The Sermon on the Mount XVII

Subtitle:  Revealing Areas that are Pitfalls for Hypocrisy IV

Matthew 7:7-12.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 14, 2024.

Jesus finishes up this section by looking at our relationship with God through prayer (or lack thereof).  How can prayer become an area that is fraught with hypocrisy?  It can be so in the same way that prayer has always been a challenge to the flesh of us humans.

Are you challenged by prayer and sustaining a relationship with God through it?  Prayer is not easy on us, at least when we approach it as Jesus taught back in chapter 6.  Secret prayer is acid to our ego and our flesh.

Let’s look at our passage and get into this topic.

Hypocrisy in our prayer life (v. 7-12)

In verse seven, Jesus uses the command form of “asking, seeking and knocking” in his description of prayer.  We could say that these verbs represent different ways of describing prayer, or ways of thinking about prayer.  The command is to be doing something in the present because something else will happen in the future.  We should note that Jesus does not tell us how long that will be.  In fact, from the experience of the saints, we know that this period of time (from praying to receiving an answer to prayer) varies from an immediate answer to an answer that may be answered after our death.

Though you could infer this from verse 7, the addition of verse 8 makes clear that there is an implication of continuity in our prayers, persistence, perseverance.  Thus, we are to be asking in the present until that day in the future becomes today.  We should not confuse this with the earlier warning not to pray as if we will be heard by our many words.  That is pointing us towards simple prayers.  Whereas continuing to ask each day is not the same thing.  It is in truth continuing to have faith that God will answer.

When we feel that tendency to complain like this: “I asked God for such and such, but it didn’t happen,” we need to understand that our faith is being tested.  We need to wait upon the Lord’s answer in faith and trust, while continuing to ask. 

Now, let’s look at the same statement that is made in three different views of prayer.

The first is the idea of asking.  We come to God with a request.  Jesus essentially says for us to be asking and it will be given to you.  We may be asking for something tangible, like bread, or we may be asking for something less so, like wisdom.  Regardless Jesus emphasizes that his followers should be asking God with the expectation that they will receive from Him.

Sometimes we ask for things, but we haven’t thought through what it might look like for God to give it to us.  Wisdom is rarely given instantly as seems to be the case with Solomon (though it could be argued that it was not as immediate as people may think).  It typically comes through interactions with life and God’s help in the moment.  We then grow in wisdom as God helps us.  It doesn’t work like the futuristic movies that picture a person hooking their brain to a computer and downloading the skills to fly a military helicopter.  When we ask for wisdom, we should not expect to wake up as Solomon the next day.  However, we can be fully assured that God will help us to receive it in a multitude of many ways.

We might even ask ourselves (after asking God for something) this question.  What would be the righteous way to answer this?  What would be the good way that a loving, heavenly Father would answer this?  Asking our heaven Father for something involves maturing in our understanding of that process.  I didn’t know all of the things that my earthly parents were thinking about, but their answers and their timing helped me to grow in understanding them.  How much greater is this with God who is a perfect Father?  It is much more.

The second picture is that of seeking something from God (or even seeking deeper relationship with God).  Seeking involves not knowing where something is and trying to get to it, find it.  We may even think of prayer as seeking God’s wisdom in how we ask and how He responds.  Prayer is not about coming up to a cosmic vending machine and pushing certain buttons and putting in a certain amount of currency in order to get what you want.  In prayer, we are seeking something and our heavenly Father is just the One to help us find it in the righteous and proper way.  Thus we are commanded to be seeking and then we will find.

The third view of prayer pictures us knocking on a door.  Doors are a picture of access.  They often have locks to keep unauthorized people out.  Jesus is the door to the Father.  Thus, we pray to the Father in the name of the Son (through him).  However, there is a sense when we are asking God for something that it is much like knocking until He answers.  Am I going to get tired of knocking and walk away?  Will I be persistent, or accuse Him of being stingy?

The interesting thing is that God is pictured as a Father who is approachable and gives answer to prayer.  We see this all through the sermon on the Mount.  The essential statement underlying all of Christ’s commands is this.  “God is your heavenly Father who cares for you.  You can completely trust Him!”  In chapter 6 when he teaches us how to pray, he says to address God as a Father who is approachable and desirous to help us.  Is that how you see God?

