Read Along
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used with permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life.
That “therefore” points back to the line right before it. “You cannot serve both God and money.” So Jesus goes straight from money to the fear that sits underneath it. What if there isn’t enough?
And He doesn’t say it once. In these ten verses, the word for worry comes up six times. He knows exactly who He’s talking to.
This is episode ten of twelve on the Sermon on the Mount. Last time, Jesus said the heart follows the treasure, and that no one can serve two masters. This time, Matthew six, verses twenty-five to thirty-four. Two pictures, one promise, and one question: how can Jesus tell anxious people not to worry?
Start with what He names. “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.”
Food, drink and clothes. These aren’t luxuries. For most of the people on that hillside, they were the whole daily struggle. In one of Jesus’ own parables, a landowner hires workers at “a denarius for the day.” Paid by the day, a day without work could mean a day without bread.
So Jesus is talking to people who could run out, people with no surplus in the barn.
Then He asks a question. “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?”
It’s an argument from the greater to the lesser. God gave you your life. He made your body.
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