OUR FATHER WHO SENT HIS SON TO DO AND TO TEACH Part 16

The Lord Jesus, in Mathew chapter 6 verses 25 - 27, continued teaching His followers about how to live as citizens of His kingdom and expounds on the previous lesson that touched on the impossibility of serving both God and mammon (money) at the same time.

He adjures His people not to expend energy worrying about how they would survive in the world. If they were to primarily concern themselves with the things of the kingdom of God, all the things they require will be provided to them by their Father in heaven;

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? 

26 Look 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? 

27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

This passage has tones of the verse that Jesus used to reject the temptation to turn the stones to bread in the wilderness in Mathew chapter 4 verse 4;

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

This refutation alludes to the fact that life is more than bread and the fulfilment of physical needs but is, in fact, rooted in the spiritual provision that comes from the utterances of God.

Jesus tells His followers that in the same way that our Father provides food for the birds of the air, we, who are of much greater concern to the Father, would be provided for. 

If we attend to the things of the kingdom of God, we do not need to server mammon and we need not worry about how we will nourish and clothe ourselves because our Father will take responsibility to provide the things we have need of.

Amen.

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