Anxiety and Provision

One of Henry Ward Beecher’s favorite stories was about a young man who was applying for a job in a New England factory. Asking for the owner, he found himself in the presence of a nervous, fidgety man who looked hopelessly dyspeptic. “The only vacancy here,” he told the applicant, “is a vice-presidency. The man that takes the job must shoulder all my cares.”

“That’s a tough job,” said the applicant. “What’s the salary?”

“I’ll pay you ten thousand a year if you will really take over all my worries.”

“Where is the ten thousand coming from?” asked the applicant, suspiciously.

“That my friend,” replied the owner, “is your first worry.”

Anxiety and worry can paralyze you emotionally and psychologically. Both will steal joy, peace, sleep, and many other things from you.

Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 7557 Epigram on Worry (Causes)

• The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.

—Robert Frost

Of worry, James Merritt says, “ Sometimes it is carved into our bodies by sores that we call ulcers. Sometimes it is etched into our faces by lines we call wrinkles. It may be pictured on our lips by the shape we call a frown. It can be heard in footsteps pacing back and forth across a floor late at night. Sometimes it is muffled by the silence of someone lying in bed staring at the ceiling without being able to go to sleep.”

In today’s section of the Sermon on the Mount, we are going to read about how we should trust God rather than giving worried thought to our needs.

This passage includes practical implications of the preceeding discussion. Jesus lays out a practical implication of what He had said about laying up treasure in heaven instead of on earth and really implications of what He had taught us to pray in the Lord’s prayer passage. I hope you will see the interconnectedness of King Jesus’s teaching and grasp what it means to live as worry free citizens of the kingdom of God.

Let’s read from Matthew chapter 6, verses 25-34.

Matthew 6:25–34 ESV

“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.

PRAY

I. Don't be anxious about your life or your body.

Worried thought - focusing in all the bad that could happen.

- Your Life

- Your food

Food is great. It’s necessary for our bodies to function properly. Notice though that food makes a terrible master. Jesus had just modeled a disciple’s prayer in asking for daily bread. What reason would we have not to believe that God would provide it. Carson points out that it’s an affront to God to constantly worry about how future meals will be provided.

Does not forbid planning or foresight.

Forbids worry and anxiety.

It’s hard to not worry. Easy to say but hard to do in our flesh. Jesus gives us reasons why we should not be worriers.

It’s unnecessary for the children of such a Father. (v. 25b-30)

It is unworthy in the subjects of such a Kingdom. (v.31-33)

It is unfruitful. (v. 34)

You can not add any time by worry. Worry doesn’t earn you anything but ulcers.

II. Trust God to provide for your needs as His children. (v. 26-29)

A. Jesus gives them some illustrations from nature.

- Birds - not fed and cared for by “their” heavenly Father but my “your heavenly Father.” Those who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ are children of the heavenly Father. They are family members of God and have value as those created in His image and re-created through Jesus Christ. God bought us with a great price and therefore we are of infinite worth and value to the Lord. Your Father will take care of you.

Sinclair Ferguson has worded it this way:

Exalting Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount Have Faith in God; He’s on His Throne 6:25-34

Your life is in the hands of your Father. He has designed it. He knows the end of it from the beginning. He plans each step of the way to fulfil his purpose for you and through you. You will have all you need to fulfil that purpose, and when that is accomplished, you will be taken home to be with him. Why worry when he has your life in his hands? Your worry is a sign that you do not adequately know him, or that you do not trust him, or have not yet yielded to him as you ought.

It is only when we want to take our lives out of the Father’s hands and have them under our own control that we find ourselves gripped with anxiety. The secret of freedom from anxiety is freedom from ourselves and abandonment of our own plans. But that spirit emerges in our lives only when our minds are filled with the knowledge that our Father can be trusted implicitly to supply everything we need. (Sermon, 144)

- Lilies

The United States clothing industry is a 12 billion dollar business. According to Real Cost by Emma Johnson the average American spends 1,700 on clothes each year. Johnson says poignantly, “what is significant is whether that money is spent on need or waste. The answer is, largely, waste.”

When I was in Uganda a few years ago I helped at a camp training young people to lead chronological Bible storying Bible study groups. I have many pictures and what you’ll notice is that in a week long camp there were pictures from different days and many of students are wearing the same clothes. One guy, I noticed was wearing a University of Missouri Tigers shirt. I looked at him and said, “Oh, my wife is from there,” meaning the state of Missouri. He had no clue what I was talking about. It was just the shirt that he picked up at whatever roadside clothing shop. He wasn’t really seeming too worried about where his clothing was going to come from.

