We're gonna be in Matthew chapter number six. If you'll turn over there, I'm glad they sang that song just now, because I'm gonna preach from the passage where we find that, about considering the lilies. And while you're turning over there, I just mentioned, I think they put the table out here somewhere. There's some books and things that you might be interested in. So you look them over and if you are, you can see me after the service. There's some children's books that my youngest daughter, Bethany, wrote and illustrated. And there's a series of books that my oldest daughter, Rachel, wrote. And then there's a couple DVDs, Learn to Play the Guitar, which you've got plenty of guitar players around here. But I'll tell you how that came about. We go to churches where they don't have any music. They don't have a piano player. They don't have a guitar player. They don't have anything. So Mama put together a piano lesson DVD and Bethany put together a guitar lesson DVD, but mama held a book up in hers. And because she held that book up and told him to go buy it, we couldn't use it because she violated somebody's copyright. So we couldn't use that one, but those are back there. And then I don't know, there's something you look at over there and see if there's anything that you think would be a help to you. I want to look in Matthew chapter six. We're in the Sermon on the Mount. We've been dealing with some passages that are Our familiar passages, we looked in Genesis 22, and then last night, Luke 15. I wanna deal with this passage in Matthew chapter number six, in the Sermon on the Mount. I've got a fly up here. He's bothering me a little bit, but we'll get rid of him. Brother Kelly was preaching one day, he swallowed a fly. He said, well, at least it was scriptural. He was a stranger and I took him in. But hopefully that won't happen tonight. Matthew chapter six, verse 25. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are you not much better than they? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought saying what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed. For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself, sufficient under the day, is the evil thereof." And we'll use these verses tonight, and I want to preach on answers for the anxious, or we might call it a word for the worriers. Now when we come to this passage, the text that we've read, I want you to notice the very first word is the word therefore. I remember an old preacher tell me one time, he said, whenever you find a therefore, you need to look therefore and see what the therefore is there for. Why does he start with therefore? Because he's been talking about the care of God. He'll tell us in verse 19, lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, nor where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your heart, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. So he just told them not to put their trust in earthly things. not to lay up their treasure on the earth. Then he tells them about the light of the body, is the eye. And what he's talking about, we won't read all these verses, but he's talking about if you're not looking in the right place, you're gonna get darkness instead of get light. So if we're not supposed to put our trust in things of this world and we're not supposed to set our eyes on things of this world, what are we supposed to do? He said, therefore I say unto you, take no thought. Now I'm interested. in this passage for several reasons. I remember some years ago, we were out in Maryland. We were preaching at the Pioneer Baptist Church in Thurmont, Maryland. And we were driving through Frederick and there was an Ames department store. I don't know if you ever remember Ames department stores. And I decided we would stop. Now I'm not much of a shopper, but they had a big sign that said 75% off. I thought that's where I'd like to shop. So we pulled in there and we looked around and we didn't find anything that we wanted, but when we were walking out, they had these tables set up right by where you'd have to walk by them to get out the door and they had things set up on the table they wanted you to buy by impulse. And so I was looking at the table as I walked by and I saw this big box and it said, I could just see the back of it, I couldn't see the front, and it said on it, The Stress Buster. And I thought, well, that's interesting. I wonder what the stress buster is. So I picked up the box and turned it around. You know what it was? It was a punching bag with a face drawn on it. And so apparently what you do if you have stress is you take that punching bag home and you hang it up, probably not in your living room, but maybe in the garage or in the basement, and you go in there and you look at that face and you imagine whoever it is that's causing your stress, and then you just beat the daylights out of them. I thought to myself, that's the world's answer for stress. Did you know that God already has a stress busting program? It's found in the book of Philippians and it goes like this. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds by Christ Jesus. That's God's stress-busting program. He wants me to leave my worries and my cares with Him. Now he'll tell us about that in this passage. Now let's make sure that we don't misunderstand him when he says, take no thought. Take no thought. Is he saying that I should never plan for tomorrow? Is he saying I should never have a goal or an ambition or anything like that? No, he's wanting me to get my priorities in order. He'll tell us later in the passage, he'll say in verse 33, but seek ye first the kingdom of God. and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." He'll say in this passage, is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment? He didn't say that meat and the body didn't have, or meat and raiment didn't have anything to do with life. He said life is more than that. So what he's saying is, not that I'm never