This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Sermon on the Mount” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 10, 1989.
About this sermon
In Matthew 6:34, ‘take no thought for the morrow,’ Christ assaults the way his hearers relate to time itself. 6:25-30 separates what has value in the worldly order from what has value in the heavenly one. In 6:31-33 Christ tells believers to seek righteousness, the one thing that reorders every other value.
Sermon transcript
This morning we are in Matthew 6 once more. We are reading from verse 19 to the end of the chapter. This will provide us our last message on these verses specifically. We will move on to other considerations from here. Hear the word of God. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, Thine whole body shall be full of light, but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! 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. He cannot serve God and manner.
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. Is not life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather in the barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.
Are ye not much better than they? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought, for, Raymond, consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow shall take thought for the things of itself. sufficient unto the day of evil thereof.
Jesus is assaulting anxiety. Jesus is assaulting anxiety for the sake of those he loves, for the sake of his disciples. for those who are citizens of the kingdom of heaven for the sake of his church. He attacks three times. His assault is a three-fold assault. We are at first thirty four this morning. This is his last assault. It is meant to be. On the face of it is an assault upon the purity of time. It is an assault upon the tyranny of the future, the oppression of tomorrow. His first assault was verses 25 through 30. And that first assault drew before our eyes a disparity of value. Note the conclusion of the twenty-fifth verse.
Is not life more than food, and the body more than raiment? He draws before us a disparity of value. Life surpasses meat. The body surpasses raiment. Our worth, we who are of the kingdom, surpasses that of birds and flowers. There are, after all, two orders of existence. Two orders of existence. One in which meat and clothes constitute the reality. The reality.
The other, where life and body are seen in the dimensions, in the light and hues of eternity, are seen as significant beneath the purview of the kingdom of heaven. And for the sake of that kingdom, and body, eternal and immortal, and thus of supreme significance.
In the one order of existence, anxiety is as natural as breathing. In the other, nature itself birds and flowers, if you will, conspire to exclude anxiety altogether. Anxiety-free. In the one order, things are pursued, sought after, as the remedy for anxiety. But ironically, Anxiety multiplies.
In the other order, things are forsaken, given up, sacrificed for God. But ironically, oddly enough, in this order, anxiety dissipates. and finally disappears. The kingdom of heaven brought by Christ, proclaimed by him, resident in him, turns things upside down. Turns upside down our ordinary expectations. we would have thought a life given to acquisition.
We would have thought a life given to acquisition would actually diminish worry. Have more, worry less. Have more, worry less. But such a life doesn’t diminish worry, instead it compounds worry. Whereas a life given to the kingdom of heaven, we would think, would leave us supremely vulnerable, in a position in which our anxiety would be compounded mercilessly. but wonder of wonders, it doesn’t at all. Instead, our anxiety is eradicated because that order of existence into which we have been brought, with which now we have contact, is an order of existence in which anxiety is an impossibility. Is there worry in heaven? Is there anxiety in heaven?
No. No. And that’s the order of existence to which you belong. In Jesus’ second assault, verses 31 through 33, he makes it clear that the one order of existence that he would have us turn away from is actually the order of existence pursued by the Gentiles. While the other order is that for which, understand what I’m saying here, Is that for which Israel was destined? And the true Israel gains. Love of the most earnest affection for, here we are at verse 33, love of the most earnest affection for heaven’s kingdom and the father’s righteous rule, his reign, carries in its wake all things necessary, all things necessary.
It simultaneously carries away all our sins. Train your heart. Discipline your soul. Set your affections upon the Kingdom of God and His righteous reign. And everything else will be taken care of. But now for his third assault, the lone verse, verse 34.
This point here, first of all, is what we might call, now please, Bear with me here, I’m going to use a word with a lot of letters in it. We are indeed moving beyond the Reader’s Digest. We are leaping beyond the parameters of Guidepost Magazine. We’re going to use a big word. Now when I use it, I don’t want you all to tune out.
