A few thoughts on Matthew 6:25–34
I would like to share with you a few thoughts I have been mulling over in my morning meditations in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus speaks of two activities in the passage before us: worrying and seeking. These two are closely connected, as weird as that may sound at first. Allow me to highlight this connection in vv31–33:
“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we
eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What
will we wear for clothing?’ “For the Gen-
tiles eagerly seek all these things; for your
heavenly Father knows that you need all
these things. But seek first His kingdom
and His righteousness, and all these things
will be added to you.”
(Matthew 6:31–33, NASB95)
Do you see Jesus’s point? You can either, by worrying, seek what “the Gentiles eagerly seek”, or else you can “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” — but you can not do both at the same time. You will either trust God, your heavenly Father, to supply you with all you need, or you will chase after these yourself.
Calvin’s thoughts are gold on this:
Each of us ought to labour, as far as his
calling requires and the Lord commands;
and each of us ought to be led by his own
wants to call upon God.¹
Jesus is not merely making the point here that you can trust your Father (you can!): He wants you to be free to seek what you are called to seek: v33a. And if our hearts are weighed down seeking after things He has promised to provide for us, we will have no capacity left to seek what we are meant to seek. Our souls will stick to earth, unable to reach for heaven.
In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches us to pray in the right order of things: see Matthew 6:10–11.
In our passage, this same Jesus graciously reorients us to adopt this outlook on life. This is because we have a tendency to switch v11 and v10 in the prayer Jesus teaches us, both in our thinking and in our practice — we put our bread before God’s kingdom, and this leads to worry, weakening faith, and wrong priorities. But make your first aim the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and you will find your soul to be free to serve God, pursue righteous living, trusting in Him more and more, and growing in your experience of His kindness to you.
What do you seek?
Calix
Pastor
March
¹ John Calvin and William Pringle, Commentary on a Harmony
of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 1
(Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 339.
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