planning or anything or putting away, it's just that I gotta get my priorities. I need to get first things first in my life. And what I need to do first is I need to learn to trust the Lord. One writer put it this way. He said, there is all the difference between foresight and foreboding. It is the latter that Jesus chides. The farmer must sow in the autumn that he may reap in the summer, but there is no need for him to lie sleepless through the nights of winter, worrying about the yet distant harvest. You know, the Bible tells us in the end days, men's hearts will fail them for fear. We don't talk much about fear, but we use a different word for fear. Your doctor will use it to you sometime, with you sometime when you go in there with heart trouble. He'll say you have too much stress. That's our modern worm for fear. We're stressed out over what's gonna happen tomorrow, what we'll have, what we won't have, and so the Lord is trying to help us here to not worry, to not spend our life in a worried state, to not spend our life anxious. about what's gonna happen tomorrow. And I tell you, we live in a day of worry, don't we? We live in a day of anxiousness. So I want us to see what the Lord said, what he said about being worried and what he said about being anxious. I remember my mother told me this years ago before she went home to be with the Lord. Now you're not going to believe this because you'll just have a hard time believing that this is true of a nice fellow like me. But when I was the boy, there were four of us McBride boys, I was the troubled boy. I was the boy always in trouble. I was the one always getting in some kind of mischief and always some kind of trouble and always something going wrong. And I was the one my mother always had to get after and always had to look after. and I remember when I surrendered to preach and I went in evangelism and my wife and myself and my daughter went out in that little Volkswagen rabbit and headed out without one meeting scheduled headed down the road and my mother didn't tell me this then but she told me years later she said I was in my I was in the house and I was doing the laundry. And she said, I was praying for you. And she said, I was afraid. I thought about you. And I guess this was because I was always the child in trouble. She said, I thought about you on those roads, traveling with your family. And she said, I was worried and I was praying. And I said, Lord, you got to watch over Brian. Lord, you got to take care of Brian. Lord, I don't know if Brian will make it. And this is the way she said it to me. You take it for what it's worth. She said, in the middle of my prayer, the Lord said to me, Beverly, She stopped, she said, he always calls me Beverly. Said, Beverly, don't you know I'm gonna take care of Brian while he's out there on the road? And God settled her heart. She prayed and God gave her peace. Now there are three things I want you to notice in this passage. He's gonna tell us about worry. The first thing he's gonna say to us is that worry is for the faithless. It's for them who have little faith. He makes this statement in verse number 30. Look what he said. So he tells us that worry is the opposite of faith. That worry is the result of having little faith. He wants to press this home to us and He's going to use three natural things, three things we see in nature to impress this upon us that we ought to have faith in God, that we ought to trust Him. He'll talk to us about, I like, there's two little statements He makes. He said, are ye not much better than they? And then he'll say this, shall he not much more clothe you? I like those two little phrases. Now look at the three natural things he'll mention. He'll mention the fowls of the air. God cares about the fowls of the air. Last spring when the COVID hit, we were home, we had everything got canceled, we were home for three months. And so you say, Oh, preacher, what'd you do for income? Well, we didn't have any meetings and I don't preach for money, but if I don't preach, I don't get paid. So we're home, but I'll tell you what happened. It got to be exciting to go to the mailbox. See what was in there. The Lord took such good care of us. You know, while I was home, while I was home for three months, I lost 30 pounds. Was it because you were not eating good? No, I was eating good. Every morning I had farm fresh eggs, either bacon, sausage, or ham. I had chocolate chip pancakes with maple syrup and chocolate milk every morning, but I lost 30 pounds. I was hauling brush and burning things and building walls, and I lost 30 pounds, went back on the road and gained 50, but anyway. the fowls of the air. But I started to tell you about that while I was home. I'm never home very much, and there's a wooded place beside our house, and I kept noticing birds. There were a lot of birds around, and I said to Sherry, I said, you know, right here where we sit at the breakfast table and eat our breakfast, the window right there, there's always birds. I said, let's find us a bird feeder. So we got us a bird feeder, and we put bird feed in, and we set it out there, and man, we had every kind of bird you could imagine, every kind of, Woodpecker, we had a pileated woodpecker. You remember Woody Woodpecker? Those great big ones we had, red-headed and red-bellied and everything you think about, every kind of finch and bluebirds and blue jays and cardinals and all kind of stuff. They were out there eating and we'd fill that thing up and a day or two it'd be empty, they'd eat it all up. And I thought about that when I went back on the road. Who's gonna feed the birds? Well, I come home. I'm back now. I'll be home. I'm preaching around. I'll be able to stay at the house for about three weeks. Guess what? The birds are doing fine. They didn't need me to feed them. God was taking care of them. They're still all around there. The bird feeder's empty, but they're still doing well. God tells us here that He feeds the birds. He