Jesus' Diagnosis For Anxiety

Well, here in a second, uh, Fred Goodwin is gonna come out and share a little bit.

I asked Fred if he would give the message this morning.

If you don't know Fred, if you haven't been here when he's spoken before, Fred has been a pastor uh for as long as I've been alive.

And Fred, I'm not saying that to knock your age.

I'll be there one day.

Um, but one of the biggest joys of my life is that in every season of life I have seen that that God has just put men in my life to mentor me.

And I've been really blessed by that because I need that.

Pastors need pastors too.

And so Fred is is a man that a few years ago uh God really connected us together, and God made it very clear to me you need to you need to ask this guy to invest in you and and learn from him.

And so I get together with Fred and and we hang out, and you know, Fred's, he's like a man's man, and I'm not a super man's, I'm like, I'm masculine.

I'm not saying that.

I'm obviously masculine, right?

It's just I don't know how to I don't know how to use tools um or anything at all.

Every time I go to Fred's house, he's like, oh, I built this table by myself with a piece of wood that fell down in my yard, and and I'm like, well, that doesn't even make sense to me.

I'm not a person, I don't, I don't build my own furniture.

How many of you build your own furniture?

You're furniture builders.

Very good.

How many of you go to IKEA?

That's your idea of building furniture.

Anyone?

And anyone here ever, you ever like buy a piece of furniture from IKEA?

Have you ever had that experience or a place like that?

What I mean is you you buy a piece of furniture that you're gonna get to put together so you get you get to feel like you're the one who built it, even though you're not?

You know what I'm talking about?

So, IKEA furniture, if you haven't had this experience, is the worst and the best.

It's the best because it's cheap, it's the worst because it's unnecessarily complicated.

Uh, you will buy a coffee table that is 430 pieces that you're gonna put together with like an Allen wrench.

And if you've ever bought if you ever bought something from IKEA, like the nightmare scenario would be that you open everything up and there's no instructions.

That would be like a nightmare.

Anyone who's ever bought a piece of IKEA furniture, can you, can you like, does that make sense?

That would be a night, it would be a nightmare, right?

Like you take it home, you open up, there's no instructions.

That would be that you would be so upset, so frustrated.

Because you would know there's no way, there's no way that you would be able to put this thing together without the instructions.

Similarly, if if you ever buy something from a place like IKEA and you don't get the parts, because they have parts, like all the hardware, if if they don't put that in the box, you're gonna be super frustrated.

Like, how in the world am I supposed to do this without the parts?

One of the beauties of God is that even though our lives are incredibly complicated and incredibly difficult, he's given us both the parts and the instructions to live it out, to do it well.

It's funny though, because while we're we'd be very upset with a product that we would buy that would come without instructions, it's so easy for us to neglect, as Jesus followers, the instructions that God has given us through his word.

We're in a series right now called A King in His Kingdom.

And what we're doing in this series is we're studying the teachings of Jesus.

Jesus was very clear when he spoke.

He called himself a king.

That's a bold thing to say.

He said things like, My kingdom.

Like if I walked around saying, my kingdom is like this, everyone would be like, What are shut up, right?

What are you saying?

You're not a king.

Jesus, Jesus is our our king if we've given our lives to him.

And and something that's very indicative of the modern American church, we've been talking about this for the last few months, is that we find ourselves often very familiar with what Jesus did, but not as familiar with what he said.

Sometimes we we get so busy in life that we forget to stop and take time familiarizing ourselves with the instructions that our King has given us.

And so what we're doing in this series is we're just diving into his teachings.

We want to know what he said.

You know, when I when I buy a piece of furniture that I'm gonna put together, you know, to feel like a man, I uh I don't look at the instructions as suggestions.

I don't I don't look at it as if it's saying, hey, here's a way you might want to go about putting this thing together, or you know, do it your own way.

I recognize that this is someone knows better than me and has asked me to do it this way.

And I don't begrudge them for that.

I'm grateful.

Well, likewise, our our King Jesus cared enough for us to teach us what what life in his world is really like.

He cared enough for us to actually show us what to do.

It's a good thing.

And so I said this last week.

If if you're interested in Jesus, if you just find yourself interested in Jesus, maybe you're not a Jesus follower, you wouldn't quite say I've crossed that line yet, but you're like, I'm I'm interested.

Well, if you're interested in Jesus, you should be, because he's interesting.

And you should at the very least be interested with what he said if you love Jesus.

And I know many of us in the room will be like, I love him.

I'm not just interested in Jesus, like I love him.

If you love Jesus, you should you should love what Jesus said.

