The Sin Nobody Talks About

The other Bibles this morning, I would like to direct your attention to the 6th chapter of Matthew, beginning in verse number 25. Matthew chapter 6, verse 25. You follow along there, share your Bible with one nearby, as I shall read a portion of the Sermon on the Mount in the lips of Jesus Christ. Matthew chapter 6, verse number 25. That literally means don't worry about things, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the earth, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto a stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. And here I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today it is, and tomorrow is cast into the heaven, shall he not much more clothe you, or ye of little faith? Take thou, therefore take no thought, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all of these things do the Gentiles, the unconverted, seek. For ye are the only Father in the north, but ye have heed of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought, no worry, or the morrow. For the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself, sufficient unto the day is the evil, more literally, the problems there are. I want you to read aloud with me that 33rd verse again, if you have a terrible for you, please, together. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Our entire judicial and penal system, it is built upon the presupposition that some crimes are just automatically worse than others. While in the context of our modern society and democracy, this may or may not be true, it is true that modern man is moving more to an understanding of the fact that the nature of the crime may well be predicated on the reason the man did the crime. For example, whether one steals one dollar or one million dollars will in a great way determine his kind of sentence. But we who know the spiritual problems in the heart of men, and those who are psychologists and make of their business do try to understand the mind of men, if there is any difference, understand that the problem is not that the man stole a dollar or a million dollars. The problem is that he is a thief, that he merely steals. Whether a man is stealing apples off of a train, or stealing the whole train, is not basically the problem involved. The problem is that he is a thief. Jesus Christ, however, knew no such discrepancy in the augmentation of the problem, of the crime that men committed, and the sins that they committed. Whether an individual was a big sinner or a little sinner was not a problem to him. In fact, Jesus had more problem with the religious crowd who talked about the things they did not do, and did not do the little things according to their jot and tell of the law, but who overlooked mercy and loving kindness and patience and compatibility and understanding and forbearance and forgiveness. He had more trouble with that self -righteous gang than he had with all of the harlots and liars and thieves and murderers with whom he was confronted in all of the New Testament. But because we do categorize crime and sin, I am quite sure that some of you are going to chuckle a little bit this morning when I tell you that the sin to which I refer, the sin about which nobody talks, is one of the worst sins of all. Now I expect that some of you are anticipating hearing a deep, dark, foreboding, mysterious subject like a perversion or dope addiction or the unpardonable sin discussed. Now the sin to which I refer is the sin of worry. You say, preacher, that's not so bad. Why? Well, I worry and I see half of you already grinning yourselves to death. You say, I worry and I worry. Well, doesn't everybody worry? No, people don't have to worry. Jesus Christ was the most normal man that ever lived. He was so impoverished he had to work miracles to have enough food to eat. And yet Jesus never worried. He was concerned. When I talk about an absence of worry, I'm not talking about going around like the funny looking little boy on the front of Mad Magazine with a stupid little grin that says, who, me, worry? I don't mean that at all. I am talking about a person whose life is so possessed with an absolute lack of faith and confidence in the power of a loving heavenly father that his life is destroyed, his energies dissipated, and he makes shipwreck and havoc out of the golden experience of just living and being a child of God that the Lord has made within the potential grasp and reach of every living man. Now, many of us have our own particular category of sins. I don't smoke. I don't cuss. I don't go to the picture show. I don't drink. I don't dance. I don't spit in the sink. I don't jaywalk. I don't do this. I don't do that. And we think that we're very religious and very pious because of all of the things we do not do. The Pharisees came to Jesus one day and said, Lord, we do not eat on the, pick corn on the Sabbath. We do not take 200, more than 200 steps on a certain day. We give tithes of all we do. They had their long list of all the little things that they thought made a man religious. Now, Jesus