On the Horizon: Faith to Endure: Worry Matthew 6:25-34; 10: /10/2009 Matt Cassidy

Transcription

1 On the Horizon: Faith to Endure: Worry Matthew 6:25-34; 10: /10/2009 Matt Cassidy Happy Mother s Day! That was a lovely song about adopting children and those slides were children who have been adopted by families at Grace or the adults were adopted themselves. Adoption is a wonderful way to express God s love in your life. Right now, we are in a series about hard times and living for the next horizon, having faith to endure. I wanted to let you know that the plan of the series itself was to start with general principles of a faith that endures and then it intensifies as times get more and more difficult. I tell you that to say that next week we are going to talk about the depth of depravity of the life that we are experiencing right now and always, and that this place is not the way it was supposed to be. God will fix it but until then we have a lot of questions that won t get answered. So next week (May 17) is kind of a rough sermon. The week after that, May 24, I really want you to do whatever you can to invite a friend and to make sure you attend as well. We will have a guest, Beverly, who has had some difficult things happen in her life. She works in the intensive care unit in one of the most difficult hospitals in the world in Houston. Not only has she had difficult things in her immediate family but she deals with it all the time. The depth of her understanding of who God is and what He is like and how to make sense out of senseless things you do not want to miss May 24. I tell you that because I want you to consider bringing someone who has had significantly difficult things happen to them. I think she might be able to help. Sometimes people who have experienced difficult things try to avoid church and sometimes they need to be here more than anyone else. I have been looking forward to May 24 because of this guest since January or February. Today, we are going to talk about worry because it makes sense that you would talk about that on Mother s Day. I will play it nice today because it is Mother s Day. We won t talk about really profound things of worry and anxiety because it is Mother s Day, a happy time. The principles apply to just about any time and any situation. I know I found a whole new level of worry when Melinda and I found out we were pregnant. Melinda took me to dinner and we were really poor. We had just purchased a house and we were able to purchase a house because (1) it was cheaper at that time to live in a house than to live in an apartment, and (2) they had a loan program that if you made under a certain amount of money, they had poverty loans. We were able to qualify for being that poor. We made so little that we could get this benefit. I had Faith to Endure: Worry Page 1 of 12

2 just purchased this house and then Melinda takes me to dinner and says I am pregnant. We are going to have a baby! I was in between jobs. Did I forget to tell you that? I just had a temporary job and I didn t know how long it was going to last. We had this 30-year mortgage with my 4-mmonth job. I just looked at her --- and you are supposed to be happy, I know, but I don t do that well if it is not true. We are eating everything on this table and I want that person s left over plate to go. We don t have any money and we could eat their food later. Then when the baby was born, it didn t get any better because everybody came up. Melinda s parents were in town and relatives were excited and I was just sitting there thinking Oh my. Oh my, my. Melinda had an IV bag and they were going to remove it. I said Oh, whoa, she is not done with that. I want her to finish that bag. I paid for that. During the ride home, she was all excited and I was just shaking. It comes with parenting. It is a whole different kind of worry when you have children. If you look in your Bibles, whenever the Bible talks about worry or anxiety, you will see that the answer to that problem is good theology, a greater understanding of God. The better you understand God, the less you worry. The deeper your theology, your conviction about God s strength and God s goodness those two things mostly the rougher the seas you can endure. The nature of God and the love of God is what allows you to live in many respects a worry-free life or one that is limited as to worry. Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 26:6, I want you to look at a passage where Jesus is teaching on worry. It is a premier passage in His teaching. Tone of the Bible Passage I want you to understand that the tone of this might not seem all that appropriate if you are tied in a knot, if you are suffering, birthing an ulcer as we speak because of the things you are enduring. You will hear that Jesus tone doesn t seem to be appropriate for your condition or circumstances. I tell you that because Jesus is not speaking about worry from a hospital bed. He is not in a waiting room in an ICU ward, speaking in that context. This is called the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus is outdoors, covering a number of subjects. Because He is outdoors and He is a great teacher, He grabs props as the subject comes up and says It is kind of like this. He works His way through as Plato or Socrates did and teaches in that manner. Jesus is keeping it light and so I am going to keep it light. You are going to hear the levity of His conversation, not because of where you are but because of where He is. We are going to do that because that is what He does and it is Mother s Day. Faith to Endure: Worry Page 2 of 12

