MAtthew 6:25-34
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Introduction
Introduction
This morning we are going to talk about anxiety. Though we are not going to stay there.
That, in fact, is the problem with anxiety. It starts and ends with itself. We want to talk about it, understand it, probe it, but ultimately we want some rest from it.
We want to talk about it because it can be overwhelming. It is a word and a condition and a feeling that absorbs and overwhelms individuals, groups, and cultures.
It is in our culture right now.
It is in our talk, in our minds, in our stories. Right where it wants it to be.
its so prevalent it’s the lead character in the movie inside out 2 it got its own Hollywood break
Anxiety is a problem but we need to place it appropriately.
Everyone experiences it to some degree. We do not go without it. If you saw inside out 2 you see the effect of anxiety in the teenage mind.
Everyone deals with it to different degrees.
And it depends on experiences,
Brain chemistry
History
Relationships
Trauma
And so on.
Some of us have anxiety and it is manageable. Some of us deal with anxiety and it is less than manageable.
What I don’t want you to hear me say today is that we should never feel anxious.
What I do want you to hear me say today is that anxiety is an opportunity.
We have to understand what it is and what it does and why it is that Jesus Himself can tell us to not be anxious.
God is our certainty in the middle of anxious possibility
God is our certainty in the middle of anxious possibility
Anxiety is a problem but is not a god.
It is complicated but is not omniscient (though we often think it is).
It is not a negative emotion, but we have weaponized it.
If it is to be an opportunity, we have to look at how Jesus sees it.
“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?
How is it that Jesus can make such wild claims. What do you mean we don’t have to be anxious about our life? Now I’m anxious about being anxious about my life.
But Jesus will lead us through this passage, not just telling us not to be anxious but telling us why we don’t have to be anxious.
First let’s look at that word, anxiety. The way this word gets defined as a meditation or a rumination. It is the working and reworking of something in the mind. Going over and over and over it.
Have you ever been to the zoo and seen an animal in a cage that is so stressed out it just paces back and forth, back and forth?
It’s not out for a leisurely stroll, you can see in the way that it moves that it cannot stop, cannot find rest. It is taxing to see because you understand the animal is not at its best in the cage.
That pacing is rumination. That is our mind in anxiety. Pacing the cage, never resting, never stopping. We just go around and around and around. It feels like movement, but we never go anywhere.
This is why Anxiety turns possibilities into certainties. Because it feels like your mind is moving, but you are just turning in circles. The motion you feel feels like forward motion, but you are just turning. What we imagine being possible, through anxiety, became certain.
Anxiety turns your what ifs to it is. What if I don’t go here? What if I don’t make friends? What if I don’t get an A? Or a promotion? Or a spouse?
Instead of remaining what if, they become it is. Not that they become true, but we treat them as such.
anxiety becomes the only voice.
But Jesus calls to us through the anxiety. He is kind enough to ask questions in it. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing?
He is asking us to consider what is better?
Like hearing a voice in a crowded room, we can begin to consider.
Jesus is going to call us to consider how God cares for creation and for His people.
Then we can reevaluate anxiety as opportunity.
God Cares for Creation
God Cares for Creation
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?
But look where He begins. Look at what He is using to compare us to.
Look at the birds.
Look at the flowers.
Jesus is using the concept of Creation, whose being is in God and as well within that creation, beauty (birds and flowers) to call us to consider those things.
Jesus is saying that there are small, tiny things that you and I walk by everyday that God cares for. God remembers them.
This passage reveals the character of God. Not just in the way He treat us. But in the way that He simply is.
Because God is like this, we can live like that. If God is who HE says He is, if He cares in the way HE says He cares, then we can live in trust that He will care for us.
There are any number of verses to look at but lets’ just look at
You cause the grass to grow for the livestock
and plants for man to cultivate,
that he may bring forth food from the earth
and wine to gladden the heart of man,
oil to make his face shine
and bread to strengthen man’s heart.
The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
In them the birds build their nests;
the stork has her home in the fir trees.
The high mountains are for the wild goats;
the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers.
He made the moon to mark the seasons;
the sun knows its time for setting.
You make darkness, and it is night,
when all the beasts of the forest creep about.
The young lions roar for their prey,
seeking their food from God.
When the sun rises, they steal away
and lie down in their dens.
Man goes out to his work
and to his labor until the evening.
O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom have you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
Here is the sea, great and wide,
which teems with creatures innumerable,
living things both small and great.
God cares for and creates all of creation. Everything is held by Him. Even the birds and the flowers. We will hear in a moment the question that will compare Gods creation and humanity but for now, we are just asked to consider Gods workmanship.