did not condemn them. He did not come to destroy the law. He came to fulfill it. He didn't say that's bad. He said, that's good. But I want you to understand that a man's relationship to God and his fellow man, and that's what the cross is, both a horizontal and a vertical relationship by which relationship we are made right both to God and man is a whole lot more than a little law set of legalistic rules and things that we either do, do, or do not do. There are some principles involved in the Word of God. Now, when Jesus Christ, on the Sermon of the Mount, took three chapters of the entire Word of God to set forth his philosophy, his teaching, his revolutionary approach to life, there were two basic factors that make it prominent and make it practical. Number one was that God is not the enemy of man. Throughout the centuries, man has stood in awe. Now, we need to fear God in the sense of the literal Old Testament word for fear, which means to trust God and honor God. It does not mean that we're supposed to go around scared to move, counting our every step and fearing our every action to bring the imminent, immediate, eternal retribution of a God whom we have angered. We are not puppets on a string. We are not legislated and disciplined into a straitjacket that takes all of the juice out of the turnip and all of the goodies out of life and all of the fun out of just being a Christian. Jesus' main teaching in the Sermon on the Mount was twofold. It was, first of all, that God wants man to live. Life can be a gas, if you please. It ought to be a blast. Life is wonderful. Over and over and over again, he said, blessed are you if you do this. Blessed are you if you do that. Blessed are you. Blessed are you. That word blessed means happy. In other words, he said, I have come to tell you how to be happy and to be free from the fear and problems and all of the neurotic tendencies and the frustrations and the anxieties and the worries and the fears that beset a modern society are certainly relevant and applicable to the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. He said, you need not live live like ordinary men. The Christian life can be and ought to be and will be when certain basic requirements are met, a life above and beyond, a dimension above the ordinary, a cut above the average. The New Testament spirit -filled Christian need not be one of the little boxes all in a row. Life can have a zing, a zest, a verve, a vitality, a different dimension that the world knows nothing about. The basic philosophy of the New Testament ethic is that Jesus Christ wants people to be happy. Now, the other thing is this, that that happiness is not the result of what one does. It is the result of what one is. Happiness is not different things to different people. Happiness is not a new house to a carpenter or to a prayer, a preacher, a prayer, prayer, prayer, or to a beetle, a yeah, yeah, yeah. Happiness is found in Jesus Christ. God has so arranged the human personality that it can only find fulfillment and absolute happiness when it finds God, and the only link between man and God is Jesus Christ. And so God is not a scorekeeper. We are not spiritual bookkeepers going around with our own little set of religious precepts that say do this and do that and don't do something else. What one does for his fellow man, what one does in his service to God, is the natural result of what he is, rightly related to God by faith in Jesus Christ. And so the Christian life ceases to be a set of rules and becomes the result of one big basic principle, our relationship to God. Jesus was confronting the Pharisees and they were discussing whether one was to eat corn if he were hungry on the Sabbath. Jesus said the jot in the tittle of the law, whether the sun is up or down when you eat, is not the point. The Sabbath was made for man. The principle covers the rule. The Bible is basically not a set of laws and rules. Now they are there. And where they are there, they are to be observed and obeyed. It is basically a principle. And the New Testament philosophy that Jesus Christ gave in the Sermon on the Mount, which was the prelude, the forerunner, the preview of all of his teachings, was twofold. Number one, God wants you to be happy. Number two, you can be happy not by doing but by being rightly related to God through the only way you can be through Jesus Christ. Now, there are many things that we as Christians have in our lives that keep us from being happy. Worry is perhaps the most prominent. Jesus categorized them and castigated them right along with all the major sins of his day. Worry, lack of faith, lack of trust in God to run and ruin, direct and govern and care for our lives was categorized with envy and backbiting and murders and imulances and variances and seditions and heresies and murders and stealing and all of the rest of them. Someone has said that the greatest and perhaps history will record the only major contributions that this society will have made to history is speed and noise. Well, if that is true, and it may or may not