Matthew 6:34

Matthew 6:34

I. In considering this text the question naturally arises, Is not the Christian character essentially a provident one? Is it not the very nature of the new life which is within us, that, taking all its interests and affections out of the present, as it passes, it throws them on to that which is coming, and always is living in the future? All this is perfectly true; and perhaps the very habit of a Christian's mind in looking always onwards has a tendency to make his temperament anxious. Every duty has its dangers; every height has its precipice; every light has its shadow. But this is true only of an early and imperfect religion. As a believer grows, his tomorrow becomes more and more eternity. So it comes to pass that the very forethought of the Christian, which becomes the law and condition of his being, turns into the remedy for every unhappy disposition, and he takes no thought for the morrow, being engrossed in the thought of that never-ending eternity which lies before him.

II. Consider the benefit of living by the day. (1) As respects our pleasures. Just as snow-clad mountains in the distance give a distinctness to the nearer prospect, so every child of God knows well how the joy is heightened by the privilege of not having to dilute it by anxiety for any future good. (2) As respects our pains. It is the sorrow and the pain which are coming which are so hard to bear. The unknown and the undefined are always the largest weights; and in the same proportion suspense is always the greatest of evils. So that he has well-nigh found a panacea who has thoroughly imbued his mind with the truth of the text. It will be a sweet, a prevailing argument with God, every moment "O Lord, think of me this day;for this is that tomorrowof which Thou didst command me not to think." And as you do this the yesterdays will become memory's witnesses to God's mind, and the tomorrows will be fields for faith's peaceful exercise.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,1874, p. 221.

I. There are two classes of persons who take no thought for the morrow. There are those who live heedlessly and giddily, absorbed in each new fancy or pleasure as it passes, without any definite aim or aspiration, and only free from anxiety because they are free from all serious thoughts whatever. There are also those who are careless for the morrow, because they are careful for today. They have a firm trust in God. They believe that every day is His, and that their powers are His, and that if every moment as it comes is given to Him, He will provide for the future. The first class may be said to be below anxiety, the second to be above it. It is very important to ask ourselves whether we are not in the first of these two classes. May it not be that even the reproofs, even the warnings and cautions of Christ presuppose a degree of strength to which we have not yet attained? Can it be that the words of the text speak with a certain ironyto some of us?

II. Christ was speaking mainly to poor men. They were anxious, as the poor always are, about very simple things. They were anxious about food and clothing for themselves and for their families. Christ addressed Himself to the special needs of those He saw before Him. How does He address Himself to ours? The principleof His admonition is, "Do not be anxious about the future. One thing is needful. Trust your Father in heaven to send you all other things." To those who fear they will not be able to hold out either in diligence or goodness, Christ says, "Take no thought for the morrow." Do right today. Make one thing clearly your first object. Seek to know and to do God's will, and then all other good things will be added unto you. Best of all good things, greater spiritual strength, a more habitual consciousness of Christ's presence, a truer delight in feeling, "I am His and He is mine;" a growing power of confessing Him before others, a growing impossibility of denying Him in anywise.

III. If we dream of what we shall do tomorrow, we shall do nothing today. We have read of sieges in which resistance was protracted day after day and week after week, with apparently scarcely a possibility of ultimate success. If we question the defenders, they tell us that they looked forward very little. The duties of each day, the hope of being able to know at the close of each evening "The city is still ours," were sufficiently absorbing, and did not allow the mind to be unnerved by the contemplation of the extreme improbability of final escape. If ourwarfare is to end triumphantly, if we are to hold out against temptation till relief comes, we must take counsel of this sober short-sightedness this wise refusal to anticipate evil. "Give us this dayour daily bread." Let this be our prayer for all wants of the body. "Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us thisday without sin." Let this be our simple prayer for all wants of the soul.

H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons,1st series, p. 108.

I. It is most obvious that in these words Christ could not have meant to say, "Live only in the present; be forgetful of the future." His precepts direct men to think of the future. The whole tendency of Christianity is to produce the deepest thoughtfulness for the morrow, for its spirit prompts men to stand ever "with their loins girt and their lights burning" ready alike for the coming trials of life and the change of death. It is evidently of the evil of the future that Christ is speaking, and, therefore, it is the anxious restlessness which springs from fear of that evil which He condemns. Regarding the words in this light, they present to us the Christian law of living: "Do the day's work God gives you, bear the day's burden God sends you, and be not anxious about the evil which the morrow may bring."

