Following the Way of Jesus

God’s Kingdom is Here! - Let it be your Treasure.

Matthew 6:19-34

Jesus, our King is telling us the lifestyle we ought to adopt in His KIngdom and the wisdom we ought to live by as we live in this world.

At no point does he makes things easy - Love your enemies.  Pray for those that persecute you.  Do good to those who wrong you.  Rid your life of anger.  If someone strikes you on one side of the face, turn the other side to them and offer to take another blow! Crazy right?

There is no easy message in the sermon on the Mount. Why? Because when God’s Kingdom invades our Kingdom, it flies in the face of all of this world’s values, all those values we adopted when we were kings in our own little kindom.

However, if we want to hold onto our kingdom, we’re going to do so by rejecting the kingdom of heaven.  In order to accept the kingdom of God, we’ve got to let go of our own kingdom and that goes against the grain of everything inside of us that wants to hold on.

This strikes us forcibly again here in relation to our treasures! We work hard for these and we want to ensure that we keep hold of them but in order to do so, that will involve us in a whole lot of worry. This is what Jesus addresses here! Ratehjr than building up treasures on earth, God’s Kingdom is here. Let it be your treasure.

1. Build up Treasures in Heaven not Treasures on Earth - vs 19-24

“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. “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! “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.”

There is nothing wrong per-se with treasures on earth - we all have them and they take many forms, not just material treasures. The issue is whether or not these treasures are the most important things in our lives. Its an issue of “where the heart is!”

Consider that God promised Israel in Deuteronomy 28: “Now it shall be, if you will diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country” (vv. 1–3).

Nothing wrong with treasures; they are blessings from God BUT those blessings are clearly and repeatedly contingent on obedience to the Lord. Material or other earthly benefits that are accumulated by greed, dishonesty, deceit, or in any other immoral way are not to be conceived of as blessings from the Lord. So, to claim God’s approval simply on the basis of one’s wealth, health, or status in society was to go way beyond what God’s word actually says and indeed the pursuit of wealth for its own sake is discouraged in both Old and New Testaments - “Do not weary yourself to gain wealth, cease from your consideration of it” (Prov. 23:4).

And Paul established the proper attitude when he said that “godliness actually is a means of great gain, when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. And if we have food and covering, with these we shall be content” (1 Tim. 6:6–8).

Contentment with what we have is what is an essentially materialistic world is really very difficult. As John Stott acnowledged when he said, “Worldly ambition has a strong fascination for us. The spell of materialism is very hard to break” (Christian Counter-Culture [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1978], p. 154).

One of the supreme tests of our spiritual lives, then, is how we now relate to material possessions. 16 of the 38 parables of Jesus deal with money. 1 out of 10 verses in the New Testament deals with that subject. Scripture offers about 500 verses on prayer, fewer than 500 on faith, and over 2000 on money. The believer’s attitude toward money and possessions is indicative of where his faith truly lies.

We Christian need to remember and live by these words - money, wealth, possessions and even the legitimate stuff of life is not wrong in itself but to be so absorbed in these that they become gods to us is to fall into the sin of idolatry! - “My little children, keep yourselves from idols”(1 John 5:21).

Jesus calls upon as citizens of the Kingdom of God to be mindful of the allurements of wealth. He warns us agains the danger of the enticements and the entanglements of the pursuit of wealth and worldy treasure as a means to steal away our hearts from God - Those who want to be rich, however, fall into temptation and become ensnared by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction.For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.(1 Tim 6:9-10).

So, in vs 19-24, Jesus draws a contrast between earthly possessions and heavenly ones. All that we have here is liable to decay and may even be stolen from us. But if our hearts and our treasures are in heaven, we will have something solid and lasting that can never be removed from us.

Jesus also warns against a divided heart sayint that it it is impossible for both God and possessions to be our masters. The heart can be devoted to one master only.

So Jesus says to us:

a. Watch what you “lay up.” - Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (6:19–21)

Layup (thēsaurizō) and treasures (thēsauros), come from the same Greek word and gives us our English word thesaurus which is a treasury of words. So literally it reads, “do not treasure up treasures for yourselves.” It carries the connotation of stacking things horizontally, as one stacks coins and in the context of this passage the idea is that of stockpiling or hoarding wealth for storage and safekeeping and to ensure future security (see Luke 12:16–21).