Verse 8 quickly adds the reason why what he has said is true.  It essentially is a no-brainer statement.  However, this is what makes it so powerful.  We can grow discouraged and stop asking, seeking and knocking.  Jesus tells us that it is asking people who receive, seeking people who find, and knocking people to whom the door is opened.  It essentially undermines our tendency to quit.  Why would I quit when an essential aspect to receiving is being a asking person?  The reason is that I have lost faith in God’s care and love for me.

This point is not a guarantee that you will get exactly what you pray for, like an order at a fast food joint.  Rather, he is pointing out the silliness of not continuing to prayer.  Only those who continue in prayer will see answers.

We should also note here that we are not talking about the general grace of God.  Everyday God gives a certain amount of grace to everyone.  We all have oxygen.  When it rains, we all receive it (in that area).  The sun shines on us all alike.  We live in a world that is fit for us to survive.  However, in prayer, we are talking about special grace that comes in the form of an answer to our requests.  God in His sovereignty has provided a certain level of care for all.  However, He leaves room for us to take the initiative in order to make requests of Him.

Perhaps you “tried” being an asking person and “felt” like it “didn’t work.”  I will come back to some of the words in that last sentence.  But, let me just say that God isn’t something that you try.

Prayer has a level of discovery to it.  We pray for things, but we also want God’s wisdom and will (remember the Lord’s prayer).  My prayer about a situation, or for a particular thing, may change over time as I wrestle with God over it in prayer.  However, even then, the same point made by Jesus applies.  Only those who keep looking will discover what God has for them to learn and receive.  Prayer takes faith, not in prayer itself (as a mechanism), but in the God to whom we pray.  He is the heavenly Father who loves us.  Think of the wonder of this.  God has carved out certain areas of His will that will not happen unless we have the gumption to ask for it, seek for it, and knock on His door for it.

It is interesting that all three of these pictures of prayer are referred to in different ways throughout the sermon on the mount.  In the area of asking, giving and receiving, Jesus has mentioned several things.

• Matthew 5:42, “Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.”  This is important to remember that, when you ask God for things, He has been watching your response to others who have asked you for things.
• Matthew 6:8, “Your Father knows what you have need of before you ask.”  This may cause some to question praying at all.  However, Jesus goes the opposite direction.  The fact that God knows what we need (i.e., He is intimately aware of your needs) is reason for continuing to pray, not to quit.  Thus our present praying is not informing God of the what of our request.  Rather, it is demonstrating the depth of our faith in Him and His purposes (or not).
• Matthew 6:11, “Give this day our daily bread.”  All of these together shows us that God wants us to ask Him for things, and He wants to give us things.  However, we need to ask in a right way.  How can I ask God to be a giver to me when I refuse to image His giving nature to others?

The area of seeking and finding is also mentioned.

• Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.”  This actually tells us what we should be seeking from God.  You cannot separate God from His Kingdom, so it is also a seeking for nearness to God.
• Matthew 7:14, “difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”  This one is in the next section.  Still, Jesus points to two different roads we can take in life.  The things you are seeking may take you down the wrong road.  If my life is all about the things of me and this life, and not about the things of God in this life, I will have difficulty finding the way which leads to life.

The area of knocking, opening (a door), is also mentioned.

• Matthew 5:2, “Jesus opened up his mouth and taught them.”  This may seem to be a stretch, but you cannot deny that Jesus is presented in the gospels as the door, the gate, the way for us.  So, when it says that he opened up his mouth and taught them, we can see the wisdom of God the “way of the Lord” being explained to the people so that they can know how to live, i.e., what way to go.
• Matthew 6:6, here we see that there is a door to the secret place that we can go through, shut, and be alone with God in prayer.  Yes, I will ask God for things, but the biggest thing that needs to happen is for me to be changed through relationship with God in the secret place.

In all of this, we should notice that parents wrestle with the requests of their kids and use their wisdom to determine whether it should be outright given, or if it should be mitigated in some way.  A kid may want ice cream for every meal.  No good parent would give such a request.  However, they will also see the desire of their kid and once and a while treat them to some ice cream.

