Daily Devotional

June 19

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

He that spared not His own Son, how shall he
not also with him freely give us all things?

[Our Lord's] argument [Matthew 6:25] is a very profound and powerful one; and how prone we are to forget it! He says in effect, 'Take this life of yours about which you are tending to worry and become anxious. How have you got it? Where has it come from?' And the answer, of course, is that it is a gift from God. ... So the argument which our Lord uses is this. If God has given you the gift of life—the greater gift— do you think He is now suddenly going to deny Himself and His own methods, and not see to it that that life is sustained and enabled to continue? God has His own ways of doing that, but the argument is that I need never become anxious about it.

Of course I am to plow and sow and reap and gather into barns.
I am to do the things that God has ordained for man and life in this world. I must go to work and earn money and so on. But... I need never be concerned or worried or anxious that suddenly there will not be sufficient to keep this life of mine going. That will never happen to me; it is impossible. If God has given me the gift of life, He will see to it that that life is kept going. [Jesus] is not arguing as to how this will be done. He is just saying that it will be.

I commend to your study, as a matter of great interest and vital importance, the frequency with which that argument is used in the Scriptures.... It is a very common biblical argument, the argument from the greater to the lesser, and we must always be watching for it and applying it. The Giver of the gift of life will see that the sustenance and support of that life will be provided ... that is exactly what God does with the [birds of the air]. They have to find their food, but it is He who provides it for them; He sees that it is there for them.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 113-14

---

“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”