“Do Not Be Anxious” – Matthew 6:25–34

Sermons – Harvest Community Church (PCA)

Hear now the word of the Lord from Matthew 6:25-34. 25 “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? 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? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?[a] 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 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? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6:25-34 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. We live in an anxious age now, to be sure. Every age throughout history has had their own anxieties, their own anxiety producing problems, but there are a couple of factors that really do make our age particularly prone to anxiety. One of those factors is that we not only deal with our own anxieties, the aspects of our own life, that that can breed anxiety in us. We also live in a hyperconnected world where we can be connected to everyone else's anxieties. If anyone anywhere in the world is worried about anything, it can be transmitted immediately to us, over television or over the internet. We're not awash in our own anxieties alone, but really the anxieties of the entire world. The other aspect of our lives that make us particularly prone to anxiety is how much we focus directly on anxiety itself. We have leisure to spend all kinds of money and time and research focus on the question of anxiety. Who's anxious? How anxious are they? How anxious are they today compared to a year ago? If you pay attention to the news, you hear all kinds of studies that they publish about different aspects of anxiety, what can help it, what can hurt it. In fact, just this week, an advertisement came up on the Internet for a pet anxiety bed. And I said, Well, hey, I'm preparing a sermon, this is great research. So I click the ad to read more. I'm told that there is a Harvard University study that this anxiety is even transmitted to pets, that three out of four cats or dogs deal with character affecting anxiety on a daily basis. So it's not just that the world is awash in anxiety. It's not just that we're awash in anxiety. Even our pets are anxious because of us. Then we study the anxiety and we become anxious about the anxiety itself and round and round it goes. We live in an anxious age. I understand that some of you may be here today and this isn't a joke, it's your everyday life. You live up to your eyeballs in anxiety all the time, crippling anxiety. So how do we deal with it? Well, Jesus offers us here gospel truth. Jesus speaks directly into our anxiety, but he tells us a word that we may not be particularly ready to hear. In fact, what Jesus tells us is really a word that the world will rebel against. The world doesn't want the advice that Jesus has concerning anxiety. Because what Jesus does is to deal with an anxiety in an infuriatingly indirect manner. He doesn't just say if you have anxieties, go deal with those. He says if you have anxieties over here, the solution lies somewhere over there. Our big idea today is that to pacify earthly anxieties, pursue Heavenly treasures.. We have anxieties about earthly things over there, to bring peace to those things, to pacify earthly anxieties, we need to look over here to pursue heavenly treasures. Three points for today's sermon. 1. Pacify Earthly Anxieties 2. Pursue Heavenly Treasures 3. Pause Tomorrow's Troubles Pacify Earthly Anxieties So let's look, first of all, at pacify earthly anxieties in verses 25 through 30. Again, pacify means to bring peace to something, Jesus says bring peace to your earthly anxieties. Now, this week, I had the privilege of having a couple of great conversations about last week's sermon where Jesus said that we should stop treasuring earthly treasures and instead start treasuring heavenly treasures. So I heard that there were discussions in disciple groups, that's excellent. I got to talk to some of you all who raised your own questions. Does this mean that we can't enjoy anything in life? Does this mean that we need to sell all of our possessions and go live as a monk somewhere in escape it all? Well, no, Jesus isn't saying that in the previous passage when he said not to lay up for yourself treasures on earth. God is the creator of the Earth. God wants us to enjoy the Earth. But at the same time, Jesus wants us to understand that earthly treasures have a way of capturing and captivating our hearts. So while he's not telling us to get rid of everything and live with nothing, to enjoy nothing in this life. What he is saying is that we are far more prone to be self-deceived about the hooks in our hearts from earthly treasures than we might think we are. So Jesus then takes what He talked about in the previous passage and draws that into the current text. Notice in verse 25, he says, "therefore". Now, if you know anything about interpreting the Bible, whenever you see it, therefore you have to ask what it's there for. So again, he's going back to the previous section and saying everything I said about keeping our eyes on the master, keeping our eyes set on heavenly treasures, rather than treasuring up earthly treasures that can be corroded. Therefore, on the basis of that, you might literally translate this, "therefore", he says, "I tell you this, 'Do not be anxious about your life.'" What Jesus is saying is if you want to know where these places, where earthly treasures are, not just something that God wants you to enjoy as a part of enjoying His creation, but where are those places where you are treasuring earthly treasures? He asked a simple test. Where are your anxieties? What are you anxious about? Follow the anxiety. If you follow the anxiety, you usually can trace it back to things that have too much of a hold, too much of a grip on your life. Now, it's interesting what Jesus points out. He doesn't say, don't be anxious about your next career move or your schoolwork. He doesn't say, don't be anxious about whether you're going to get that awesome new possession