II. In showing that this is both possible and necessary for the Christian man, we must regard this injunction as Christ here regards it, as flowing from faith. Faith may rise in three different ways, each of which seems to give it a different aspect. It may be intuitive, reflective, or submissive. In our hopeful moments it rises from the intuition of love; in our thoughtful hours it is the offspring of intellectual reflection, and when depressed and sorrowful it is the profound outgoing of trust in One who is stronger than we. (1) The highest faith is that which rises from the intuition of love, and the essential feature of such faith is this that it thinks not of the future, but grasps eternity as a present reality. The necessary result of such faith is a defiance of life's evils, for the love of God, when realized in Christ, dares all futurity, and angels, and principalities, and powers to sunder it from God. It prevents our taking thought for the morrow. (2) Again, faith rises from reflection on the revelation of God. Is it possible that faith in a Father can exist with an anxious care for the morrow which makes the work of today restless and confused? The mighty calmness of nature shames our restlessness into repose. We cannot trace the Father in the glory of His universe, and yet disbelieve in the provision of His care for us. (3) Once more, faith rises from the conscious feebleness of man. Times of childlike trust and submission, arising from a sense of infirmity, help to the fulfilment of Christ's injunction, "Take no thought for the morrow." For the more powerfully we are conscious of our ignorance and helplessness, the more utterly can we leave the future in God's hands.

E. L. Hull, Sermons,2nd series, p. 52.

On a Particular Providence.

I. Perhaps one of the most important uses of the Old Testament is, that it points out to us how clearly what the world calls chance is to be attributed to providential interposition. The veil is uplifted, and the finger of God is seen. It is true, indeed, that the word chance is used in Scripture, as in Ecclesiastes 9:11.; but there it is used to denote, not what infidels mean when they speak of chance, but merely such accidents as have occurred contrary to the expectations and designs of men God Himself being mediately or immediately the cause.

II. The doctrine of a special providence lies between two extremes, as all truth does; between the system which denies to man any power, and that which refuses to recognize the occasional interference of the Deity.

III. Only let us from the heart believe in the special providence of God, and thenno notion of expediency will induce us, in any single instance, to do evil that good may come; or, which is a greater trial, to fear to do good lest evil should ensue. The true Christian, strong in the faith of God's special providence, and he only, is the really consistent man, whom neither the frown of the tyrant, nor the preferments of the powerful, nor the flattery of the crafty can drive or allure from the narrow path; who can alike defy lawless power and public opinion that is, the opinion of the thoughtless many, as opposed to the truth possessed by the thoughtful few; he only can resolutely oppose the spirit of the age, when the spirit of the age is not in accordance with the Spirit of God.

IV. See the influence of the doctrine of a special providence on the duty of prayer. If we believe that God doessometimes interfere and interpose, under circumstances apparently the most trivial, we shall most assuredly prayto God, whenever we have any object at heart, that by His good providence our exertions may be rendered successful; we shall feel that whatever is worthy of our labour is worthy of our prayers; and prayer will thus sanctify our actions, while our energy of action will give incitement to our prayers.

W. F. Hook, Sermons on Various Subjects,p. 25.

I. Christ's thought in the text, as I imagine it, is this: As the birds and the flowers, in a sort of necessary way, keep the laws of their nature, under the kindly care of their Father, all their wants are met; they sing and feed, they bloom and live out their brief lives in glad perfection. But the secret of it lies in their unconscious obedience to the laws of their being; it is in obedience that the watchful care of God is realized. Hence, when Christ comes to apply the matter to men, He introduces the condition. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and food and drink and raiment will follow. He by no means says, Live as careless as a bird; but rather, Be as true to your law of righteousness as a bird is to the law of its condition, and you may be as free from anxiety.

II. Christ does not here hold us back from forethought and care, and even a sort of anxiety. Seek, He says, first and always; and no seeking, no search, worthy of the name, can be made without care. The matter turns, then, on the thing that is to engage our thought and care. Not meat and drink and raiment; not the things the Gentiles seek after. Let your search be after righteousness. Put your solicitude, your careful thought, your strife, where they belong in the realm of righteous obedience and there will be no occasion for anxiety elsewhere.