said, He's interested in the birds. And He says, are you not much better than they? God will take care of us. He'll supply our needs. I was in a meeting a while back, not too long ago, and I didn't look necessarily at the preacher's shoes, but I just felt like the Lord put it on my heart that I needed to buy the preacher a pair of shoes. The pastor. And usually pastors don't like you to do that. They don't want the evangelist to come in and spend money on them. I tell you, I should have said yes right away when the Lord told me, but I didn't, I hesitated. He spoke to me about it again. And so I gave the preacher some money, said, go buy you some shoes. And so he went, he sent me a picture after I left the meeting that he got his new shoes, got him some Floresheim shoes. But you know what happened to me the next week? I got two pair of Johnston and Murphys. God takes care of you. He'll make sure you have what you need. He'll always take care of us. The fowls of the air teach that, and then the flowers of the field, he says this, I say unto you about those lilies that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. I have a closet, and I'm gonna have to go to the Goodwill store, and I'll tell you why. I have too many clothes in the closet. I'm gonna have to take some, get rid of. Say, preacher, how can you have too many? Because a preacher just recently gave me about 14 suits. I'm wearing one of them right now. I gave some away before he gave me some. But the Lord takes care of it. Are you listening now? The Lord, I don't know if I'm as beautiful as a lily tonight, but I am dressed up in the house of God. The suit could be as beautiful, what's in it's not, but the suit could be. And so he said, wherefore if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow's cast in the oven, shall he not much more clothe you? Oh ye of little faith. And he talks about Solomon. He said, King Solomon was not, he was not clothed like the lilies of the field. He said, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. We need to go back sometime in 1 Kings and read about Solomon. 1 Kings 10 said, King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom. And yet God said, I clothed the lilies of the field better than Solomon was clothed. I say this to you, and I think I may have said it to you already Sunday morning, but God can take better care of you than you can take care of yourself if you'll trust Him. So He talks about the fowls of the air to help us have faith. He talks about the flowers of the field. Then He talks about the frailty of life. Look in verse 27. Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? Now, He may be saying to us, that no matter how hard you think it, you can't make yourself any taller. But if you go back and look in the book of Job, Job talks about life as a span. And he may be talking about making myself taller. He may be talking about making myself live longer. And I think we ought to take care of ourselves and do what we can to keep ourselves healthy. But I'm gonna tell you, when God says it's time, we're leaving here. Amen. So he tells us that we cannot change our stature, whether it's the length of our life, whether it's the height of our life, we can't change that. So what do we ought to do? We ought to trust the one that made us. So he's telling us that worry is for the faithless, O ye of little faith. When I am struggling under worry and anxious care, it is an indication that my faith is not what it ought to be. that my faith, he doesn't say no faith, but he said, O ye of little faith. He wants us to grow in faith. And I'll remind you of this, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So worry is for the faithless. How's your faith tonight? So I don't know how my faith is. Well, then let's ask it this way. How about your worry? Can God take care of you or can't he? I think he can, can't he? Here's the second thing. Worry is not only for the faithless, but in our text, worry is for the fatherless. Look what else he said. He said, therefore, verse 13, take no thought saying what you shall eat or what you shall drink or wear withal. Shall ye be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. He brought up the Gentiles. That's what you and I are. For your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Now why did he bring up the Gentiles? Because he's talking to the Jews here and the Gentiles were those who did not believe in the God of the Bible. And so they were, in practicality and everyday living and experience, they were fatherless. They had no father. And then he said, you're heavenly father. You have a father. You know what's the problem with most of us? We're acting like we have no father. We live like we don't have a father. Like somehow our father died or maybe he got weak or maybe he didn't see anything coming down the road. Maybe he got blindsided or taken by surprise. I don't think he ever gets blindsided, do you? I don't think he ever gets taken by surprise. Worry is for the fatherless. You know, if we would go back to the Sermon on the Mount, 17 times we'll find the word father, and 12 of those times will be in Matthew chapter six. He'll talk about the father over and over again. In Matthew chapter six, he starts the chapter out like this. Take heed that you do not your alms before men to be seen of them, otherwise you have no reward of your father, which is in heaven. He'll talk about the Father again in verse four, and then again in verse six, and in verse eight, your Father, and in verse nine, our Father, and in verse 14, your heavenly Father, and in verse 15, your Father, on and on. In verse 18, thy Father, thy Father. He wants us to be reminded that we have a Father. We're not fatherless. We're not orphans tonight. God is our Father. If you have been saved, God's your Father. You've been birthed into the family of God. He wants us to be reminded that we have a father. What do we know about this father? What does he tell us about this father? Well, we