Living a Day at a Time

Matthew 6:19–34 ESV

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. “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? 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? 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.

Scripture: Matthew 6:19-34

Sermon Title: Living a Day at a Time

Pre-Scripture Reading Introduction: The past couple of weeks we have looked at two essential things for Christian discipleship, two essentials for our lives to grow in relationship with God, to allow his Word to filter into our hearts and minds, and to see him revealed more and more. Our first lesson, from Matthew 20, we looked at our orientation—making sure our direction is sound, our sights need to be set on and oriented by God’s kingdom. Last week, we looked at John 1 for how to put the vision into practical terms—we considered that God calls us to not just be fans, but to go all-in as his disciples. We are not just seeking to be seen with Jesus and able to identify him, but in truly following Christ we seek to be transformed by him, and to stay with him.

We hear these things, but then we go home and begin to process them. Hopefully, we start to think about how we can serve more and disciple more, but then maybe we look at our calendars—and wait a minute, the kids have to go here and there.  You have to work at your career job. You have a block set for a committee or board meeting. When your day is done, you want to come home at night, relax, and spend time with your family. You think back to Sunday messages and you wonder, “How can I serve others when I am so worn out?” Maybe you even think, “Pastor, I agree with what you said last week, but it is easy for you—you get paid to study and meet with people and teach them. How am I really supposed to live life and be a disciple?” That’s the question before us this morning, and we want to consider it alongside this passage where we find Jesus teaching crowds of that I believe were typical, everyday, working people.  

Brothers and sisters in Christ, one of the most common desires of people living in developed countries with cutting-edge technology is a desire to go back to simpler times. Most of us are probably grateful for the ability to connect with others more readily, to have the medical technology we do, and the ability to travel easier. Yet with all of these advances, I think many people still admire the simplicity of past generations. Maybe people worked harder and things took a bit longer to do back then, but there is an assumption that their lives were so much better. There are many things that might go into that, but I think a major one is that when things are simpler, there is an assumption that there might be less worry. If that’s true, then part of what’s at the core of people now wanting to go back is their worry over how things are today. 

When we talk about worry, we are talking about fear and anxiety coming from some kind of trouble or distress going on.  Despite what we might think about there being less worry in the old days, we find Jesus in the Middle East 2,000 years ago speaking on that very topic—and it meant the same thing that it does today. These were average, working people that Jesus was teaching, not entirely different in status from us. They were simple people—they walked wherever they needed go, they worked with their hands, but they found it important to learn as well. But again, no matter how romantic we might think of these ancient people and their simple lives without electronics, they too worried about things.

Jesus jumped into the topic of worry without babying them, without sugarcoating his message.  He told them, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat and drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?” This crowd of working class people was focused on everyday things; they were worried about there being food on the table, clothes in their closets and wardrobes, and if we jump down to the final verse, we also see they were worried about tomorrow, the future. 

Jesus went right to the heart of what so many people then and now are worried about: the things we think of for what it means to live life. Our labors are so easily seen as necessary for the sake of supplying our everyday needs. It is important to recognize this, because so often people are tempted to think we are self-sufficient and just need to do whatever it takes to provide for ourselves. Even when times get hard, people are prone to worry rather than to seek help from others. Jesus used imagery to help show that worrying about these kinds of things is unnecessary. Birds, they do not sow or reap or store, they do not do anything, but they can eat and live—“your heavenly Father feeds them.” And lilies, Jesus said, those are blades of grass with beautiful flower petals on top of them—but “they do not labor or spin,” they do not make their own clothes and there days are so fewer than ours, yet God has dressed them more splendidly than the richest and most decorated of rulers.   

A few moments ago, I made that claim that people desire to go back to old, simpler times partially due to thinking they would have less to worry about than they do today. Jesus wanted these people to be less worried, to not think so much about what they had to have and how they themselves would provide for it. But he is not telling them to not worry just as a piece of good advice. If you have your Bibles open, look again at the connecting point between these two sections, around verses 24 and 25. The “therefore” connects back to what Jesus said just before. “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Therefore…do not worry.” Jesus was teaching them that worrying is a symptom of serving another master. 

Do you get what he was saying? Worrying about these things, worrying about the blessings of food and drink that our bodies need and about the blessing of clothes that God gives to cover nakedness, and how we will get them means we are not serving God. Worrying about how we are going to live is an expression that we are not wholeheartedly serving God. Jesus said, you hate one and love the other, be devoted to one and despise the other—if our hearts are not wholeheartedly devoted to God, what does that say? 

If we live life with our minds and routines wrapped so much around making ends meet, making sure we have provided for ourselves, we have helped our kids get a good education—if what we do and how we live our lives is focused on us leading ourselves, then we are serving something or someone else other than God. If your greatest focus is what you can make yourself into and what you can create and produce—then the treasure you are storing up is one that you have created, and it can be eaten, destroyed, or stolen from you. Even things as good as work—hard work, helpful and fruitful work can be an end in itself, rather than seeking to bring glory to God. If you are not growing in your faith and how you express it to others—you’re missing the point. Jesus was not soft with this crowd; he called them and he calls us to check our priorities. Who or what are we serving? 

I hope we can grasp the weightiness of what Jesus told the crowd and what he tells to all of his disciples: do not worry, do not let anxiety lead you to serve another master. At the same time, let’s be clear about what that command does not mean. Jesus wasn’t saying, “Do not care about things that happen.” He was not saying, “Ignore struggles and tragedies, and do not care about those who are hurting.” He wasn’t saying, “You may not be afraid.” Jesus experienced our humanness, and he allows us to show our emotions when we are concerned. “Do not worry,” does not mean we cannot have a pained response to the things we see and encounter in our world that is damaged by sin, even death. There is a difference, though, between worrying which consumes and leads us to seek after things that will not fulfill, and concern. Concern, I’m proposing, is the mindset and lifestyle that is lived expressing greater trust in God than ourselves.

