Jesus Has a Question for You 3 Text: Matt. 6:25-34 Valley Community Baptist Church Jan. 19/20, 2019 Avon, CT Pastor Jay Abramson Why Are You Anxious? There s a lot of tension and uncertainty in our world today. Have you noticed? Britain voted to withdraw from the European Union but now they can t decide how. There s so much volatility in our stock market that funds where people just store cash are at record highs. And there s so much tension between the Congress and the President that our government has been shut down for a month! All this tension is having a very negative impact on people. In fact, experts now say that anxiety has overtaken depression as the most common reason people seek out a counselor. In its annual survey of students, the American College Health Association found a significant increase of undergraduates reporting overwhelming anxiety. In 1985, only 18% of incoming freshman at U.C.L.A. said they felt overwhelmed by all they had to do. By 2010 that rose to 29%. By 2017 it was 62%. 1 An article in the New York Times says, Americans can make a pretty strong case that they are gold medalists in the Anxiety Olympics. 2 In our Scripture today, Jesus asks what some would call a naïve question: Why are you anxious? I mean, isn t it obvious why we re all anxious and one in five Americans are taking medication to deal with it? Well actually, it s apparently not that obvious to Jesus since He DID ask the question. So, let s begin with a psychological evaluation of Jesus, just in case there might be something wrong with Him for being so calm. In other words I. What s Jesus Diagnosis? First of all, Jesus asked this question early in His ministry career, so is it possible that, to that point in His life, He d had no anxiety? Well, let s line it out. Since He was a teenager, he had been the primary provider for His family, which according to Mark 6:3 included His mom and at least six siblings. This impoverished Him, by the way, since at 33 He died penniless. Secondly, Jesus was hated during His entire ministry career. Hated! We re all aware of the power of social media for good, like the times it s been used to raise money for people to pay for a needed surgery. But it can also be used for incredible evil. Gigi Hadid is modeling s It Girl right now. By her own admission, however, most of the time she s a nervous wreck. She says, I always get made fun of on social media because my voice shakes. It shakes because of my anxiety. I feel almost suffocated by the world and the world s opinions. 3 Well, Gigi, Jesus knows what you re talking about. Powerful people in His day planned and eventually accomplished having Him killed. And thirdly, Satan himself not only tempted Jesus but constantly harassed Him through his demons and human allies. So, we shouldn t be thinking that Jesus didn t know about stress. In fact, if you measured the stress level in Jesus last year of ministry by the Holmes-Rahe Stress Test, He would be in the highest category which means He had an 80% chance of becoming either physically ill or depressed. And as we saw in the Garden of Gethsemane two weeks ago, Jesus WAS showing the symptoms of extreme anxiety as He sweat drops of blood. So, when Jesus asks, why are you anxious?, it s not because He s clueless. He s not delusional. He s perfectly normal AND did Himself have moments of despair and extreme anxiety. Which means that His reason for asking us this question must have a different motivation. And to discover that, we need to examine 1
II. How Did Jesus Deal with Stress? So, we ve documented the stress in Jesus life. Now, we also need to document how He dealt with it. Jesus greatest battle with stress (and anxiety) was in the Garden. Let s begin there with our examination of how He dealt with it. The first thing to notice is that Jesus DID deal with it. He didn t try to avoid it, run from it, or numb it with chemicals, or surrender to it. He confronted it. He acknowledged it as a battle and went to war against it. And it was a battle in which He was wounded, no question about it! Matt. 26:39 says: And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed It was in this battle in the garden where Jesus first shed blood, not on the cross. He didn t give in to anxiety and fear. He fought it. But long battles with anxiety can lead to depression. Depression can be especially immobilizing, but it too must be fought. Dr. Ed Welch describes it this way: Here is the problem. Most people do things because they feel like doing them. They get up in the morning because they feel like going to work, or they feel like avoiding the boss s questions if they don t show up or they feel like avoiding poverty. We are more feeling driven than we think. In depression, you don t feel. (Or, whatever you do feel isn t going to motivate you to do anything profitable. ) How can feeling-driven people set goals, have purpose, or get motivated when they don t feel? Initially, you will have to learn another way to live. In depression, the new way of living is to believe and act on what God says rather than feel what God says. It is living by faith. In... a debate between what your feelings say and what Scripture says, Scripture wins. Depression is hard. It doesn t leave without a fight. But there are good reasons to enter into the fight. Changes are guaranteed. