TRUST GOD| Matthew 6:25–34 | Pastor John Anderson | 7.26.26

Hello, this is Pastor Running Girl and Pastor John Anderson.

Welcome to the Resurrection Church PlayStation.

Each week we bring you Sunday's message from Resurrection Church right here in Racing, Wisconsin.

So whether you're listening to the water, driving the water, folding some laundry, or avoiding folding laundry, we hope this encourages your faith, challenges your perspective, and reminds you that resurrection isn't just something that happened.

It's something God is still doing.

Enjoy this week's message.

Today is a powerful reminder to those of us, including myself, who are often consumed by worry and uncertainty.

So reading from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6, verses 25 to 34.

Matthew 6:25–34

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

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

Look at the birds of the air.

They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not of more value than they?

And which of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to your span of life?

And why do you worry 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 clothed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, What will we eat, or what will we drink, or what will we wear?

For it is the Gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.

Today's trouble is enough for today.

The gospel of our Lord.

Chuck, I'll use this.

Thank you.

It's on.

Okay.

Hi, everybody.

Uh, my name's John.

I'm one of the pastors here at Resurrection.

If you have your Bible with you, uh, we're gonna be in Matthew 6.

We're actually gonna be all over today, but we're gonna be in Matthew 6 today.

Uh, big thank you uh for the vacation my family and I uh experienced last week.

Thank you to Matt Smith for his uh his generosity and welcome.

We had a blast.

Um it was it was a great time to disconnect and to reconnect with the things that matter most.

And I and what a wonderful week to come back to, as Pastor Ryan and Kira mentioned.

We had our camp this week.

Um, those kids are just there, there's a source of joy.

Uh, yesterday we got to celebrate in this sanctuary uh the marriage of Dalton and Nicole Phillips and some members of our church.

We're married here.

This morning we had this beautiful baptism.

Um, and this afternoon I have a funeral.

And it's not lost on me that God's present in all of those things and speaking the same truths that God spoke through the scripture Ashley just read to us today.

And I love this series that we're in back to the basics.

Each week we have just been trying to remind you of the basic tenets of Christianity so that it would maybe be a new discipline that you have been lax in or maybe never, maybe never really pursued, that we would follow Jesus, love God, love our neighbor, that we would be people of forgiveness, that we would give, that we would serve.

And last week, Pastor Ryan beautifully brought you into that holy breath of prayer.

And today we're talking about trusting God.

It's hard sometimes, isn't it?

There was a man who boarded a plane and he had a big uh hiking backpack on, filled to the brim with stuff.

It's so full that it was hard to get down the hall or the aisle of the plane, and he finally sat down keeping the backpack on.

And a flight attendant came up to him and said, Um, sir, we we can store that for you.

And the man says, Oh, I know, I know.

I just didn't want the plane to have to carry all my weight.

Same amount of laughs, the first service, and don't feel bad about it.

But here's here's why I tell you that, because it's exactly, I think, what every one of us does at some point in our lives.

Some of us, right now in a season where we're doing it every day, God says, I've got you.

I'm enough.

I will satisfy.

I'm what you thirst for.

And we say, I know, but I'll feel better if I just do it myself.

I'm gonna ask you a question.

What occupies your mind when no one tells it where to go?

So, what occupies your mind?

What what what thoughts fill your head when you don't have an assignment to accomplish a job to get to, a chore to finish, when you are alone, when you're when you're driving, when the house is quiet, when you're about to fall asleep?

What what what runs through your mind?

For some of us, maybe it's things like kids, our health, our marriage, the economy, politics, retirement.

What is it that runs through your mind?

Maybe it was a conversation from yesterday.

Have you ever noticed that our minds have this remarkable ability to rehearse disasters that have never happened?

Some of us have lived through a hundred conversations with a person, and we've won every single one of them, by the way, with counter-arguments, galore, yet they don't even know they're in the conversation with us.

And we laugh because it's true.

