Jesus’ Counsel for the Anxious | Matthew 6:25-34
Brian Hedges | May 3, 2026
Let’s turn in our Bibles this morning to Matthew 6. We are continuing in our study in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus gives us a portrait here of the heirs of the kingdom of God, and we’re going to be in Matthew 6:25-34.
I think today we’re looking at some of the most well-known and practical, helpful teaching of Jesus; it’s Jesus teaching about worry and anxiety. Worry and anxiety were not just ancient problems; they are, of course, modern problems.
There was a book written a few years ago by Jonathan Haidt, called The Anxious Generation, that really looks at the rise of anxiety and mental illness and even self-harm among youth, Generation Z. And he argues that there has been a great rewiring that has happened since about 2010, a great rewiring in the minds, literally in the brains of young people. Of course, it’s happened with technological advances and especially with the advent of the smartphone. So, whereas at one time kids’ childhoods were play-based and much more interactive and kids were playing outdoors, now kids are being raised on screens, so their childhoods are phone-based. Haidt claims that this shift has replaced a real-world independence with online life, and that this has led to problems such as sleep deprivation, social isolation, and addiction.
Now, I think what Jonathan Haidt argues for Generation Z is actually true to some degree for all of us. Because we live in such a heightened technological age, the problems of mental illness and even the problems of anxiety in all of our lives are probably greater than they were at some point in even our recent history.
I was just looking yesterday at the DSM-5; that is, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This is what psychologists and therapists use. I just looked up the section on anxiety, and it was helpful. It distinguishes between fear and anxiety: fear is defined as an emotional response to real or perceived imminent threat. You know, if you come across a snake in your backyard, you feel fear. That’s natural. But anxiety is something different; anxiety is anticipation of a future threat. And anxiety disorders differ from just kind of normal fear and anxiety because they’re more excessive and persisting than is appropriate. And this manual details twelve different types of fear and anxiety disorders. These are things that people are dealing with today, perhaps even some of us.
Even if you don’t have an anxiety disorder, you know what it is, as I do, to experience that everyday, garden-variety kind of anxiety and worry, when there are particular things happening in your life—maybe in your family, maybe in relationship to money or your job, your workplace, maybe it’s issues with health, or maybe it’s broader concerns about the church or society or the nation—and you know what it is to be kind of eaten away inside by that nagging sense of worry and uncertainty and fear. This is a real issue for us today.
I know the kinds of burdens that you carry, and I know personally, from personal experience, what it is to carry some of these burdens, and even to lie awake at night with a worry kind of keeping me awake. So these are things that we need to consider. We need to consider Jesus’ teaching, and it will help us, if we will pay attention and if we will put in practice the things that he says.
So let’s look today at Matthew 6:25-34. I want to begin by reading this passage from God’s word, and then I want to point out three things that Jesus does in this passage.
As I do read the passage, notice that there is a repeated command to not be anxious. You see this repeated three times. Beginning in verse 25, Jesus says,
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ’What shall we eat?’ or ’What shall we drink?’ or ’What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
This is God’s Word.
As followers of Jesus, we should not be people characterized by worry but instead by trust in our Father and by seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. That’s what Jesus is teaching us in this passage.
I do think that, as you look at what Jesus says and how he says it, he weaves together commands, illustrations, arguments, promises in such a way as to really appeal to reason and common sense, to appeal to a life of faith, and to appeal to the realities of the gospel of the kingdom of God, and with full force bringing all of these arguments to bear in our hearts and lives calls us to be people who are characterized not by worry but by faith. That’s what this passage is about. I want to break it down into these three steps. These are really three arguments or three appeals.
1. Jesus’ Appeal to Reason
The first one is Jesus’ appeal to reason. And what I want you to see here is that Jesus here teaches us to use common sense and therefore not to be people who are characterized by worry. It is an appeal to reason.
One reason I start here is because you might read this passage and feel like, “You know, I get that Jesus said this in the ancient world, but it feels a little bit naive today for Jesus to say, you know, ’Look at the birds of the air, look at the lilies of the field, don’t be anxious, don’t worry…’” You might even feel that it sounds a little bit like a platitude, or you might think of popular music that maybe you like to listen to, but it doesn’t quite ring true. So there’s Bobby McFerrin, who said, “Don’t worry; be happy. Every little thing’s going to be all right.” There’s also a Bob Marley song that uses similar words.
