Sermon on the Mount: Anxiety (Matthew 6:25-34)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning into New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel center church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Jesus said, Therefore I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear?

Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?

Consider the birds of the sky.

They don't sow or reap or gather into barns.

Yet your heavenly father feeds them.

Aren't you worth more than they?

Can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying?

And why do you worry about clothes?

Observe how the wild flowers of the field grow.

They don't labor or spin thread.

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

If that's how God clothed the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for you, you of little faith?

So don't worry, saying, What will we eat, or what will we drink, or what will we wear?

The Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.

Therefore, don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

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

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we have little to offer you than our anxieties, our fears, our fretfulness, our nerves, our burdens.

But you, Lord, are gracious and generous with us.

You invite us, weary and heavy laden, to come to you to find rest.

So I pray, Lord, that you would minister to our hearts through this, your word.

It had power in its day as Jesus proclaimed this truth.

It has power in our day to transform our hearts.

So, Lord, Holy Spirit, would you illumine this word to our hearts?

Strengthen us by it and center us in the good news of your gospel.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Despite my best efforts, the thing that keeps coming to mind as I've been prepping for this sermon over the last couple of weeks is that old Bobby McFarron song.

Don't worry, be happy.

You know that one.

Do you know how it goes?

Don't worry, be happy is how it goes.

Over and over and over again, world without end.

Amen.

For those who know it, of course.

It's a wonderful three or four minutes, it's uplifting, it's encouraging.

I'm always left with one question as the song fades out, and that's this.

But how?

If anyone knows what it is to live with anxiety, in anxiety, to be an anxious person, to be human, we've wondered that.

How do I switch, how do I flick the switch of my anxiety into the off position?

Don't worry, be happy.

Of course, Bobby McFarn's song, As Catchy as It Is, is something of a meditation on this very passage in Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

And as I read Matthew chapter 6, and the song plays in my head, I can't help but wonder: is all Jesus have to say to me in my anxiety, don't worry, be happy.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Because if that's the case, then the same question stands.

But how?

I would really like to learn how not to be anxious.

Anxiety is something of the word of the moment, isn't it?

Sociologists, psychologists, social commentators of all sorts have noted how anxiety is on the rise, especially with Gen Z, the generation coming to age right now, but really across the board.

Anecdotally, so much more of my pastoral conversations relate in one way or another to anxiety more so than any other point.

My admittedly not terribly long career, but we're feeling anxious.

We're feeling apprehensive, we're feeling tense, we're feeling uneasy, we're anticipating future danger or misfortune.

And I think that's part of distinguishing anxiety from fear.

Fear is when you're walking through the forest and you see a bear and you think, I gotta get out of here.

That's fear.

Anxiety is walking through the forest and feeling like a bear is around the corner and therefore you think, I gotta get out of here.

Anxiety is anticipating misfortune, danger, disaster right around the corner.

And there's something about this moment we live in where we feel like danger, disaster, calamity is right around the corner at all times.

And perhaps not for, not without good reason.

Now here's the thing.

This is what I find so fascinating.

Objectively speaking, in any way you can measure well-being or prosperity, we live in the single most prosperous moment in human history.

Objectively, that's the case.

We live in more relative comfort, we live in more relative security than any other moment in all of human history, and yet it stands that anxiety is still on the rise, isn't it?

Isn't that interesting?

If the narrative is as prosperity and security increase, our anxiety will decrease, we're finding something of the opposite.

And that suggests to me this: that anxiety can't simply be a material problem, a lack of material resources, a deficit of material goods.

Anxiety has to be more than just a material problem.

I'm sure it's related to material problems of all sorts.

In fact, Jesus acknowledges the same.

But at its core, is it a material problem or a spiritual problem?

That's what I think Jesus wants us to see in his teaching today.

We've been traveling through the Sermon on the Mount together, learning what it is to live life according to Jesus.

And here's what we're seeing over and over and over again: the kingdom of God, his reign, his rule, his ordering of all things rightly reorders our life towards heaven, towards his will, towards his purposes in our life in our world.

It's reordering ourselves, it's reordering our character, it's reordering our conduct, it's reordering our desire.

Last Sunday, Ken and Howard came and talked about how the kingdom of God reorders our inordinate desire for money.

I mean, how easy is it to make money the bottom line of our security and therefore the frontline defense against anxiety?

But Jesus would have us know this life is more than what's material.

You cannot serve God and money, he says.

And fresh off that conclusion, Jesus says this in verse 25.

Therefore, I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.

Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?

Isn't this more about what's material?

There's more than what's material at stake here.

There's what's spiritual, Jesus has to say.

Don't worry, Jesus says, but how?

Here's what I think Jesus wants us to see.

Jesus wants us to see that God's kingdom reorders our anxiety.