be, I would add one more. Speed, noise, and worry. We are the greatest worriers in all of the generations. We're worried to death. We're afraid of inflation. Ah, but we're far more afraid of depression. We're afraid of war, but we're afraid of peace. Do you know that if a peace treaty would be signed, there would guarantee there would be no more work, no more war ever, that 55 % of this congregation would be out of work tomorrow morning and we'd have a depression that would make the last one look like a Tea Party. We're afraid of the Republicans. We're afraid of the Democrats. We're afraid to bust. We're afraid not to bust. We're afraid of integration. We're afraid of segregation. We're afraid of the right. We're afraid of the left. We're afraid of the new. We're afraid of the old. We're afraid to change. We're afraid not to change. We even have a psychological name for the fear of fear. We've got all of our fears and all of our worries so systematized and categorized that across the epitaph of a dead and dying society, there may be written the words on our tombstone one day that all that could be said of the 19th of the 20th century American was that his life was made up for three categories. Hurry, worry, and bury. And that's just about where most of us are. Even animals. Do you know they have animal psychiatrists today? They surely do. There are neurotic dogs. I went to take my poodle the other day. I mean, we have a poodle too. Heaven help us. And we also have a little toy collie. Well, we went to take the little toy collie in to get a shot. Now get a load of this. All I wanted to do was go to the vet and get the thing shot for rabies. Well, they said, does the patient have an appointment? I said, well, I don't know. I mean, I got my dog here. They said, well, the dog is the patient. I said, well, no, the patient doesn't have an appointment. They said, would you kindly be seated? So I was kindly seated. They asked me to fill out some papers. They wanted to know in my name, where I live, how much I made if I had Blue Cross Blue Health, and was I sick? All I wanted was a rabies shot for this little mutt. Then a few moments later, they came out and said, now, the doctor is with another patient, but he can see you in just a few minutes. Well, I said, thank you very much. We went a little bit farther, and it wasn't long until they gave the patient the shot, and she said, now, will you come back for your next appointment in just two weeks? And she gave me a little card and wrote all that down on there. Well, la -ti -da, isn't that something? I'll tell you, if that's Houston, I'm going to go out in the country here to Spring or Pasadena. I'm going to find me a country vet. I never got so confused in all my life. And do you know they even have dog psychiatrists? We've got neurotic dogs. We've got sick horses. We've got frustrated cows. We really do. And do you know that the poodle, incidentally, is the most susceptible to taking on the characteristics of its owner of any dog? And that's exactly what the dog is. And now they are developing a science by which they may be able to psychoanalyze the parents and the owners and solve their problems more easily by never seeing them just analyzing the dog. Because the dog will be honest. He won't try to cover anything. The dog will lie. And if the dog's a nut, like, man, I mean, the parent, he's just gone. You can't miss. And so you handle all my soul. Where are we going to stop? Teenagers, children, child psychologists are doing a land office business. And I thank God for every one of them. I think that's great. I do think this. I think they ought to be Christians. I can, I find great difficulty recommending a person to talk to somebody who's going to take apart their human nature who does not even know the presence and then the reality of the God who has created human nature. That's kind of like having a lumberman try to overhaul a wristwatch. I believe they need to know Christ. I believe if a man's going to deal in human nature, he'd better make sure he's been, first of all, to the God who has created human nature. For it is God that giveth wisdom. It is God that puts a man together and only God can take a man apart and put him back together again. Confusion, teenagers, dogs, teenagers are frustrated. A 17 -year -old boy jumped off of a building. The poem was not original of him, but he left this. There's little in taking and giving. This was the note. There's little in drinking of wine. This living, oh, this living, was never a province of mine. For hard is the battle and sparse is the gain. For those who live at the top. And art is a form of catharsis and love is a permanent flop. And work is the product of cattle and rest is for the clam and the shell. So I'm thinking of throwing the battle. Would you kindly direct me to hell? And he jumped off of a building and killed himself. Well, what an irony that the same society that could send a man to the moon could create this kind of worry and tension and frustration in a 17 -year -old boy whose life should be at the very crux