Matthew 06: Kingdom Living 201
In Matthew Chapter 6, Jesus continues His Sermon on the Mount by diving deeper into what true Kingdom living looks like. While Matthew 5 focused on how believers should relate to the world around them, Chapter 6 shifts focus to our relationship with God Himself. Pastor Brandon aptly calls this "Kingdom Living 201"—taking us beyond the fundamentals and into more challenging spiritual territory.
The chapter opens with Jesus addressing three core spiritual practices: giving, prayer, and fasting. With each practice, Jesus establishes a consistent pattern of instruction. He warns against performing religious acts to gain public admiration and recognition, explaining that those who parade their devotion publicly "have received all the reward they will ever get." Instead, Jesus advocates for privacy and sincerity in our spiritual disciplines. When giving to those in need, we should do so quietly, not even letting our "left hand know what the right hand is doing." When praying, we should withdraw to private spaces rather than seeking to be seen by others. And when fasting, we should maintain our normal appearance rather than making our sacrifice obvious to gain sympathy or admiration. The consistent theme is clear: God values authentic devotion over religious performance.
One of the most profound sections of this chapter is Jesus' teaching on prayer. He doesn't just tell us how to pray—He gives us a model prayer that has become foundational to Christian practice for two thousand years. The Lord's Prayer, as it has come to be known, begins by honoring God's name and expressing desire for His kingdom to manifest on earth. It then moves to requests for provision ("our daily bread"), forgiveness (contingent on our forgiveness of others), and spiritual protection. What's particularly noteworthy is Jesus' reminder that "your Father knows exactly what you need before you ask him." This reframes our understanding of prayer not as informing God of our needs, but as an act of trust and relationship-building with Him.
The latter portion of the chapter addresses our relationship with money and worry—two areas that often expose our deepest insecurities. Jesus is strikingly direct: "You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money." He identifies financial security as perhaps the most common rival to God in our hearts, not because money itself is evil, but because we often look to wealth to provide what only God can truly give: security, significance, and identity. Jesus then transitions to His teaching on worry, using vivid natural imagery of birds and wildflowers to illustrate God's faithful provision. His memorable phrase, "Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?" cuts through our anxious thinking with piercing clarity. The antidote to worry isn't greater self-sufficiency but greater God-dependency: "Seek the Kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need."
Perhaps one of the most challenging insights from this passage is that worry can be understood as "functional atheism"—a practical denial of God's goodness, power, and involvement in our lives, even if we intellectually affirm these truths. When we allow ourselves to be consumed by anxiety about tomorrow, we're essentially saying we don't trust God to be God. The solution isn't to suppress legitimate concerns but to bring them to God in trust. As Pastor Brandon explains, there's a significant difference between caring about outcomes and being consumed by worry. Kingdom living involves casting our cares upon God rather than carrying them ourselves.
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