that you've been looking forward to. He doesn't say, don't be anxious about whatever kinds of things that we often are anxious about. He says we shouldn't even be anxious about our basic needs. Don't be anxious about your life, life and death issues, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. "Is not life", that is literally is not your soul, "more than food and the body more than clothing?" Jesus goes right to the most basic necessities of life, things that we sometimes don't even think about in the world in which we live, where we have an abundance. Jesus says, don't be anxious about these things. Now, especially in times of need, we might say to Jesus reading this, well, that's all well and good, but there are needs to meet. There are deadlines coming due, there are bills to pay. How then do we pacify our earthly anxieties? Well, Jesus goes on in verse 26 and 27 and points to an example. He says, "Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet you're Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" Now, don't misunderstand the work of the birds. If you've ever seen a bird, a bird just hanging out on the street corners or in your yard or whatever, if you notice, the one thing about birds is they're not idle. Birds are constantly pecking at this or that, constantly trying to gather food. Birds are always working. But they never sew and they never read. Everything that a bird finds to eat is given to that bird as a gift from God. So for us, whether we are farmers or whether we buy our food at the grocery stores, whatever we get, none of it is something that we have personally created and brought into existence in an absolute sense. Everything comes as a gift of God. If God so feeds the birds who neither sow nor reap, won't he also feed you, also feed us? So Jesus then asked this poignant question in verse 27, "Which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to a span of life?" Now, piggybacking on what Jesus says again, we are in a tsunami of studies related to the effects of anxiety. As it happens, anxiety doesn't add a single hour to your life. In fact, it can subtract hours from your life expectancy. Anxiety doesn't give you life, it literally kills you. So Jesus says, "Don't be anxious. Look at the birds of the air." Then the versus 28 through 30, he keeps going. He says, "And 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." Now, the word for consider that Jesus uses. It's not the same word as look, earlier he said, "Look at the birds." Now he says, "consider". This is a word that's very closely related to the word disciple. So Jesus is saying, learn from these, the disciple is a learner. Learn something. Take a lesson away from the lilies of the field. Now, compared to birds, lilies are intensely idle. They literally never move from where they are rooted unless someone else digs them up and moves them to another place. Yet even though they're idle, God is working. God is not only letting them live at a cellular biological level, but God clothes them beautifully with great splendor. Solomon in all his glory was not as splendors as these lilies. If the lilies get this kind of treatment, how much more will God clothe you? So when Jesus is saying all of this, in this first section, we need to pacify our earthly anxieties. The last thing he says is so important. He says in verse 30, "If God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow was thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith." Oh, you of little faith, that's where Jesus is putting his finger on the real problem. The problem with our anxieties is not in the things that we are anxious about. The reason we are anxious is not have anything to do with the food we either have or don't have. The reason we are anxious is not about the clothes that we have or don't have. The reason we are anxious is because we do not have sufficient faith. Now, this is where Jesus is telling us that the solution, the gospel solution to anxiety is frustratingly, sometimes infuriatingly indirect. Jesus is saying you can't sort of deal with your anxieties head on the way that we often do. The way you deal with your anxieties is to do it indirectly, by dealing first and foremost with your faith. I think one of the hardest things to do is to deal with problems indirectly. It's so much easier to just go after problems. I've got to figure out what the problem is. I've got to figure out how to solve the problem. I've got to think about it and turn it over and over in my mind. And then I got to do whatever it takes to deal with this anxiety until it is dealt with and done. But sometimes problems can't be solved directly. It seems like we are making more progress and soothing our anxieties when they're spinning in our minds. But we're not. You're only making things worse. We can't identify on things and focus them, do what needs to be done and solve them that way. Jesus says we have to tackle our anxieties, not directly head on, but indirectly by faith. We have to cast our cares upon him because he cares for us. Again, you might hear this instruction, don't be anxious and you might say, "But Jesus, I live in a world filled with rising interest rates, rising inflation, falling markets, wars, rumors of wars, and on and on and on. It's easier to say not to be anxious than to do it." We're awash in earthly anxieties, not even only our own, but the anxieties of the whole world. How can we possibly not be anxious? Pursue Heavenly Treasures Well, again, it's counterintuitive, it's paradoxical, it is indirect. Jesus has instead of trying to deal with your earthly anxieties instead, and here's the second point, pursue heavenly treasures. Now, in verse 31, to start the second section, Jesus summarizes what he said in the previous section. He says, "Therefore", again, it's a different word here for, therefore. Earlier it was on account of this, on account of what he said, here it's just, therefore. Let's figure out what it's there for. He's carrying forward his message, he's