and zenith and epitome of existence. That's the bloom of life. But when we're 12 and 13 and 14, we want to have makeup and hoes and be old and grow up and become 20 and 25 and 30. And when we're 35 and 40, we wake up and we realize that we've missed life. And so 40 and 50 and 60 -year -old women peroxide their hair and have leotards and long, stringy hair. And they go all through life frantically trying to recaptivate that frustrated youth they never had. When they were young, they were trying to grow up. And they blew all their fuses. They popped all their corks. They busted all their gaskets. And when they were 18 and 20, they woke up and they were jingled and jaded by life. It had passed them by and life was a flop and a disappointment. And they were old at 20. They had worried themselves because of what they were not, what they thought they were missing, into an early grave. They're telling us that there are all kinds of psychosomatic illnesses. Many doctors just sometimes give sugar water and keep us coming back, you know, because we think there's something wrong. They say there are so many illnesses that are mentally caused, many kinds of arthritis and twinges in the spine and stiffness in the joints and many problems, the doctors say, are nothing but the problem of worrying ourselves into the grave. They're all not, but many are. It's not the work, but the worry that makes a man grow old. that numbers the years of his children, ere half the story is told, that weakens their faith in heaven and their wisdom and their faith in God's great plan. It's not the work but the worry that breaks the heart of man. If you're beginning to feel kind of stiff in the joints and prematurely old before your time, you might better slow down and learn to trust God a little bit more and quit worrying yourself into an early grave. I heard about an old boy who went to a doctor, I went to a doctor the other day, he gave me an examination and I said, have you ever had this before? I said, yes sir, he gave me a bill for $46, he said, well you've got it again. Well this old boy went to the same doctor and he went in and asked for an examination, the doctor examined him, talked to him a little bit, they discussed his problem, he said, doctor I've been getting stiff in the joints. Well the doctor said, I want you to drink a whole lot of water every day. He said, but doctor, some of the joints don't serve water. Little humor there. Very little. Ah, but there are so many problems that we cause because we worry. Now you say, preacher, what are you supposed to do about worrying? Well, number one, you ought to re -read every day this passage of scripture that we read. If God cares for you, for the animals and the birds and the flowers, doesn't he care for you? Doesn't he care about what's going to happen tomorrow for you? The Bible tells us that in God's great plan, he is interested in and involved in and cares for the affairs of men. A long time ago I discovered something. There are really only two things in this world to worry about. And every worry you've ever had, every problem you can think of, can be categorized in either of these two categories. Number one, things that you can change. Number two, things that you can't change. Now you give me a problem or a perplexing difficulty that you have, or with which you have ever been confronted, that cannot be placed in either of those two categories. Things you can change or things you can't change. Now let's take it apart a minute. Here are things you can change. If you have the resources, the ability with which to change a problematic situation, why worry yourself sick about it? Why don't you get up and do something about it? If you can change it, change it. Now here's a problem that you can't change. If you can't change it, why worry about it? Change worrying, never change the thing. Jesus said it like this. Which of you, by worrying, by giving mental consideration to it, by draining yourself of all of the ability to think clearly and act wisely and solve your problems, which of you are going to add one hair to your head, or one cubit to your stature, one inch to your height? Which of you are going to change a thing just by worrying about it? Worry never changed a thing. Then, if it's something you can do something about, don't worry about that either. Just get up and do it. So if it has to come in one of those categories, then either one of them have a very, very simple solution. But the solution to both of them does not entail the problem of worry. Worry doesn't change a thing. Again, Jesus Christ tells us over and over and over again that he cares for us. Now you say, preacher, Jesus walked on the water. Jesus worked miracles. He did all of these things. Why doesn't he do these things for me today? Well, that's the kind of business he's in. You know, I started a little list. I have seen so many amazing things happen in the last few weeks. My wife and I have started a little list called Our Miracle List, and we've written down some of the most amazing things God has done. Why, sure, you have problems. Life is not devoid of problems. There is no absence of them. But if you'll quit seeing that glass as half empty and start seeing it as half full, you'll go a long way to solve your problems. I like what Norman Vincent Field said. He said the positive thinker does not refuse to acknowledge the negative. He merely refuses to dwell upon it. You get up in the morning and you look out the window and you say, good morning, Lord, and you'll have a good morning. You get up the morning window and you look out the window in the morning and you say, good Lord, morning, and you'll have a tough time. Paul had something like that in mind. Listen to what he says. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. Now, to be sure, there are problems. But ladies and gentlemen, if you go into the problems that confront you every day with a defeated, pessimistic, worrisome, basic outlook and attitude, you will devoid yourself and denude your personality of those God -given innate resources with which you could have been solving those problems. And all of the physical energies and mental anxieties and worries and all of the power and the mental abilities that you use to worry could have been channeled into solving the problem and you wouldn't have one left to worry about it. You see, worry is not only dishonoring to God and self -destroying. Worry is a robber. Worry is a thief. Worry robs you of two of the most God -given possessions and wonderful possessions in all the world. The ability to think clearly and the ability to act wisely. Now, a lot of my friends over the country just ride off the downtown church. I mean, they say, oh, Bassanio has just ripped them now. I mean, it's just dead. It's gone. There's not a chance. They really do believe that. And they're saying, oh, you've got a downtown parking problem. And it's so far from wherever where people live. That's true. We do have a downtown problem, but it's not parking. Why, sure, it's hard to park downtown. But do you know that you have more vacant lots and vacant parking garages undercover downtown in a downtown church than any church in America? We've got the best parking in America. Let's quit talking about what we don't have majoring on what we do have. Let's think positively about this. Somebody says, oh, it's so far from where people live. Listen, brother, if life gives you a lemon, make it a lemonade. I believe that every supposed liability of this church can in reality be an asset. If you start thinking that way instead and quit convincing yourself that it's no good and it just can't happen. For example, I believe the best time of the year to rent out the Coliseum and have a revival or try to fill up the church and have one for that matter ought to be Christmas. Oh, everybody's so busy. Do you know that the three weeks before Christmas, there will probably be a total of a half a million people downtown a day Christmas shopping? What a chance, what a time to get your men and your teenagers and get organized and get over here at five o 'clock and have a hamburger feeding. Get out on the streets and witness at 630 and bring them in by the car. There are thousands of them all over this downtown. Problem, my foot. Sure, you sit around and mope and go, oh, my, it's terrible we're downtown. But if you open your eyes and see there are more people downtown certain seasons of the year and go after them than any other time of the year, you can do the job. Start thinking positive. Sure, there are problems, but don't dwell on them. See that glass is half full, not half empty. Make every liability an asset. It's always darkest just before the sunrise. But God can bring the sunrise up into your life if you will quit dissipating the God -given ability to think clearly and act wisely and solve your problems on worrying. You wear yourself sick, you can't think about a thing. A young friend of mine named Gene Cagle was the quarterback of the Oklahoma University football team way back in the days when we used to beat Texas. And that was a long time ago, long time ago. So Gene, as a sophomore, had the potential to become an All -American. He's been our youth director up there. He's a member of First Southern Baptist Church in Del City now. I had the privilege of baptizing him a few years, some time back. This hasn't been one of my better weeks. We've been moving. We've been in an apartment and it's been wonderful. But now we're moved. We had to move and fix up the house and it's great. Oh, Aldean's so happy. She's got a utility room and she can, you know, got a new clothes dryer and she can wash and dry the clothes without hanging them out on Sunday and the neighbors won't know she's washing on Sunday. Oh, it's just wonderful. So this has been a week, a moving week to the new house and it's been a little slow. Where was I, by the way? Now you're asleep again, Ralph. I told you to help me. You think I'm kidding, don't you? I don't know where I was. Yeah. You said you fixed to get shot when you get home. That's right. Well, anyway, I'm going blank. Gene Cagle. Thank