Matthew 6:26 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Matthew 6:26

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Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord not only teaches his disciples how to live, but why they should live in this way. He also teaches us how to think, and these thoughts should be behind our actions. He explains how faith works, for he wants us to live the Christian life with understanding, not mechanically. We are fully informed of the advantages of the Christian life and its superiority over all other lives. How wonderful are the Lord’s illustrations, often drawn not from the unusual or the extreme, but from the common place events of life which are familiar to all, and yet they teach us lessons which most have missed. How different was the Lord’s way of looking at the world to ours! He saw it entirely through the eyes of faith and so he saw the working of God in even the simplest common place occurrence. There are deep lessons available to us in all the works of God, even those which we see every day, because all that he does is wonderful and we too often take for granted what we are already familiar with and do not encourage ourselves as we should. Nothing that God has done is accidental or just fortuitous. For Christ, these lessons were a constant reality.The subject continues to be how to live in the world without anxiety about the supply of our daily needs. Do we believe that God created all things, and that all that exists is designed by him and is exactly as he intended? It must be so because he is a loving God and cares for all that he has made. Nothing takes place by chance, and his care extends over the multitude of living things which the imagination of man has trouble conceiving. This is still true in spite of the fall, for although the Lord has allowed the creation itself to be subject to futility (Romans 8:20) and to experience disease and death, he has not abandoned it altogether. There are lessons for us even though God allows his creatures to die after a brief life. We see evidence, says Christ, of the loving care of God even towards the most insignificant creatures, and we may reason from this to his loving care towards his own children who are so much more precious to him.We are told to follow the example of the birds of the air in their simple reliance on the provision of their Creator. Christ does not mean that they engage in a conscious trust which we should imitate, for obviously they are not aware of the Lord, not being made in the image of God or capable of knowing God. Although the Scripture uses language that seems to imply the consciousness of God’s provision by every creature – Psalm 145:15-16 ¹⁵The eyes of all look expectantly to You, And You give them their food in due season. ¹⁶You open Your hand And satisfy the desire of every living thing – this is poetic language. The lesson is that, even though all anxiety about their welfare is absent, God looks after them until their appointed lifespan is over. They do not trouble themselves about the provision of their next meal, but follow where the instinct of hunger leads them. Now if these lowly creatures are provided for without them making even a small part of the preparation for the future which human beings make, why cannot God’s children trust him to provide for their needs? The birds wake in the morning without any conscious knowledge of where their next meal will come from. They fly out into the world seeking food and they come across it entirely by the providence of God. A farmer spills grain here, or a plant grows up there, and the birds are led to notice it by the senses that God has given them. They do not understand about sowing and reaping. Instead they fly around without concern and continue to feed and sing and build their nests. They are not able to pray to God for their daily bread. It is the Lord who records their need. Even though the work involved is vast and involve untold providences that bring provisions from afar, he does not forget to arrange food for their table. Each day’s food must come to them without any preparation on the previous day, for they simply fly out into the world and expect to find what they need without forethought. They pass through winter when the food supply is greatly reduced and the world becomes inhospitable, yet they are still provided for. But it is the Lord who takes on the arduous task of building barns for them and calculating what they will consume, storing up sufficient for their needs. The point is that in spite of this complete absence of anxiety about the supply of their needs, those needs are just as real and their life is just as much dependant on him as ours is, but the Lord does not let them down. God is not reluctant to provide for his creatures. Anxiety does not make the slightest difference, and does not help the Lord to do his work.

Application

If our heavenly Father cares for the birds, then how can we think that he will not care for us? It is entirely right that we see ourselves as more important than them. This is not based on pride but on the word of God – the human race alone is made in the image of God. We alone can relate to him, and worship him, and are conscious of his wonderful acts. Man is the only self-conscious creature, and he is the only creature conscious of God. Pink remarks that the birds and other animals are closer to living as they were designed to live, feeding daily from the hand of the Lord, than is mankind, who having the use of means, employs it not in a trustful way, but to make himself independent of his Creator. Our lives do not go on for ever, but he sustains us until our appointed hour. How we thank God for our Saviour, who has come into the world and taught us to see the world as a man of faith! How wonderful are all the small events of life which contribute to our sustenance and which come from the hand of our loving heavenly Father!

Questions

Should we abandon all preparation for our future and cease to plan for tomorrow or the day after? No, the Lord has given us the capacity to provide for ourselves to a limited degree and expects us it, but that capacity comes from him and does not make us independent of him. It does not make us any the less reliant on him. It simply makes us creatures who can consciously work with him to bring about the ends he intends – the support of our lives here on earth. Our ability to make use of means, to plan ahead, to prepare, goes to our heads and we foolishly conclude that we have to do everything for ourselves, to run the very universe. A proper humility keeps us in our place, and we can play only a very small part.

What about the carnivorous creatures; their life is sustained only by the death of another of God’s creature. Is this not an argument against the care of God? Has not his care towards the one that perishes failed? No. Scripture does not allow us to reason that way. He sets a limit on each life, and Genesis is very clear that the reason why death is in the world is because of man’s sin, to teach mankind the consequences of disobedience, not because of any failure of God’s providence. They live because he provides for them; they die not because he fails to care for them, but because their allotted time is complete: such is faith’s view of the matter.

How damaging therefore is the doctrine of evolution which undermines all that Scripture teaches about the providence of God. If God did not make the world and every kind of creature in it; if there was always death in the world and life has evolved via countless deaths, then where is the care of the Lord for all he has made? We can understand that God still cares for his creatures even though creation is subject to the curse, but we cannot understand how he could do so if they have always lived under the sentence of death, killing and being killed.

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Introduction

Matthew 6:26 Commentary and Bible Study