WE ARE STUDYING THE FOUR GOSPELS MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE AND JOHN TO KNOW THE LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. TO KNOW HIM IS TO LOVE HIM.
Our Savior was rejected in Nazareth see;
Then He;
We see that He;
He then tells us how to get saved;
Jesus ends His Ministry in Judea and;
John the Baptist Exalts Christ.
Jesus finished His Ministry in Judea and went up to Galilee but did not take the long road the Jews normally take to avoid going through Samaria but went straight to a place called Sychar near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there.
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria.
Jesus returned via Samaria to Galilee and we see The Rewards Of Service John 4:28-38, The Growth Of Faith John 4:39-45 and lastly The Reward Of Trusting Jesus’ Word John4:46-54.
Back in Galilee after a year in Judea;
Jesus Ministers to Great Crowds.
Nazareth’s loss was Capernaum’s gain. The people in the latter city recognized that His teaching was authoritative. His words were convicting and impelling.
The Sermon on the Mount.
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
The Beatitudes. Salt and Light.
Christ Came to Fulfill the Law
Retaliation and Love Your Enemies
Secret giving and secret praying
What to Seek and Whom to Serve
Frederick Brotherton Meyer, a contemporary and friend of D. L. Moody and A. C. Dixon, was a Baptist pastor and evangelist in England involved in ministry and inner city mission work on both sides of the Atlantic presents it to us this way;
THE CURE FOR ANXIOUS CARE
Matthew 6:27-34
The Lord’s tone is gentle and tender when He turns to address the poor. He says three times over, “Don’t be anxious.” He never forgot that He sprang, according to His human nature, from the ranks of poverty. His references to patching garments, using old bottle-skins, the price of sparrows, and the scanty pittance of a laborer’s hire, indicate that He was habituated to the shifts of the poor.
There is all the difference between foresight and foreboding. It is the latter that Jesus chides. The farmer must sow in the autumn that he may reap in the summer, but there is no need for him to lie sleepless through the nights of winter, worrying about the yet distant harvest. Do not be anxious about the supply of your needs, whether of body, mind, or heart. God knows what you need. If He has given life, will He not maintain it? Does He not care for the birds and flowers? Did He not give His Son, and will He withhold any good? Trust Him and be at peace.
We thank William MacDonald (1917-2007) who, for more than forty years, written directly about the key issues of Christianity. Leaving a promising business career as an employed investment analyst with First National Bank of Boston “at the foot of the Cross”, he had travelled worldwide, proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ for the Believer’s Bible Commentary.
Do Not Worry
Matthew 6:25-34
6:25 In this passage Jesus strikes at the tendency to center our lives around food and clothing, thus missing life’s real meaning. The problem is not so much what we eat and wear today, but what we shall eat and wear ten, twenty, or thirty years from now. Such worry about the future is sin because it denies the love, wisdom, and power of God. It denies the love of God by implying that He doesn’t care for us. It denies His wisdom by implying that He doesn’t know what He is doing. And it denies His power by implying that He isn’t able to provide for our needs.
This type of worry causes us to devote our finest energies to making sure we will have enough to live on. Then before we know it, our lives have passed, and we have missed the central purpose for which we were made. God did not create us in His image with no higher destiny than that we should consume food. We are here to love, worship, and serve Him and to represent His interests on earth. Our bodies are intended to be our servants, not our masters.
6:26 The birds of the air illustrate God’s care for His creatures. They preach to us how unnecessary it is for us to worry. They neither sow nor reap, yet God feeds them. Since, in God’s hierarchy of creation, we are of more value than the birds, then we can surely expect God to take care of our needs.
But we should not infer from this that we need not work for the supply of our present needs. Paul reminds us: “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat” (2Th_3:10). Nor should we conclude that it is wrong for a farmer to sow, reap, and harvest. These activities are a necessary part of his providing for his current needs. What Jesus forbids here is multiplying barns in an attempt to provide future security independent of God (a practice He condemns in His story of the rich farmer in Luk_12:16-21.) The Daily Notes of the Scripture Union succinctly summarize verse 26:
The argument is that if God sustains, without their conscious participation, creatures of a lower order, He will all the more sustain, with their active participation, those for whom creation took place.
6:27 Worry about the future is not only a dishonor to God—it is also futile. The Lord demonstrates this with a question: “Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” A short person cannot worry himself eighteen inches taller. Yet, relatively speaking, it would be far easier to perform this feat than to worry into existence all the provisions for one’s future needs.
6:28-30 Next the Lord deals with the unreasonableness of worrying that we will not have enough clothing in the future. The lilies of the field (probably wild anemones) neither toil nor spin, yet their beauty surpasses that of Solomon’s royal garments. If God can provide such elegant apparel for wildflowers, which have a brief existence and are then used as fuel in the baking oven, He will certainly care for His people who worship and serve Him.
6:31, 32 The conclusion is that we should not spend our lives in anxious pursuit of food, drink, and clothing for the future. The unconverted Gentiles live for the mad accumulation of material things, as if food and clothing were the whole of life. But it should not be so with Christians, who have a heavenly Father who knows their basic needs.
If Christians were to set before them the goal of providing in advance for all their future needs, then their time and energy would have to be devoted to the accumulation of financial reserves. They could never be sure that they had saved enough, because there is always the danger of market collapse, inflation, catastrophe, prolonged illness, paralyzing accident. This means that God would be robbed of the service of His people. The real purpose for which they were created and converted would be missed. Men and women bearing the divine image would be living for an uncertain future on this earth when they should be living with eternity’s values in view.
6:33 The Lord, therefore, makes a covenant with His followers. He says, in effect, ”If you will put God’s interests first in your life, I will guarantee your future needs. If you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, then I will see that you never lack the necessities of life.”
6:34 This is God’s “social security” program. The believer’s responsibility is to live for the Lord, trusting God for the future with unshakable confidence that He will provide. One’s job is simply a means of providing for current needs; everything above this is invested in the work of the Lord. We are called to live one day at a time: tomorrow can worry about its own things.
Amen!
Please pray the Holy Spirit-The Paraclete will use these sermons and studies to bring many to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
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