Trust settles what abundance can't

A reading from the gospel according to Matthew.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Chapter 6, beginning at verse 24.

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money.

Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body what you will put on.

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

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 being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life?

And why are you anxious about clothing?

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

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, do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?

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

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

Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.

Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

When someone tells you they're feeling anxious about their finances, you usually have some good advice ready to give.

You might say it's worth building up an emergency fund.

Set aside a little bit so perhaps you've got a bit of a buffer against some of the disruptions in life.

Maybe go through all those subscriptions you've racked up and maybe take stock on whether you need them all.

You might find yourself having spent hundreds of dollars every month on things you don't even know you're paying for.

Cut those out and you'll start to see some change.

Maybe ask for a raise.

After all, what's the worst that could happen?

I guess the worst is the answer is no, but it's often the case that you're not going to get one unless you ask for one.

Or maybe it's necessary to go start a kind of side gig, a side hustle, something to just pad that income, maybe a little part-time work, sell something online, and then you can start to fix some of those financial troubles.

This is all very sensible advice, advice you've probably heard or given out or read, but you notice that all of them deal with the number, as if the problem with the anxiety is the amount.

But in today's gospel from Matthew chapter 6, our Lord Jesus points at a different problem at the core of our fears and our anxieties, including our anxieties and fears about our money and our means.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

It seems that he's pointing us towards not so much a number, but something different.

He points us to the question of masters and loyalty and whether our loyalty is aimed where it needs to be.

Now you and I know pretty well the kind of subject that Jesus is talking about here.

You know that feeling of fear or worry that usually has a dollar sign attached to it.

And it comes when you take stock of your life, your situation.

Maybe you review what came in this month versus what went out this month.

Maybe you look at some of the things around your home and you wonder as the winter is coming, whether the furnace is going to last another season, or whether this is the year that it finally gives out and now you're on the hook for a big expense that you're not ready for.

Maybe you consider what you've what you owe versus what you've set aside, and you start to wonder and calculate whether what you have will be enough for your needs now and long into the future.

And this can cause a kind of chest-tightening fear and anxiety as we wonder what is it and how will we get through it?

And usually our answer is what we need is a little more.

Yes, just a little more is going to make the difference.

But don't you and I also know that at some point in our life, hasn't it happened that we got a little more?

And after we got a little more, we quickly discovered that a little more was still necessary.

And that that little more that we thought we needed wasn't the cure for our fears and anxieties that we once thought it was.

Why is that?

What's going on there?

Indeed, beyond that, there can also also be a fear that because we don't have a little more, that we're somehow slipping behind where we need to be or where we ought to be.

You know, someone will think, perhaps if I had bought that house five years sooner, it would cost dramatically less than what it did actually cost me.

If maybe I could have gotten that promotion when the opportunity arose, then I would be better off now than I would otherwise be.

If I could just maybe achieve this goal sooner, well then this is going to change the trajectory of my life.

And how is it that it seems I'm falling behind, missing all these opportunities when it feels like everyone else is somehow getting it all straightened up and lined up in just the right way?

And so whether it's our concern about today, concern about tomorrow, or the whole trajectory of our life and the life of our family, there are so many causes for fear and worry and anxiety, and nothing seems to ease them.

What is going on in our heart that this is the case?

Well, Jesus provides a very clear and pointed answer.

He put it this way: He said, No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money.

You see, that's not the language of employment, as if you've got two jobs and therefore two bosses and you're having to navigate between the two.

Nor is it the language of priorities, as if you're gonna have multiple priorities and you have to balance them and divide your time proportionally among them.

This is the language of loyalty.

This is the language of allegiance and trust.

And the thing about loyalty and allegiance and trust is this, that it cannot be divided.

Loyalties divided are not loyalties at all.

And so what's going on in the words of Jesus here is that loyalty is required.

And he's saying that we will be either loyal to our God or we will have to be loyal to money.

You see, that is something that sometimes strikes us as pretty black and white.

In fact, Jesus seems to repudiate one of the ways we often think about this subject, which is we kind of think of things like money and I suppose other things as neutral by default, as if money is only what we make of it, and as it just sits there, it is totally neutral.

But the language Jesus uses here and in Matthew chapter six is striking in the way he treats money not as something neutral, but as a kind of power personified.

He views money in this chapter as a kind of rival Lord, one that is competing for your allegiance, one that has designs over you and would direct you and would shape you and guide you according to its purposes and priorities.

A rival Lord.

And so Jesus is not asking us simply to balance or ask which one we prefer, he's asking which one we truly belong to, which one has our everything.

Not only that, I think he's also asking us by this teaching to discern from our own anxieties and fears where our loyalties lie.

What is it that keeps us up at night?

What is it that makes us feel the most fearful?

Examine that and you will find out where your loyalties lie, and you may discover that you are investing too much trust in a Lord, in money even, investing too much in something that cannot deliver the goods that you and I are actually seeking, that we actually want and need.

Indeed, Jesus all but says this as he continues.

He says, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.

Look at the birds of the air.

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

Here the core message of what Jesus means when he talks about money and anxiety and these rival lords, and when he talks about not to be anxious about your life, and points us to the example of the birds and the flowers, is to say to us that abundance alone is not the solution for our fears.

