are not exceptional. We are not exceptional. Christians face that sort of thing all the time. But where did the pressures of worry concern our food and our drink, our daily provisions, all the [inaudible 01:03:06] pressures that we have to face?

The crucial point comes in verse 33, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” We read at the end of the previous verse, “Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. If you look back to the birds, and if you look back to the flowers, won’t He look after His own children?” Our part is not to worry about these necessities, rather our part is today to seek God’s kingdom, obedience to His saving grace, and His righteousness. Worries must never control our commitment to God’s kingdom and His righteousness. And worries must never be permitted to make us act and fret and fear as if God did not love us. Those are the two things on which this injunction [inaudible 01:04:18]. Worries must never control our commitment to God’s kingdom and righteousness. And worries must never be permitted to make us act and fret or fear that God did not love us. We are to seek, it is a present imperative to get the unceasing quest to seek and to seek and to go on seeking and constantly still to seek and ever to seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness and all these other things will be given to you as well.

There is a general rule here as well as a specific promise and comfort. It is fairly well known I think that the Puritans in their day eventually became very rich and well to do. Nor was it because they were [inaudible 01:05:07], nor wasn’t because they [inaudible 01:05:09]. In fact, Puritan historians will tell you with one accord that the Puritans could look to others with a straight face, look at them in the eye, and say, “If you want to see the effect of the gospel, look at our simple lifestyle.” I wonder how many Christians in the West can say that today. But the Puritans said that regularly and commended their gospel along those lines. But at the same time, they were industrious, they were hard working. They didn’t [inaudible 01:05:39] their money.

How much does a box of fags cost in this country at the moment, does anybody know? How much does a pack of fags cost? Thirty-three? All right, so supposing a person goes through a pack a day, and there’s 2 of you in a family to do it, there’s 62 a day. Multiply that by a year. Throw into that a great deal of time spent in the local pub, and you’ve easily burnt through 500 quid. Hard to believe, but it’s the truth. You see, even in the little realms of fidelity, not frittering away money, but doing an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, for working industriously and honestly so that you do [inaudible 01:06:24] good work, there is a sense in which a person does find that all these things are [inaudible 01:06:29] to Him.

Now, what must not be said…and this I’m ashamed to say is a very common teaching in North America and it is utterly to be abhorred. The impression that must not be given as if we are to be holy so that we can have these things. That’s not the idea at all. Rather, we are with single-eyed devotion to serve the kingdom of God, we are to be righteous and let the Lord look at these other things, and they will come. He will provide us with our needs. And if He provides us with more gracious ways of doing things, then that gives us more to extend liberally upon others.

There is one final reason for the abolition of worry, it is a lovely one. “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” I think Jesus is being slightly humorous here. Our gracious God intends us to be responsible today not to stress about tomorrow. He intends us to take one step at a time, no more. We are to seek God’s kingdom today, tomorrow has its own share of troubles. But He hasn’t commissioned us to worry about those. He’s commissioned us rather to be holy, to seek His kingdom today, that is what He’s commissioned us to do. And if there are new troubles tomorrow, to believe [inaudible 01:08:14] in the word of Lamentations 3, that, “The steadfast covenant love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning.” Great advice. Amen.