The Cost of Worrying

ME - Worry, what good is it?

Woke up at 2 a.m. after looking at a retirement calculator before bed

Lying in the dark doing mental math: adjusting savings, cutting expenses, projecting market returns

Running the numbers over and over as if thinking harder could change the outcome

That gnawing feeling underneath: if I don't figure this out, nobody will

Feeling like sixty-six-and-a-half-year-old me is depending on right-now me, and I'm already behind

Trying to control something decades away

Worry isn't always dramatic; it finds you in the dark with a calculator in your head and a knot in your stomach

WE

We all know this feeling. 

We worry about making ends meet, about what's in the bank account, about whether we'll have enough. 

And it's not just money. It's the deeper anxiety underneath: We live in a culture that tells us security comes from what we accumulate, what we control, what we build for ourselves. Am I going to be okay? 

And so we white-knuckle our way through life, gripping tightly to the things we think will keep us safe. 

The Rich Fool in the verses just before our passage this morning is the extreme version — but if we're honest, his instinct to hoard and self-secure lives in all of us. 

We trust in ourselves rather than trusting in God, and that misplaced trust produces a life defined by worry.

GOD

1. The Problem Jesus Names (vv. 22-26) — "Do not be anxious"

Jesus says "therefore" connecting back to the Rich Fool. That man's life was demanded of him. He couldn't add a single day. 

So Jesus draws the logical conclusion: if life is in God's hands, not yours, then worry about food and clothing is misplaced. It's not that these things don't matter, it’s that life is more than these things (v. 23).

Notice Jesus isn't addressing laziness here; he's addressing worry. 

And he says something striking: worry doesn't actually work.

You can't add a single cubit, a unit of length, a fun wordplay, to your life by anxious striving (vv. 25-26). 

Worry promises control but delivers nothing.

2. The Father Jesus Reveals (vv. 27-32) — "Your Father knows"

Now Jesus points to evidence. Look at the ravens. They don't sow or reap, yet God feeds them. Look at the lilies. They don't labor or spin, yet Solomon in all his glory wasn't dressed like one of these.

"how much more will he clothe you" (v. 28). This is an argument from lesser to greater. If God lavishes care on birds and wildflowers, things that are here today and gone tomorrow, how much more will he care for you, his image-bearers, people of "much more value" (v. 24)?

The root problem, Jesus says, is not circumstances, it's faith (v. 28, "O you of little faith"). The pagans chase after these things because they don't know the Father. But have a Father who knows what you need (v. 30).you

Then comes verse 32, one of the gospel declarations in Luke: "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." 

Notice every word. 

"Little flock" — we are sheep who need a shepherd, small and vulnerable. 

"Your Father" — not a distant deity, but a dad. 

"Good pleasure" — he's not reluctant; he in this.delights 

"Give" — not sell, not loan, not make you earn. Give. 

"The kingdom" — not just bread and clothes, but , the whole inheritance.everything 

This is the heart of the passage. The kingdom isn't earned by anxious striving. It's a gift from a delighted Father. (Connect to Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 1 — we belong, body and soul, to a faithful Savior. The call to not worry flows from belonging.)

3. The Freedom Jesus Offers (vv. 33-34) — "Seek his kingdom"

Because the Father gives the kingdom, we are freed to live differently. 

Seek his kingdom (v. 31) and the rest will be added. 

Sell possessions, give to the poor, store up treasure in heaven (v. 33). 

This isn't a command to become destitute, but an invitation into a radically different economy. 

When your security is in God, you can hold everything else loosely. You're free to be generous because you're not clinging to stuff for safety anymore.

And "treasure in heaven" doesn't mean treasure you only get after you die. As N.T. Wright puts it, heaven is God's sphere of reality that is even now breaking into our world through the kingdom. To store treasure there is to invest in what God is doing now. The values and priorities of God brought to bear against the greed and anxiety of the world.

Then the diagnostic-and-prescriptive line: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (v. 34). Jesus doesn't just say your heart follows your treasure — he implies you can your heart by moving your treasure. Generosity isn't just the overflow of a changed heart; it's a means by which the heart is changed.move

YOU

The next time you're lying awake at 2 a.m. running the numbers, the real question isn't "How do I fix this?" but "Do I trust my Father?" Worry is almost always a trust question disguised as a math problem.

Take an honest inventory of where your trust actually lives. Is it in the paycheck? The savings account? The retirement plan? The five-year strategy you've mapped out? None of those things are bad; planning is wise, saving is good stewardship, but they make terrible gods. The moment any of them becomes the thing standing between you and panic, it's become more than a tool. It's become your security.

Jesus doesn't just tell us to stop worrying and leave it there.

- Not because God needs your money; he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, but because your heart needs to be loosened from its grip on the things you're clinging to for safety.

"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" it's an invitation. Jesus is saying you can actually move your heart by moving your treasure. You don't have to wait until you feel generous to give. You give, and your heart follows. Put your treasure where you want your heart to go.

Here's the gospel foundation underneath all of it: God is a generous Father who delights to give you the kingdom. This isn't a reluctant God who needs convincing. This is a Father whose good pleasure is your provision. Because that's true, you can stop white-knuckling your way through life and start living with open hands. The indicative fuels the imperative, because he gives, you can let go.delights

WE

Imagine what it would look like if this church if we actually lived this way. Not perfectly, not without struggle, but as a community that is learning together to hold things loosely and trust God deeply. A church where people aren't grasping for more, aren't keeping score, aren't quietly competing over who has what, but instead are marked by generosity, contentment, and a strange kind of peace that doesn't make sense to the world around us.

That kind of community is a witness that the world doesn't have an answer for. You can argue with someone's theology. You can debate someone's doctrine. But it's hard to argue with a group of people who are genuinely free from the anxiety that everyone else is drowning in. When people see a church that gives freely, that doesn't panic when times get tight, that takes care of each other without keeping a ledger — that gets attention. That raises questions. That opens doors for the gospel.

The people around us; our neighbors, our coworkers, the folks we run into at the gas station and the grocery store here in Ellsworth, many of them are buried under worry. Worry about bills, about retirement, about whether they'll have enough. They're chasing security in things that moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. The culture keeps telling them that the answer is more; more money, more savings, more control, and it never delivers. The anxiety just grows.

But we know something they don't. We know a Father whose good pleasure is to give us the kingdom. We have access to a security that no market crash can touch, no layoff can threaten, no recession can erode. And that's not something we keep to ourselves; that's something we get to show. We get to show this community that there is a different way to live. A way where worry is abandoned because we belong to a Father who has figured it out, who holds our future, and who delights to provide.

This isn't about pretending we never struggle. It's about struggling differently. It's about being honest when we're afraid and then pointing each other back to the God who feeds the ravens and clothes the wildflowers. It's about being the kind of church where someone can say "I'm worried" and instead of getting a lecture, they get surrounded by people who say "We know. Us too. But let us remind you who your Father is." That's the mission. That's what it looks like when the kingdom breaks into Ellsworth.