If we're honest, many of us walked into church today carrying some sort of a backpack, something that we can't see, but they're real and and they're heavy.

Maybe it's pressure, maybe it's responsibility, maybe it's shame, maybe it's regret.

Those things that nobody else sees, but you feel them every moment of the day.

And that's why I think Jesus' words today and the stories we're gonna hear about are so important.

And so as we enter into God's word, let us pray.

God, we thank you that we can trust you and we can trust your word.

You came to us, you lived among us, you showed us the way and called us to be a people of the way.

Holy Spirit, move in this place.

Help us to lean into what you are teaching us today.

Help us to respond to your word.

Help us to sit and listen to our Savior.

As always, I pray the meditations of my heart and the words that pass through my lips are yours, O God.

It's in Christ's name I pray.

Amen.

We're in Matthew 6.

And if you know a little bit about your Bible, Matthew 5 through 7 is the Sermon on the Mount.

It is the longest time we have of Jesus speaking recorded in Scripture.

It's probably the only sermon we ever need to hear, yet, for a long time, many people like me have decided we have to add to it.

And in the middle of it, uh Pastor Ryan lifted this up last week.

We learn about the prayer, how to how to pray.

And then Jesus goes on and hear these words again, even though Ashley did a beautiful job.

By the way, no pressure, Ashley, when you say this is a very meaningful and important scripture to you.

I'll look to you for notes afterwards.

Hear these words again.

This is Jesus, and he's gathered, we think, with thousands of people, Jew and Gentile alike.

And a Gentile, by the way, in the Bible, if you don't know what that means, it's someone who they would identify as not Jewish.

So they're all gathered.

And he says, Listen, don't worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.

Is there not more to life than just food and more to the body than just clothing?

Look at the birds of the air.

They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet somehow your heavenly father feeds them.

Are you not of more value than they?

And then he goes on, he says, Look, consider this.

Consider the lilies of the field.

You see, you see how they grow?

They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon, the great King Solomon, in all his glory was not clothed like one of these flowers.

And so strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.

Today's trouble is enough for today.

Amen.

But here's the reality: if you've ever struggled with anxiety ever in your life, and and there was a great book, The Anxious Generation.

There's been all sorts of books in the past couple of years, this last decade, about the anxious generation that my kids are growing up in.

Church, as you're gonna find through scripture today, we've been anxious forever.

And so, what is what is Jesus' solution?

He says, Are you ready?

Don't worry about it.

Really?

That's that's the solution?

God, that's like telling someone who's drowning, have you tried not drowning?

Have you tried that?

If it were that easy, none of us would worry.

And so here's what I want you to notice: Jesus doesn't begin with stop worrying.

That's not how he begins.

He begins with a different word, and it's important that you notice it.

He begins by saying, Look.

He's essentially drawing your attention away from whatever it is you're staring at, whatever you're fixated to, and he's saying, Look at me.

Listen.

See these birds?

You see these flowers?

You see God?

Worry has a direction, it fixes our eyes on what we cannot control.

And Jesus, in the scripture, is redirecting our attention.

He doesn't shame us, he simply asks us to look somewhere else.

What a beautiful gift he gives us.

He doesn't ignore reality.

Our Savior never does that.

He doesn't say the birds don't face storms, he doesn't say the flowers won't wither, and he never says difficult days won't come.

In fact, if you've read the Gospels, Jesus warns them often that life won't always be easy.

No, instead, Jesus offers them something better because he knows the human heart.

And he knows that whatever captures our attention could eventually shape our trust.

Or as Lulie Giglio says, whatever has your attention, your full attention could eventually capture your affection.

Or I'll tell you my words, whatever has your full attention inevitably becomes your God.

Your full devotion, your full attention.

And so Christ is saying, look somewhere else.

Let me ask you a question.

What has had your attention this week?

What was it?

What popped into your head right there when I asked it?

Not what should have had your attention, but what had your attention this week?