3 I will try to apply his principles to parenting and to getting a job or keeping a job. But these principles apply to every context, I believe. Worry Defined In Matthew 6:25-34, six times Jesus uses the word worry. In all of those times, you need to understand this because it makes the understanding of worry more vivid. The word worry itself in the original language means to be double minded, to be split or divided in your understanding. The purpose of worry, if it could be animated, would be to cause a riot in your mind and in your soul, to be off balance, to not know where your footing is, to be confused about who is in charge and what they are like. A great picture of what it means to be double minded that many of you might know is the story of Peter out walking on water when Jesus calls him out. Peter is doing quite well when he is focused. To be a person of faith is to be focused on the nature of God, His power, and the goodness of God, His loving kindness. That happens with Peter. Then he becomes double minded. He is no longer singularly focused on Jesus; he is also thinking of the storm. It becomes quite literally sink or walk. Are you going to focus on Jesus, then you can walk. If you get double minded and think about the storm, you will sink and drown. That is what it means to be double minded. Overarching Theme of the Passage Matthew 6:25 In an overarching verse, Matthew 6:25, Jesus says Quit worrying about things of life like food or drink because life is so much more important than food or drink. You are going to see comparative or priority statements throughout this entire section. You are going to see that some things are far more important than others. In these first verses, Jesus says that life is more important than food or drink. Come on. Then He says, your body is more beautiful and more important than fashion, the things you put on it to cover it. So come on. Let s think about the important things. Matthew 6:25 Therefore I tell you, do not worry [don t be double minded] 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? How consumed are you and I about where we live, what we eat, or what we wear? He says, you are alive. Your body is a miracle. Faith to Endure: Worry Page 3 of 12

4 A lot of times, Jesus will appeal to you and I to have the faith of a child and I think there is a lot of that in this whole section, in this verse as well. Children get this. When they are little, they don t care so much about what they are eating or drinking or wearing. They love life and they love to use their bodies. The little house I mentioned earlier was 1500 square feet. We were able to save our pennies and now that we had three children, we wanted something a little bigger. We moved into this beautiful place where we have lived for 13 years. It has 2100 square feet we picked up 600 square feet. It was bigger than we could ever have imagined we would need. Even when we moved into this place, it was an upgrade in quality too. The reason I am telling you that is because right when we moved into this place which had deep carpet that we could never replace, we just said If anything breaks, we are devaluating this house. We are going to wear this house down. The drawers had metal side rails on them and I would just open them and close them. Look at these double-paned windows. I still can t believe we live there. Right about the time we finished unpacking everything and Melinda and I were celebrating that we didn t ever have to move again, we moved to Boston for just one semester so that I could work as an assistant to one of the professors of a seminary there. Because I was just an assistant to the professor, we lived in one of the dorms that had not yet been renovated. So we went from 2100 square feet with three kids, 1 3 and 5 years old, to a 625 square foot apartment that was carpeted with indoor-outdoor stuff. The furniture looked like picnic furniture or that 1970 s wrought iron metal stuff. The foam on the coach had worn all the way down to about that thick. It was two bedrooms and one bath. The kids room had a bunk bed and this other bed that was rickety. The master bedroom had a bed with a hole in the middle of it. Melinda, believe it or not, bought this full size foosball table at some garage sale for $5. So we had 625 square feet plus a foosball table. That is another story all together. When we got to this apartment, we pulled up and thought Oh goodness gracious. We just came out of this dream house experience. The kids had barely broken the place in. And now we are living in this apartment. -- When we opened the door, the kids went running in, jumping up and down. -- Look at this place! This is incredible! I can t believe we get to live here, mom and dad! What is this carpet? I ve never seen carpet like this before. They don t make it anymore, baby; it is asbestos. They were jumping on the beds and then they made a fort out of the foosball table. Melinda and I were thinking - They like life. We were worried about where we were going to live and what we were going to eat. They don t care. They didn t care about fashion. We didn t have coats warm enough for Boston so we went down to the thrift store for the seminary. The kids were saying Golly, the coats are already broken in. I won t get in trouble for ripping the elbows out. Faith to Endure: Worry Page 4 of 12

