The Question of Anxiety: Why Do You Worry? - Jesus Is The Question

Hello everyone and welcome to Trinity Sermons.

This is episode 5 of our sermon series, Jesus' The Question.

We have guest preacher Simon Davis with us today where we will be looking specifically

at the question Jesus asks, Why do you worry?

And wow, what an impactful sermon for our age today as we currently live in what many

call the Age of Anxiety.

I really hope that you enjoy this message today and we hope that it challenges you and

you find it meaningful as you go about your week.

Enjoy and God bless.

This morning's reading is from Matthew chapter 6 verses 25 to 34.

Matthew 6:25–34

Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will drink or eat, or

about your body, what you will wear.

Is life not more than food and the body more than clothes?

Look at the birds of the air.

They do not sow or reap or stow away in barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them.

Are you not much more valuable than they?

Can any one of you by worrying at a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes?

See how the flowers of the field grow.

They do not labor or spin.

Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is

thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith?

So do not worry saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear?

For the pagans run after all these things and your heavenly father's heavenly father

knows that you need them.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you

as well.

Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

The word of the Lord.

Well good morning everyone.

Good morning.

If we haven't yet met, my name is Simon and it's hard to believe but 10 years ago I used

to work here.

So if you're new within the last 10 years, I haven't met you and if you know who I am,

you've been here for more than 10 years.

I'm amazed that none of you have changed at all in this time.

If you knew me back then, a lot has changed for me and I'm happy to tell you about it.

But we're in a sermon series about Jesus's questions.

I'm very grateful to Rob for entrusting me to preach this morning but I also see that

this passage is a good one to leave to a guest preacher.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We've just heard thank you to Mandy in chapter six of Matthew's gospel where Jesus asks a

lot of questions.

But Jesus' questions for us today are all drawing us to an imperative Jesus gives, a

command to the hearers.

That's one of the most confronting orders Jesus could give us today and he does.

So you've heard in the passage using the word worry but I like the other translation because

it's a bit more confronting I think.

Therefore do not be anxious about your life.

Jesus said do not be anxious to a generation long ago but whether you're religious or

irreligious we live in an anxious age now don't we?

The Surgeon General of the United States has called anxiety an epidemic and statistically

the number of Canadians who are experiencing anxiety has increased significantly each and

every year especially among young Canadians and yet Jesus says do not be anxious.

In today's passage we're going to start by examining the kind of anxiety Jesus is talking

about, Jesus' antidote for anxiety and lastly the way to have power over anxiety in your

life.

Doesn't that sound like a good thing that we could have?

But before we dive in I want to give a disclaimer, I need to.

Do not for one second think that Jesus in this passage doesn't understand the kind of

anxiety you're experiencing, your diagnosis of anxiety if you have one.

Do not mistake Jesus' words, Jesus' desire and demand for you and I not to be anxious

as some kind of prohibition against being in therapy or a wagging finger to those who

have a prescription for their anxiety diagnosis.

That's not what Jesus is doing.

However, no one is off the hook whether you have a diagnosis or not you and I need to

listen to Jesus this morning.

So let's look at this passage.

Therefore do not be anxious about your life.

I primed a couple people before the service but this is a question from my leading Bible

studies at Pioneer Camp Days.

When you see a therefore in the Bible you should always ask what?

What it's there for.

Thank you, I'm so glad you were with me.

So what's happening?

Where are we in Matthew chapter 6?

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

What's the context for our reading?

We're in the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus has just come through a section that concludes

in verse 21, for where your treasure is your heart will be also.

And a few verses later in verse 24, you cannot serve two masters.

You cannot serve God and mammon, God and money.

Now you might think that Jesus using this term mammon to personify serving money is

a very primitive way of looking at the world but you'd be wrong.

You'd be wrong and you would have never listened to Bob Dylan.

What the heck am I talking about?

You may be a heavyweight champion of the world, you may be a socialite with a string of pearls

but you're gonna have to serve somebody.

Do you believe that?

You're gonna have to serve somebody, God or mammon.

Maybe it's too busy to pick on loving money.

There's probably not a life group for money lovers here, I don't think.

