25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious 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? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:25–34, ESV)

Example: This passage is like a dad calming his kids who are stressed by a crowd by putting them on his shoulders.

What happens to us when we receive God as our Father?

• Anxiety dissipates.
• The kingdom becomes our priority.
• And we approach tomorrow with confidence.
  • Note: God as Father is a gospel empowered reality.

Our approach:

• Jesus’ basic command: Do not be anxious.
• Jesus’ four supporting arguments: birds, lifespan, lilies, and Gentiles.
• Jesus’ advanced command: Seek first the kingdom.
• Jesus’ concluding application: Don’t be anxious about tomorrow (and all its inevitable troubles)—walk with God through today.

Jesus’ Basic Command:

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious 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? (Matthew 6:25)

• What is the anxiety (or worry) Jesus has in mind?

• • • Therefore (context): Money, the good life, treasure (6:19-24).
    • A normal anxiety (or worry) that chokes out life by displacing trust and disordering our priorities.
    • Not a clinical anxiety disorder, but a restless, anxious care about securing specific outcomes in life.

• Point: The Father gave you life and a body, so he will care for the lesser needs of food and clothing.

• • Life, body—God gave us life itself.
  • Food, drink, clothing—the basic stuff of life.
    • Example: a dad who gives his son a nice car (life, body)—but the son becomes obsessed with whether or not his dad is going to let him keep the floormats (food, drink, clothing).
  • By starting with our most elemental concerns—things needed for our survival—Jesus addresses all anxiety.
    • For many of us, food and clothing are not significant worries, so we’ve moved onto other things.

Jesus’ Supporting Arguments:

Note: Jesus then launches into four supporting arguments designed to help us trust the Father rather than be anxious about our lives.

Supporting Argument #1: Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 6:26)

• • Look at the birds of the air: an argument from lesser to the greater.
    • If God feeds the birds, won’t he feed his kids?
  • They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns: Jesus is not undoing God’s commission for humankind.
    • God created us to work—to take the raw material of His creation and, through dominion and stewardship, shape a world where his image-bearers flourish, societies form, and the earth reflects His glory (Genesis 1:26–31). Work is not a product of the fall. It is a product of the garden.

• Jesus is arguing that our Father feeds the birds, and we are of more value to him.

• • Without any farm work at all, the lesser (birds) are fed by the Father.
  • God’s nature is to provide for even the most insignificant creatures.
  • This means he is certainly concerned with caring for his most significant creatures, his children.

Supporting Argument #1. Your Father values you more than birds—and look how he treats them.

• This argument from Jesus helps us recognize our proper value before the Father.
  • Example: Lauren’s “I love you.”

Supporting Argument #2: And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? (Matthew 6:27)

• • A single hour to the span of his life: worry cannot produce a longer life.

• Don’t confuse anxious worry and prudent concern.

• • • Joseph was right to set aside for the seven years of famine (Gen. 41). Solomon was right to praise the ant for the way it stored up for the future (Prov. 6:6). The young women were right to prepare for their role at the wedding by securing oil for their lamps (Matt. 25:1-13). This is prudent concern.
    • Prudent concern might make healthy choices.
    • Anxious worry will overemphasize, over-hypothesize, and give outsized importance to healthy choices.
    • Anxious worry stresses and strains but does nothing.

Supporting Argument #2. Your Father gave you life—you cannot add to it with worry.

• This argument helps us realize the ineffectiveness of worry.
• Jesus wants to deliver you from the unhealthy feeling that you can control all your outcomes and that it all depends on you.
• Example: Elijah at the broom tree and mountain—It is enough. I alone am left. Take away my life (1 Kings 19:4, 10).

Supporting Argument #3: And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? (Matthew 6:28-30)

• Lilies of the field / Solomon in all his glory: Grass vs. most prosperous king in Israel’s history.
• Which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven: Jesus is contrasting temporary grass fields with eternal image bearers whom the Father loves.

Supporting Argument #3. Your Father extravagantly clothes insignificant grass fields that quickly die and become fuel, so he will clothe you.

• This argument helps us anticipate the Father’s work in our long-lasting, intrinsically important (to him) lives.
• Example: Jesus is dropping a hint—something better is coming. The Father wants to clothe you better than you’ve ever been clothed.
  • For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. (2 Corinthians 5:4–5, ESV)

Supporting Argument #4: Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. (Matthew 6:31-32)

• • Therefore do not be anxious: He repeats his basic command.
  • The Gentiles seek after all these things (food, drink, and clothing).
    • Note: Jesus isn’t saying anything about race, but about the knowledge of God. The nations did not yet know the Father, so of course they would not be living in his security.

