So beloved, hear now God's most holy and inspired word, starting at verse 25. 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 or 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. Oh, they grow, they neither toil nor spend. 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. Let us pray. Oh Lord our God, our Heavenly Father, we do ask that you would illuminate our minds and open our hearts to receive your word this day. We pray that you would apply it to the hearts and lives of each person here. Help us to consider these things, consider where we have fallen short, but most importantly, see how you provide for us as our Heavenly Father. Help me, O Lord, to preach clearly and faithfully your word. We now pray all these things in Christ's name, for his sake. Beloved congregation, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's clear the Lord knows everything that we are in need of. And sometimes the thing that we need the most is a particular passage. I knew I was going to be preaching on this passage dealing with worry. And boy, I tell you, I worried a lot this past week. And what was the result of my worry? I was in a bad mood. I probably added a few gray hairs on my head, and I know I didn't prolong my life. But today we are going to consider, we're gonna consider this, this is the main point. Because your heavenly father knows and cares for you, you must not live in anxious pursuit of material needs, but instead seek first his kingdom, and trust Him one day at a time. So the first word you'll notice in our passage is therefore. Therefore points us back to what we previously considered. And what we considered previously was where your treasure was, are your eyes good or bad, and who do you serve? So after considering these things, Jesus is basically applying everything that was said before. This is the application. And if we are seeking earthly things, if our treasure is on this earth or our eyes are looking at our possessions or we're serving money, the natural fruit of that is what? Worry. Worry. And what's interesting in this passage, although it says worry a lot, there's three commands where Jesus says, do not worry, do not worry, do not worry. And when we see repetition in scripture, that's telling us to pay attention to what Christ is saying. And when we worry, it exposes where our trust is. And that is convicting because there is not a single person here that has not worried at least once. And I know it's more than once, right? This word for worry means to be pulled apart inside. Anxiety tears the soul apart. It sends us to, and the two battles is, trusting God, and asking the question, what if? What if this happens, or that happens? What if I'm driving in my car, going somewhere, and I die in a car accident? Or I get in, you won't be worrying if you die, but if you get in a car accident, and then you have to go through surgeries, and all these things, and it's all this worrying about the future. So the issue here is anxious living. It's not just your behavior, but it's living as if everything depends upon you. And there's two opposite errors that we have to be careful about, especially when we're considering worry. The first one is we live as if everything depends upon us, and the opposite is, well, I'm not gonna worry about anything, so therefore I don't have to do anything. So there's an anxious over-responsibility or laziness. And this passage isn't saying that we are not to work. We are to work, but we are to work without worrying. And worrying does feel like work, doesn't it? Sometimes you can worry all day and think that you worked an eight-hour shift but you really didn't do anything. All you did is worry. And what we'll see is Jesus will, or he points his disciples to creation. He points them to the birds. The birds still work, but they aren't anxious. Jesus says, do not worry about your life. He says, do not worry about food, drink, or clothing, your basic necessities. And the key phrase here or name is father, your father. Think of a person, a person might have a general care for children, but there's a special care for a father's own children, their own child. And this passage is telling you who you belong to. You belong to your heavenly father. You are God's children. That is who you are. And if you are God's children, you shouldn't question whether God will care for you or not. And worrying does no good. It doesn't benefit you whatsoever. Jesus says, and this passage can be translated a little bit different depending on the translation, but Jesus says, who can make himself taller? Who can make himself prolong his life? In our passage, it says cubit. A cubit was 18 inches. Who of us can add 18 inches to our height by worrying. If it could, then I'd probably worry, because I'd like to be a little bit taller. But it does not cause us to increase in height or prolong our days. And anxiety does feel active, but it accomplishes nothing. It's like being on a treadmill. You're moving, but you're not going anywhere. It adds, but it really just drains you. And actually, worrying shortens your life. I didn't look up the statistics, but I know I've seen it before that one way you can shorten your life is to be stressed all day long. But Jesus doesn't ignore life as if life has no troubles. Because he says, each day has its own troubles. And bad things will happen. They will happen to Christians. However, the Christian knows that all things are under his hand, under his care. Nothing comes by chance, but everything comes from his fatherly hand. Really, that's the only comfort we can really have, right? I wouldn't want to be an atheist. An atheist thinks everything happens by chance. Therefore, what good can come out of the bad things that happen? But if we have a good God behind all things, then we know that even the hardest of times in our life is being used for our good, and the good is to make us more like Jesus Christ. And that's the question we should always ask ourselves when anything happens in our lives. How is God using this, this thing that I'm going through to make me more like Christ? And think of Christ, we looked at in Luke 22, Jesus was under so much stress and anxiety, not simple anxiety, but anxiety, that his sweat became like drops of blood. That's an actual medical condition where you can become so stressed that your sweat becomes like blood. Yet the Lord trusted in his heavenly father. He wanted to do the will of his heavenly father. And Jesus says, do not worry about tomorrow, but he's not saying never think about tomorrow. There's nothing wrong with planning and preparing what's ahead, but there's a difference between planning and just sitting and thinking about it and doing nothing. The problem is not forethought, it's fearful, faithless forethought. And I have to be careful about this when I'm talking to Angie. We all have to be careful about this. That when we see someone worrying, do you ever feel tempted to just say, stop it? Just stop worrying. Does that help the person that you're talking to? No, it doesn't. And Jesus doesn't just say, stop it, now let us pray. No, he says, don't worry. And what he does is he points his disciples to the creation. He says, look at the world, let the world preach a sermon to you. Let me show you that worrying is unnecessary. And first