But what Jesus said in the lead up to our passage this morning is the key to understanding

all the rhetorical questions he asks.

The key to not being anxious.

It's a diagnosis for you and me.

We cannot serve two masters.

That's not how idolatry works.

Jesus himself says there is no in between.

If God is not the Lord of your life, something else will be.

We try and fill our hearts with good things and we turn them into ultimate things.

Money might be easy to pick on.

What about love?

Love is a good thing, right?

A meaningful relationship.

Think about Jacob and Rachel though.

Jacob's love for Rachel is not an example of dating in a biblical way.

It's not a good pattern to follow in Genesis 29.

It's an example of love going from being a good thing to being an ultimate thing.

Displacing God from the throne of Jacob's life.

Here's a quote for you.

If you get married as Jacob did, putting the weight of all your deepest hopes and longings

on the person you're marrying, you're going to crush him or her with your expectations.

It will distort your life and your spouse's life in a hundred ways.

No person, not even the best one, can give your soul all it needs.

Good quote, eh?

It's from a book called Counterfeit Gods by the late pastor Tim Keller.

And if you want to explore this question, this framework of idolatry in modern times,

or even if you don't, I would highly recommend this book.

But wait, how does our context about serving the right master help us understand what Jesus

is saying about anxiety?

The kind of anxiety that Jesus is talking about is one where someone frets about not

having enough material things.

Money, food, clothing from our passage.

Jesus is mainly talking to people who were farmers and fishermen.

And even if they weren't farmers or fishermen, people in Jesus' day should understand something

that might be a bit more difficult for us.

Here's a little line that I came up with to help us understand.

The difference between diligence and anxiety is idolatry.

Diligence in our work, in all our pursuits, is something the Bible commends from start

to finish.

Jesus' command not to be anxious doesn't mean you can say, I'm going to go out fishing

in my boat, but I'm not going to put down my net.

If God wants me to catch a fish, they'll hop in the boat.

The fisherman who says that is what the Bible calls a fool, and you might call him a fool

too.

You can be diligent in your work if the Lord is the one you serve.

But anxiety creeps in when our work becomes idolatrous.

When we are working not to work, but to get the job that would finally give my life meaning.

If only I was a manager, if only this, if only that.

When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially

an idol, something you're actually worshipping.

That's Keller again.

I think that's a good quote to think about it a second time.

When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness, it's essentially an idol.

There are things in your life that have a hold on you.

You might be ashamed of them, or you might dismiss them as being not that bad.

But when we feel anxiety in our lives, when we worry in our hearts, Jesus says that somewhere

in your heart of hearts, you and I are playing with fire.

I've just been working on a farm for two weeks as a beautiful picture of the sunset.

It was chickens and bunnies and veggies and a huge forest and a trout pond where Bruce

Preston couldn't catch any fish.

It was wonderful.

But I was very aware of two things.

One, I had to rely on the instructions that were left for me because I did not know enough

about what I was doing.

My lack of expertise kept me humble.

And that's another sermon, but I think it's a good lesson for us all to learn.

And the second thing I learned is this.

I could not make a single tomato grow faster by being anxious.

I could not get the eggs to hatch by being anxious.

All I could be is diligence, diligent.

And that might seem simple, but I'll tell you what.

Did I almost become anxious that I would disappoint my friend when he came back?

You bet.

If my friendship had creeped from being a good thing and lovely thing to an ultimate

thing, I might have stayed up all night going down YouTube rabbit holes about scrolling

and seeing how it would be possible to get the chickens to grow faster or the eggs to

hatch or the vegetables to grow.

I could have done that.

But instead I trusted in my instructions and I was diligent and it worked actually.

I couldn't have done any better by being anxious.

And that is exactly what Jesus says to us in this passage.

What is the opposite of anxiety?

Jesus lays it out.

The opposite of anxiety is trust.

Your heavenly father feeds sparrows.

Your heavenly father clothes even the grass with beauty.

So do you see Jesus's rhetorical question for us?

Do you really believe in God's provision for you?

Does God love you more than sparrows?

