"Doubting God" Matthew 6:28-34 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew 6, 28, 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 of 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 don't be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, what shall we wear?

For the Gentiles seek after these things.

Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

All these things will be added to you.

Therefore, don't be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.

Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

There was a period of time in American evangelicalism where everything was gospel-centered.

You had books on gospel-centered preaching, gospel-centered parenting, gospel-centered working, gospel-centered retiring, gospel-centered budgeting, gospel-centered gardening.

The fall affects gardening.

I just want you to know that.

If you were to look at the top ten books for sale in Christian bookstores during that time period, some of them were Prayer of Jabez, some of them were Jesus calling, and the rest were gospel-centered Jabez calling books.

And that movement, of course, recently has started to dissipate and fall apart for several reasons.

Not because the center was off, gospel-centeredness is good, but because the circumference was off.

It was never defined.

There was no scope to it.

When everything gets reduced to a gospel issue, it dilutes the gospel of its power.

And in response to that this morning, I do want to look at a passage like this through the lens of gospel-centeredness, because if something is a spiritual issue, I think it's important to understand that it is a gospel issue.

If something is related to your spiritual well-being, then the scripture has given you all you need to interact with that.

The Bible has everything pertaining to life and godliness.

And when I say the Bible has everything pertaining to life, I'm not saying the Bible has like the driving code for the state of Virginia.

But I'm saying the Bible, through like, let's say the book of Proverbs, has principles that you should apply while you're driving.

See my earlier comment about some of you needing gospel center driving classes.

The Bible doesn't teach you how to drive, but it teaches you how to live morally and ethically, how to apply wisdom to diverse circumstances and situations.

And so, in as much as something is a spiritual issue, you encounter what God gives you to navigate spiritual issues through the word.

Of course, the word of God is God's sufficient and complete revelation to you, but the word of God also has a secondary meaning, the Son, Jesus Christ, who comes as the word incarnate, the spoken revelation of God, incarnate, robed in human flesh, who came to earth to lead a sinless life, to die as a substitutionary atonement on the cross, to offer salvation for all who would believe, who rose from the grave on the third day and now reigns in heaven, forgiving the sins of those who place their faith in him.

That's the ever-living incarnate word of God.

And so, if something is a spiritual issue, you understand how that issue relates to you through the lens of the Word of God, what the Scripture says about it, and through the lens of the Word of God, how Jesus Christ brings you to an understanding of it.

You interact with the written word of God through the incarnate word of God, who the Spirit of God dwells in your heart and gives you eyes to believe in the incarnate word of God, then the Spirit of God applies the written word of God to your mind and to your soul to give you a peace that surpasses understanding as you engage with everything spiritual in this world.

So if something is spiritual, it very much is in that sense a gospel issue.

Not that every component of it is a gospel issue, but that every spiritual component of it is a gospel issue.

And last week we established that worry very much is a spiritual issue.

It's a spiritual issue because Jesus has commands to you about it.

Jesus tells you how you engage with it.

If something is a spiritual issue, God's word speaks to it, and God's word speaks to it through the lens of Jesus Christ, who is the word of God.

Now that's true for every spiritual issue.

And so I want to give you a kind of an outline this morning, the gospel and blank.

You can substitute any spiritual issue into this blank.

Specifically any sin issue, the gospel and worry, the gospel in lust, the gospel in greed, the gospel in pride, the gospel in covetousness, whatever.

The gospel in selfishness, selfishness, the gospel in any category of spiritual issue, you can plug into this outline, and this outline will work.

And I hope that helps you.

I thought about why to approach it this way.

I want to disabuse you of the notion that any category of sin is extra complicated.

You know, ultimately, at the end of the day, sin issues are just that, sin issues, and the gospel relates to them as such.

So the gospel in blank, and of course, anything you put in that lens is going to have this response God, sin, Christ response.

This is the basic category of a gospel outline: God, sin, Christ response.