If someone watched a movie of your week, what would have, what would it have looked like?

What would they have concluded matters most to you?

Because here's what worry does.

It zooms in, it magnifies, it convinces us that this one problem is the whole story.

And Jesus, Jesus shows up and Jesus zooms out and he says, Stop.

Look, look at the birds.

Isn't that fascinating?

Jesus could have started with theology.

He was preaching a sermon.

He could have given them all that language, but instead, he starts with creation, much like our scriptures begin.

He points them to nature, to life.

The birds aren't lazy.

They still gather food, they build nests.

There is so much going on around you.

Jesus says, Don't miss it, because if you miss it, you miss me.

And if you miss me, you're gonna try to do it on your own and you will fail.

I was up in the Northwoods last week, like I mentioned, and uh I was going out for a run, and my buddy Matt goes, uh, I was putting my headphones in and he goes, What are you doing with those?

And at the time I thought maybe because of his age, he didn't know what they were because there was no cord attached and there was no tape because I didn't know at the time.

Uh, but no, instead, instead, he said, I said, I'm listening to some music, and he said, something to the effect of, buddy, the greatest chorus in all of creation is out there.

Why not go listen to that?

We miss it so often, even though we think we're in the middle of it.

I think about my mom, she loved Psalm 121.

And if you don't know the psalm, the opening line to the psalm is what all of us need.

It's the psalm I've sent to every person in this room who's ever lost someone.

The opening line is: I lift my eyes up to the hills.

Where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

And again, we see movement.

The psalmist wants us to change where we are looking.

Sometimes faith isn't having all the answers.

Oftentimes, faith isn't having all the answers.

Sometimes faith is simply lifting your eyes and seeing that person in front of you and being reminded that you're not alone.

Lifting your eyes up to the one who has created you and calls you his.

G.K.

Chesterton uh has this great quote, uh, because sometimes we forget who God is in the midst of the busyness of our life and the great authority that God has.

Many things in your lives today have great power.

Some, unfortunately, too much power, but they have no authority.

And G.K.

Chesterton was asked this question once about power and authority.

And he said, Let me tell you this: if a rhinoceros were to burst into this room right now, it would have great power.

But I would be the first to stand in and tell it that it has no authority whatsoever.

And we forget that sometimes.

Martin Luther, who was so instrumental in the tradition that we worship in, when he was in hiding and he felt assaulted by the forces of this world and those forces opposed to God, would walk around a castle shouting, I am baptized, I am baptized, I am baptized, remembering whose he is.

And sometimes our eyes and our hearts, they get distracted by the news, by the doctor's report, by your bank account, by the calendar, by all the things that pull you away from your heavenly Father.

But here's what I know: whatever you stare at long enough begins to feel enormous.

But whatever you compare to God will always begin to shrink.

Always.

Not because it's unimportant, by the way, don't hear that in any part of this sermon, but because God is infinitely greater.

There's that great story at the end of Luke 10.

Jesus has sent out his disciples and they come back and they go into this town, and we don't know how many of them were with him, but they encounter Martha and she invites them to her home, and her and her sister welcome them in.

And Martha begins to prepare a meal.

Some of you know the story.

And Martha is preparing a meal.

Meanwhile, everyone is sitting and listening to Jesus.

The Bible says that Mary, her sister, was sitting at the feet of Jesus.

And Martha's upset, and she comes to Jesus and she's like, Hey man, can I have some help?

Because my sister's not helping.

Um having three boys, I've heard a similar conversation before.

And listen to what Jesus says.

Martha, Martha, he says her name twice.

You should always pay attention when Jesus says your name twice.

Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.

There is need of only one thing, and Mary has chosen the better part.

Martha wasn't wrong to prepare a meal for these people or to get the house in order.

Those are all good things.

But where had she started?

Is that's what Jesus was trying to center her on.

She was worried and she was distracted.

That's a divided heart.

She's not just busy, she's fragmented, and we've all been there.