Now there is nothing wrong with this - this is after all good stewardship. Jesus is not advocating poverty as a means to spirituality. Both the Old and New Testaments recognize the right to material possessions, including money, land, animals, houses, clothing, and every other thing that is honestly acquired. The foundational truth that underlies the commandments not to steal or covet suggests the the right of personal property. Stealing and coveting are wrong because what is stolen or coveted rightfully belongs to someone else.

And indeed, the Bible counsels individuals to work hard - “by wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches” (Prov 24:3–4).“in all labor there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty” (Prov 14:23) follow good business practices; deposit monies as security (cf. Matt. 25:27).; to learn from the ant as a model of the good worker, who “prepares her food in the summer, and gathers her provision in the harvest” (Prov. 6:6–8). Paul tells us that parents are responsible for saving up for their children (2 Cor. 12:14), that “if anyone will not work, neither let him eat” (2 Thess. 3:10), and that “if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. 5:8).

So what is the danger here? Perhaps the key to understadnding Jesus’ warning here is in the word “yourselves.”

In Jesus day, wealth was frequently measured in part by clothing. Rich people sometimes had golden threads woven into their clothing, both to display and to store their wealth. But the best clothes were made of wool, which the moth loves to eat; and even the richest persons had difficulty protecting their clothes from the insects.

Wealth was also often held in grain, as we see from the parable of the rich farmer who said, “I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods” (Luke 12:18). Brōsis (rust) literally means “an eating,” and is translated with that meaning everywhere in the New Testament but here (see Rom. 14:17; 1 Cor. 8:4, “eating”; 2 Cor. 9:10, “food”; and Heb. 12:16, “meal”). It seems best to take the same meaning here, in reference to grain that is eaten by rats, mice, worms, and insects.

Almost any kind of wealth, of course, is subject to being stolen, which is why many people buried their nonperishable valuables in the ground away from the house, often in a field (see Matt. 13:44). Jesus speaks of theives breaking in, literally to “dig through,” which could refer to digging through the mud walls of a house or digging up the dirt in a field. Nothing we own is completely safe from destruction or theft. And even if we keep our possessions perfectly secure during our entire lives, we are certainly separated from them at death.

When we accumulate possessions simply for our own sakes—whether to hoard or to spend selfishly and extravagantly—those possessions become idols. And this is the real danger. The selfish pursuit of wealth in order to secure one’s future comforts and insure against some future calamity is both futile and dangerously misguided.

This was the problem with the Rich, Young Ruler. The reason Jesus challenged him to “sell your possessions and give to the poor” (Matt. 19:21) is precisely because all of his status and reputation for moral correctness arose from his wealth. He could buy anything he desired and he thought he could buy “eternal life” as well. The young man’s wealth was his idol, and therefore became a barrier that had to be removed. It was a price he would not pay! Possessions were the first priority. His treasure was on earth, in the wrong place as far as eternal life is concerned!

Jesus goes on to point out that a person’s most cherished possessions are inseparable from his deepest desires - for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. They will either both be earthly or both be heavenly. It is impossible to have one on earth and the other in heaven (cf. James 4:4). That is why Jesus says: “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.”(v24). Just as we cannot have our treasures both in earth and in heaven or our bodies both in light and in darkness, we cannot have God as our master(Grk: kurios - Lord) and money as out master at the same time. erve two masters.

The idea behind this is the master-slave relationship. By definition, a slave owner has total control of the slave. For a slave there is no such thing as partial or part-time obligation to his master. He owes full-time service to a full-time master. He is owned and totally controlled by and obligated to his master. He has nothing left for anyone else. To give anything to anyone else would make his master less than master. It is not simply difficult, but absolutely impossible, to serve two masters and fully or faithfully be the obedient slave of each.

Over and over the New Testament speaks of Christ as Lord and Master and of Christians as His bondslaves. Paul tells us that before we were saved we were enslaved to sin, which was our master. But when we trusted in Christ, we became slaves of God and of righteousness (Rom. 6:16–22).

We cannot claim Christ as Lord if our allegiance is to anything or anyone else, including ourselves. And when we know God’s will but resist obeying it, we give evidence that our loyalty is other than to Him. We can no more serve two masters at the same time than we can walk in two directions at the same time. We will either … hate the one and love the other, or … hold to one and despise the other. As John Calvin said, “Where riches hold the dominion of the heart, God has lost His authority” (A Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 1. p. 337).

