Well, the central theme of today's text is probably something that everyone in this room has struggled with, and I suspect struggle with often. The theme of Matthew 6, 25-34 is worry, anxiety, fretfulness. Let's see what Jesus has to say to his followers about this problem.
If you would stand with me in honor of God's Word as we read it together, Matthew 6, verses 25-34. Jesus says, Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious 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? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field which today is alive, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Let's pray. Father, once again you have put your finger on something that we're so prone to do, and yet something that diminishes your glory in our lives, something that diminishes our ability to shine as lights for your honor in a darkened world. Help us Holy Spirit to take these truths to heart, and may we experience a freedom from the sin of worry like we've never known before. Give us faith like that of a little child who simply rests in his Father's love and ability to protect and to provide. We pray all this through Jesus who is our Prince of Peace.
Amen. You may be seated. Most of us here today have probably at one time or another had the exciting or nerve-wracking experience of going to a job interview. You try to look your best, you make sure you're there right on time, not too early lest you appear eager, but not a second late so that they'll know you'll be a prompt employee. You get an upbeat attitude, and in you go for the interview.
They begin to ask you a ton of questions, and eventually they get to this one. Tell us about your greatest strengths and weaknesses, and I really don't like that question. You feel like you're bragging if you're making too much of your strengths, but you feel like you're talking yourself out of a job when you bring up your weaknesses. You're there to try to sell yourself, and so you can't just say, I don't have any weaknesses.
They'll never buy that. What do you do? What do we do? Well, we choose to mention weaknesses that sound like strengths. I'm such an overachiever.
I'm too driven, and everyone tells me I'm just way too conscientious. We pick respectable weaknesses because it makes us look good. We don't do this sort of thing just in job interviews to potential employers. We do it everywhere, don't we? If we're honest with ourselves, we do it around our friends.
We do it at church. We inflate people's perception of our virtue and character. We let people think more highly of our spiritual maturity than it really is, and we do it by only talking about those respectable flaws in our character. Well, Jesus in our text before us addresses one of those respectable flaws, and he shows us that it's really not respectable at all.
The sin of worry, of anxious fretfulness, and it is a sin, is just as incriminating as pornography or theft or drug abuse. It's one of those areas that perhaps we've convinced ourselves is not all that bad when in reality it is an affront to the trustworthiness of God. Now, Jesus has already dealt with materialism back in verses 19 through 24. We looked at that last week, and I think we all know that materialism is bad. Loving the stuff of this world is bad.
Being enslaved to money and possessions is idolatry. So it's obvious to us that crass materialism is not a respectable character flaw, and because we know it, perhaps we could think of verses 19 through 24 as maybe Satan coming in through the front door. It's obvious.
It's evident. But in our text today, Satan sneaks in through the back door. He comes in subtly, almost imperceptibly, in the form of anxiety and worry. It's almost as if the devil's saying, if I can't get these Christians to love temporal things, I'll get them to waste all of their time and energy worrying about temporal things, and then I'll get them to think that somehow worrying about these things is a virtue, not a vice, not a sin, but rather maybe a mark of a conscientious Christian. I'll get them thinking it's respectable to be a worrier. But folks, three times in these verses, we are told by Christ, do not be anxious.
Do not be anxious. This is no respectable sin. It's not a mark of a conscientious overachieving Christianity.
It is an affront to the trustworthiness of God, and as such, it's something that we must fight against every day until it is subdued and conquered in our hearts. Well, how do we do that? Jesus tells us right here, there are three things that we've got to get right if we are to overcome the sin of anxiety. First, there is the right perspective. Secondly, there is the right priority. And thirdly, there is the right place. Let's look at each of these briefly, and we'll begin with the right perspective.
We see it there in verses 25 through 30. Through a series of rhetorical questions, Jesus shows us that a skewed perspective of life is the cause of our anxiety. He begins by putting his finger on the kinds of things that tend to worry us.
