SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jeff.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Please take your Bible or your device if you have it and make your way to Matthew chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 6 in the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: Last Sunday we looked together at verses 25 through 34, the end of chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Very close to the middle of the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning I want to approach that same passage of Scripture with you.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 25, but I'd like to do it from a different perspective.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll look at the same passage of Scripture and look at it from a different direction and see where the Lord leads us.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have your Bible, I encourage you to follow along as I read in Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord Jesus says, 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.
SPEAKER_00: Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
SPEAKER_00: Look at the birds of the air.
SPEAKER_00: They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
SPEAKER_00: Are you not of more value than they?
SPEAKER_00: And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life?
SPEAKER_00: And why are you anxious about clothing?
SPEAKER_00: Learn from the lilies of the field, how they grow.
SPEAKER_00: They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
SPEAKER_00: But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
SPEAKER_00: Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?
SPEAKER_00: For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
SPEAKER_00: Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The owner of the Montana Ranch I worked on for several years lived in California, and he used the ranch as an escape, as a summer retreat, and he invited all kinds of guests every summer.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the many responsibilities assigned to me was the maintenance of the guests' swimming pool.
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't that hard of a job as long as I stayed on it and did all of the testing and the pH levels and all that stuff every single day of the summer.
SPEAKER_00: Springtime was the one exception to the difficulty level.
SPEAKER_00: In early June, generally after the first free or the last freeze was over, I had to clean and prep the swimming pool for the summer use.
SPEAKER_00: But there was one major issue that I encountered year after year after year every year.
SPEAKER_00: And that had to do with the swimming pool being uncovered.
SPEAKER_00: There was no cover at all ever put on the swimming pool.
SPEAKER_00: So you can imagine then what I would have to encounter.
SPEAKER_00: When the falling leaves of autumn were blown about by the wind, where did they gather?
SPEAKER_00: In the swimming pool.
SPEAKER_00: When the wind drove the dust and the dirt around year round, where did it fall?
SPEAKER_00: In my swimming pool.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and and you know every fall, how every once in a while, especially out in the outlying areas in the country, you will see those little rodents scurrying around, gathering up food for the winter.
SPEAKER_00: Well, every fall season, some of them never made it back out of the pool.
SPEAKER_00: At least until the spring cleanup.
SPEAKER_00: By that time, by spring cleanup time, the pool was at least half full of thick black water and a sludge at the bottom of it that smelled somewhere between a rotten egg and sewage.
SPEAKER_00: And it was my job.
SPEAKER_00: It was my job to pump all of that out.
SPEAKER_00: And when I couldn't pump any more of the liquid out, to scoop out all of that sludge in the bottom of the pool while trying not to breathe.
SPEAKER_00: I'm completely serious about this.
SPEAKER_00: Cleaning out that pool was worse than cleaning out the horse stalls or the calving shed.
SPEAKER_00: It was just nasty.
SPEAKER_00: But my job wasn't done simply by getting the stuff out of the pool.
SPEAKER_00: Because that blackish mess stained the walls and the floor of my pool.
SPEAKER_00: See, it was a it was a concrete pool and it was painted white.
SPEAKER_00: So that black junk just stained the paint.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I could have could have just left it, but it would have looked like a cleaned-out mud pit.
SPEAKER_00: Power washing helped a great deal.
SPEAKER_00: But there were still stained spots all over the pool.
SPEAKER_00: So I had to purchase myriatic acid to acid wash the pool.
SPEAKER_00: And myriadic acid, if you don't know about it, it's it's nasty stuff.
SPEAKER_00: It comes with with all kinds of warnings and a skull and crossbones images plastered all over it.
SPEAKER_00: And I bought it by the five-gallon containers.
SPEAKER_00: Generally, it took me about 20 to 25 gallons every spring of myriatic acid to get that pool where it needed to be.
SPEAKER_00: It's dangerous stuff.
SPEAKER_00: It will burn through your skin.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not in a well-ventilated area, it will burn your sinuses.
SPEAKER_00: But it ate through the nastiness of the pool really well.
SPEAKER_00: And every year it was the same process over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Pump out the pool, power wash it, and mop it with myriatic acid.
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't mind if I never had to work with myriadic acid again.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I can still smell it.
SPEAKER_00: And I can still, to this day, feel the uncomfortable burning on my forearms and my wrists when I was stupid enough to not wear a long-sleeve shirt.
SPEAKER_00: Worry and anxiety are like that acid to your soul.