you. Good. Gene Cagle in the Nebraska game, he had scored three touchdown passes in average a game for four or five games, sophomore year, maybe All -American, great passer. Gene was coming into that last Nebraska game before the end of the season, and he was injured early in the second quarter and was out the rest of the season. Later on, in the early part of the next year, that injury took something out of him, and he never quite had the same thing. He never quite had the stuff. Now Gene Cagle is a sterling Christian. The next year, Bob Wormack, a young quarterback from Ada, also a fine Christian boy, came along and took his job away. Gene could have sat on that bench and worried and felt sorry for himself and pouted himself into nothingness to where he could not have handled the situation, but he believed that all things work for good, that God is still on the throne, and he doesn't make any mistakes. And so instead of worrying about it, he began to praise the Lord and know that God was not going to do anything wrong in his life. A few days later, Wormack himself was injured, and Gene came off of the bench and threw some touchdown passes and won that job back for the rest of the year. Now if he would have been over there pouting and worrying, when the time came for him to get his big break to go back in and play, he would have been so jaded he couldn't have hit anything. But absolute faith in God kept him from worrying about the situation, and kept him up mentally, so that when the time came to solve the problem, he was able to throw the pass and move, and he won that game and became a hero. Worry robs you of the ability to think clearly and act wisely. The Bible says in Romans 8, 28, May all things work together for good to them that love the Lord. Now I've said that worry is not only useless and dissipating, but it's downright sinful on top of that, and it is. Worry says to God, I do not trust you. I cannot believe you. I cannot believe your word. You said I'll take care of the sparrow, I'll take care of the grass, but I don't believe I can trust you to take care of me. You know, back years ago, before we had so many cake mixers, when women used to make cakes from scratch, they put in a little salt, little soda, eggs, butter, chocolate, make a beautiful chocolate cake. God is trying to bake a beautiful cake out of your life, but he must put in all the ingredients. The finished product of a good cake could not occur if you only put in butter and sugar and milk and all the goodies. You've got to put in some salt. You must add in some soda to interact the bad with the good to produce the best. What kind of cake would you have without salt and soda? What kind of a life are you going to have unless God sprinkles in the salt and soda of life? Without battles, you don't have any heroes. Without wars, you don't have any veterans. It is through the wars and the problems and the soda and the salt of life that God interacts the bad with the good to produce the best. And the worrying Christian says to God, I cannot adequately trust you with my life. You don't know what you're doing. You're not handling my life correctly. You may be, I cannot trust you, but that you will give me too much salt and too much soda. A college student came home, freshman, from school his first semester. You know, there's nothing any smarter in the world than a college freshman. Well, he said, Dad, I've been studying biology and I've learned that God made the world all wrong. For example, over here is a watermelon with a little bitty vine. Up here is a tiny acorn with a great big vine. Now that's wrong. That's backward. About that time, a wind came along and blew the acorn off and hit the college student, whoop, right on top of the head. Well, he's rubbed his head a little bit and said, gee, Dad, sure glad it wasn't a watermelon. See, God knows what he's doing. Our Lord knows pretty well how to handle things. The psalmist said, my heart is fixed on thee, O God. A broad meaning of neurosis literally means off -center. It means a little unstable, a little bit off from the norm. If you're going to be a normal, well -adjusted, well -balanced, happily -oriented, successful, victorious, dynamic, happy Christian, you're going to have to get your mind stabilized on God through Jesus Christ. There is no substitute. There is no other way for happiness and victory in life than through Jesus Christ. Two little sparrows were sitting in an orchard one day. They had a conversation that went something like this. Said one sparrow to the other, I should really like to know why these anxious human beings rush about and worry so. Said the sparrow to the other, Friend, I think that it must be that they have no heavenly father. However, such as cares for you and me. We do have a very loving and wise God for our heavenly father. If he is yours through Christ, let him have your life. You'll begin to live. If not, accept him as your savior today and you'll find what life is really all about. Let's stand together and pray, shall we?

Matthew 6:25 Matthew 6 · chapter mention