How Much is Enough?

Meditation June 9, 2020

Matthew 6

25“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life ? 28“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

We continue the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus, in the sermon, is giving instruction for living as believers. This is not ‘natural’ to us. We knew how to live as unbelievers, as pagans. We are not what we were once, we are no longer pagans but new creatures; new to ourselves and new to the world. As the old creatures; we knew well enough how to get on in the world in which we live. Now we find ourselves living in two worlds, new creatures who are pilgrims in an unfamiliar country looking for a city made without hands. We are more out of sorts here than we would be if we found ourselves stepping from a spaceship into a world of aliens of a different language, culture and way of thinking. We need a lot of instruction for living. This is the situation Jesus is addressing. We sometimes fail to grasp how radical the change wrought in us by God in Christ. We quite literally have our feet in two worlds but the world to which our allegiance belongs has rules that are quite different from the world we currently occupy. The law, the rules of the city made without hands, the world that is yet is to come, though those rules are given here, they are one thing for the unbeliever and another for the believer. For the one they convict and condemn; for the other they lead to Christ and are guides, a light for our path to show the way in which we should go. For the one they are outward only and necessarily so for the heart of stone can neither embrace them nor understand them as anything but an outward imposition; for the other, for us as believers,  they are that which we love, we are blessed for we delight in them and meditate in them continually (Psa. 1). Jesus then, that we may the more delight in and be governed by the rules of the yet unseen city, is opening to us in some detail instructions by which to live as citizens of the new heaven and the new earth while traveling through this world which is now completely foreign to us.

He has given instruction for the way in which we are to perform our duties to God, the Builder and Maker of that city we seek; that is, our religious duties, if we may call them that, of charity, prayer and fasting – such at the time were considered to encompass all that we would put under religious duties. Now he has turned our attention to instruction in the way we are to view that which God provides for us and our posterity (we must never forget God’s promises are to us and our children); in other words, what we are to make of things.

His first instruction is do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. Treasures on earth don’t last. Things treasured up on earth deteriorate, they are lost, they are stolen and if you manage to hold onto them for you lifetime at last someone else lives in the house you built and enjoys the treasure you treasured up. Therefore, treasure up your treasure in heaven; i.e. in that city made without hands to which you are going, where the treasure endures. He doesn’t say we are not to amass such as God is pleased to give us. Consider Abraham, Job, David; Solomon. So much was the goodness of God for things to be used on our journey through this foreign land that it soon became among the Jews an erroneous measure of a persons’ standing with God. We see that as far back as Job which was likely around the same time period as Abraham. His friends, poor counselors they were, told him if God has taken away your things you surely have done some evil, you are not in a good relationship with him, confess it so that God can restore your things. When Job had learned the lesson God had for him, then God restored Job’s ‘things’. The problem is not in storing up things but in putting our confidence in things; in making the storing up of things our hope; our idol, our God.

At this point, the poor, those who live from day to day, the overwhelming number of those to whom Jesus spoke then as today can and often, too often, take that and run with it to an unwarranted righteous assessment of themselves and suppose I need not concern myself with that as I have only enough to get by from day to day. And, being new to being new creatures with an abundance of the old creature still to be swept away, the mind quickly runs to the thought that “I don’t have to worry about of laying up for myself treasures on earth. I have worry enough about what I am going to eat tomorrow.” So now, Jesus says, about that “I tell you do not worry….”

Notice that He begins “Therefore, I tell you etc.” When Jesus says therefore he points back to the previous, therefore means because of this or for this reason. In other words, the problem with treasuring up treasures on earth and the problem with worrying about what you are going to eat tomorrow are, at the root, the same problem.

The NIV says “ do not worry”, the KJV says “take no thought”; the AS says “do not be anxious.” I prefer the AS translation. Do not worry and take no thought lend themselves to the erroneous notion of some that we should live like the birds without any forethought or planning how we are going to provide for ourselves. That is not what Jesus is teaching. God says, if a man would eat let him work. Working means having a job; getting a job means having a skill; having a skill means learning which means planning for the future. That is not the problem. That is not that which Jesus is instructing against. Jesus is instructing against concern over things such that it distracts us. Such was the 16^th century meaning of ‘take thought’ which the KJV uses.

Jesus is not warning his disciples against foresight and planning. Remember the two farmers from a few days back? Whether in wealth in living from paycheck to paycheck or living in poverty, Jesus is warning against allowing ourselves to become obsessed with things, worldly good and needs, having them control our minds and behaviors; in short, He is warning against putting things ahead of God. Anxiety, worry, fretting, being distracted by concern, whether in abundance or in want, is to imply by that distraction, that God cannot provide as needed. Kierkegaard has noted that "No Grand Inquisitor has in readiness such terrible tortures as anxiety." It consumes thoughts, passion and time. It calls into question the goodness of God’s providence and if not a practical atheism it is at least a practical deism that says ‘God doesn’t see.”

Remember the single eye? The single eye, the pure intent and affection of the heart becomes double vision when distracted to things whether the distraction, the anxiety is to obtain them or to treasure them up. This is what pagans, unbelievers, do v32. They are occupied with things, with getting them, with holding onto to them because being a god unto themselves they have no other place to turn. But you are not so. Look at the birds. You don’t see them with minds occupied with plowing and planting, distracted from their singing by labors and worries about seed time and harvest; yet, God cares for them. Do you not think that you made in the image of God, and now new creatures being made over in the image of Christ as God’s treasured possession, his royal priesthood will be cared for? Do you suppose God will abandon to fickle fate those for whom he gave His Son? Well, you see his point. We need only follow after those things, those labors, by which God ordinarily provides for our need and we may rest assured God will provide such as we need and, if it is good for us, more than we need.

We have been taught to pray “give us this day our daily bread”, our daily provisions. Do we now suppose God who is able to do immeasurable more than we ask (Eph. 3:20) our Father, you understand that, “Our Father…give us this day our daily provision…” Shall we then suppose He is not listening or, that He is less careful for our needs than our earthly fathers or that He is not true to His word? Surely, He is true. Thus, be satisfied with such as God provides and “do not let your lives be dominated by thoughts of things for God has promised I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Heb. 13:5 admittedly a Maloy interpolation)