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Sermon on the Mount- Lilies and Fig Leaves

Our world seems darker and more dangerous everyday. Tyranny, censorship, and political persecution at home; Wars, the drumbeats of coming wars, and failing states abroad. The sons of Isaac and the sons of Ishmael seem to be squaring off for their final apocalyptic struggle. Will we find ourselves trading nukes with Russia and China this year or next? When is the next Pandemic and the next trans-humanist cure coming and will we have any freedom or even humanity left when it does? What will happen with the conspiracy between banks and governments to control us through the Digital Dollar and a cashless society? Into all of this confusion and anxiety, Christ’s words in Matthew 6 crash like a sword dividing us from the world.

¹⁹ “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰ but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

The Sermon on the Mount is very strong on antithesis, on incompatibility, and mutual exclusiveness. In the Sermon, life is about two paths diverging, a Narrow Gate through which only an individual alone can walk and a gate so broad that the collective walks through it totally unaware. It is about light and darkness, love and hate, things which cannot mix at all. And so, when our Lord says, ‘Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth’, we should not take it as if He said, ‘Treasure in heaven is preferable to earthly treasure for this, that, and the other reason,so when you are apportioning your time and effort make sure to prefer treasure in heaven, while still being prudent to amass a reasonable treasure on earth’ No. Rather He is marking out the two things as entirely incompatible.

²⁴ “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

In 1 Samuel chapters 4-7 there is this story about how the Israelites went out to battle against the Philistines. Just briefly, Israel had the Ark of the Covenant with them and the Philistines were afraid of the Ark but they put on their big boy pants and fought anyway. And on this occasion the Philistines won and captured the Ark. But then, when they took the Ark back to their hometown and put the Ark beside their idol the idol kept falling down and their god Dagon wound up losing his head and hands, his wisdom and his works you might say. Now, I covered this story pretty excellently in my famous Shark of the Covenant

The Shark of the Covenant

sermon so right now I just want to read the punchline, Samuel’s words as the two peoples are preparing to do battle again, some years later, in chapter 7:3-4.

³ Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you return to the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths from among you, and prepare your hearts for the Lord, and serve Him only; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” ⁴ So the children of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and served the Lord only.

Serve the Lord only, alone. In Israel, the issue of idolatry was never that they replaced Yahweh with Baal, it was always that they supplemented Yahweh with Baal, exactly as the Philistines tried to forge a partnership between Yahweh and Dagon on this occasion. The crassest, brassiest idolator in Israel bowing down to a golden calf would have told you that the Lord was God, and then he would have told you that there are some things that the Lord doesn’t do or won’t do or can’t be depended on for and that for those he has Molech on speed dial. He’s just covering all of the bases. So, when Christ talks about treasure and money and Mammon is He talking about your finances? Yes, sure we put too much emotional and spiritual weight on financial matters. We imagine that those who are good with money have some spiritual cache or maturity or whatever and judge those who are poor with money as spiritually unworthy.¹ But there is another dimension that we need to see here, not however forgetting the plain meaning of His words. He is about to get into it and I don’t want to get ahead of our text too much, but the substance of the matter is that trying to use our works or our righteousness to complete the work of salvation which Christ has done for us is not a piece of good hearted piety. What we call ‘holding up our end and trusting God for His part’ and ‘God helps those who help themselves’ He calls darkness. What we call ‘progressive sanctification’ or ‘making a good use of grace’ is just a baptized idolatry. And all of this is simply because, ‘where your treasure is there your heart will be also’. Christ doesn’t admit of your heart being in two places or being divided by expressly denies that possibility. You cannot love Grace in Scene 1 and Works for the following scenes. If your treasure is your character and the testimony that you have built then your treasure is simply not in Heaven. It is in yourself. You are in this world, and if you have any hope or any store of value in yourself then that is your treasure. Christ admits no compromise.

²² “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. ²³ But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Modern translators have turned this passage into a riddle with no solution. What does a good eye mean and what in the world is He talking about? As the older, less FOS, translations make clear He is not talking about your eye being good(my own beloved NKJ) or healthy(ESV and NIV) or clear(NASB) or generous or full of childlike wonder and belief(The Message) but being in the words of Wycliffe simple or as the Tyndale Bibles(Geneva, KJV, mainly) have it single. If your eye is on One Thing to the exclusion of all others, if all of your hope is in one and only one then your whole body will be full of light and purpose and meaning. If ‘It’s complicated’ and you chase one thing now and another tomorrow your life will be dark and directionless. I like Tullian Tchavidjian’s famous saying, ‘Jesus + Nothing = Everything’ but there is a flip side to that heavenly treasure that we miss. Namely, ‘Jesus + Something Else = Just that something Else’. When the crowd of men or gods or religions or works or righteousnesses comes near the shy Nazarene carpenter slips away unseen and we often carry on a long time before we miss Him. Our righteousness and His righteousness just don’t mix.

²⁵ “Therefore I say to you, do not worry 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?

