person can and cannot do. People cannot have faith in God, while worrying about the material things in life.This passage is all about the natural things in life and what God is going to provide you with. Do not worry about where your next food and drink will come from, or what clothes you will wear tomorrow (6:31); God takes care of this for you. He takes care of insignificant things, like grass and lilies (6:31, 6:28). He will take care of you too. The temporary like the lilies and grass are taken care of; you who are less temporary will be too, so long as you have the faith in the Lord. “Your heavenly father knows that you need all these things,” (6:32) Priorities are emphasized in this passage; one needs to realize what is important today and not about what is to come. God and reaching His Kingdom should take priority over everything. Material things in life are not as important as what your faith and believing that God is going to provide for you. People have to “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” in order for everything they need to be given to them. In this passage, there is also evidence of a lecture against single-mindedness as well as hypocrisy. Matthew 6:16 tells of hypocrites (the scribes and the Pharisees, 23:15) – how they teach people, but don’t practice what they preach. Jesus is different; he practices what he preaches. When Jesus tells people something, he follows through with it himself. “And whenever you fast,” (6:16) Jesus fasts for “forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.” (4:2). When the scribes or Pharisees do a deed, it is purely “to be seen by others.” (23:5) Everything they do is for image and material sake only, for “inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.” (23:25) Jesus repeats the fact that the scribes and Pharisees are full of hypocrisy and lawless several times (23:...