When God's rule, when God's reign, when God's right ordering of all things breaks into our lives through Jesus, through his word, by his spirit, we begin to see our anxiety reordered.

Away from our self-reliance and towards trust in our Heavenly Father.

Trust in His provision.

Trust in His protection.

Trust in His paternal care.

Provision, protection, paternal care.

That's what Jesus wants us to see about the reality that we live in now that God's kingdom is breaking into our lives.

Now, my Bible has little headings that kind of help to identify what the texts are about as we go up.

Probably your Bible, if you've got one open in front of you, has the same.

The heading that mine says is the cure for anxiety, which is a pretty big promise, I think.

If it's the cure for anxiety, I've yet to be cured.

But here's what I want to suggest: without underselling things or without over-promising, what Jesus offers us here, if it's not an instant cure, flick the switch off of our anxiety, it is a reordering of our anxiety.

It is a resolution, it is a renewal, it is an invitation not to be driven away from God and towards self-reliance, but an invitation toward trust in God the Father.

Our anxiety can bring us an opportunity to draw nearer to God than we would be otherwise.

So let's discover some good news for us anxious people.

God's kingdom reorders our anxiety.

First off, God's provision reorders our anxiety.

So verse 26.

Consider the birds of the sky.

They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

And here's the rhetorical question: Aren't you worth more than they?

So consider the birds, Jesus says.

Here is biblical sanction for bird watching.

Birds have a lesson to teach us.

And the lesson is this: God provides.

He provides what he knows that we need.

And God has this interesting concern for little things like birds and the lessons that they'll teach us.

Later on in Matthew chapter 10, Jesus asks another rhetorical question.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

Aren't not two sparrows sold for a penny?

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside of your father's care.

So don't be afraid.

You are worth more than many sparrows.

Jesus wants to get this lesson across.

You are worth it in God's eyes.

But before we get to that lesson, let's notice a couple of things.

Let's notice, number one, that God wants us to notice when we look at birds that He provides.

He's the provider, He's the one who will give us what He knows that we need.

But as Matthew 10 highlights, that doesn't mean that we are invulnerable to difficulty.

Invulnerable to how do I want to put it?

That we're invulnerable.

Let's put it that way.

Sparrows still fall to the ground, but they don't do so without the Father noticing.

We might not be invulnerable to challenges, to difficulties in life, but we are not beyond God's care.

God will provide.

Here's what Jesus wants us to see.

Birds don't sow, they don't reap, they don't gather into barns.

Rather, your heavenly father feeds them.

Now here's the thing, they may not gather into barns, but birds do gather, don't they?

They still go out and work very hard.

I see them in my front lawn, scattering the seed we put out all day long.

Birds work very hard for the food that they eat.

And yet they don't work at it with the sort of anxiety or frenetic nervousness that we so often do, right?

This is not a biblical uh, this is not a biblical rejection of planning or hard work or all the things that go with it.

God wants us to provide through very practical means.

But we should be cautious against this sort of frenetic nervousness that so often goes with our toil.

The good Bishop J.C.

Ryle says that prudent provision for the future is right.

Wearing, corroding, self-tormenting anxiety is wrong.

Prudent provision, I like that.

Birds have that to teach us.

Anxiety says you don't have what you need.

And unless you have what you need, you will remain anxious.

The gospel says you are precious.

The gospel says you are worth far more than a sparrow.

You are precious.

You are created in God's very image.

And therefore, you can rely on the God who created you in his image to provide exactly what he knows that you need.

He will not neglect you, he will not forsake you.

The Desert Fathers, who were a group of Christians who wanted to dedicate themselves to Christian living in a pretty wild way by forming these communities out in the desert, they had a practice of not gathering more food than a single day required.

Now, I'm not suggesting that that's the best idea for all of us, but the spiritual logic to their practice, this kind of monastic practice of theirs, was this that God's provision is more trustworthy than my own resourcefulness?

And frankly, I have a hard time believing that.

I feel like the more resources I can accumulate for myself, the more secure I will be.

Is God's character, God's ability to provide, even more trustworthy than what I can do for myself?

That's the challenge.

Can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying?

See, anxiety gives us nothing, does it?

But it takes much.

It takes our peace of mind, it takes our trust away from God and puts it into ourselves, and we are well aware of our own deficits and powerlessness, powerlessness in life.

Right?

I got there.

Consider the birds, and we have good reason to pray, give us today our daily bread, because we know that our Father is keen to provide it.

His provision is even more reliable than my own resourcefulness.

That's the lesson we look at, we find when we look at birds.

God's provision can reorder our anxiety towards trust in his ability to provide rather than our felt ability to provide for ourselves.

But not just that, Jesus wants us to see that God's protection reorders our anxiety towards our Father as well.

Verse 28.

They don't labor or spin thread.

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

If that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for you, you of little faith?

Much the same argument here, isn't it?

Why do you worry about clothes?