Food, drink, clothing. In other words, the things that tend to keep us awake at night and bother us throughout the day and distract us from being able to relate freely to others and rob us of the joy of contentment are typically the things that concern the outward man, the physical body. We worry about physical survival. We worry about physical prosperity.
These are the things that concern us the most. Christ says it ought not be this way. You need a correction in how you view your life. You need to gain a right perspective. And so to correct our perspective, he tells us first to look, to look. We see it there in verse 26.
Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? So underlying this anxiety about physical necessities and comforts is the assumption that God doesn't really care about our needs or that he's not really aware of our needs.
But the truth of the matter is he does care, and he cares very much. To get his point across, Jesus reminds us of the fact that even birds are cared for by the providence of God. God in his goodness sustains the life of these small seemingly insignificant creatures, and if he'll provide for the birds, will he not also provide for us?
Jesus asks the question, are you not of more value than they? Now we live in a strange time in which human life is despised and animal life and even plant life is practically worshipped at times. Unjust wars can take the lives of thousands, and it's okay. Babies are aborted by the millions, and it's okay.
But we cannot tolerate the diminishing population of panda bears and sea turtles. Now folks, I'm not advocating for the mistreatment of animals, but our culture has it backwards. God has given man a special place in creation. It is to man that he gives the charge, subdue the earth, have dominion over the earth. Human beings are of more value before God than animals. Now why is it that God places such a special value on mankind?
What makes us more valuable than the birds? Well first of all, it's because we bear the image of God. God values that which possesses his image, and no other created thing besides humans possesses that image. Not only that, but God values that which he sent his son to redeem. Christ did not take on the form of a humpback whale.
He didn't become a spotted owl. He took on the form of a servant and became a man to save men. So Jesus' argument is one from the lesser to the greater. If God cares about feeding the birds in his creation, he cares far more about feeding his children, the ones who bear his image, the ones he died to redeem. It's interesting that in Luke's parallel passage to Matthew 6, he uses the word ravens instead of birds.
That's even more specific. And I've read that a baby raven is abandoned by its parents immediately after birth and is forced to fend for itself. And I think this makes the analogy even more poignant. God even cares for abandoned birds and sustains them with life. And if he'll do it for them, Jesus says, he'll do it for you. The psalmist put it like this. He says, when my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. We worry about sustaining our life with food, and yet the truth of the matter is that the time of our death is set, and we cannot do anything to change it. One pastor said, you cannot worry yourself into a longer lifespan. Jesus says, look at the birds.
If I take care of them, I'll take care of you. So not only does Christ tell us to look, he also tells us to think, to think. He says in verse 28, consider or think about the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin.
And I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Think about the flowers. Think about the shortness of their lifespan.
They're here and they're gone. And yet God goes to the trouble, so to speak, of decking them out with the most amazing, eye-catching wardrobe, just because he can, just because it pleases him. And the rhetorical question here is, will he not much more clothe you? Again, we ask what makes us more valuable than flowers. And again, the answer is that we're more valuable to God than flowers because we bear his image, and we bear the righteousness of his Son. If God will make sure to dress the flowers that do not possess redeemed souls, he will certainly make sure to dress his redeemed children.
You see how messed up our perspective is? We worry about whether God will provide us with clothing, not just clothing, but any physical necessity. We doubt whether God will provide these things. And we ought to be asking ourselves like Paul did in Romans 8, he who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Well, Jesus then gives a scathing title to those who spend their lives enslaved to worry. We see there at the end of verse 30, oh, you of little faith.
You have little faith. When we who are the recipients of God's greatest gift, the gift of salvation, when we doubt God's concern or ability to provide for our temporal needs, we're living like practical atheists. We believe there's a God, but we live as if there isn't.
We find it next to impossible to take the promises of Scripture at face value, and so we set up all these safety nets just in case, and then we get safety nets for our safety nets, and then we sit around to worry about our safety nets. Jesus says it's all a lack of faith. I read an insightful description last week of what it means to be a little faith Christian.
