Alex Huggett: Well, the last couple of years have been challenging for many people probably most people actually as the economy makes a slow recovery after the pandemic and I think, as I've been observing and reflecting on my own experience, there are two particular drivers of anxiety.
Alex Huggett: One is, of course, inflation.
Alex Huggett: Evolution has outstripped wages growth, so although you might have got a pay rise this year, it probably didn't keep up with the cost of living, which, of course, means you have less spending power than you did a year ago.
Alex Huggett: The other big one, of course, is the housing crisis.
Alex Huggett: People with perfectly good jobs are sometimes living on the street because they simply can't find somewhere to live.
Alex Huggett: Builders are losing their life savings as builders go bust, and if you're a renter and can find a place, you may well be paying an outrageous amount in rent.
Alex Huggett: Andrea and I actually experienced a little bit of this pain in the last year when we signed up with someone to put on a patio on our house and a pegola, and they went bust.
Alex Huggett: It was a good builder.
Alex Huggett: They just went bust, couldn't find labour and took a substantial deposit with it.
Alex Huggett: And we have.
Alex Huggett: We're okay, by the way.
Alex Huggett: I just want to express that I share your pain.
Alex Huggett: We have five adults living in a three bedroom house, and we assumed that the discomfort of small bedrooms and shared bedrooms would have driven out at least one of our children by now, and we're wondering if we need to reconsider our long term housing plans.
Alex Huggett: But you know, the problem is who wants to be upsizing their home at our stage of life?
Alex Huggett: Of course we could add a third economic challenge to this.
Alex Huggett: Our biggest trading partner, china, is facing some very strong economic challenges that may well affect the mining sector that fuels our state's economy.
Alex Huggett: So there's a bunch of things going on economically that perhaps can cause some anxiety for us, and over the next five or six weeks we're going to explore the topic of how to stay afloat when the economy is sinking.
Alex Huggett: Might sound a bit dramatic, but that's how it feels some days, and so we want to look at what the Bible says about this, spiritually, socially and practically.
Alex Huggett: And just to give you a heads up, in the final week we're planning on having a panel question and response with Alissa and Kathy, if babies allow us to.
Alex Huggett: So, just so you know, alissa is a certified practicing accountant and Kathy is a licensed in the financial industry, so they kind of know what they're talking about.
Alex Huggett: So if you have questions that this series as I speak prompts, there'll be an opportunity to ask them Again.
Alex Huggett: You can scan the QR code for an online form or you can just fill in a response card and pop it in the response box at the back.
Alex Huggett: Response cards are on the table outside, so don't have to do that today.
Alex Huggett: Just keep that in mind as we go through this series.
Alex Huggett: So today I want to look at how can we stay afloat emotionally or, as the subtitle in my Bible of the text we're about to read says, the cure for anxiety.
Alex Huggett: So we're going to read from Matthew, chapter 6, verses 25 to 34.
Alex Huggett: If you have a Bible or a Bible app, you're welcome to turn to that, and I'll be reading from the Christian Standard Bible.
Alex Huggett: So Matthew, chapter 6, verse 25.
Alex Huggett: And this, of course, is Jesus speaking in the Sermon on the Mount.
Alex Huggett: Therefore, I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.
Alex Huggett: Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?
Alex Huggett: Consider the birds of the sky.
Alex Huggett: They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Alex Huggett: Aren't you worth more than they Can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying.
Alex Huggett: Why do you worry about clothes?
Alex Huggett: Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow.
Alex Huggett: They don't labour or spin thread.
Alex Huggett: Yet I tell you that not even Solomon, in all his splendour, was adorned like one of these.
Alex Huggett: If that's how God clothes the grass of the field which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for you, you of little faith?
Alex Huggett: So don't worry saying what will we eat or what will we drink, what will you wear?
Alex Huggett: For the Gentiles eagerly seek all of these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.
Alex Huggett: Therefore, don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself.
Alex Huggett: Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Alex Huggett: May the Lord bless His reading to us.
Alex Huggett: Well, as creaky as it sometimes feels.
Alex Huggett: We are blessed to live in a country with a robust welfare system.