You can memorize this kind of outline, you can use it in evangelism.

You know, you've got a chairlift ride with somebody or an Uber ride with somebody.

This is the little outline you can work through in your own mind and your own mind as you share the gospel, who God is, what sin does to your relationship with God, how Christ uh makes intercession for you or atonement for sin, and then ultimately the call to respond to that.

Every spiritual issue can be seen through that lens.

But this morning I'm less concerned about every spiritual issue and more concerned about worry, the gospel in worry.

So I want to teach you this morning practically how to view worry through the lens of the gospel.

How to view worry through the lens of the gospel.

And it starts, of course, with God.

Now I want to do it this way because I am concerned about the solutions our world offers to anxiety.

Our solution engages our world engages with worry and anxiety through the lens of medicine or psychology, through the lens of anecdotal evidence and a formulaic approach to living, and whether it's medicinal or psychological or anecdotal or formulaic, that ultimately becomes non-spiritual and robs the Word of God as its power to engage with a spiritual issue.

The word worry, I learned that, learned this uh this week, the word worry comes from an old English word, Rygen.

Rigin in Old English means to strangle something to death.

I'm so glad I didn't live during the medieval time period that has a word specifically for that.

But that word has made its way into English today through the notion of worry.

It's an appropriate name for it.

Worry is something that does choke you to death, it strangles you spiritually.

So it is important to know how to respond to it as it relates to the gospel.

First stop on this is God.

How does worry relate to God?

And this is the main way Jesus structures this passage in Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

He brings it to you through the lens of how God engages with it.

He does it through three analogies.

I gave you these three analogies last week.

We didn't work through all of them, but he gives you the analogy of the feathers, the analogy of the flowers, and the analogy of a father.

Last week we looked at feathers, and we learned from this that God engages with worry because he made the world in such a way that he provides for the birds.

You don't see the birds worrying about what you're going to eat.

You do see the birds getting up early and doing work, and God provides for them.

And that becomes the analogy for the human experience.

People are supposed to work, they are supposed to be prudent, but they are not supposed to worry because ultimately God made the world in such a way that he provides for the needs of his people.

If he provides for birds, aren't you more important than birds?

And God provides for birds just by the normal way, providential way, he made the world to operate.

That's the point with the feathers.

We looked at that last week.

That leads to flowers, which is this week, verse 28.

Why are you anxious about clothing?

Recall that in the Roman Empire, people would park their money, so to speak, in their clothes.

They would invest in clothes.

It kind of held their money, they could be resold and the cost recovered.

This led to a very fashion conscious world.

Not that they had, you know, runway shows or changing fashions every year, but more that your clothes did advertise to the world your situation in life, how wealthy you were.

It was very much on display.

And it is somewhat different in the American culture today.

The American culture today almost has the opposite approach to that.

You know, the more the more rich you are, and the more wealthy you are, the more famous you are, the more likely you are to be seen wearing sweatpants.

This is not the Roman world.

In the Roman world, the clothes made the man.

And so Jesus says, Why are you worried about your clothes?

Why do you think that your finances, in other words, why do you think the external defines who you are?

That's the bottom line question about this.

Why do you think that what's on the outside is what counts?

For example, consider the lilies of the field.

And lilies is a, you know, it's kind of an unfortunate translation.

It's the word for any any wildflower there.

Uh it's the kind of flowers, if you've been in around the Sea of Galilee in the spring, those fields are have the grass in it, and they're just covered with all kinds of wildflowers.

Lilies is just kind of a catch-all phrase for that.

Think about them.

Jesus is giving this sermon out in the plains of Galilee there, out above the Sea of Galilee.

He is giving this likely in a field covered with these kind of flowers and grass, and he asks people to consider them.

He's drawing from what's around him to make this point.

The lilies grow, yet they don't toil or spin.

You don't see the lilies gathered around a sewing machine.

It just they grow naturally and beautifully.

