As you can see, I'm not quite used to this new differences in the order here. Sorry about that, guys. Well, I want to start by talking about a comedy skit by a very old comedian. I only know about this because Mike and Robin showed it to me. They really get a kick out of this. It's a comedy skit by Bob Newhart. The Twings obviously know where I'm going with this, too. How many of you even know who Bob Newhart is? Okay, that's good, that's good. Showing our age. Bob Newhart, I believe, was a comedian in the 70s and 80s. He had a sitcom. But he's a very dry humor type of comedy. I don't know if there's a lot of that nowadays, but just a hilarious guy. Well, in this skit, he plays a therapist. And there's a lady who comes to him seeking counsel. And he explains to her, he says, I only charge $5. I'm very inexpensive for the first five minutes. And I am certain that I will be able to counsel you within the first five minutes. And you will only have to spend $5. OK? The lady, I don't know if she's really convinced of this, but she begins to explain to him how she's terrified that someone is going to come and get her and put her in a box and bury her. And Newhart asks, has anyone ever tried to put you in a box and bury you? She says, no, no, that's never happened, but I'm worried that this is gonna happen. And he asks, are you claustrophobic maybe? And she says, yes, yes, that's it, I'm claustrophobic. And it keeps me from being able to go through tunnels. I can't go into elevators, any type of spaces because I'm just consumed with this fear that I'm going to be buried alive. Well, Newhart says, OK, I've got the answer for you. I'm going to solve this for you with two words. If you will obey these two words, then you will never have to deal with this fear ever again. And so the lady's like, OK, how in the world is he going to fix this for me in two words? So he looks at her intently, and he says, stop it. Just stop it. He says, you don't want to go through your whole life being afraid, so just stop being afraid. Well, the woman says, well, I can't. And he quickly interrupts her and says, we never go there. Whenever we go to You Can't, we just tell you that you just need to stop it. Now, I can't do Bob Newhart any justice. You need to go watch the clip for yourself. He's hilarious. This skit is very funny. And we kind of understand where Newhart's coming from, have some impatience with people who can be fearful all the time. but it's not a very good counseling strategy. It's just not gonna work if you want to counsel people. Well, thankfully, in the passage we're gonna look at today, Jesus is a lot more compassionate, and he's a lot better of a counselor than Bob Newhart is in this skit. We're gonna be looking at a passage in which Jesus helps us with the issue of anxiety, and instead of just telling us to stop it, He's gonna comfort us and he's gonna give us several reasons as to why we, because we have a heavenly Father and we are God's children, should not struggle with anxiety. So if you will, turn your Bibles to Matthew chapter six. And as John said, this is part of the Sermon on the Mount. And we're gonna read verses 25 through 34. hear the word of the Lord. 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 sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? 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. But if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. Therefore, do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Now the main point that I want to try to get through in this sermon is that your life is more than physical needs. Now God is not unsympathetic towards your physical needs, get that, that is a major part of the sermon. God is not unsympathetic to the fact that you need physical things, but his primary concern is your spiritual good. Sorry, I'm having to deal with this microphone. You should have the outline in your order of worship, so I'm not going to go through all those points. But the first point you can see there is do not be anxious because your heavenly father values you. And this is in verses 26 through 30. So the first cure that Jesus gives for anxiety is to remind us that God values all creation. So certainly, certainly he's going to value his own children. And this is what is known as a lesser to greater argument. If you read the Gospels a lot, you'll see Jesus doing this everywhere. He loves to use the lesser to greater argument. And the lesser to greater argument is basically if God does the lesser thing, then it's logically to believe that God will do the greater thing. In verse 26, Jesus says, the birds don't have to worry about where their next meal comes from. Because your father feeds them. Now think about that, just in that wording, Jesus is saying there are these lesser creatures that God feeds, but God is your father, your father is the one who feeds these birds. In verse 28 he says, the lilies of the fields do not toil or spin to provide clothes for themselves. but God clothes them with morally, Father, is so proficient in taking care of the lesser parts of creation. Why are you, his child worried, that he will not take care of you? Do you ever doubt your value to God? I think we as Christians can be deceived into doubting our value. Well, here Jesus says that your father, he loves birds, he loves squirrels, he loves rabbits. If