It went like this. Little faith means, first of all, that we are mastered by our circumstances instead of mastering them. Little faith means surrendering to the thought, what's going to happen to me? The little faith Christian lies awake at night for hours going around in circles over the same old miserable details about some person or some thing. They fail to realize the importance of salvation and the position resulting from salvation. God has destined us for glory, and nothing will circumvent that purpose. The trouble with many of us Christians is that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but we do not believe Him.
He makes such statements as, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Yet we keep our problems and worries to ourselves, and we are borne down by them and defeated by them. Little faith is ultimately due to a failure to apply what we know and claim to believe to the circumstances and details of life.
It is a poor type of Christianity that has a wonderful faith with respect to salvation and then whimpers and cries when confronted by the daily trials of life. Very convicting, but that's Christ's assessment of us when we are given to worry. Folks, we may come to church and talk about God's sovereignty and salvation, but then we go home and begin living and worrying as if we were sovereign over the circumstances of life.
We betray a worldview that underestimates the scope of God's kingly rule. John Calvin said, the more we worry, the more we show our unbelief. So worry is a failure to believe God. It's a failure to believe that God cares about His children. It's a failure to believe that God will help His children, and if we're ever to overcome worry, we've got to gain the right perspective. And the right perspective, the anxiety-abolishing perspective, is that God does care about His children, and He will take care of their needs.
But secondly, we must have the right priority, the right priority. We see this in verses 31 through 33. Jesus says, Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. In these verses, Jesus contrasts the world's way of living with the Christian's way of living and points out that there ought to be a stark difference. If our perspective is governed by what we have learned in verses 25 through 30, then our actions ought to conform to what Jesus says in verses 31 through 33. There should be a very obvious difference when we compare our priorities in life to the priorities of unbelievers, Gentiles. When Jesus says that the Gentiles seek after all these things, He's referring to unbelievers. Gentiles are people who have no saving relationship with God through Christ. Their chief end, as they see it, is not to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Their ultimate aim in life, their chief priority, is to eat better and drink better and dress better.
They're consumed with the temporal realities of this world. Gentiles, then, as Jesus is using the term here, are slaves to the body and its senses. Have you ever heard of the word sensate? It means to be preoccupied with things that can be experienced with the senses. There's a professor that used to teach at RTS, he's gone on to be with the Lord now, but he wrote a book called The Sensate Culture and it describes what has happened to Western culture. We've become a culture that's driven by the senses, preoccupied with sensual things.
We're always looking for the next buzz, for pleasure, for novelty. This is how Gentiles, unbelievers, live. You've seen the bumper sticker, no doubt, he who dies with the most toys wins. That philosophy is short-sighted. It sees nothing beyond the grave and so it says you might as well get all the gratification out of this life that you can get. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. We smile and we shake our heads at the bumper sticker, but the truth is many of us live like that. We know that every man is headed towards an eternity after this life.
We have all the right answers when it comes to salvation and what happens after death, but somehow in this life it makes very little, if any, practical difference. We find ourselves acting like all the other worldlings around us. We're living for that next promotion, for that next raise.
We live for the weekend or an evening of binge watching and then when these things are threatened we get all worried. What's going to happen? What are we going to eat? What are we going to drink? What are we going to wear? Jesus says don't be like that.
Don't be a worldling. Don't act like a Gentile seeking after all these temporary fixes and neglecting what matters the most and then he diffuses our anxiety by reminding us that God knows that we need food. God knows that we need clothing, but he doesn't intend us to spend our life fretting about those things. Instead he wants us to have a different priority, a right priority. He wants us to have the priority of a kingdom seeker, the priority of a kingdom seeker. Verse 33, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Our priority in life, the thing that gets us out of bed in the morning is not breakfast and a new outfit. It is God's kingdom and his righteousness.
What does it mean to seek the kingdom and the righteousness of God? If you've ever been in love you know what it means to seek something first, to seek one thing ahead of everything else. It doesn't mean you stop living life, but it means all of life revolves around that one thing. I remember as a young teenager falling in love, deeply, deeply in love. She was all I could think about. She was all I could talk about. I would sit around daydreaming about her, had pictures of her all around my room.