Maybe it seems like I am making too much of this point, but again Jesus pointed out in the images of the birds and the lilies that the heavenly Father feeds, and it is who God clothes. Jesus was instructing and inviting this crowd to serve God. What does it mean to serve him? It means to trust him; to know and to follow-through by bringing all of our concerns to him. Worries get stuck in our minds and they tear us apart because we think we have to deal with them on our own. But Jesus said, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” If what takes up the majority of your time each day frustrates you and leaves you thinking that it must be up to you to solve and fix everything—none of that adds to your life. But if instead of worrying about things, we rather recognize our concerns and bring them before the Creator and Provider, trusting he is able to meet our needs—then we can be sure that God will satisfy. 

Jesus’ message for all who heard and all who now receive his words was don’t seek to store up these earthly things, but it’s not just don’t seek after them, but also do not be ruled by them. Food and clothes are good things, but we must honor that God provides them. It’s easy to pray in the time of blessings, but there may be times in our lives when we find ourselves in troubled circumstances—times of drought and natural disaster, times of financial instability and even poverty. In these times of great need, as well as in times of blessing, we are called to bring our concerns to God. Additionally, maybe in times of plenty, we pray for the concerns of others as well and how God might use us. Wherever you are in life, this is a routine to get into: to present your concerns and requests regularly, so that we never forget that God is the one who has made it possible for us to have what we need. 

I do not think that Jesus’ teaching is meant to be restricted only to diet and fashion, though, to food and drink and clothes. We could stick in any good opportunity, any good blessing from God—even my work as a pastor. If I am preaching simply to meet the financial needs of my wife and I. If I am teaching and speaking to others just because I have been educated. If I am doing these labors without sincerely bringing all concerns to God for him to bless me and others and the work being done—I’m missing the point. If I am not hoping that his grace might be known more and more in what I do and say daily—then I am not being a disciple. If I do things on my own strength, on what I can achieve and obtain, without tending to my salvation or the salvation of others—then I am not serving God whole heartedly. If I live and work and do ministry like that, I will live with worry rather concern. 

If you think back to the question we started with, how am I really supposed to live life and be a disciple? I hope you have seen or maybe are starting to realize that this really cannot be the question. The labor and the life God calls each of us to is not to see discipleship as just a part or a component, it is not just something to cram in when we have time and energy, but all of life is discipleship shaped around how we use our God-given gifts and opportunities to grow and reach out to others. In living life, we bring our concerns to God, the Provider and Sustainer, seeking his wisdom, seeing that we need not stress and get frustrated trying to figure things out on our own.

In locating the difference between worrying and concern Jesus speaks a word about faith. Believing in God will be revealed in where you and others see your treasure. It will be revealed in who you serve with all of your life. Faith will be revealed in how you designate your time, your resources, your gifts, and your concerns-even unto the food you eat and drink and the clothes your wear. At the heart of faith is the question: what is the purpose and the end of your life? Is your goal to live according to a magazine’s advice, to some celebrity’s picture of the good life, to grow crops and livestock with the primary motivation on getting paid and not paying much attention to how it helps others? Or is the purpose of your life to glorify God and to enjoy him and to make him known to all people? Do your convictions, and in turn, how you live daily show others that Jesus our Redeemer is the only one at the center of what drives you—or is he just a part that you try to include when appropriate or convenient. 

When it comes to faith, having multiple is beings that you believe in is incompatible with what God calls us to. It is incredibly easy to get sucked in to thinking that we have it all figured out. When things are going well, we can fall into a trap of not paying attention to God until we think we really need him. I think that might be what was going on with this crowd. Because of their worried living, Jesus described them as people of little faith. Maybe that seems harsh to us that he would rebuke them like that, but the only times we find this word being used by Jesus is with his disciples—even calling Peter a man of little faith when he began to sink after walking on water. Jesus used this comment on their faith to spur them and spur us on that we would not be content with just our routines, but we might see how much God can grow us to trust and lean on him. 

Our God is able and willing to meet every last need that we have; we must not pursue life on our own. There is one need above all others—the need for a Savior, the only one who can give us food and drink that nourish and quench us forever, who clothes us with clothes as white as snow so that no sin can be seen. This man who spoke these words on a mountainside was sacrificed to take upon himself all of the worrying, all of the serving another master that we do. The greatest need we have in life is to be loved unconditionally—that is what it means to be forgiven. The greatest want we have is to know we are part of a plan. Christ willingly fulfills both of those no matter how many people or things we have sought to serve if we will settle to serve and love him. 

When we have faith brothers and sisters, this saving faith, worry can subside. Our wants and our needs come into unity with the only One that can truly provide for them. If you are a bit confused, you do not necessarily need a career change to disciple others, but do look for how God would have you bring glory to him and the knowledge of his work through what you do. We do not need to worry, but he invites us to still bring our concerns to him. It is completely because of who God is, that we have the opportunity to look wholeheartedly and ever only to the greatest master because he never leaves us. He will provide through the lightest and the darkest days of days; even greater, he has added eternal hours to our lives where we will spend our days without any need with him. Live a day at a time, brothers and sisters, seek after the work that God is doing right now. Worry not what will come tomorrow, Amen.