Good morning, my friends. This is missionary James Robinette with Mission East Africa, Uganda. And by the gracious appointment of our great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, it is my real pleasure and joy to look to the Word of God with you once again this Lord's Day morning, my friends, as we worship him. He is worthy, He is deserving of worship. And it is our great joy, our pleasure, our wonderful undertaking as we worship Him to lift up His name. And so my friends, may we be helped to lift up the name of Jesus the Lord this day. And we trust Him that in the means of grace, His word effectively used by His Spirit will indeed enable us to bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's our great life's purpose, to glorify God in Jesus Christ and to enjoy Him forever. Amen. My friends, I want to begin a short series of sermons today. about worrying. Actually, I should rephrase that and entitle this sermon series, Not Worrying. And as we begin this new year of 2017, many of us have pressing issues. We are burdened, perhaps troubled. We are caring about sense of distress in our hearts, a sense of fear, of worry perhaps. We're wondering where provision will come from. We are actually distressed because of a distrust that God will take care of us in Christ Jesus. Now this This kind of state of heart, this condition of worrying, to put a word to it, is contrary to a simple trust in our great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has promised to care for us and to meet our needs. And so for those of you, perhaps like me, who struggle many times with worries, a distrust that God will care for us, I want to encourage you today, and I hope to encourage my own heart in the process, as we look to the Word of God, that our faithful God will indeed provide what is good and right for us in Christ Jesus. Now, there's a great condition to that last statement, and the condition is that we must be in the kingdom of God. Jesus tells us to first seek the kingdom of God, and all of our lesser needs, though real needs, will be met. God will faithfully meet them. And so wonderfully, praise God, if you are in Christ today, this promise of God is made to you. because you have first sought the kingdom, you have come to Christ, you have believed in him and repented, God's promise to you as we find it in scripture is that your needs will be met in Christ Jesus. Amen, praise God. And so we have great encouragement to come to Christ because he is able and willing and indeed will meet every need of all who come to him. He is faithful and he calls out, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. He calls out to the thirsty for those who have need to come to him and his promise is that he will give us drink. living water to drink and his meaning simply is that as we come to him our every need will be met. Praise the Lord. And so my friends turn with me in your Bibles as you can to Matthew chapter 6 and we'll soon begin reading starting at verse 25. Matthew 6 25. Praise God. Let us pray now. Father in the highest heaven, I am already encouraged, Lord. I am already helped and strengthened to hold these glorious truths in my heart and to articulate them to my listeners today that indeed, Lord, you are the God who meets our every need and how right and sensible this is, Lord. How right it is that we would understand that you have done the greatest thing for us. You have brought us into the kingdom of God. And so you will surely do the lesser thing of meeting our every temporal need in Christ. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for your great work, your great ability. And so I pray that your word would be a blessing and a real help to us. We confess, Lord, that we often worry, We distrust you. We do not trust you as we should. We fear for the future. We are in dismay at times. Lord, we find that we are concerned about the meeting of our needs, and we fail to look to you and pray, and first of all, to rejoice in you as you give us word to do so, but forgive our sin of worrying, forgive our sin of not trusting you, forgive our sin of thinking evil of you, Lord, and forgetting that you are the great and generous, able God that you are, who has pledged that you will meet our needs. Thank you, Lord. And so help us today in the word of God and bless the people's hearts with precious truth. Encourage them that you are the provider of your people. In Jesus name, amen and amen. Praise God. And so, my friends, let's begin by remembering that God tells us that he is the God of mercy. That is, he is the God who meets the needs of all people. His mercy is upon his creation. He has created us. In fact, the entire creation is utterly, absolutely dependent upon God. We did not create ourselves, as Psalm 100 reminds us. He is God. He has created us. And he has created us in such a way that, indeed, we have needs. People have needs. And God, our great and wise creator who has made us this way, has also declared to us that he is the God of mercy who will meet the needs of all people. And indeed he does. He brings food to all. He sends rain to the just upon the just and the unjust. And so, praise God, he is the God who meets the needs of his creatures. And he is the God who governs the creation in his providence so that we see in his providence, his workings, his government of the creation, his faithfulness to meet the needs of creatures. And let us remember as we begin this morning, too, that the creature's greatest need, that is, mankind's greatest need, is to be in Christ, to come to Christ, because then all of our needs will be met. All needs. The greatest need that we