any of you have been in Burke County, God is really loving the rabbits right now. They are everywhere. He is taking care of rabbits. He loves deer. He loves all creatures of the forest. Therefore, it would be inconceivable to think that God does not love those who bear his image. But we shouldn't stop by seeing our value only in being God's image bearers. We should actually see our greatest value in the giving of God's son for us. Romans 8.32 says, he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? God has proven your value by giving his son someone who is of great value to him. Think of that, he gave Christ who is of great value in order to make you his son or his daughter. That's how valuable you are. And this should be the greatest evidence to us that God values us and that God will give us all things. So why should we not be anxious? Because our Heavenly Father values us. And Jesus really wants you to believe that in this passage. Well, you might say, how can God value me? He is so far above me. He's so different from me. How does he understand and know my needs? How can he take care of me when he is so high and so lofty? And this brings us to our second point. Do not be anxious because your heavenly father understands you. This is in verses 31 through 32. Jesus says, therefore do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all. Now, I am definitely not a science guy. I never liked science in school. My son Isaac, he likes science. I'm more of a sci-fi guy, if that makes any sense. But I do like cosmology, astronomy. Not that I really understand a lot of it, but I'm interested in it. And there is a star in a far off galaxy, and it's called UY Scuti. Has anybody ever heard of that? It's the letter U, the letter Y, and S-C-U-T-I. I don't know who names these things, but there's a much more interesting star named Betelgeuse. That one's easier to remember. But UY Scuti is the largest star known to man. If this star were placed where our sun is right now, it would expand all the way out to the orbit of Saturn. That is a huge star. If you flew a Boeing 777 around this star at normal speed, it would take you 1,200 years to fly around it one time. One time. That is if you could survive the trip. Well, the overwhelming vastness of some parts of creation are there for a reason. They are there to show you the greatness of God's glory. They are there to show you that we serve an infinite God, and that's true. But sometimes we can get so caught up in how infinite an other God is that we can get kind of the attitude that the psalmist has in part of Psalm 8 when he says, When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him? How could God be mindful of me when there's something like you out there? Well, as Christians, we are told in the scripture that the same God whose ways are so other and so transcendent is also the same God. who knows the hairs numbered on our heads. He's an intimate God. He's not an aloof, capricious God like the Greek or Egyptian gods. He is our Father. He is infinite, but He is also our Father. He knows you intimately, and because of that, Jesus says in verse 32, your heavenly Father knows that you have need. of earthly things. Now, I think there's two common mistakes that we make when we slip into doubting that God knows our needs, and there's probably several of them, but I thought of two things that I think that we do wrong in our thinking when we don't believe that God understands our needs. The first one is that we actually doubt God's goodness. And Jesus shows us this in Matthew 7, verses 7 through 11. This is another part of the Sermon on the Mount. He says, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds. And to the one who knocks, it will be opened. Or which of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him? Now you can see here Jesus is again using a lesser to greater argument. Here Jesus is saying that your goodness is no match for God's goodness. Your goodness in comparison to God's goodness is even considered evil. So if you can be good and give good gifts to your children, then how much more will God give good gifts to you? Think of how humanistic we are when we think this way, when we doubt God's goodness. We actually deceive ourselves into believing that we are more virtuous than God is. We give good things to our children but often don't believe that God would do the same for us. And what does this do? It creates worry in us. It creates doubt in us. So when we're tempted to worry, we need to try to meditate on God's goodness and remind ourselves of God's goodness. James 1.17 says, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James says God is the source of all good gifts, and there is no changing in him. He never turns from giving good gifts. And this brings us to the second mistake that we can often make, which is we actually can forget that God has an unchangeable nature. There's a cycle that I go through, I assume you guys go through it as well, where you have a little bit of faith and you doubt, a little bit of faith and you doubt. So there's some circumstances in our life that we're worried about, but we do have enough faith that we go to God with it and we pray about it. Well, in spite of all the worry that we're consumed with, God provides for us. And we rejoice in the provision. But then guess what happens? Another