Matthew 6:19-34

Chapter 22

Christ Anxious About the Heart The Safety of Spiritual Riches the Rectitude of Motive secular Anxiety and Worldly Fear the Uselessness of Anxiety

Prayer

Almighty God, we have read of thy care of our life, and without reading it in a book we know it well, for day by day thou art at our right hand, thou dost satisfy our mouth with good things, thou dost renew our youth like the eagle's, our strength is returned to us after its expenditure, thou dost keep our eyes from tears, our feet from falling, and our soul from death. Thou hast shown unto us great and wonderful things as we have come along the pathway of life; we have begun to pray where we expected to die; thou hast planted a tree beside the bitter lake, and made its waters sweet with the branches thereof; thou hast planted flowers upon the tomb; thou hast dried tears which no human hand of sympathy or tenderness could reach; and, when the grief was keenest and the darkness most burdensome, then was the star the brightest and in the cold wind there were voices of hope.

We bless thee for all thy tender care, thy long-continued patience; thou dost watch over each of us as if he were an only child. Behold there is no measure to the Lord's mercy, and his compassions fail not. We bless thee for thy great Book, so full of music and truth and beauty; touching us at every point of our life, speaking to us the one word we most need, comforting us with infinite solaces, opening the prospect beyond the horizon of time, and enabling us to see into the rest and the joyous service of heaven.

We give ourselves into thy keeping; we would have no will but thine; we would not attempt to open any door but with thy key. Thou hast been our God and our Helper, and in thy love do we rest as in an inviolable defence. Show us more of thyself; fill our whole life with light, may our eye be single, that our whole body may be lighted with the flame of thy glory. May our whole life, body, soul, and spirit, be a daily sacrifice on the sacred altar; may our whole desire rise up before thee in a solemn and all-believing prayer.

We thank thee for thine house; we bless thee that no storm can overtake us hidden in the sanctuary of God. The Lord's blessing be in every heart, the Lord's light shine upon every eye, and, as for our whole life, we open it now and give thee all the hospitality of our love. Come, abide with us, and in the breaking of our bread we shall see great revelations of heaven.

We commend one another to thy tender care. The Lord help every man, woman, child, now bent in prayer. Thou knowest the secret desire of each heart, the solemn purpose of each life thou knowest the sting that pierces the heart, the burden too heavy for mortal strength, the great fear that deepens into dejection, and threatens to become a mortal injury. Thou knowest our family life, our commercial difficulties, and our whole estate is known to thee. The Lord undertake for every one of us according to the heart's necessity, and multiply unto us his grace, so that beyond all our want there may be an overflow of divine love.

We bless thee again and again, in never-ending hymn and psalm, for the gift of thine only-begotten and well-beloved Sou. We know Jesus Christ, we have heard his words, we have touched the hem of his garment, we have seen the outflowing of his sacred blood; we remember that his cross was set up for us, and in the agony of our contrition he is our only hope. God be merciful unto us sinners: give us assurance of daily pardon, and strengthen our confidence in every divine promise: then shall our life be quiet and bright, and strong and good. Hear us when we sing thy praises, hear the desires we cannot put into words, see the falling of secret tears on account of secret sin, and help us one and all with the unfailing strength of thine infinite grace to live before thee in all faith, in all affection, and in pure desire to know and do thy blessed will. Amen.

Matthew 6:19-34 .

19. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

22. The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

23. 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!

24. 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.

25. 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 the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

26. Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

27. Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

28. And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29. And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

31. Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

32. (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things 33. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

In this passage you have, first, an exhortation, and, secondly, a reason for it. The exhortation is, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth: lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." The reason is, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." You will never understand the exhortation till you understand the reason given for it. Vain is all criticism upon the words, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." It is in the treatment of those words that the annotators have failed. A thousand little and mean questions arise whilst we confine our attention to the words, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." We are not in a condition to criticise that language until we complete the sentence and find at its close the all-convincing reason for giving such an exhortation.