So you might think of that, and you read Jesus and you think, “Okay, is that what Jesus is saying here? Is this just kind of platitude from a, you know, an ancient teacher? ’Don’t worry, be happy. Everything’s just going to be okay’?”
I want you to see that more is going on here than just that, and I want to begin with a couple of clarifications to show that what Jesus is saying here is not in any way denial of some of the basic realities of the world in which we live, but instead there is an argument here from reason. It is an argument for us to live with a certain kind of wisdom in our lives. So two clarifications.
Clarification number one: Jesus here does not deny the reality of problems, of troubles, or of needs. This is not denial of those realities. He acknowledges that we have needs and he says, “The Father knows that you need these things before you ask.” And he acknowledges the reality of trouble. In fact, verse 34 ends with the word trouble, and literally in Greek it’s the word “evil.” He says, “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble,” its evil. Elsewhere, Jesus says, “In this world you will have tribulations, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” He’s not denying the reality of that. Jesus is not saying in this passage that if you just don’t worry and just be happy, you’re never going to experience any trials or any problems. This is not denial. Jesus is very grounded in the reality of the world in which we live. In fact, Jesus himself will face moments in his future, in the garden of Gethsemane, where he feels this dread of what’s coming in his life. So what Jesus is saying here doesn’t deny any of that.
Now, this is important for those of you who are wading through deep waters of trial right now. Jesus’ teaching here is not just pious platitude; this applies to where you are, to what you’re facing, because he’s calling us to think through our problems, and he’s calling us to lift our gaze to the care of our Father. So that’s the first clarification: Jesus doesn’t deny the reality of problems, troubles, or needs.
Second clarification: Jesus doesn’t deny the necessity of work, planning, or saving. This is not a call for us to all quit our jobs, to spend money recklessly, to not worry at all about the future in the sense of planning ahead. It’s not that. It’s not, “Take no thought,” as the old King James, I think, mistranslated the passage. Jesus isn’t calling us to not think ahead. Instead, Jesus is calling us not to live in excessive worry, and there’s a difference between those two things.
One commentary puts it like this: “These exhortations against anxiety about food and clothing are not arguing against the proverbial wisdom of preparedness or saving and planning for times of need. Rather, these instructions are driving at the inner heart.” They’re driving at the inner person, at the heart issues. Jesus is going for something deeper that is reflected in our minds and in our thoughts.
So just understand those clarifications.
Now, here is Jesus’ first basic argument, the argument from reason.
(1) It’s, first of all, that worry is foolish because life is more than food. You see this in verse 25. “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”
Life is more than just about food and clothing. So, you know, part of the problem with excessive worry is it’s superficial, because you’re looking at immediate things. You’re not even thinking in terms of the larger spiritual realities of your life in the world. So Jesus says it’s foolish. Don’t spend your care on these things. Your life is about more than what you’re going to eat and what you’re going to wear.
(2) Jesus also argues here that worry is futile, because you can’t add to your span of life. Verse 27: “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”
Now the translations differ in how this is rendered. Some translations, like the old King James, say something like you can’t by taking thought add a cubit to your stature. And then some say add an hour or even a minute to your span of life.
I think the gloss here is essentially this, the sense is essentially this: that by anxiety and worry, you don’t actually change anything about your future. You can’t extend your life. You can’t add to your life. Worry is simply wasted effort. Worry is futile.
(3) Then thirdly, worry is irrational. And I mean irrational in the sense that worry is spending your thoughts in a way that is not carefully reasoning out the way in which the world works and the way in which God works in the world. Worry is irrational. It does not change future troubles. That’s kind of the sense of verse 34. “Don’t be anxious about tomorrow.” Tomorrow’s troubles will come, but don’t worry about them today.
This is true even in a lot of proverbial wisdom in our world. Maybe you’ve heard of the old American humorist Will Rogers, who one time said, “Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.” There are myriads of sayings like that that show that worry is futile, wasted effort. It’s just not worth worrying about the future, because you’re worrying about something that’s out of your control, and it’s really not rational to have anxious thoughts about those things.
