{"id":2768,"date":"2014-01-01T05:06:26","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T11:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/?p=2768"},"modified":"2025-06-16T14:48:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T20:48:00","slug":"matthew-625-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/?p=2768","title":{"rendered":"Matthew 6:25-34"},"content":{"rendered":"

25\u00a0\u201cTherefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

26\u00a0Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

27\u00a0Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

28\u00a0\u201cSo why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

29\u00a0and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

31\u00a0\u201cTherefore do not worry, saying, \u2018What shall we eat?\u2019 or \u2018What shall we drink?\u2019 or \u2018What shall we wear?\u2019<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

32\u00a0For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

33\u00a0But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

34\u00a0Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day\u00a0is\u00a0its own trouble.<\/span><\/em><\/h3>\n

therefore (v.25) \u2014 referring back to “you cannot serve God and mammon” in v.24<\/span><\/a>.<\/h3>\n

stature (v.27) = age, length of life \u2014 so the phrase “add one cubit unto his stature” is an idiomatic term for lengthening one’s life<\/h3>\n

toil (v.28) \u2014 the man’s work of growing flax<\/h3>\n

spin (v.28) \u2014 the woman’s work of weaving flax<\/h3>\n

oven (v.30) \u2014 in that culture, grass was used for fuel<\/h3>\n

Toward superabundance, as we have seen [in vs. 19-24<\/span><\/a>], they are to be without covetousness. We will now consider their attitude towards necessary things, which is, that they are to be without care. \u2014 Morgan, page 67.<\/span><\/h3>\n

All of my commentaries (except Stam, below) attempted to apply these verses to Christians today. They universally ignore the simple fact that the Lord does not always supply the necessities to Christians today. Believers suffer, get sick, starve, and die at the same rate that non-believers do.<\/h3>\n

Some commentaries tried to twist what the Lord said to mean that we should work to provide ourselves with the necessities, but we shouldn’t worry about them.<\/h3>\n

Not one of them mentioned the fact that the Lord, in verse 32, contrasts His listeners with the Gentiles. And yes, at that point in time, to be a Gentile was to be a non-believer, but the Lord’s use of the term also demonstrates that this passage doesn’t apply to us today.<\/h3>\n

So to whom does it apply? To believing Jews of that day (and during the Tribulation \u2014 Matthew 24:15-18<\/span><\/a>). It was only a short time later, when the Lord sent His apostles out to witness about the kingdom that He told them:\u00a0Provide neither gold nor silver nor copper in your money belts, nor bag for\u00a0your\u00a0journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor staffs; for a worker is worthy of his food (Matthew 10:9-10<\/span><\/a>). <\/span><\/em>For that group of people, at that point in time, the Lord miraculously provided all their needs.\u00a0\u00a0Keep in mind that in Acts, Paul had to collect money from the Gentile churches to feed the starving, believing Jews in Jerusalem. The Lord wasn’t providing their material needs any more because the kingdom had been postponed.<\/h3>\n

Today we find ourselves in a situation where it would be dangerous and wrong to follow our Lords’ instructions to refrain from laying up store for the future. Rather we must now again heed the Scripture which says: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise … [She] provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest<\/em> (Proverbs 6:6-8).<\/span><\/h3>\n

That this last should be our mode of life during “this present evil age,” is clear from the Spirit-inspired words of the apostle Paul, who wrote to the Thessalonians: For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat<\/em> (2 Thessalonians 3:10).<\/span><\/h3>\n

And it was on the authority of the glorified Lord that the apostle wrote to Timothy: But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel<\/em> (1 Timothy 5:8<\/span><\/a>). \u2014 Stam, pages 75-76.<\/span><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25\u00a0\u201cTherefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-matthew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2768"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9220,"href":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768\/revisions\/9220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/versebyverse.carpelibra.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}