Sermon Tone Analysis

8-9~/10-08

Bandwidth:  Simplify

Bandwidth is creating capacity to truly live.

Why is it we live such fast, stressed-out lives?

I want you to consider Jesus’ teaching that there really is another way to live.

We can start fresh every day living from a much freer, less burdensome perspective on life.

I want to begin by giving you a chance to self-diagnose.

Where is your current stress and worry level?

So just assume you’re starting with zero points and I want you to answer these questions.

--If you often worry that you’re not not going to get it all done that day--if you find yourself thinking that often add 10 points to your score.

--If you wake up in the morning usually feeling refreshed, you get to subtract 15 points.

--If you often say to yourself, “I can’t believe what time it is,” add 20 points.

--If you’ve ever tried to bill your doctor for the time you spend in the waiting room, add 20 points.

--If you have to clear out the space in the passenger seat of your car for someone to sit down, add 15.

--If you have a hobby you enjoy, subtract 15 points.

--If your hobby is taping pictures of your boss to a watermelon and throwing it from high places, subtract 50.

That’s a great stress relief.

--If you’ve ever stared at a family member or your roommate threw the tines of a fork and pretended he was in prison, add 25 points.

---When in traffic if you mentally mark cars to see whose lanes wins, or if you often find yourself honking and waving and directing people to warmer climates, and yet you still believe you live a relatively stress-free life, you’re in denial.

So for those of you who actually know your score and are stressed and bothered that there weren’t any points on the last one, relax.

It was a joke, ok?

Our world screams at us:  work harder, stay busier, buy more, do more.

So many of us do live stressed out worried up, moving fast but often we wonder, are we even headed in the right direction?

We have lots of acquaintances in life, but how many truly life-giving relationships do we have?

Maybe, the answer to the life we long for deep within is not faster, higher, more.

Maybe God intended life to be much simpler and easier than we tend to make it.

That’s what I’m discovering the longer I study the teachings of Jesus.

I want you to consider this:  What if God intended your life to be much simpler, much easier than you tend to make it?

What if the answer to alleviating the stress and worry and frustratsions of life is not to try harder or schedule better or move faster, but to simplify--to prioritize from a completely new perspective?

What if all the rules that govern all your ‘have to’s’ in life could change?

What if God’s desire was actually for you to live a worry free, stress-free life with the capacity to actually live fulfilled each day in that day?  That’d be amazing, wouldn’t it?

That would truly be an amazing way to live.

You know what I find, is that things haven’t changed that much in 2000 years.

Yeah, technologically speaking they have, but humanly speaking, they haven’t changed that much.

So we’re going to take a look at a message that Jesus gave on a hillside one day, called the sermon on the Mount.

And, He’s speaking to a thousand people who’ve gathered on this hillside by the sea of Galillee, and they’re stressed and worried just like we are about all the things of life.

And Jesus makes it real simple for them.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.

Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not much more valuable than they?

Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" [Matthew 6:25-27, TNIV]

 

That’s pretty simple, right?

Jesus says, “Don’t worry.”

Be happy.

Remember that song?  “Don’t worry.

Be happy.

Here’s a little song I wrote.

You might want to sing it note for note.”

Is that what Jesus is trying to say here?

Just stop it.

Stop worrying.

Relax.

Don’t worry.

Be happy.

I don’t think so.

Because, if it were that simple, we would just stop it, wouldn’t we?

What Jesus is trying to get us to see is life from a completely knew perspective --a whole new paradigm, a God-centered view of life rather than just our limited human-centered view of life.

That’s the key.

See, until we have a shift in our thinking about what life really is, we can’t just stop worrying or stop stressing.

So, what is life?

And that’s really the rhetorical question that Jesus poses here, because He knows we stress and we worry about life based on certain assumptions of what life is and what’s going to bring life to me.

And Jesus is challenging our most basic assumptions about it--that life primarily comes from the outside in rather than the inside out.

He’s challenging this assumption that life has to start with the physical and then work in.

And, then maybe if we have time we’ll add a little dash of God--a little sprinkle of sprituality to spice things up a bit.

He is challenging our whole assumption that’s how life works.

He’s challenging our whole view of life and God’s place in it.

So He starts with what’s most important physically--food for life and clothing for the body.

No doubt these are the most important physically speaking.

Right?

So what Jesus is doing is like He’s pushing us up to the edge of the cliff and He’s making us look down so that when we back up we can see from a new perspective.

It’s not as bad as we thought, and so He pushes us to the kind of extreme of the things that matter most physically.

Because the truth is most of us will never be at the edge of the cliff where we’re asking, “What will I eat today?

What will I wear?”

We may ask ‘what will I wear?’

But it’s not as in, ‘or I’ll- not- have anything-and-I’ll-be-streaking-around’ sense of what will I wear.

It’s more like ‘I’ve got 10 things and I don’t like any of them what will I wear?”  That’s totally different than what He’s talking about.

Jesus is trying to get us to see that God gave us life-- physical life--so why can’t we trust that He will also give us all the things we need not only to physically survive, but to spiritually thrive as well.

But that’s just Jesus’ point here.

The whole problem that He’s pointing out is that we don’t really see life from God’s perspective.

We don’t really trust that God really is good and really wants to give us life to the full.

And so, as a result we don’t tend to trust Him, and we don’t tend to see from His perspective, and we live our lives stressed and worried because we try to play God and control things, but we can’t.

And so we stress and worry about all these lesser things.

Jesus knows we struggle with that just like those people back then did, and so I imagine what happened is some birds fly over.

And He says, “Let’s just make this real simple.

Look at these birds, would you?

They don’t live stressed out and worried and they don’t even have mortgage insurance.

They don’t even have a good 401k or IRA plan.

And yet, though they aren’t valuable at all to you, they matter to God.

He cares for them.

Every single one of them as long as God wants them to live, they will live and have all they need.”

And then Jesus delivers the punch.

“And you know what?

You’re much more valuable than they are”.

So you don’t need to worry and stress out about all these lesser physical things like when people don’t do what you want them to do.

Or, when you can’t get everything on your To Do list done.

And, besides Jesus says, “it does no good anyway.

Who by worrying can add a single hour to life?”

He says.

Just stop and think about it for a second.

What was that thing that stressed or worried you the most last week?