What is Christ anxious about? What is it that he wishes to take care of? He himself gives an explicit answer to the inquiry. His one anxiety is about the condition of the HEART. "'For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also;' and it is the heart that touches my supreme solicitude. If the heart be right, the whole outgoing of the life will be right; but if the heart be wrong, then all the actions that make up the sum total of the duties and exercises of life will also be wrong." Now I see the whole meaning, I understand what my Teacher intends me to receive as his doctrine. Provided my heart is right, he does not care if my possessions are heaven-high, if I can rise above them and stand upon them, and use them with mighty strength. He is most anxious that they should not be bigger than I am, his supreme anxiety is that they should not lure my confidence and make up the sum total of my hope and expectation. So long as I can treat them as so many conveniences and use them for the good of my fellow-creatures, he cares not how many, how rich, may be my possessions. He says to me lovingly, with infinite pathos and concern, "Brother, friend, man keep thine heart right, keep thy love in its right direction, let thy life be a continual sacrifice, burning upwards to the holy throne that deserves it. Then, as for thy possessions, thou wilt be master, not slave. The more thou hast, the more the poor will have; thou wilt be treasurer and custodian, thou wilt not be oppressed by the riches, but ennobled to dignity by them." So then there is no exhortation here against laying up property. The world must have property, and the more that property is in good hands the better; and, concerning every man who makes a good use of money, I pray the Lord to send him tenfold more. The more he has, the more the poor have; the more money the good man has, the more the whole church has. It is better that that money should be in the hands of a good treasurer than in the hands of an untrustworthy custodian.

Look at the figures in this exhortation, showing how keen was the observation of Jesus Christ regarding everything going on around him. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt." The property of the contemporaries of Christ consisted largely of linen and embroidered goods. To have great stores of these was the Jews' great notion of wealth. Jesus Christ, looking at all the piles of linen and embroidery, said, "Take care that the moth does not get into them; remember that there is a moth do not forget the consuming insect." It was a practical and most secular exhortation.

"And rust doth corrupt." The treasures were largely hidden in the earth. Men would dig deep pits in the field and hide their most valuable possessions, and there they would rust. Jesus Christ, looking at the man filling up the earth upon his treasure, says, "Remember the rust: what you have put in the earth there is exposed to danger: you may cover it up very carefully, but the rust will get at it." There is always some danger to be provided against.

"Where thieves break through and steal." The houses were mud houses, the walls were mud walls, and the thief is at the back yonder, breaking through, boring his way through the mud defence that he may get at the treasures hidden inside. Jesus Christ says to the builder of the mud wall, "Take care, it is only mud, understand that mud is not impervious: always remember that there are weapons of iron that can break through your mud defences." And again I say unto you, there is always danger to be guarded against, and a man is no stronger than his weakest point. Beware of the moth, beware of the rust, beware of the thief. Life is based upon caution, unless it be founded in God, and then it is lifted up above all danger, or the dangers that affect it themselves fail away before its supreme strength and immovable confidence.

So much for the exhortation, and so much for the reason. Now what is it as an argument? I am always struck with the common sense of this divine Talker. Apart from his metaphysics and high imagination and noble courage and heroism, there is an element of marvellous common sense. He grasps his subject: he lays upon it a grip that means "You cannot take this easily from me." Let us look at it merely as an argument.

Jesus Christ Says, "Riches can be stolen, riches can perish, riches can fly away, therefore look out for treasures that are not subject to these vexations and harassing contingencies." Is the argument sound? Look at it again. What you have in your hands may be taken out of them, therefore have something in your heart that no man can get at and steal. The reasoning is sound and unanswerable. He who has nothing but what he can grasp in his hands is no stronger in his possessions than his fingers. A man can wrench what he holds out of his possession, and they will be his no longer. Where is your Bible? If it is only in your hands as a book, though you are pressing it to your heart, it can be taken away from you, and you may be without it. But, where is your Bible? "In my head," say you, "in my heart; I know it." Then, though the book be burned with fire, the revelation is untouched.

