In Matthew 6:24 – 34, the word anxious is used five times, and three of the times, Jesus is tells his followers to “stop being anxious.”
Matthew 5:1 says that when Jesus saw the multitudes, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, His disciples came to him, and he began to teach. According to the last two verses of Matthew 7, the multitudes also joined and either stood or sat down behind the disciples as Jesus taught what’s called the sermon on the Mount. So Jesus is teaching, and the 12 were immediately in front of him, then the multitudes are behind the 12. The point I’m trying to make is that when Jesus speaks about anxiety, He’s not just talking to the crowd, but He is also speaking to the 12 (those who were his most radical followers.) The sermon on the Mount is considered Jesus’ hard-core message about being a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. There is a lot of meaty stuff in the sermon, and right in the middle of the sermon, it was important to Jesus that he talk about the issue of anxiety because he knew that anxiety would be one of the powerful weapons that the enemy would try to use the stop a believer in his or her tracks spiritually.
At its core, anxiety is about the “unknown” or the “uncertain.” Jesus uses examples of food and clothing, but those are just two examples because Jesus was talking about more than just trusting God with having enough food to eat or clothes to wear. If you go back to verses 19 – 23, you will discover that Jesus is really talking about is the issue of what we treasure most in life. When you treasure things that are temporal and are therefore vulnerable to diminish or to disappear, then you will live your life in anxiety worrying about them. Jesus doesn’t just tell the listeners to stop being anxious, because doesn’t work. It would be like yelling at Siri to pay closer attention to you. Instead, he tells them the root cause behind anxiety and the solution. Anxiety is a heart issue, and when your heart treasure are things and people (Mammon), then anxiety, which is a fruit of fear, will always show its ugly face. If treasuring the treasures of the kingdom of God and abiding in God’s righteousness is your primary treasure, then anxiety has no place to occupy in your heart. The promise that our Heavenly Father will always meet our daily needs is always there, and therefore we can trust Him with all things Mammon. Our part is to stay focused on seeking the reality of the kingdom and the reign of Christ in all things and pursuing the life that manifests the righteousness of God at all times. Notice that Jesus doesn’t tell them to seek righteousness but to seek the righteousness of God. Now that’s exciting stuff! This is not some kind of spiritual self-help program Jesus is inviting them to pursue. Instead, he is inviting them to live with the wonder of always being conscious of the reign of Christ (the kingdom of heaven) no matter what happens in life, and the glorious victory of experiencing the reign of the righteousness of God over the power of sin in our lives no matter what the enemy throws at us.