applying what he just said in a summary sentence. "Therefore", verse 31, "do not be anxious saying, "What shall we eat or what shall we drink or What shall we wear? Therefore don't be anxious." Where he's primarily given negative instruction, don't do this, now he hive us positive instruction, here's what to do instead. The first thing Jesus tells us in verse 32, is he tries to break down why we are anxious. He tells us why we have these anxieties. So he tells us two reasons why you are anxious. Well, it's because of this and because of that. He gives us two, for statements. He says, first of all in verse 32, "For the Gentiles seek after all these things." That's one explanation. The second explanation immediately follows it. The word for is not given in our English translations, but it's there in the original, "For your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things." This is telling us something that we must understand if we are to tackle our anxieties. What's Jesus saying here? Well, the first thing is he's talking about a pagan way to deal with our anxieties, a pagan way to deal with our problems. If you are a gentile and not just gentile ethnically, but a gentile in terms of religion, that is if you are a pagan, the gentiles of those days worshiped are their pantheon of gods. They were pagans, they had pagan worship. Understand, you may have had all these gods that you could appeal to, so you thought. You could maybe offer this sacrifice to this god to get that blessing. Or you could pray this prayer in this way, at this time to that god, and you could get something different. And it was all the dance, it was all in a way to figure out what you needed and sort of pull the right divine lever to get what you wanted, like a big divine vending machine. Understand, what that means is that ultimately everything falls on you. Did you offer the right sacrifice? Were you ceremonially clean at the right time? Did you offer the right prayer? If not, well, the reason you don't have a crop that's on you. The reason you don't have whatever kind of blessing you want in life, well, again, that's on you. If you just did things in the right way, you would get what you wanted. Now Jesus is speaking in a world where everyone was religious one way or another. You could either be a Jew and love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, one God alone or you could be a pagan and worship all the gods that you worshipped, but there was really no in between. Today, of course, many people do not believe in any god. Well, even there, the same principle holds true. If you don't believe in any god, if everything is just materialistic, if it's just molecules bumping into each other in natural selection, well, you're still left in the same place. Everything depends upon me. Yeah, there's chance, there's randomness, but I've got to do what I've got to do because certainly the universe doesn't care about me any more than the pagan gods cared about the people who worshiped them. Jesus says on the other hand, we don't have that kind of god. We have a Heavenly Father who knows that you need all these things. We don't have to pull the right divine lever on the heavenly vending machine to get what we want. We go to a Father in Heaven who loves us and who wants to meet our needs. It is a totally different perspective. Remember, Jesus just a few sections ago taught us to pray the Lord's Prayer. How did it begin? "Our Father who art in Heaven." We approach him as uninhibited children as our Father. We approach him as the one in Heaven who, "Our God is in the heavens and He does all that he pleases", the Psalmists say. He can meet our needs. Our Father is in Heaven, and he is mighty and powerful to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. So Jesus says, if you want to understand why you're anxious, it's because you think everything falls on you and you do not sufficiently believe that your Heavenly Father wants to meet your needs. If you believed that, if you had that kind of faith, everything would flip. So in verse 33, Jesus tells us to do what is counterintuitive, what is paradoxical, what is infuriatingly indirect. Jesus, my problems are over here and he says, I don't care. Understand, the solution to that is, look over here. Jesus says, "Seek first", not to solve your earthly anxieties. "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you." It's indirect. Don't go straight to deal with your problems, seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. To pacify earthly anxieties, pursue the heavenly treasures of the Kingdom of God and God's righteousness. You know something of what this looks like if you've ever seen a child right before, they need a nap or right before bedtime. If you've ever dealt with a child and things are going well and they're playing well and they're maybe even getting along with their siblings, wonder of wonders. Things are going well, but then there comes to be a dispute over a toy or a demand to get to do something. All of the sudden the world has come to a stop because this child cannot handle the injustice of it all and throws an outright fit. Now the problem is not really because of the toy or because of the privilege. That's sort of the immediate presenting problem and as a parent, you have to be wiser than this, and it's hard because you're caught up in it. But you have to realize that really isn't the issue, the issue is they're tired. You have to deal with them that indirectly. I can't just give you the toy and all will be right. I recognize you need something; you need a nap. Now, if we wise, mature adults are honest with ourselves, we know that this is sometimes true about us as well, isn't it? Sometimes we just need a nap. Sometimes we just need to go to bed instead of obsessing into the night about these issues that we are dealing with. If we can just go to sleep, the next morning we wake up and everything looks different. The problem wasn't really what we thought it was, we just needed