III. Christ takes pains to tell us why and how we may trust. His reasons are as solid as the world, as sure as the process of nature, as true as God Himself. (1) We are put into the sure order of nature, and this order is one of supply of wants. (2) We are put under a law of righteousness, and this law also works towards a supply of wants. (a) A righteous man, by the habit and law of his being, sows seed for the bread of tomorrow. (b) Righteousness puts a man into such relations to his fellowmen that it builds for him houses of habitation for all his mortal years.

IV. Why does Christ in this inaugural discourse devote so much time to such a matter as anxiety a thing that hardly comes within the range of morals? He treated it as a matter of great importance: (1) because it is a source of great unhappiness; (2) to create an atmosphere of peace about the soul.

T. T. Munger, The Appeal to Life,p. 149.

In regard to the future, there are two wrong feelings which we are apt to cherish. There is the feeling of over-confidence, the feeling which results in what the old proverb warns us against, "boasting one's self of the morrow." And there is the opposite extreme the feeling of anxiety, of distrust, of fear, which shows itself in dark forebodings of the future. It is this second extreme our Lord admonishes us to avoid.

I. There is the testimony of life. However trying your circumstances may be, your life is a witness that you are not forsaken by God. Next to Christ, life is the supreme gift of the Creator. And it is life pre-eminently which announces His presence.

II. Whatever your circumstances may be, the minutest of them is under the power of God. Our Lord introduces us to the blessed fact that no creature is unimportant in His sight. "Behold the fowls of the air," He says: for "they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them." God's providence is indeed broad and universal in its plans, and it does work in great tracts and circles of toil; but it finds room and time to visit the nest and supply the table of every sparrow that chirps upon the hedge. Hear the gospel of the birds.

III. Whatever sorrow or distress there may be in your lot, God is abler to help than you yourself are, and His way of helping is better than your own. Do not doubt the power, or the pity, or the care of God. And do not cherish the evil thought that your own ordering of your affairs would be better. He who crowns the lily with its glory can supply you, if you will patiently wait for it at His hands, with a blessedness which can never be taken away.

IV. He who best knows the reality, who came down from heaven to tell us what is in God, gave us the assurance of a Father. God is our Father, and we are bound to trust Him with the trustfulness of a child, and we are free to expect from Him a child's inheritance.

V. Be not, then, wistful about the future; be not filled with anxieties about the morrow. If you have made this loving God your soul's dwelling-place, no evil can come near you. "The young lions may lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing."

A. Macleod, Days of Heaven upon Earth,p. 119.

To accept this saying as a rule of life makes life easier, and it makes work for others surer, wiser, better, and more joyous.

I. Put your whole force into the work of today, not troubling about the next day. If you do that, you will not at least be troubled by the anxieties about work which ought to have been done in the past, and you will be free from all back trouble when the morrow comes. And if it is duty you do, it will arrange itself rightly in the world, for others and for you. It is true you may fail, but God will not allow our failure to bring ruin to the cause of man, though it may spoil our own life for a time. But even then there is so much time before us that we need not despair. In kindlier weather, in a brighter world, we may repair the past, resume the half-written life, re-knit the broken web, accomplish the love which duty here forbade. For we abide for ever, and we have a Father who will not let us fail for ever.

II. It is plain that when Christ said, "Take no thought for the morrow," He did not mean that to embrace the whole of life, or of His teaching on the subject. He did not mean, do not work in the present for the future, but do not spoil your work in the present by over-care for a future not in your own hands; He did not mean, do not look forward for yourself, nor consider how your acts now will bear on time to come; but He did mean, do not let anxiety, care for meat and drink and the visible things of life, so crowd and disturb your mind that you cannot give that free, wise, sober, unfearful consideration to the education of yourself, your children, your nation, and mankind that is most noble in a man. He did not mean, think only of yourself and your joy, but have your view so free from self-trouble that you may think for others, your life so full of joyous freedom that you may be able to act with unfettered energy for others.

S. A. Brooke, Sermons,2nd series, p. 68.

References: Matthew 6:34. T. Jackson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 195; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. xxv., p. 244; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 193; J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons,p. 367; C. Girdlestone, A Course of Sermons,vol. ii., p. 325; C. Kingsley, All Saints' Day and Other Sermons,p. 365; Ibid., The Good News of God,p. 276; J. C. Hare, Sermons in Herstmonceux Church,vol. i., p. 265.Matthew 6:34. J. Vaughan, Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament,p. 11.