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Who Really Cares?
Matthew 6:24-33
Who cares? It doesn’t really matter that much anyway. Who actually cares? Those were the words out of the young man’s mouth, and he was a little bit frustrated ’cause he was going over his handwriting and spelling, and his teacher was correcting a number of things, and so his frustration got the better of him. In some ways, I can sympathize with that attitude. Writing college papers, I thought I got the general idea, and I handed in the paper. My professor sure knocked me down a little bit for the punctuation and spelling that I missed.
So imagine if you had that attitude throughout your life. You’re driving in your car, and you feel a rumbling in the tire, and you’re like, “Well, that doesn’t really matter that much anyway,” so you just keep on going. Well, eventually you’re gonna have a flat tire, and you won’t be going anywhere. So you see that those small things sometimes do matter. If that young boy applies himself to his spelling and punctuation, that’s gonna help him throughout his life. If you take care of your car, that’s gonna help you throughout your life.
So what about our devotional lives and our spiritual lives and things like that? Do those things really matter? Do the, our prayers in the morning or our prayers before our meals, our saying a devotion throughout the day, attending church, do those things really matter? Well, I think we would see that those things do matter, and there’s a certain value to all of those things throughout your life, and they’re good for you.
At the same time, you don’t wanna live your life feeling like you’re never good enough, you haven’t done enough. So how do you prioritize? How do you balance those things? Well, our scripture lesson for today, written in Matthew 6, I think speaks a great deal to this. It says,
“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.
“For this reason I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?
“Which of you can add a single moment to his lifespan by worrying? Why do you worry about clothing? Consider how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin, but I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will he not clothe you even more, you of little faith?
“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For the unbelievers chase after all these things. Certainly your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
(Matthew 6:24-33)
Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. But who cares about that? Well, God cares. Jesus cares. God cares so much that he sent his Son into this world, that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. Jesus cares so much for your salvation that he sought you first. As it says in Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” Jesus cared so much for you and for me that he died for us while we were yet sinners to pay for the debt of our sins all of the times that we’ve messed up and not prioritized things correctly. Jesus lived a perfect life in our stead and paid for those sins of ours so that we could be justified before the Father.
So now we can seek him because he has first sought us. We can love our neighbor, and we can walk in the good works that God has prepared for us beforehand. That is a joy, knowing that our salvation is already paid for on the cross, that Christ has won it for us. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things will be added to you as well. Amen.
