Letting God Add

Meditation June 10, 2020

Matthew 6

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.

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.

What you see is what you get with this one, my sweet wife. I know what I want to say but I don’t feel like I am quite going to get it out. This is at once such an easy and straight forward passage and one about which much more needs to be said than I am capable of unfolding. The thought, the problem, the remedy so easily apprehended but to comprehend it and put it into words…. I can only trust the Holy Spirit will be pleased to guide.

But first, as we think about this, a word to the wise from J. Vernon McGee, “My friend, don't think you are being pious when you say, "Oh, I won't test God." God says, "Test Me. Try Me, and see if I am not good...." I actually feel fatigued when I talk to some folk who say that they are just going to step out on "faith." Oh, my friend, wait until God puts a rock underneath you. Wait until God gives you definite leading before you make a fool of yourself and bring criticism upon the cause of Christ.”

I know a lot of people who have done just that. And I know a lot of people who have themselves fallen because of that. Someone, perhaps well-meaning, had led them to believe they only needed have faith and all would be well. The all was not well and they said to themselves, “It was all a lie, nonsense, I knew it all along. I should have listened to my better judgment.” I will not question they should have used better judgment but they should have used God’s better judgment; not their own. Remember Johnnie B’s farmer who sat in the corner of his field with seed in his hand and a prayer on his lips while his neighbor plowed his field and sowed his seed with a prayer on his lips. If you are not searching for employment as a manager with skills you have developed for doing so,  don't expect a stranger to wander willy-nilly to your door and ask you if you would like to become a manager for his business. 

We are at the end of chapter 6 of Matthew’s gospel and we are at the end of Jesus instructions to guide us new creatures in Him and now also strangers and pilgrims in a strange land. Though we must yet live for a time in this world, our affections, our allegiance and our citizenship is in another world. Our need is to know the manner in which we should live in this world which we must temporarily occupy as citizens of another world which we have only seen dimly, as Paul says, through a dark glass. We have never done this before. We have never before lived with our feet in two worlds. If that were not enough, we must do so now as two people, as new man and old man. We are likely in the only known circumstance of a happy dissociative identity disorder. But happy (blessed) though it be it presents the challenge of what and how. There is a war going on in here. What am I to do? That is the question Jesus is answering. In doing so, that we may better understand and conduct ourselves, He has told us this is what you now are, these (the beatitudes) are your new personality characteristics and that being the case, these are the ways in which you should conduct yourself with regard to the world, God, your fellow man, and things God gives you in your current dwelling. We are now at the end of considering how we are to conduct ourselves in regard to things. In short, don’t worry about them.

To many, probably most, that is like the exhortation to not think about a banana. How do you not think about a banana? How do you focus on the banana you are not to think about and not think about a banana? Well, of course, it is quite impossible as long as you are saying to yourself, ‘I will not think about a banana.’ You cease to think about a banana when something else captures an holds your attention.

That, in a manner is the answer Jesus gives. Turn your attention to the His kingdom and His righteousness; i.e. the Father’s kingdom and righteousness. That is who Jesus is talking about. You have needs, your Father knows you have needs v32 your Father provides for the needs of His creatures vv28-30. Worry, being anxious for things, anything, is a tacit accusation against God that He doesn’t know, doesn’t care and/or can’t do anything about the situation. That, says Jesus, is how unbelievers, pagans, think and thus they focus their attention on what will we wear, what will we eat, how will we get the things we need? You on the contrary, “but you…” seek, not the things the pagans seek. But that isn’t what Jesus says. That is a result of Jesus’ exhortation, but it is not the primary result nor the most important result and the difference between Jesus exhorting us not to think about those things which the pagans seek but to seek our Father’s kingdom is a critical distinction not only for our spiritual well-being generally but specifically for avoiding worry.

In Tolkien’s The Return of the King, one of his characters that “the whole thing is quite hopeless, so it’s no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won’t come.” That is not faith but fatalism. It is surrender to blind forces over which none have control. Not only do we not live in such a world but there is no such world and we are not such creatures. Even squirrels gather and bury acorns and bees store up honey and we are supposed to assuage our worries by adopting less wisdom that a bee? “Oh, just don’t worry about it, there is nothing that can be done anyhow” may sound like a solution but it is only a not so clever after all way of thinking about the banana you are not going to think about.

So, Jesus says, “seek His (your Father’s) kingdom and righteousness.” Jesus does not say to seek for you Father’s kingdom, as if to seek for it and find it that you might enter it, He is speaking to His followers, believers, those who were already in the Kingdom so He says seek it, seek the things of it, seeks its good, seek its manifestation, seeks its advancement, seek the glory of its King and all the things that your are worrying about will be given, added to you. The subject of the Sermon on the Mount is the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, your Father’s kingdom. He began with the subjects of that Kingdom, who we are, what our character traits are, how we should live as citizens in that Kingdom and now He comes to this as the cure for worry, i.e. let thoughts of the Kingdom dominate your mind. You are the King’s children. Seek the things of the King and rest assured “all these things (the needs of life) will be added to you.” So now we see why worry is an affront to God. Our Father has said, give yourself to those things needed for my Kingdom and I will give you those things you need for the world in which you must live for a season. Worry says, I hear you but I don’t believe you. God’s answers is unchanged, “Try me and see…. Mal. 3:10. Plow to the glory of God, plant to the glory of God, seek employment (food and raiment) to the glory of God, seek that you may be well to serve well, seek that you may be God’s alms giver to the needy, clothe the naked, care for the widow etc. and see if God does not provide. That is the cure for worry and fretting. Show me your faith without works, without seeking the employment that will provide your needs, without going out to gather the manna, and I will show you my faith by my works, by doing those things God has given by which he rewards with such as we need and that abundantly above all we ask. (James 2:18)

The LORD will make you prosper abundantly—in the fruit of your womb, the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your land—in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. The LORD will open the heavens, His abundant storehouse, to send rain to your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations, but borrow from none. The LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you will only move upward and never downward, if you hear and carefully follow the commandments of the LORD your God, which I am giving you today.… (Deut. 28:11ff) Did you see it? God will bless “the work of your hands…if you hear and carefully follow the commandments of the LORD your God…” i.e. if you seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. That has ever been the promise of God the Father to his children and it has ever stood and will ever stand as sure as the God who made it.