And if you worship Jesus, if you believe he is who he said that he was, if you believe that he is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, if you believe that he is the creator of all things, God in the flesh, if you believe that that's that's Jesus, then his words, they should be what guides your life completely and totally.

Not not your feelings, not your desires, not your own perspective, but the teachings of Jesus, the teachings of Scripture that he affirmed.

So it's it's an it's a joy for us to dive into his teachings.

And Fred's gonna lead us through that.

Last week we we got to Matthew chapter six, where we're going through this very long series of teachings that Jesus gives.

It's actually the largest uninterrupted set of teachings of Jesus that we have.

It's often called the Sermon on the Mount.

It's Matthew 5 through 7.

And we're about halfway through it.

And so we got about halfway through chapter 6 last week.

Today we're gonna jump into the rest of it.

Fred's gonna lead us through that, and specifically what we're talking about this morning is Jesus' remedy for anxiety, for worry.

And I know none of us in the room deal with that at all, right?

We're all good there, but just in case we might one day venture into some worry, we're gonna look at what Jesus has to say about it.

So if you guys wouldn't mind, welcome Fred with us.

Fred, I'm gonna leave it with you.

I love you, brother.

It's a privilege to be here with you, and a privilege to be in this portion of uh the this extraordinary study of King and his kingdom.

Because I find increasingly, no matter where I travel, churches are wrestling with this, that we can't be satisfied with what the American society dictates to us.

Can you imagine if the values of our American culture were the values of God?

That we can do whatever we want because it feels good?

Or that we have to live for the opinions of others, or that it's all about money, or all about accomplishing our lists?

I mean, we'd be exhausted.

And why would we worship a God like that?

Fortunately, we have a God who calls us to live a vastly different kind of life than we know in our world, that we know from our feelings, that we know through our experiences growing up, or even by looking at entertainment or the news, that he calls us to live his kingdom life with Jesus as King.

So in this portion of Matthew chapter 6, he deals with, as Justin just said, that extraordinary thing that we deal with in this culture all the time.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

And when I say this culture, I travel a lot of places for the Lord.

And there's a lot of cultures that don't get nearly as anxious as we Americans.

They don't worry about all that much stuff.

I remember recently being in Haiti and I happened to ask my translator, what's the weather gonna be?

You know, because I really want to know, I want to prepare.

I mean, that's what we do in America, right?

We have to know what the weather is.

I mean, what's the weather gonna be?

Is it gonna be hotter than it was yesterday?

I mean, we go on and on and on.

And he looked up at the sky and he said, It's gonna be sunny.

And I went, oh yeah, that's right.

They don't get anxious about the weather here unless it's a hurricane.

You know, why do we get anxious about so many things?

And what's fascinating is Jesus understands that and he speaks right to us.

And we need to hear what he has to say because what he ends up teaching us is an anxious Christian is a contradiction of terms.

If you have completely surrendered your life to Christ, you've asked for his forgiveness, you've been washed in his blood, you're seeking the anointing and empowering of the Spirit to live a life pleasing to him, we have to recognize that it's going to be vastly different values than what we may have grown up with.

So turn with me, please, to Matthew chapter 6, verse 19.

Matthew 6:19

By the way, one of the churches that my wife Jill and I was at recently, we found it fascinating that this church has is growing in the habit of taking notes during the message.

And they're either using their phones or their pads or using a notebook.

And as we looked around, it was fascinating to see so many people doing that.

Why?

Because we're not interested in information, are we?

Don't we want more than that?

See, what God wants from us is transformation.

He wants us to be so available to him that he changes the way we think about things.

Consider what he says now as he gives us the diagnosis for anxiety.

Matthew chapter 6, we begin in verse 19.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Don't store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal.

Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.

Wherever your treasure is, there the desire of your heart will be.

Because we've come to believe that the things of this world define us.

How sad.

And what we get in that heart is stuff.

And I'm not just talking about those things we buy that we fill our homes with and then have to clean, dust, and so on.

I'm talking about all the stuff that gets in there that's not there from God.

Let me give you an example.

I was ministering in New York a few years ago, and uh in the midst of the conference, we had a time of prayer ministry, and this woman came down to the prayer team and she said, Would you pray for me, please?

I'd like to know God more fully in my heart.

I'd like to receive the Holy Spirit.

And we said, Wow, what a faithful prayer.

So we began to pray.

And what I found fascinating was the Lord spoke to me and said, Ask her who Daniel is.

Now, please don't misunderstand.

I don't hear speak God speak to me like that every hour, not even every day, not even every week.

So it was very, very clear this was God speaking to me in the midst of the prayers.

