Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer.
If our God, if the Heavenly Father is a good, a blessing, and a prospering God that makes sure somehow birds get taken care of and cares about the beauty of flowers that don't last more than a few months, isn't He going to care about security and beauty for you since you're His child? Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Okay, so what brings you the most worry and anxiety? Is it your kids, your job, your finances? I think it's safe to say that we usually worry about what we are devoted to most. Thankfully, Jesus talks about the difficult emotion of anxiety by first challenging what it is that we are most devoted to. Today, Pastor J.D. continues our new teaching series called Smoke from a Fire.
And as always, if you missed the first message in this teaching, you can always catch up online at jdgreer.com. But right now, here's Pastor J.D. with a message about anxiety. If you got your Bibles this weekend, you will take them out and you will open them. Turn them on and scroll down to Matthew chapter 6. That is where we are going to be today.
Matthew chapter 6 verse 24. We are in our second week of a series on emotions that we are calling Smoke from a Fire. The basic idea in this series is that our strongest and our deepest emotions function something like smoke from a fire in which you could trace the trail of the smoke back down to see what is on fire in your heart. The wise thing to do if you smell smoke in your house is never to whiff it away. It's not to turn on a fan or try to get the smoke out of your house.
The wise thing to do is to figure out what is on fire in your house. Well, in the same way, when you experience these emotions, before you just focus on managing them or even on medicating them, what you ought to do is look at what they are telling you about the condition and the state of your heart so that you can understand what's going on down there. Well, this weekend, I want to talk about an emotion that we've all dealt with to some degree, in varying degrees, at some point in our life, and that emotion is anxiety. I posted a question on Instagram. The question was, what makes you anxious? I got a number of interesting responses back to that question. One response was, looking at Instagram makes me anxious. I thought, well, just get off of it.
Stop responding to me. Then there was this one, the thought of you preaching a sermon on anxiety makes me anxious. Now, one was when your countdown clock hit zero, zero, zero, and it still sounds like you were in the middle of your introduction.
That was from some of our program people there in the back, I think. Some of the more serious responses that we got were, let's see, money was one. That usually was expressed as, I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to have enough to provide for my kids or to be able to take care of my aging parents. Being alone, that actually was the number one most repeated response that I got on this little mini survey.
The fewest survey, the future, that came in a few times. Being accepted by others, going to the doctor, because we know how evil those people are. Whether I am truly living out God's purpose for my life was one that came in.
Being able to find the right spouse, being able to have a child, losing a spouse or a child, losing another child, or failing as a parent. To be honest, simply the number of responses I got to that question was telling. Usually when I post stuff like that out there, I'll get, you know, a couple dozen responses or whatever, but just the sheer number of people that were responding saying, hey, this is where anxiety comes from.
My life was pretty overwhelming. Anxiety is one of those problems in our hearts that gives birth to all kinds of other problems. Think of it like one fire that quickly spreads all over the house of your life. A Bible teacher named John Piper says, he says, think about how many other sins in your life are connected to the root sin of anxiety. Anxiety about money, for example, will cause you to hoard or to steal. Anxiety about succeeding will make you irritable and impatient with those around you. Anxiety about relationships can make you withdrawn or feel indifferent toward other people.
Anxiety about what others think about you can make you lie or stretch the truth or cause you to do things that otherwise you may not do. If anxiety could be conquered, a mortal blow would be struck to many other sins. So today we are going to try to strike a mortal blow to anxiety. And we're going to do that by looking at what Jesus says about anxiety. It is, I believe, one of his most profound and insightful teachings. It comes at the end of Matthew chapter six, which is right in the middle of Jesus's famous sermon on the Mount. And Jesus is going to explain that anxiety is a divine invitation for you to trust God and for you to lean in more on God. By the way, Matthew six is such a favorite passage of mine that I constantly refer to bits and pieces of it in other sermons that I am preaching. And so when it came time to choosing a passage for this emotion, I wondered if maybe Matthew six was way too familiar as if, you know, I've been through it too many times, but when I went back and actually looked, the last time I preached all the way through this passage was 2003. Like half of our worship team was still in diapers at that point, so I felt like it was time for me to do it again. Okay, so we good?
