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Text: Matthew 6:25-34
This is about God as a Father. And God is a Father based on His promise and someone’s response to his promise which is called faith. Verses 31-33 sum up this part of the sermon.
Fatherhood of God
- God the Father of Israel
- Matthew 6:31-33
- As a nation, Israel has God as a Father. God gave Israel direction, protection, provision, and care that the Gentiles (the nations) didn’t have. But having God as the Father of the nation didn’t mean all Israelites were saved as individuals. If you are Jewish it is possible to have God as the Father of your country and you die and go to Hell.
- John the Baptist came preaching repentance to Israelites.
- Jesus Christ told a Jewish Pharisee named Nicodemus ye must be born again.
- Jewish people are not forgiven of sins because they’re Jewish, that’s covered in almost every book in the New Testament.
- But being Jewish did have its advantages – Romans 9:4 Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;
- This is the perspective that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming from when he’s talking to the disciples here.
- Application to the nations
- You and I would fall under the Gentile category – we are just the nations.
- The Jewish people are the first to have this offer made; it is to the Jew first then to the Greek. To the Jew first then to the Greek does not mean to the Jew only then to the Greek something totally different. Let me make this clear here. Because Jesus Christ is directing his instruction to these Israelites doesn’t mean he’s going to say something different to the Gentiles when the time comes.
- Can you find in the Bible where God is also willing to be a Father to anyone outside of Israel?
- Galatians 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
- Now everyone will say, Oh yea, I have faith in Jesus. But go back to Matthew 6:30, O ye of little faith. That’s not a good thing. (How many of you have heard of the parable of the mustard seed?)
- God is a Father by faith. And faith means you seek the kingdom of God. And you look to the God of Heaven to bring a reward with Him.
- 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
Faith or fear
- The fear of not having enough or not having more is the most pervasive, common, motivation of people. And almost every decision revolves around that fear. That’s what Jesus Christ said in Matthew 6:32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) and then over there in Luke 12:30 For all these things do the nations of the world seek after. So this is the standard for a world headed to a fiery judgment. This is what a dying, God rejecting world is motivated by because they have no heavenly Father.
- So the contrast to the dying world without any Heavenly Father is this, for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
- Take no thought… (vss 25, 27, 28, 31, and 34)
- Command to anyone who will have faith in verses 25, 31, 34 – Take no thought… God’s word is a book that tells you how to think and what to think that will help you serve God. (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)
- Questions about the unreasonableness of unbelief in vss 27 and 28.
- Worrying isn’t going to change anything in verse 27.
- Creation testifying to the care of God in verse 28.
Cross reference to Matthew 6:24-34 is Luke 12:30-53.