Our asking, seeking and knocking needs to be informed by all of the wisdom of Jesus.  Prayer is learning to align my life with the Kingdom of God (His purpose and will).

Jesus then gives two examples of giving by human fathers and compares them to God the Father (verses 8-11).  These are simple illustrations that challenge our ability to give up on God in different ways, all of which lack trust in Him.  The first is a son asking for bread.  What father would give him a stone?  This rhetorical question would be understood by all in the crowd.  None of them would do that to their son.  Similarly, in the second question, the son asks for fish.  What father would give him a serpent?  This is parallel to the first question, but also intensive.  A stone is inanimate and is only unable to help the son.  Perhaps, we could see in it a mockery.  However, a serpent has an evil connotation to it that the stone doesn’t.  Still, the obvious answer is that none of them would think to give their kid a serpent when they were asking for fish, that is, food.

Notice that Jesus has begun to bring our prayers back to the concept of a heavenly Father who cares for us better than the best of parents.  This is the same as he did back in chapter 6 and the Lord’s Prayer.  Even the best of parents are fallen beings when compared to God.  They are not perfect and don’t always respond to the needs of their children like they should.  But, God is absolute righteousness and absolute love.

Parents will rightly listen to their kids, but not give them everything they ask for.  In these cases, it has nothing to do with trying to do them harm, or being mean to them.  Parents who love their kids take in mind the desire of the child and wisely formulate the best way to answer the child.  This is where we miss it with God.  As adults, we don’t like being in the child-position with God.  We give up on our heavenly Father far to easy.

God is way better at hearing the prayers of His children and determining what we need and when we need it.  He does care for you, and He is not holding out on you.

This isn’t the only dynamic at play.  Yes, I need to learn to trust God, but there is also a spiritual enemy that seeks to tempt me away from trust in God.  If you have seen a sumo wrestling match, then you know that the goal is to resist being pushed out of the ring.  Satan knows that he will win against us if he can push us out of the ring of faith in God.  Of course, he is not literally pushing us.  In this sense, our faith can over come all of his bullying and seducing that seeks to pull us away from faith in God.

Verse 11 emphasizes that God knows much better how to give good gifts to those who ask of Him than we do as people.  I don’t ask wisely in my prayers, but God is committed to giving good gifts to me.  In fact, the Lord’s prayer teaches us how to wisely pray.

Verse 12 generally looks like Jesus is jumping to a new topic.  This is the Golden Rule.  It actually serves to remind us of a principle that he has been brushing up against all throughout the Sermon on the Mount.  Whatever you want people to do to you, do also to them.  In fact, he says that this sums up the Law and the Prophets.  This is another way of saying that this is what it is trying to teach us.  Treat people the way that you would want to be treated.

Of course, our first response is this.  “What if they don’t treat me the same way that I did them?”  That is the test of following Jesus.  Jesus is not promising that people will treat you well if you treat them well.  In fact, they may crucify you if you love them with God’s love.

This command from Christ does not have an escape clause.  There is no mechanism for letting us quit doing them good because they haven’t reciprocated good to us.  We are simply to live our life only doing to others what we would want them to do to us. 

When we approach this as a law, we are looking for  the loopholes.  However, when we see Christ on the cross, we realize that this is all about imaging God, not getting what we want.  In my flesh, I feel that I have been nice enough, but what if God did that to us?

This brings us to ask the question.  What does this have to do with prayer?  The Golden Rule reminds us that prayer in the secret place with God is intimately connected to our life with others in the public place.  A relationship with God cannot be divorced from our relationship with others because God loves them too.  We see this throughout the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5:23-24 pictures a person offering a gift to God at the altar and then remembering that their brother has been offended by them.  He tells us to leave our gift at the altar, go make amends with our brother, and then come back and offer our gift to God. 

Matthew 5:44 tells us to pray for those who are spitefully using us, as well as learning to love our enemies.

Also, Matthew 6:14-15 we are reminded that God’s response to us takes into account our responses to others in the area of forgiveness.