You can try to catch them growing, and you can't.

Northern Virginia is great for this.

We have so many flowers that grow, and you can have flowers.

Most of you probably have flowers in your backyard, they're just there naturally, and you can look at the same flower every single day, and it's so hard to see day one where the flowers are.

It just kind of naturally develops, the bud appears, and then eventually opens and it flowers, and it's not laboring.

You don't see the flowers sweating.

Jesus says, I tell you, even Solomon, who was wise and wealthy, the wealthiest king Israel had, the wisest king Israel had, in all of his glory, in all of his wealth, and all of his splendor, and all of his fashion, he was not arrayed like one of these.

Solomon's nicest silk royal robe, put that thing under a microscope, and it looks like it was made by worms.

Look at a flower under the microscope, and it's intricate and beautiful.

That's the point.

Solomon can have all the wealth and all the wisdom in the world, and yet he's fail compared to a flower.

Flowers are so much more pretty than the nicest garment you can have.

So that's the start of this analogy.

Not the end of the analogy, it's the start of it.

Flowers are better than robes and dresses and clothes and fashion.

Flowers trump fashion, in other words.

But the analogy keeps going.

God clothes the grass of the field this way.

So the analogy here is not that the grass is pretty, but that the flowers are pretty on the grass.

God is robing the grass with flowers.

The grass is not pretty.

Grass, the grass in Palestine is like the grass here.

Like it rains and it's green.

That's nice.

And then tomorrow it doesn't rain and it's brown.

That's sad.

Maybe it rains on Wednesday, it'll be green again.

Yay! And then on Thursday it's brown again.

That's the grass in Palestine.

So Jesus is looking at the grass and is like, this is nice grass.

Maybe it rained yesterday.

It's nice and green.

But regardless of the grass, the flowers robe the whole scene in splendor.

The flowers make the field look beautiful.

When you say, oh, look at the pretty field, you're likely not talking about the grass.

You're talking about the flowers that grow.

You don't pick all the flowers so you can look at the grass.

Unless you're Americans, you like to get rid of the dandelions.

But normal people, the flowers are what makes it pretty.

The grass does not last long.

Okay, green today, brown tomorrow.

In fact, he says, look, the grass is gonna be alive tomorrow today.

Tomorrow is thrown into the oven.

You would take the dead grass, it's so easy to pull up.

Like you don't have to labor.

You just grab hands of handfuls of it.

It's brown, it's dead.

You could use it as fire starters, you could use it to start the oven in your house to bake your bread.

Now you can't cook food with grass because grass burns so fast.

You just catches a spark on fire, the whole thing burns immediately.

That means it's great to start the rest of the fire, but it doesn't even have enough value to actually cook your food on grass.

You don't, you know, barbecue hamburgers on grass.

But you could start the fire with grass.

And so that's what Jesus says.

That's how worthless grass is.

It's here, it's gone, it's burns.

But those flowers sure look nice, don't they?

Now, if God makes something as worthless as grass, as pretty as he does with the wildflowers, don't you think you have more value than grass?

I like to use his grass as the analogy, not the flowers, because the person who's prone to worry might be like, I do think flowers have more value than people.

But grass, you've got to grant that people are more important than grass, right?

And God makes the grass look pretty on the outside.

Don't you reason from that that you, somebody in the image of God, are worth more than grass.

So there's a beauty that comes from an inward tranquility, an inward stability, an inward faithfulness, steadfastness is a biblical word.

That creates an inner sense of beauty.

You're beautiful on the inside through your faith in God and your stability as you relate to God in a way that is superior to grass that is here for a moment and then burns tomorrow.

People are afraid of not having the right clothes, of not looking the best they can, of not being in style, etc.

etc.

God provides for his children in a much better way, which leads to the third analogy, that of the Father.

That of the Father.

Jesus says, Why would you be anxious about these things in verse 31?

What you eat or drink or wear.

The Gentiles seek after those things.