Our treasure is either on earth or in heaven, our spiritual life is either full of light or of darkness, and our master is either God or mammon (possessions, earthly goods). “The orders of those two masters are diametrically opposed and cannot coexist. The one commands us to walk by faith and the other demands we walk by sight. The one calls us to be humble and the other to be proud, the one to set our minds on things above and the other to set them on things below. One calls us to love light, the other to love darkness. The one tells us to look toward things unseen and eternal and the other to look at things seen and temporal.’(John MacArthu

b. Lay up treasures in Heaven:

It is worth obsering that there is no universal command which requires ALL OF US ro go sell all we have and give to the poor.

The story of Annanias and Saphira in Acts 5 shows that money was never required but offered freely by God’s people and belonged to them to distrubute as they wished.

However, God does expects His people to be generous. He also expects them not only to be thankful for but to enjoy the blessings He gives, including the material blessings and to recongise that the Lord “richly supplies us with all things to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17). And Paul expected the rich in the church “not to be conceited and not to put their hope in the uncertainty of wealth, but in God, who richly provides all things for us to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, and to be generous and ready to share, treasuring up for themselves a firm foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”(1 Tim 6:17-19).

God’s principle for His people has always been, “Honor the Lord from your wealth, and from the first of all your produce; so your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine” (Prov. 3:9–10). Jesus said, “Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, they will pour into your lap. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return” (Luke 6:38). Paul assures us that “he who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows bountifully shall also reap bountifully” (2 Cor. 9:6).

At the end of His parable about the dishonest but shrewd steward, Jesus said, “I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the mammon of unrighteousness; that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9). Our material possessions are “unrighteous” in the sense of not having any spiritual value in themselves. But if we invest them in the welfare of human souls, the people who are saved or otherwise blessed because of them will someday greet us in heaven with thanksgiving.I

It is possible that both our treasures upon earth and our treasures in heaven can involve money and other material things. Possessions that are wisely, lovingly, willingly, and generously used for kingdom purposes can be a means of accumulating heavenly possessions. When our time, energy, and possessions are used to serve others and to further the Lord’s work, we build up heavenly resources that are completely free from destruction or theft.

Jesus wants the laying up of treasures in Heaven to be our focus - to have a “single eye” on investing in things of the Kingdom of God - “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!”(vs 22-23).

Jesus says to us “if your eyes are good” - the Greek word is “haplous” which means “clear” or even “single” as in the King James Version.

An eye that is clear represents a heart that has single-minded devotion. “The eye” is an inlet for the mind and heart. The eye is the lens, of the body, through which all light comes to us. It is the only channel of light we possess, and therefore our only means of vision. The eye also informs the mind, allowing the brain to make sense of and respond to the vision it brings. This has a knock on effect to the whole body - Look lion! Run. Look, the kids have jus arrived home. Hug! However, an eye that can’t see leads to blindness.

The spiritual application here is that the person with an eye to the treasure in heaven has a body full of light whereas the opposite is true for those who lay up treasures in Heaven.

What we love most and spend time with most is what we value most. J. C. Ryle said, “Singleness of purpose is one great secret of spiritual prosperity” (Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. Matthew, p. 56).

And this links to what Jesus speaks of next - worry! - If we see life through the world’s materialistic lens of wealth and abundance then having a lack of those things will lead to worry and fear and inecurity. But if we embrace Jesus perspective and trust God for our wealth and security them our whole eye will be full of light because this world is “God-bathed”(Dallas Willard) and a perfectly safe place for us to be, even when it feels unsafe. If we are able to adopt this narrative then instead of worry and fear being our dominant narrative, we’ll actually be able to live a life of peace. 

G. Campbell Morgan wrote: You are to remember with the passion burning within you that you are not the child of to-day. You are not of the earth, you are more than dust; you are the child of tomorrow, you are of the eternities, you are the offspring of Deity. The measurements of your lives cannot be circumscribed by the point where blue sky kisses green earth. All the fact of your life cannot be encompassed in the one small sphere upon which you live. You belong to the infinite. If you make your fortune on the earth—poor, sorry, silly soul—you have made a fortune, and stored it in a place where you cannot hold it. Make your fortune, but store it where it will greet you in the dawning of the new morning. (The Gospel According to Matthew [New York: Revell, 1929], pp. 64–65)

The person whose master is Jesus Christ can say that, when he eats or drinks or does anything else, he does “all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). He can say with David, “I have set the Lord continually before me” (Ps. 16:8), and with Caleb when he was eighty-five years old, “I followed the Lord my God fully” (Josh. 14:8).

