Text: Matthew 6:25–34
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
Birds, Lilies, Fields, & Fools
This morning, before we do anything else, I’d like to get the words of the Lord in front of us. Look with me, if you would, at Matthew 6:25. This is the Word of the Living God:
“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.”
-Matthew 6:25–34
Thus ends the reading of God’s Word; may he write it on our hearts by faith.
Jesus: First-Century Hippy?
As many have encountered this part of Jesus’ teaching, they have asked some variation of the question, “Is Jesus a sort of ancient hippy philosopher?”
Some read this sermon of the Lord’s and conclude that Jesus is basically saying that the key to life is to get out of the rat race, go find a nice field somewhere, and think real deep about lilies and swallows.
Now, before we rush to answer that question (correctly, by the way) that no, of course Jesus isn’t just some kind of first-century hippy—we need to stop and understand why it is that lots of people do come to that conclusion. Because there’s something true about Jesus and his teaching—something true and very important—that we need to see, even while not mistaking Jesus for a flower child.
Remember for a moment the context and aim of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew is eager to help us see that the coming of Jesus is the coming of the true Israel and Israel’s God. When you look at Jesus, you are looking at the substance of all that Old Testament promised in word and shadow—you’re looking at the true lamb, temple, priest, king, prophet, torah, and promised land. You’re looking at the seed of the Kingdom of God—the beginnings of his true rule and realm.
And this realm is not just a corner of the Middle East—the promised land there was just a sign, just a shadow, just a type, just a finger pointing at something much more vast and glorious. No, this Kingdom that has arrived with this King is the true Israel, the true Kingdom, the true Promised Land. It is going to swallow the earth—so that the songs Israel has been singing since David would finally be unleashed:
“He will have dominion from sea to sea and even from the River to the ends of earth—the earth’s remotest regions will be his.”
This Kingdom has arrived in the very midst of that old, corrupted realm—it has erupted out of the ground of that very place, that sign. A new King has come, and his rule is heralded in the heart of the old kingdoms.
And it has come with a new way and a better way than that of the old kingdoms of men. The old kingdoms of men absolutely were—and today, where they still stand and hold sway, absolutely are—kingdoms of anxiety.
The old realm is a realm of anxiety. It absolutely is a rat-race-realm. It is a realm of worry. It is a realm of chronic, scrabbling after crumbs. It is a realm of power and the piling up of things vulnerable to moth and rust and thieves in the hope that those things will satisfy.
Anxiety is the thrumming pulse of the old realm, because it is a realm built on the desperate search for that which only God can give—all while rejecting God, and trying rather to be gods. It is a realm built by men who will not seek for God, but rather seek to be gods.
And so in the face of that, bringing his better way, his better Kingdom, his better rule, Jesus absolutely does say, “Don’t fall for it. Don’t fall for the rat race. Don’t fall for the the old regime and its thrumming pulse of anxiety—anxiety that keeps businesses open and workers working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Don’t fall for their kingdom of worry. Look rather to the birds and the lilies and the grass of the fields.”
So this morning, we’ll work through his teaching very simply and straightforwardly, simply following the outline he gives us, which goes like this:
First, in verse 25, he gives us the doctrine, our marching orders, his command to us: Don’t be anxious about your life, clothes, food, etc.
Then, starting in the second half of verse 25, we’ll see how he unfolds this instruction with a series of rhetorical questions and illustrations to help us see the contrast between his Kingdom and his instruction on how to live in it and the folly of the old realm. That will take us through verse 32.
Then, Jesus gives the underlying principle that serves as the ultimate antidote to all anxiety in verse 33, which I believe to be possibly the most important sentence in the whole sermon on the mount, before he reiterates his command in verse 34.
Birds, Lilies, Fields, and Fools
So first, remember the pointed edge of the command he gives us 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.”