Now he uses the contrast of Gentiles, because Gentiles don't have a heavenly father.

He's speaking to the Jews out in the plain here.

They should be in a covenantal relationship with God.

Your heavenly father knows that you need them all.

Of course, the pagans in Rome are worried about fashion, Jesus says.

Of course they are.

But why are you?

Of course, people who don't have a God looking out for them are worried about where their food's gonna come from, but why are you?

And so this really sets forward like your basic question about God as it relates to worry.

For you to engage worry through a gospel-centered lens, you have to start with this basic question.

Do you believe that God knows what you need?

And do you believe God is able to provide it?

And do you believe that God loves you enough to provide it?

Those are kind of, I said one question, those are three.

It's all the same questions.

Does God know what you need?

Does God love you?

Will He give you what you need then?

Like, this is the first of four questions we're gonna ask.

You this is a, do you if you don't get this question right, don't pass go.

You can't go on to question two.

Don't get, don't wrestle over how worry is sin or not sin, or don't wrestle over how faith and worry combat each other.

You don't even get to get to that point unless you get through this checkpoint first.

This checkpoint says, do you believe that God is good and knows what you need?

That's your starting point.

Does God love you?

Does he know what you need?

This is Jesus' question.

Why are you worried as if you don't have a heavenly father?

You do have a heavenly father is the implication.

He does love you, and he does care about you.

How do you know your heavenly father loves you?

Because he gave his son for you.

Because Jesus says he loves you.

Jesus says he knows what you need.

God knows all things.

If he is robing the grass in splendor, certainly he knows what you need to be beautiful on the inside.

If he is providing the early bird the worm, certainly he will provide food for you to eat tomorrow.

Because God, ultimately, God is good.

God is good.

All of God's attributes can be boiled down to that.

God is just good.

The kindergartners have it right.

God is good all the time.

That's step one.

Gospel and worry begins with knowing that God is good and cares for you and provides for you.

Step two, the gospel and worry, God is good.

Secondly, sin is bad.

Sin tears you apart from God.

It is important to recognize that worry is sin for lots of reasons.

One of which is that Jesus tells you not to do it three times in this very passage.

Now I understand that people will quibble with that kind of language or argue with it.

But I think the best way to see something is sin, recognize what sin is, from God's perspective, sin is anything that fails to meet his glory.

Sin is anything that falls short of the glory of God.

It fails to reflect God in God's fullness and all of that.

But from a human perspective, sin is anything that the law forbids.

Sin is anything that God's word steers you away from, or that God's word restrains you from.

And God's word functions as law in that sense.

That's not the only function of God's word, but it's a big function of God's word, is to restrain you from sin and evil and to tell you what is bad, to keep you from self-harm and show you how to live your life.

That's law.

And the scripture tells you not to worry.

Jesus says, don't be anxious about those things.

Philippians 4, verse 6.

Philippians 4:6

Do not be anxious for anything.

That's kind of an overarching command right there.

So that's the law that is at work.

The law that's at work is that worry is contrary to God's nature, and so it is not good for you.

And yet, people worry because we are sinners.

We have a fallen nature.

That's why we worry.

Now, specifically, underneath worry is a lack of confidence in God's goodness and sovereignty.

That's what's going on underneath the hood.

Is a lack of confidence that God truly is good and truly does know what you need and truly will provide it.

Because you don't see how He's going to provide it.

You're in a difficult situation, you don't see how you're going to get out of that situation.

You don't see it, therefore worry.

And sometimes you worry about things you can't even see.

You know, sometimes you worry, what if a tidal wave swept away Washington, D.C.

tomorrow?

You know, it's not going to happen, but you think, what if?

And any natural disasters like that, people worry about the natural disasters they can't see.

What if the tidal wave comes?

I don't know what I would do.

I don't know what I would grab first.

I mean, your mind goes racing into the waves that way.