Jesus Christ says, "Have an inward life, have an interior life, have a soul." The Teacher who teaches thus is a wise man. He warns us against the things that can be destroyed, and points us to the possessions that are indestructible. He tells you in so many words that you are no richer than your heart is; though your books be many enough to make a library of, you are only as rich as you are in your thought, feeling, aspiration, desire after God and all things godly. I feel that such teaching is true: no long and laboured argument is needed to make me feel its truthfulness. If I speak right out of my heart and let my better self be heard, I say with the Scribe, "Well, Master, thou hast said the truth."

Take it in another light, that it may be clearly seen by those who can understand better by illustration than by mere argument. You come into the house of your friend, and you are struck with his books, say upon agriculture. You look over the volumes and say, "Well, how very many books you have upon agriculture. I am surprised at your collection of works upon this subject." A friend belonging to the house says to you, "If you think the books upon agriculture are many, what will you say when I show you the library upon astronomy? If you think these books a good many upon agriculture, when I show you the astronomical works you will be utterly confounded." By the help of that illustration, you go a little further and reason thus. If you think this man is rich in shares and stocks and fields and investments of one kind and another, what will you say when you see his thoughts, his feelings, his prayers, his aspirations, his plans for the amelioration of the race. Our inner nature should be so much in excess of our outer nature as to give the impression that we have no outer nature at all. We are to be so much larger in the soul than we are in the hand as to throw the hand into infinite insignificance, though in itself it have a giant's fist and can deliver a Herculean blow. Let every man therefore ask himself what he has in the bank of the heart.

"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil (double), thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" The heart is in the eye of the life: always keep the heart pure and right, sincere and true, and you cannot stumble long. Let your motive be correct, and you will be brought along the right road, even though you may have stumbled into the wrong path for a moment. Let your heart be right, and I care not in what thicket you be tangled, you will see a clear, broad road out of it, and you shall yet rejoin the main path that lies right up towards the light and the heaven that is at the end of it.

How is it then with the heart which is the eye of the life? What is your motive, what is your purpose? Dare you throw back the screen and show the motive to heaven's light? If so, you cannot be weak; you cannot be the subjects of long continued depression and fear. O youth my child, my son give God thine heart; and as for thy mistakes, they prove thee only to be mortal. But once let your motives become mixed, let them double themselves back into reservations and ambiguities and uncertainties, let the inner life become a hesitation and a compromise and a trick in expediency, and you are blinded in your very centre and fount of light. And if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! If your supreme manhood be debased, how utter is the degradation. If you have gone down in your motive, you have gone altogether. So let a man examine himself as to his motives and purposes, and keeping these right, so as to bear the very test of fire and to stand the examination of light, he may maintain his life in the quietness of religious confidence. If you have got wrong in your motives, stop. Do not be lured away by inventiveness in making excuses and palliations. To your knees, and become strong by first becoming weak. No coverings up, no clever juggleries, no assumptions of appearance, but complete, unreserved, emphatic, contrite confession, and then begin again. Remember that your eye is the centre of light, and if the eye be put out or injured, no other part of you can receive that great gift. The eye once blinded, your finger tips cannot be flamed up into illumination, your whole body is darkness. With the eye, the light is gone for ever, and wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

How marvellous it is that a single organ should hold so much, and there should be no alternative arrangements in this matter of light, looking at which we can say, "Well, it matters little if the light goes out at one point, it can come in at another." Such is not the arrangement of divine providence: you have the one inlet of light; lose that, and your whole body, though it be great and strong and healthy, and apparently beyond the touch of death, will be full of darkness. See how much depends upon one faculty, one organ. Let the ear be deafened and all music is lost; let the eye be blinded, and the whole firmament, with all its sun and stars, is but a covering of darkness. There is but a step between thee and death: thou hast but one right hand, take care lest it be paralyzed and fall uselessly by thy side for ever. These are the cautions of no alarmist; they are the strong, grand, pure teachings of a Man who breathed the mountain air, and had the sea's freshness ever breathing through his magnificent heart.

