Fixing the Mind on the Kingdom
To complete the lifestyle pattern, the disciple is told to fix his mind on the kingdom by emptying his mind of worry, from which conduct the essentials are taken care of. It is a principle based on trust.
‘Take no thought’ occurs three times in the passage. In other words, ‘Don’t worry, never mind, forget about it.’ We need to be continually reminded. ‘Why take ye thought?’ (verse 28.)
Don’t worry because “your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things” (verse 32.) If our needs are in the mind of our Father—in the mind of the one who created the universe and sent his only Son to die in our place, what is there that we should worry about? Food and clothing seem to be legitimate items to worry over. To say otherwise seems foolish. If there is something harder to do than to not worry about the things we need to live, I don’t know what it is. Who would not a climb a mountain if it meant that worrying about essentials would be trampled underfoot by the ascent? But if faith can move a mountain, it follows that we don’t need to climb one. Is there a person anywhere who does not worry about essentials for as much as a week? I used to stand in front of a bank to offer tracts to passersby. I noticed while standing there that no one looks more concerned than a man in a suit. How many of these worried individuals are Christians? Worry governs people; it leads to sickness; it shortens lives. Worry is in vain since Jesus said to ‘take no thought.’
But are we to be no more anxious than the birds are? The illustration that Jesus gives about the fowls of the air means exactly that. Birds do not have what it takes to worry. Our trust ought to be so complete that we seem incapable of worry. The bird eats what is made available; it lives where it can; it doesn’t gather more food than it needs (except for the blue-jay, I guess, who has been hiding peanuts under the leaves to the side of the house.) I have never seen a bird starve. I probably never will. In fact, I don’t remember ever seeing a skinny bird. They all look rather plump. We had a pet starling when I was a boy. Each morning dozens of flies were gathered on the window sills and panes waiting to be eaten. That bird never went hungry. He was always fat. The number of flies that he could eat amazed me. And so now, remembering all the flies that he ate, I look at the birds outside, and exclaim, “How does God feed all these birds?!” It seems impossible. Feeding us is as mysterious as that, and as possible as it seems unbelievable.
We covet treasures through the eye. Then we worry about essentials with our mind. It is hard to trust the Father for essentials when the eye is trained on treasures. When the mind is in bondage to treasures, it seems absurd to trust God to provide the essentials. How can a person who is still trying to serve both God and mammon be capable of trusting God for the essentials of food and clothing? The pursuit of treasure is in itself a demonstration of lack of trust. “And having food and raiment let us be therewith content” (1 Timothy 6.8.) It makes sense to have to subdue the lust for treasure before one is able to trust God for the essentials, because treasures occupy the mind, and the mind must be burden-free in order to trust God. The battle over luxury must be won before the battle of necessity can be overcome. If a person is occupied with treasures, he will worry about essentials. Oftentimes, it is because he has treasures that he has no essentials. How often have we noticed that the poorest person has the latest gadget? A fixed eye can regulate treasures. A fixed mind can go even farther. It can rest in God who provides the essentials. We need to trust God by ‘taking no thought.’
“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” ‘Take no thought’ is the lifestyle principle for the essentials. What does it mean to ‘take no thought?’ The Lord criticizes the Gentiles to teach us what it means: “(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:)” (verse 32.) To ‘take no thought’ is to ‘seek not.’ To ‘take no thought’ is a demonstration of faith. ‘Seeking’ demonstrates lack of faith.
Just as the starling went to work pecking the flies off each morning, disciples must go to work to support themselves. The Lord’s comment is a lesson for disciples to not meet their needs in the way that Gentiles do. The way Gentiles do it reveals their lack of trust. They seek after the essentials in a harried, confusing fashion. They do not draw a distinction between essentials and treasures. They work frantically to get all they can. Such is the case for persons who have no kingdom inheritance. We can learn how to ‘take no thought’ by observing how the Gentiles ‘seek.’ Then we need to quit imitating the Gentiles and trust God instead.
The Gentiles, or unbelievers, are obsessed with getting their needs met. To them, treasures are as essential as food and clothing. Many of these Gentiles abandon their babies and toddlers to strangers all day long because they ‘need’ to own a house or drive a certain car. These ‘needs’ are so essential to them that in order to meet them they are willing to sacrifice the most precious years with their children. It seems no sacrifice to such people to have their children raised by total strangers. Because they value material possessions over their children, they go even farther by recommending government run daycare. A cold Communist State is to them an idyllic utopia. Fatherhood and motherhood are both necessary to form the character of an infant. But parenthood does not rank alongside belongings with such people. The acquisition of treasures is more important to them than bonding with their children. They pay dearly for this, for their children rebel, and lash out through drugs, fornication, and bad behavior generally. A few wise men have suggested legislation that would hold parents accountable for the crimes of their children—crimes committed by children neglected by parents who are busy working for treasures as if they’re essentials. Parents who abandon their kids are later committed to senior homes, where they are as neglected as their children were. Poetic justice runs in a circle, and no one can outrun it. The standards of the world are in our local churches now, and being taken for commandments by professing Christians. What the world runs after, Christian professors follow. At first they shyly trot; then they sneak a lope; at last they shamelessly sprint. “These things ought not so to be.” The lifestyle of the Gentile is not the only way to live. He who is ‘the way’ has taught us a better way. And he demonstrated it to us.