5 Jesus is saying this. Life is more important than food or drink. And your body is more important than clothes. Come on. Really. That is the theme of the whole thing. Now He will break it down. I want you to know that whenever the Bible appeals to animals or less than animals to teach you a lesson, it is supposed to be kind of a humorous jab. That is why I said it is a light-hearted sermon by Jesus. He is kind of making fun of us. Like in Proverbs, it says Hey, lazy dude, look at the ants. They don t even have a brain and they know that hard work pays off. You could learn something from the ant, sluggard. Matthew 6:26-27 Food and Drink So you see how He is kind of punching you a little bit. In this section, see what He says in verse 26. Matthew 6:26 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? How big is the bird s brain? About the size of a pin? That is the essence of worrying right there. Who is in charge? What Jesus is appealing to is that your theology is the most important thing about you. If you have shallow or wrong understanding of who God is, His power, and His love, you are going to be a nervous wreck. You are going to think that you should be in charge. You are going to want to control everything around you. Jesus is appealing to this. Look at your heavenly Father. He is providing for birds and He cares more about you than birds. Think like a bird. Just do like a bird. A bird doesn t get up and have to plant the field. He doesn t have to harvest the field. He isn t building big silos to hold birdseed in. What does a bird do? By the way, the bird is not passive, just sitting there with his mouth open. He just does what birds do. He goes and gets a day s worth of food and eats it. That is pretty simple in bird thinking. Jesus says Think like a bird and be like a bird. Just do what you do. The question you should ask in the context of worrying is this What do I do? And I ll let God do what He does. In parenting, especially when you are getting started in this, you think Who is in charge? You are in charge. You will make sure that child is never in danger and never goes without and is protected in every context. The evolution of parenting is that you start with that and then it gets more intense because you can t do this because playing God is a very difficult thing to do, physically and emotionally. Then you snap. Something happens and you realize This kid is not safe with me either. Then there is a decision point. Are you going to just try harder or are you going to give up trying to be God? If you give up trying Faith to Endure: Worry Page 5 of 12

6 to be God then you say What do I do? All you have to do is be like the bird, play the parent part and let God do what He does. Have you ever noticed how parents of multiple children change in their parenting style? The first born, they are consumed with control. With the third born, - Look, you eat that quarter and it is coming out of your allowance. You get a quarter a week and you want to chew it, that is fine. It is not because the parents are losing their love for the children. It is because they are losing their need to control. They are becoming more self-aware. They realize early on that You, kid, are not safe with me. You are only safe with God. Somewhere along the line, the parents say What can I do? What does God do? They take responsibility for being a good parent but they don t take responsibility for things that only God does and can do. So stop playing God and just play the good parent. In getting or keeping a job, if you are looking at every possible reason to be laid out, if you are working every contingency, a couple of things will happen. One, you will probably become very angry. That also happens with parents. They become angry and annoyed. The other thing that happens, especially in employment situations, is you start playing political games. You start hedging bets. You start saying whatever it takes to keep your job. Then you have a very difficult time living with yourself, hopefully. If you do that over a prolonged period of time, you will sear your conscience and you won t know right from wrong anymore. It will all be about keeping your job. In today s culture, big businesses just let whole divisions go not because of a person s worth or merit but because they have to cut costs. So you will get more consumed because it is your job to keep the job. Or, you can just give up and say I just have to do what birds do. Ask the question. What do I do? Here is what you can do. You work hard. You are a team player. That is what God wants you to do at work. Be ethical, be a team player, all those sorts of things he spills out in Proverbs and throughout the Bible. You work hard and be a team player and let God run the universe because He is good and He is strong. Matthew 6:27 Value of Worrying Jesus with His tongue firmly planted in his cheek in the next verse says So, how is that worry working, you being God and all? How is that working? Matthew 6:27 Who of you by worrying (being double minded) can add a single hour to his life? Matthew 6: Clothing Let s start talking about clothing then. Let s move on to that. Faith to Endure: Worry Page 6 of 12

7 Again, we started with birds in the air, not so big brained, and now He is moving on to flowers. You can learn something from flowers. Matthew 6:28-30 And why do you worry (double minded) about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. (They just do what flowers do.) Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? See how playful He is. Can you just do what the flower does? Do you think a flower is spinning and toiling? Does the flower say Now, what is that word again? Photosynthesis? What do I do again today? The flower does what a flower does. The issue is this when it comes to worrying. Who is in charge? God s answer to that through the teaching of Jesus is this. God is powerful and He is loving. He ought to be the one in charge, o ye of little faith. So you just think like a flower and you do just like a flower. That is all that God asks you to do. He is just asking you to be a person and that is not not a sovereign. You ask the question What do I do? And what does God do? In parenting, you try all the control you want and then you have to let go. Your children are not safe with you and you cannot protect them; you can t really provide for them. So, what do you do? What is the answer to What do I do? I would say, what I have found lately is that common sense parenting isn t common anymore. If you don t know what to do, the answer is to get involved in some church that helps you to know what the big deals are and what the little deals are -- how to raise a child in a way that glorifies God and helps them live a great life. Can you do that? That doesn t sound like much. Can you go to a great church and get plugged in and hang around people ten years older than you? You can do that. Can you be teachable and listen? You can do that. You can t do much more. It takes a church to raise a child. What about work? How do you get a job these days? Can you do everything? Can you manage to send out resumes and all that sort of thing and make sure everybody gets what they need in the big grand scheme of things? I would say no. I would say that it takes a church to get a job. The ministry that got started last Monday, the Career Transition Ministry, is a fabulous thing. We invited a couple of friends and we will invite a couple more this week. They loved it because when people walk in they realize I just have to do what I have to do. That is it. Somebody is there to help me. We have great people in there to coach you in how to write a resume, how to send it out and then more importantly is soul care how to manage your worries when you are scared. These people speak things Faith to Endure: Worry Page 7 of 12

