“25 Therefore I tell you, do not worry 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?
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? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 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?
31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first His kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
A lot of people are quite anxious right now. Some studies show that more than a third of Americans are showing clinical signs of anxiety or depression in the midst of this pandemic. Since the purpose of this sermon series is to hear from God about what we are experiencing in this moment, anxiety seems like an appropriate subject.
But, of course, anxiety won’t really be the subject. We will talk a lot about anxiety, but the subject will be Jesus. We don’t use Jesus to deal with our anxiety. Our anxiety must drive us to Jesus.
Jesus’ words on anxiety are among the famous words ever spoken on the subject. Anyone and everyone can learn something from what he taught, but that misses the point. Jesus wasn’t simply offering tips for dealing with anxiety. He was inviting them into a relationship with his Father because that is what anxious souls need. That’s what everyone needs.
So, you will hear wisdom from Jesus about anxiety, but if you take the wisdom without the relationship, you’ll miss the point. Anxious souls don’t merely need wisdom about worry. Anxious souls need God to take care of them. Anxious souls are filled with concern; they need to know that God is concerned for them. That’s the claim of this sermon: Anxious souls are filled with concern; they need to know that God is concerned for them.
We will study this in three points. First: do not worry. Second: lessons from the birds and flowers. Third: your Father knows what you need. We will study Jesus’ call not to worry in verse 25. We will study lessons on worry from the birds and flowers in verses 26-30. We will see that our heavenly Father knows what we need in verses 31-34.
First: do not worry. We need to let Jesus say what Jesus said. Jesus wasn’t aiming to say everything that could be said on anxiety with these words. These words weren’t meant and are not meant to serve as a full treatment for everything to do with anxiety. Perhaps you have a diagnosed anxiety disorder and you’ve read Jesus’ words about worry ten thousand times wondering why they haven’t made your worries go away. You might need other help. These words of Jesus will help, but he might further help you through his servants, through Biblical counselors, through prayer with those who love you, and through medication. Don’t expect everything out of Matthew 6:25-34. Let Jesus say what Jesus said.
Jesus’ words on anxiety came on the heels of his words, “you cannot serve both God and money.” That’s what comes before verse 25, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry 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?”
Jesus was thinking about the security that we believe money can buy. If you live for this life, you will serve money because that’s your security. If you live for the next life, you will serve God He’s your security.
If you live for this life, you will worry about this life. You will spend yourself seeking what you think you need for this life. To all of this Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life.”
That’s true for food. That’s true for drink. That’s true for mortgage payments. That’s true for retirement accounts. That’s true for payroll. You worry because you think you need to secure a certain outcome in this life. Your desire to secure this outcome—to pay your mortgage, to have enough to pay your employees—is understandable and laudable, but your ability to secure this outcome in this life is an illusion.
You know that you have begun to worry when you feel the pressure to make the future turn out a certain way. John Calvin saw this. He referred to anxiety as “immoderate care.” That’s a helpful phrase. Anxiety is proper care cranked up beyond reason and beyond your ability. Calvin said that this immoderate care is condemned because, in his words, “by doing so men teaze and vex themselves to no purpose, by carrying their anxiety farther than is proper or than their calling demands.”
You can’t control life. Your attempts to do so make you anxious. Perhaps you are a hog farmer. You can’t control the packing plants. You can’t control federal and state regulations. Those are beyond your power. You do what you can, and you are responsible for what you can do, but you have to leave it there. If you can’t, you will worry yourself to death. If you can’t, it’s a sign that you are living for this life.
If you can’t stop worrying, you think you have more power than you really do. Calvin said these people, “claim more for themselves than they have a right to do, and place such a reliance on their own industry, as they neglect to call upon God.” Anxious people tend to be hyper-responsible people, meaning they think they are responsible for more than they are in fact responsible for. They think they are responsible to make their children turn out a certain way. They think they are responsible to make their business or their church a success. They, “claim more for themselves than they have a right to do, and place such a reliance on their own industry, as they neglect to call upon God.”
You are very, very small. It’s very possible, and it’s indeed likely, that you can do far less than you think you can. To accept that, you will need to humble yourself. You need to recognize that you are just as feeble and often foolish as everyone else. You are not really all that different from the people you see as incompetent. You are really not all that different from the people you might consider to be failures. Humble yourself. The alternative is to live with the illusion that you can control what you can’t and that is a recipe for having the life choked out of you by anxiety. I use that image of choking intentionally because it’s likely our English word for worry is derived from German and Latin words that carry the connation of choking. Anxiety chokes the life out of you.