Alex Huggett: We have unemployment benefits to free healthcare.
Alex Huggett: But you know, that's actually a very new invention in history.
Alex Huggett: For most of history, the social safety net was family.
Alex Huggett: A bad year or long unemployment meant going hungry, not being able to afford medical care for your kids.
Alex Huggett: Not having medical care was worth, and maybe even homelessness.
Alex Huggett: And it's into that context that Jesus says don't worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear Now, I don't know about you, but that seems a little bit unrealistic sometimes.
Alex Huggett: Don't worry, can we really live worry-free and practicalities of life, and if so, how?
Alex Huggett: Well, jesus begins by asking isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?
Alex Huggett: To which we probably respond well, of course it is.
Alex Huggett: But we live in a very consumeristic society.
Alex Huggett: Whether it's a latte with a smashed avo on sourdough for breakfast, designer sneakers, a trip to Bali or saving for a better house, the quality of our lives often feel tied up with the goods and services and experiences that we consume, and media really reinforces this message.
Alex Huggett: Social media influences advertisers, the news media, sometimes even government with the policies and the messaging they give.
Alex Huggett: Now, I actually like smashed avo on toast and I like nice threads, but when these things become the focus and what gives us identity and meaning, we start running into the rocks of anxiety, because what happens when I can't afford them?
Alex Huggett: So being worry-free doesn't begin with having enough of these things, and it doesn't begin with having enough money for these things.
Alex Huggett: It begins with understanding that actually they're just not that important in the big scheme of things, or rather that they're far more important things.
Alex Huggett: So we need to change our perspective.
Alex Huggett: Now, I know this morning I'm mostly speaking to Christians, but, if you like me, I find I constantly need my perspective challenged in this regard.
Alex Huggett: We all know that the most important things in life are not these, and that they are things like what brings true goodness and meaning and contentment, the social and the spiritual dimensions of life.
Alex Huggett: Now, they say, no one dies wishing they'd spent more time in the office.
Alex Huggett: You can be poor and happy, but you can't be lonely or spiritually empty and happy, regardless of how much money you've got.
Alex Huggett: But the noise of our society and media make it very difficult to be content to live in the reality of these higher truths, and so Jesus is going to address this in a moment.
Alex Huggett: But the cure, he says, for anxiety begins with believing that there are more important and more transcendent realities to live for than just these material concerns that actually eclipse these material concerns and make them seem less important in the light of eternity, and so what we need to do is we need to shift our perspective away from a focus on material things and how big they learn we can't get rid of it all together but just what place they hold in our hearts and minds and onto the spiritual things.
Alex Huggett: The second part of staying afloat is summed up in Jesus' words Aren't you worth much more than these?
Alex Huggett: In the lilies of the field, as some translations put it, the wildflowers of the field that are thrown into the furnace, the birds of the sky, aren't you worth much more than these, and won't he, god, do much more for you?
Alex Huggett: So Jesus said that God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the wildflowers of the field.
Alex Huggett: Now, if you paid attention in high school science, you might be thinking well, hang on a minute.
Alex Huggett: That's not actually how it works.
Alex Huggett: God doesn't handcraft each wildflower and put it in place.
Alex Huggett: Their genes make them what they are.
Alex Huggett: Nor does he handfeed the birds, otherwise, what do we do with the ones that die during a drought?
Alex Huggett: Well, again, jesus challenges us to take a different perspective, one of the concepts in philosophy.
Alex Huggett: I'm going to get a little bit philosophical here briefly, but it's really helped me sort through this issue of God's involvement in His creation.
Alex Huggett: This is what we call God's providence, his care over creation and the way when we look at the world we can see the mechanisms that make it work is the idea of causes and what philosophers call material causes and efficient causes.
Alex Huggett: So what am I talking about?
Alex Huggett: Well, I want to use an example made popular by John Lennox.
Alex Huggett: Someone asks why is the kettle boiling?
Alex Huggett: And you might say well, it's because the electricity in the element is exciting, the atoms in the water, so that they heat up and start bubbling, and so on.
Alex Huggett: I didn't pay that much attention in science either.