"No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." We do not understand this in English. Men run away with very shallow notions of what is here said; these English words do not express the Saviour's meaning, except with indefinite-ness and a great distance of appreciation. No man literally, no slave, and we do not know, thank God, what a slave is. The slave had no will of his own; every pulse of his body belonged to his master; he dare only look as the master approved; there must be no protest even in his eye, or he lost his life. He must stand, sit, come, go, at the will that was iron and that could not be broken. No man, says Christ, can sustain that relation to two masters; he cannot belong, absolutely, body, soul, spirit, will, imagination, energy, feeling, to two different masters. Masters we do not understand this in English. We never can enter into the tragical pathos of that awful word: never to be able to call an hour my own; never to be at liberty to utter the voice of complaint; never to be permitted to look my true self, but to wear a mask to please another's eye; to be at the beck and call of a man who can take my life from me with impunity that is to be under a master.

How many persons there are who have read this text so as to sever the spiritual and the secular. It is thus the Bible has been maltreated by some of its friends: it is thus that great excisions have been made, so that religion has been left in the church as an all but impalpable shadow. That is the meaning of this great Teacher we must use the spiritual and secular, for all things are sacred according to the hand that touches them. What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common or unclean. You miss the grandest side of life when you separate it into spiritual and secular. There are some persons who talk about the temporalities of the church there are no temporalities in the church. There are those who speak of the business side of the church there is no business side of the church in any degrading sense of the term: it is all business. "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" He who lights a lamp in the church is as he who preaches a sermon; he who opens a door or keeps a gate, as he who breathes a gospel and unfolds a revelation. The difference is in the degree, not in the quality; "He who sweeps a floor for thy sake, makes that and the action fine." We must be lifted up in our whole conception of life and labour, industry and reward, if we would enter into the spirit of Christ in his interpretation of our life and its duties.

Now comes the grand wondrous discourse concerning secular anxiety and worldly fear, the beautiful sermon wherein you find the reference to the lilies and the birds and the grass of the field. Let us look at that wonderful sermon a moment. We are treating this gospel by Matthew in its wholeness and not going into the mere detail of the occasion as a painter paints a landscape with a church upon it. He does not take you into the church, he simply throws the church upon the landscape as part of something else, and you must catch it in its proper outline and relationship. It is so I am treating this gospel. By-and-bye we shall go to the church and spend a day there; by-and-bye we shall come into the detail and study each particular delicate line; meantime we have to treat the gospel in its totality, and under the direction of this feeling look at this most marvellous discourse.

"Take no thought for your life." We do not get at the Saviour's meaning in this English word "thought." We do not, indeed, get into the right meaning of the word thought some three hundred years after the use which it first assumed. When this translation was made, the word thought meant something different from what it means to-day it meant anxiety, restless, carking care; it meant that penetration of fear which upsets the balance of life and turns the whole soul into moods of dejection and wearing anxiety. The word thought meant this in the time when the English Bible was translated hence one of the historians says, "Queen Catherine died of thought." Hence Cleopatra said to Enobarbus, "What shall we do, Enobarbus?" And the answer was, " Think, and die." In other words, "Fear, fret, pine away, succumb to depression, anxiety, and all the influences that can vex and tear the balance of the heart." It is against such thought that Jesus Christ warns his disciples.