All of our preparations come from worry or anxiety.  There is no need to dance around and justify our "prudence", our "preparedness", our "thoughtfulness".  Let’s stop justifying ourselves and call a spade a spade. We gather up earthly treasure because we are worried and want to be prepared.  Because life is scary and this world is dark.  Because some failures are so big that they mean death either for us or for those we love, and some so big that they mean Hell and letting a little failure in the door is a slippery slope. Our worry is entirely sensible, but it misses the big picture. We are slaves to our fears. Whether or not you think or feel psychologically or emotionally worried or anxious your actions and mine identify us as behaving in a way that Our Lord describes as worry and as worship of Mammon, the God in the Belly. 

²⁶ Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

The ravens make us look like fools.  And that is what we are, fools and sinners.  The birds don't work at any of the things that we do.  They gather no earthly treasure, make no preparations for today, tomorrow, or eternity. And which of us doesn't envy their freedom?  "I'm as free as a bird now, and this bird you cannot change"²  All of our work, doesn't get us anything that we wouldn't have without it.  In fact, if we do provide more food for ourselves than God would have given us without our works we find that not only have we made ourselves slaves to the getting of the food, but slaves after the fact, whether because we exercise the extra food off, or we resist the temptation to eat all the things in our barns, or because we have to maintain or improve our barns like the guy in Luke’s parallel passage³.  Our works only make us slaves, only make us beholden to the God in the Belly, and all of the things that we thought to accomplish the Lord brings about not because of our works but in spite of them.

²⁵ And which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? ²⁶ If you then are not able to do the least, why are you anxious for the rest? ²⁷ Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ²⁸ If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith?

Christ⁴ used the birds of the air to condemn our works, He uses the lilies of the field to condemn our righteousness and our holiness.  What does He say?  Which of you can make yourself grow a cubit, roughly 18 inches taller?  And then He claims that this is the least.  What are you comparing a grown man getting a foot and a half taller to that that is "the least"⁵?  If I showed up 7 1/2 ft tall you guys would think that was a big deal and want to know how I did it. Not just how, you’d probably also want to know why.

With the overalls he looks a bit like Mario. Maybe I should’ve got a picture of him with a ‘powerup mushroom’ and showed him 5 ft tall. That’s pretty ambitious graphics for this blog though.

But even if we take Josiah. He is between 2 and 3 feet right now, I don’t know exactly how tall. If suddenly he was tall enough to ride the Mindbender at Six Flags you’d want an explanation.⁶ Even though we might tell him to ‘Eat biscuits to get big and strong like dad.’ none of us seriously expects him to put some sort of effort into growing or thinks that any effort he made would make a difference. And yet, physical growth is a natural human thing. We do get taller if we eat right, and I guess have good posture, take care of our backs that kind of thing. When Christ calls physical growth ‘the least’ it is clear that ‘the rest’ that He commands us not to be anxious about is something beyond physical and earthly life, in other words, a spiritual thing and I think that it must be about what we call ‘growing in Christ’-sanctification⁷. Which one of you can add anything to your own holiness? Which one of you can make yourself a little more Christlike today than you were yesterday? You’re more likely to pull a Super Mario: pop a shroom and sprout up to 9 ft tall.

²⁷ Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ²⁸ If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith? Luke 12

The lilies have no works, yet they grow in the way that they were made to grow.  If you are in Christ then you will grow, if His seed is in you then that seed will grow though not in a way that makes sense to us or seems like spiritual growth.  Notice that He makes no distinction between one lily and another. These are ‘the lilies of the field’, not the lilies of the garden tended by man, cared for and worked over, but the lilies who have nothing of their own and no one but the heavenly Father. These are not the ‘lilies of the valley’, the elite among flowers but only the common run of the mill lilies of the field. These aren’t even the lilies which sprouted from seed which fell on good soil, the glorious panoply of the lilies of the fields spring up in the best soil and the most miserable, a carpet too rich for Solomon to afford, and whatever differences there may be between lily and lily are insignificant to this Gospel as the differences in our circumstances or ‘responses to grace’ are insignificant. Nothing we do is going to have any affect one way or another.  Which is good news because I have a pretty good idea which way we would affect it if we could.  In light of our depravity our inability is Good News. Christ causes us to grow spiritually not because of our efforts but in spite of them.

To drive the point home, He says that they don't spin, they don't make clothes for themselves, like Adam and Eve did after they sinned.  Throughout Scripture clothes are a sign of righteousness, whether Adam's poor attempt to cover his sin or the skin of his Substitute that God clothed him in, or Aaron's vestments or the filthy rags of our righteousness, or the linen clean and white without spot or wrinkle which is Christ's righteousness covering us-His Saints.  The lilies, our divinely chosen exemplar, have only the clothing that God gives them, and their beauty is breathtaking.