This is a real challenge and its one I must face - one all of us must face in this life of discipleship. It is not easy! In fact, withour the grace of God and the help of the Holy Spirit it is impossible. But by the grace of God, I can put Him and His Kingdom first!

2. Don’t Worry about your Life Be concerned for God’s Kingdom! - vs 25-34

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, 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? 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? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or 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 is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 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. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

The problem with absorption in earthly treasure is that it bings with it a whole lot of worry!

“Therefore I tell you...” - refers back to the previous verse, in which Jesus declares that a Christian’s only Master is God. He is therefore saying, “Because God is your Master, do not worry about your life!” A bondslave’s only responsibility is to his master, and for believers to worry is to doubt him and be disobedient to Him.

Whether rich or poor; concerns to secure your future treasure inevitably cost us a lot of emotional energy. Whether rich or poor we perhaps have all found ourselves at times spending inordinate amounts of time worrrying about In what we eat, drink, and wear, the necessities of life that we must have to exist, whilst understandable is also harmful and futile to the person of faith. Why? Because the person of faith is told to pray “give us this day our daily bread” - trusting God for provision not worrying about it.

In the Greek, the command “do not worry” includes the idea of stopping what is already being done. In other words, we are to stop worrying, implying that we have been worrying!

The English term worry comes from an old German word meaning to strangle, or choke. That is exactly what worry does; it is a kind of mental and emotional strangulation, which probably causes more mental and physical afflictions than any other single cause. Someone has said, “Worry is a thin stream of fear that trickles through the mind, which, if encouraged, will cut a channel so wide that all other thoughts will be drained out.”

Jesus moves us from the concern to be rich to the concerns of the poor - what shall we eat, drink wear?

This is an understandable concern and it gives rise to a fear, leading to insecurity and uncertainty of life around the basic necessities of life? Most western Christians have never been there, we have on the contrary such abundance, that we are not often worried about these things.

In Jesus day though, in a dry; arid; war-torm land food and water could seldom be taken for granted. Shortage of water naturally brought shortage of food, which seriously affected the whole economy and made clothes harder to buy. Yet Jesus said, do not be anxious for any of those things.

The heart of Jesus’ message is: Don’t worry— even about necessities. For though these things are important, the Lord knows and cares about our need of them and most importantly He cares for us so much but these are not the most important things of life! Feeding and caring for the body are not mroe important that feeding and caring for the soul!

Worry Is unnecessary because God is our Father and He will take care of us!

“ Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his life’s span? And why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these. But if God so arrays the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more do so for you, O men of little faith? (6:26–30)

a. Don’t worry about food:

To illustrate His point Jesus asks us to look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? (6:26)

As an object lesson, Jesus calls our attention to the fact that birds do not have intricate and involved processes for acquiring food. They do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Like every creature, birds have their life from God and the Lord has provided them with an abundance of food resources and the instinct to find those resources for themselves and their offspring. Your heavenly Father feeds them. He “prepares for the raven its nourishment, when its young cry out to God” (Job 38:41; cf. Ps. 147:9). If God so carefully takes care of such relatively insignificant creatures as birds, how much more will He take of those who are created in His own image, and who have become His children through faith? Are you not worth much more than they?

Jesus does not suggest that birds do nothing to feed themselves. If we observe them they are diligent and persistent in foraging for food. But they do not worry about where their next meal is going to come from. They gather food until they have enough, and then go about whatever other business they may have until time for the next meal. They never worry about or stockpile their food. In their own limited way they illustrate what we should know: that the heavenly Father feeds them.

“Are you not worth more than they?” - Quite a controversial thing to say in the modern world but Jesus is quite clear that humans are the crown of creation as they alone are made in the image of God and Christians are recreated in the image of Christ. No bird was ever promised heirship with Jesus Christ throughout all eternity. And if God gives and sustains life for birds, will He not take care of us who are His children and who have been given all those glorious promises?

b. Don’t worry about life!

"And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his life’s span?”(6:27). This has to do with life expectancy.

