Reflect God in Your Ambitions
A Manual for Kingdom Life • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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The Englishman William Carey served as a missionary to India for many years during the late 18th and early 19th centuries and now is often called the father of modern missions.
Carey had a son named Felix, who, according to biographer Shally Hunt, was considered to be something of the black sheep of the Carey family. In fact, she has suggested that he may have suffered from bipolar disorder.
Whatever might have inspired that appraisal of his character, it is clear that Felix led a tortured life.
He lost his mother to insanity and a brother to dysentery. His first wife died in childbirth, and his second, along with two children, died in a shipwreck that he survived.
And, though he had set up a small mission in Burma, the east-Asian nation that is now called Myanmar, he abandoned his third wife during a brief political career that was marked by alcohol, drugs, and mounting debt.
Felix Carey had promised that he would become a missionary and follow in his father’s footsteps, but he had turned away from his vow when he was appointed by the Queen of England to be ambassador to Burma following that shipwreck.
In that position, he soon found himself being used as a pawn in a political game between Burma and Bengal. He had tried to please his father as a missionary, but “was seduced by the Burmese Court and all things mammon.” Shally Hunt has said. “After his impoverished and turbulent childhood, Felix found riches and power irresistible.” [https://www.baptist.org.uk/Articles/370739/Felix_Carey_a.aspx]
Father and son would eventually reunite, and Felix Carey is credited with printing the first portions of the New Testament in the Bengali language. He died of cholera at the age of 37, leaving his fourth wife expecting a child.
I think it must have hurt Felix’s great missionary father very much to see his son suffer so much heartbreak, especially when much of it was self-induced. And I can imagine that William Carey had spent many long nights praying for his son. Indeed, considering that Felix finally left the life of debauchery he had pursued following the shipwreck that killed his second wife and their two children, it seems that his father’s prayers were answered.
In fact, Carey had called on friends to pray for his wayward son, as well.
Upon learning that his son had accepted the ambassador’s post in Burma, Carey wrote the following to a friend: “Pray for Felix. He has degenerated into an ambassador of the British government when he should be serving the King of kings.” [Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 22.]
It seems that the younger Carey, who was, by all accounts, a brilliant man with a knack for languages, had, when faced with a heartbreak of epic proportions, decided to follow his ambitions, and they had led him straight into trouble.
Here’s the thing about ambition: It’s not really a bad thing, in and of itself. We were not made to be people who simply drift along with the tide of life. We were made to be people who yearn for things to be better.
“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it.” That’s what God told Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In other words, go out and make the world a better place — make it like this garden that God had made so perfect.
Ambition is that which gives purpose to our desires. The dictionary defines it as “a strong desire to achieve success.”
We talked about the desire for wealth last week, and it makes a good example of what I mean.
Most folks don’t want more money just so they can have bigger piles of hundred-dollar bills lying around they house. Most folks who have a desire for wealth want more money in order to be able to wield power or to have a higher status in society — or even, in some rare cases, to be able to give more money away through philanthropy or ministry.
So, in those cases, ambition is the thing that gives purpose to the desire to acquire wealth.
But ambition can be a positive thing, too. You might have an ambition to run a marathon because you want to be very healthy and fit. You might have an ambition to learn a new language so you can serve as a missionary in a foreign country. For several years, I have had an ambition to finish seminary so I could be a better pastor and serve God by serving His people.
The thing that makes ambition good or bad is — just as we have seen with so many other things during our study of the Sermon on the Mount — the direction of our heart in it. Is your ambition directed to God and His glory? Or is it directed at yourself and your own glory?
Now, all this talk about ambition may seem irrelevant when we look at our passage today from Matthew 6:25-34. In fact, Jesus never uses the term “ambition” here or anywhere else in His teaching.
Nonetheless, as I studied this passage this week, and with the help of John Stott’s commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, I began to see that ambition — this “strong desire” for something, this thing that gives our desires purpose and meaning — is exactly what Jesus was talking about here.