How does this relate to hypocrisy?  The faith component in prayer tries and tests us.  Will I stay in relationship with God when things take longer, or don’t happen as I wanted them?  Will I blame God and walk away?  We too easily give up on God and lose faith in the difficult things of life.  When that happens, some will remain in the church and play the part of a Christian, but in their heart they no longer pray, nor believe that God is their loving, heavenly Father.  This is the very definition of a hypocrite.  In fact, the more responsibility you have in the church, the more vulnerable you are to hypocrisy because you may feel that you have too much to lose.  The religious leaders of the days of Jesus had become hypocrites, but held on to their positions of power.

Others may be disillusioned with God and “deconstruct their faith.”  They may walk away and join another religion or become an atheist.  At least they aren’t a hypocrite, right?  Maybe not.  Think about what is going on in their heart.  “I tried it, but it doesn’t work!  I don’t believe in God!”  Yet, this person is insisting that they did everything right and it was God who didn’t do the righteous thing.  They are accusing God of something that is not true and clinging to the fiction of their own righteousness.  You “tried” praying to God?  What did that look like?  And, “it didn’t work?”  What were you expecting it to do?  What do you exactly mean by “work?”  This argument that I was righteous and God failed doesn’t hold water.  This is the hypocrisy of accusation against God.

In the end, prayer is not about getting everything that I want.  Don’t go through the Bible looking for the Scriptures that promise you will get everything you pray for, nor looking for the Scriptures that show you will not get everything you pray for.  Pray is not a mechanism for getting things, though you will get things through it.  Prayer is a relationship of faith that enables us to become everything that we need to become by God’s help and grace.

Let’s not be a hypocrite, but instead, let’s turn back to God in prayer.  Let’s start believing in God and not giving up on Him because He hasn’t given up on us!

Pitfalls for Hypocrisy IV audio

The Sermon on the Mount XV

Subtitle:  Revealing Areas that are Pitfalls for Hypocrisy II

Matthew 6:25-34.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on March 24, 2024.

We continue looking at our relationship with things and asking how they can cause us to be hypocritical.  In the previous sections, Jesus has focused on wealth and its tendency to become our master.   However, most of the people in the crowd are not wealthy and do not entertain any ideas of becoming wealthy.  Today’s passage speaks to that large percentage of people who live at a level of survival.  They live from day to day, week to week, and their whole life is focused on the things that are necessary to keep living.

It is also important to understand that Jesus is using language that will remind them of the wilderness wanderings of Israel when they came out of Egypt.  There, God helped them to survive with food, water, and clothes that didn’t wear out.

Let’s look at our passage.

Do not worry about the necessities of life (v. 25-29)

The backdrop of Israel in the wilderness reminds us that God took care of them even though they were in a place of scarcity.  In His love, God wants us to understand that it is not His intention to live in worry about food, water, shelter and clothing.

Of course, in our luxury, we can be confused on what is necessary and what is simply a desire or a want.  Even in a necessary category such as food, we can long for a particular kind of food, or a level of cuisine that is higher.  It is important for us to understand that our Creator is also our heavenly Father.  He knows that we are mortal beings that need food.  However, He also knows that we do not “need” expensive food every day.  I don’t believe that this means He is opposed to the desires we have that go beyond necessities.  Yet, He never made us to be slaves to our desires, nor fearful of our necessities.  He has designed the world to care for such needs, and His supervision ensures that we will find what we need.

In the midst of our worrying, God wants us to know that we don’t have to do it.  We can choose to stop worrying.  In fact, Jesus commands his followers, “Do not worry…”

Jesus is talking about a stressful anxiety about these things and not simply planning for them.  He is not commanding us never to think about these things.  This word has the idea of being internally divided, or fractured, over various concerns.  Worrying about things is a type of bad stress that actually affects our health and life span negatively, but more on that later.

The average person in the crowd that day most likely stressed about food, clothing, and not being killed by the Romans.  Jesus focuses on food and drink (water) as necessary for life, and clothing as necessary for our bodies.  He could have added oxygen or other things, but these  work best because they will remind the people of the wilderness wanderings of Israel.

God provided food (bread and meat) and water in the desert.  They may have gone some days here and there without, but in the end, God always made sure they had these things. 