So back in the days that Jesus walked the earth with the disciples there wasn’t a ton of money to waste. Many of the people owned what they were wearing and that’s about it. Now, you’ve got to love Jesus doing a question and answer time where he not only gives the answers but also asks the questions and then answers them. He points out the lilies who are splendidly clothed. If God is going to take care of this stuff that will be tossed in the fire as fuel won’t He even more so take care of your needs? Absolutely. Something awesome I just saw today in this is that often the grass and plant life was used as fuel for the fire. And who benefitted from fire? The people! So even that which Jesus points to as God having taken care of, the grass growing, are going to be used to also provide something for the people. God even cares for the stuff He uses to help us along so how much more will he absolutely give us what we need. You can trust Him.

He says they are of little faith.

Jesus makes use of this phrase not because they doubted his existence but because they doubted God’s ability to take care of them.

Matthew 8:26 ESV

And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.

Matthew 14:31 ESV

Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Matthew 16:8 ESV

But Jesus, aware of this, said, “O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?

Here’s the thing. Our desire to sit and stew over what may or may not happen is a symptom of a deeper problem in our hearts. Ultimately we are not trusting God, our Heavenly Father to take care of us. You may say that you absolutely trust Him to take care of you but sometimes when His way of taking care of you doesn’t match the way you want to be taken care of we find we start to get anxious and worry.

It’s a symptom of unbelief in our hearts.

George Muller said, “The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith; and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.”

Trust is the key. When we don’t trust God to provide its like saying I trust this chair to hold me up but never sitting in it. Do I really trust it?

Quarles summarizes the teaching well: “A person’s survival depends on divine sovereignty, not human anxiety” (Sermon, 271).

III. Because you see how God takes care of lesser things you can trust Him with your life. (v. 30-32)

- Don't be like the pagans. The Gentiles. Those who did not know the Lord didn’t have a living God to trust to meet their needs. Don’t live like you don’t either. So live like someone who has a heavenly Father who despite our wretched and sinful nature, sent Jesus, the Son of God, God in the flesh to earth. He wrapped Himself in flesh and came as a baby born to a virgin. He lived a human life but was completely sinless and perfect and pure. No evil thoughts, no evil intentions. And then, because sin must be paid for with blood, He willingly gave His life on a criminal’s cross in our place, for our sin. And He died as a perfect sacrifice. He took the wrath of God on Himself. You and I deserve it justly and rightly and yet He took it and in taking our sin on Himself, he gave us His righteousness. His right standing before God is given to us as well. How incredible. Why would we think that a God who would go to such great lengths to provide for our salvation would not also provide us with lunch or socks?

And after He was dead for three days, He rose. He’s alive. That kind of power is the power of our God and King and you aren’t sure if you can trust him to give you pants? It seems silly to us when we put it in that context but it’s exactly what we do.

IV. Seek first (v. 33)

- keep on seeking, constantly be seeking

“Always be closing.” - from Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross.

Always be seeking.

- the kingdom of God

- His righteousness

All of these things will be added to you.

Make the kingdom of God your primary object of desire. When you do, you will find the ability to trust Him to meet your needs. You’ll be focusing on doing His work and seeing Him get the glory and you won’t have as much trouble trusting that He’s going to take care of you because your focus won’t be on yourself but on Him.

Here’s the thing about this: The sermon on the mount has been saying this. In the Beatitudes, we find what a citizen in this kingdom is to be like and what they are to be focused on, giving us little glimpses of the kingdom to come when it comes in it’s fulness in eternity. And Jesus gives what that looks like and goes into how you live like a citizen of the kingdom of God. Then He models how to pray with a focus on God’s holiness and His kingdom and will being done. And when our focus is right and our priorities are rightly ordered we don’t worry about what we are going to eat or wear because we know the one who holds all of these things in His hands and we trust that He alone will provide for us what we need.

And it’s trusting that what He knows I need is better than what I think I need.

V. Tomorrow has its own trouble. Live today worry free in Christ. (v. 34)

In 1931 a missionary named John Vinson was working in North China. An army of bandits swooped down on his village looting, burning, and killing. They took 150 Chinese and Vinson captive. When the government troops pursued, the bandits offered Vinson his freedom if he would write a letter to the commanding officer of the government troops asking him to withdraw.

