Scriptural text: Matthew 6:19-34
Daily Life (Matthew 6:35-36).
If you decide to live for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to Him than the birds.
Divine Logic (Matthew 6:27-32).
Here Jesus points out another problem with anxiety, fear, and worry; they’re useless. They don’t work. They don’t help. Those emotions are powerless, so far as those actual needs are concerned. Anxiety is a natural human response-especially when you are wondering how to feed your family. Still, it’s a brute fact that worry, in and of itself, can add a single hour to anyone’s life. Worry is ineffective.
Of course, many will protest that anxiety is not like a hat: it’s not simply something we can remove. God knows this, and understand how difficult it is to put trust in God when times are difficult. In fact, this is why these reminders are in Scripture. If being a born-again believer made all our fears and doubts disappear, there would be no reason for God to remind us not to worry! Jesus will continue in this passage to show why it is essential for God’s people to make an effort to shed worry. “Why take ye thought for raiment?” These verses suggest that Jesus spoke these words probably in the early spring (around March-early April), when the wild flowers were in full bloom. The hills around Galilee are full of the vibrant color of flowers. Jesus reminds the disciples that God cared for garden of flowers on the hills and mountainsides. Jesus pointed to them and said, Look at the flowers, how they grow and multiply. In verse 29, Jesus again speaks with the voice of authority: “And yet I say unto you.” There was no king like Solomon, but not even Solomon in his greatest garments of magnificence and glory could compare to the beauty of these lilies. If God takes care of the grass -which blossoms today and thrown into a furnace the next-then doesn’t it stand to reason that because we are greater value in His eyes that He will take care of us.
Different Laws (Matthew 6:33-34).
Thoughtfulness for our souls is the best cure of thoughtfulness of the world. Seek first the kingdom of God, and make religion your business: say not that this is way to starve: no, it is the way to be well provided for, even in the world. The conclusion of the whole matter is, that it is the will and command of the Lord Jesus, that by daily prayer that we get strength to bear us up under our daily troubles, and to arm us against the temptations that attend them, and let none of these things move us.