A lily that grew a fig leaf on it, however, would not be breathtaking. It would be a Frankenstein, or Faucienstein to be a little more with the times. Why can’t we see what a patchwork, what a chimera, we make when we combine our righteousness with that of Christ? Without getting into the soteriology and eternal destiny of grass, the Lord's provision of righteousness for the most insignificant is greater than the righteousness which all of Solomon's works could provide for him.  If then God so clothes the least of these, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Lily with fig leaves, courtesy of Substack Image Generator-Looks pretty until you realise that it is a transgenic monstrosity…

³¹ “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6

For those who want the hard Law of Moses replaced with an easy Law of Love or Liberty or some such here is what you have asked for.  I’ve always been told that it was in the Sermon on the Mount. I finally found the New Law. He not only commands that we not worry about what we will eat or drink or our future or oour freedom or health or peace or safety, but He forbids even seeking them.  Thou shalt not seek any of the things that the gentiles, normal people seek. Thou shalt not seek food, clothing, or shelter. Thou shalt not be anxious, for all anxiety is unbelief, is gross idolatry and atheism.  Try and keep those laws for awhile and let me know how it goes.

As soon as the smallest part of righteousness or holiness is assigned to us or our works the most crippling anxiety overwhelms us. How can we ever be sure that our part has been done enough or done well enough or done sincerely enough? We never will have rest. The only way to obtain any of these things is by seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness, not the righteousness that we have a part in but the righteousness that comes entirely by gift. Seeking His righteousness then, is not a one time thing after which we move on to seeking our own righteousness. Rather, as Hebrews 3 has it,

For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, Hebrews 3:14

The ‘beginning of our confidence’ is grace full and free before we began to add our works and worthiness to it. Hold to that! Do not be moved from the beginning of the Gospel. That is what seeking something first means, not merely first in the sense of time but as the foundation, the priority which can never be moved away from. The end must be in the same place as the beginning or as chapter 7 tells us it is built on sand and will let you down when you need it most. To continue with Hebrews just a further,

Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. Hebrew 4:11

The seeking first, the diligence that is called for is continually reminding ourselves that our works and our righteousness are of no value, continually renouncing all that we might think of adding to ‘the beginning of our confidence’ that the whole of the thing is grace given to sinful men, else He could not call it ‘rest’. The diligence that He requires is a diligence in resting, continually applying yourself to the task of having no work or hope but Christ alone. That is what it means to seek His kingdom and His righteousness first and only, to the absolute exclusion of any kingdom or righteousness of our own.  What we are called to do is to trust Our Father and to not make any contribution at all.

That doesn’t mean trusting that He will give us the things that we have identified for ourselves as good, whether earthly things or spiritual, doesn’t mean trusting that we have taken the right steps to get Him to do what we want. It means trusting that His will, His judgment, His choice is the highest and only good even though we see it differently.

“Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Luke 12:32

The Father's Good Pleasure is the whole of the Gospel, start to finish, front to back, cover to cover.  We are a worried, anxious, fearful Little Flock.  The Law and the wolves are at our door⁸.  All of our righteousness and works and sanctification are subject to moths and rusts and thieves.  The protections that we once thought we had, progress we once thought that we had made are evaporating like mist in the hot sunlight of reality.  We are not only the refuse of humanity but our religion is unrepentant idolatry.  Our only hope is the one that we ought to really fear, the one who when He is done killing us can cast us into Hell, as Christ warns us.  All of reality, all of the Universe, physical, social, moral, spiritual whatever joins together in telling the Little Flock, "NO."  But there is a Father who reserves to Himself the right, the power, the freedom to say, "Yes."  He doesn't need a reason.  He doesn't give an explanation.  He gives us the whole kingdom, everything just cause He wants to. He condemns damnation, locks up captivity, and gives gifts to men.

The Father has prepared food for you.  The body and blood of Christ.  He has prepared clothes for you.  The righteousness of the Perfect Messiah.  He has prepared the whole kingdom for you.  What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?  The table is set.  All you are called to do is eat.

1. Although we don’t judge a theoretical physicist by his gardening ability somehow we think that Christianity and finance, Christ and Mammon, are similar enough that there is a correlation, or maybe we just think that money is the ultimate reality and everything else is second banana.

2. Readers, unfortunately, have to only imagine me belting out such great lyrics. Sad.

3. Luke 12

4. Matthew omits the very suggestive comment about our inability to ‘do the least’ so I have quoted Luke here. Other than the omission the passages are identical.

5. Presumably His main audience was adults but as I show below the point holds even if we consider the audience to be children.

6. I don’t know if the Mindbender still exists at Six Flags but consider how untimely and inappropriate this growth would be and the real dangers that growing outside of the right time and way would present…e.g. my 14 month old son on a roller coaster. That is the result of our imagined spiritual maturity and contributions to the work which only Christ can do.

7. I dispute that this is the sense in which the NT uses this word but use it here in its common signification. If the silly Wesleyans and their followers would at least trouble themselves to learn that the right name for the thing that they are talking about is mortification then they might be enlightened with the knowledge that, ‘Only God can mortify.’ —the difficulty of tracking the source of that quotation, my faulty memory says either Lactantius or John Chrysostom, and the ease of finding nonsense such as John Owen’s Mortification of Sin shows how delighted we are in nonsensical asceticism, self-imposed religion, and how averse the human mind is to trust and rest in the Lord.

8. I meant God’s Law. The connection with Christians receiving visits from federal law enforcement occurred to me on a reread.