Jesus asks.

Let's pause there.

Why would we worry about clothes?

The thing I worry about most about my clothes, and I worry about this constantly, is whether or not my fly is open.

And it never is, but I'm constantly worried about it.

And then that's just my own anxiety.

That says a lot about me psychologically.

Now, for those who do worry about their clothes, probably it's whether or not you wear the right clothes.

That's the kind of thing we worry about in our moment, isn't it?

I don't tend to worry about that so much, but I know plenty of folks who worry that I'm wearing the clothes that suggest I'm with it.

You know, the clothes that suggest uh that might make the difference between being on the in and being on the out, something like that.

I don't need to overly define it, you know what I mean.

We worry about wearing the right kind of clothes, which suggests that clothes are something of a luxury item for us, aren't they?

We don't really notice how badly we need clothes until the weather suddenly turns like it has this week, and we realize I need that second layer.

Now we're getting closer to something like Jesus' first audience uh would, their attitude towards clothing.

It's not whether or not I'm wearing the right clothes, it's that I have clothes, right?

It's that I have clothes that will protect me from the elements.

And I have clothes that might make the difference between whether I live or whether I die.

Why would you worry about clothes?

Do I have the protection that I need?

Jesus has another lesson for us to observe from nature.

Observe the wildflowers, consider the lilies, he says.

Wildflowers don't labor, they don't spin, right?

They don't do that same thing that we do with anxious toil, you know, endlessly cycling through work to try and survive, to try and stay ahead, to try and make sure that we have what we need.

Wildflower is a way of simply receiving what it is that they need.

And not just receiving what they need, but receiving it lavishly.

They are lavishly adorned by the Father who delights not just to give them what they need to survive, but delights to give them something beautiful that they need to survive.

Lavishly, even more than Solomon in all his splendor.

Solomon, of course, was that great king in the Old Testament who is known for his opulence and radiance, right?

Even more so than Solomon, God delights to adorn these wildflowers.

And now it's a so much more argument, isn't it?

How much more valuable are you, Jesus says.

See, anxiety is constantly telling us you're vulnerable, you're exposed.

You're done for.

And that's God saying that to the psalmist.

And yet, early days of COVID, as heartening as this was, I still knew Christians who died of COVID.

Christians who nearly died of COVID.

And so I kind of wonder, God, what's this promise worth?

And I think the answer is this that God can deliver on this side of life or on the next side of death.

But he will deliver.

The resurrection is proof that death will not thwart God's plan to deliver.

There is nothing, no power greater than God's ability to protect.

And that protection might look very different than I would select for myself.

But God nevertheless will protect.

God can be trusted to do that, even more so than the resources I might accumulate for myself.

It's become important for that reason, but it's also important, I think, for a second reason, because this is the very psalm that Satan quotes to Jesus multiple times during his temptation.

Did you know that?

He quotes it at least twice.

And two times Satan is trying to get Jesus to take his trust away from his father and put his trust in whatever Satan promises to deliver Jesus as if he could do that.

See, this is a psalm whose words are getting twisted in such a way that the enemy wants Jesus to take his trust away from the Father.

Put his trust in what either Jesus could do for himself or what the enemy could do for him.

In other words, put your trust anywhere else than the Father.

You're putting your trust in the foolish place, Jesus.

And Jesus quotes back to him from Scripture, a correct understanding of Psalm 91 from the book of Deuteronomy.

My trust is where it needs to be.

It's in the Father.

And the Father's ability to protect and the Father's ability to provide is greater than anything else I could do for myself or you could promise to do for me.

So as Christians, we are told to consider.

Consider what God can do.

Consider birds, consider lilies.

Look at these things and learn the lessons that God wants to teach us through them.

In other words, a Christian doesn't reduce their anxiety by not thinking, by checking their brain at the door, but rather we reduce our anxiety by thinking rightly, by recognizing how God is at work providentially in the world around us, providing and protecting, recognizing his care and his compassion.

There are many means by which I think God can minister his grace to us in our thinking and begin to change and shape and direct our thinking towards him.

One especially helpful thing for me was cognitive behavioral therapy, which is just one means, I think, of common grace.

There was a time where I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, and I was getting pretty barely functional for a while there post-COVID.

CBT is a is a fantastic evidence-based therapy that is meant to identify the ways we think, evaluate the ways we think, is this true or isn't it, and then replace that thinking with uh with with thoughts that are truer to reality.

In other words, fear is often a liar.

Fear will tell you the worst thing will happen.

Evaluate that and then replace that with a truer uh proposition.

And in a real way, Jesus is just 2,000 years ahead of this behavioral therapy practice.

Jesus is saying, identify the thinking here.

Do you really think you can provide more for yourself than your father can?

Evaluate that thinking and replace it with gospel-centered thinking.

That's what Jesus is saying to us.

