Matthew 6:19 “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?

Jesus speaks first of the place where treasures may be laid up, namely in heaven, and then points out that the various factors he has spoken of as doing away with earthly riches do not apply there. In heaven neither moth nor rust is at work, and there are no thieves to break in or steal. The treasures in heaven are described in language that exactly negates what is predicated of earthly treasures.

Jesus points out that the place we choose for our treasures tells something about ourselves. He does not describe treasure in any way, but clearly it means here that which one prizes most, that which one values above all else. The place where we choose to store up what we value most shows what our values are deep down.

What our eye is on is important.

When the eye is functioning normally, the light it perceives means illumination of benefit to the whole body. All sorts of bodily functions may then be performed satisfactorily. There is a spiritual parallel. Jesus speaks of the eye as the light of the body. The meaning appears to be that the eye is the organ that means light to the body; whether we are sighted or blind depends entirely on the eye. The eye is the source of light to the whole body. Apart from the eye the body would receive no light; so, the eye functions much as a lamp does. It is therefore important that the eye be healthy, singly concentrating on its proper function. In that case the proper functioning of one small member means illumination for the whole body.

The contrary supposition is that the eye is evil, which presumably means that it is diseased or impaired in some way. An eye that is not functioning properly does not bring to the body the benefit of light and, lacking a healthy eye, the whole body is envisaged as in darkness. Nothing can compensate for the lack of light at the one point of entrance. If therefore brings out the consequence of all this. Granted that the entrance of light is so important, then, there is disaster if the light within anyone is in fact darkness. Such a person may well think he has light, but to walk in darkness is to lack vision, it demonstrates that one has no light.

“If man divides his interest and tries to focus on both God and possessions, he has no clear vision, and will live without clear orientation or direction. Life not focused on God’s claim and command is lost in spiritual darkness.” Filson

The climax of this saying is concerned with the spiritual rather than the physical meaning of vision; the light that is in you is surely not the light that strikes the eye. We might call it the brightness of goodness within.
Maybe we should think of something like “the eye of the soul”; just as a healthy physical eye means illumination for the bodily functions, so a healthy eye of the soul means enlightened living. Jesus is talking about the enlightenment that comes to the person who lives close to God.

When the eye of our soul is darkness there is disaster!

Jesus is supposing that where there should be light in a person there is in fact darkness, a perversion at the very heart and center of the person’s life, then there is a complete lack of vision. It leads the entire life into a great darkness.

The service of God must be wholehearted. This is the thrust of the teaching about light and darkness (it is to be one or the other, not both), and this is further brought out with the forthright statement that it is impossible to give one’s first allegiance to both God and money.

No one can belong completely to two owners. It is true that the ancient world knew of slaves with a shared ownership (Acts 16:16), but in this case the slave belonged completely to neither. Jesus is making the point that in the full sense of the term to be a slave meant to belong wholly.

This is a relationship that cannot exist in duplicate: to belong wholly to one owner means that all other owners are ruled out. Where there is an attempt at shared ownership, Jesus goes on, there is failure.

The slave in such a position will regard the two “owners” differently. Jesus speaks of no half measures; the slave will be linked to the two by hatred or love, by devotion or contempt, and in each case the one attitude rules out the other. There can be no half measures.

The height of this saying is that it is impossible to be simultaneously a slave of both God and mammon, worldly treasures. Cannot is a strong term; it signifies a sheer impossibility. Slave is another strong term; it points to complete devotion. It is possible to devote oneself wholly to the service of God and it is possible to devote oneself wholly to the service of money, but it is not possible to devote oneself wholly to the service of both.

The stark alternatives make it clear that the service of God is no part-time affair but something that calls for one’s fullest devotion. Since money tends to draw people away from God, Jesus warns about it. It is no sin to have money, but it is sin to serve (“be a slave to”) money.

Anxiety and Trust, 6:25–34

25 “For this reason I say to you: ‘Do not be anxious about your life, what you eat [or what you drink], nor for your body, what you put on. Is not the life more than food and the body than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them; are you not worth more than they are? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his height?
34 Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious about itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Jesus underlines the pointlessness of anxiety and the sound reasons for trusting the heavenly Father.

There is more to life than food and clothing, so one’s attention should not be concentrated on them but should be focused elsewhere. We need to remember as Jesus spoke these words that he lived in a society where shortage of food was much more common than in our modern Western word. Even so he sees the Father as active throughout his creation, caring even for birds and flowers; there is accordingly no reason for those who call him “Father” to be anxious. God will surely meet all their real needs. Worry is pointless; trust is well based.