-Matthew 6:25a
The word “anxious” in this sentence means something like “worried concern.” And you might ask, “Why not?” You might ask that, because those things do seem to be fairly important. I have to eat and drink, or I will die. I need to wear clothes, even to obey the commands of the Scriptures. And my life? Wouldn’t it be reasonable to be concerned about my life? So if I’m going to be anxious about something, those things seem pretty reasonable.
Let’s see how he makes his point, and we will see why this instruction is a grace. Jesus goes back and forth between illustrations and rhetorical questions to make his point.
1. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
First, in the second half of verse 25, he asks,
“Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”
-Matthew 6:25b
We tend to spend a lot of our time worried about our physical life, sustenance, and accessories. Think about it: Do you spend more time worried about your soul—about your obedience to God, rest in the Lord, etc.—or about your bank account, house, health, food, etc.?
That preaches something. That preaches something about what we think is the most important, most valuable thing. Our anxiety about these things shows us that we believe them to be at the center. Our actual theology is betrayed by our actual worries.
So the first point Jesus makes is that anxiety about daily bread and raiment reveals what we believe to actually live at the center of life.
Now, there is a kind of concern, a kind of trembling concern, even, that we are explicitly told to have. Paul says it to the Philippian church, that we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
When we tremble at the thought of being found outside of the grace of God, then we are preaching something deeply true—that it would be better to lose anything to keep God. When we tremble and worry about our clothing, our food, and our life, we also preach something, but something deeply false—that those things are of greatest concern.
So sinful worry is an unveiling of wrongly ordered loves. It reveals something about what we really believe to be of greatest importance.
2. Are you not of more value than they?
Look at verse 26, and we’ll see his second illustration and rhetorical question,
“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?”
-Matthew 6:26
Birds seem to have figured this out. They just go about being and doing what they were made to be and to do, and the Father feeds them. The point isn’t that we are to be and do what birds do, but to be and do what people were made to be and to do.
So people were made to cultivate and farm and grow and adorn and store up and build things. That’s not the point. The point is that if we simply point our lives at what it is that God has made us for—living for his glory and approval, obeying his Word, loving our neighbor, and more—then we ought to be able to trust that our Father will feed us, like he does the birds.
It’s an a fortiori, or how-much-more, argument: If he feeds birds who do what they were made to do, how much more will he feed men, who bear his image, as they do what they were made to do?
3. And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
In verse 27, he adds a third rhetorical question,
“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”
-Matthew 6:27
Can you worry yourself into longer life? Can you worry another five minutes onto your span? No. And not just because that doesn’t work on a utilitarian sort of level. But no, because the span of your life is already marked out. Did you know that?
“Since his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass…”
-Job 14:5
“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
-Psalm 139:16
So even when we worry about real things—like, for example, maybe you are actually hungry and broke. Or maybe you are actually ill and facing death—we are not actually changing the moment of our departure from this mortal coil. God is exhaustively sovereign. You will die when he has determined that you will die.
What a gift, right? What freedom that doctrine ought to give us! That means that, even as I do what I should to seek health so I can use my strength to serve God and his people, even if I get cancer, I need not shoulder the responsibility for trying to re-number my own days.
God is working the pre-determined span of your life—conception to burial—together for your good and the good of his good plan.
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
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? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
-Romans 8:28–39
4. 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?
Verse 28–30 adds,
“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?”
-Matthew 6:28–30
Again, if the Father clothes grass as it does what it was made to do, he will clothe us as we do what we were made to do. Trust your Father.
5. Are you in or out of my Kingdom?
Finally, as he sums up his teaching, he says,
“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.”
-Matthew 6:31–32
Again this is Kingdom talk. He does something very interesting, here. He equates those who follow him with true Israel, and those who don’t with the Gentiles. Obviously, we are Gentiles in one sense. We are not ethnic Jews. But the point is deeper than that. The lines are not going to be drawn around descent from Abraham—but around membership in this Kingdom or in the kingdom of darkness. Gentiles, those outside of his Kingdom, are worry and fuss and live in anxiety about food and clothes and money and the rat race of accumulating things as an end in itself.