This feel fresh to everybody? All right, now one quick caveat before I jump in. As with all these emotions, there can be a lot going on when you experience anxiety. Last week I explained that our bodies and our souls are integrated. What that means is that what happens in one invariably, inevitably affects what happens in the other. And I say that because there are some of you that when you experience anxiety, there are other factors going on that have to do with your physiological makeup, that have to do with past traumatic experiences that you walk through.
It may have to do with relationships you are in or not in in the present. And I don't want to in this message imply that I'm collapsing all of our anxiety problems just into the spiritual bucket. I am dealing up here in Matthew chapter six primarily with the spiritual root causes of anxiety. All right, Matthew six, let me just read the passage to you in its entirety, beginning with verse 24, because it is such an important and incredible teaching. Matthew 6 24, no one can serve two masters, Jesus says, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You simply cannot serve God and money. You say, well, that's an odd thing to start with. If you're going to talk about anxiety, great question.
Put a pin in that, we'll come back to it. Verse 25, therefore I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat, what you will drink, or worry about your body, what you will wear, because in life more than food and in the body more than clothing. Verse 26, consider the birds of the sky. They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. Aren't you worth more than a bunch of birds? Can any of you add one single moment to his lifespan by worrying?
Why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow. They don't labor or spin thread or cut coupons or go shopping, yet I tell you that not even Solomon and all of his splendor was adorned like one of these beautiful creations. Well, see, if that's how God closed the grass of the field, which is here today, and trampled down, cut down, thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for you?
You of little faith? Verse 31, so don't worry saying, what are we going to eat or what are we going to drink or what are we going to wear? For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things.
By the way, Gentiles there in that context just means pagans, people that are totally separated from religion, people who have no concept of God at all. But you, you got a heavenly father. You have a heavenly father and he knows that you need those things because he created you with those needs. Verse 33, you, you should seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and then all these things will be provided for you as you need them. Verse 34, therefore, don't worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day you see has trouble of its own. In this passage, I believe Jesus makes primarily three points about anxiety.
Here they are. Number one, anxiety, Jesus explains, thinks too little about God. Anxiety thinks too little of God. This might be the most profound, most counterintuitive point that Jesus makes in this passage because you see most of us think of anxiety as an emotion that just naturally arises from the uncertainties of life. But Jesus says, listen to this, Jesus says it is an emotion that is intimately connected to our deepest desires. We worry most about what we are devoted to most.
If you want to see what you are most devoted to, simply ask yourself a question what you have the most anxiety over because what you are most devoted to is what you worry about most. Let me prove that to you really quickly. I don't worry much about your kids' grades, right? It's not that I don't care about you or your kids. It's just that it's, I don't worry about your, I'm not like, oh, I don't lie in bed at night. Like, oh, what about that person's kids?
Many of them are going to graduate high school and they're not going to be able to get a job and their life's going to be bad. I don't ever think that, right? Why? Because I'm not devoted to your kids and I love your kids. I love, you know, being a part of the same church, but I'm not devoted to them and you're not devoted to mine. So I don't worry about them. And you typically don't worry about mine. I don't worry about how your boss is going to respond to that assignment you turned in last week. If you come up to me and like, hey, let's pray about this. We're going to pray about it together. And I genuinely care, but I promise you 15 minutes from now, I'm not going to be thinking about it, but you probably still are because you're devoted to your job. And so what you worry about is always connected to what you're devoted to, which is why Jesus starts this discussion on anxiety.
Listen, by challenging what we are most devoted to, right? You see the word therefore in verse 25. Anytime you see the word therefore in the Bible, you should always look and see what it's therefore.
I was worried that you were going to know that joke. So therefore, I tell you, what's therefore pointing back to? Verse 24.