Alex Huggett: That's the material cause, what we might call the scientific explanation.
Alex Huggett: Or you might say it's because I wanted a cup of tea.
Alex Huggett: That's the efficient cause.
Alex Huggett: I'm the agent that made that happen.
Alex Huggett: I don't know why it's called the efficient cause.
Alex Huggett: You've got to ask Aristotle that.
Alex Huggett: So when we study science and when we study the world with a scientific lens, we're concerned with material causes, and of course that's good.
Alex Huggett: Science is good.
Alex Huggett: But here's the limitation.
Alex Huggett: That's all science can do.
Alex Huggett: That's all it's good for.
Alex Huggett: It is concerned with physical material realities, but these physical material realities are just the tools.
Alex Huggett: That God, who is the efficient cause the agent uses.
Alex Huggett: Why are the wildflowers of the field so beautiful?
Alex Huggett: Why are the birds of the sky fed?
Alex Huggett: It's because God had ordered it.
Alex Huggett: God wanted the cup of tea, so to speak.
Alex Huggett: And he uses genetics, he uses the climate, he uses the lifestyle cycle to affect these things, but ultimately he does it and, according to Genesis, chapter 1, he delights in it.
Alex Huggett: He's not just a remote God who switched it on and then left.
Alex Huggett: He looked at creation, he looked at the world and said he's good.
Alex Huggett: And you know what?
Alex Huggett: He looked at us, humanity, and he said on that day he said it's very good and he's not hands off.
Alex Huggett: Colossians, chapter 1, verse 17, says that In Christ all things hold together.
Alex Huggett: His power is still at work in creation and again, that's what we call God's providence, his care of the world.
Alex Huggett: So, look, if we're going to live a worry-free life, we need to shift our thinking away from the material, mechanical, scientific view of the universe, or just only having that sort of view, to one in which we see God as intimately involved, god as caring.
Alex Huggett: Jesus says that if God cares for these things which, in the end, you know, we just toss dead flowers into the bin, we've got a new puppy at our house and, oh my goodness, my garden is in a terrible state Not that it was brilliant, but it is destroyed.
Alex Huggett: If God cares about those things, how much more does he care for you and for me, who are made in His image and who have inestimable worth?
Alex Huggett: See, god sees you, god values you, god loves you, god cares for you, which doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get smashed avow on toast or a holiday to Bali, but it does mean all will be well.
Alex Huggett: So in trying to learn to live the worry-free life, we've shifted our perspective and we're trusting in God's care.
Alex Huggett: Jesus says there's one other thing we need to do to live a worry-free life.
Alex Huggett: You see, it's not enough to believe in the non-material aspects of life.
Alex Huggett: Those higher ones are spiritual and the social.
Alex Huggett: We have to pursue these realities so that they become real for us.
Alex Huggett: And so Jesus says to seek first the kingdom and his righteousness.
Alex Huggett: Well, what does that mean?
Alex Huggett: Does it mean I spend all day in prayer, quit my job and just go to church?
Alex Huggett: Well, no, those things are important.
Alex Huggett: Not quitting your job, but prayer and church are important.
Alex Huggett: But it's actually far more radical than that, because it gets involved in the whole of life, just stepping back.
Alex Huggett: The problem with materialism is that it elevates finances to a god-like status in people's hearts.
Alex Huggett: We desire things and we actually start to serve things, and when that happens, rather than people using money as a tool, we actually start to get used by money, and that leads to injustice.
Alex Huggett: Whether that's an airline outsourcing services overseas while still making huge profits, or a clothing brand underpaying sweatshop workers or whatever it is, injustice abounds, and it's all because of money, and you know we're nearly all complicit.
Alex Huggett: Very hard not to be complicit in this, unless you're very diligent.
Alex Huggett: Chances are you're wearing an item of clothing that was made through exploitative labour practices.
Alex Huggett: We were shopping during the week, and I was having a look at brands at the shopping center.
Alex Huggett: I thought I wonder, so I pulled out the Baptist World Aid has an ethical clothing brands thing, and I'm scrolling through.