We've all been there.

In fact, some of you might be right now half listening to me, thinking about the next thing.

You ever been at a dinner table listening to your family talk?

But all you're thinking about is those emails or that work you have to do, playing catch in the yard with your son, but you're thinking about yesterday's conversation.

So busy thinking about the next thing that you completely miss the people right in front of you.

That's what worry does.

That's why Jesus names it.

It steals the present, it convinces us that life is happening somewhere else instead of right here.

And Jesus lovingly says, Come back to me.

Start with me.

In fact, if you know the Greek word and you're gonna learn it, because we love learning Greek here.

The Greek word unpacks this even more.

The Greek word that Jesus uses for worry here is mereim nao.

Say merim nao.

Merim nao.

That's seminary right there, by the way.

You just repeated it.

You didn't really know how to teach it.

Merim Nao.

And you know what it means?

Listen to this.

Anybody that's ever had anxiety in their life, listen to what this word means in Greek.

It means to tear apart.

It means to be torn in different directions, divided, never fully put together.

Isn't that such an honest picture of anxiety?

Part of you worrying about retirement or grieving the past or caring for your children or wondering about your own health or trying to control something that is completely outside of your control.

Meanwhile, very little of you is actually here and present.

Anxiety doesn't just make us afraid, according to Jesus.

Worry, it fractures us, it breaks us in two.

No wonder we're so exhausted all the time.

Jesus simply wants to restore order.

In that story with Martha, he doesn't tell her to stop serving, he just restores order.

He says, Martha, you need presence before performance, you need relationship before responsibility.

Martha, you need kingdom before that kitchen work.

You ever been in a season where you're accomplishing so much?

Like everything around you just seems to be going great, but inside you have no joy.

We're more connected now than ever in the history of the world.

Yet we are now also more distracted than ever before in the history of the world.

We're answering emails while eating together, we're scrolling while praying, but definitely not while listening to this sermon.

We become experts at multitasking, but we are beginners at paying attention, and that is not what Jesus is calling us to.

Church, when was the last time?

Listen, when was the last time that you sat with Jesus?

Not not went and asked him for something, not to prepare a Bible study or to open up a worship meeting or because someone told you you had to, but because you so desperately just wanted to be alone with your king.

When's the last time you just opened yourself up to your Savior and said, none of this, none of this equals what you offer me?

So fill me up.

Fill me up.

And that's a hard question because if we are honest, many of us, myself, too often included, we spend way too much time talking about God than we do talking to God or listening to God.

Which is why Jesus starts this section without guilting us.

He just says, look, seek first the kingdom.

You don't need answers all the time, you don't need certainty all the time, and you definitely don't need control all the time.

No, seek the king.

And that's hard work.

And I know there are people in this room who are struggling, and you might be hearing what I'm saying, and you're thinking inside your head, you have no idea what I'm dealing with, and you're right.

I do not have any idea what you are carrying, but we have a savior who does.

And what you're carrying, and those worries and those anxieties, they they don't they don't take anything away from your humanity in God's eyes.

They make you a full human.

They don't preclude you from God's love, they don't prevent you from this table.

In fact, the table exists because of that.

Loneliness and grief, all of these things, Jesus is not minimizing any of that.

He is saying that those things, listen, those things never get the final word.

Your God does.

Your heavenly Father who loves you, who wants you to follow Him and to love Him and love your neighbor and serve others, to receive and to give and to be a church in a world so desperately in need of a church.

God reminds us who we're called to trust.

1400 years before this sermon, the Israelites were on their way into the wilderness.

They've just escaped the Pharaoh, right?

All the plagues, remember the story, they crossed the Red Sea, things are great.

Exodus 15, they're singing songs of praise.

For three days, we record in scripture that the Israelites were happy.

They were released from slavery.

They walked across an entire sea that was wet and then not wet in a moment.

And they begin to grumble.

And God says, You know what?

I'll provide food for you every single day.