The Bible also tells us that their clothing and sandals did not wear out during the 40 years they were in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:4; 29:5).  It was His supernatural provision just as much as the manna, flocks of quail, and water coming out of a rock upon the strike of the staff of Moses.  However, the clothing would also have the connotation of the Garden of Eden.  The environment of the earth was not hostile in the beginning.  Also, the earth was not a morally hostile environment either (sin and sinners).  Clothing becomes a protectant against exposure to the elements and exposure to those who may be stirred up by nakedness and thereby led into sin.

You will also notice that this section is filled with questions.  You could say that at the heart of worry is our unanswered questions, or questions that we have for which we do not like God’s answers.  We are questioned by Jesus (by God) five times versus the three questions that we often wrestle with and laid out in verse 31.

Here is the tie to hypocrisy.  Fearful questioning of God and the world around us can lead us to playing the hypocrite..  We may go through religious rituals that declare God’s provision and greatness, and  yet, we do not actually trust Him.

Jesus asks the question, “Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”  Of course, it is!  God’s purpose for humanity is higher than simply eating food and wearing clothes.  In fact, food, drink and clothing are symbols for the higher spiritual things that God wants to accomplish in our life.  The manna in the wilderness hints at a supernatural bread from heaven that we need.  We are told in the New Testament that this bread from heaven is Jesus himself.  The work that Jesus did in a human body was as necessary for us as natural bread is for our body’s survival. 

We are also told that Jesus is the source of the water of life.  It is the Words that Jesus spoke to us, and the Holy Spirit that He has poured out upon us.  Jesus is the source of water, the rock in the wilderness that has been struck so that the waters of life would pour out to us.

Finally, the righteousness of Christ is presented as a white robe that we can wear.   Our righteousness is not pure white.  Our robes are speckled with sin.  However, our faith in Jesus gives us a new robe of his righteousness that we can put on.  By faith, the Holy Spirit helps us to obey Jesus and go to war against sin our life.  Thus, we are enabled to walk out the righteousness of Christ even as we wear his robe.  This clothing will never wear out.

All of this is important to understand.  Yet, Jesus is telling us to stop worrying about the natural necessities of our life.  I can say that I believe, but then go on not to trust Him fully through worrying, complaining, and not having the relationship with God that I should, or even could.

To illustrate the illogical nature of worrying about these things, Jesus gives three illustrations of God supplying for His lesser creatures.  The first is about birds.

Birds do not sow seeds, water them, reap them and then store the seed in barns.  These are the kinds of things that God has given humans the wisdom and ability to do.  Thus, birds are in an even more precarious place than humans.  They are at the mercy of God’s provision even more than we are.  There are some animals that will cache food (squirrels), or store it as fat for winter (bears etc.), but don’t miss the point.  The emphasis is on the situation of the birds.  A bird has to forage and find food each day.  They have to wake up each day and go about looking for what God will provide.  Jesus actually says, “Your heavenly Father feeds them.”  Think about what that looks like.  The birds do not see a man with a grey beard floating down from the sky with a bag of bird seed.  God’s provision operates at a far grander and foundational level than that.  Because birds are not human, they will not spend time fretting over whether they will find enough seed each day.  Neither should we think that they exercise great faith in God.  They are simply an illustration to us that we don’t have to fret.

Thus, Jesus gives his second question.  “Are you not of more value than they?”  The answer is “Yes, yes you are!”  This does not mean birds have no value, but that the value placed upon them within God’s purposes is much lower than that placed upon us as humans.  We are His imagers upon this earth.  This means that He will even more make sure we are taken care of.  Surely your Creator has thought about your need and made provisions.  Yes, you will have to get up each day and work at bringing it in.  You will need to use your mind, and prayerfully ask God’s help.  But, you can trust Him.  Thus, our deepest question is simply this.  Can I trust God?  God is your God.  He cares for you.  Don’t think of Him as the pastor’s God, or the prophet’s God, like Saul did with Samuel in 1 Samuel 15:15, 21.  He is your God, and He cares about you more than the birds.

The second illustration is about length (verse 27).  It is simply laid out in the third question that Jesus asks us.  “Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?”  This translation (NKJV) relates the issue of length (1 cubit is about 18”) to stature.  However, the word primarily has a meaning of life.  It is more likely that the length here is a picture of lengthening one’s life in the sense of adding a step to your journey.  This fits the passage better than the concept of height, which is a secondary meaning of this word anyway.  No one can add a step (minute, hour, day, etc.) to their life by worrying.  The truth is that worrying will only lower our life.  Studies have shown that heavy anxiety can affect our immune system, our emotional well-being, and thereby our physical well-being.