“Your life” - Grk: Psuchē (life) is a comprehensive term that encompasses all of a person’s being. The soul of the person —physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Jesus is referring to life in its fullest possible sense. Absolutely nothing in any aspect of our lives, internal or external, justifies our being anxious when we have the Master we do.

Modern society is obsessed with trying to lengthen life. We exercise, eat carefully, supplement our diets with vitamins and minerals, get regular medical checkups, and do countless other such things in the hope of adding a few years to our lives.

But God has bounded the life of every person. “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”(Psa 139:16). Exercise, good eating, and other common-sense practices are beneficial when done in a reasonable way and looked at in the right perspective. They no doubt can improve the quality and productivity of our lives, but they will not force God into extending our life’s span.

You can worry yourself to death, but not to life. Dr. Charles Mayo, of the famous Mayo Clinic, wrote, “Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands and the whole nervous system. I have never met a man or known a man to die of overwork, but I have known a lot who died of worry.”

“The gift of life is a gift from God to be used for His purposes, for spiritual and heavenly reasons, not selfish and earthly ones. Our concern should be to obey, honor, please, and glorify Him, leaving everything else to His wisdom and care.”(John MacArthur)

c. Don’t worry about clothing!

"And why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these. But if God so arrays the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more do so for you, O men of little faith? (6:28–30)

Using flowers as an illustration, Jesus addressed himsef to some people who were so poor that they had little in the way of clothing. He assures them of God’s concern and provision. The lilies of the field (a general term used of the wild flowers that in great variety and beauty grace the fields and hillsides of Galilee). Those beautiful decorations of nature make no effort to grow and had no part in designing or coloring themselves. They do not toil nor do they spin, Jesus said, stating the obvious; yet I say to you even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these. in terms of the amazing detail, shading, and coloring of a flower, its intricacy anbd delicacy.

Despite their beauty, however, flowers do not last long. Along with the grass of the field, they are alive today and tomorrow thrown into the furnace or oven (Grk: Klibanos). Such ovens were made of hardened clay and were used primarily for baking bread(hence kilns). When a woman wanted to hurry the baking process, she would build a fire inside the oven as well as under it. Fuel for the inside heating was usually composed of dried grass and flowers gathered from nearby fields. Once the flower’s beauty was gone it had little use except to be burned up as fuel for baking. Then it was gone.

Again we are asked to reconsider our values.

So many of us have so many items of clothing that we cabbot and do not wear them all. Many people have made a god out of fashion, and shamelessly waste money on expensive clothes they will wear but a few times.

Our worries today are seldom for necessary clothing. If Jesus told those who had but one simple garment not to worry about their clothing, what would He say to us?

If God bothers to array the grass of the field with beautiful but short-lived flowers, how much more is He concerned to clothe and care for His very own children who are destined for eternal life?

d. Seek God’s Kingdom & Righteousness:

Within this series of warnings about the dangers of worry, Jesus gives a positive command coupled with a beautiful promise: But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.

(i). Seek God’s Kingdom:

The cause of worry is seeking the things of this world, and the cause of contentment is seeking the things of God’s kingdom and His righteousness so Jesus says in effect. “Rather than seeking and worrying about food, drink, and clothing like unbelievers focus your attention and hopes on the things of the Lord and He will take care of all your needs.”

Give priority to two things, the Lord says: God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. God’s Kingdom is the dominion or rule of God as Lord of our lives. Seeking God’s kingdom is losing ourselves in obedience to the Lord to the extent that we can say with Paul, “I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, in order that I may finish my course, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).

To seek first God’s kingdom is to pour out our lives in the eternal work of our heavenly Father. To seek God’s kingdom is seek to win people into that kingdom, that they might be saved and God might be glorified. It is to have our heavenly Father’s own truth, love, and righteousness manifest in our lives, and to have “peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17).

(ii). Seek God’s Righteousness:

Instead of longing after the things of this world, we are to hunger and thirst for the things of God, which are characterized above all else by God’s perfect righteousness and holiness. It is more than longing for something ethereal and future; it is also longing for something present and practical.

We not only are to have heavenly expectations but holy lives (see Col. 3:2–3). “Since all these things [the earth and its works, v. 10] are to be destroyed in this way,” Peter says, “what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Pet. 3:11).