have, our spiritual need for forgiveness of sin, the bestowment of life, eternal life, abundant life, and all blessing. The promise of God to meet our every need. All of those great factors are fulfilled when we come to God, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, when we come to God through Christ, amen. And so God is faithful to provide food and clothing. He is faithful to provide medical care. He is faithful to provide the needs of the heart for friendship, first of all, for family, for fellowship, for all people. He is faithful to give man wisdom to go about the work that God requires of him. He is faithful to meet the needs of all, but he has pledged himself especially to meet the needs of His people in Christ. Praise God. They, we, are as the apple of His eye, His beloved, and so our God who loves us, those who believe in Christ, has pledged to meet our every need. Now, this is a great help to us to not worry and to obey the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me begin reading. here in Matthew chapter six and verse 25. Here, Jesus is preaching and teaching. We call this section of verses in Matthew five through seven, the Sermon on the Mount. Therefore, I say to you, do not worry 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, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you, by worrying, can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. And yet I say to you that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Now, if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not worry, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Amen. And we find in Luke, in chapter 12, a similar section of verses, very similar, and that begins in verse 22 through verse 33. I will make comment about that section of verses later and we'll look at the context. There are some differences in that section of verse though. These sections of verses are very similar. They were given as addresses by the Lord at different times, we would understand, praise God, and in different contexts. And so we find here in Matthew chapter 6, my friends, wonderful truths and wonderful reasons that we are not to worry as we find there in verse 34. Jesus tells us, commands and instructs, encourages us, therefore do not worry. Praise God. And so we find here that we are instructed not to worry because our great and sufficient God helps us and he helps us in the teaching of the Lord to understand that he will provide for us in Christ Jesus. And that's the foundational truth that we hold to. Praise God. God has pledged, God has promised that he will meet our essential needs in Christ Jesus. That is, the needs that absolutely must be met. he will meet our spiritual needs of a greater priority than our temporal needs, that is our material needs. And indeed, when we come into the kingdom, he meets our great spiritual need in every detail, in every facet, praise God. And he pledges himself here to meet our temporal needs, that is our material needs. When we come into Christ, you see, The great blessing of salvation is that we are blessed spiritually. We are spiritual beings and we are blessed temporally. We are material beings, but the blessing comes to us and the promise of God comes to us in this order. that we receive from his hand the permanent spiritual blessing, which is truly our greatest need. And then secondarily, we receive the temporal or material blessings that we also need. Praise God. The spiritual, the permanent blessing of God is given first, and that includes the meeting of our temporal or our temporary needs in Christ Jesus, amen. And so, because our first need is for forgiveness of our sins and the receiving of eternal life from God, this is given first. Because our temporal material needs are secondary, though real needs God pledges to also meet these needs, but again, the promised blessing of God comes to us in the proper order. Amen. And to not worry, we must remember our needs, the priority of our needs, our first need is for the spiritual grace which God gives. We do need, of course, food and we need clothing, praise God. We do need shelter, of course. We need rain so that the crops will grow, so that the food that we need will be produced. We are in need as social creatures of family, of the presence of loved ones and friends. We are in need of the help that alone can come to us from the church, from the spiritual body of Christ. Of course, we have many, many needs, but our greatest and first need is to be in Christ and to be saved by God, to be made a son of God, to be forgiven of all of our sins. And this is simply wonderful that as God directs us that this first need would be met, that is we come into the kingdom of God that thereafter our temporal needs will also be met. He is faithful, and we find this line of reasoning in Scripture in several places. For instance, in the writings of Paul, that God faithfully meets the greater And so therefore we'll faithfully meet the lesser. Amen. And so we are encouraged not to worry because the greatest need is met in Christ. We are justified. We are sanctified. We are glorified in Christ. God's future grace is promised, it is determined, it is appointed. God will not withhold grace today or future grace that is grace for tomorrow's needs in Christ Jesus. All grace is promised to us today and tomorrow as God gives us tomorrow. He will not be gracious today and forget to be gracious tomorrow and so Wonderfully, the need of the past has been met in God's saving grace. The need of today is met in God's saving grace. The need of tomorrow and of the future of every tomorrow is met in