Not so with the citizens of this Kingdom of the Father. They will be concerned with something far higher than that—even as they participate in economies, wear clothes, grow food, and make money.
The Ultimate Antidote to Worry
That brings us to verse 33, which I believe to be possibly the most important sentence in the Sermon on the Mount:
“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.”
-Matthew 6:33–34
Verse 33 gives us the ultimate antidote, not only to sinful anxiety, but to all of the sin that will lead us to fall short of the righteousness of the Kingdom—the righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.
The word translated “anxiety” in this passage comes from a word that has the sense of being pulled apart. The picture is that, if we try to pursue the things of earth—up to and including our own earthly life—on equal terms with the Kingdom of God and the righteousness of that Kingdom—we will be pulled apart. We won’t be wholeheartedly able to do anything. We will continually be anxious, trying to have both.
But Jesus answer isn’t to get rid of one. It’s not to get rid of the things of earth. It’s to pursue them properly. It’s to make the Kingdom of God and the righteousness of that Kingdom the highest end, the end we pursue even as we plan and wisely use food, clothes, money, and our health.
So rather than being anxious about food and clothes and health and even our own life, we are to bring those things to the Lord and say to them, “Kneel to the King.”
And then we can pursue those things as Christians. We can approach food Christianly—giving thanks for it, feeding our children and our neighbors with it, not worshiping it. The same for clothes and even our very lives.
The antidote to worry is not to do nothing to secure your needs. It is rather to seek first the things that are first—the Kingdom of God and the righteousness of God—and then to use those lesser things to serve that greater thing.
Do you see how this serves as the antidote to all of our sin? All of our sin is, at bottom, a matter of improperly ordered loves. It is a matter of seeking first that which is not first—and therefore turning even glories into horrors.
Seek first after sexual pleasure, and the glory that is sexual pleasure will become a horror, a slaver, a ruinous thing. It will consume realms and peoples and nations. It will lead to the most gruesome of evils.
Seek first after wealth, and the glory that is wealth will become a horror, a slaver, and a ruinous thing.
Seek first after comfort, and the glory that is comfort will become a horror, a slaver, and a ruinous thing.
Seek first after family, and the glory that is family will become a horror, a slaver, and a ruinous thing.
Seek first after achievement, and the glory that is achievement will become a horror, a slaver, and a ruinous thing.
Seek first after wealth, and the glory that is wealth will become a horror, a slaver, and a ruinous thing.
Seek first after knowledge, and the glory that is knowledge will become a horror, a slaver, and a ruinous thing.
Seek first after beauty, marriage, strength, masculinity, femininity, renown, legacy, philosophy, power, prophetic cultural insight, and all of those lowercase glories will become horrors, slavers, and ruinous things.
That’s why I consider this sentence, verse 33, to be possibly the most important in the sermon—it teaches us how to do everything.
The God of the Future
Let me leave you with this, with one final point to consider in this instruction from the Lord.
Remember, this is a sermon about the Kingdom of God and the righteousness of that Kingdom. And it is a sermon about the Kingdom of God from the King of that Kingdom. And the King is inviting you to leave the way of the old realm—the way of making your life’s aim the accumulation of power and earthly treasures—and to join in his new realm and its better way.
Part of what he’s saying when he says, as he did in Matthew 4:17, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” is that he has come to bring all things under his rule. The Father is, right now according to Psalm 110, putting all things under his feet.
That means that Jesus, as the King of this realm, is the King of everything—including the future. When he announces his rule, he is also announcing his rule over the future. Christ is the God of the future, and because he is the God of the future—listen, this is so important—you don’t have to pretend to be.
Don’t try to worry your way into a better tomorrow. Don’t try to be the God of the future. That job is already taken, and you are secure in the grip of the God who writes the future, rules the future, and promises good to us in the future.