he says, look at the birds of the air. He says, study the birds. And this is a command. He says, go outside, look at those birds. See how they act, how they live. Now, yes, birds work, but they don't worry. They're not like us where we're building up barns and trying to make sure our bank accounts are okay. And although there's activity, your Heavenly Father, well, the birds, they are provided for by God. wasn't the universe, it wasn't fate, it was the Father. And the same Father who watches over the birds watches over you. And you're gonna see a phrase come up over and over, and I think this is key. He says, look at the birds, and he says the Father provides for them, but then Jesus says, are you not more more of value than they. You are more valuable than birds. And if the Lord will provide for the birds, the sparrows, would you not think that he would provide for his children? But then he goes from birds to flowers. He says, consider the lilies of the field. He says, Study them. Think hard upon creation. And this phrase for lilies of the field is probably speaking of mixed wildflowers covering the hills in that area. But I think this is referring to not like beautiful roses or anything like that. It's talking about weeds. Sometimes weeds can be the most beautiful flowers there are, just ask Angie. I'll give you this example. We have a flower garden in our front yard, and this was years ago, but it was becoming very full, and there's this one big flower. And I kept telling Angie, I said, that is not a flower, that's a weed. Oh, just let it grow, just let it grow. And then we had David Vander Vliet, come over one day and I said, Dave, what is that? He said, that's a weed. I said, all right. Case solved. But I'll give Angie credit. It did look beautiful. So what Jesus is saying, these flowers, these weeds, they're so beautiful. They have more splendor than King Solomon. Jesus says, oh, you have little faith. If God so clothes the grass, how much more will he clothe you? Why would you doubt that your heavenly father will clothe his children? But then he goes from birds, flowers, and then he says, look at unbelievers. They seek after these things. They do it in anxiety. They do it, not thinking that there's a God behind the creation and that God has provided these necessities. So once again, God provides for birds, he provides for weeds, he provides for unbelievers, and it would be foolish to think that God would not provide for his children. And your father knows the things that you're in need of. He knows what you in need of before you even ask Him. And although He knows, we are to ask Him. We are to ask for our daily bread. So God cares for all of creation, but He especially cares for His people. And if you question whether or not God cares for you, just consider His Son. Yes, we can consider clothes, we can consider food, we can consider water, but God the Father provided his son. He gave his son to be sacrificed for you. He gave his son for you. So if he's willing to give his son to die in your place, why would you doubt him providing the bare necessities? But Jesus doesn't just say, avoid worrying. He calls you to shift your focus. And here's an application, like, if you go out these doors and you just keep saying to yourself, okay, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, you're gonna end up worrying because you're gonna be sitting and thinking about not worrying, which is gonna cause you to worry. What you need to do is not just avoid worrying, but shift your mind to think properly. What does Jesus say? He says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. So he's not saying don't just forget about clothing and food and everything like that, but he's saying, focus first on His righteousness. And the first righteousness you must seek is a righteousness that exceeds the scribes and Pharisees. You must first seek the righteousness of Christ. And then you are to seek to live righteously. You should seek to live righteously in your heart, in your home, in your church, in the world, Which means that in all of your life, you should live to reflect the Lord Jesus Christ and to live like Christ. But we can't do that without first having his righteousness. So we must first seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and then this promise is given. All these things will be added to you. That's a promise from God. One way in which you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness is coming to church. You're doing that right now. And what does Jesus say? All these things will be added to you. What you're gonna eat after church, what you're gonna drink, what kind of comfy clothes you're gonna put on after you get home. All that will be added to you. It's already provided for you. That's one thing we take for granted in America, is we have so many blessings. If we were in a third world country, they would look at us like we were millionaires or billionaires. You know, yeah, I mean, even as we say this, like, when was the last time you had to worry about food There are people out there that do worry about that. They don't know what they're gonna eat tomorrow, let alone today. So your focus should be on the things of God, and then you should trust in God to provide. And once again, Jesus acknowledges trouble. There is trouble. but God will provide. He doesn't promise to remove all trouble, but he does promise that he'll give you the grace that is sufficient for today to make it to the end of the day. And tomorrow, tomorrow will have its own troubles, but the grace tomorrow will be just as sufficient as the grace today. Yes, you are to plan, but never panic. And Once again, that's easier said than done. And the fact that we struggle with anxiety and worry and all these things shows us just how much we need God's grace. Because without his grace, we would kill ourselves with anxiety. So beloved, there are two ways to live today. You can live as the orphan or as a child. The orphan says, no one's washing out for me. Nothing good's gonna ever happen to me unless I go out and do it. But the child says, my father knows. My father knows what I'm in need of and he will provide. So this week, go outside. I hear it's supposed to be a warm route, so you can go outside and just look at creation. The birds are down south, and the flowers are under the snow, but still just look at creation. When the snow melts and birds return, Look at every bird, look at every flower, look at every weed, look at every sunrise and sunfall, and let that preach to you that your heavenly father is still feeding his creation, he's still clothing his creation, he's still sustaining it, and he's ruling over it. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, our God, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this passage. It is a passage that we should consider regularly on a daily basis to see your providence and showing that you are the one who rules over all things and you are the one who provides for all things. And Lord, Shift our focus so that we may seek first the kingdom of God and your righteousness. And trust in that promise that all things will be added to us, the things that we are in need of, our daily bread. Now we pray as the Lord taught us to pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.