One particular study tracked a large number of people from teens to ninety-year-olds.  They were able to follow them over the course of twelve years while tracking their anxiety levels.  At the end of the 12 years, they determined that a person with high anxiety was 2 times more likely not to be alive than those who did not have high anxiety.  It simply does you no good to worry and fret about something you cannot control, and it generally does bad things.

Why not make your default position trust in God’s purpose and loving care for you?  We will live exactly as long as God has enabled us to live, and I can be good with that.  Even if I were to die in my childhood, the resurrection and the age to come cause this time of our lives to pale in comparison.  Then, we will have bodies that are not dying, weak, and impacted by disease.  We will be immortal.  This life is actually just the proving grounds for our place in the life to come.

The third illustration (verse 28) is about flowers.  His fourth question is this.  “Why do you worry about clothing?”  He tells us that lilies do not toil nor spin.  These verbs have to do with making clothes.  They don’t work hard amassing the raw materials of clothing, neither do they spin that raw material into threads that can be worked in a loom into the material for making clothes.  This may seem like a silly statement, but notice that Jesus has increased the dependency by moving from an animal to a form of vegetation.  Birds can forage around, but flowers simply are what they are.  They draw nutrients from the soil and their DNA code expresses that in a particular form.  They are in an even more precarious situation than birds.  However, Jesus tells them that not even King Solomon was dressed, arrayed, in as much glory as they.  Remember that Solomon was extremely rich and would have the finest clothes that money could buy.

These simple flowers that grow up, bloom and then die, have a beauty that outshines our clothing.  If you think that Jesus is stretching the concept of clothing here, then think of it this way.  I spoke of clothing earlier in the sense of protection from the elements.  However, we generally fret and are anxious over how nice those clothes look.  Thus, clothes become a big part of a person’s identity, whether a rich nobleman or a peasant.  Jesus tells us that God has given flowers a visual glory to which our humanness doesn’t compare.

Yet, there is a beauty in our nature as humans.  I am not just talking about a beautiful person in the prime of their life.  There is a different kind of beauty that is displayed in the whole range of our look from newborn to senior.  There is also a beauty that is displayed in our male and female similarities and differences.

We can spend too much time trying to mimic the glory of a flower and forget that God’s different glory for us can be enough.  It should not be lost on us that Jesus emphasizes that the flowers which have a greater glory also have a much shorter life-span.  What glory are you going for?  The Bible says that the righteous will shine like the stars in the resurrection (Daniel 12:3).

The fifth and final question is this.  “Will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”  Of course, this is our true problem.  Faith and worry are inversely proportional.  That means, when faith goes up, worry goes down.  It is impossible to quit worrying without putting faith in something.  Some may not worry because they have faith in their own ability.  The believer knows that they have ability, but even greater than that, they also know that they have a heavenly Father who is caring for them.  We really do not have an excuse for worrying.

This is exactly the problem that is expressed by Israel back in the wilderness.  They perished because of their unbelief, lack of faith in God.  What is even sadder is the fact that they had a tremendous amount of amazing evidence that God could and would take care of them.  Don’t be the kind of person who blames their lack of faith on God’s lack of giving us evidence.  Unbelief actually blinds you to all the evidence.  So, listen to Jesus and start trusting God and stop worrying.  It just isn’t the logical and righteous thing to do.

Three conclusions (v. 30-34)

It is clear from the creation account that man is not only the apex of God’s creation, but that His purpose for us is for us to image Him to the earth and to the heavens.  Birds have their part in the purpose of God (i.e., one of those is to be an illustration to us humans).  But, our purpose is much more important to God.

In verse 30, Jesus tells us to stop questioning ourselves out of trusting God.  “What shall we eat?  What shall we drink?  What shall we wear?”  These are real questions that we may not have the answers to.  However, our lack of an answer is not a reason for unbelief, and not trusting God.  The Red Sea was not a reason for Israel to stop trusting God.  That is precisely when trust becomes the most critical thing.  It really doesn’t matter if a kid doesn’t know what they are going to eat for dinner.  What matters is that they have a loving parent who is taking care of those things for them.  Your worrying won’t fix any of your problems, but God can and will when we trust Him.