The word is eschatological. Do you know what eschatology is? Right? Traditionally, it’s the doctrine of the last days, isn’t it? And for Jesus to speak eschatologically means that he is speaking from the vantage point, from the perspective of last things. Last things reality. His first point here in verse 34 then is what we call eschatological. That is, he is qualified by Jesus, unsurpassed knowledge of the last things. Now many have raised questions at this point.
They say if Jesus is really speaking in an eschatological way, he would have said, therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow, because tomorrow may never come. Or, therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow for tomorrow the kingdom in all of its glory may arrive. In fact, we may even find that we and others comfort ourselves with that line of reason. Jesus may be back before midnight, so don’t worry about it.
But because of this general approach, that Jesus would have spoken otherwise if in fact he had the last things, eschatology in mind. Because of that, people have dismissed this passage from the ranks of the eschatological message. But such an approach as this misses the truth about Jesus’ grasp of eschatology and the truth that is laid within this passage. Jesus, for instance, knows that the world is not about to end anytime soon when he speaks these words.
That’s the problem for his disciples, don’t you know? They have been raised in good Jewish theology. The Messiah appears, the kingdom comes, and everything is brought to its conclusion. Life and history are not going to go on. Jesus’ message about the kingdom presents something quite different, yes. The end times have commenced, the kingdom has arrived in him, the blessings even of the eschatological, or the heavenly state, are being conferred upon those who believe, but the consummation, the end, is yet distant. Jesus’ eschatology is what we call already, but not yet. Already, you are being blessed with end-time blessings, but the fullness has not yet arrived, the consummation, the still future. Therefore, the fact that he speaks about tomorrow, even The care is peculiar to each day.
There is no denial of his eschatological vision. In fact, his comment here confirms that vision. You see, it is precisely because the far distant future has been resolved for you that the near, proximate future carries no intimidation or threat for you. It is precisely here, then, that the power of the connection between verses 33 and 34 becomes apparent for us. We who have set our hearts upon the appearance of the kingdom of heaven and upon the Father’s righteous reign, we who have resolved the question of history’s destination, its direction, and its end, We who have been quieted concerning the horizon, the far distant horizon, and the certainty of our place in that horizon, need not be anxious about the few feet of territory that we must traverse tomorrow. The weightier matter has been settled. The less important issue is thus resolved.
Our Savior here has a second point as well. It is what we call His version of realism. You see, Jesus knows that short of glory, short of that end point, when glory in all of its magnificence shines forth upon us, Jesus knows that we in our lives now experience our days as days that are being filled with Days filled with trouble. And this, despite the fact that the time of salvation blessing is already here.
Troubles persist. They continue, even temptations through evil and apostasy persist. But now you see, the trick of the disciple’s life, the trick of that life for the citizen of the kingdom of heaven, is the assessment and treatment of those troubles that are inevitable. They will not be avoided.
The trick for us who are of the Church is our assessment and treatment of those troubles by a heart set upon treasure in heaven. Verse 21. The assessment and treatment of those troubles with an eye that is clear, letting in the light of glory even now. Verse 22. For us, the trick is the assessment and treatment of those troubles by way of a service that is determined upon devotion to God. Verse 24, by a soul that knows life is eternal and more than meat, by a soul that knows that our bodies are immortal and more than clothing, and more than that, destined for resurrection. verse 25, “…by a love that binds us to the kingdom and the Father’s righteous reign above all else.” Verse 33. My dear beloved friends, you need not be terrorized by time, by the tyranny of tomorrow. All of the great issues are resolved. Do not be anxious. Do not be anxious.
Dearest Lord, even in the midst of our troubles, for the present day will bring them, but in this present day, Lord, and we understand how in fact the operations of your son in our souls set us in a position wherein anxiety is dissipated and a free, glorious, wonderful expression of love and praise is forthcoming. We pray this in Jesus name, who gains all of this for us.
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