And so God does miraculously, every single day, manna from heaven comes down.

And then you know what they do?

After days and days of this daily provision, they begin to hoard it.

They begin to worry that it might not show up, even though God promised that it would.

And we struggle the same way, church.

Now, 2,000 years removed from Christ, we struggle with the same things.

I trust you, God, but not with all of it.

God, what if it all runs out?

I want to know that you're enough.

Jesus is challenging them.

He's saying to them, look, let every sunrise, every single sunrise become an invitation.

Will you trust me again today?

Mark.

Luther's great prayer.

Oh, God, help me to die and rise with you this morning to do your work in this world.

What's the first thought of your day?

How often do we ask God for a map?

God, tell me what it's all gonna look like, where I'm gonna go.

And God says, Look, I'm your guide.

You don't worry about the map.

Just follow me.

Pastor Ryan, you know, he lists up the prayer last week that comes right before this.

And in that prayer, we we say, Give us today our daily bread.

Enough for today.

Let what God gives you be sufficient for this day.

I think about one more psalm, and I'll invite the band up.

We're gonna sing a song in a moment.

Uh, trust in God.

Look at that.

That's uh me and my boy Johnny.

Look at that little dude.

He is not he's not that small anymore.

Um all of my boys are taller than Pastor Ryan.

Uh, but uh haven't called the old man just yet.

So uh, but I I bring this picture up because there is a psalm that I think captures the anxiety of life in such powerful ways.

The psalmist in Psalm 73, if you haven't read it, great psalm.

The whole 14 verses of that psalm that start it are about this man who is looking at the world and he's stressed out by everything he sees.

The wicked prosper, things aren't going my way.

The things I thought I was gonna have, I don't have.

People don't like me, they revile me.

And then in verse 15, it says that he went into the sanctuary, which is he prayed, he put God first instead of his complaints, and then and then the psalmist records these words.

Nevertheless, you remind me, God, that I'm continually with you.

You hold my right hand, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me with honor.

Whom have I in heaven but you, and there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

What would change in your life if every day that was your prayer?

The psalmist never says I'm holding on to God.

It says that God is holding on to his hand.

And I think about my boys.

I've shared with Owen bringing him into the target parking lot for the first time as a walker, but all three of my boys walking out into an area that might seem unsafe to them, I was gonna keep them safe.

Not because they were holding on to my hand, but because I was holding on to theirs.

And church, you have a God who is holding on to your hand in every season of your life, and there will be days that you don't know the way and he'll guide you.

And there will be days that you want to pull away and he will pull you back.

There are days your feet are unsteady, but if you look up and recognize the one who is holding your hand, you will be steadied.

A God who loves you, a God who we can trust.

And you know why we can trust this, God church?

Not just because Christ gave us all these words and said, No, go and do it, it's because Christ came to us.

Because Christ lived for us, because on the cross, just like us, Christ cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Because our God faces death and defeats death.

Our God bursts forth from a tomb so that we no longer have to fear death.

You should shout, Hallelujah! You have a God who holds your hand, a God of the cosmos who has created you and cares enough to spend time with you, cares enough to listen to you, and now a God who is calling you today in this moment, not to dismiss your worries or anxieties as not real, but to acknowledge God first and to trust that God can carry these things for you and with you, church.

We're gonna sing, I trust in God.

Those are big words.

Trusting in God when it's inconvenient is the most faithful thing you can do.

So let's sing to God.

Amen.

Amen.

Let us pray.

God, receive our song.

Let it be a song of praise and nothing else.

We trust you and we need you.

Remind us that you are holding our hand.

Remind us, God, that you don't want us to be a people torn apart by worry, distracted by anxiety.

But you also know the human condition, God.

And so in those seasons of life when we are overwhelmed, help us to go to you first.

Help us to seek your face so that we are reminded, God, that you can conquer all things and you are bigger than all things.

Help us to encourage each other as well in those moments.

It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen, church.