have a father who cares. He cares for us. The Bible said, casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. Say, preacher, how do you know God cares for me? Because he cares about the sparrows that fall. And the Bible said we're of much more value than the sparrows. One writer said this one time. He said, when the Bible said that, are not two sparrows sold for a farthing and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your father. He said that falling on the ground. He said, what it means is God attends the funeral of every sparrow that falls. I like the thought of that. But I thought about this. Now we're thinking about our father. I thought about this. Someone will say, well, preacher, I'm not worth much. I'm really not worth much. In one place Jesus said two sparrows were sold for a farthing. But in another place he said are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? Now I told you once already this week, I'm not good at math. But if two sparrows are sold for one farthing, shouldn't it be four sparrows for two farthings? That's not what it is. He said two sparrows for one farthing, five sparrows for two farthings. What's going on here? Well, here's what I think's going on. Did you ever, if you ever been to a marketplace and I'm not talking about Walmart or something like that, but a flea market or a garage sale, and they're selling little things, and they say, well, I want so much for this and so much for that, and maybe there's four of them, or maybe there's five of them, and you don't necessarily want five, but you want those four, and so you pay them what they're asking for the four, and they look at you, and they say, okay, well, since you bought four, I'm gonna throw the fifth one in. I'm gonna throw it in free. And so when Jesus said there's a fifth sparrow, you know what? He's just thrown in. He wasn't worth anything. He wasn't worth even half a farthing. He just got thrown into the bunch. And the Bible said God loves him too. Sometime, I don't know about you, but I feel that way, like I'm the fifth sparrow. Not worth much, but you know what? God loves me like he loves the rest of them. He loves me just like he loves you. So we have a father who cares. We not only have a father that cares, we have a father who knows. Look what he said in our text. He said, for your heavenly father knoweth that you have need of all these things. God knows what I need. He knew that preacher needed shoes. He knew I needed shoes. He knew I needed coats, suits. He knows what I need. Sometime I pray. Say to the Lord Lord, you know, we got to have this got to have that but God already knows But I pray and ask him but then sometimes he knows I have needs. I don't even know I have He takes care of us doesn't he? He blesses us in ways. We were not expecting and he knows what we need He knows better than we do. So we have a father who cares we have a father who knows and we have a father who gives I want you to notice what he says later in the Sermon on the Mount. Look in chapter 7 and start in verse 7 and watch what it says. It says, Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son asks bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father, which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him? So here in this sermon on the mount, not too far removed from where we're preaching, where we're studying right now, Jesus wants to remind us that God is a giving God. He doesn't give bad things, He gives good things. He blesses us with things. How much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him? I remember my father giving me good things when I was a boy. Not always everything I asked for, because some things I asked for would not have been good for me, but he gave me good things. He was an earthly father. You say, well, preacher, I had a father who was not good to me and didn't give me good things. Well, then let me say this to you. Your heavenly father is better than that. That's what he just told us in this passage. He's better than that. I remember a preacher tell me one time, he said, when I was lost, I'd go to church and the preacher, the pastor would stand up and say, God is like your father. And he said, my father had beat me and abused me. And he said, if God is like my father, I don't want to have anything to do with God. But I want to tell you something. He just told us God's better than that. If you be an evil. An evil man, God is better than that. Now sometimes evil men, we being evil, all of us sinners, we're good to our children, but no matter what we're like, whether we're good or whether we're bad, God is better than that. He gives better gifts than men do. So worry is for the fatherless. You know what some of us are doing? We're acting like we have no father. I have that problem sometimes. I act like I don't have a father, but I do, I have a heavenly father. He takes care of me. So worry is for the faithless. Worry is for the fatherless. And then you might be familiar with this word and you might not. But worry, number three, is for the feckless. The feckless. What is a feckless person? Well, a feckless person is somebody who is irresponsible. Now watch the last thing he says in our text. He said, verse 34, take therefore no thought for the morrow. For the moral shall take thought for the things of itself, sufficient under the day is the evil thereof. And it is, listen to me now, it is irresponsible for me to worry away my today or waste away my today worrying about my tomorrow. It is an irresponsible use of my day today. if I spend the whole time worrying about what may happen tomorrow. That's irresponsible. I remember some years ago, I was preaching in Mississippi, and I preached for a man whose personality is completely opposite of mine. He's very dignified, he's very quiet, very... I don't know what the word to use is. He's just different for me. And he's a good man of God, loves God. So I preached for him. My family sang and I preached. Then I went