Matthew 6:31-34 “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
From verse 25 in Matthew chapter 6 until the very last verse, which says, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”, the Lord explains why it is that Christian people have not a thing in this present world to be anxious about. In fact, He makes it very clear, that if we are to be concerned with anything, then we most certainly ought to be concerned with seeking a greater knowledge of our Father in heaven and all the righteousness that He is; this, in fact, is the very way by which we, as pilgrims in this ‘present evil world’, can live our lives victorious over the anxiousness that rules the world.
The ‘Sermon on the Mount’, like all scripture, is written for Christian people and only Christian people. There are those who are unbelievers, and those who claim to be believers, who look at the Lord’s sermon in these three chapters of Matthew (5 through 7) and turn it into a philosophical teaching, ie. a philosophy that they believe that if only the entire world would accept then all the worlds problems would be solved. The only way that this would be true is if every person in the world were a Christian; and Scripture is very clear that this is an impossibility. The Lord indeed asks, concerning His second coming, “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”(Luke 18:8), and in Matthew 13 He tells us that there will be tares amongst the wheat in the Day of Judgment, ie. unbelievers amongst the Christians on the earth. So we know that the days are becoming worse and worse, as the apostle Paul reminds us in 2 Tim. 3:13, that, “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” And, our Lord puts it very bluntly in Matthew chapter 25, where He describes the final judgment of the living and the dead; the goats on the left hand shall go to perdition, and the sheep on His right hand are to go with Him into eternal happiness. So, we should never be surprised that there are those in the world who desire to use the Word of God to there own advantage and their own glory. “Let them be accursed.”, say the apostle Paul, for they have a false gospel, which is no gospel at all. And that is the point of which our Lord now leads us as Christian people in this great message.
The Lord shows us that the world, and all of those that are in the world, have two ways of looking at the world; and each of these two ways is a way of anxiousness. The world is unsettled, there is no comfort outside of Christ, and our Lord wants us to be absolutely certain; so he shows us how we are not to be.
The first way of which we are not to be, is as a fatalist; as the worldly song goes, “Que sera, sera, what ever will be will be.”, or, in the modern vernacular, one often hears, “It is what it is!” And, the second way that the world looks upon things is with contingency, ie.if this then that, or literally, if I can only achieve this and that, or avoid this and that, then I will be in a wonderful condition and I will finally be at peace! Well, both of these worldly views of life in the world can only but lead to despair and anxiety.
In the very fatalistic Romantic period of the late 18th century, there was a very popular novel by Goethe called, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” In this novel, the main character commits suicide with a pistol, and the story had such a profound effect on certain people, that they committed suicide in a ‘copy-cat’ manner, even dressing as the character and having copies of the book beside their dead corpses. No doubt, these people felt that it was a beautiful thing to be a fatalist. There is no comfort in this, to be sure.
And, likewise, those that live in contingency are no better off than the fatalist. Their entire life depends on situations and outcomes that are entirely out of their control. They may convince themselves that they have control, and most of them try to control everything; but in the end God’s wrath comes upon them. Either God allows them to live out their lives with wealth and earthly success, thus, always looking over their shoulder to see who is coming for their earthly goods; or He strips them of their goods and brings them the anxiety of either never attaining that to which they desired, or losing that which they had. Any way you look at this type of worldly person, there is no comfort and only anxiousness.
This is why the Lord says in His very last statement of this chapter,“ Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” In other words, He says, “If today is causing you to be anxious, then why are you thinking about tomorrow? Tomorrow isn’t even here yet, and if the present day is uncomfortable for you, why look ahead, there is enough evil in your world at this very moment, so why do you bother bringing the evil of tomorrow into the present?” And this is exactly what sets the Christian apart from the world. Christian people look at the world in light of who they are, ie. the children of God! There is no need to be anxious for anything, except for one thing, the most important thing, —knowing God and His righteousness.
If we keep our eyes on God and His righteousness, and seek Him in and through our Lord Jesus Christ, we have a promise from God that is unlike any promise that any one who is not a Christian can have; we have a promise of assurance. We are to live in this world as being certain. The others are fatalist and contingent, but Christians are certain. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”(Rom 8:32)
We are promised the “Peace that passeth all understanding”, rest for our souls, a light burden, joy and a spirit of rejoicing. And all this because we “lay up for (ourselves) treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:” We live where our Lord lives, in the heavenlies. We are but pilgrims and sojourners whilst we live here on earth. Let us pray for all of those who have all of their treasures stored up on earth, that they might come to the glorious kingdom of our Lord and lay their burdens and their anxieties at the foot of His cross and take upon themselves the light yoke of our Lord, who is meek and lowly, and who lived and died for our forgiveness and our righteousness. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness;”; and let us trust that God loves us more that the birds and the flowers, and all of those of whom, in their contingent wealth or in their fatalist despair, would ridicule us for believing in God and His promises towards us.
Scripture Alone 