Introduction
You can talk about money at church, and talk about it well. That is what the series God or Mammon has been doing for several weeks now at Momentum. We have seen that money is a spiritual subject. We have looked at the two traps Mammon sets: the love of money and the hope placed in money. We have talked about gratitude, contentment, simplicity.
But today we need to go further. In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus puts his finger on the real symptom, the one that gives away every money problem: anxiety. The anxiety of running short, of not having enough, of not being able to provide for your family, of not being able to handle the unexpected. This anxiety that settles into our minds, hijacks our thoughts, and keeps us prisoner.
Jesus wants to set you free from this chain. And he does it with a claim that may unsettle you: for him, anxiety is not something you suffer, it is something you choose.
Article outline
1. You were created for more than survival
2. Depend on God, do not control your life
3. Anxiety, a real matter of faith
4. The practical key: seek his kingdom first
1. You were created for more than survival
Listen to how Jesus begins: "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). He has just handed us his thesis for the whole passage. A sentence you should not underestimate.
We tend to see anxiety as an attack, something that falls on us and has to be managed. Not for Jesus. Anxiety is not something you suffer, it is something you choose. It is not imposed from the outside; it is something you impose on yourself.
Look at who Jesus is speaking to. He is not addressing a room full of comfortable entrepreneurs. He is speaking to a people under Roman occupation, crushed under taxes, the very people who will later come and ask him whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. People who are struggling, counting their budget, far from at ease. And it is to them that he says: stop being anxious.
We often imagine there is a scale, an income threshold above which we would finally feel secure. That is false. The people most at peace with their finances are not the wealthiest; there is almost an inverse relationship. Anxiety is not solved by more money.
So Jesus attacks the root: your life is worth more than food, your body more than clothing. Human beings were not created to survive. You were created with a purpose. You only need to open the first two pages of the Bible to see it: you were created to be the image of God, to represent him, to live a life together with him. In one sentence: you were created to glorify God.
The logic behind all of this is simple: if God created you for this, he is not a bad engineer. If you need food, drink, and clothing to carry out this mission, he will take care of it. Very often, your anxiety comes from being so focused on your own survival that you forget you were created for something far greater.
2. Depend on God, do not control your life
Jesus continues with a case study: "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? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?" (Matthew 6:26-27).
The bird cannot plan the way you can. It does not have the luxury of making a grocery list, going to the store, and filling the fridge. Every single day, it is forced to depend on God. Every day, God has to open its eyes to the seeds, the earthworms, the fries dropped just within reach. The bird is forced to depend.
Here is what Jesus is saying: very often, anxiety comes from trying to control your needs instead of depending on God. If you grasp that, you hold 90 percent of the Christian life in one sentence: the Christian life is depending on Jesus Christ.
Why? Because God wants to take care of what he has made. And look closely: it was not for the birds that he died on the cross. It was for you. If he is already able to do this for them, imagine what he wants to do for you.
Your anxiety, your need for control, often comes from a wrong understanding of the relationship God is offering you. You picture him as a harsh master, a distant king, a God too great to be reached. Those things are true, but that is not the relationship he offers you. The relationship he offers is that of a father with his children. Look at your own little ones running around: as a parent, do you expect even one of them to pay the bills? No. That is your job. Their part is to depend on you. And you love it when they dare to ask you for things.
Why do you think Jesus put this simple line, "give us this day our daily bread," in the Lord's Prayer just a few verses before this one? It is the concrete application. If God makes sure every little bird has food, how much more will he make sure that you have everything you need? Your life has value to Jesus Christ. He placed that value on your life by choosing to sacrifice himself for you.
Here is a personal example. A brother from the church tells how, as a theology student in the United States, he found himself living on frozen pizza and instant noodles. After a while, he was anemic, pale, out of energy. One morning, standing in front of the mirror, he simply said to God, "Lord, this is rough, I don't know how I'm going to manage." That very afternoon, a friend called: "I'm at the grocery store, do you need anything?" Half an hour later, that man was at his door with two full bags, nothing but meat. He fell to his knees. He realized just how much God wanted to take care of him, and just how much he himself had underestimated him.
James writes in his letter that sometimes we do not receive because we do not ask. Or we do not ask because we are trying to stay in control. Or we ask for the wrong reasons, for more control over our surroundings, not to live in connection with God.
Be careful: depending on God does not mean being lazy. Birds spend their whole day searching for food. And Paul writes to the Thessalonians that if you do not work, you do not eat either (2 Thessalonians 3:10). That is not the question here. The question is: what is your hope, your joy, your sense of well-being built on? If it is built on Jesus Christ, then anxiety will leave you.
3. Anxiety, a real matter of faith
Jesus goes on with a second example: "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" (Matthew 6:28-29). Then comes a statement that changes the register entirely: "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 6:30).
Here, Jesus moves to a different category. Food is a daily concern. Clothing, in that era, was something else entirely. A garment was precious: people owned only a few in their whole lifetime and hoped to pass them on to their children. A modern equivalent would be your house, your car, the things you would most hate to lose. This dependence on God does not only apply to the small things; it applies to the big ones too.
And Jesus makes an astonishing comparison: he sets ordinary wildflowers against Solomon, the richest king Israel ever had, a man who could afford anything he wanted. That king, at the peak of his glory, never had clothing more beautiful than these flowers. Solomon, with all his control, never reached the splendor of the flowers of the field. Depending on God is always the better path: it always leads you into something more beautiful and more good than anything you could provide for yourself.