That abundance alone is not what will ease or settle our anxieties.

Indeed, you and I know sometimes the more abundance we have, the more things we are fearful about, the more we have to care about and worry about.

And so Jesus tells us it's not abundance that is going to settle those fears and anxieties, but it will be trust.

Trust is what will make the difference.

Trust, not a plan, not more, nothing like that.

And as he continues, of course, he says there's a question embedded here that which of us is going to, because of our anxiety, add a single hour to the span of our life?

Is more hand-wringing going to do it?

Is another sleepless night going to do it?

Is another fearful check at our balances going to extend our life?

Of course not.

Indeed, nothing you and I have done has sustained our life to this point, and we are not sustaining our own life this day.

It is someone else who did and does these things for us.

And the one who has done this, Jesus points us to, it is none other than God Himself, a heavenly Father who loves you and clothes you and feeds you and graciously provides for your every need.

And if you have this loving Father, then Jesus asks a kind of rhetorical question to kind of move us from one idea to an even greater one.

He says, If this heavenly father is so generous in provision for the birds and the grass of the field, he says, Will he not much more clothe you?

O you of little faith.

Right there is the crux of what Jesus is getting at.

See, Jesus has been talking about food and drink and clothing and barns and fields and flowers and birds and all these things, but here he gets to the heart of it.

He names what our problem is.

He doesn't say, you of little means, you of modest income, you of insufficient planning.

He says, you of little faith.

What's missing in these moments of anxiety is the trust.

The trust that can actually settle our anxieties and quell our fears about our life.

That anxiety then is not so much a supply problem that will be solved with more, but it is a trust problem that will be solved by genuine, comforting faith in this Heavenly Father.

Again, we understand this often.

There have been moments of life that have taught us this, why more has never comforted you or me for good, why there's always that time that, well, there could be even more.

There's yet more that I could have, because abundance cannot do what only trust can do.

Indeed, everything that we chase after to build that bigger number is something that is going to require great effort from us and yet cannot endure.

Whether it's a promotion or a raise or a portfolio, the time is coming when it won't be enough, when something greater will be required of us and in us.

Not only that, none of those things that we chase after is generous or gracious or loving in and of itself.

Whereas Jesus points us to a Father who carries that name well, who is truly generous, bottomless in his mercy, giving in every way, providing not just what we need, but even more for our enjoyment.

And this is the one we can trust.

Now here's the thing about trust.

Unlike money, unlike goods, these are not, trust is not something that we are able to manufacture or mine or otherwise come up with on our own.

There's no way you, by your own effort, are going to build some kind of factory that is going to bring raw material in one end and out comes trust.

There's no place you can go digging for it or mining for it.

You can't buy stock in an organization that will pay you trust as a dividend.

There's going to be no way to generate this on our own.

Which is why Jesus doesn't tell us to do that.

Instead, he says, if you want trust, you need to look somewhere and you need to find it there.

And what does he say?

So Jesus doesn't say to stop seeking.

He says to start seeking where it can be found.

He says to seek God's righteousness.

Righteousness that belongs to God before it belongs to us.

It's not as if you and I need to find some righteousness in our life, kind of polish it up and be able to present it to God.

This is a righteousness, a standing, a completeness that He gives to you just from the same generous heart as he provides for your daily bread.

Only in this case, this gift is given in the person of his son Jesus Christ.

And what a promise this is, that as he gives you what you need for your ultimate salvation, that he will also add even more for your day-to-day living here.

I mean, just think this promise through.

If the birds of the air find provision from God, how much more will God give you?

And if God himself has done so much for the beauty of creation, what does it mean that God gives you even more?

That he gave himself for you, that in the person of Jesus God gave up his life so that he could carry your sin and your shame and your death to the grave, and then there swallow it up, then to rise again to life as a vindication and a seal and a deliverance of all his good gifts to you, so that just as you have been baptized into his death, you too are baptized into his resurrection.

That God has given this ultimate gift to you and to me, does this not mean that God considers you to be a treasure worth giving everything for?

And if God considers you to be such a treasure, will he not stop at nothing to bless you and keep you?

And if he will stop at nothing to bless you and keep you, is there anything he's going to leave left out?

Some gap unfilled, some blessing ungiven?

And if it's true that this Father is going to do all these things for you and me, would it not be possible then to set some of those anxieties and fears that consume us aside and say we don't need those anymore, for we have in its place a Father who loves and provides in every way.

Earlier I said that it was not abundance so much as trust that will settle our anxiety.

But the thing about trust is we need to put our trust in the right thing, the right person, the right one.

And in the person of Jesus, in God's plan for you and me, we have someone who truly is worth our trust and can carry it.

By his life, death, and resurrection, we have this abundant testimony and promise of everything Jesus has done.

Not as a fairy tale spun to deceive us, but as testimony of true things that have happened on which we can bet our body and our life.

And because we have such a God, such a confidence, a Lord who is worthy of our trust, we can invest all of our trust in Him and find that from Him we receive what matters most, the righteousness of God credited to us.

And then on top of that, all the other things that we need for body and life.

And all this because we looked at our masters, our loyalties, and we said, we are no longer going to serve Lord money, but instead we serve the Lord Jesus, who loves us, who has bought us with his blood, and will continue to bless us and keep us.

Amen.