DO NOT BE ANXIOUS - MATTHEW 6:25-34

Do Not Be Anxious

6:25-34

Anxiety is an emotional and physical state brought on by worry and fear. It can cause your heart rate to go up and your breathing to get fast and shallow. It can keep you from sleeping and even eating. In extreme forms, it becomes a disorder which causes panic attacks. 

Everyone experiences anxiety at some point in life. When you are a student, a looming test can cause it. Performing in public, being summoned to a meeting with your boss, or being given a task you do not know how to complete can cause anxiety. There are many other causes and you can probably name several.

Money, or the lack of it, can cause anxiety. Worrying about how you will pay a large bill, worrying that your money will run out before the next paycheck, worrying if you will get fired from your job, all of these can be anxiety producing events.

In Jesus’ time, many people lived day to day. A man had to work for a day to get money to buy food for tomorrow. If he did not get work, his family did not eat. Clothes might wear out and need replacing when there was no money to do so.

Incredulously, then, Jesus said “do not be anxious about your life”, including food, drink, and clothes. 

Notice, though, that Jesus began his command with the word “therefore”. In other words, based on what he has already said, do not be anxious. 

So, what did he say? He said to pray for daily bread. (6:11) Ask God and trust him to provide what is needed for the day. The implication is that he will provide for the needs of his people. 

He also said for us to avoid focusing on money, for we cannot serve both God and money. (6:19-24) 

Therefore, based on these principles, we should not be anxious about our lives. He made two points about this.

First, life is more than food and clothing. Those things are necessary, but are not all of life. I think he is speaking of spiritual things here. Life is about loving and serving God, thereby laying up treasures in heaven. 

The Westminster Larger Catechism puts it this way in question 1: 

Q. 1. What is the chief and highest end of man?
A. Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.

Second, we should know God will provide for our needs. He gives examples of this. First, the birds do not sow or reap, yet God feeds them. (26) He refers to God here as “your heavenly Father”, the one who loves us and takes care of us as well as the birds. And we are more valuable to him than the birds. So, if he feeds them, how much more will he feed us. 

Second, the flowers of the field do not work to get clothes, yet they are made beautiful in appearance. Even Solomon did not have this glorious appearance. And we are more valuable than the flowers. They are taken away and burned up. If he loathed them, how much more will he clothe us? 

Jesus also pointed out that being anxious will not add even an hour to our life span. It does not accomplish anything. And we know that anxiety can actually hurt you. 

Jesus called those who are anxious about such things “you of little faith”. He said that to people on several occasions in the gospels, each time when people panicked and did not believe he would take care of them. 

He said it to the Twelve when they panicked over a storm that arose on the Sea of Galilee and were worried their boat would sink. (Matthew 8:26)

He said it to Peter when he walked on water, then became afraid and sank. (Matthew 14:31) 

He said it again to the Twelve when they forgot to bring bread, but also after Jesus had just fed thousands from a few fish and small loaves of bread. 

And, last, he said it to the Twelve when they could not cast a demon out of a boy. (Matthew 17:14-21) Then he said it only takes a small faith, like a mustard seed, to do even what seems to be impossible. 

If we become anxious about these matters, we act like those who do know God. Jesus called them Gentiles here. (32) That is because those who do not know God and trust him do not have a basis to believe he will take care of them. 

But those who know God know that he knows what we need. He knows we need money, food, drink, and clothing. (32) He tells us to ask him for them daily, but to do so knowing he knows even better than we what we need and that he will provide them for us. We are to live in faith daily, not worrying about tomorrow. The cares of today are sufficient for us. Or, as my mother used to say, “don’t borrow trouble”. 

What we are to do, as opposed to worrying about these things, is to seek his kingdom and righteousness first. (33) We seek to live as citizens of his kingdom, loving, serving, and obeying our king in heaven. And when we do, he will add all of these things to us.

Other writers of Scripture have reinforced this theme, this idea. Peter said to cast all our anxieties on God because he cares for us. (1 Peter 5:7) 

Most famous is Paul, who wrote “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made know to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. (Philippians 4:6-7) 

Instead of being anxious, we pray and ask God for our needs, with thanksgiving. He then will give us his peace to guard our hearts and minds and keep us from being anxious. 

The Doctrine of Providence concerns God’s direction of his creation. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) says it this way:

God the great Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy. 