Then Jesus adds a short phrase that changes everything: "you of little faith." For him, the real issue underneath all of this is a matter of faith. Anxiety, in the end, is a lack of faith. That is why it is something chosen and not merely something suffered.
We often confuse anxiety with anticipation, or with being responsible. Jesus is not saying to live carelessly, nor that planning ahead is wrong. He invites you to examine why you are planning. If God allows you to plan, amen. If circumstances make that impossible, amen as well. The underlying question is: is the source of your security your work, your merit, your ambition, or is it Jesus Christ himself?
Three lies sabotage your faith and keep you trapped in anxiety. First lie: God does not truly know you. He would be so great that he could not really know what you are going through. This is why the incarnation matters so much. Jesus created you (the engineer knows his machine), but he also chose to come and live our life. When he preaches this sermon, he is not seated on a throne: he is a traveling preacher, with no home, dependent on those who support him along the way. He has both an intellectual and an experiential knowledge of your condition. If you want to meditate on this, read Psalm 139: "O Lord, you have searched me and known me... you know all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether."
Second lie: God lacks compassion. This may be the most common lie of all. You tell yourself: God has already done enough, he died for my sins, he gave me the Holy Spirit and eternal life, that is already more than I deserve. But Jesus will say in the next chapter: "Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Matthew 7:9-11). And Isaiah 30:18 offers this beautiful word: "The Lord waits to be gracious to you; he exalts himself to show mercy to you." He wants nothing more than for you to come to him.
Third lie: God is not in control. Sometimes you feel like your fate has slipped out of God's hands, as if Satan himself were stronger than Christ. That is blasphemy. Colossians 1:17 says that it is Christ who holds the universe together; if he stopped holding it, everything would collapse. Since the Ascension, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. This is the God you serve.
4. The practical key: seek his kingdom first
All of this is true, but when anxiety hits, your brain does not have time to unpack the theology. You need something practical. Jesus gives it to you: "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. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble" (Matthew 6:31-34).
Jesus invites you to trade one thing for another. From the prison of anxiety, you move to the priority of the kingdom. Seeking the kingdom first does not mean the rest is despised; it means there is an order. And the promise that follows is extraordinary: God will take care of you. All these things will be added to you. Not by merit, not because you were perfect, but because God wants to take care of you.
The logic is that of a parent with a child. You do not ask your child to worry about lunch or about heating the bedroom. You ask them to obey, to brush their teeth, to go to school. You take care of the groceries, the job, the house. That is exactly what God is telling you: "You take care of my righteousness and my kingdom; I will take care of what you need."
Seeking the kingdom means shifting the center away from yourself. The question is no longer "what do I need?" but "what does God want me to do?" Building his kingdom, seeing lives saved and transformed, becomes more important than building your own little castle. Seeking the kingdom means deciding that coming to church matters more than a study session. That your home group matters more than your laziness. That growing as a disciple comes before comfort.
And righteousness, in Matthew, is not only being right before God in a legal sense. It is living the life God loves, your sanctification. His righteousness is the change of your heart, more important than a change in your bank account. It means investing in your ministry, not only in your vacation.
Key takeaways
- You were created for more than survival. You were created to glorify God, and if that is what you were made for, God takes care of the rest.
- Depending on God is not being lazy; it is choosing what your security is built on. The chain of anxiety comes from a need for control, not from a lack of money.
- Anxiety is a matter of faith. It exposes lies about who God is: his knowledge of you, his compassion, his control.
- The practical key: seek first the kingdom and the righteousness of God. The rest will be added.
- When anxiety knocks at the door of your heart, refuse it in the name of Jesus Christ, and remind it how great your God is.
Personal application
- What concrete need are you currently refusing to depend on God for, choosing instead to try to control it yourself?
- Which of the three lies affects you the most: God does not know me, God has no compassion, God is not in control?
- What concrete decision can you make this week to put God's kingdom ahead of a material concern?
- When was the last time you dared to bring a very concrete financial need to God?
- Do your home group, your worship service, and your Bible reading truly come before the apparent urgencies of your week?
Verses cited
- Matthew 6:25-34: main text of the sermon
- Matthew 6:11: "Give us this day our daily bread"
- Matthew 7:9-11: the Father who gives good gifts
- Psalm 139: God knows me completely
- Isaiah 30:18: "The Lord waits to be gracious to you"
- Colossians 1:17: Christ who holds the universe together
- 2 Thessalonians 3:10: whoever does not work should not eat
- James 4:2-3: you do not receive because you do not ask
FAQ
Does Jesus consider anxiety to be a sin?
Jesus does not treat it as a mere emotion you suffer, but as a choice that betrays a lack of faith. In Matthew 6, he commands people not to be anxious and points out that anxiety reveals where your trust truly rests: in Mammon or in your heavenly Father.
How can I reconcile depending on God with being financially responsible?
Depending on God does not mean being lazy. Birds spend their whole day searching for food, and Paul reminds us in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 that whoever does not work should not eat either. The real question is the source: is your hope and your security built on your job, or on Jesus Christ?
What does it actually mean to seek God's kingdom first?
It means putting God's work, your sanctification, your home group, and the mission ahead of your own material priorities. It means deciding that your worship service matters more than an exam review, that growing as a disciple matters more than your laziness, and that the change in your heart matters more than your bank account.
to take notes and ask questions.