Our nation’s lifestyle is that of the Gentile. Canada is no more Christian than Cuba is. But consider an example from Japan. So obsessed are the Japanese with amassing goods that their government rejected daylight savings time for fear that it would encourage laborers to work even more than they do. What is the government worried about? Ten thousand Japanese citizens die of overwork each year, either by heart attack, stroke, or brain hemorrhage. A word has even been coined to identify this modern ‘disease.’ Karoshi is a growing threat. Karoshi support groups have been started for those who have lost loved ones to overwork. Forty-two hotlines provide advice for Karoshi candidates. I heard the testimony of one such candidate, a Japanese man who commuted hours to work every day to do the job that would enable him to buy his bigger house. Because he could not endure all that traveling, he ended up sleeping at work instead of at home. Then, the four hours that he saved from not having to commute, he used for work. He testified that he was not even able to think about his family when he retired to sleep at night. ‘Take no thought for your life,’ Jesus says. The end result of taking inordinate thought is that something as fundamental as the family is no more thought of. A god such as mammon or overwork is an enemy to faith and a destroyer of life and family. Or shall we expect that gods work together for our good? France’s legislated thirty-five hour work week does not help matters for the French. Even when people are forbidden to work hard enough to buy essentials and pay taxes—even when labor inspectors are hired by the state to enforce this law—what person is more luxuriously attired than a French citizen? Essentials are commonly sacrificed in order to possess treasures. A people with heavy tax burdens will seek solace in treasures, and escape through entertainment. What do we need, then, but politicians who live modestly and who legislate mercifully? We need politicians who live according to the way set forth by Jesus. And because this lifestyle can hardly be lived except by grace from God through faith, Christian magistrates are what we need. But wicked people will not have the righteous rule over them. Therefore what can we do but pay high taxes and then relieve our anxiety by needing less to live on than we thought?
Opportunists take advantage of faithless souls. It is easy for them to do this because the world does not operate on the basis of trust. We are deceived by marketers into believing that we need more than we do. Some of the most beguiling marketers are behind our pulpits. One of their tricks is to convince us to give money to them in order to get God to give the money back to us through another channel. Then they accuse us of having little faith when the money that we gave doesn’t come back. Another one of their tricks is to make us believe that we give to God through them. “You’re not giving to us but through us,” says one radio solicitor, as if the donations go right through him without funding his well-known travel habits and golf addiction. So they cajole us into believing that we give to God by giving to them. Then they take our money and spend it on what we were going to buy for ourselves. No one preaches more vehemently than that pastor whose gospel is mammon. He pleads with his audience to give its treasures up; and he pleads with incomparable passion because he wants these treasures for himself. Ignorant churchgoers never figure these fraudsters out. Why not? Are these churchgoers not defrauded because their eyes are dark with envy? They want to be as well off as they think the fraudster is. Some of us, practically every time we go to church, are fooled into believing that the essentials of life are more than they are, or that treasures are nothing more than essentials that we need. If we were to apply the principle of moderation to pastors who are living more like popes than paupers, we would no longer feel obliged to enrich them. If we had grown wise by now, we would have more money from being fooled less often. Then we could give to actual persons in need and not being haunted anymore by the suspicion that we’re being robbed on the Sabbath by a con man posing as a Christian. We must learn what the essentials are, which lesson may be apprehended by reading no more than one Bible verse. Then we need to get into the practice of not worrying about these few things and to fix our mind on the kingdom of God instead. Right now the oil sector is being obstructed in a spiteful way by hate-filled politicians in eastern Canada. This is a great evil, for it has been granted to us by God to extract his resources. However, we should not miss the blessing that lean times bestow. What is this blessing but to feel our need for God so much as to turn to him in our distress? Does the young man feel any need for God as he drives his new truck to and fro from the oil patch? Does the young woman feel any need for God as she drives this man’s new truck to the mall to buy more lingerie? A rusted truck is a better magnet to God than a new one; a humble girl is more likely to be found in frayed cotton than frills and satin. In 1987 a US politician shot himself on live television before a crowd in order to seal a pension to his family. Is that not the antithesis of taking no thought for the essentials of life?
Observing the people around us can help us to know how to seek in a sinful way, how to disbelieve God instead of trust him, and what a mind is like that is fixed on the world instead of the kingdom of heaven. But what saint—what sinner saved from sin like ourselves—can we look to for a positive demonstration of ‘take no thought?’ There is a prophet from the Old Testament who took no thought for food and raiment. Habakkuk was an optimist in a time of impending doom. In fact, he was the one prophesying the doom. Vexed by the sins of his people and tormented by his own prophecies of destruction and bloodshed, Habakkuk demonstrated the trust that would be required in the future siege: “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3. 17, 18.) This is what it is to ‘take no thought’ for food and raiment. This is what it is to have the mind focused on a kingdom that lies beyond this present world and time. It will be easier to ‘joy in God’ when essential meat is lacking if we are used to going without figs and fruit. Luxuries and dainties are fine—until we think we need them. Then, by their unwonted absence, the stomach begins to crave; and then we repine instead of rejoice.
Once the eye and mind are fixed on the kingdom, treasures are out of mind if not out of hand, and essentials are left for God to provide as we do our best to fulfill a decent role in society that will put bread on the table. To live nearest to what God’s ideal is for us—that should be our aim. “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” (Matthew 6.33.) This verse is the summary manifesto of the lifestyle pattern. If we seek first the kingdom of God, treasures and essentials will be pushed out of mind. To seek the righteousness of God is to seek what the future kingdom will be like: righteous and peaceful. It is to seek what heaven itself is like, heaven being the ruler by which the earth will be judged. To seek this righteousness is to imitate what the Lord is like. It is to seek to do the Lord’s will ‘as in heaven.’ It comes down to practical matters like treating people fairly, governing wisely, avoiding impurity, laboring patiently, eschewing false doctrine, and exposing works of darkness. Training the mind on what is right, weans it from the world.
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