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion (Phil. 1:6) Do you believe that? Think about it.... 4 First, Jesus fought His anxiety in the Garden. Secondly, He enlisted others to fight with Him. In Jesus case, the disciples did NOT join the fight. We talked about this a few weeks ago. I believe that made Jesus fight all the more difficult. Why do we need others to fight with us and how can they help? We need others help because the enemy s primary attack is against our thoughts. He s the deceiver, remember? Deception primarily is an attack on what you think and perceive. Others can help you resist him by helping you to think clearly. Dr. Welch says that the main road out of anxiety and depression is the road of trust in God rather than trust in self. It s helpful if we even write this down as a purpose statement. Then, Dr. Welch says this: [After] you develop a clear statement of purpose, you should have someone help you refine it, remind you of it, and read it to you. At that point, your job will be to listen. You have been listening to your own thoughts, but now you must listen to what God says in His Word and through people. 5 This new way of thinking is what Jesus is prescribing in Matt. 6. Do you see that? To deal with your anxiety, Jesus tells you to change your thinking 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 2
sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matt. 6:25, 26) Jesus is giving you new thoughts. He s confident that new thinking will enable you to fight anxiety successfully. He wants you to focus your thinking on His principle of that which has more value. Now, isn t this the same truth principle He was teaching last week concerning our souls? It is! He lists here the kinds of thoughts we get anxious about: food, physical health, clothing. Then He says, What s of greater value, food, health, clothing or YOU? And this is exactly the lie that Satan tries to plant in your brain, that YOU are NOT more valuable than food, health, or clothes. In fact, Satan tries to convince you that EVERYTHING and EVERYONE is more valuable than you. Christian counselor, Dr. David Powlison, worked with a woman we ll call Mara who was very anxious and depressed. She described the home she grew up in this way: Mara: In the home where I grew up, I felt I was never good enough for my parents. I could never meet all their expectations. Somehow everything was always my fault. I think that s what the guilt feelings were about. Dr. Powlison: Was there a behavior component too? What was the effect on your relationships with other people? Mara: I think the main impact that it had was that I was very limited in my relationships. Limited because I was focused on myself on surviving and on trying to get out of the depression This is one of the problems with depression it is very self-centered. 6 And what evidence that He can help does Jesus give people who are anxious? He tells them how valuable they are! They re worried about food and health and clothes and Jesus says, Are you not of more value than they? Then, to prove His point He gives two examples from Creation birds and flowers. Did you know that there are five hundred million hungry birds flying around in the world every day? And you might see birds killed by predators or pollution, but you don t see birds dying from hunger, do you? And when it comes to clothing, who s better dressed than lilies? How does Jesus put it?... 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. (Matt. 6:28b, 29) So, why is it that there are no food lines for birds or used clothing barrels for lilies? Because God feeds and clothes them, which means that He cares for them and places a high value on their being so arrayed and well fed. So, what s Jesus point with all this? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?...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? (Matt. 6:27, 30) Do you see the shift in thinking that Jesus is prescribing? Jesus isn t saying that food, health, and clothing aren t important. He s saying, I ve got that covered! You don t have to get all tied up in knots about it. I ll see that you have what you need. That s why He says, O you of little faith. Do you trust that He ll really have you covered in those areas? They ll be covered not because you worry more but because He loves you more. Often, people who have little in this world worry less than those who have much more. Bruce Wilkinson in his book, Beyond Jabez, tells of an old African woman in Swaziland, Africa. Although she lived in a tiny mud hut, she had taken on the responsibility of caring for 56 orphans. Wilkinson met this woman on a trip to Swaziland with a group of volunteers who came 3