A corollary of this doctrine is that God the Father provides for his children and directs them in life toward their sanctification and his glory. Romans 8:28 tells us “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Then, verse 32 tells us “He who did to spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

Believe, therefore, in the Father’s love for you. In love, he is able and willing to provide for you. 

Faith in God defeats anxiety. 

MONEY: THE KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE - MATTHEW 6:19-24

 Money: The Kingdom Perspective 

6:19-24

Having taught us to pray for our physical needs and to be dependent on God to provide for us, Jesus now goes further to explain these things in this passage. 

His first command is to not lay up treasures on earth for ourselves. He pointed out that earthly treasures are subject to loss. While today our treasures might be bank accounts or stocks and bonds, then wealth was largely in multiple items of clothing and food stocks in Israel. 

Here are some examples. In Luke 12:13-21, Jesus told a parable about a man who had a great harvest and planned to build bigger barns to store his crops. His wealth was in his crops. But, then, God said he would die that night and his stuff would belong to others. We often call this the parable of the rich fool. 

The point is, you cannot take it with you when you die and you do not know when life will end. 

Reaching back in time, we remember the story of Namaan. He offered payment to Elisha for his healing. Elisha refused, but his servant took two changes of clothing and some other things. (2 Kings 5) Namaan’s wealth was in clothing and gold. 

In Jesus’ time and place, clothes were made mostly of wool. They were very subject to being eaten by moths. You may have found little holes in a wool garment before if moths got into your closet. 

Rust could be any kind of corrosion or disease. They can kill crops. I had an uncle who tried farming beans and was wiped out by “bean rust”. 

In addition to natural causes, treasures are also lost to thieves. They could dig in through mud walls and steal things, or break through doors while the family was out. Today, house burglaries are so common many of us have alarm systems. 

We also have identity theft and hacking from modern thieves. There is investment fraud.

All of these things point to the transitory nature of wealth and the fact that it is not as secure as we often assume it is. 

In contrast, Jesus said to lay up treasures in heaven. (20) Those treasures are protected and not subject to the disasters of earthly treasures. 

But an additional reason, and the greatest reason, for this command is that our heart will be directed to where our treasure is. (19) 

Here is an example. Take a person who has never read a stock market report in their lives. They buy some stock. Now they check the market every day. The price of the stock becomes a huge issue for them. If it is up, they are happy; down and they are anxious.

I once had a church member and friend who had become rich tell me that most people did not understand how much of a burden it was to have a lot of money. I replied that it was only a burden if you let it be. She was shocked and asked me to explain. 

So I said, you could take all that money and put it in savings accounts or other investments and forget about it. It is a burden for you because you believe you have to work constantly to make the most money out of the money you have. You could just leave it alone. 

She thought about that for a minute and said “I can’t do that”. Despite being wealthy, she was unhappy and burdened. Her heart had turned to her treasures on earth and she lost the joy of heaven.

This proves the truth of Ecclesiastes 6:10, which says “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this is vanity.”

This principle is easily applied to those who are wealthy. It is easily applied to anyone but ourselves. But people of all economic levels can be fixated on money and possessions.  And that fixation is a spiritual cancer. We call it “materialism”. That is what verses 22-23 are about.

When you first read these verses it seems like a jarring iteration to the flow of the passage. But it’s not. It is an illustration and a metaphor.

The 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 lights your way. A blind person stumbles around in the dark, a sighted person is able to navigate the way.

It provides the orientation and the distancing, the direction for the person’s body. It is about focus. When you walk, you should focus on what is in front of you, your path. If you look around, you may stumble over what you should have seen in front of you. 

So, having an eye that is good suggests singleness of a good purpose and direction.

Light in the Bible is often a metaphor for the knowledge of God. For example, John wrote: “In him (Jesus) was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:4-5) And the psalmist wrote: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”. (Psalm 119:105) 

Where a person looks, what he takes in determines his direction in life. The whole body here is an Aramaic expression for your self. The eye lets in light. And if the eye is good, it determines you yourself the direction in which you are going. 

Here the idea is again, unswerving loyalty to the values of God’s kingdom.

To have a bad eye, in contrast, means an eye that is focused on the wrong things, even evil things. They distract you from the treasures of heaven. 