And verse 24 is where he challenged what we're most devoted to, right? He is saying the reason you're so anxious about money is you are devoted to money because you believe, listen, you believe that money is the one indispensable ingredient in the good life. You think that money determines whether or not you're going to have everything else that you think you need. The point of this passage is not money.
The point is anxiety. Money is simply Jesus's number one illustration because he knows that when it comes to anxiety, this is where the rubber is going to meet the road for most of us. If you think that money is essential to the good life, then you're going to spend most of your life worrying about getting it, about keeping it, about hanging on to it, about not losing it, about who's got more of it than you do, about whether or not you're disappointing your parents as you not have more than you thought that they were going to have or whatever it is.
You're just going to worry about it. And then Jesus asks a series of questions that challenge our devotion to money. He says, verse 25, isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?
In other words, is money really what determines the good life? He then is going to illustrate why that's not true with two examples. First, he says you should consider the birds of the sky. The birds of the sky don't sow or reap or gather into barns or have savings accounts or open up 401ks, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. They don't spend much time saving, yet they always have their needs provided for because God takes care of them.
Second, he says you should consider the wild flowers of the field. Verse 28, they don't labor or spend thread, yet I tell you not even Solomon, who was the richest man in his generation and the most stylish man in his generation, not even Solomon in all the splendor was adorned like one of these beautiful creations. Flowers don't spend any of time anxious about looking pretty, yet they're beautiful because God takes care of them and God beautifies their lives. And y'all listen, the point in Jesus saying that is not that we shouldn't save. It's not that we shouldn't pick out stylish clothes or it's not that we should never use money to buy nice things for ourselves. It's simply that we should not be devoted to money as the primary source of security and beauty because our Heavenly Father will take care of those things for us.
So what's the conclusion that he comes to? Key point, verse 33, Jesus says you should seek first the kingdom of God. You should be devoted first and foremost to God. And when you do that, then all the rest of these things that you're worried about, the security, the beauty, the joy, all that stuff, God, your Heavenly Father is going to provide that for you. You are listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.
Greer. To learn more about this ministry, including how to partner with us financially, visit jdgreer.com. We'll get back to our teaching in just a moment, but dream with me for a second. Imagine a world where everyone has access to the life changing truth of the gospel, where God's word is proclaimed without cost getting in the way. That's our huge vision here at Summit Life. With your prayers and generous financial gifts, we are able to produce broadcasts, podcasts, devotionals, and more to help spread the gospel deep and wide.
But we can't do it alone. You noticed, I said with your support. You're an integral part of the team helping to spread the good news of Jesus all across the globe. Trust me, you're helping to make an eternal difference with your gift. So would you join us in advancing this God-given mission today? Become a regular monthly gospel partner or give a one-time gift right now by calling us at 866-335-5220 or visiting jdgreer.com. Let's fully embrace the hope of Jesus and share it with a world in great need.
For now though, let's finish up today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. Whenever I think of this verse, I always think of one of my favorite passages by C.S. Lewis that I hope is very familiar to you because it is one of my favorites and I think it's very important.
But C.S. Lewis thinking about Matthew 633 said, what Jesus is saying here is that in our lives there is a first thing and then there are second things. The first thing is God and obedience to him. The second thing is everything else that we worry about, money, relationships, marriage, career, kids, all that stuff.
He said, now here's what Jesus is saying. When we put first things first, when we put God first, then God promises that he will take care of second things. But when we put second things first, not only will we lose contact with the first things, we'll also lose our ability to enjoy and rest in the second things. You see, when it comes to worrying about money, people typically fall into one of two personality types, both of which Jesus, in my opinion, brilliantly addresses through these two illustrations. For some, money is their source of security. That's what money does for you is it makes you feel secure about the future.
You're going to be able to face tomorrow because you got money. So your favorite thing to do with money when you get it is to save it. You get an extra bonus at the end of the year and you're putting that in the bank and you're going to hold on to that. For other people, money is primarily their source of beauty, their source of enjoyment, their source of significance. And so when they get an extra bonus, they spend it. They upgrade the car, they upgrade the wardrobe, upgrade the lifestyle, they go on vacation, they add some joy into their lives. So you got people for whom money is security, they're savers.
