1.
Background
READING:
Matthew 6:19-34 January 11
How many who would not even think of saying to their hearts, 'There is
no God', deny him practically by ordering their lives as if he were
not? And even among those who yield in their lives a practical as well
as formal acknowledgement of God, many yet manage practically to deny
in their lives that this God, acknowledged and served is the Lord of
all the earth. How prone we are to limit and circumscribe the
sphere in which we practically allow for God! We feel his presence and
activity in some things but not in others; we look for his guidance in
some matters but not in others; we can trust him in some crises and
with some of our hopes but not in or with others. This too is a
practical atheism. And it is against all such practical atheism
that our passage enters its protest.
How are we to order our lives? Is it true we can trust the
eternal welfare of our souls to God and cannot trust him with the
temporal welfare of our bodies?
Is it true that he has provided
salvation for us at the tremendous cost of the death of his Son, and
will not provide food for us to eat and clothes for us to wear?
Is it
true that we can stand by the bedside of our dying friend and send him
forth into eternity in good confidence to God, and cannot send that
same friend forth into the world with any confidence that God will keep
him there?
O the practical atheism of many of our earthly cares! Can we not read
the lesson of the birds of heaven and the lilies of the field which our
father feeds and clothes? What a rebuke these lessons are to our
practical atheism! How many of us who can 'risk' ourselves, do not
think we can 'risk' our families in God's keeping?
How subtle the
temptation! But here our Lord brushes them all away in the calm words
“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all
these things shall be added to you.”
Faith and Life B.B. Warfield