Verses 22-23 therefore restate the truth of the previous paragraph, that the way people handle their finances affects every other part of their lives, either for good or for bad”.

The idea here is a sense of single-minded purpose, undivided loyalty to God. The emphasis is on the focus and fidelity of your heart and mind. Jesus is not highlighting money or property but rather the need for total commitment to God and the cause of his kingdom. Wealth is simply one example of a rival for the devotion of your heart. 

That, then, is why Jesus says bluntly in verse 24 “no man can serve two masters. He will love only one and be devoted to it. You cannot serve both God and money. 

If the goal of your life is single-minded devotion to Jesus, neither possessions nor poverty will have any appreciable influence on your happiness. 

So, how do we lay up treasure that will last, treasures in heaven? We pursue those virtues already set forth in the Beatitudes, the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, and other teachings of Jesus. 

We seek holiness, obedience to God’s commandments, winning people to  Christ, and making disciples. It includes investing your life in what God is doing, which cannot be lost” 

Invest in your relationship with Jesus: in knowing and loving him more intimately and enjoying his knowledge and love for you. Invest in other people. 

THE MODEL PRAYER (Part 2) - Matthew 6:11-15

The first three petitions of the Model Prayer focused on God’s name, kingdom and will. But they are requests that God bring his people to hallow his name, submit to his reign, and do his will.

The remaining petitions request things for ourselves. 

This tells us it is acceptable to pray for ourselves and our needs. It should not  be the only thing we pray about, but God does want us to pray for our needs. Paul wrote: “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God”. (Philippians 4:6)

First, Jesus says we should pray that God give us our daily bread. Bread stands for all food. It might even stand for all our needs. It does not stand for give us everything we desire.

In Jesus’ time, many worked as day laborers. They got paid at the end of the day. They could use that money to buy food for the next day. If they did not work, they did not get paid. If they did not get paid, they did not eat. 

That is why the Old Covenant law condemned the withholding of daily wages. Leviticus 19:13 says “The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning”. Some in Jesus’ day did it anyway. James condemned the practice, saying “Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept  back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of tiger harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts”. (James 5:4)

You may not have been a day laborer, but you may have had times when you did not have enough money to feed your family or pay your rent. You might live “paycheck to paycheck”. 

This petition is for God to provide for those basic needs. It is not an excuse to not work. In fact, God may answer this prayer by providing work for you. 

But the emphasis is on daily needs, not long term needs. It is about dependance on God and not worrying about tomorrow. And it is about trusting God to provide for tomorrow. 

We have an example of this in the book of Exodus. The Israelites ran out of food in the wilderness. God rained manna from heaven on them. God rained manna from heaven on them day by day.

He did this for 40 years! 

They were only to gather enough for one day, except on the day before the Sabbath. (Exodus 16) God was teaching them to depend and rely on him day by day. 

Jesus will say more about this later in this chapter.

Paul picked up this theme when he wrote “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus”. (Philippians 4:19)

We not only need food for a good life, we need forgiveness of sins. Jesus tells us to pray for that. (12) The word debt here is a synonym for sin. Luke uses the word sin in his version of the prayer. (Luke 11:4)

Jesus is telling us to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness. We know that, when we do this, God forgives us. (1 John 1:9) Since sin separates us from our fellowship with God, we need daily forgiveness to stay in perfect communion with him. This is not about salvation, which is secure. It is about relationship. 

There is a picture of this in John 13:10. Jesus was washing the feet of the disciples. Peter wanted Jesus to wash his hands and head also to signify he was fully united with Jesus. But Jesus said: “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean”. 

Since God forgives our sins, we also forgive those who sin against us.

Once we have seen the gravity of our offenses against God, the sins of others against us seem trivial and easily forgiven. 

Verses 14 and 15 take this command even further. If we forgive others, God forgives us. If we do not forgive others, he will not forgive us. 

Jesus made this point later in Matthew 18:23-25.

In that story, a servant owed his king a very large debt. The king intended to sell him to obtain the payment. The servant begged for mercy and the king granted mercy to him. Then, the servant accosted a man who owed him a small sum. The man begged for mercy, but the servant did not grant it. He put him into debtor’s prison. When the king heard of this, he said “should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?” Then he put the servant into debtor’s prison. 

The point of the prayer then is that we are forgiven when we truly repent. Repentance is evidenced by having a forgiving spirit toward others.  