Let’s read these verses together, and then we’ll talk a bit about what good ambition looks like and how Christians are called to reflect God in their very ambitions.
“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? “And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? “And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ “For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Now, do you remember the principle of biblical analysis that I taught you last week? Let’s apply it again this week. Say it out loud with me if you know where I’m going.
Verse 25 follows verse 24. That’s right. Verse 25 follows verse 24.
And, once again, there’s nothing obvious here that would suggest that Jesus has changed the subject in today’s passage from what He was talking about in last week’s passage.
Last week, we talked about how Christians — subjects of the kingdom of heaven — are to reflect God in their desires. We are to seek rewards in heaven, rather than treasure on earth. We are to be devoted to God as our master, rather than devoted to wealth. “You cannot serve God and wealth,” Jesus said in verse 24.
And so, when He starts today’s passage with “For this reason, I say to you,” we need to be sure we understand that “for this reason,” or perhaps “therefore” in your translation, refers to something He has already talked about.
You cannot serve God and wealth. THAT is why I say to you, “do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on.”
Who worries about these sorts of things?
Well, according to Jesus, the Gentiles do — the pagans, those whose worldview is set on things of this earth.
Do you see that in verse 32? “The Gentiles eagerly seek all these things.”
The Greek word that’s translated there as “eagerly seek” means to “devote serious effort to realize a desire or objective; to strive for; to try to obtain; or to desire something.” This is ambition.
In other words, the Gentiles’ ambitions were set on the desires of the flesh — on eating and drinking and nice clothes and all of the things that all the ads on television tell us are worthy of our attention and our striving.
But, back in verse 25, Jesus asks a couple of questions that should stop us in our tracks if we are His followers. Isn’t life about more than the next meal? Isn’t your body intended for something greater than looking good in the latest fashions?
And then He gave a couple of illustrations to help make His point.
Look at the birds of the air. Watch birds. There it is, a commandment from our Savior, the King of kings. Watch birds. THAT’s why I spend so much time watching the birds in our back garden.
But seriously, watch the birds. Do you see them worrying about what they’re going to eat tomorrow?
They don’t plant fields, they don’t reap harvests, and they don’t store up food for the winter. They come to the bird feeder, and they eat whatever they want, and they fly away when they’re done and come back when they want more. And the hummingbirds will even get in your face if the feeder is empty.
And the point is that birds don’t do anything productive in society, and yet God still makes sure they are fed.
Does He drop morsels into their mouths with a heavenly hand? Of course not. They have to find the bird feeder or whatever they find in places where we don’t live to feed them. They have to get up early and go out and get the worms.
And the same is true of you. God provides, but He provides through your agency or the agency of others. He has given you the talents and skills you have to earn your living; He has provided the job that results in your paycheck. But you still have to do the work.
And then there is the illustration of the flowers in verse 28.
“And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.
The lilies and the wildflowers and even the grass of the fields don’t do any work at all. They simply grow where they’re planted. And yet God provides them beauty that is without equal, beauty that has mesmerized the greatest artists of mankind through all of human history.
And, as Jesus says in verse 30, if God will provide such clothing for grass, whose life is short and inconsequential and whose value is simply as fuel for the furnace, then why would He not provide what you need?
“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’
The Gentiles eagerly seek all these things. But your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
Remember what Jesus said when He introduced the model prayer back in the first part of this chapter?
“Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”
He has given you life. Why would He not then give you the things you need for life?
But here, we must pause and recognize a great reality of life in this broken world in which we live: There are many around this world — even among the Christian disciples to whom this Sermon is directed — who are starving and naked.
So how do we reconcile what Jesus says here with this fact of life in a sin-broken world?
The first thing I want to note is that WE have a responsibility as Christians to help provide for others.
In fact, Jesus says this himself later in the Gospel of Matthew, when He describes the scene at the judgment seat of heaven, where He will bless those who have fed and clothed and visited the least of these and curse those who failed to do so.
“The fact that God feeds and clothes his children does not exempt us from the responsibility of being the agents through whom he does it.” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 167.]