upon her hut quite by accident on the final day of their time there. The group had come with the idea of bringing seedlings to plant gardens. When the group happened on this woman s hut, they noticed that all around there were patches of dirt dug up like small gardens, except none of them had any plants. When they asked the woman about it, she said, Yes, I asked the children to do that yesterday. But they said, Why should we do it when we have no seeds or money to buy seeds? I told them, Last night I asked God to send someone to plant gardens for us. We must be ready for them when they come. 7 God sent the volunteers to the very place where one of his servants, rather than worry, chose to pray and expected a loving God to answer. Do you have that level of faith? Which brings us to III. Jesus Defense Against Anxiety In verses 32-34, Jesus says: 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. (Matt. 6:32, 33) Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matt. 6:34) Let s notice the truth of this last verse. Basically, Jesus is saying, Hey, don t borrow trouble from tomorrow. We ve got enough to deal with today! I can almost see a bit of a smile as He says that! Before this though, in verse 33, we find the real gem: But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matt. 6:33) In verse 32 Jesus makes it clear that He s not saying, Ignore the fact that you re hungry, sick or naked! Just set your mind on spiritual things and ignore these physical trivialities. No, no, He s not saying that! He s saying the opposite of that. He says plainly, Your heavenly Father KNOWS that you need food, shelter, clothing, and health. Just don t make those things your highest priority! Make the Father s kingdom and His way of doing things your highest priority and He ll see to it that you have what you need of the rest. Now please, don t walk away today thinking that I believe that there is a simplistic solution to all your struggles with worry, panic attacks or crippling anxiety. I m not saying that if you would just pray more, all that will be gone overnight. No, for some people, even significant Christian leaders like Martin Luther or Charles Spurgeon or contemporary music artists like Sara Groves, it appears that this will be something they fight for the rest of their lives. Which is what it has become for Vince Miller. For him, it started in childhood. He writes: My struggle with anxiety started early. As a child, I experienced vivid dreams that made my heart race. Even thinking about them today brings certain emotions. The night terrors came on suddenly and without escape. Eventually, a counselor helped me to break free from those dreams. But as an adult, anxiety returned in the form of insomnia An average night s sleep for me is about four hours. I wake up at two, three, four in the morning and never go back to sleep I used to hate being an anxious person. Now I don t mind it as much because in those moments when I wake at two or three o clock in the morning in a cold sweat, my mind racing, concerns of money, the future, those who depend on me I roll off my bed and onto my knees in prayer. I practice this shift every time my anxiety strikes. I ask God to 4
transition my anxieties from the things of this world into the things that God is concerned about. And there in those moments I fight the war that God has called me to fight as a man of God. 8 There s an old sarcastic saying that says, Why pray when you can worry? In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was so engulfed in anxiety that His body chemistry began to break down. But He fought the fight for which His Father had sent Him into this world. And while anxiety took its toll on Him that night, it did not beat Him and it does not need to beat you. Fight on with the stamina only faith in Jesus can give you. And take courage from these words that describe your future: Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more (Rev. 22:1-5) So, fight your fight with anxiety and this; its days are numbered. Amen. 5
1 Statistics from Increasingly Teenagers Report overwhelming anxiety www.preachingtoday.com 2 www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2017/august/8080717.html 3 www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2017/july/7070317.html 4 Edward T. Welch, Words of Hope for Those Who Struggle with Depression, The Journal of Biblical Counseling, Vol. 18, no. 2, 2000, p. 41,45 5 Ibid., p. 41 6 Ibid., p. 32, 33 7 www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2005/december/16259.html 8 www.desiringgod.org/articles/use-anxiety-to-your-advantage 6