Worry is a lack of confidence in God's goodness and God's sovereignty.

Of course, we live in a fallen world where tidal waves do come and earthquakes do happen and all bad things happen in this world.

Worry doesn't say bad things don't happen.

You don't fight worry by saying nothing bad will ever happen.

No, bad things do happen.

You fight worry by understanding that God is sovereign over those bad things.

You don't know the bad things that'll happen tomorrow, but you know that God is sovereign over them.

But sin comes in and says, How sovereign.

Like, really does God know what's gonna happen tomorrow?

Really is he gonna care for you tomorrow?

Don't you have a little bit to contribute to this?

Doesn't God need a little bit of help from you?

And so here I want to kind of limit my scope here.

When I talk about worry and anxiety, I'm not talking about emotions.

Emotions aren't sinful.

I'm not talking about grief.

Of course, somebody dies that you love, you grieve over them.

I'm not talking about disappointment.

You want certain things to happen.

They don't happen.

There's a natural disappointment that comes with that.

You see this in the Bible.

Jesus is sinless, yet Jesus wept.

The Holy Spirit can be grieved.

Both the Holy Spirit and Jesus believe in the sovereignty of God.

But I'm talking about worry and anxiety.

Stressing out about things you're not responsible for and stressing out about things that you are responsible for in an imprudent way.

You have to recognize that we worry because we are sinners.

Another way to understand that worry is sin is to see in the Old Testament how often God hands people over to worry.

God will hand people over their sins.

You know, it's from Romans 1, for example, that you pursue a certain lifestyle, God hands you over to that lifestyle, just gives you the fruit of your sin.

In the Old Testament, you see that with worry.

God uses worry and anxiety as a form of judgment on people.

For example, in Ezekiel chapter 4.

Ezekiel 4 · chapter mention

In Ezekiel 4, God says, I'm going to bring judgment upon the people of Israel.

Armies will come, but then he has this interesting turn to phrase, Ezekiel 4, verse 16, that God's punishment, because of his judgment on them, they will eat their bread with anxiety.

Ezekiel 4:16

That's a punishment that God gives them.

Psalm 127, verse 2.

Psalms 127:2

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to bed, eating the bread of anxious toil.

But God gives rest to his beloved.

For those that have confidence in the sovereignty of God, there is rest.

For those that don't have confidence in the sovereignty of God, there is the judgment of anxiety, the judgment of where is my food coming from, the judgment of am I doing enough?

The judgment of not being able to rest because of worry.

That's a judgment by God.

And we worry because we are fallen.

We worry because we don't know the future.

We worry because we don't know the solution.

We worry because we are aware of the problems in life and we don't know how to navigate them.

That's why we worry.

We worry because we're not omniscient, we don't know all those things, and we don't trust God, and so that gap produces worry.

Ultimately, we worry because we lack joy.

Philippians 4, verse 4 says, rejoice when?

Philippians 4:4

Always.

Rejoice always.

Worry chokes out joy, so worry provokes sin by keeping you from obeying the active command of God to rejoice always.

Those are all the ways worry is sin.

God says not to do it, it harms your life, it's a judgment from God, it robs you of obedience, and yet we do it anyway.

And I'm not lecturing you on something I'm not familiar with.

Of course, I know what it's like to worry.

Of course, I worry about things.

And people will often say, oh, worry can't be sin because Christians do it.

Doesn't quite make the argument you think it makes.

You need a robust understanding of total depravity.

That sin touches every area of your life in more complex ways than you can imagine.

More in your life is affected by sin than you're willing to grant.

Even your worship.

On your best day, your worship has mixed motives in it.

Everything you do in this fallen world is touched and tainted by sin.

Certainly worry and anxiety are.

Certainly they are.

And so, knowing that we deal with worry, knowing that it's sin, is how we combat it.

This is where the Sermon of the Mount begins.

Remember, blessed are the poor in spirit, the spiritually bankrupt.