We are to rely on God, not on our money-making abilities. “Do not be anxious about your life,” Jesus says, and specifies food and clothing (and possibly drink) as things about which people might worry.

Even the poorest must agree that, important as are food and clothing, they are not the most important things of all. There is more to life than food; there is more to the body than its clothing.

Jesus explains that the correct attitude about money and worry removes people from preoccupation with their own worldly success; it discourages the wealthy and the comfortable from concentrating on their own success and the poor and uncomfortable from concentrating on their own misery.

We belong together, whatever our worldly goods, and this encourages the idea of sharing.

The birds with their absence of care can teach people something about reliance on God. Birds do not engage in agricultural processes like sowing crops or reaping them, but that does not mean that they starve. Nor, of course, does it mean that they are idle (is anything busier than a sparrow?); they search for their food.

Jesus is not counseling his followers to be indolent.

The processes of sowing and reaping are elementary for the careful farmer, as is the storing of the crop in barns. Although birds have no part in any such process, they are fed. Jesus does not say that “their” heavenly Father feeds them, but your heavenly Father; the very Father in whom the anxious have ceased to trust provides even for improvident birds.

The folly of worry

Jesus draws attention to the limitations of human achievement, even when anxiety is given full rein. All the worrying in the world produces little in the way of achievement. These days we reason that few people are anxious to increase their height by the length of their forearm, but many would like to increase their length of life. Yet, worrying about it will change nothing.

Jesus asks why people worry about what they wear.

While the question is perhaps not as urgent as that of food, it is serious enough; in all ages people have seen clothing as one of the basic necessities of life. This time Jesus tells people to learn from the flowers. He is probably thinking of wild flowers (flowers “of the field”) rather than those which have been cultivated by someone. Such flowers do not toil, and specifically they do not spin. Beautiful as they are, they do not work; they produce no cloth of any sort to account for their “clothing.”

Matthew speaks of Solomon five times, which is more than in any other New Testament book; here the point is that that king was proverbial for magnificence. But not even that magnificence can compare to the way the flowers are clothed. One points to the basic unit; Solomon’s clothes could not compare to that of even one of the flowers.

The “clothing” of the flowers is not something they achieve of themselves; God provides them with clothing. This time the plants are not called “flowers” but grass, a term that mostly refers to ordinary green grass, it indicates that it is wild growth, not cultivated.

Since God takes such care of the lower orders of creation, certain consequences follow for his people. Jesus is not saying that his followers may be as careless as the birds and the flowers, doing no work and simply looking to our Father to provide everything. We must work, but He provides.

It is a condition of our life here and now that we work for our daily bread. But there is all the difference in the world between doing this in anxiety and fear and doing it in trust in a loving Father.

Jesus suggest that the people who worry act like the Gentiles, those outside the people of God. Such people cannot claim to be members of the heavenly family, and it is not surprising, accordingly, that they should be anxious and worry. They must seek the supply of these necessities by their own efforts and out of their own resources. Anxiety is natural for them. But worry should not characterize God’s children.

Disciples first priority is to seek not the things they would like to have or even the things they are sure they need, but God’s kingdom and righteousness.

The kingdom is not one among many competing aims for the disciples, but that which comes first of all. The disciple who seeks that first, will soon seek that only.

Kingdom points to rule, and the expression is to be understood in terms of doing the will of God now as well as looking for the coming of his final kingdom. The important thing for the disciple is to be constantly seeking to do the things that God wills, that is, to be submissive to the King.

In this context seeking God’s righteousness (not our righteousness) will mean seeking that righteousness which God only can give, there is no thought that the believer by his own efforts can attain a righteousness that may fitly be called “God’s”.

This will include the “right standing” before God that comes about as the result of Christ’s saving work and also the right conduct that becomes the servant of God.

Jesus says, all these things will be given you, where these things are the things the Gentiles worry about. They will come to the trusting disciple, so there is no need for anxiety. The word rendered given is more literally “added”: the things in question will be added to what the disciple already has.

There is no need to be anxious even about tomorrow, let alone the days ahead.

Tomorrow will be anxious about itself does not mean that, while we must not worry today, tomorrow we may do so. It is a forceful way of saying that worry must always be deferred. Tomorrow’s worry is only in the sense “tomorrow never comes”; if worry is confined to tomorrow, we are free, for it is always today.

If we restrict our concern to today, we defeat anxiety. The plain statement that there is trouble each day, is important. A shallow thinker might gather from the previous words about trust that the believer will have a smooth path through life. That is not what Jesus is saying.

All people have trouble, believers among them. But he is making it clear that there is all the difference in the world between facing the problems we will certainly meet with firm faith in our heavenly Father and facing them with anxiety.