SPEAKER_00: Not in its cleaning properties, but in its dissolving eating work.
SPEAKER_00: Now care and concern are appropriate.
SPEAKER_00: God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: And he told Adam that he put him there before sin entered the world to work it and to keep it.
SPEAKER_00: Adam was to have care and concern for that which God placed within his area of responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: But the parts of our being that express care, that express concern, they often grow in intensity and become acidic.
SPEAKER_00: And before long, something that God gave as good is suddenly eating away at us like an acid.
SPEAKER_00: Most of you know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: You've lived that feeling.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you may be living it at this very moment.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus commands us three times do not be anxious.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be anxious.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at that last Lord's day.
SPEAKER_00: The ultimate cure he told us for anxiety and worry is greater faith.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 30, he tells us that our tendency to worry and to be anxious is because our faith is small.
SPEAKER_00: So the cure then is to increase our faith.
SPEAKER_00: But as we noted last time, while greater faith is a very simple cure, at the same time it is exasperatingly complex.
SPEAKER_00: Because of its complexity, I want us to look at this passage again, but from a slightly different perspective.
SPEAKER_00: And I need you to know that God always providentially works to make the preacher preach first to himself.
SPEAKER_00: I'm, Allison can tell you, I'm not one that is often given to worry.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a typical area of struggle for me, but I've worried all week about this sermon.
SPEAKER_00: I have 15 points to make.
SPEAKER_00: And all week long I've worried about how I'm going to get through all of them in one service.
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, God makes the preacher preach to himself first.
SPEAKER_00: But I do think it's best for us to cover all of those points this morning.
SPEAKER_00: That means that I'll only touch on them very briefly.
SPEAKER_00: And you will need to do the hard work of spending time with the Lord to process where you are in relation to them.
SPEAKER_00: Now we've actually decided to spend yet another week on this subject.
SPEAKER_00: So be sure to come back next week as we return to tie all of this together that we've looked at.
SPEAKER_00: But this morning we're going to be moving very quickly.
SPEAKER_00: So to help you listen and follow along, I've provided all the notes for what we're about to cover.
SPEAKER_00: But you don't get them till after the service.
SPEAKER_00: They are at the front desk at the Welcome Center, and you can pick them up on your way out.
SPEAKER_00: For the remainder of our time, though, I'd like your attention to be focused on listening, on focusing on what you're hearing, on what God says in this text, and on your own heart and mind.
SPEAKER_00: Now, those of you that are OCD about taking notes, you can do one of two things.
SPEAKER_00: You can go ahead and take notes and confess your sin.
SPEAKER_00: Or thank you for laughing.
SPEAKER_00: My terrible attempt at humor.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can trust me that I'm going to give you everything that you need in those handouts.
SPEAKER_00: First, let's consider how it is that the acid of worry begins to eat away at us.
SPEAKER_00: How does worry invade our being?
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what it does.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're going to cover first.
SPEAKER_00: Then we're going to begin to see how we counteract that acid in our souls, how God directs us to do that.
SPEAKER_00: And we're only going to touch on that today and then complete that next week.
SPEAKER_00: And to kind of put all of that succinctly, to counteract the acid of worry and anxiety, we must have godly wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: And that wisdom consists of two parts: knowing ourselves and then knowing our God so that we pursue Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at the first part.
SPEAKER_00: What wisdom do we gain about ourselves from this passage, from what Jesus says to us?
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of things that we learn.
SPEAKER_00: We learn, first, that worry invades our being when we look at life without faith.
SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Is not life more than?
SPEAKER_00: Then he goes on to talk about what we'll eat and drink and where.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the concern about the needs of our life.
SPEAKER_00: And that extends then to our control over our perceived needs.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, think about what you think about what you need.
SPEAKER_00: All of us have those thoughts and those feelings and those perceptions about what we need to have in life, right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, whatever you see in life that you perceive that you need, life is more than that.
SPEAKER_00: Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
SPEAKER_00: If you go back just a couple of chapters to chapter 4, Jesus addressed this in his own temptation.
SPEAKER_00: When Satan came to tempt him, he was 40 days and 40 nights without eating.
SPEAKER_00: What's the very first temptation?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus make a stone into a piece of bread.
SPEAKER_00: Need it.
SPEAKER_00: And what did Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: He quoted Deuteronomy chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: He said to Satan, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
SPEAKER_00: What was he saying?
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that food is important, but the things of God are more important.
SPEAKER_00: There is more to life than what you see.
SPEAKER_00: Give you an illustration of this.