• Anxiety characterized pagan religions:

• • Superstitious sacrifice
    • The ancient pagan sacrificed livestock to an unpredictable god.
    • The modern person sacrifices margin, rest, generosity, and sometimes family to an unpredictable market.
  • Ambiguous appeasement
    • The ancient pagan never knew if they’d done enough to appease their gods.
    • The modern person never knows if they’ve eaten clean enough, exercised enough, slept enough—there’s always another protocol, supplement, or biohack they need.
  • Rote rituals
    • The ancient pagan repeated mechanical, formulaic actions because not doing them felt dangerous.
    • The modern person compulsively checks the phone 150 times a day, refreshes the news feed, and reopens Instagram because they can’t imagine life without it.
  • All of it induces more anxiety.

Supporting Argument #4. Your Father knows everything you need, so you don’t have to behave like people who don’t have him in their lives.

• This argument helps us dismiss the notion that God is distant and uncaring, but is instead personal and close.
• Example: The Burkes didn’t have to act like those without the pilots in their lives—we wondered if their flight to San Diego was going to happen. We kept trying to discern the monitor at the airport restaurant. Then the table next to us interrupted. It was the small crew who would fly their plane: “Yes,” they assured us, “You are going to make it.”

Jesus’ Advanced Command:

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)

• But seek first:

• • • Not: empty your mind.
    • But: fill your mind (with the right things).
      • This is not merely “refrain from worry” but “replace your worry.”

• What are we to seek?

• • • The kingdom of God.
    • God’s righteousness.
      • Not justification (Pauline).
      • But doing God’s will (Matthaean).

• When we seek first the kingdom and God’s right living, he provides for us.

• • • Example: Front door (kingdom, righteousness), back door (all these things).
      • Us: Kingdom, righteousness
      • Father: Provision
  • We a tension in Jesus’ teaching: many righteous people have suffered and died, naked and starved. Remember these elements:
    • 1. Jesus’ teaching allows us—if not invites us—to be anxious about the needs and lives of others.
    • 2. Jesus is speaking to a community, one that might position themselves to help one another in times of need.
    • 3. Jesus actively cared for those who were without by embracing a life stripped of protection or provision—he was beaten, stripped, and died for us. The one who feed the five thousand is the one who died for thousands. The most righteous one ever, the one who sought the kingdom and did righteousness at all times, suffered greatly.
    • 4. Jesus makes his promises with a full eschatological view—all these things are added forever.

• What does it look like for a modern person to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness?

• • Reject consumerism: view material goods, wealth, and earthly security as mere byproducts of life with God.
  • Say ‘yes’ to kingdom oriented opportunities: when opportunities to serve, pray, give, learn, share, or grow arise, find ways to get into them rather than ways to get out of them.
  • Pursue a lifestyle of righteousness: actively pursue ways to live out the ethics described in the Sermon on the Mount, including righteous acts like giving, prayer, and fasting.
  • Sanctify your daily work: Perform your ordinary, daily responsibilities in faith, believing God is watching over your life.
  • Turn anxiety into prayer: Do combat against inevitable anxieties in prayer, surrendering fears and adopting the divine perspective.

Concluding Application:

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:34)

• Each day is an opportunity to confidently walk through it with our Father in heaven.

• • Jesus personified tomorrow.
    • Tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
      • Stop borrowing trouble from the future.
  • Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
    • Again, not a statement against planning or building—Jesus constantly prepared for tomorrow—but a statement for trusting God for today and all the trouble that comes with it.
    • Discipleship is a daily endeavor.
      • Daily manna (Exodus 16).
      • Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years.” (Hebrews 3:7–9, ESV)

Questions

Head (Knowledge, Understanding)

1. Jesus opens this passage with the word “therefore,” connecting it directly to His teaching on treasure, the single eye, and serving God versus money (Matthew 6:19–24). How does understanding that connection change the way we read His command not to be anxious?
2. Jesus provides four specific “supporting arguments” to dismantle anxiety (the birds, the span of life, the lilies, and the behavior of the Gentiles). How does each specific example logically address a different facet of why worry is unnecessary or ineffective?

Heart (Feelings, Impressions, Desires)

1. When you consider the illustration of the Father feeding the birds or clothing the grass, what does that reveal to you about God’s emotional disposition toward you as His child? Does this “lesser-to-greater” argument change how you feel about your own value?
2. Of the four arguments Jesus gives — the birds (v. 26), the lifespan (v. 27), the lilies (vv. 28–30), and the Gentiles (vv. 31–32) — which one speaks most directly to the specific anxiety you tend to carry? Why do you think that particular argument resonates with you?

Hands (Actions, Commitments, Decisions)

1. Jesus’ “advanced command” is not merely to stop worrying but to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). Nate offered five practical expressions of this: reject consumerism, say yes to kingdom opportunities, pursue righteousness, sanctify daily work, and turn anxiety into prayer. Which of these five represents the most concrete next step for you this week, and what would it look like to act on it?
2. Jesus says, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34). What is one specific “tomorrow worry” you are currently borrowing from the future? What would it look like to convert that worry into a prayer and entrust it to the Father today?