problem comes along. And we worry and we fret and we forget that God provided last time. And for some reason we think God is gonna change and he's not gonna provide the next time. It is as though we are perpetually in our hearts making ourselves orphans over and over again as anxiety arises in us. In Malachi 3.6, God says, I am the Lord. I do not change. Well, guess what that means? That means God's fatherhood never changes. His fatherhood of you never changes. And it's a perfect fatherhood. We should trust that our good, unchanging heavenly father, who knows the hairs on all of our heads, understands that we have needs. So we should not be anxious because our father values us. He understands us. But now we're going to talk about God's primary concern. His primary concern is your spiritual needs. And this brings us to our third point. Do not be anxious because your heavenly father matures you. This is in verses 33 through 34. Jesus says, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Look at that phrase, sufficient for the day is its own trouble. In this phrase, Jesus is not denying that God will allow or even ordain daily trouble in your life, but he says God allows the right amount. And this does not contradict God's desire to meet physical needs, but it emphasizes that God has a primary concern that is above his concern for your physical needs, and that is your righteousness. He wants you to reflect his righteousness. Why do we need our needs withheld? For the sake of spiritual maturity. How many of you who are children enjoy it when your parents make you work, when your parents make you do chores, or they discipline you in some other way. Wash the dishes, mow the lawn. Why do parents do this kind of stuff to children? Well, when I was a teenager, I believed it was because my parents wanted to withhold pleasure from me. They don't want me to have any pleasure. Well, trust me, guys, when you become adults and have your own children, you're going to understand that the real reason is because you know that children need discipline. order to mature. It's not as though parents despise the thought of their children enjoying life and having pleasure. They don't. Trust me, they don't. But they understand that life is more than pleasure. Immature people don't understand that life is more than pleasure and all children need some form of discipline so that they can grow in maturity and be adults. Now I'm going to And still Jesus' logic here, and using the lesser to greater argument of this passage, we see the shift to God's primary concern when Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. At this point of the passage, I think Jesus is showing that our worry is not just about physical things. It's not just about clothing and shelter and food. It's also about our willingness to submit to God's will rather than our will. And just a few verses back in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had just told us to pray, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And I don't care how new or immature of a Christian you are, or how mature of a Christian you are, we all struggle with aligning our will to meet God's will. We just do. And it seems like an easy concept. It seems like the basics that a Christian ought to be able to understand that whatever the Lord ordains, we sang that, whatever the Lord ordains is right. And I will be happiest if I submit to the ordained plan. It's easy to get up here, but it's harder to get down here. Why? Because I've got my own plans. In essence, the real cause of our anxiousness is that we want to be our own master. And we just want God to sign off on my plan. Sadly, this is for us Presbyterians, A theological understanding of God's sovereignty doesn't always mean that we are consistently submitting to it in our hearts. As I get older, I see this in myself sometimes, I look back and I think, you know what, God, if you'd just done this differently, if you'd just allowed this to be different, my life would be a lot better right now. Think about how arrogant that is. is push God off the throne for a few minutes and say, God, let me counsel you on how my life should be going right now. Like I could have a better plan than the master architect, the sovereign Lord of the universe. And when God seems to be veering away from my plan, what do I do? I worry. I become anxious. He's not doing it my way. Now look back at verse 30. Jesus says, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. Aren't you glad Jesus doesn't say, oh, you of no faith? To have our lack of faith exposed the way that Jesus exposes it here can be kind of overwhelming. But I don't think Jesus means this statement to crush those that he's counseling. He wants our faith to increase, but Jesus is patient. He's loving. He's long-suffering. Otherwise, he would just say, stop it. You don't have faith? Stop it and just have faith. But in his love and patience, he's preparing us, not for our kingdom, not for a kingdom of earthly physical pleasures, but for his kingdom, the kingdom of eternal righteousness. Think of the example of the patriarch Joseph. After many hardships and many pleasures in this life, God used Joseph to meet the physical needs of the Israelites when they were facing starvation. They were about to die out. God cared about Joseph and he cared about Israel's