Conlusion & Application:

To summarise, to be anxious even about things which we need to survive, Jesus says, is not only futile, it is faithless.

It is significant that each of the four other times Jesus used the phrase “O men [or “you”] of little faith,” it was also in relation to worry about food, clothing, or life span (see Matt. 8:26; Matt 14:31; Matt 16:8; Luke 12:28). This shows that as disciples we may well have the faith that saves, but we need that faith that trusts God for the mundane, ever day things of ordinary life and living.

We believe that God can redeem us from sin, break the shackles of Satan, take us to heaven where He has prepared a place for us and keep us for all eternity, and yet we do not trust Him to supply our daily needs?

Don’t worry says Jesus! Trust God’s love and His integrity. Trust His willingness as your heavenly Father to keep His Word and His promises.

(i). Worry shows that we are mastered by our circumstances and by our own limited perspectives rather than by God’s Word.

Worry is debilitating and destructive. Worry pushes the Lord even further from our minds.

It is the mark of “pagans” to “run after” and worry about our the things of this world as the udnerlying philosophy is d, because a mind that is not centered on God is a mind that has cause to worry. The faithful, trusting, and reasonable Christian is “anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving [lets his] requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6). He refuses in anyway to “be conformed to this world” (Rom. 12:2).

Paul counsels us as he did the Ephesians: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might” (Eph. 1:18–19)

(ii). Worry Is a waste of nervous energy and depletes future resources of trust:

Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (6:34)

Making reasonable provisions for tomorrow is sensible, but to be anxious for tomorrow is foolish and unfruitful. It is also to lose sight of God and trust in His provision!

God is the God of tomorrow as well as the God of today and of eternity. “The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness” (Lam. 3:22–23). I

Tomorrow will take care of itself, Jesus assures us. That’s not a fatalistic statement that is trust! God has it in hand - it is in his heavenly Father’s hands.

That each day has enough trouble of its own is not a call to worry about that trouble, but to concentrate on meeting the temptations, trials, opportunities, and struggles we have today, relying on our Father to protect and provide as we have need. There is enough trouble in each day without adding the distress of worry to it.

God promises His grace for tomorrow and for every day thereafter and through eternity. But He does not give us grace for tomorrow now.

He only gives His grace a day at a time as it is needed, not as it may be anticipated. “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal(Isa. 26:3–4).

(iii). Worry should give way to contentment:

Worry is the opposite of contentment, which should be a believer’s normal and consistent state of mind.

We believers should aspire to say with the Apostle Paul, “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need” (Phil. 4:11–12; cf. 1 Tim. 6:6–8).

Let our contentment be found in God - in His ownership, control, and provision of everything we possess and will ever need.

Let us remember that God owns everything, including the entire universe - “The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it” (Ps. 24:1). Everything we now have belongs to the Lord, and everything we will ever have belongs to Him. Why, then, do we worry about His taking from us what really belongs to Him? One day when he was away from home someone came running up to John Wesley saying, “Your house has burned down! Your house has burned down!” To which Wesley replied, “No it hasn’t, because I don’t own a house. The one I have been living in belongs to the Lord, and if it has burned down, that is one less responsibility for me to worry about.”

And that reminds us to be content because God controls everything - “You rule over all, and in your hand is power and might; and it lies in your hand to make great, and to strengthen everyone” (1 Chron. 29:12). Daniel declared, “Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, for wisdom and power belong to Him. And it is He who changes the times and the epochs; He removes kings and establishes kings; He gives wisdom to wise men, and knowledge to men of understanding” (Dan. 2:20–21). What a difference this made to Daniel! Remember when in chapter 6, Daniel was cast into the lion’s den and the Lord delivered him. The worried one was the King Daius who we are told “sleep fled from him.” whilst Daniel apparently slept soundly next to the lions, whose mouths had been closed by an angel (Dan 6:18–23).

Let us learn to be content because the Lord provides everything. The supreme owner and controller is also the supreme provider—Jehovah-Jireh, which means “the Lord who provides.” (Gen. 22:14). If Abraham, with his limited knowledge of God, could be so trusting and content, how much more should we who know Christ and who have His whole written Word? As the apostle assures us, “God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19). - “He who did not spare His only Son, but gave Him up for us all. How will he not, also along with Him, graciously give us all things?”(Rom 8).

God’s Kingdom is Here! - Let it be your Treasure.