I think Jesus here is showing us a different way. As I’ve said many times in this series on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus here speaks not only as our savior, not only as our king, Jesus speaks as a sage. He speaks as a wise teacher. And Jesus is showing us the way of wisdom here in the way he reasons with his disciples.
You see this in the examples he gives in verses 26-28. So verse 26: “Look at the birds of the air.” Jesus is saying, “Open your eyes. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they?” And then verse 28. “Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider—” It means to think. Consider. Think. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
Jesus here is using two very simple illustrations from nature, and he’s saying, “Open your eyes, open your mind, think about it.” Think about this world and think about how God cares even for his lesser creatures. And you’re of more value than they; won’t God also take care of you?
There’s something simple and yet profound about this, just the simplicity of Jesus’ common-sense wisdom here, as he tells his disciples, “Open your eyes and look at the world around you and consider, and just think it through.”
Did you know that sociologists have noted that even just something as simple as this—being outside, spending time in nature—makes a difference to our experience of mental health. Jonathan Haidt, again in this book The Anxious Generation, talks about the psychological damage of the phone-based life and how for Gen Z kids, social interactions and time outside have both diminished because of the smartphone. In fact, he calls smartphones “kryptonite for attention.” Kryptonite for attention. Kryptonite kills Superman. What kills your attention? The smartphone. Technology.
Here’s a very practical thing—I’m actually serious about this, and I think Jesus’ teaching, in kind of a subtle way, shows us this—if you are struggling with anxiety, a very practical thing for you to do is get off your phone, spend a day outside, look at the birds, remember the God who feeds them, take a walk at night, look at the stars, and remember the God who created them. Ponder. Think it through.
If God is real—and he is—and this God keeps the world running as he does, won’t this God also take care of you? In other words, there’s something very common-sense for us to do, and that is to structure our lives in such a way that we diminish some of the reasons why we tend to feel so worried and anxious.
This can have to do with all kinds of things about our daily life: the way you use your phone and technology, the amount of time you spend outdoors rather than indoors, the amount of sleep you get at night, just basic self-care. Some of you, perhaps, are deeply plagued by anxiety, but if you look at the structure of your life, everything in your life is set up to make you feel anxious, because you’re indoor, you’re connected, you’re online, you’re not spending time with people, you’re not pursuing physical health, you’re not sleeping well. All those things are going to make you more anxious. Just going back to some of this basic, common-sense wisdom will help us.
So in summary, I think Jesus here is calling us to some common-sense practices. He’s saying that worry is a waste of time and energy; worry does not change the future; worry is foolish, futile, irrational. Why waste your time on worry? Open your eyes to the world around you, think it through, and don’t waste your life in worry.
Any good therapist or counselor would tell you much the same thing. This is common sense. Jesus is a wise teacher.
2. Jesus’ Appeal to Faith
But listen, there’s a lot more going on here than just that. That’s included, but there’s more than just that, because Jesus here is also exhorting us to trust in the Father’s care. So there’s not only an appeal to reason, there’s also an appeal to faith.
You see this several places in the passage, especially where Jesus speaks of “your heavenly Father.” That phrase appears twice.
Verse 26: “Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they?” Then again in verse 32, “Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.”
Alright, your Father knows. And as we’ve seen in the Sermon on the Mount, the fatherhood of God is a theme, a thread that runs through the sermon, as Jesus calls attention to his Father, and he points his disciples to his Father. He tells them to pray like this, “Our Father who is in heaven,” and then you bring your needs before the Father: “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” You’re addressing the Father.
Throughout Matthew 6 he’s been talking about practicing your righteousness, and he says, “Don’t practice your righteousness before men; practice your righteousness before the Father who sees in secret.” Just a few verses later, in Matthew 7:11, he says, “If you then being evil would give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?” He’s calling us to trust our Father.
He essentially says—here’s the second basic argument—if your Father cares for his lesser creatures, he will also care for you. And this means, therefore, that worry indicates little faith. It indicates a lack of faith.
Verse 30: “If God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown to the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” Now that’s a rebuke from Jesus. He’s telling us that if your life is characterized by excessive worry and anxiety, your faith is too small.