See, God's provision, God's protection can reorder anxiety, but here's where I want us to land.

God's paternal care is the bottom line that reorders our anxiety towards trust.

Verse 31.

Don't worry, saying, What will we eat, or what will we drink, or what will we wear?

For the Gentiles eagerly seek these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.

Don't worry about life's essentials, Jesus says, but how?

He's got two things to say to us.

Number one, worrying about these life essentials more than anything else is characteristically Gentile or characteristically pagan.

It's characteristic of non-believers in the Heavenly Father.

Either it's a burden of providing all these things for yourself, or it's a burden of making sure your transactional relationship with the divine is such that he'll supply what you need.

You know that kind of relationship with God, right?

I do a little for him, he does a little for me.

That's a burden, isn't it?

Because boy, you better make sure you're doing all the right things.

This is what's characteristic of those who don't know God as their heavenly father, Jesus says.

And that sort of religion, whether it's a religion of self or a religion of transaction, generates anxiety.

Instead, your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

He knows what you need before you even ask it.

And let's not miss how Jesus is referring to God, not in the abstract, but in the most intimate and relational term you can, your heavenly father.

Not all of us maybe have had experiences with an earthly father that lend themselves to trust and intimacy.

But Jesus is saying, here is a heavenly father who can be trusted to deliver on what he promises, can be trusted to provide for you, can be trusted to protect you, can be trusted to have great affection for you, knows your material needs, and will meet them.

I love that anecdote that Corey Tenboom talks about.

She says that when her father was teaching her a lesson on these lines, he says, Corey, when you're taking the train to Amsterdam, when do you get your train ticket?

Do you get it before you go into the train station?

And she goes, Well, no, I you put it in my hand right before I get on the train.

And he says, Your Heavenly Father knows what you need.

In other words, God may not provide what we need on our timetable, but he will not leave us unprovided for.

So good luck.

The gospel says, By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.

There was nothing.

God withheld from us in Christ.

He is given everything and all eternity.

So how much more can we trust him in light of our needs?

So, what does this mean for us?

It means get your priorities straight, Jesus says.

Verse 33 seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be rided for you.

Don't aim at these things, you'll miss it.

Aim at the kingdom, and everything will be included.

Let me just read one kind of semi-extended passage of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, because boy, I love this passage so much.

This is a fantastic book, Discipleship, Cost of Discipleship by Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer was a pastor in Germany, faithful gospel pastor in Germany in the 1930s as National Socialism was taking hold.

He knew what it is to live in anxious times.

And this book is his exposition on the Sermon on the Mount.

And I just want us to consider these words.

It's a little extended, but I think it's worth it.

He writes this the kingdom that God references, pardon me, that Jesus references here in verse 33, the kingdom is none other than the righteousness that we've been reading about so far, Matthew 5 and 6.

The righteousness of the cross and of following Christ beneath that cross, fellowship with Jesus, and obedience to his commandment come first, and all else follows.

Before we start taking thought for our life, our food and clothing, our work and families, we must seek the righteousness of Christ.

But here's how the gospel factors in.

Again, Bonhoeffer writes, we have here either a crushing burden, which holds out no hope for the poor and wretched, or else it is the quintessence of the gospel, which brings the promise of freedom and perfect joy.

Jesus does not tell us that we ought, pardon me, Jesus does not tell us what we ought to do but cannot.

He tells us what God has given us and promises still to give.

If Christ has been given us, if we are called to his discipleship, we are given all things, literally all things.

If we follow Jesus and look only to his righteousness, we are in his hands and under the protection of him and his father.

God will help us in the hour of need, and he knows our needs.

Amen.

The question is, what are the priorities of my own life?

And I have to confess, so often my life is aimed at all the material things I think will provide me with happiness or security.

And so few times are my priorities reflective of the kingdom, and yet God is more gracious still.

Seek first the kingdom is the invitation, and all these things will be added to you.

Said the Robin to the sparrow.

I should really like to know why these anxious human beings rush about and worry so.

Said the sparrow to the robin.

Friend, I think it must be that they now have no heavenly father such as cares for you and me.

Isn't that a thought?

Don't worry, be happy.

But how?

God is the one who reorders anxiety, isn't he?

God is the one who provides the provision, the protection, the paternal care by his reign, by his rule, through his kingdom that we cannot provide for ourselves.

So when anxiety comes, and it will come, I don't think there is a cure or silver bullet for anxiety in this life.

But when it comes, we can gratefully receive the good gifts that God gives us to treat our anxiety.

We can also remind ourselves of the reality of the world we live in with Christ as King.

Anxiety can drive us away from God, towards our own self-reliance, towards our own resourcefulness and the endless burden that that generates, or anxiety can drive us toward our Heavenly Father, who protects and provides and loves us more than anyone else ever could.

Therefore, don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's Word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

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Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.