So I stopped the prayer team and I said, Excuse me, who is Daniel?

And she said, What?

And I said, Who is Daniel?

And she said, He's my brother.

And I found myself saying to her, Why is he in your heart?

And she said, Because he's a raging alcoholic.

And she begins bawling.

And I said to her, My dear, you are so anxious about your brother that God can't get in.

Let's first pray and turn your brother over to the Lord, and then your heart will be available to receive what God has for you.

And I'll never forget the beautiful prayer we we all had for her and her for her brother, and then what God did in ministry to her because she was finally available to receive.

You see, we we we walk around so often with things in our heart that we're angry about or we have to justify or otherwise, and it isn't pleasing to God.

And we we we don't dare ask him because we're afraid that he might change our perspective.

But that's exactly what he wants to do.

Because he knows better than we do how he wants to bless us.

And he does not want us to walk around with these anxieties.

Does that make sense?

So the first thing we have to consider is are our hearts really open to hear what God has?

Are they really, in the words of the parable, good soil?

Or are they hard and we're we're not really wanting God to address things with us because we're we're clinging to them?

It's an interesting challenge.

But the the difficulty is if we don't yield, there are eternal consequences, aren't there?

We're talking about God.

And we're gonna be standing before him, and I hope we don't have to prove anything because he already knows us as his children.

So the first thing he says is, uh, I need to examine your heart and see if it's really open for the Spirit.

And that's what God does for us, because we have the wrong treasure inside.

But he goes on, and Jesus has something else to say.

He says, Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body.

When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light.

But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness.

And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is.

Do you hear that?

There's not just the wrong treasure in our heart, it's the wrong way we're looking at things.

That our eye isn't really as open and clear to God as we think it may be.

Now we would say our mind is not right before God.

Or in the business we use the term stinking thinking.

We're justifying something that is not of God.

We're seeing things from the world's perspective, not from God's perspective.

How often do we do that all the time and presume that God's going to bless it, and he can't bless it because it's really darkness?

And how many times do we do that on a regular basis and just pretend it's okay?

Let me give you an example.

The one that's so prevalent in our culture: men looking at pornography, either in a magazine online, or in some of the crazy shows that are on Netflix and Hulu.

How do we possibly think that we can do that and laugh about it or enjoy it and think that pleases God?

And it distorts our minds, so we begin looking at women like objects rather than as sisters in Christ.

And we no longer honor them.

Men, do you get it?

But women, you know, I find there's interesting things with many young moms.

Let me give you another example.

I think a lot I find a lot of moms who think what they have to do is raise good kids.

And what they define that as is good in school, good in sports, behaving when they're out, being kind to your brother and sister, and all that's good, but even unbelievers try to do that.

We're not looking at it from God's perspective.

What does God want?

He wants us to raise these young ones to be godly adults, who are transformed in the grace and power of God, who know the Word of God, who are powerful in prayer and are ready to be changers of this world because they have a call of God upon their lives.

Do you hear what I'm saying?

We don't want to raise up children, just be good, be good children because ultimately they may just remain good children and never grow up to take the responsibility that God wants for them.

Do you hear what I'm saying?

It's a slight difference, but it's all the difference in the world.

Are we willing to see life the way that the Lord wants us to see it?

Isn't it interesting that when Paul writes to the Romans, in chapter 12, he says this be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

See things differently.

Risk believing there might be a better way of looking at it through the eye of God, through that lens.

Or in Romans chapter 14, he says, whatever doesn't proceed from faith is sin.

Romans 14 · chapter mention

Whoa.

I mean, there's attitudes we have that we haven't gone before God, and it's actually sin, it's driving us away from God.

Yes, we're looking at things the wrong way.

We would say it's it's it we have a greater need for a biblical worldview, and I can even give you a test.

You don't have to answer, but I'll ask the question.

How many times are you in the Word seeking God to speak to you each week?

Just think about that for a moment.

How many times do you go to the Word of God?

And here's what a recent study has has proven.

If you're in the Bible four days a week, you are growing in your understanding of a biblical worldview.

Four times a week.

If it's three times a week or less, you don't.

You're too managed.

You're the ways you you are processing life is too much driven by this culture and not by God.

That's that's what Jesus attends to here.

And he says, Why are we anxious?

Because we're looking at things the wrong way.

We think it has to be on my terms, we think it has to be on our terms, we think we have to justify ourselves.

He says, You don't have to do any of that.

Jesus says we have to trust him and look at life the way he wants us to look at life.

Does that make sense?

You're awfully quiet today.

That's not usual for me.

Is it because we're all on vacation, but we wish we were elsewhere?