God created you for far more than that. That’s part of what’s going in the words, “is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?” Life is bigger than your worries. Worry has a way of focusing us in to an absurd degree. Jesus is helping us take a few steps back.
Think of it this way, imagine that you are a parent of a toddler who is endlessly concerned with the covers of her books. She cannot stand to have any ripped or torn covers. She spends all her waking hours trying to fix these covers, but of course she can’t because she’s only two. At some point the thought would go through your head, ‘honey, is life not more important than book covers?’
Jesus is telling you that that’s how his Father sees your anxiousness. ‘Honey, there is more to life than this. Take a step back.’ I’m not saying that your worries are as inconsequential as book covers. What I am saying is that Jesus’ Father understands life much better than you do just like you understand life better than a two-year-old. In fact, a two-year-old understanding is much closer to your understanding than yours is to God’s. He tells you not to worry about your life just like you would tell a two-year-old not to worry about those book covers. You would be wise to listen to him. He knows everything. He tells you don’t need to be so concerned because his Father is concerned for you. You see that in our second point: lessons from birds and flowers.
Jesus was a masterful teacher. It’s likely that he was pointing to birds that were flying overhead when he said, “look at the birds of the air.” It’s likely that he was pointing to the flowers the people could see around them when he said, “see how the lilies of the field grow.” No one has ever been better at Jesus than connecting God with life. He saw his Father’s fingerprints everywhere. That’s an enviable way to live. That’s something to aim for.
Jesus thought the birds were an argument against worry. Now that’s a pretty powerful argument because you see birds every day. Verse 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?”
Jesus’ argument runs along the lines of the lesser to the greater. “Are you not much more valuable than they?” It’s possible that you worry so much because you don’t really think that you are more valuable to God than a bird. You’re wrong. God’s Son tells you than his Father is far more concerned about you than He is about the birds and He feeds the birds every day. He is clearly concerned about birds. Maybe, in your case, all you need to quiet the anxiety in your mind and heart right now is to know that the Father loves you. You don’t need to worry. Your Father loves you. As Calvin put it, “Whenever we are seized by any fear or anxiety about food, let us remember, that God will take care of the life which He gave us.”
Not only is worry needless, it is also pointless. You see that in Jesus’ next words, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” The language in the Greek runs along the lines of measurements of length. “Who of you by worrying can add a cubit?” “Who of you by worrying can add eighteen inches?” This translation, wisely in my opinion, takes this as a reference to the length of life. “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” You are worrying about your life, but your worrying can’t and won’t change anything about your life. It will just make it miserable.
Jesus doesn’t want his disciples to be miserable. He wants them happy and content in God’s care. You see that in his teaching about the flowers in verse 28. “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 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?”
Jesus pointed his listeners to the flowers to show how utterly fabulous they looked and that these flowers had nothing to do with it. God did it all. He didn’t just take of them. He made them beautiful.
Sally Lloyd-Jones paraphrase in the Jesus Storybook Bible is helpful. ‘“What about these wildflowers… where do they get their lovely clothes? Do they make them? Or do they go to work every day so they can buy them? Do they have closets full of clothes?” Everyone laughed again—who’s ever seen a flower putting on a dress? “No,” Jesus said. “They don’t need to worry about that because God clothes them in royal robes of splendor!”’
The Father doesn’t simply care about what is needed. He cares about beauty. Life with God is not about the thinnest gruel on which you can live. God describes it as a banquet of the finest foods and wine. His Son regularly described it as a celebration at which there is more than enough.
Consider the lilies. God made them far more beautiful than they needed to be. We’ve got a few patches of lilies in our yard that just finished blooming. They were a brilliant yellow. God didn’t need to make them so yellow. That was a gift. He made them beautiful because He wanted to. He loves loveliness. You are much more valuable than a flower. He abundance for you. The flowers teach you that.
Every flower and every bird teaches. As Luther put it, the birds and flowers “sing and preach to us and smile at us so lovingly, just to have us believe.” It’s lovely to consider that God feeds every bird on earth daily in hopes that you will see that He will care for you too. It’s lovely to consider that God decorates every flower in hopes that you will see how abundantly He will care for you.
You have no idea how precious you are to God. None of us do. We have no idea how gut-wrenching our disbelief must be to Him. We have no idea how gut-wrenching our choice to savor sin must be to Him. We are precious to Him.