the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. And so because this is true, praise God, We trust Him that our temporal needs will also be met in Christ Jesus, amen. And so, this is the foundational truth that we find in this section of verses, and it is of mighty help to us. This is an awesome truth, an awesome principle that the Lord reveals to us here. And so now let's take a bit of a closer look at this section of verses and admire and receive into our hearts more of the truth that is detailed. Notice that Jesus begins there in verse 25 of Matthew chapter 6 to tell us to not worry about our lives, and this section of verses begins with the word therefore, a transitional verse, which takes us back to the preceding verses, and we must take a quick look at the preceding verses to understand the transition. In other words, Jesus begins this section of teaching with the idea that based upon what he has just previously taught, we are now to do this, we are to apply the truth, we are not to worry about our lives. And as we look at Matthew chapter 6 in the immediate context, We see that in the first section of verses, one through four, Christ tells us that we are to be true to God. We are to be true to God and seek to please God and not to seek to do good in a hypocritical way to be seen by men. And he tells us, that the heart that truly seeks out of love for God, to please God by faith in Christ, will serve God, not for the applause of men, but to please our God. And that God will, of course, receive this true service to his name. And so, Jesus calls us to not be hypocritical in our service to God. And then we find that he teaches us to pray rightly. He begins again to teach us not to pray for the applause of men. He says, you have your reward if you do so. In other words, if what we seek from our hearts is praise and honor from men, then we will pray in that way to receive that honor from men. But if by the Spirit of Christ we pray for our Father's true will to be done, if again we pray in secret for the pleasure of God and for His will, asking for His gracious will to be done in our lives and in the lives of others, then it is that we will pray truly. He also teaches us there that we are not to pray as the unbelievers pray by making vain repetition. Because their thought is that God will hear them if they simply repeat or say often enough what they say. And so he leads us to understand that true prayer, spiritual prayer, is not praying in vain repetition. It is not praying hypocritically to be seen by men. It is a secret bringing of the heart to God for God's will to be done in our lives and for his kingdom to come. Praise God. Notice again that this is an inner spiritual quality. This is an issue of the heart because God looks upon the heart. And so when we pray, he teaches us that we are to ask of God, who is our Father in heaven, who is holy in his great nature, his name is holy, that his kingdom will come. Again, spiritual priority. Praise God. The first petition made to the great holy God, the Father, our Father in heaven is that his kingdom may come. And truly when his kingdom comes, all that is needed comes to a human being. when his gracious will is done in his awesome sovereignty on earth as it is in heaven, then the first need of a man is met. Praise God. Notice there in verse 11, if you have your Bible, again we're looking at the context to better understand how it is that we are instructed not to worry, that Jesus teaches us to pray, give us this day our daily bread. Praise God. Now, we understand that in this petition, Jesus is teaching us that we must then bring all of our temporal needs to God. This is really a summary of our temporal needs. And so we ask from God daily that our bread, our needed food will be given to us. And in so doing, we are taught to ask him that all of our temporal needs be met from His mighty and gracious hand, that He would give freely to us food, and clothing, and shelter, friends, he would give to us family members, that he would bring good to our beloved family and friends, that he would bless the church with precious grace. Amen. And so our need for shelter, our need for physical strength, our need for healing, our need, that our needs are great, that all of these great temporal material needs would be met because God's kingdom has first come to us. Praise God. And he calls us to recognize our sinfulness, our guilt, there in verse 12, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And he calls us to daily confess our sins. In this we see our great need, that we must look to God to meet our needs, our need of daily forgiveness in this sense, and the need of grace, precious grace that would enable us to forgive those who are indebted to us, to those who offend us. He calls us in verse 13 to to be helped and that God will guide us not into temptations to sin, but that God would deliver us from the evil one. Praise God. Amen. And so wonderfully note in these petitions that all of our needs are brought to God. And so as we daily pray, We are helped. Our first need, the kingdom of God, comes to us, praise God. Our need for material provision, our temporal needs are requested to be met of God, and we trust God that he will. The Lord himself teaches us to pray this way. Surely our Father is good. He will bring good to us. He will answer our cries for the meeting of our material needs, that our great need to recognize our sinfulness and that that sinfulness would be forgiven. that we would be gracious and forgive others, that this would be given to us daily, and that we would be kept from hard testing, from a temptation to sin in which we could fall. Really a