"(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 he 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."
Matthew 6:32-34
Let us summarize the verses which have already been before us in that section of our Lord’s Address which is completed at the end of Matthew 6. In verses 19-24 Christ forbade the practice of covetousness, and in what follows He struck at the root from which that sin proceeds, namely distrust and excessive care for the things of this 1sfe. First, He tells us that such worry is needless: the bounty of God assuring supplies (v. 25). Creation is a pledge of our preservation: He who gives life will maintain it, He who provides a body will not deny it food and raiment. Second, He shows us that such worry is senseless: the providence of God unto inferior creatures evidencing it (v. 26). If God provides for the fowls of the air, will He suffer His own children to starve? Third, He proves it is useless: the impotency of man demonstrating it (v. 27). Since no anxiety or industry of ours can increase our stature, much less can worrying improve our earthly estate. Fourth, He announces it is faithless (vv. 28-30). Since God clothes the herbs of the field, will He suffer His dear people to lack suitable covering?
None but the Divine Physician could have opened up so impressively the hideous nature of this disease. In that Divine diagnosis we are given to behold the excuselessness and the heinousness of this sin which is so prevalent among professing Christians. Distressing ourselves over the obtaining of future supplies, carking care in connection with securing the necessities of temporal life, so far from being a trivial infirmity which we need not take seriously to heart, is a sin of the deepest dye which should humble us into the dust before God. Worrying over tomorrow’s food and clothing is needless, useless, senseless, faithless, and therefore it is utterly excuseless. Then surely we should make conscience of it, confess it contritely before God, and seek from Him grace to mortify it. That which was spoken by Christ on the Mount is addressed unto us today: Oh, that we may be given ears to hear and hearts to improve the same.
"(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things" (v. 32). In these words our Lord advances two additional reasons why His people should not be unduly solicitous about temporal supplies. First, because such anxieties are heathenish. This will appear more evident to the ordinary reader when we point out that the Greek word which is here rendered "Gentiles" is translated "heathen" in Acts 4:25; Galatians 1:16, etc. At the time Christ made this statement the "Gentiles" were without any written revelation from God and were in complete spiritual darkness. In consequence, they had the most erroneous ideas of the Divine character and government. Many of them believed that all things were fixed by a blind and inexorable fate, while others went to an opposite extreme, supposing that nothing was predetermined, but that everything was left to capricious chance. Such are the philosophizings of man’s much-vaunted reason when unillumined by the Spirit of Truth.
The concepts which the "Gentiles" formed of their "gods" were such that they could have no trust in them. So far from regarding their "gods" as beings of benevolence, who regarded their devotees with compassion, they were looked upon as objects of dread, whose favour could only be purchased by the most costly of offerings (appropriated by the priests) and whose ire had to be placated by human sacrifices. Of a future life beyond this vale of tears the heathen had but the vaguest and gloomiest ideas. Consequently this world meant everything to them, and therefore their whole thought was directed and their energy devoted to the obtaining of its necessities and comforts, making such their chief good. Their ambition rose no higher than to eat and drink, to have a sufficiency of material things and make merry therewith. And those of them who possessed little of this world—and only a very small number had much—were weighed down with worry as to how soon their slender resources might completely fail them.
"For after all these things do the Gentiles seek." It should be pointed out that the word in the original whereby Christ described the behavior of the heathen is more emphatic than our translation intimates, denoting that they "set themselves to seek" or "seek with all their might." This is a detail of some importance, for the mere or simple seeking of things necessary for our welfare is a duty, but when we give ourselves wholly to the quest thereof it is a sin, for it proceeds from distrust of God. And this was precisely the case of the Gentiles at that time: they were without the knowledge of the true God, had not His Word and were ignorant of His providences. How vastly and how radically different is the case of the Christian: God is revealed to him in Christ, a written revelation from Him is in his hands assuring him of the supply of all his need. How shameful then, how wicked, for a child of God to come down to the level of the heathen, as he does when carking care possesses his heart.