Anxiety is what happens when our internal framework puts something other than God on

the throne of your life as Lord of your life.

If we have anxiety, it is a diagnosis of our disordered loves, of idolatry in your life.

But Jesus does not leave us convicted.

When Jesus asked these rhetorical questions in Matthew 6, is not life more than food,

the body more than clothing?

Are you not of more value than many sparrows?

How can any of you by being anxious add a single hour to their life?

Jesus gives us the antidote in the diagnosis.

Did you catch it?

He gives you and I the antidote for our anxiety in one little word, consider.

Consider the lilies of the field.

That is the antidote.

Consider, in other words, think.

Christianity gets a bad rap when people assume that after you become a Christian, you have

to stop thinking and just blindly trust.

In this passage, Jesus tells you, he tells you and me that trust, the trust that you

and I need to overcome anxiety doesn't come from passivity, it comes from thinking.

Does God really love you?

If he does, then you can rest assured you can trust in his plan, in his provision.

You're not going to plant a seed unless you trust it will grow.

But to get the trust, you need to think, you need to consider, you need to look at what

is actually happening, what has actually happened throughout history, where our God has rescued

and blessed his people.

Hours after God had sent plagues on the Egyptians, hours after he had struck down their enemies,

God's people felt trapped.

And they said to Moses, is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken

us away to die in the wilderness?

What have you done to bringing us out of Egypt?

Who was their God?

The rescuer.

God had just proved his love and his power and his provision for his people and what

did they do?

They were anxious because they didn't think.

Do you know the reason that lion tamers brought stools into the cages with lions?

I didn't know this.

It wasn't so they could grab a seat if they got tired.

A lion could bat away the stool and it wasn't to jam the lion's mouth open if they got hungry.

No, the lion would see all four legs of the stool and their brains couldn't focus on all

four at once.

Isn't that interesting?

The lion would forget it was a lion who could eat this tamer at any point.

And the whip wasn't to whip the lion.

It was to make a sound in the air, a distraction again.

And isn't that how you and I forget who we are?

Too many distractions, too many things to focus on, too many messages trumpeting up

the control we pretend to have.

In 1 Peter 5, 8, Satan is depicted as a prowling lion, but in this analogy, Satan is the tamer.

There's a spiritual reality behind the idols in our lives.

The adversary is trying to distract you, lying to you.

You will forget who you truly are.

Like Jesus says in the parable of the sower in Mark 4, the cares of the world and the

deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things choke out the word and it becomes

unfruitful.

If we are connected to the vine, if we are in Christ, we will bear fruit and anxiety

is not one of them.

What we need to do is think.

When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and

see him there who made an end to all my sin.

Look, think, remember.

Remember who you are.

If you're tricked into thinking you have control over your life, you will be anxious because

you have to ignore the shifting sands all around you and you will ignore it by making

good things into ultimate things and to serving them instead of the one who created you.

That brings us to the crux of the matter.

You may be here and be wondering if God really does love you more than the sparrow or the

grass.

Maybe things have gone bad.

Maybe you got that phone call or something else is happening in your life.

Maybe you're going through a tough time financially and you find yourself kind of envying that

sparrow.

I've never met a sparrow financial advisor or a sparrow debt consolidator or a sparrow

lawyer.

And you might be asking the question, does God really love me?

There are two things that God needs to say to us this morning and the first is a prayer

you already know.

A prayer just a bit earlier in chapter six, give us this day our daily bread.

That's the humbling part.

We're to be grateful for God's provision, not anxious about excess.

God does not tell us to pray for our daily cottage or daily vacation or if you're me,

our daily F-150 lightning.

God owes us nothing.

But I'm guessing not many of us are anxious about our daily bread.

Most of you know where lunch is coming from and if you don't, there's a barbecue right

outside.

Do you see the things that you have as blessings from God that you are called to be stewards

of?

On the other hand, I have prayed for provision for me and my kids that we could have our

daily bread.

Maybe you've been there.

You are there.

As those prayers were miraculously answered for me, my trust in the Lord has grown.

We are anxious about so many things and yet we are not thankful for the very provision

we are experiencing.