Alex Huggett: I'm like it's almost impossible to get something that has a high grade.
Alex Huggett: A lot of places are getting better, though, so there is hope.
Alex Huggett: Pursuing the kingdom means pursuing the interests of the king, the king who came and, rather than using people, gave his life for people.
Alex Huggett: Pursuing the kingdom means loving the king and loving the things the king loves, so loving people and loving justice.
Alex Huggett: You can't love people and be content within justice.
Alex Huggett: Right, and incidentally, I know that most of our Bibles say to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Alex Huggett: In both the Greek and the Hebrew the word for righteousness is the same word in the Greek and Hebrew for justice.
Alex Huggett: They're not separate words like they are in English.
Alex Huggett: In the English we have one that tends to be the more inward looking one and one that tends to be more outward looking.
Alex Huggett: But they're both linked concepts biblically being right within ourselves and right with God.
Alex Huggett: You can't separate it from being right with other people and right with His creation in the way we treat one another.
Alex Huggett: So I was sort of reflecting on this at the beginning of our service.
Alex Huggett: Material and consumerism.
Alex Huggett: They lead to a scarcity mindset.
Alex Huggett: You know there's not.
Alex Huggett: Will I have enough?
Alex Huggett: There's not enough housing out there.
Alex Huggett: How will I find housing?
Alex Huggett: And then you start having to put some money under the table or fighting for that resource, and the fear of not having enough leads to anxiety, conflict and exploitation.
Alex Huggett: What do we do?
Alex Huggett: Because often scarcity is real, but trust in God means we cast off the fear and death of consumerism and pursue the abundant joy of life in God's kingdom.
Alex Huggett: It's not that we can't seek material things we still need clothes, we still need food, we still need a place to live.
Alex Huggett: It's that we seek them in the context and the values of God's kingdom, trust in God to supply.
Alex Huggett: And when we seek God's kingdom first, jesus says he adds these things to us.
Alex Huggett: They will come to us and we don't need to anxiously pursue them.
Alex Huggett: It's not that we can be completely passive, but we do it from a different place.
Alex Huggett: When we open ourselves to do that, we open ourselves to His abundant grace.
Alex Huggett: Sometimes we have the resources to do things ourselves, and we should, but there's an element of God's grace that we sort of might miss it out on because God doesn't need to do it to us.
Alex Huggett: And again, this isn't about sin, this isn't about wrongdoing or anything like that, but when we come with a need to God, it puts us in a place where we can experience His grace and His power at work in our lives.
Alex Huggett: But it's got to come from trust.
Alex Huggett: So finish off.
Alex Huggett: How can we stay afloat when the economy is sinking?
Alex Huggett: Well, maybe you feel like the whole world is sinking.
Alex Huggett: There's a lot going on.
Alex Huggett: Our instincts may tell us we have to hold on to what we've got and fight for what we need.
Alex Huggett: But Jesus tells us to live in a different and counterintuitive way, to change our perspective, to trust in God's care and to seek first His kingdom.
Alex Huggett: As we do that, we plant ourselves in the abundance of God's grace.
Alex Huggett: Jesus elsewhere says he loves to give the kingdom to those who earnestly seek it.
Alex Huggett: So we really can't lose.
Alex Huggett: If our heart is for the kingdom, he will give it to us.
Alex Huggett: So there is more to life than just food and clothing.
Alex Huggett: God loves and cares for you and there is plenty in God's kingdom.
Alex Huggett: Let's pray, father.
Alex Huggett: We thank you.
Alex Huggett: We thank you that Jesus demonstrated this abundant grace in coming down to us and living so simply giving Himself for us.
Alex Huggett: Father, that's such a challenge to those of us who seek to follow Him.
Alex Huggett: Help us to see the world as it truly is, both material but the spiritual is so much bigger and the relationships we have are so much more important than these material things.
Alex Huggett: Father, help us to trust you, to trust your love for us.
Alex Huggett: Father, give us a revelation of your love.
Alex Huggett: Father, give us a faith to seek your kingdom first, to live in this world as citizens of your kingdom and to put ourselves in positions where we can receive your grace In Jesus' name amen.