We are given the key, the foundation of what allows for any of this to be either true or a reality. It is that God Himself is sufficient. He is gracious. He is complete in Himself. He cares for us. And He is generous and willing.
This is not just the understanding for this passage but for the whole SOTM.
When we understand what God is like, everything we are called into becomes a possibility. In Christ it is probability.
everything Jesus says places us on the track to the kingdom. When we are anxious, we only see a small “I” and a very big world. Jesus wants us, on the search for the kingdom, to consider the bigness and beauty of creation to reset our understanding of self in the world.
Are you not of more value than they?
- Jesus doesn’t just say, believe. He could just say believe.
- But He gives us reason to.
- His kindness is beyond just the call to believe.
- Look at the grace of God in anxiety. He tells us we are more valuable. He starts with showing us God’s effort and perspective.
- God is the One who provides (we need to see this in the treasures in heaven as well)
- And God is the One who cares.
- Before Jesus even gets to instructing us in anxiety, we are told what God does.
- Anxiety often feels like we are in a whirlwind (or cage) and can’t find our way out. Maybe the call is to see just how much exists beyond our own self.
- But that in that, you are cared for.
- Maybe we are called to see an entire world that works and exists outside of our own worries. And God is holding it together.
- Maybe you are anxious about finances
- or the election
- or your family.
-We often want God to alleviate those moments.
- Fix it God! DO something about it!
- But maybe we need to see that God is doing something about everything. maybe the first step is recognizing His activity and presence in Creation all along.
God Cares for His People
God Cares for His People
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?
- We are called to consider something else. What is the utility of anxiety? What work is it doing in your life?
- Does it add an hour to your span of life?
- This is contrasted with the work that God is doing
- Consider anxiety, what kind of work is it doing?
- But then consider God, what kind of work is He doing?
- God cares for the small and temporary things, not just with something, but with beauty.
- Jesus is saying that God pours out His concern and care for His creation.
- But it is meant to show how much He does the same thing for us.
This is not just about how we are valued but even more importantly who it is that values us. The point is not just that we are valued, the point is who values us.
God Himself is concerned with the affairs of humanity
He sees your frustration
And your effort
Your shame and feelings of failure.
Look at Isaiah 43:2
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
We are told to consider the flowers and the birds. But then consider that God cares for us even more.
He holds us up
We are not consumed
We are supported and strengthened by the very hand of God.
The voice of God that whispers in the beginning into our anxiety is now a shout. Because we hear the voice of God who promises to care for us through our worries.
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.
Jesus is not saying there is no such thing as anxiety. He is honest about it. But there is a call to trust God for the sufficiency of today.
See what God does. He takes the small things, the things that we don’t think have. Alot of value or utility in them, and He uses them far beyond our capacity.
Anxiety has taught us to think in circles. That this is who we are and it will not get much better. That our possibilities are certainties. But that is not the case.
God is our certainty. Our possibilities are just that, possibilities. When we feel anxious, we are called on to consider and believe that God is more certain than anything certain we feel.
When you feel anxious, what if instead of turning your possibility into certainty, you turned your possibility toward your One certainty?
That you went to God, every time you felt anxious, and met your possibility with His certainty. Maybe it’s 1000 times a day. But every possibility doesn’t become a certainty but it meets the One who is.
What if anxiety was opportunity? Sure, an opportunity brought with difficulty, but one that reminds you every time of God’s certainty.
I mentioned earlier that anxiety is a ruminating, like a tiger in a cage that cannot settle. It goes round and round and round.
That’s what the word means.
But we are given another option at the end of the passage.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
We are called to seek.
We aren’t just told to knock it off or stop worrying. Again Jesus is redirecting us. We are called to seek. That means to look for something more, something else. To look for or wish after. IT is the call to pursue something more and greater than ourselves.
Jesus invites us not to ruminate on what may be but to pursue what is. TO seek after the kingdom. To live and act in the certainty of God’s work in the world.
We easily live in the opposition of anxiety. HE is moving us toward living in the provision of the Kingdom. A Kingdom where the King Himself cares for us.
This is why Jesus calls us to practice our righteousness. To do the work of the kingdom. To serve and to worship and live generously in the world. In our seminar on peacemaking yesterday we talked about being called into avenues of grace for one another. That We are given a ministry of reconciliation that we are called to live out.
We don’t just wait idly for the kingdom, we act. We find concrete practices of righteousness. This is our seeking
We will get tripped up in anxiety. But it is an opportunity for seeing the One who is Certainty Himself. In every opportunity we can grow in know we have been chosen in the Kingdom by a God who cares for us.
Our role is to choose the kingdom. To in finding God as certainty, saying yes to serving Him in the world, in His world where we are reminded that He cares for Creation and His people. He is our certainty in every possibility.