This leads to his first conclusion in verse 31.  He reminds them that this is how the Gentiles act (i.e., the nations).  They clamor and desperately seek for these kinds of things.  However, Israel was the people of God.  They had a heavenly Father Who had pledged Himself to caring for them.  Of course, there was a time when all the sons of Noah (all of humanity) were God’s people and cared for by Him.  However, the rebellion at the Tower of Babel brought judgment upon them.  On top of the confusion of languages and scattering across the earth, these nations doubled down on rebellion by throwing off the truth of their error.  They connected to fallen spirits who taught them all manner of false religion for the ulterior motives of those fallen spirits.

Jesus would go on to pay the price for the sins of the nations so that they too could come near to God.  However, don’t miss the power of the point.  Don’t act like a rebellious orphan who has no loving Father.  We shouldn’t fault a lost person who worries.  That is simply their situation.  However, it is a strange thing for a child of God to walk in worry and complaining. Stop it!

The second conclusion is put in a positive form and is clearly the most important of the three.  Seek first the Kingdom of God, and He will take care of these natural needs.  The life of the nations was all focused on these lower, lesser, things of life.  We could categorize them as concerns of the flesh.  God’s people on the other hand are to seek His kingdom and his righteousness.  These two themes have been presented throughout the sermon on the mount.  Our higher purpose is to work with God in order to bring His will and rule to the earth.  If we will do that, then He will take care of the lower needs.  This doesn’t mean we don’t work, buy food, prepare meals, make clothing, etc.  It does mean that we don’t worry about those things.  Instead, we will trust in His care.

We should even note that we can do these lesser things for God’s higher purposes.  We pray for food so that we can be strengthen to accomplish His greater purpose of the Kingdom.  In this way, even things like food, water and clothing can become holy.  I am not consumed with wanting designer clothes so that others will think I am great.  Instead, we will use clothing as a means of bringing in God’s Kingdom, whether in how we dress or in blessing others with their necessary clothing.  Lesser things can be done for higher purposes, which elevates them in the end.

This highlights the need for faith in our lives, not just faith for salvation, but also for living itself.  For a kid, becoming an adult is a scary thing.  A teenage boy can be intimidated by becoming a man, getting a job, paying for his own place, his own insurance, etc.  On top of this, he can really be intimidated by marrying a woman and raising a family.  No one ever approaches that with every single question answered about the future.  However, God has fitted us for becoming adults in many ways, and a critical part of that is having faith.  We don’t have to have all the answers.  We just have to have a reasonable hope that we can do it and it will be good.  In God, we always have a reason for hope and faith in our future.  I mentioned a young man, but we could also picture a teenage girl.  How intimidating is it to become a woman, marry a man, become pregnant, birth and raise a baby?  In and of themselves, these can be scary things.  God has not only fitted you to be able to do these things, but He also pledges to be with us and help us in them.  We can walk forward with faith and trust in Him.

The final conclusion is given in verse 34.  We are told to stop worrying about tomorrow and just face the difficulties of today.  Of course, as I said before, he is not talking about the thinking we do in order to plan for tomorrow.  This is our tendency to worry about the things that we think will happen or could happen tomorrow.

Today has enough evil of its own, whether we know what it will be or not.  Of course, you will want to trust God and ask His help as you face them.  You will also want to trust that He is working to help you with it as well.  It may take time for God’s answer to materialize, but it will.

We also have to be careful that our planning is not a means of ensuring that we never have to trust God. Our best plans are still the plans of frail humans.  We can’t control everything through sheer planning.  Even our plans have to be put in God’s hands.  We don’t have to trust Him, but we can.  We are privileged to have a heavenly Father who cares for us.  If your plan has no room for God in it, then you are not aiming high enough.

This life is a journey in which the Lord walks with you.  Don’t walk it as if He is not with you.  Instead, make your trusting in Him a critical part of your plan.  Anything short of this will lead religious people to be hypocrites.  We will give lip service to trusting and loving God, but we will doubt His love and care, becoming mere posers, actors.  May God save us from such an empty life!

SOTM XVI audio