People for whom money is beauty and joy, they're spenders. And I've explained to you that in God's wonderful sense of humor, these two kinds of people always get married to each other. You never marry somebody of your own type.
You always marry somebody on the opposite side. And here's what I, I'm not a marriage counselor, but here's what I've discovered in the marriage counseling I've done. Each of these people always thinks the other one has the problem with money, right? Because if you're the saver, you think the spender is just irresponsible. And if you're the spender, you think the saver is, is worried about a bunch of stuff, it's never really going to happen anyway, and they're way too uptight. Jesus is telling both of you, the saver and the spender, so stop elbowing each other. He's telling the saver and the spender that both of you've got the same root problem with money, you just got it in different directions. Both of you are devoted to money as necessary for some aspect of the good life.
Do you savers think that money is necessary for security? And Jesus addresses you through his illustration of the birds. He's like, the birds don't save and they're fine. He addresses you spenders who think the money is your joy through the wildflower illustration.
He's like, I don't spend any money on clothes and they're gorgeous. He tells both the saver and the spender, you should devote yourself instead to God and let God be the primary source of your security and the primary source of your joy. And just like God takes excellent care of the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, he'll take excellent care of you. Again, he is not saying that you shouldn't save for the future. He's not saying that you shouldn't buy nice things for yourselves, just that your primary devotion, your primary concern with your money should be about what does God want me to do with it? What does God told me to do with it? Am I giving the first and the best to him? Am I spending the rest of it in a way that honors him? And when you do that, he promises to worry about all of those other things that you think money is necessary for.
Now we have one quick caveat. Some of you are anxious about money because you have terrible spending and saving habits. But even beyond that, for some of you, after you've developed all the right habits, you're still really anxious about money. And that's because money is in the place of God as what you see as the key to the good life, to security and to beauty.
And so you're devoted to it. Money is your first thing. And Jesus says, make God your first thing. And God will add all these other things, security and joy and everything else you're looking for.
He'll add that into your life. In life, there are first things and there are second things. You make sure you keep the first thing first and God promises to take care of the second things. But you put the second things first, and not only will you lose those first things, you're going to lose your ability to have joy in the second things. Now, Jesus applies it to money because money is the big one for us.
But you could just as easily apply that principle to all the other things in our lives that we worry about as well. Don't worry about parenting. If Jesus was talking to a group of parents of teenagers, he could have said, hey, don't worry about parenting. Don't worry about, do the birds of the field worry about their parenting? They just push their kids out of the nest and say fly.
Their kids turn out fine, right? Because God makes sure that their offspring knows what they need to know. Just like with money, that wouldn't have meant that we don't need to put time and energy into parenting just so we shouldn't be anxious about it. We ought to be primarily devoted to God and our parenting and let him worry about the results of it. I ought to ask every day, have I done what I think God wants me to do? And if I'm putting first God in his kingdom and obeying him, then I can trust that he's taking care of all the ways that I lack as a parent. When I'm seeking to obey him in parenting or in any area, his promise, he will take responsibility to make sure all those other second things work out. You following Jesus' thought pattern here? When it comes to money, parenting, marriage, education, career, or any of the other litany of things that we worry about, God is not telling us to sit back and do nothing.
He's saying what we need to do, we need to do in obedience to God to the best of our ability and then we can trust him with the results and not stress out about him. We don't need to sit around and stress out about, oh, did I handle that conversation exactly right? Did I say everything I was supposed to say in that conversation? Did I make the right decision? Am I really handling myself? Am I putting myself in a place where I can meet people so that I can get married? What are other people really thinking about me? No, what you think about is, am I doing what I think God wants me to do?