Blessed are those who look at their life and say, I don't have any righteousness of my own.

Lord, I know worry is wrong, and I worry all the time.

So I'm poor.

That's a great place to start.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

You say, God, I need a righteousness that's external to me.

I need something outside of me to help me deal with my sin.

I need a righteousness that is not my own.

God grants that.

God gives it.

You mourn over your spiritual condition and you're comforted.

You're hungered for a righteousness that's not your own and it's given to you.

You'll be satisfied.

Worry doubts God, worry reveals the effects of sin in the world.

But God meets you in that place.

But you can't move on to receiving forgiveness for your sin unless you recognize what sin is and confess it to the Lord, which leads to number three Christ.

God is good and cares for you.

Sin is bad and destroys you.

Christ makes a solution.

His solution is that he is familiar with our nature.

He came.

God, the Son of God, came to earth, robed himself in human flesh, took on a human nature, led a human life, became a man, and led a sinless life.

He was tempted in every way like we are, and yet he himself is without sin.

God knows what the human condition is for two ways.

God knows everything you're going through because he's omniscient, and because the man Jesus Christ went through it as well.

Jesus didn't go through every single temptation you go through, but he went through every category of temptation you go through.

But he was tempted to waste his time on frivolity.

He was tempted in every way like we are.

And yet he was without sin.

This demonstrates God's love for you in that he came to you, and while we were still sinners, Christ came to us.

That demonstrates his love for us.

Telling somebody who's worrying to stop worrying at them or even yelling at them, stop worrying, is not helpful.

In the same way a parent yelling at their kids to lower their voices is not helpful.

Learn this as a high school teacher.

I can't yell at my students.

You guys sit down and pay attention, be polite.

Mercy.

Does not help.

Yelling at somebody to stop worrying doesn't help them stop worrying.

What does help them stop worrying is what Jesus does here.

Look to God, recognize your sin, look to Christ.

He even says, why are you, verse 31, anxious about these things?

What you eat, drink, wear?

Then in verse 33, seek first the kingdom of God.

Pursue the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Come to him.

Jesus says earlier, life is more than what you eat and drink and wear, isn't it?

That word life that is used here in the Greek is psychic.

It means not just your outer life, but your soul, everything pertaining to the full life.

It's more than what you eat, it's more than what you drink, it's more than what you wear.

It comes down to your relationship with the Lord.

Life is not food, it is not clothes, it is not shelter.

Life is your relationship with God through Christ.

That's the kingdom of God.

That's more important than all these things in the world.

That's the great news.

There is an antidote to worry.

The antidote to worry is to think about how Christ conquered sin on the cross.

The antidote to worry is verse 31.

Life is more than those things.

Verse 33, seek first the kingdom of God.

That's more important.

The kingdom of God is what God wants to give us, and he gives it to us through Christ.

That's why he can say, Why are you worrying, oh you of little faith?

Why are you worrying, oh you of little faith?

God wants to give you more than what you're after.

You, oh you of little faith, is at the end of verse 30.

God cares for you in a way that is more than food, clothes, and shelter.

Have more faith in that.

Place your faith in Christ.

That's the antidote to anxiety.

And I say antidote, not vaccine.

Okay, there may be a vaccine against COVID, but there's not a vaccine against anxiety.

You will get anxious.

But there is an antidote to anxiety.

There is a way to fight it when you're experiencing it, which is to go to Christ.

People say if worry is sin, then how come I'm always going to be dealing with it my whole life?

Because you're going to be dealing with sin your whole life.

Every category of sin is like that, isn't it?

You're going to deal with lust your whole life, greed your whole life, pride your whole life, selfishness your whole life, worry your whole life.

You will, because you're fallen.

Now, hopefully, as you grow in Christ, the way you're fighting those sins varies, and the kind of temptations you're experiencing vary.

Hopefully you're not tempted in those ways now, the way you were five or ten years ago.