George Mueller was that great pastor in Bristol in the nineteenth century who lived by faith and saw God answer prayer in such a way that he was able to feed and clothe ten thousand orphans over the course of his life. And he said, “Where faith begins, anxiety ends; where anxiety begins, faith ends.”
Faith and anxiety are incompatible. Jesus says if you’re worried, if you’re anxious, you have a little faith.
I’ve been reading devotionally this last week in the Gospel of Matthew, and I was just noticing—I really wasn’t even looking for this, but I just noticed that there are several times where Jesus commends the faith of these various people who encounter him, and there’s this contrast between the little faith of the disciples and the great faith of others. Let me give you a couple of examples.
So in Matthew 8, there is a centurion—a Roman centurion! This would have been a Gentile, a Roman centurion. He hears about Jesus and he comes to Jesus, and he has this servant who’s lying paralyzed in bed, suffering terribly, and he asks Jesus to heal this man. And Jesus says, “I’ll come to him and heal him.” And the centurion says, “There’s no need for you to do that. Just give the command, and I know he’ll be healed.”
In other words, his faith is undaunted by distance. And Jesus says, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.” And Jesus spoke the word and the servant was healed at that very moment.
Then in Matthew 9, there’s a sick woman, a woman who has been sick for twelve years. Twelve years she’s been sick! And she learns about Jesus, and she thinks, “If I could just go touch the hem of his garment, Jesus will heal me.” Her faith is unintimidated by time, the length of time she’s been sick. Twelve years she’s been suffering, but faith reaches out, grabs the hem of Jesus’ robe, and she’s healed. Jesus says, “Take heart, daughter. Your faith has made you well.”
Then in Matthew 15, there’s another woman who is undeterred by discouragement. This is a Canaanite woman. She’s a Gentile. Jesus is preaching and ministering in the regions of Tyre and Sidon, and this Canaanite woman comes and says, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David. My daughter is oppressed by a demon.” Jesus initially kind of puts her off. It’s kind of a strange passage. You almost feel like Jesus is being rude to her. He essentially says, “I didn’t come for you; I came for the house of Israel.”
And this woman will not be deterred even by Jesus’ seeming reluctance to heal. And finally Jesus says, “Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done to you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
Great faith, as opposed to little faith.
We sang this morning about faith that can move mountains. He’s moved mountains; he could do it again. Do you know that comes from Jesus? In Matthew 17 and Matthew 21 Jesus talks about how faith can move mountains. Jesus is calling us to great faith. He’s calling us to trust in our Father’s care.
Now, let’s just not misunderstand this. This does not mean that if you just psych yourself up enough that God will answer every request on your wish list. That’s not what this is talking about, okay? This is not health, wealth, prosperity teaching. The Bible doesn’t teach that. Jesus doesn’t teach that. It actually teaches something so much better. It teaches that we have a real heavenly Father who really does care for us and that we really can trust him in and through anything that we go through. He’s calling us to trust in the providential care of our God who is our Father.
Some of you maybe will recognize these words from the Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 27. We’ll actually read this together later this morning, but let me read it to you now. I love these words, and I think it gets it exactly right.
The question is, “What do you understand by the providence of God?” Listen to this answer. This is a good answer.
“God’s providence is his almighty and ever-present power, whereby as with his hand he still upholds heaven and earth and all creatures and so governs them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty; indeed, all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.”
You know what that means? That means that there is nothing that ever comes into your life as a child of God that does not come filtered through the fingers of the fatherly hand of God. It doesn’t mean that troubles will never come, it means that troubles will never come without God’s permission. It means that troubles will never come in such a way that God is not at work, that God is not using it, God is not working that together for your good, and that God will not sustain you through it. So trust in the Father’s care means we trust him in those situations.
The psalmist says, “When I am afraid I will trust in you.” Are you sometimes going to feel anxious and worried? Yes. What do you do in that moment? That’s the question. Do you just kind of go inward and you spin out all these different scenarios and you make it worse, or do you turn your heart to the Father and you remind yourself of his care for you until your heart is at rest in him?
