Matthew 7:1-12Jesus seemed to be talking in a stream-of-consciousness mode.
In the space of a few minutes, he talked about worrying, judging, fixing other people, God’s fatherly care, and treating others like ourselves (note that chapter and verse divisions were added much later). On the surface, these seem to be a randomly assembled chain of teachings. However, there may be an underlying thread of logic holding them together.
Judging and fixing others and worrying tend to be human preoccupations that interfere with the quality of life Jesus envisioned for his listeners, a life full of zest and busy with things of the kingdom of God.
All three preoccupations run counter to the thinking of God. He thinks worry is useless because He takes care of all that is necessary. He thinks He is more capable than any of us at judging and fixing people, actions which are His sole prerogative.
Jesus gave a two-part solution for our worrying, judging, and fixing preoccupations. One part is learning to trust God to handle our needs.
When children feel insecure about the parental figures in their lives, they tend to worry or to mistreat other children. Similarly, adults tend to worry or to judge and fix others when they feel insecure about the care of God, the heavenly Father.
Jesus first knew about the power of fatherly love from his good and decent stepfather, Joseph. He also know about it from observing seriously flawed fathers in the village where he had lived and worked, men who still took good care of their children’s needs.
Jesus wanted us to know God as the best, doting father, waiting to spoil us. Knowing such love calms our inner fears and reduces our tendency to worry, judge, and fix.
A second part of the solution is learning how to treat other people like we want to be treated.
Jesus knew the hurts and dreams of humans because he had studied his own human experience like a scientist observing an experiment in a laboratory, and from the knowledge he gained, he figured out how to treat other people. He invited each of us to join him in the laboratory, each to study our own human experience, and from the knowledge gained, to learn how to treat other people.
Jesus had a grand plan for a grand life for each of us. He intended that nothing get in the way of that life.
Matthew 6:25-34Jesus thought it was glorious to be a human, and he lived life with zest. He wanted the same for his listeners.He understood life was fragile and dangerous. When he said “Each day has enough trouble of its own,” perhaps he thought back to troubles in the lives of Mary and Joseph, such as those around the time he was born, or troubles in his life, such as his recent time in the wilderness.Jesus knew a person could lose life in quality as well as quantity. He was especially concerned about how worrying corroded away the quality of life, and worrying about things God already took care of seemed extremely senseless to him.Jesus drove his point home with two wonderful lessons drawn from nature. The birds fly and sing, providing us great enjoyment, yet they do not worry about food. Also, the flowers of the field are clothed in magnificent beauty, but they die and dry out and are gathered with the straw used to coax the fire to life. If God feeds the birds and clothes the flowers, Jesus said, He will certainly take care of us.Obviously, his zest for life included a great appreciation for the beauty of nature. As a youngster, he and his friends probably played in the fields around the village, wondering at what they saw. We can image them lying on their backs on a hillside studying the clouds. Even as an adult, when he had a few free moments, he went on walks through the countryside, admiring the flowers and trees and watching the birds and other animals. Jesus' zest for life included more than just appreciation for nature. As he contemplated nature, he saw great truths about God revealed. It was as if he read nature like a theologian reads a scholarly book.When we live the fulfilled life Jesus wanted for us, instead of worrying about necessities of life, we will act and think like him, including looking out for the things of his spiritual kingdom. With his kind of zest for life, perhaps we too will be able to read some theology from the birds and the flowers.
Matthew 6:16-24Humans are economic amphibians, living in two very different economic systems at the same time.
Jesus said a person could invest in and build up treasures in either the earthly or the spiritual economic system. Because earthly treasures are easily damaged or lost, he said to only collect them in the spiritual economy. As economic amphibians, we might assume we can strive for treasures in both systems, but this is not possible. Jesus said, “You cannot serve both God and Money.”
Although Jesus did not say exactly what spiritual treasures are, he taught in other parts of the sermon how to invest to get them: be faithful in marriage, even in the heart; keep promises; treat everyone well, including those who are not kind in return; and give gifts, pray, and fast to please God, not others.
From Jesus’ economic concepts, we get two strategies for how a person can change his heart. He said “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In other words, a person can change his heart by changing the location of his treasure.
Sometimes this passage is interpreted as if Jesus said, “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be,” which is probably true. However, in this passage, Jesus said the heart follows the treasure.
Another strategy for changing the heart is to change what the eyes look for.
Financial talk has a lot of vision-related language: An investment sage is on the lookout for a good buy and looks over financial records of a company to decide its value. A sales rep takes a look at a car or piece of property to decide its worth. An antique collector spots a priceless heirloom.
Likewise, the spiritual investor can be on the lookout for spiritual opportunities. He can look over a situation to determine its spiritual potential. He can spot the opportunity to do a good deed.
Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body,” meaning that what we search for determines our spiritual condition. If a person only looks for bargains in the earthly economy, his inner being “will be full of darkness.”
The spiritual investor is on the lookout for spiritual opportunities, and Jesus said his “whole body will be full of light.”
Matthew 6:9-15
The most extraordinary thing about the prayer Jesus gave is that it is so ordinary.
Most of us have read and recited what we call The Lord’s Prayer so many times that we no longer know how unusual it sounded to Jesus’ listeners that day.
For his model prayer, Jesus could have chosen a more complex, longer one in use at the time. He could have chosen one of the Psalms, which he loved. Instead, Jesus gave this eloquently simple prayer.
In most of our modern translations, it is a little over fifty words long, and according to how it is punctuated, it is five or six sentences. Its language style is simple, perhaps what one would call generic. Even at a leisurely pace, it only takes a little over 15 seconds to say it.
The prayer briefly touched on perhaps ten topics; about half of them dealt with God and his plans and about half dealt with the one saying the prayer. Jesus had just said, “When you pray, do not keep on babbling” (Matt. 6:7), and this prayer is starkly different from a babbling prayer.
Two aspects of the prayer are curious. First, there is no thanksgiving.
Jesus certainly emphasized giving thanks to God in his teaching. Maybe he assumed that because God already knows everything about us (consider Matt. 6:8), every important topic did not have to be included in every prayer. On the other hand, he may have been giving a model of praying and not a model prayer; in other words, he was telling how to talk to God, not what to say.
Second, all the first-person pronouns were plural: not my and I but our and we. He may have been giving a model prayer for public use, which connected to his earlier discussion about hypocrites praying in public. Perhaps, if he was giving a model for how to talk to God, the plural pronouns are not important.
In giving this model, Jesus took prayer out of the hands of experts and distributed the right to pray to the masses. His model is one almost anyone can use—just say simply what is on the heart and do not worry about leaving something out.
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