something. We needed indirect sleep. But sometimes the problems are real. Sometimes it's the problems that keep us up, isn't it? Sometimes we're worried about things and we don't know how to deal with them. The problem isn't that the problem isn't real and we just need a nap, the nap won't make the problems to go away. Sometimes it's not that the problems are false, the problems are not real. Sometimes the problems are real and our solutions aren't real. We think that if we could just deal with these things that are so vexing us that our lives would be so much better. Jesus says, the solution isn't over there, it's indirect. What you need is to come to know the God in heaven as your Father through faith in Jesus Christ. You need to come to know that the Creator of all things, the one who upholds all things by the word of His power, the Ruler over the cosmos, is your Father in Heaven who wants to meet your needs. If you knew that, and if you knew our Father which art in heaven, he would change everything. You would see that the solution you are pursuing, the one that you keep turning over and over in your mind. How do I fix this? The problem that's keeping you up at night, that sleep won't solve. Your Father is ready and willing. He's powerful and mighty to save, even if it's not what you want in your timeline. Even if just giving you the toy won't fix the issue. Your Father is wise and he is good and he is gracious and he wants to meet your needs. The problem is you don't have the faith to go to him. To pacify earthly anxieties, pursue heavenly treasures. Pause Tomorrow's Troubles So how do we handle our earthly cares? Well, the simple answer that Jesus gives, and 34 is something of an interesting verse. Jesus tacks it on at the end, not just as an afterthought, but it really does bring into play the practical application for how to live this out in verse 34. Jesus says pause tomorrow's troubles, that's the third point. Jesus says in verse 34, "Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." It's interesting how many of our anxieties are bound up in tomorrow. Have you ever noticed that we are so very rarely anxious about what is right in front of us? We are so much more often anxious about what possibly what might what could, what conceivably happen tomorrow. Now, again, we have all this research. A new study came out recently that said 85% of the things that we worry about never come to pass. 85% of the things that we lose sleep over never come to pass. Why are we worried about tomorrow? Why are we worried about tomorrow, because when we get there, it seems different on the day. Why is that? Because God gives grace sufficient for the day. He doesn't give you grace to know that everything is going to be fine. He gives you grace for right now. And whatever comes tomorrow, when tomorrow becomes today, God will give you grace to handle that. His mercies are new every morning, as we read in Lamentations chapter three. Here's one strategy that I use for this. I have been plagued at different times by deep anxiety, like I'm sure many, if not all of you have. When there are things that I cannot shake, things that I'm trying to bring to the Lord and struggling to do so. A practical application of this that I developed in conversation with some other people, that has helped me at least, I have a to do planner that's a little app in my phone. If I want to do something, I write it down so that I don't forget about it. Then I can stop thinking about it, trying to capture it in my brain. I can just put it down and I can release it from my brain and want to think about it. I know that when the time comes, I won't forget to do it because it's written down in my to do planner. Sometimes I take these worries, these anxieties, and I write them down in my to do planner, and I set them due for the day that I can first deal with it. That's a strange, silly sounding kind of a thing. But when I write it down and know that I'm going to deal with it on that day, that's sufficient for the day is its own trouble. I can start focusing on whatever is front of me today. It's like my brain can release it. I'm entrusting the Lord whenever it pops up again, I say, No, Lord, I've written that down. I know that tomorrow will be anxious for itself. I don't want to be anxious for tomorrow. I'm entrusting this back to you, and then I go back to what I'm doing. And by knowing that later on it's going to come up and the day comes when it comes up. When that day comes, it never seems as daunting as it did a few days before, when it was an overwhelming anxiety for me. Pause tomorrow's troubles, Jesus says. Trust God for what's in front of you and trust that whatever bridge you have to cross, Jesus is going to meet you there in that moment. Application Well, how do we apply all of this? Well, I think as we think about application, we have to sort of stop and step back and look at the irony of all of this. That in an age of such unprecedented wealth, is also the age of unprecedented anxiety. You see, we aren't, most of us on a day to day basis worried about what we're going to eat or what we're going to wear. It's like we're saying to God, "Well, God, you've met all of my basic needs so well that I'm going to shift my anxieties onto my wants and not to my needs." Jesus is saying, don't you see God's faithfulness, His endless faithfulness is not to let you worry about something else. His faithfulness proves you that you can trust him in whatever you encounter. When has your Father in heaven ever let you down? Still you probably have these stories in your mind. You probably know that some people have suffered, maybe you have suffered, maybe you are suffering this morning and have not yet been delivered. Maybe you know, the secret, the open secret that all of us eventually must die. However long we survive, eventually it's going to come to an end. Shouldn't we be anxious at least about that? I know God didn't heal this person's cancer. I know God didn't keep that group of Christians away from persecution. Can I really trust Him if some people don't have their needs met in this life? Our hope and our confidence in life and death is Christ and Christ alone. Our hope is not about what God is going to work out in this life. If that were true, then there would be no confidence. Our hope is that in this life and far more in the next; God has sent Jesus Christ to be our faithful savior, and that we are entrusted completely to his loving care so that not a hair can fall from our heads without our faithful savior's knowledge. So Jesus tells us. Don't directly obsess about your anxieties. Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Treasure first heavenly treasures. Treasure, first Christ and His kingdom. And then our interaction with the world changes. It lets us enjoy earthly treasures without treasuring them as ultimate. It means that we have energy to work diligently, like the birds to meet our needs. But we won't be anxious fretting about it. It means that even if the worst nightmare comes, even if the worst nightmare comes, we know that Christ's K=kingdom is unshakable. Now, as we've been studying the Sermon on the Mount, one of the things that we keep returning to again and again and again is that every time in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is helping us to understand him, his person, his ministry. He's teaching us something for our own lives, but in this, he is also sort of pulling back the veil so that we can see him and what he has come to do more clearly. Because Jesus came into this world in order to undergo the weight, to endure the burden of the greatest earthly anxieties that anyone has ever faced, far greater than what we face on a daily basis. Jesus came to suffer under it all so that on the night before He was going to be betrayed and delivered up to be crucifixion. When he is going to face the horrors of death and hell itself on the cross, Jesus was anxious. We are told that He was filled with such anxiety that he sweat out great drops of blood. He did so in order to set an example for us. Jesus showed us where to bring our anxieties. Jesus could have raised up an army. Jesus could have called ten legions of angels from heaven to deal with his problems directly. But what did he do? He went to his Father in Heaven. And he prayed, "Father, if there's any way, let this cup pass from me, and yet not my will, but yours be done." He was praying for strength in the midst of his anxieties. It wasn't the what if of what might happen tomorrow. He knew what would happen tomorrow, and he was praying for grace to endure it and he sets us this example so that when Jesus came to the cross, do you notice how calm he was, how silent he was. When Pilot challenged him, are you really a king? Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world," if I were focused on earthly anxieties, in other words, "my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from this world." At the cross we read that Jesus for the joy set before Him endured the cross despising its shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. But during the cross, when he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to the one who judges justly. Jesus triumphed over the world's anxieties. Jesus triumphed over sin, death and the devil, not only to set an example for us, as important as that is, but to establish the perfect, unshakable, firm foundation of the Kingdom of God that he calls us to seek first. To come to faith in Christ and what he has accomplished for us at the cross and look to that and know that if we are in Christ, nothing can harm us in this life or the next, not in the lasting sense. If you don't know Jesus this morning. Your life just has to be a flood of anxiety. Who protects you in this life? How sure is that protection? Even if you're able to make your way through this life and escape the various dangers around you fairly well. Who is going to protect you on the day that you close your eyes in death forever? Do you have protection and safety and suretyship on that side of eternity? You don't have to continue life as a ball of anxiety. Worrying how am I going to get this done? How am I going to take care of this? That's how the Gentiles take care of their needs. But Jesus says instead, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Fear not little flock, it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Christ came into this world to die, to take care of the greatest threat, the greatest vulnerability that you will ever have in this life. That is the wrath of God hanging over you because you are a guilty sinner in the sight of God. Oh, sinner, would you give up your pride? Would you give up your self-sufficiency? Would you turn to Jesus Christ and be saved? Christian, would you entrust your anxieties to your faithful savior? Would you sing with the psalmist, "God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way to the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at swelling." Would you take your eyes off of earthly troubles? Would you take your eyes off of earthly treasures? Would you instead set them on things above, on heavenly treasures, on the King and his kingdom and his righteousness? In the heavenly places where your Savior is seated at the right hand of God. To pacify earthly anxieties, you must pursue heavenly treasures. So where is your treasure this morning? Again, follow the anxiety. Find what you're anxious about and turn those things over to Christ. Repent from treasuring earthly treasures. Repent from that and instead turn to Christ and be saved. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would give us peace. We pray that you would pacify our anxieties. We pray that you would do this through Christ our savior, our faithful savior, who loved us enough to give up his life for us. Father give us Jesus Christ and him crucified, that we might be saved and not only saved, but saved to the uttermost. For Christ's glory and for our good, and in His name, we pray. Amen.