I'm glad I'm right here with you.

All right, I'll try.

I'll try.

But but let's continue because he has another, well, diagnosis about what gets us into those that anxiety trap so much.

He says in verse 24, no one can serve two masters.

For you will hate one and love the other, or you'll be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money.

Now, I have to admit I've wrestled with God over this verse because I would have thought he would have said you can't serve God and Satan, or God and sin.

Those are pretty common barriers or differences.

But but Jesus gets really in the heart of it and says, No, it's it's the issue that always is defining self and has always fallen.

That's how we look at money.

Is money our servant that God has given us to help us to deal with the world and transact business?

Or are we serving it?

You know, in the American culture, studies have proven over and over again, at no matter whatever economic level you're at, every level of us believe as Americans, if we could just receive 15% more, we'd be happy.

That's why we're so unhappy and why we're always anxious, because we don't have enough.

How absurd.

There's a vastly different way of doing it.

And instead of being driven for money, we live for God.

And let Him attend to all those financial things.

How do we do that?

It's very, very simple.

Bible's very clear.

What's the word?

Don't all speak at once.

That's right.

Tithe.

Tithe.

It's that simple.

It starts in Genesis and it goes all the way through.

It is the only place in Scripture we are told that we can put God to the test.

You can trust me on this.

I've read the Bible all the way through over 50 times.

I studied it my whole life.

I try to study it every day.

There's only one place we can put God to the test.

And we can do it in bringing in the tithe.

And this is the promise.

If we will tithe, he will open the windows of heaven and shower blessings upon us.

Don't you want to be showered with God's blessings?

He says this is one way we can do it.

And what's tithing?

We recognize no matter what resources we get, whether it's a paycheck for what we've the abilities we have or what we've learned in school or or or whatever, or some other money that we receive, the first 10%, it isn't ours.

It isn't ours, it's God's.

You see, my wife and I, when we got serious about Christ after we were married, we decided we needed a tithe.

It it's throughout the Bible.

You trip over.

Jesus even said so.

And so we we decided to do that.

When we first started, it sounded crazy.

We were throwing a 20 in the in those days in the plate every so often, and thought this was a pretty good deal.

We're really blessing people.

And then now he wants us to tithe?

Oh my goodness.

And yet, of course, along comes the babies, and then along comes all their needs, then along comes all the medical bills.

We have three sons, you can imagine the medical bills.

And then they grow up and they want to drive cars and they're have expenses of school and sports and college and the weddings come along and bigger vacations and all that stuff.

And you know, now we're just entering into retirement.

And you know what we found?

God's faithful.

He is always faithful.

If you live life the way God wants you to live it, the windows of heaven, we we spend time now praying every morning, and just odd that the windows of heaven have remained open through our whole lives.

God blessing us, blessing us, blessing us.

Does it mean we don't get anxious?

No, we'll get to that in a minute.

But God's always faithful.

You see, Jesus teaches us in this portion of Matthew, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, what these ways of living for Him are, how we live in His kingdom.

And then He apparently goes off and shows us how to live that.

The disciples walk and see how He lives this out before He goes to the cross.

So that we understand what this new way of living is all about.

And it's what we have to learn in whatever culture we're in.

We have to learn this.

I was joking with Justin earlier this morning.

I told him, you know, the last time I preached, I had to be translated in German.

I said, maybe you need to come up and translate what I might be saying, because your folks may not understand.

But I'm going to try to keep it simple.

Jesus says, we're always getting anxious because we have the wrong treasure in our heart.

We got to ask him to remove that.

We're looking at life through the wrong way.

Our mind is not processing things right.

We have to look at it more biblically.

And yes, we may be serving two masters.

And we need to not justify behavior that isn't pleasing to God and live instead for the master, the king, the one who loves us more than we love ourselves.

Does that make sense?

Okay, and then what he does is for this next portion, he says, Therefore, let me tell you how that how that looks.

Let me tell you what that looks like.

In our translation we're using today, he says, That's why I tell you not to worry about everyday life.

Don't worry about it.

And he doesn't say, Don't worry, be happy.

He says, Don't worry, but trust me.

And he says, whether you have enough food or drink or enough clothes to wear, isn't life more than food and your body more than clothing?

Look at the birds.

They don't plant or harvest or store foods in barns, for your Heavenly Father feeds them.

Aren't you far more valued to him than they?

Church, aren't you?

Amen.

You're far more valued than even a beautiful little bird.

Come on.

He didn't die just to redeem the birds, he died to redeem us and to get us back home to the Father so we can live holy and righteous lives unto him.

Wow, what a privilege! He says, Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

And why worry about your clothing?