She lived on my street only about five houses down and every time we drove by there she was in the driveway, a shiny Porsche 911 with black high gloss paint, tan interior, whale tail spoiler on the back. I was in love with Porsches. My bedroom was kind of like a little shrine to these beautiful German sports cars. Models everywhere, car magazines piled up. I even had a life-size poster on the wall over my bed.
You all remember that? Now my friends all liked Corvettes and Mustangs, but during that love affair you could not tell me that some Chevy or Ford was better or prettier than a Porsche 911. I was convinced it was the supreme automobile and I was on a mission to convince everyone else that I was right. Now your passion may not be sports cars. It may be a hobby or athletics or politics or whatever, but what do we do when we're passionate about something? We think about it all the time.
We talk to everyone about it, whether or not they're interested. We enjoy what we're passionate about and it shows in everything we do. Folks, seeking God's kingdom and righteousness means being passionate about what God is passionate about. It means talking and thinking about the things that God is doing in the world. It means using everything at your disposal, your time, your energy, your money, your gifts to promote and advance and enjoy and participate in God's reign as king on this earth. A Christian who is seeking God's kingdom wakes up in the morning wondering how he can bring glory to God throughout the day. He gets into the word.
He's excited about getting his marching orders. He arranges his affairs and his calendar to maximize his enjoyment of God, to maximize his usefulness in heaven's kingdom, heaven's cause. Everyone who knows him knows he's passionate about God, passionate about holiness. It's evident in his house. It's evident in his family. It's evident in how he conducts himself at work and how he uses his day off. It's evident in how he speaks and dresses and eats and worships. It's evident in how he treats other people. This kingdom seeker is not easily bothered by the things that worry most people because as Romans 14, 17 says, the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Certainly he spends time eating and drinking and caring for the needs of his body, but his motive in doing so is because it makes him a better subject in God's court. Have you noticed how in the Lord's Prayer we just prayed a few moments ago the request for daily bread comes only after the request for God's kingdom to come?
That's because it's a subordinate objective. Seek the kingdom first and then all these things will be added to you. So the kingdom seeker is always in pursuit of kingdom advancement. Somehow it just seems like he always has exactly what he needs at the right time.
Have you ever known someone like that? A kingdom seeker? I'm afraid there are few and far between in our culture, but this is the ideal that every Christian is supposed to be pursuing. A life that is driven by the right priority, by kingdom priorities. And then there is this most amazing promise just kind of thrown on to the call of being a kingdom seeker. Christ promises that when we live like this he will make sure that we have our temporal and physical needs met. Brothers and sisters, this may very well be the most underrated promise in the Bible and I'm not really sure why we don't rest in it more than we do. Maybe we're just so annoyed at the health and wealth gospel abuses that we're afraid to acknowledge any material blessings that accompany our salvation. The difference between the prosperity gospel and what Jesus is saying here, however, is that for those who have bought into that prosperity gospel, material blessings are the end, the ultimate reward. But for the Christian, Christ provides those material blessings so that we can enjoy him more. Christ is saying here that material blessings are given in order that we might be freed up to pursue what really matters. God takes care of our material necessities in order that we might seek him without distraction.
He's the reward, not the stuff we get. Nevertheless, there are material blessings that accompany salvation. That's why David can say in Psalm 37, I have been young and now I'm old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.
And don't think that David's observation was just an Old Testament reality. Paul says in Philippians 4 19, my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. And he's speaking there of material needs. So are we pursuing the right priority in life? I came across two helpful questions that we need to ask ourselves in this regard. First, is my reaction to life's circumstances essentially different from what it would be if I were not a Christian? In other words, am I living like a Gentile or like a kingdom seeker? And secondly, do I always place everything in my life and everything that happens to me in the context of my Christian faith and then look at it in that context? In other words, is God, rather than my needs, my frame of reference for all of life? And if we find that we are living life with the right perspective and we are pursuing the right priority, then it is not presumptuous to believe that God will meet our physical and temporal needs.