Is it possible that any man here can be encouraging himself in languor and indifference and idleness by saying that he is considering the lilies and beholding the fowls, and yielding himself to the genius of this Sermon on the Mount? I must rudely disturb his foolish and atheistical lassitude. Let us behold the fowls of the air for a moment, and see how far their course justifies the man who is simply folding his arms and sitting still and letting God take care of him. First, the fowls get up soon in the morning where are you? Away goes one of your props. In the next place the fowls are most industrious: it is one of my little pleasures to watch the industry of the birds, and, indeed, they seem to have no hours. I trust nobody will ever form them into a union for the purpose of shortening the hours of labour: that would be a great mishap in the air, to cut short their song exactly as the clock struck five! O, the building that is going on now! The straw-carrying and the feather-catching and the leaf-binding what industry! Up with the sun, working all the hours of the light, and twittering and trilling and singing all the time. There is another of your props gone, lazy man.

I find, too, that the birds are self-supporting: they would never take anything at your hand if they could help it. A bird is sadly driven when it comes to any man and says, "Let me peck at your hand, if you please." The birds support themselves who supports you? You would borrow a shilling of your poor old mother if you could, and you talk about beholding the fowls of the air. You have borrowed of every friend you ever had be just in your exegesis of the divine word, and add not the blasphemy of a fool's criticism to the behaviour of a cowardly spirit.

And the lilies is it a happy-go-lucky life with them? Far from it The word lilies here is a word that may be so interpreted as to include all flowers, and the flowers are found in their proper places, they are where they were meant to be, if they are growing properly; not only so, the flowers are working in harmony with great laws. Every flower draws its beauty from the sun: the flower roots itself in dark places, and prays with open face for the great light, and holds itself out with gracious willingness to catch every drop of dew that it can hold. So we must be in our proper spheres, in our right relations: we must keep the economy of life and nature as God has established it, then we shall truly, with a wide and healthy wisdom, behold the fowls and consider the lilies.

Jesus Christ gives a reason for this exhortation again. He says, "Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature?" He thus shows the uselessness of anxiety. Suppose now you. sit up all night with your hands folded or twisted, in expression of keen unappeasable solicitude and yearning what does it come to in the morning? Nothing. Suppose you should belabour yourself all day long, what does it come to tomorrow? To weariness, dejection, sadness, and to all the results of misdirected energy and irreligious folly. A great teacher now living has well said that if any friend of ours had told us one hundredth part of the lies our fears have told us, we never would have allowed him to speak to us again. We would have said, "Get thee behind me, thou lying man." But our fears come every day and tell us exactly the same lies, and we give them exactly the same confidence. Is that religion? It is, but only the religion of paganism. The religion of trust, love, faith, rests in the Lord and waits patiently for him; forms a grand and loving expectation, directs it often in speechless prayer to the generous and over-arching heavens, and calmly awaits the revelation and the whole answer of God.

This is how I want to live: I want to subordinate every desire to the one aim of seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness; I want to interpret that kingdom as meaning and including all other kingdoms; and I would calmly await the leading of divine providence. Why fidget yourself, why fret and annoy yourself, why go out and throw yourself into a bed of stinging nettles merely for the sake of doing something? I would not anticipate tomorrow any more than I would anticipate death. Death is abolished; there is no dying for the man who is in Christ. Let the child close his eyelids; he will open them in heaven. Let a pagan call that death if he likes; the Christian calls it life. Nothing wrong can happen to me if I be really rooted in God, and if my eye be set towards him with the one anxiety of receiving his light.

Given that I have to take care of myself, and make all my arrangements, and go up and down life as if everything depended on me, and my life becomes a cloud, a fear, a sting, a great distress; but given that I am creature, not creator, child of the one ever-living, ever-loving Father, the very hairs of my head are all numbered, my name is written in heaven, and the whole plan of my destiny is mapped out in the skies that I am, consciously or unconsciously, so long as my desire is as a pure flame, working out the divine intention. Let me feel that to be the case; then, come weal, come woe, high hill or cold river, or bleak wilderness or beauteous garden come what may, God will come with it, and my life shall be a great, sweet peace.