8 into your life about God s greatness and about God s love for you. He cares more about you than He cares for flowers and have you seen the way they get dressed? A flower is better dressed than Solomon on the day of his coronation. God wants you to have a job. If you have people praying for you, then when that funny and mysterious call comes form who knows where, you hang up and say that was a God thing. I m good but I m not that good. I never would be able to get that guy to call me or that woman to invite me to an interview. Matthew 6:31-32 Displays Lack of Faith to Worry It is kind of silly. Watch how this happens. Jesus is being playful here. You could learn a lot if you just watch the birds. You could learn some if you look at the flowers. Then He goes even further and says You guys pray like pagans. Matthew 6:31, 32 So do not worry Make up your mind about who you will trust. saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or What shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Do you know how pagans pray? They don t pray or they don t pray much. When they do pray, by definition they don t know about the nature of God s power. They don t know about the nature of God s love. That is why Jesus says -- God knows you need these things. He wants you to have them. So when you are less than a bird and less than a flower and you are all the way down here like a pagan, you are either not praying or praying to a wimpy god. No wonder you are so nervous and worried. The reason I have a smirk on my face is because I prayed like a pagan not long ago. I was so twisted up that I was getting an ulcer, literally. I had to see a doctor about it. I couldn t figure out what was going on. The reason was that I was looking at every possible contingency of what might happen in my life, playing it out to the last degree, and it was crushing me. So I went to some friends of mine and they said You pray like a pagan. You don t pray much and when you do, you act like He won t answer or He doesn t care. What do you want to pray? I said, Look, here is what I want to pray A or B. Just A or B. They said, Let s pray A or B. Before I could say B, God said B. I just kept praying. Well, you know, God, I am thinking A or B. B. Well, I don t know what I would do with all these other options. All I can live with is A or B. B. B rang my doorbell. Hi, I am B and I have a bow on my head. God answered your prayer. Faith to Endure: Worry Page 8 of 12

9 I was still arguing with God. I was still nervous after B showed up. It was so funny because I was being like a pagan. I didn t pray much. When I did pray, I didn t expect much to happen because I didn t think He was all that strong and I didn t think He cared. Matthew 6:33 & Matthew 10:28-31 Application #1 So what is the solution if you are dumber than a bird and less insightful than a flower or maybe you find yourself in this pagan category? Jesus says this. There are two Jesus applications. Here is how you get over worry. Matthew 6:33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. What does that mean to seek first the kingdom of God? I would say it means a couple of things. First it means that you are going to pursue God s kingdom first and foremost. No matter what happens, you are going to be God s man or God s woman. You cannot control outcomes for the most part. You can control your heart. You pray: God, I want You to enjoy the way I play out this scenario. I want You to watch and be glorified or be proud of the way I conduct myself. No matter what happens in the next week or the next six months or next year, I want to pursue your kingdom. I want your presence and my dependence on you to be obvious in the way I live my life. I want that more than anything else. No matter what happens, I want to please You. That is one way that can be interpreted. I am going to make You, God, proud. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Another way it can be applied is to think much bigger. This applies when we are not talking about food and clothing anymore. It gets deeper later on in Matthew 10 when Jesus is talking about worrying and then it is not about food and clothing but about life and death. Sometimes seeking first the kingdom of God is to say Look at how big the kingdom of God is and all that God reigns over and look at how long He reigns. So it is an appeal to the vastness of the soul, that you will live for eternity and in 10,000 years from now when God is still king, Christ still rules all of creation, and you are there with Him and the people who serve Him. After every knee has been bowed and every tongue has confessed that He is Lord, after all the cleaning up and the injustices reconciled, He is there. That is why in Matthew 10, Jesus says this about life and death. Matthew 10:28-31 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will Faith to Endure: Worry Page 9 of 12