Finally, we are to ask God not to lead us into temptation (or testing) but to deliver us from evil. (13) This is a prayer for protection. Certainly, we want to avoid temptation when we can and resist it when we cannot avoid it. God can empower us to do this when we ask him.

We also want to be delivered from evil, or the evil one, when he attacks us. Some people believe they can rebuke Satan. I do not believe the Bible tells us that. Jude 1:9 says even the arch angel Michael did not do it, but rather said “the Lord rebuke you”. I have asked the Lord to rebuke Satan in certain situations and he has done it. 

We are to resist the devil, however. James 4:7 says “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

So this prayer is a model for you. You can use it to structure your prayers. And you can pray these words. Whatever you do, communicate with your Heavenly Father who loves, cares, and provides for you. 

THE MODEL PRAYER (Part 1) - MATTHEW 6:9-10

The Model Prayer

6:9-15

Instead of praying like the pagans with vain repetitions (empty phrases v.7; “babble repetitiously” NET), Jesus tells us how to pray simply and directly. Prayer is not seeing how many phrases we can string together. It is about meaningful communication with God. 

Jesus does not want us to speak words without our minds being engaged. That is the problem with reciting prayers someone else has written. You certainly can pray with those, as long as you are actually praying, communing with God. But, just reciting the words without engaging your mind to communicate with God is heaping up empty phrases. 

The Lord’s Prayer is rightly understood to be the most important prayer for Christians, but it’s more than that. J. I. Packer cites Tertullian, who called it a “summary of the gospel,” and Thomas Watson, who called it a “body of divinity.” Packer himself said the Lord’s Prayer is “a key to the whole business of living,” adding, “What it means to be a Christian is nowhere clearer than here.”

Notice Jesus did not say this is “what” to pray, but how to pray. (9) So, he evidently did not intend for this prayer to be liturgical. However, it is often employed that way. It often becomes a kind of chant.

Jesus said prayer was addressed to the Father, our Father in heaven. The Jews addressed God in prayer, but Jesus referred to God as “Father” and is the first to do so. Now tells us to do the same. 

This tells us that God is personal. He is not the impersonal power or spirit of the universe. And he is in heaven. He is the sovereign who rules over the universe. 

He relates to us as a “father”, establishing the relationship between him and Jesus’ disciples, who are his children. 1 John 3:2 says “Beloved, we are God’s children now”. 

He is also a loving father who wants to provide for his children. God is love. He loved us before we loved him. (1 John 4:16-19)

So we address our prayers to the sovereign ruler of the universe who cares for us as a loving father cares for his children. Addressing him as our Father in Heaven reminds us of who he is, giving us the right state of mind to pray. 

To do so reflects the great blessing believers have of being brought in to the family of God as his child. This makes us brothers and sisters of Jesus and fellow heirs with him.

However, this address also recognizes that each believer has an intimate relationship with God and speaks to him out of that relationship. 

As God’s children, we want God to be praised and recognized as holy. His name should be revered, especially among his children. God is holy. Therefore, his name is holy. And so we pray “hallowed be your name”. (9) "Hallowed" translates the Greek word hagiazō, meaning to treat as holy, sanctify, revere, or honor. We pray that God would make his name holy on this earth. 

We should cringe when we hear God’s name taken in vain. It violates the second commandment. (Exodus 20:7) And it it derogatory of the name of the one who made us, loves us, saves us, and provides for us. The Lord will not hold one guiltless who uses his name in vain. (Exodus 20:7) So we care about the holiness of God’s name and we are concerned about the consequences for those who defame his name in anyway. 

The second petition in the prayer is related to the first. We pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. (10)

God is already the sovereign king of the universe. But he began a special work of building the kingdom on earth through Jesus Christ his son. Jesus’ first words in the Gospel of Mark are: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel”. (Mark 1:15) So we know that the kingdom has been inaugurated by the coming of Christ. Or we might say it has broken in. It will be consummated when Christ returns. 

Therefore, when we pray “your kingdom come”, we are praying that God’s kingdom will be extended as he saves people. At the same time we are praying that the consummation of the kingdom will arrive. 

As God’s kingdom expands on earth, his will is done on earth as in heaven. But we also pray that God’s will be done now in the sense that our world will observe and obey God’s standards.