Look at the lilies of the field, how they grow.

They don't work or make their clothes.

Yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are.

And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, will he certainly care for you?

He will certainly care for you.

Why do you have such little faith?

What's fascinating in Scripture is that faith normally is referred to in Scripture as that which is quantitative, it's measurable.

Now, we think you have faith or you don't.

No, in biblical understanding, faith apparently in the eternal, you either have a little faith or you have more faith or you have a lot of faith, a strong faith.

So he's saying, why are you anxious?

Why are you worrying?

Is your faith that small?

When faith is small as a mustard seed will move a mountain?

Is it smaller than that?

Are we paying lip service to the king?

Which is treason?

Or are we saying, Yes, Lord, I will not worry?

Now, fortunately, we're told how to attend to that, but let's finish these verses.

So don't worry about these things saying, what will we eat, what will we drink, what will we wear?

These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers.

But your Heavenly Father already knows all your needs.

Listen to what he says.

If you don't bring faith to bear in your life, you will be anxious about everything.

You'll be anxious about your kids and their protection.

You're going to be anxious about money.

You're going to be anxious about food.

You're going to be anxious about what you're wearing on a particular day.

You're going to be anxious about how you look and what people think about you.

You're going to be anxious and he said, unbelievers have to deal with all that.

But that isn't for you.

That isn't what I've redeemed you for.

I want you to come out of that and live in my peace.

You see, the absence of peace is not war.

It is in the world's eyes, but not scripturally.

Scripturally, the absence of peace is anxiety.

So look in your heart.

Is there peace or is there anxiety?

Look in the way you process things.

Is there peace or is there anxiety?

Look at who you're serving every day.

Are you serving money?

Are you serving the King Jesus?

He says, unbelievers, they live over there in that anxious stuff.

That isn't how you live in my kingdom.

He says, seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

So don't worry about tomorrow.

Tomorrow will bring its own worries.

Today's trouble is enough for today.

He said, wait a minute, you said not to worry, then you're gonna say, you said we're gonna have worries.

Yes.

But it's what we do with the anxiety and the worry that defines whether we have faith or we don't.

You see, if we're unbelievers or living life as unbelievers, then something comes to our attention.

We take it into our hearts or our minds and we panic.

It may be a little panic, we just don't want to admit that we're anxious, but we're showing it.

And let's be honest, if we walk into a room and we are anxious, it affects the whole room, doesn't it?

It does.

An anxious presence does that.

It affects families, it affects neighborhoods, it affects schools, it affects churches if people are anxious about things.

But how much more if we're at peace?

And people walk into a room and they're already at peace because they're walking with the king.

Those are the folks who want to follow, isn't it?

Those are the ones who have figured it out, who aren't playing the game of this world anymore, filled with its anxieties and fears.

So how do we do that?

Well, fortunately, Jesus, and in particular details, Paul, tells us how to attend to that.

He writes to the Philippians in chapter 4 these words.

It's that easy and that hard.

To shift your focus on what's causing the fear and the anxiety and turn and said to the Lord, and listen to what he says.

He says, Tell God what you need and thank him for all that he has done.

Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.

His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ.

Wow! Do you hear what he's promising?

Which many of us who have been on the journey for a while know to be true.

We can either choose to take anxieties and take them in.

Or we can see that as a trigger to say, I need to pray about this.

And I need to take it to the Lord.

I need to tell him what's going on, and I need to thank him because he's the redeemer.

That's his job.

And you know what?

He doesn't give that job up to us.

We take the concern to him and he redeems it.

But there's uh an extra benefit, there's a byproduct.

We give it up to God, and what are we told?

That the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard our heart and our mind in Christ.

Wow! Don't you want God to guard your heart?

Don't you want God to guard your mind so you don't go into that stinking thinking?

Then pray.

See anxiety not as something to panic about, but the anxiety as a call to pray.

I I spent uh a few years in the in the Navy.

I went to the Naval Academy, then was a backseater on carrier-based aircraft.

Um, you know, it was really nice to know somebody else was guarding me at night.

Except that one night that I was on guard duty, I didn't that was a long night.

If someone's willing to guard you, isn't it a place of peace?

A chance to rest?

We're told in the Word of God that God wants to guard us and grant us a peace that we'll never understand.

And you know what?

That word is true.

The challenge for us is will we risk believing that there's a better way of living than trying to defend what we feel in our heart, defend what we see in our minds, and serving multiple masters.

Jesus says that's all causing anxiety, and that's not for my children.

You put your trust in me, and I'll guard your heart and your mind with a peace that passes all understanding.

Thanks be to God.