I read a story about a man who during World War II was picked up by a German freighter after his ship had been torpedoed, and he was put into the hold. He was so terrified—this guy was a missionary—he was so terrified he couldn’t sleep. And he knew that he needed to do some work on his heart. He started remembering the Psalms, and he remembered Psalm 121 from the King James: “My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he shall neither slumber nor sleep.” And he essentially said, “Lord, if you don’t slumber or sleep, there’s no use in both of us staying awake. So I’m going trust you and I’m going go to sleep.”
That’s exactly right. It’s faith that trusts in the almighty, ever-present power of God our Father, who loves us and cares for us in all the circumstances of life.
So here’s the question: How do you exercise that kind of faith? And the very simple answer is prayer. It’s prayer. Calvin said that prayer is “the chief exercise of faith.” There really is no substitute for this. And listen, this is not a platitude. Prayer is not easy. Prayer is a real spiritual practice that takes some intentionality and some discipline, and it requires faith. But this is what the Bible calls us to.
So listen to Paul in Philippians 4:6-7, and remember that when he wrote this he was in prison. He’s in prison when he writes this! And Paul says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
“Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.”
Prayer is how you trust in the Father’s care for you.
Jesus here teaches us to use some common sense; it’s an appeal to reason. Jesus exhorts us to trust in our Father’s care; it’s the appeal to faith. But Jesus even calls us to more than that.
3. Jesus’ Appeal to the Gospel
So number three, Jesus calls us to seek the kingdom of God, and here you have the appeal to the gospel. Look at Matthew 6:32-33. In verse 32 Jesus says, “The Gentiles seek after these things,” what they eat, what they drink, what they’re going to wear—the Gentiles are seeking after these things. Underline that word “seek.” Then verse 33—many of you will know this verse by heart—verse 33 says, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
I’m calling this the appeal to the gospel because in the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus is proclaiming what Matthew calls the gospel of the kingdom.
The gospel is good news; the kingdom is God’s saving reign revealed in Christ Jesus. It’s the rule of God in the world. And we’ve seen in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus speaks to us as savior, as sage (wise teacher), and as the king. And the Sermon on the Mount is his manifesto of the kingdom. He is showing us what the heirs, the citizens of the kingdom, look like—how they live, their character, their priorities, their way of living in the world. So Jesus here calls us to that. He calls us to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
Jonathan Pennington in his very helpful book The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, calls this verse “marching orders for the Christian way of being in the world, being one who is dedicated to God’s coming reign and the kind of Christ-centered righteous behavior that marks the kingdom.” He says, “Seeking first the kingdom is precisely the concrete practice of righteousness as the Sermon on the Mount develops it. It is the activity of the faithful disciple.”
Jesus is calling us to that. He’s calling us to make that the driving force, the driving priority of our lives: to seek to live under the saving reign of God and to practice the righteousness to which He calls us as it’s described in the Sermon on the Mount.
In other words, this ties in with everything that’s gone before in this sermon, and especially with the passage we looked at last week, if you were here last week, verses 19-24, where Jesus says, “Don’t lay up for yourself treasures on earth, lay up for yourself treasures in heaven,” and he talks about the eye as the lamp of the body. “If your eye is full of light, your body will be full of light; if your eye is full of darkness, your whole body will be full of darkness.” And, “You cannot serve two masters. You’ll either serve God or you’ll serve money.”
Then in verse 25 he says, “Therefore,” in light of this sense of values in the kingdom of God and this vision of the life to which Jesus calls us and your ultimate allegiance and devotion to one master (either God or money), “Therefore,” he says, “Do not be anxious.”
That means that a life that is plagued by, characterized by worry and anxiety is a life that is not deeply rooted in and aligned with the vision of the kingdom to which Jesus calls us.
So here is the application for this. If you struggle with chronic worry, you need to ask yourself if the things you are anxious about are really aligned with the kingdom of God. Most of the time, if we will get our priorities sorted out again and we will remember what it means to live with a single-minded devotion to Christ and his kingdom, our worrisome thoughts will begin to diminish.