Think about the power in your and my ability to take out your phone and order food from

almost any country in the world and it could be delivered to this room.

No emperor had that power in all of human history.

No head of state had that power 50 years ago, 20 years ago.

And are we grateful?

Many of us are anxious.

But Jesus' words in Matthew 6 are not meant to guilt us, they're meant to point us.

Point us toward him.

Point us that anxiety is a symptom of our hearts idolatry.

See that thinking can get us out of it.

And finally to experience the power over anxiety.

So what are we to think about?

Will gratitude over knowing that we have our daily bread really push out all the anxieties

we are facing?

It might help frankly.

It might do for all of us to be more thankful but we have something more.

What we have to think about, what we have to consider in order to have power over anxiety

is not an abstract truth or a mere remembrance.

It's what 1 Peter 1.3 calls a living hope.

Something alive.

A hope for the future.

A hope from the future.

An anchor that holds within the veil.

When the future is shrouded in mist, a sure and certain, a living hope that holds us now.

In Hebrews chapter 12 verse 2, it's one of those verses I keep coming back to.

Hebrews 12:2

For the joy that was sent before him, he, that is Jesus, endured the cross.

See Jesus had a living hope.

Sure and certain that something on the other side of the cross was so worth it, would bring

such joy that it gave Jesus the power to endure both a brutal physical death and also the

pouring out of God's wrath that Jesus experienced on the cross.

Jesus lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died.

For what?

It wasn't eternal bliss in heaven with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

That sounds great but Jesus left all that to come and die on the cross.

So what was Jesus' hope?

His power to endure.

It was you.

What did Jesus gain?

What was added to the eternity with the Trinity from enduring the cross?

Who was Jesus' living hope?

You and me, filled with idolatry and anxiety, giving our hearts away to other gods, broken

and sinful.

Jesus thought of eternity with you and it gave him the living hope to endure.

When the Spirit of the Living God rushes into your heart, that is the anchor, the deposit,

the guarantee that your future, my future, is completely secure.

And no idol can give you that.

They can distract us.

They can lie to us.

Our disordered loves can cause anxiety in us but if God is your living hope, if Jesus

is the Lord of your life, you can remember who you truly are.

If you are Jesus' living hope, he can be yours.

Consider him so that you may not grow weary and lose heart.

Let me end with this.

I could understand if this sounds a bit abstract to you, if it sounds impractical.

The noise that anxieties make in our lives is loud and I know firsthand that it can be

more distracting than a four-legged stool to a lion.

But as deceptively simple as this antidote seems, I never truly put it into practice

in my life until everything fell apart.

You know those Christian-y things you know you should do?

Reading your Bible every day, praying, those things that seem like a really good idea but

the cares of the world are pushing them away.

Those things, Christian disciplines, are not a prescription of how to fall in love with

God but they are a description of lovers of God.

Not a prescription to fall in love with God but a description of lovers of God.

There was a time when my world fell apart and I was surprised to find myself in love

with Jesus in a way I had never experienced before.

All those practices which felt so far away, so impossible to live into with all the distractions

and anxieties I faced, they were suddenly a joy.

The true God of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else

demanding your attention.

Is Jesus where your heart goes?

Do you love him more than all these distractions?

If not, repent of your idols and turn to him.

If you want to love Jesus or if you want to want to love Jesus, if you want Jesus to be

your living hope, think.

What has he done for you?

How much has he proved it over and over?

You fearful saints, fresh courage take.

The clouds you so much dread are big with mercy and shall break with blessings on your

head.

Whatever your circumstance, no matter how crippled you are with anxiety, no matter how

much hope you need, let us recognize that the idols in our heart give us anxiety.

Let us remember what Jesus has done and how much he loves us.

If we were Jesus' living hope, he can be yours today and every day.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for the sacrifice of your son.

May we consider him so that we may not grow weary and lose heart.

In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.

Thanks for listening in to our sermon today.

We are so glad that we could share our message and the good news with you in this way.

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Thanks again and join us next week for yet another question Jesus asked.

Today's sermon was taken from the August 20th, 2023 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville

in Mississauga, Ontario.