God's Cure for Anxiety

Opening Statement: You have anxiety because you doubt God.

CIT: The source of our anxiety comes from doubting God. In order to beat this anxiety we must have proper priorities and perspective.

Anxiety doubts God. (Matt. 6:25-32)

Anxiety doubts God’s provision (Matt. 6:25)

Anxiety doubts God’s care (Matt. 6:26-31)

Anxiety doubts God’s knowledge (Matt. 6:32)

Proper Priorities beats anxiety (Matt. 6:33)

Our priorities inform our perspective (Matt. 6:34)

Anxiety doubts God (Matt. 6:25-32)

Jesus tells his disciples here to not be anxious about what they will eat or what they will wear, food and clothing. This sounds obvious to us because just about all of us know where our next meal is going to come from and aren’t operating with only one pair of clothes. However, in the 1st century context of this passage, Jesus’ disciples are dealing with just that. They don’t know where their next meal is going to come from, or if they’ll have enough money to buy food, and they don’t have a closet full of clothes that they can wear.

So, to us it may become more obvious that they should be anxious about where their food and clothes are going to come from. In our American materialistic culture we might say that they would be wrong if they were not anxious about their finances if they didn’t know where they would be getting a paycheck each day.

Anxiety doubts God’s provision (Matt. 6:25)

Jesus takes their anxiety though and holds it in front of their face to show them their wrong thinking. He says, “do not be anxious about your life…nor about your body...”

Jesus tells them to not be anxious about their life and body, what they will eat and what they will wear because God has given them life and a body to begin with, and if he has given us a life and a body won’t he then provide the things that sustain our life and body? Therefore, to have any anxiety about what you will eat or what you will wear is to doubt that God can provide for your needs.

Anxiety doubts God’s care (Matt. 6:26-31)

Jesus takes it a step further and teaches his disciples that their anxiety over food and clothing is not only rooted in doubting if God can provide, but it is also rooted in doubting if God even cares about them or their needs.

So, Jesus gives an example from creation to teach his disciples, and us , that God cares deeply about us and our needs.

Jesus points to the birds and shows that they don’t farm because even they trust that God cares for their need of food.

Jesus then points to the grass and flowers to show that they don’t worry about clothes because God has provided beautiful clothing for them because he even cares about grass that is here today and gone tomorrow.

Therefore, if God cares about worthless grass and birds how much more does he care about those who bear his image, those whom he knit together in their mother’s womb.

If we are anxious about things as simple as basic needs then this shows that we doubt that God can provide for our simplest needs or that he even cares about them.

But, let this be your assurance, that, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know that he watches me.”

Anxiety doubts God’s knowledge (Matt. 6:32)

Jesus pushes into this anxiety one last time by showing his disciples that the Gentiles are the ones who are out their worried about food and clothing.

The word there for seek is a very strong word. It has the feeling of longing after something with every thought. Every thought the Gentiles are worried about if they will have food and clothing.

For us, the Gentile is the unbeliever, the non-Christian. The unbeliever is constantly anxious about their simplest needs and wants, every thought is on the things of this world, things that Jesus tells us moth and rust will destroy. They are constantly thinking about them, talking about them, complaining about them, reading articles about them, posting on Facebook about them. Their happiness or unhappiness, their peace or anxiety is hinging on these things. But we, as Christians, are not so. We are not anxious about them because our heavenly Father knows we need them.

So, to have anxiety even about our simplest needs is to doubt God’s ability to provide for us, his care for his creation, and his knowledge of what his creation needs.

Some of you may know this, but also many of you may not. I have an anxiety disorder and have semi frequent panic attacks. And in studying this text I realized that Jesus truly is the great physician because he was able to trace the source of my panic attacks through this text to a “T”. When I have a panic attack it starts with a simple problem, let’s take one that may just be very specific to my life that no one else has ever struggled with, finances. there have been multiple times when I have taken a look at my feeble bank account and see the tidal wave of bills coming I begin to become anxious. I know that when these bills come I ‘m not going to be able to buy groceries to feed my family so I’m anxious because I can’t provide for my family. I then think about how bad of a husband and father I am because I can’t care for my family which makes me even more anxious. then, I begin to think, if only I had known a few months ago when I bought that Gatorade that these bills would be so much, then I would be able to afford groceries. Then, boom. Panic has set in. When the panic sets in I go through this progression again but from a different angle. Why didn’t God provide for me in this moment, maybe it’s because he can’t provide for me. If he can’t provide for me does he even care about me? If he doesn’t care about me does he even know I exist and needs these things?

When I say all that we can all see how illogical that sounds. You may have wanted to scream from your pew, “YES!!! GOD CAN PROVIDE!!! GOD DOES CARE!!! GOD DOES KNOW!!!

That’s what Jesus is doing here. And he gives us the tool that we need to defeat this anxiety every time it rears its ugly head.