SPEAKER_00: It's found in 2 Kings chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: It's always been one of my favorite passages of scripture, favorite stories, even as a kid.
SPEAKER_00: See, in 2 Kings, there was this prophet named Elisha, and God gave Elisha amazing insights that could only come from God.
SPEAKER_00: And that came to irritate one particular man.
SPEAKER_00: He was the king of Syria at the time.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the king's servants said to him that God tells Elisha what you talk about in your bedroom.
SPEAKER_00: So the king of Syria said, I want Elisha dead.
SPEAKER_00: So he gathered up his army, he marched to where Elisha was staying, and he surrounded the city.
SPEAKER_00: One morning, Elisha's servant went outside of the city.
SPEAKER_00: And it tells us, when the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city.
SPEAKER_00: And the servant said, Alas, my master, what shall we do?
SPEAKER_00: He saw what he perceived to be reality, and he worried about it.
SPEAKER_00: What happened next?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're told, Elisha says to his servant, Don't be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: For those who are with us are more than those who are with them.
SPEAKER_00: Huh?
SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00: There's just two of us.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Elisha prayed and said, Oh Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw.
SPEAKER_00: And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
SPEAKER_00: See, there's an illustration of looking at eyes, looking at something through physical eyes, through the eyes that we normally process things through, versus seeing with eyes of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Worry creeps in and settles in when we look at life without eyes of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that in your own life?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that you look at situations and circumstances in your life and the way you see them, the way you perceive them opens the door for that acid to creep right in and start eating away at you?
SPEAKER_00: This might be the most common way that worry invades our lives.
SPEAKER_00: But worry also invades when we fail to understand and apply the plain teaching of creation.
SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: Twice.
SPEAKER_00: Twice he says, look at the world around you.
SPEAKER_00: He says, look at look at the sparrows, the small tiny birds that flit around everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the birds of the air.
SPEAKER_00: They don't sow, they don't reap, they don't gather into barns, and yet they're always fed.
SPEAKER_00: Are you of not much more value than they?
SPEAKER_00: Then later he says, consider, learn from, spend some time processing the wild lilies, the wild flowers that grow.
SPEAKER_00: They don't do anything, they don't toil, they don't spin, and yet they grow and they're clothed with great and great grandeur and beauty and glory.
SPEAKER_00: In Proverbs, Solomon directs us to think about ants, rock badgers, locusts, lizards, lions, roosters, goats, leeches, and bees, among other creatures.
SPEAKER_00: There's wisdom and learning from the creatures that God has made.
SPEAKER_00: In Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: In Isaiah, God condemned his own people by pointing to an ox and a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he said: the ox knows its owner.
SPEAKER_00: And the donker knows its master's crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.
SPEAKER_00: How would you like to get condemned by God through a donkey?
SPEAKER_00: In Romans chapter 1, the Apostle Paul says that creation declares the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: It says his attributes and his power and his divinity are clearly understood if all you do is take some time to look at the world.
SPEAKER_00: Problem is in our in our sinfulness, in our unrighteousness, and our disbelief and our sinful idolatry of self, we ignore that truth.
SPEAKER_00: Or we suppress it, we push it down, or at worst, we understand it and we throw it to the ground and trample it.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther once turned that whole thing around to condemn us, to point fingers at us.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther said, We are commanded to have dominion over all creatures.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we behave so shamefully that a feeble sparrow must preach the gospel to us and daily hold forth before our eyes and ears, teaching us to trust God, even though we have the whole Bible.
SPEAKER_00: When's the last time that we learned from a sparrow?
SPEAKER_00: See, God has given us visible theology in the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: It's there, it's everywhere, to move us to trust Him instead of worry.
SPEAKER_00: But worry begins to invade when we fail to acknowledge and properly apply that revealed truth to our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Are you failing to look at your world and see the hand of God and so allow worry to seep in and eat at you?
SPEAKER_00: Worry also invades when we reject God's value system.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, look at the birds of the air.
SPEAKER_00: Learn from them.
SPEAKER_00: They don't sow, they don't reap, they don't gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them.
SPEAKER_00: Are you of not much more value than they?
SPEAKER_00: The events recorded in Genesis 3 changed everything.
SPEAKER_00: If you're Christian and if you understand the Bible, you you you know that and you grasp that and you know that when Adam and Eve sinned, it changed everything.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes we fail to really process how how deeply and pervasively everything was changed.
SPEAKER_00: Having a particular piece of fruit was considered more valuable than obeying God.