physical well-being. He didn't let them starve to death. But when you go to the New Testament and read about Joseph in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, Joseph is not exalted for rescuing Israel from their starvation. Now I'm not saying his faith played a role in that, and God used his faith, and that was an example to us. But that's not what he's being exalted for. He's exalted for something else. The author of Hebrews says, By faith, Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites, and gave directions concerning his bones. Now, this seems like an odd thing to exalt the faith of Joseph for. Why was it such an act of faith to give direction to, don't leave my bones in Egypt, make sure they go with you to Israel? Why is that such an act of faith? Well, in this Joseph was expressing his faith and belief in the resurrection. He wanted his bones not to remain in that land that foreshadows earthly pleasures, which is Egypt. And Joseph had many earthly pleasures in Egypt. He was basically a king there. He was a second in command. But he knew that his hope was in the land that foreshadows the eternal kingdom, Egypt. And he wanted his bones to be in that land, the land that represented resurrection, not the land that represented earthly pleasure. Joseph suffered the loss and experienced the gain of physical needs. He was used by God to accomplish great things, but what Joseph learned in all of those things was not to live for the comforts of this life, but to make preparation for that eternal kingdom, and he held on loosely to this world. This is what Jesus is teaching when he says, seek first the kingdom of God. All the physical earthly blessings are add-ons. They're not bad. There's nothing wrong with earthly pleasures, but they're add-ons. And we should not put the add-ons in front of the kingdom. Seek the kingdom first, and God will give you these add-ons. in this life. Blessings here and there. I would like to begin my conclusion by reading 1 Peter 5, verses 6-7. Peter says, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. This passage sums up Jesus' teaching here on the Sermon on the Mount. And there are two ways that Jesus' command to not be anxious can be applied to all people. The first one is what we call the second use of the law. Hopefully you guys are familiar with the term second use of the law. This is what we call the gospel use of the law. The law is actually used to show you your need of Christ. According to this concept, the law shows you your inability. So the second use of the law shows you your inability to keep the law. And it shows you your need to embrace Christ because you cannot keep the law because you understand that Jesus is the only one who can perfectly keep the law in your place. In this case, the law actually produces what I would call a good anxiety. We want those who don't know Christ to have anxiety because we would rather them have anxiety in this life and it drive them to Christ so that they can experience the true reason to not have anxiety. So the second use forces you to look into your heart and see that you are completely unable to obey the command to turn from anxiety. You need to cast yourself upon Christ, repent, and embrace him for salvation. And the second thing is the third use, so the second is the third use of the law. And this is what we would refer to as the sanctification use of the law. Those of you who have been Christians for a long time, you know that when you embraced Christ, all your fears didn't just melt away. You continue struggling and fighting to not be anxious. Well, you too need to keep casting yourself upon Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not teaching you to abolish your anxiety by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. That's not what he wants you to do. He's trying to show you your weakness because he wants you to be dependent, dependent upon him. He wants you to remember he died for all of your sins, even the sin of anxiety. And this is not to say that you should brashly continue in that sin, but we have to be comforted by the fact that Jesus has died for our anxiety and that he's paid for that sin as we can continue to wrestle with it. Hebrews 12, one through two says, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, Let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. This passage says that we are surrounded by saints, who bear witness and encourage us in our race against our own sin. As we run this race, we must look to Jesus, the founder and the perfecter of our faith. We also must remember that God has called us to be witnesses and supporters of those who are struggling with anxiety. Be like Jesus, don't be like Bob Newhart. Now, as you fight the good fight against all the lies that drive you to be anxious, and they are out there everywhere, today we are surrounded by lies that want us to live in anxiety. Take time to meditate upon the truth that you have a good, sovereign, heavenly Father who values you, who understands you, and who is preparing you for the eternal kingdom, that kingdom that the author of Hebrews in chapter 12 says cannot be shaken. Your flesh may shake with fear, it may shake with anxiety, but the seed of faith that God grows in a heart through union with Christ will never be shaken. And we should be encouraged by that. Amen. Okay.