Church, God wants you to know him and he will do whatever it takes to enable you to pursue a deeper knowledge of him, a deeper enjoyment of his grace. When our life centers on that right priority, the worry that so often consumes our hearts dissolves like a vapor. We find ourselves focused on what God is doing rather than on what the IRS is doing. We begin praying about ways we can get in the game for God's glory rather than wasting our time debating with our fears. We start pursuing a secure eternity rather than a secure retirement, a clean conscience more than a clean bill of health. Now hear me, I'm not saying that our temporal needs are unimportant.
I'm saying that they're not most important. There's a biblical godly pecking order to our lives and when we maintain that pecking order, when we observe the right priority, God's priority, it rescues us from the things that nag and worry and distract us from the main thing. You see what freeing truth this is? Come unto me and I'll give you rest, Jesus says. Seek first my kingdom, seek me first and I'll provide everything that you need. Those are the promises of God to his children. Well it seems that Jesus at this point has said all that can be said about anxiety. He's told us to seek God's kingdom and righteousness above all and that when we do, all this stuff that overwhelms us and stresses us will be taken care of.
It's a huge promise. What more could be said? Jesus knows how we tick. He knows that it's not going to be long before we come down from this mountaintop of faith that we're on and we remember that bill that's sitting on the desk or that relationship that's hopelessly messed up. Worry begins to creep back in and we have the thought, but what about tomorrow?
What about tomorrow? And suddenly everything that's been promised, all the progress we've made in our fight against anxiety just comes crashing down and we find ourselves right back in those chains of worry. That's why verse 34 is so crucial. Verse 34 tells us that we must fight against anxiety in the right place, in the right place. And where is that right place?
It's right here, right now. We battle anxiety in the present, not borrowing trouble from the future, not worrying about what might happen tomorrow or next week or next year. The battle for peace is a battle that takes place in the present. Some have misunderstood this verse and claim that it's saying don't make any future plans, don't get insurance, don't save money and so on. There are other places in scripture that may make it clear we're not to live fatalistically as if our actions today have no bearing on the future.
We ought to prepare as best as we can for tomorrow. So Christ isn't forbidding us to think about the future. He's telling us not to worry about the future and there's a huge difference. Again, John Calvin has wise insight for us. He says the right response to circumstances and needs lies somewhere between indolent carelessness and unnecessary torments. We ought to wisely plan for the future but we shouldn't ever worry and fret and stew over the future.
My mom used to tell me all the time, Eugene, don't what if your life away? God gives grace for today's difficulties and trials. He never promises grace for trials that we imagine might come. A wise friend once warned me that when we try to fight against imaginary trouble, we're going to a place where there is no grace and where there is no Holy Spirit.
In other words, we're engaged in trouble of our own making in a place where God has never called us to go. But God's grace is sufficient for today. Christians, it's time to declare war on anxiety. It's time to quit believing the lie that worry can be tolerated because it's really not all that bad. A heart that trusts God and a heart that worries cannot coexist. And when we choose to defend our anxieties rather than trust God, we're proclaiming to the world that our Heavenly Father is incapable of or disinterested in caring for the ones He has purchased with the blood of His Son. Anxiety is an affront to the trustworthiness of God.
His glory is at stake. So we ought to fight against anxiety every day until it has been completely eradicated from our heart and until God's peace in us reigns supreme. Be still and know that I am God. Quit trying, cease striving, give up, and admit that God, your God, can handle it.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, the fact that you're in heaven ought to tell us something about your power to handle the circumstances that affect us. The fact that you've sent your Son to take on flesh and become one of us ought to convince us of your love for us, your concern for our well-being and for our joy.
So teach us to trust you. May we be known more for our peace than for our panic. Mother, thank you for the reassurance of Matthew 6. Thank you that you will take care of us. Help us to believe that. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