Proper Priorities Beat Anxiety (Matt. 6:33)

The tool that Jesus gives us to beat anxiety may not be what you first think. Jesus doesn’t jump to verse 34 and say don’t worry about tomorrow, just live for today. Jesus points us where we need to go first. He says, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”

Let’s break this up into its three parts.

Seek first

The kingdom of God and his righteousness

And all these things will be added to you

Seek first

Jesus uses the same word here for our seeking as he did with the Gentiles, but he takes this strong seeking and makes it even stronger. He says seek first, to have every thought taken captive first by one thing. We are not supposed to be like the Gentiles, or unbelievers, in seeking diligently the things of this world. We are to go above and beyond what they do. We’re called to scratch, claw, fight, and die for one thing, and that is to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.

The Kingdom of God and his righteousness

In my early stages of study I couldn’t wrap my head around this verse. I had such a hard time with answering the question of, “What does it mean to seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness?” This is due to my mistake of separating the two things thinking they are isolated form each other

Follow me here. You cannot be a citizen of the Kingdom of God if you are not righteous, but you cannot be righteous if you are not a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

So, if we are, by God’s grace through faith in Christ, truly citizens of the Kingdom of God we should be concerned with one thing and one things only. And that is righteousness, God’s righteousness in fact. Jesus makes that clear in the previous chapter, he says, “You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And if we are obsessed with being righteous as our heavenly Father is righteous we will be obsessed with being a good citizen of the Kingdom of God. And if we are obsessed with being a good citizen of the Kingdom of God we will be obsessed with being righteous. And so on and so on.

The tool that Jesus is giving us to beat anxiety is replacement. We replace seeking after things of this world, like the unbelievers do, and we seek first the Kingdom of God. How does that beat our anxiety though? Because when we are truly obsessed with being a proper citizen of the Kingdom of God and are truly obsessed with being righteous as God is righteous then we will not even begin to consider if he is able to provide, if he cares, or if he knows. Because all we care about now is him, and that’s exactly where God wants us to be.

Mitch unknowingly gave the perfect illustration for this sermon when he preached last week. He told us that we so often want to turn on the fountain of God’s blessing by our own strength. We grow anxious because we are seeking after as many things as possible to turn on God’s fountain of blessing. We grow anxious because we are seeking first after ways to provide the switch for the fountain, seeking first after ways to turn on the fountain so we can care for our needs, seeking first after ways to turn on the fountain because we know what we need. But God is the one who controls the fountain, and he is telling us here to look to him, seek him first, and he’ll turn on the fountain to supply what we truly need.

And all these things will be added to you

When we seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness we begin to trust that he can and will provide for our needs.

When we seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness we begin to trust that he does care about and for our needs.

And when we seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness we begin to trust that he is the one who truly knows what we need.

Our Priorities inform our perspective (Matt. 6:34)

Once Jesus had taught his disciples that they key to beating anxiety is replacing our worldly priorities with Kingdom priorities he now moves to show us the practical outworking of this prioritizing of the Kingdom.

The practical outworking is this, “Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

The outworking of our prioritizing of the Kingdom of God and his righteousness is that we are not to be anxious about tomorrow, we should focus on today.

This teaching that Jesus gives us here in verse 34 is not unique to the Bible. If you do your research you will see that nearly every world religion, cult, or philosophical system will teach this as the way to beat anxiety. But here’s the thing, this way of beating anxiety is like shooting a water pistol at a forest fire. We can say all day that all you have to do is just not think about the future just focus on what is right now. But if that’s all we have there’s nothing to stop us from thinking about the future, there’s nothing to replace that anxiety.

Verse 33 is what makes verse 34 so powerful. The Kingdom of God and his righteousness is the only way that we can not be anxious for tomorrow and focus on today.

You may be sitting there thinking, “Gabe this is all well and good, and I believe everything your saying, but what happens when something bad happens in the future? What if in the future I lose my job because this pandemic never ends and I can’t provide for my family? What then? Am I just not supposed to think about that?

My answer to you from this passage is this. That when we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness he supplies and fulfills our need of grace for each day. Every single day he gives you the grace to focus on his kingdom and trust that he will provide. So, as DA Carson has said, “If tomorrow does bring new troubles, there will be new grace to meet it.”

I told you a few moments ago that I have an anxiety disorder and struggle with panic attacks and anxious feelings. But I can stand here today and tell you that this passage of Scripture here is not just some philosophical teaching that could theoretically help your anxiety, it beats anxiety to a pulp.

I have seen in my own personal life that when my priorities shift from what I want and what I think I need to who God is and what God is then my anxiety begins to melt away. this doesn’t mean that my brain chemistry has changed over night and I will never have a panic attack again, that’s a product of the fallen world we live in, but what I can tell you is that when anxiety rears its ugly head in your life you have the tools to beat it.