The force of our Lord’s argument (that it is an argument or dissuasive is clear from its opening "for") will probably be apparent if we paraphrase it thus: because on all these things do wordlings set their hearts—in the parallel passage it reads "For all these things do the nations of the world seek after" (Luke 12:30). How utterly unworthy for a Christian to be regulated by a mode of thinking and acting such as governs the godless, to descend to the level of the unregenerate. Yet, alas, how many of those now bearing the name of ‘Christ do this very thing. How grossly materialistic is this twentieth century. How close is the resemblance between what men call "Christian civilization" and the conditions which obtained in the degenerate empires of ancient Greece and Rome. Human nature is the same in every age, the same the world over, and will inevitably remain so except where the Holy Spirit is pleased to work in His transforming power.
"Solicitude for the future is at bottom worldly-mindedness. The heathen tendency in us all leads to an over-estimate of material good, and it is a question of circumstances whether that shall show itself in heaping up earthly treasures, or in anxious care. They are the same plant, only the one is growing in the tropics of sunny prosperity, and the other in the arctic zone of chill penury. The one is the sin of the worldly-minded rich man, and the other is the sin of the worldly-minded poor man. The character is the same turned inside out! And therefore, the words ‘ye cannot serve God and mammon’ stand in this chapter in the center, between our Lord’s warning against laying up treasures on earth, and His warnings against being full of cares for earth. He would show us thereby that these two apparently opposite states of mind in reality spring from one root, and are equally, though differently, ‘serving mammon.’ We do not sufficiently reflect upon that" (A. MacLaren).
There are some who seek to excuse their anxiety and worrying by saying it is the result of temperament or circumstances. Even so, that does not lessen their sin. Divine grace teaches its possessor to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts (Titus 2:12) and lifts him above circumstances (Phil. 4:11). The fact is that those who do not trust in God’s goodness and count not upon His faithfulness to supply all their need are pagans, no matter what may be their profession. Pagans believe not in Divine providence, and so rely upon the means, trusting wholly in their own efforts and endeavors, and so make themselves their own god. The real reason why empty professors are so anxious about the things of this life and so troubled over future supplies is that their hearts are earthbound and their desires heathenish. A worldling is one whose anxieties and joys are both confined within the narrow sphere of the material and the visible— take that from him, and he has nothing left.
Observe now the ground on which this argument or dissuasive rests. Real Christians have the true God for their God which the heathen have not, and therefore they must differ from them in their behavior. God clothed the grass of the field (v. 30)—yea, with a verdure and beauty exceeding that of Solomon’s royal robes—"therefore take no [anxiousl thought, saying [unbelievingly and petulantly], What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" (v. 31). "For after all these things do the Gentiles seek," and ye must not be like unto them. In all things the children of God should differ from the heathen. "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" said Christ (John 17:14), and as He evidenced His separation from and unlikeness to it, so must we. "Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:2). Sons of the King of heaven are not to conduct themselves like the Devil’s beggars.
"For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things" (v. 32). Here is still another reason, the most powerful of all, for delivering believers from distressing fears and God dishonoring anxieties about future supplies. "Your heavenly Father" is set over against the inanimate and impotent "gods" of the heathen: His knowledge or tender solicitude, against their ignorance and lack of concern. The poor pagans might well say, If we are not wholly taken up with seeking after the necessities and comforts of this life, then pray who will provide them? But it is far otherwise with the Christian. The One who made heaven and earth sustains to him the relation of a heavenly Father: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him" (Ps. 103:13). He knows what I have need of, and will not deny it to me. "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?" (Matthew 7:11). The believer need trouble himself no further than soberly to use all lawful means, calmly and confidently counting on God to bless the same: God will provide what is needful for him and therefore he need not vex his mind about it.
Let it be duly noted that Christ here repeats the note which He had struck in verse 26: "your heavenly Father feedeth them." If He provides for such inferior creatures as the fowls of the air, will He suffer the members of His own family to want? He is their Creator and so bountifully supplies their need; but He is the Christian’s Father and will not forget His own child. Here is double armor against the arrows of anxiety: the intimate relation which the great God sustains to His people, and the assurance that His knowledge of them is equal to His love for them. The children of this world are indeed tormented with anxiety as to how tomorrow’s supplies will be obtained, nor is it at all strange that they should be bowed down with such cares, for they have no heavenly Father to whose infinite love and faithfulnes3 they may commit themselves. Consequently in this argument Christ is putting His disciples to the proof, as to whether or not the relation which God sustains to them be actual and counts for anything, or whether it be mere theory and lip profession.