If you are little kid, I want you to think about how it makes you feel when dad or mom tell you that you are precious to them. How does it make you feel when you hear that you are loved? You feel secure. You feel confident in their love. You feel the opposite of worry. That’s part of Jesus’ aim here. He wants you to know that his Father is concerned for you. We continue to see that in our final point: Your Father knows what you need.
You worry because if you don’t take care of your concerns, no one will. The fact isthat God will take care of your concerns if you belong to Him; verse 31, ‘So do not worry, 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.’
God knows what you need. That might sound obvious to you, but in an effort to make it truly obvious, I want you to consider the way of the world. Jesus says they, “run after all these things.” They spend themselves on seeking. They do so because they think it’s up to them to take care of themselves. They think the idea of a heavenly Father is simply a fairy tale and their lives show it. Their lives show it by way of anxiety. They spend themselves in seeking.
I hope that you are different. I hope that you don’t spend yourself on seeking. If you don’t spend yourself on seeking, please recognize that it’s only because you believe that your Father knows what you need.
You’re a reasonable person. You know that someone must be concerned with what you need. It’s either going to be God or it’s going to be you, and unless you take Jesus’ words seriously and live as if your heavenly Father knows what you need, you will be worried. As Calvin put it, “The only cure… is to embrace the promises of God, by which He assures us that He will take care of us.”
Okay, but how? How do you live as if your heavenly Father takes care of you? Perhaps you are in agreement that this is true, but you have no idea how to daily live as if God takes care of you. Jesus tells you how in verse 33, “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Stop being concerned about securing the future you want and start focusing on obeying today. You don’t know what God will do with today’s obedience in the future, but that’s not your concern. Your concern is to carry out God’s call upon you today. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself,” says Jesus. “Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Seek God’s kingdom today. Seek God’s righteousness today.
How much of your time and energy this past week was spent considering and working to secure what you want for the future? I dare say that some of us would say, “almost all of it.” I find myself falling into that so easily.
Our culture programs us to pursue this, which means that you need to take intentional steps to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. We are trained to be consumers, not contributors. We are trained to think about what we want in life, not about what God wants out of our lives. This is the root of so much of our worries.
If you were completely consumed with what God wants out of your life, out of your work, out of your retirement years, you would say with George Whitfield, “We are immortal until our work on earth is done.”
In other words, if your heart were the same as God’s heart, you wouldn’t worry because God’s will, will be done. You would simply put your shoulder to the plow every day and do the obedience that is in front of you. That’s what you were created for. That’s what makes you happy. That’s what freedom from anxiety looks like.
There is no shortcut to this. You cannot have this freedom unless you are willing to seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. If you want to seek first your own wants and our own goals, you’ve just drained Jesus’ words dry of any of life. It couldn’t be otherwise because Jesus wasn’t primarily interested in helping people worry less. He was interested in connecting people with his Father. If people lived as if the Father knew what they needed, they wouldn’t worry. If people revolved their lives around the Father’s kingdom and the Father’s righteousness, they wouldn’t worry.
Perhaps this is an invitation for you to know the Father. Perhaps you are only listening in hopes of finding a way to stop worrying. That’s an admirable goal, but it’s not sufficient. You won’t truly stop worrying until you are convinced that someone all powerful is caring for you and you won’t be convinced of that until you know God as your Father. There’s only one way to do that. You need Jesus. No one comes to the Father in any other way than by way of Jesus. Know him. He isn’t just a great teacher on topics like anxiety. He is God. To know him is to know God. This is why he continually invited people into a relationship with himself and with his Father. We need that far more than we need teaching on any subject in life.
Now perhaps you know the Father, but you’ve forgotten that He knows what you need. It’s very possible that any number of people listening love God but have forgotten that God loves them. They have forgotten that they are more valuable to God than birds. They’ve forgotten that they are more valuable to God than the wildflowers He decorates every day. They’ve forgotten that they really have no reasons to worry about life.
What’s most needful is not tips on becoming less anxious. What’s needed is a relationship with God. You need to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. You need to stop spending yourself seeking because your heavenly Father knows what you need. You need to stop living your life and start living Jesus’ life. That’s why he came. That’s why he taught. That’s why he died. That’s why he rose again. He didn’t do it so that you could make your life work. Your life won’t work. Trying to live your life is the road of anxiety. He did it so that you could live his life. Amen.