petition that we will stand firm this day in God's grace and enjoy God's providence, His protection, His deliverance from the evil one. Praise the Lord. See how These needs are met. Jesus teaches us to pray for the meeting of needs in this sense. And Jesus concludes there that God's kingdom is the true and lasting eternal kingdom and that power and glory belong to him forever. Amen. And so we see the focus here in salvation of coming to God, coming into the kingdom, praise the Lord, and receiving all other things which are then added to us. Now Jesus calls us in context again. setting the priorities right here, putting things into the proper perspective, calling us to spiritual life, to faithfulness, to trust in God, to salvation, and then looking to God who has saved us, who has promised to meet our secondary needs. He calls us then to fast, really another call to true spiritual worship, not in a hypocritical way. In other words, not to make our religion, even our fasting, our mourning for sin, our crying out to God in this time of mournful prayer, not to be a show made for others to see, and we are in need of this encouragement today, my friends, because worship can easily become a hypocritical show, simply a platform activity where what is done is simply done to be seen by men. We are called not to let our worship, our fasting, to be in a hypocritical spirit, but to be in a true spirit as a spiritual worship unto God. Again, he calls us to fast in secret. where we will meet God in our hearts. Let our fasting be truly for God, for the glory of God, for the coming of God's kingdom, and God will reward us openly. Again, God loves to see the heart seeking Him in prayer, in worship, even in fasting, and God will bless us The wording here is he will reward you openly. In other words, he will recognize this spiritual, true spiritual act of worship, and he will respond with gracious blessing to true heart worship to his great name. Now Jesus is so wise, praise God. He has taught us to seek God's kingdom, to pray for the kingdom. He has taught us and he has instructed us to pray for material needs to be met. And now we transition to the idea that he teaches us there in beginning in verse 19, that we are not to seek to lay up treasures on earth which are corruptible, which cannot endure, which are temporary, but to lay up for ourselves lasting treasure in heaven which cannot corrupt, and which will be an eternal blessing." Again, here, he calls us to lay up a spiritual treasure. And we find in the scripture that Jesus tells us that where our treasure is, so our hearts will be. And his simple instruction here is that we must let God, we must endeavor to make God our treasure. Amen. Material treasure is laid up by those who seek to have their materials met, and sometimes and often met in abundance, and there's simply no end to how much is laid up as a treasure for the meeting of material needs. But Jesus calls us to forsake that tendency of the fallen spirit and to lay up a spiritual treasure. In other words, find our delight, find our lives, find our reason for living in God. find our treasure in God and his precious saving love for us. And that treasure, a true and lasting treasure, will be kept for us. Amen. Amen. Jesus challenges us in these verses to look beyond the material world, the temporal world. He does not deny our real temporal needs, but he encourages us by faith to look to the proper spiritual priority, and that is the spiritual kingdom of God. Now, my friends, he also calls us to be generous. Because we are first concerned about the kingdom of God, we are called to be generous to others in terms of our giving to others. Praise God. In spiritual service, in material giving, he calls us to be generous, and we are reminded that our Father is generous. Amen. And then lastly, he calls us to serve God and not riches. And he says that no man can serve two masters. A man can only serve either God or riches. And again, the idea, the allure, the attraction of riches is that if a man has riches, then the thinking is that his needs will be met. But Jesus calls us to serve God, to recognize that he is our true master, that that is truly having one's needs met, and to turn away from this desire, this thought, that material riches will meet our needs. You see, he calls us again to see that it is God who meets, person's needs amen and so we are helped not to worry as we learn of these essential truths and as we are reminded of these essential truths and so our time has gone my friend but today as you consider in your heart of hearts, as you review your needs before God, and as you look at the provision and what God requires of you, be encouraged that the first need of your heart is the kingdom of God, and that God promises that as you believe in Christ and repent of your sins, you have entered into the kingdom, all other needs will be met. We'll continue in this. series about not worrying next Lord's Day as God gives us grace. Let us pray. Father, thank you. Thank you for this encouragement. To store up this precious truth in our hearts is wonderful to us, Lord. And so by your spirit, enable us to not worry, but to trust you and see your mighty and gracious hand meet our every need. Forgive us of our sinfulness and, Lord, provide all that's needed. Protect us from the enemy. Be our God who provides the food and clothing and shelter. family and friends that we truly need be our God who first of all calls us to fellowship and love you and trust you and we shall not worry and we shall draw close to you Lord in Jesus name amen and amen so my friends until next Lord's Day morning may the Lord bless you