Hopefully you've matured some in the faith in the last five or ten years, but you're still fighting those sins.

I hope that's not surprising to you.

And you'll be fighting them the rest of your life.

You'll be dealing with worry the rest of your life.

I'm sorry to break it to you.

But that's because we live in a fallen human body.

But in heaven, there won't be any more worry.

In heaven, when you're worshiping Christ, you're not going to be tempted to worry.

So God's provision for his birds, God's provision for flowers has more to offer you in the help of worry than a knowledge of the supply chain to Walmart.

And all the supplies coming through right on time, inflation rates, rise and fall, whatever.

Those things produce worry.

Don't fix your hope on them.

Don't fix your hope on the next election.

Don't fix your hope on the Fed's monetary policy.

No.

Don't fix your hope on NFL.

Please know.

You fix your hope on Christ.

On him.

Who knows what you're going through?

You know, we're his flock.

He's not going to quench a burning wick.

He's not going to break a bruised reed.

He's going to care for those who are his.

And Jesus, by the way, Jesus knew what it was like to have false accusations against him.

You worry because people lie about you and you want to defend yourself, but you know you shouldn't.

Jesus went through that.

You worry because of family conflict?

Jesus' mom thought he was out of his mind.

You worry because of food or shelter.

Jesus had no place to lay his head, he says.

You worry because friends betray you?

Jesus went through that.

He went through all of those things.

And he went through them in a sinless fashion.

Which leads to the fourth point.

The response.

The response.

This really comes into focus at the end of the chapter.

Seek first the kingdom of God.

All these other things will be given to you.

Then the therefore, therefore, in light of that, don't be anxious about tomorrow.

In light of who God is, in light of what sin has done, in light of what Christ has done to pay the penalty for sin, you respond by not worrying, by not being anxious for tomorrow.

This is the good news.

The kingdom is more important than what you eat, drink, and wear.

And the good news about it is it's exactly what God wants to give you.

And he gives it to you through Christ.

And so you receive Christ through faith, you place your faith in him, you seek first him, everything else falls into place.

Verse 33, that word first is the word protoss.

It means first among many.

Got a list of things to worry about.

You wake up in the morning, there's a hundred things to worry about.

Before you grab any of those, you seek first the kingdom of God.

You choose the kingdom of God first.

And that reframes everything else in your day.

Your life gets reframed around seeking after God and His kingdom.

When you view the world that way, you go from hoarding to helping, clutching to giving, buying to selling, selling to donating.

You go from striving to serving, you get there through surrendering your life to God's sovereign care.

See, I believe in Christ that he bear the penalty for my sin.

I believe God loves me.

I know I'm tempted to worry.

I confess that to the Lord.

I receive the forgiveness that comes through Christ.

Now I'm surrendered to him.

Yes, there's still problems in life.

I mean, Jesus says, you surrender your life to Christ, you receive his righteousness, and people hate you.

They'll persecute you for your righteousness.

He doesn't say, but don't worry about it.

He says, but blessed are you when they persecute you because you'll receive the kingdom.

This goes back to the beginning of Matthew 5.

People are angry at you and they're striving against you and they're fighting you, and you should be blessed because you know the kingdom of God is more important than what you're going through.

This goes back to your temptation to worry.

There's some things more important than food and fashion, namely the kingdom.

Unfortunately, I place my faith in Jesus Christ, who's forgiven me of my sins, and so I'm seeking first the kingdom.

Yes, there's temptation to sin.

Praise God, there's temptation to sin because now I can be sanctified through it, grow more in godliness, which is infinitely more important than what I'm gonna eat tomorrow.

Happiness then can be reframed around growing in godliness rather than things you were worried about 10 minutes ago.

When you live for the glory of God, you can say, if I die, I die for the glory of God.

And that has a powerful effect against worry.

You seek first the kingdom.

Colossians 3, verse 2.

Colossians 3:2

Set your mind on things above, not on things below.

