_ALMSGIVING_ ‘Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them … thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.’ Matthew 6:1 In this part of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord Jesus gives us instruction on the giving of alms, a subject to which the Jews attached... [ Continue Reading ]
_ALONE WITH GOD_ ‘But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.’ Matthew 6:6 It is the test of what a man is when he is alone with God. The religious life is what we are to God, and what God is to us. I. A LITTLE SAN... [ Continue Reading ]
_THE DIVINE FATHERHOOD_ Our Father which art in heaven.’ Matthew 6:9 In this chapter, while Christ seems to be occupied with warning us against the affectations and vanities, the hollowness and formality, the shallow externalism of established observances, He adds injunctions which carry us to th... [ Continue Reading ]
_THE HALLOWED NAME_ ‘Hallowed be Thy name.’ Matthew 6:9 If the highest reach of prayer is to approach as near as we can to the worship of heaven, how can we get nearer to the ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ than by breathing faintly out of our weaker state, ‘Hallowed be Thy name’? So that indeed we may say t... [ Continue Reading ]
_GOD’S KINGDOM_ ‘Thy kingdom come.’ Matthew 6:10 It may help us to make this prayer more real if we try to know something of the Kingdom of which our Lord so often speaks and for the coming of which He bids us pray. I. A VISIBLE KINGDOM.—The Kingdom of God is a visible Kingdom, made up of men a... [ Continue Reading ]
_GOD’S WILL IN WORSHIP AND WORK_ ‘Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.’ Matthew 6:10 Is not this impossible? Is it not impossible that God’s will should ever be done here on earth as it is in heaven? And yet we dare not have a lower ideal, or nothing can be accomplished, either individu... [ Continue Reading ]
_ONLY BREAD_ ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ Matthew 6:11 How small a part of this model prayer is devoted to our bodily necessities! One single petition is all, and this of the simplest kind. Yet it is a larger one than it looks. The word ‘bread’ must stand for the necessaries of existence.... [ Continue Reading ]
_FORGIVENESS FOR THE FORGIVING_ ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’ Matthew 6:12 It is with the precious promises of God’s Word before us, and with all the bitter remembrance of our shortcomings behind us, that our Lord bids us bend daily before our gracious Father in heaven, and s... [ Continue Reading ]
_SOURCES OF TEMPTATION_ ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ Matthew 6:13 Temptation and sin are utterly distinct things, which must on no account be confused. What are the sources of temptation? We should do wrong to narrow down our idea of temptation to incitement to evil, coming from an evil quarter... [ Continue Reading ]
_FOURFOLD POWER_ ‘Thine is … the power.’ Matthew 6:13 As we travel back into the past with its temptations, its failures, and its scant victories, do we not feel the lack of power? There are four different kinds of this power: material, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. I. MATERIAL POWER.—Eve... [ Continue Reading ]
_THE GRAND DOXOLOGY_ ‘For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, Amen.’ Matthew 6:13 As the Lord’s Prayer began by asking three things concerning God,—that His name, that His empire, that His will, might be magnified,—so it ends with a lofty ascription of God’s praise in th... [ Continue Reading ]
_THE LENTEN FAST_ ‘When ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites.’ Matthew 6:16 ‘When ye fast,’—the Lord takes it absolutely as granted that none of His followers will attempt to evade, or be so foolish as to forget, the obvious benefit and necessity of this good old practice. ‘When ye fast,’ and then... [ Continue Reading ]
_TREASURES IN HEAVEN_ ‘But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.’ Matthew 6:20 The love of accumulation is such a principle in our nature, that it will be doubted whether there is any man who is altogether free from the power of its fascination. The object will appear according to a man’s ed... [ Continue Reading ]
_CHOOSING THE BEST_ ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ Matthew 6:21 This is the _ reason_ which our Lord gives for the precepts which go immediately before. And our hearts re-echo the Saviour’s words. I. A PRINCIPLE OF HUMAN NATURE.—We all know how true it is that a man’s... [ Continue Reading ]
_SINGLENESS OF EYE_ ‘The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.’ Matthew 6:22 The finest organ of the body is the ‘eye.’ Therefore it has been made the allegory of spiritual things. The idea conveyed by a ‘single eye,’ appears to be... [ Continue Reading ]
_THE TWO MASTERS_ ‘No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’ Matthew 6:24 This is one of those passages which are very hard to preach upon honestly, making the words m... [ Continue Reading ]
_LESSONS FROM NATURE_ ‘Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.’ Matthew 6:25 ‘Take no thought, be not anxious’—strange exhortation! How many nominal Christians even pretend to follow it? Why i... [ Continue Reading ]
_THE LAW OF PROPORTION_ ‘Is not the life more than meat?’ Matthew 6:25 I. A LAW OF PROPORTION.—It is necessary that there should be the _ distinction of greater and less_ in the business of life. It is in this men differ most perhaps—the faculty of discriminating and of bending the force of thei... [ Continue Reading ]
_LESSONS FROM LILIES_ ‘Consider the lilies.’ Matthew 6:28 Is there nothing ironic in proposing to a congregation of hard workers to take courage from the lilies, which toil not, nor spin? If we resembled them we should all starve. And is there no flaw in the reasoning which infers that we ought n... [ Continue Reading ]
_THE ANTIDOTE TO ANXIETY_ ‘Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.’ Matthew 6:32 Anxiety must be a sin. And it must be a sin very deep in the heart. So large a portion of the Sermon on the Mount would never have been directed against anxiety, if the sin were not very l... [ Continue Reading ]
_THE ECONOMIC PRECEPTS OF CHRIST_ ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’ Matthew 6:33 To recognise these precepts of the Sermon on the Mount as high and beautiful may in some important degree touch and mould our dispositions. But w... [ Continue Reading ]
_THE PRINCIPLES OF THE KINGDOM_ ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God.’ Matthew 6:33 These are words of the kind with which we find it hard to deal sincerely; too true to be denied, too high to be practically accepted, we are tempted to pass them by with some kind of complimentary acknowledgment. Yet... [ Continue Reading ]
_ONE DAY AT A TIME_ ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow.’ Matthew 6:34 The Revised Version has it, ‘Be not anxious for the morrow’; but, even so, this is one of the words of the Lord which absolutely startle us with the greatness of their claim. This is one of the words which brings it home... [ Continue Reading ]
_THE UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE OF GOD_ ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ Matthew 6:34 The message which this section brings to us seems to be just this: the life of the Christian is to be one of trustfulness, not restlessness. I. CHRIST’S TEACHING.—Notice the way in which Christ teaches... [ Continue Reading ]