Let me give you a personal illustration of the way this has worked for me. So I’ve struggled with anxiety off and on over the years. I’m preaching to myself this morning. There were a few years ago that we were kind of going through a lean season financially for all kinds of reasons. (I’m very well paid, the church has taken care of us; it’s not that.) But we were just—you know, there are extras. And it was a difficult season, and as I was wrestling with that, there was a refrain that maybe the Lord gave me, I’m not saying this was a word from God, but it was it was a way for me to try to daily put into practice what I was learning. The refrain that was kind of running through my mind through that season was this: “Mine is to abide, his is to provide.” My job is to abide in Jesus. It’s to seek him, it’s to be attentive to him, it’s to abide in him, it’s to trust in him. And it’s his job to provide.
Again, this doesn’t negate the wise stewardship of resources, it doesn’t negate the need for hard work and preparation—all those things—it’s none of that. But when you’re doing the best you can and you don’t know how ends are going meet, this is a way to think. “Mine is to abide in Jesus, and his is to provide in me.”
“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Or take another similar little statement from Paul in Philippians: “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.” This is what life is about.
Is my life oriented to the kingdom of God? Is this the driving conviction and concern and passion of my life? You can take verse 33 and lay it over every situation that you’re facing in your life right now. If you’re facing uncertainty in your job or stress in your work situation, lay over it verse 33. My job on the job is to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and trust that God will take care of my needs.
If you are walking through a difficult health diagnosis, either for yourself or for your family, this is what you do. Even as you’re seeking appropriate medical help and all the rest, you’re still saying, “My priority right now is to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and trust the Lord to work in and through the situation.” I’ve seen our congregation do this many times over the years, where someone faces something difficult and they’re trusting God through it, and you know what they do? They turn it into opportunity to share Christ with others. It’s exactly what Jesus is calling us to. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” You align your life with the priorities of God’s kingdom, you live for him, and you trust that your heavenly Father will take care of you.
So let me summarize and close. Jesus’ teaching shows us that worry comes from, first of all, just a lack of common sense. He really is calling us to practical wisdom here. You need to structure your life in such a way that you are not making yourself a more worrisome person. Turn off the phone, get outside, get enough sleep, take care of yourself, reason things through, look at the birds, consider the lilies. Worry comes from smallness of faith because we’re not trusting in the Father’s care, and worry comes from a divided heart, when we are seeking our security in the things of this world rather than in the kingdom of God.
Friends, Jesus calls us to something better. He calls us to not be anxious but instead to trust the Father and to seek his kingdom. And the reason we can do this is because he has already demonstrated his love, his care, his goodness to us in the greatest possible way; and he did that through the cross and the resurrection of Jesus. He did it at the cross when he gave us his Son.
Listen to these words—I want to close with these words from Romans 8:31-32. The apostle Paul says,
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
If Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead (which he did), then God the Father has already shown how supremely he loves us, how deeply he is committed to our good and to our care, and we can trust him. We can trust him through all the trials, through all the seasons, through all the difficulties, in all the needs. We can trust him with tomorrow’s trouble. Our job is to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and trust our Father to meet all of our needs, according to his wisdom and grace. Let’s pray together.
Our gracious Father in heaven, we thank you today for your word and for the teaching of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, your word strikes our hearts this morning perhaps in conviction as we reflect on how often we spend our private moments in worrisome, anxious thoughts. It rebukes the smallness of our faith, the weakness of our prayer lives, and perhaps it exposes the division in our hearts, that we are still trying to serve two masters and we end up living for worldly security rather than for the kingdom of God.
We ask you this morning by your Spirit to help each one of us as individuals see what changes, what transformations you desire in our hearts this morning. Help us see in concrete, practical ways things that we need to change in the way we structure our lives. Help us, Lord, to commit ourselves to living by faith through a life of cultivated prayer and dependence on you. And help us, Lord, in all the situations in life—every scenario, not just Sunday but Monday through Saturday, on the job, with our families, in work and play, in public and private—help us, Lord, to seek first your kingdom and your righteousness, to be able to say with Paul, “To live as Christ and to die as gain.”
As we come to the Lord’s table this morning, we pray that you would use the table as a means of grace to both call us to this undivided devotion to God as our King and also to assure us once again of the great gospel promises, that our sins are forgiven and that we are loved and cared for by a gracious Heavenly Father. So, Lord, work in our hearts now as we come to the table. Help us, Lord, to prayerfully and sincerely seek your face. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