That's the put-off, put-on nature.

Their intention.

Things above are fighting things below for your attention.

Are you gonna worry about things below?

No, because you're gonna focus on things above.

What a great picture of this in the Old Testament, by the way.

Hannah comes in the temple to the tabernacle, 1 Samuel 1.

Hannah, I won't drag you through it because of time's sake, but Hannah has so much to worry about.

And so she goes to the temple, she brings her prayer request to God, she's praying to God in the temple, and you can tell how bad Israel was back then because remember the priest comes up to Hannah and says, What are you drunk?

Who's praying in the temple?

Temple's not for praying.

You look like you're drunk.

And she says, Oh, don't judge me.

I'm just pouring out my requests and bringing my anxiety to the Lord.

That's what a godly response that is.

Hannah realized, I'm anxious.

Justifiably so.

What am I supposed to do with that?

I repent, I bring it to the Lord, I seek the Lord's favor.

This is the New Testament, it repeats that same thing.

Philippians 4, verse 6.

Philippians 4:6

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God.

That's the put off.

Put off anxiety, put on the rest of the verse, the peace of God which surpasses understanding.

How do you put off anxiety?

You repent.

How do you put on peace?

You pray, and it's supernatural.

It surpasses understanding.

God gives you peace when you confess your sins and you pray to Him.

And you'll say, Yeah, but how does that peace work?

And I can say, I have no idea.

It says you can't understand it.

I don't know how it works.

But I know that when you're thankful to the Lord and you pray to the Lord, He gives you peace and settles your hearts in Christ Jesus.

God can redeem you, He can break the power of sin.

He can defeat Satan.

He can triumph over the grave, rise from the grave.

So he can handle your worries.

You can give them to him.

And that doesn't mean worry goes away.

It means that you grow in godliness throughout your life.

Jeremiah 17, verse 7 says this: Blessed is the man who trusts in Yahweh.

Jeremiah 17:7

And then he's like a tree planted by streams, whose roots grow out and they never grow brown because he is not anxious, even in the time of drought.

What kind of tree doesn't get brown in a time of drought?

One with really deep roots.

And Jeremiah says, the man who trusts in Yahweh is like that because he's not anxious.

Circumstances are not sovereign.

God is sovereign.

When you know the Lord, anxiety begins to fade.

Paul says, I pray that the eyes of your heart would be open to the glory of the surpassing greatness of his power to save.

Got problems tomorrow.

You know what?

This is how verse 34 ends.

Tomorrow can worry about tomorrow.

I like that he personifies tomorrow.

Let tomorrow worry about tomorrow.

You worry about you.

Jesse, worry about Jesse.

Tomorrow worries about tomorrow.

All right, division of labor, settled.

Psalm 118.

This is the day the Lord has made.

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Jay Adams writes, Tomorrow always belongs to God.

And when you worry about tomorrow, you are stealing what is God's.

Don't steal from the Lord.

You can be thankful in any circumstance.

Jonah is in the belly of a fish.

And he prayed a prayer of thanksgiving in Jonah, too.

He was confident in God's sovereignty.

He tried to outrun God's sovereignty.

The moment he got swallowed by the fish, he realized, yeah, not gonna work.

You can be thankful to God in any circumstance.

Let me leave you with the words of Isaiah 35, verse 4.

Isaiah 35:4

Say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong.

Don't be afraid.

Behold, your God will come with a vengeance, and he will come and save you.

Don't be anxious about anything, because God saves those who are his.

Lord, we're thankful for the gospel and the promise that you save those who are yours.

Pray for everyone here today who has never given their life to you in faith.

I pray that they would turn from their sins and believe the gospel even this very day.

Help us grow in our fight against worry.

We know that we are prone to worry.

Our hearts are prone to wander, aren't they, Lord?

They just wander away.

But you are a God who saves, you gather our hearts back together again as we worship you.

We're thankful for that in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.