Vinson said, “Will you let the Chinese prisoners go free?”

“Certainly not,” was the reply.

“Then I refuse to go free,” he said.

That night the bandits tried to flee, taking Vinson with them. Many were killed, and many of the captives escaped. Vinson could not run because of a recent surgery. A little Chinese girl later reported that a bandit pointed a gun at Vinson’s head and said, “I’m going to kill you. Aren’t you afraid?”

As you listen to this story, how do you feel? Have you projected yourself into John Vinson's place in the story? Do you feel some kind of power coming alive in you to respond very calmly and die in a peaceful manner? Here's the point though: you don't have to die right now. This is not being asked of you. It might be tomorrow but it's not today. That trouble is not today's trouble for you. Maybe it will come tomorrow or someday or not at all in that way. The point is that Jesus is not calling you to do what the missionary in this story did. He's not asking you to have the power or serenity to die like this today. The point is to have a trust in God that when tomorrow's trouble comes, whatever that may be, that He will give you what you need.

John Vinson responded by looking up and saying, "No, I am not afraid. If you kill me, I will go straight to God." And he did.

Piper sums it up well:

"Today’s mercies for today’s troubles; tomorrow’s mercies for tomorrow’s troubles. “As your days so shall your strength be” (Deuteronomy 33:25). Don’t be anxious about tomorrow. The troubles and the mercies are appointed day by day."

IV. Application

What does this mean for our lives?

Direction of this teaching.

Don’t stop thinking about the future.

Charles Spurgeon

The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. XXXI First Things First (No. 1,864)

A man will do little by firing off his gun if he has not learned to take aim

Not living haphazardly but with full and complete trust in God for our tomorrow. God can be just as present in your planning as He is in the very day to day.

I.E. My sermon planning...

Doesn’t mean to copy the birds and the lilies.

Refers to excessive care to anxiety and worries about our needs and our future.

Determination of attitude.

I know my Father’s love.

I value my Father’s Kingdom.

I am not going to be a fool.

Determination of actions

Should make me:

Live loose to material things

Properly locate my priorities - Seek first the kingdom, righteousness, the things of God...

Give properly - Because I trust God to provide , I will be obedient and generous.

Invite musicians up

“A pastor had been on a long flight from one place to another. The first warning of the approaching problems came when the sign on the airplane flashed on: “Fasten your seat belts”. Then, after a while, a calm voice said, “We shall not be serving the beverages at this time as we are expecting a little turbulence. Please be sure your seat belt is fastened.”

As he looked around the aircraft, it became obvious that many of the passengers were becoming apprehensive. Later, the voice of the announcer said, “We are so sorry that we are unable to serve the meal at this time. The turbulence is still ahead of us.” And then the storm broke. The ominous cracks of thunder could be heard even above the roar of the engines. Lightning lit up the darkening skies, and within moments that great plane was like a cork tossed around on a celestial ocean. One moment the airplane was lifted on terrific currents of air; the next, it dropped as if it were about to crash. The pastor confessed that he shared the discomfort and fear of those around him. He said, “As I looked around the plane, I could see that nearly all the passengers were upset and alarmed. Some were praying. The future seemed ominous and many were wondering if they would make it through the storm. “Then, I suddenly saw a little girl. Apparently the storm meant nothing to her. She had tucked her feet beneath her as she sat on her seat; she was reading a book and everything within her small world was calm and orderly. “Sometimes she closed her eyes, then she would read again; then she would straighten her legs, but worry and fear were not in her world. When the plane was being buffeted by the terrible storm when it lurched this way and that, as it rose and fell with frightening severity, when all the adults were scared half to death, that marvelous child was completely composed and unafraid.” The minister could hardly believe his eyes. It was not surprising therefore, that when the plane finally reached its destination and all the passengers were hurrying to disembark, our pastor lingered to speak to the girl whom he had watched for such a long time. Having commented about the storm and behavior of the plane, he asked why she had not been afraid. The child replied, “Cause my Daddy’s the pilot, and he’s taking me home.” There are many kinds of storms that buffet us.

Physical, mental, financial, domestic, and many other storms can easily and quickly darken our skies and throw our plane into apparently uncontrollable movement. We have all known such times, and let us be honest and confess, it is much easier to be at rest when our feet are on the ground than when we are being tossed about a darkened sky. Let us remember: Our Father is the Pilot. He is in control and taking us home.