Am I doing it to the best of my ability? And if so, then I'm seeking first his kingdom and he promised, he promised that if I would devote myself to his kingdom, he'd take care of all those other second things because he's a good, good father. Anxiety thinks you see too little about God because it elevates the obtaining of other things besides him as the most essential element in the good life. And Jesus just says, isn't the good life, isn't it consistent a lot more than the possessions that you have?
Oh, yes, it does. It consists in knowing the heavenly father, trusting the heavenly father, and trusting that that good father will provide for you what you need when you focus on him. So anxiety thinks too little about God, which leads me to the second observation. Anxiety also minimizes, Jesus said, how much God thinks about me.
Anxiety minimizes how much God thinks about me. After Jesus tells them to consider how well God takes care of the birds of the field, he says, I mean, aren't you worth more than they, a bunch of birds? And then after he tells them to think about the wild flowers, he says, I mean, think about it, seriously, how long does grass and flowers last?
Like, you know, a month, two months, three months? And then it gets, you know, it dies and people mow it, they walk over time. Don't you think if, listen, if you have a God who cares about grass and cares about how pretty flowers look, if that's the nature of your heavenly father, don't you think he'll take care of you? Since you're his child, you're the best of all his creation? This is an argument from the lesser to the greater.
It is built on the character of the heavenly father that gets revealed in creation. Jesus is saying, if our God, if the heavenly father is a good, a blessing and a prospering God that makes sure somehow birds get taken care of and cares about the beauty of flowers that don't last more than a few months, isn't he going to care about security and beauty for you since you're his child? That is the argument from the lesser to the greater. If God cares about birds and begonias, he cares about you, right? Now, in one of the other gospels, Gospel of Luke, where Jesus teaches the same thing, he ends that teaching by switching it and going from the greater to the lesser. Luke 12 32, Jesus ends teaching the same thing by saying, don't be afraid, little flock, for your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. And if God gave you the kingdom, of course he's going to take care of your day-to-day needs. How pleased was the father to give you the kingdom? Well, pleased enough that he would send Jesus to die on the cross in your place.
And Jesus is like, if God loved you enough to give you the kingdom by pouring my blood out for you, don't you think he is trustworthy enough to take care of your day-to-day needs? Charles Spurgeon, who dealt with, like I said last week, a lot of anxiety himself, said it this way, listen to the voice of the Lord speak. I'll help you. It's a small thing for me, your God, to help you.
Just consider what I've already done. What? Not help you? I bought you with my blood. What? Not help you.
I'd die for you. Since I've done the greater, will I not also do the lesser things for you? It's an argument from the greater to the lesser. If God gave Jesus, of course, he's going to take care of your day-to-day needs. It wouldn't make any sense otherwise. According to the Bible, this should be so obvious. It's beyond question.
Surely if God cares enough for us to send his son to the cross, we can trust him with our bills, our spouses, and the future of our families, right? You were listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today we have a brand new Bible study from Pastor J.D. to introduce to you. You've heard a lot about who other people think Jesus was, but what did Jesus say about himself? Our featured resource for April is called I Am, Seven Weeks in the Gospel of John. It's designed to walk you through some of the most powerful statements Jesus made about himself. This seven week printed resource offers a week-by-week journey through the seven I Am statements found in the Gospel of John. Each week you'll dive into a different declaration exploring its significance through commentary, scripture passages, and thought-provoking questions. It's a chance to connect with Jesus' own words about himself and grow in your faith in him.
We pray you'll gain a deeper understanding of who Jesus is, what he came to do, and how his life and teaching can transform your life today. This is a new and exclusive Summit Life resource, so you'll want to get in touch soon with your gift to the ministry. Give us a call at 866-335-5220. One more time, that's 866-335-5220. Or you can request the I Am Bible study in a print or digital version when you donate online at jdgrier.com. Or if it's easier to mail your donation, write to J.D. Greer Ministries, P.O. Box 122-93, Durham, North Carolina, 27709. I'm Molly Vidovitch, inviting you to join us Wednesday for the conclusion of today's message on anxiety. See you next time on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