back to where I was staying in Mississippi. And on Monday, I saw there was something on my answer machine on my cell phone. So I hit the button to hear the message and it was that pastor that I'd been with on Sunday. And I'm going to try and say it to you just the way it sounded. It said, Brother McBride, would you please call me? There is something I need to discuss with you. That's all it said. My wife said, who was it? I named the preacher's name. She said, what did he want? I said, he wants to discuss something. Here's all the things that went through my mind. I sang a song he didn't like. I said something in the message I shouldn't have said. We went out and had lunch. I must have talked about something at lunch I wasn't supposed to talk about. I was going through my mind all these things, all these things that it could be that he wanted. What would you think if somebody said, I want to discuss something with you? So come Monday night, my wife said, did you call him back? I said, no. I don't want to talk to him. She said, well, you're going to have to call him back. So Tuesday, I fretted over that thing all day long on Monday. I couldn't enjoy anything I did. So on Tuesday, I called. I got the secretary. She said, I'll transfer you in. He answered the phone. I said, hello, preacher. He said, hello, Brother McBride. He said, I wanted you to call me. He said, we greatly enjoyed having you here and I wanted to discuss with you about when you could come back. I spent that whole day Monday thinking I'd done something wrong, I was gonna get called out, I was gonna get dressed down, the whole day. And all it was was he wanted to thank me for coming and book me back. You know what I was? I was irresponsible. I wasted a day worried about something that I didn't need to worry about. I wonder how much time of our life has been wasted worrying, fretting, Here's what one writer, Adam Clark, said. He said, how much good is omitted? How many evils caused? How many duties neglected? How many innocent persons deserted? How many good works destroyed? How many truths suppressed? And how many acts of injustice have been authorized by those timorous forecasts of what may happen? and those faithless apprehensions concerning the future. Let us do now what God requires of us and trust the consequences to Him. You see, when we get to thinking about tomorrow, think about this. You have, first of all, no promise of tomorrow. Isn't that true? Why should I worry about tomorrow when I don't even know if I'm gonna be here? Why should I let tomorrow ruin today when I may go home? I have and you have no promise of tomorrow. Not only do we not have a promise of tomorrow, we don't have a preview of tomorrow. Oh, you can go down and see the palm reader if you want to, but she's not gonna tell you the truth. You can consult the tea leaves and even like they did in the Old Testament, look in the liver, but it ain't gonna help you. You're not gonna know what's coming tomorrow, but there is somebody that knows. God knows he's already been in your tomorrow. In fact, with him today, tomorrow, yesterday, it's all the same with him because he dwells in eternity and we dwell in time. So we ought to trust him. We have no promise of tomorrow. We have no preview of tomorrow. And the truth is we have plenty to deal with right now. Right today, plenty of things to do. I fretted over something, something going on at the house. I have, I'll just be honest with you. I have fretted over it. I've been anxious over it. I've been anxious till I had to do some deep breathing, get my blood pressure straightened out. And the Lord rebuked me over it. He knows what's going to happen. He knows how to take care of it. You know, I'm 64 years old. I know I look much younger. But for 64 years, the God of heaven has taken care of me. He's met my every need. He's never let me down, not one time, not a single time, not once has He ever let me down. He's always been faithful. Why would I not trust Him now? Why would I not just say, all right, Lord, it's in Your hands. You do what You will. You know what's best. I'm just going to trust You. I'm talking about worrying. We see in our text worries for the faithless, worries for the fatherless, and worries for the feckless. He made this statement, sufficient under the day is the evil thereof. We've got enough to deal with right now. Let's walk with God today and let God take care of tomorrow. I want you to bow your heads a moment, if you will. Your heads are bowed and your eyes are closed. The Lord knows. Preachers talk about who's here and who's not here, but the Lord knows. He knew who'd be here. He knew what we needed. He knows what we'll need tomorrow. Let's trust Him. Let's trust Him tonight. Let's take the words of the hymn to our heart when it said, "'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, When it said only trust Him. When the songwriter asked the question, does Jesus care? And then answered the question, oh yes He cares, I know He cares. When the songwriter said, I must tell Jesus all of my troubles. He's a kind and compassionate friend. Let's just trust Him tonight. Let's not live in fear and worry. Let's walk in the truth and trust our Lord. Father, you help us tonight. I want to thank you for these that have come. And I pray you'll help them in their heart and help me in my heart. Help us to trust you like you're worthy of being trusted. Doesn't mean we don't plan. Doesn't mean that. But it does mean, Lord, that we don't live our life fretting and worrying and anxious. Help us to fulfill what we are exhorted to fulfill in this passage of scripture. And Lord, if there's somebody here lost without God, I pray they'd get a father tonight. They'd trust Jesus. Those of us that are saved, help us, Lord, to walk by faith and not by sight. Help us in Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Let's stand to our feet a moment. What you gonna say, brother? 277, I only trust him. Only trust him. Let's stand.