10 of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Here again, Jesus is saying Look, poor people get two doves for a penny. Today, some sparrow in South Africa, or outside Zimbabwe fell out of a tree and died. God knew that and He allowed it to happen. The passage is not saying that God only cares about big stuff. It is saying that God cares about everything. God cared about that sparrow who died this morning. Everything is little to Him; there is no big stuff. So Jesus is saying, like that old hymn My eye is on the sparrow. If He is watching the sparrow, I know that He is watching me. The first application that Jesus has is that you cannot be double minded about this. You seek first the kingdom of God and you won t worry so much any more. Matthew 10:34 Application #2 The second application is in v. 34: Matthew 10:34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Don t worry; just focus on your heavenly Father. What this is appealing to is that you don t know what is around the next bend so just worry about this one. Calvin Coolidge said: If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure 9 will run into the ditch before they reach you. Jesus is saying that you are worrying about stuff that won t happen. A wise person who has lived long and is mature knows which one of those 10 troubles will get to you. You ought to hang around wise people who have been following God for a long time. Let me take a time out for a minute. Why don t you decide to do that today? Seek first the kingdom of God. Let s say you don t do that much or you don t do it at all. How about today? Why don t you start today and get involved in a great church like ours or one like ours and say Worry is killing me. How does that work? It doesn t. How about you making a decision today, Mother s Day 2009 that you will pursue God more than anything else, instead of anything else. Don t worry about tomorrow. Just worry about today. If you focus on the nature of God, His strength, and the nature of God, His love, just for the moment, that principle about not worrying about tomorrow can actually be backed up into moment by Faith to Endure: Worry Page 10 of 12

11 moment. The more traumatic the event that you have experienced, the more grief you suffered, the more sorrow that is in your soul, the more things you have to worry about, the more you have to back up the truck and just worry about what is imminent. Let me put it this way. If you lost a ton of money or you lost any money that you had and now you have to save for retirement and you are worried about that that you lost your retirement and you have 20 years, God is saying Why are you worried about 20 years from now? Just save for today. Do what a bird would do. Do what a flower would do. That is not so bad. But when life gets harder and you are trying to figure out how to get through the week, you have to just think about that moment. So, it has been 17 days and 13 hours since you got a divorce and you start getting all wound up about how you can afford tuition for the kids next fall. Jesus would say Next fall? Next fall has plenty of worries. Back it up just today. He is strong and He is good. All you have to do is carpool today. It has been 37 minutes and 27 seconds since you had your last flashback of someone you lost and you really loved. Now you are laying in bed thinking I can t go outside. I can t go outside. God says Back it up. Don t worry about outside. You just get dressed. You can get dressed, right? Birds can get dressed. You just need to get dressed. Flowers can get out of bed; you can get out of bed. You get out of bed and you say I can t go outside. I can t go outside. Yeah, I know. That is okay. How about you eat? Birds eat. What do I have to do? I have to eat. I can t make a meal. Cereal you can do that. Milk, you have that. A bowl and a spoon. You can do that. You can do cereal. Then after the cereal, maybe you can go outside. Some of you might have been there. It gets that way. Jesus says Let s just back up. The question in - What can I do? You do that. You let God do everything else and you just do that. That is all He wants you to do. Just be the bird; just be the flower. You be the human being and let God be God. Jesus wants you to know this about worry. 1. You can t handle much so don t. 2. God can handle everything. He is strong and He is good. You stay focused on His strength and His goodness and you won t have much to worry about. You do that. 3. Don t worry about your life, about what you are going to eat or what you are going to drink. Life is more important than that. Don t worry about what you are going to put on your body. Your body is more important than the clothing around you. Look at the birds of the air. They don t plant. They don t harvest. They don t store things. Yet God provides for them every single day. You are worth more than a bird. Faith to Endure: Worry Page 11 of 12

12 4. How is that worry working for you? Why do you worry about what you are going to wear? You could go outside and look at a bluebonnet. Aren t bluebonnets better dressed than any man who has ever been dressed in the history of the world? The bluebonnet doesn t fret or toil about its blue-ness. So don t worry about what you are going to eat or what you are going to drink or what you are going to wear. 5. Quit praying like a pagan prays. You just do this. No more double mindedness. You seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these other things will be added to you. 6. Don t you worry about tomorrow; tomorrow has enough worries of its own. God is good. God is great. Let s thank Him for His food that is what He is saying. We have a big God and He loves us. Remember? Dear heavenly Father, I am glad that you use a sense of humor at times to make fun of our loss of bearing and that You are a great God who created everything with a song. You care about us more than you care about some birds and you provide for them. God, let us have a faith that reflects an understanding of your splendor, of your goodness, of your greatness. Let us be a people that live for the kingdom, that we live for today, this moment, to do your will, to please you. Let us be that people. In Jesus name. Amen Faith to Endure: Worry Page 12 of 12