And the second thing to note as we attempt to reconcile Jesus’ statements about God’s provision with what we know of suffering around the world is to remind you that we do, in fact, live in a sin-cursed world, and we as believers are not exempt from its troubles.
“It is true that Jesus forbids his people to worry. But to be free from worry and to be free from trouble are not the same thing.” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 167.]
Again, Jesus Himself reminds us of this when He says in Matthew 10:
“Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.
“His promise was not that they would not fall, but that this would not happen without God’s knowledge and consent. People fall too, and aeroplanes. Christ’s words cannot be taken as a promise that the law of gravity will be suspended on our behalf, but again that God knows about accidents and allows them.” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 167.]
In today’s passage, He talks about the grass of the field. Today, it’s clothed in beauty, and tomorrow it is cut down and thrown into the furnace.
“In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
That was Jesus’ encouragement for his disciples as He prepared to give Himself as a sacrifice at the cross, knowing that they would face many trials after His death, resurrection and ascension into heaven.
And it is His encouragement to us today. Take heart! He has overcome the world. And if you have followed Jesus in faith, then you are in Christ, and there is a sense in which you, too, have overcome the world in Him.
But to an even greater degree, we who are in Christ are called to have His ambitions, to have a strong desire to achieve what He seeks to achieve.
And what’s that? We talked about it when we looked at the Lord’s Prayer in the beginning of this chapter a few weeks ago.
That God’s name would be glorified. That His kingdom would come. That His will would be done.
Remember that this model prayer starts by addressing matters of God and of His kingdom and only then moves into matters concerning ourselves.
And there’s a direct connection between how that prayer is structured and what Jesus is saying in today’s passage.
“Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Don’t be like the Gentiles and the pagans and the lost people of this worldly system. They’re worried about building their own little kingdoms here. They’re worried about storing up treasures here that will rust and decay.
We who follow Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, are to have Kingdom priorities. Our ambitions, or concerns, our desires, and our focus, is to be on God’s Kingdom and God’s righteousness.
We are to be people who are ever looking ahead to the day when the “already/not yet” kingdom that Jesus inaugurated in His incarnation is finally fully realized in His righteous millennial reign upon earth after His victorious second coming.
But we are also to be people who are ever looking for opportunities to extend God’s righteousness — His justice and His love and His peace — within the sin-broken world that exists right now.
We are to be people who desire above all things that God’s name be hallowed — that His glory be magnified across the earth.
These are the ambitions of God. These are the things that He desires for we who have been made in His image. And Jesus calls us here in this passage to reflect God in our ambitions.
You can’t serve two masters, Jesus said in verse 24. So, if you have chosen to serve God in Christ, then you must refuse to be anxious for your own concerns and rather choose to be committed to God’s concerns first.
Anxiety is the opposite of faith. Anxiety says I know what’s going to happen, and I cannot trust God’s promise to work all things for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. And anxiety sucks the joy from today over something that may or may not happen tomorrow.
So, “to become preoccupied with material things in such a way that they engross our attention, absorb our energy and burden us with anxiety is incompatible with both Christian faith and common sense.” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 169.]
This is what the Gentiles do. This is what the pagans do. This is what people do who have no faith in a Father God who loves them and know what they need even before they ask.
You who follow Jesus in faith are to seek first His kingdom, to have as your ambition that the manifestations of His reign will spread throughout the earth.
From a personal perspective, that means that you must submit your will to His in every part of your life — in your home, in your marriage, in your family, in your morality, in your professional life, in your finances, in your obedience to government, and in your lifestyle.
And from a broader perspective, that means you must submit your will to His in personal evangelism to your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your colleagues, and that you must submit your will to His in your concern for local, regional, and global missions, as well.
Jesus talked earlier in this chapter about two kinds of piety: piety meant to glorify oneself and piety meant to glorify God. Here in today’s passage, He talks about two kinds of ambition: ambition meant to glorify yourself, and ambition aimed at glorifying God.
There is only one right choice for we who have followed Jesus Christ in faith.