SPEAKER_00: God said, I'm giving all of this to you.
SPEAKER_00: You you can you have the whole garden, so many, so many kinds of trees from which to eat.
SPEAKER_00: Just don't eat from that one.
SPEAKER_00: God told them what they needed to do to succeed, to be right with him.
SPEAKER_00: And yet that one piece of fruit was more valuable than being right with God.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was that their son Cain believed that killing his brother was of greater value to him than submitting to God in faith.
SPEAKER_00: David, King David.
SPEAKER_00: He believed that committing adultery and then killing the woman's husband was of greater value than his own self-control.
SPEAKER_00: Judas believed that 30 pieces of silver was of greater value than God the Son.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in each of those instances, the result of valuing something wrongly was sin.
SPEAKER_00: When we refuse or or fail to see something with the same value with which God sees it, then what we're doing is rejecting God's value system and replacing it with mine.
SPEAKER_00: It's saying I know more about the value of things than God does.
SPEAKER_00: And sin thrives when our value system, when our value system, my value system, reigns.
SPEAKER_00: Sin thrives in that situation, blowing the doors open wide for worry to come in and eat at us.
SPEAKER_00: To what do you give improper value?
SPEAKER_00: Do you give more value than God does to money or to family or to freedom or to control of your own life than God does?
SPEAKER_00: Do you diminish something more than God says it should be diminished?
SPEAKER_00: If you do, then you're inviting anxiety into your life.
SPEAKER_00: Following God's value system moves us to trust his care.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, you are of greater value than birds.
SPEAKER_00: Now our world is flipping that around.
SPEAKER_00: They're saying often, many of them, that the animal world is of greater value than human beings, and so then we just get all mixed up.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says, God's value system, understanding the value that God places specifically on you, pushes worry out.
SPEAKER_00: I love the way that Jesus says this.
SPEAKER_00: In Luke chapter 12, my apologies, I was wrong here on the location on the screen here.
SPEAKER_00: It's Luke chapter 12, verses 6 and 7.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, they're cheap.
SPEAKER_00: They're really, really cheap.
SPEAKER_00: And not one of them is forgotten by God.
SPEAKER_00: Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered.
SPEAKER_00: Fear not, you are of more value than many sparrows.
SPEAKER_00: Will you rest in knowing that God knows you and God values you so much that he will care for you?
SPEAKER_00: Can you rest there?
SPEAKER_00: If God doesn't forget a single sparrow, do you think he will ever forget you?
SPEAKER_00: But worry slips in and when we begin to question where God is, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: We get into a tight situation or a painful situation, difficult situation, and we might wonder, where's God?
SPEAKER_00: Boom, open the door, invite worry in.
SPEAKER_00: Worry slips in when we wonder if God has forgotten us.
SPEAKER_00: Worry slips in when we wonder if God loves us.
SPEAKER_00: Worry invades when we devalue or increase our own value of something when God does not.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, speaking of overvaluing something, when we overestimate our own value, that leads us to switch places with God, which is another way of inviting worry to invade.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, which of you, verse 27, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life?
SPEAKER_00: What makes us think that we can change things by worrying?
SPEAKER_00: Show of hands here.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have ever changed a single thing by worrying about it?
SPEAKER_00: None?
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: Some translations, your Bible may have this in the sense of growing, of adding stature to your height.
SPEAKER_00: Others refer to it as adding time to your life, but the sense is the same.
SPEAKER_00: Which of you, which of us, by adding acid to our souls, can increase our life?
SPEAKER_00: None of us would raise our hands, would we?
SPEAKER_00: That's ludicrous.
SPEAKER_00: We know that we have no control over those aspects of life.
SPEAKER_00: And we know intuitively that worrying about it doesn't make a difference.
SPEAKER_00: Only God can make us live longer.
SPEAKER_00: And the point Jesus makes is that we act like God when we worry.
SPEAKER_00: If we worry, we think that we can change something, we think that we have control over it, and so we can we can make a difference, which puts us in the place of God.
SPEAKER_00: We seek control of life, we we seek authority and power to order our lives the way we want.
SPEAKER_00: We seek the sovereignty that only God possesses.
SPEAKER_00: Worry then eats at us like an acid when we try to switch places with God.
SPEAKER_00: Worry dethrones God so that we might rule in his place.
SPEAKER_00: I love how Luke records it.
SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 12, verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: Which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life?
SPEAKER_00: If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?
SPEAKER_00: Let that hit you real hard.
SPEAKER_00: It's a small thing, small thing for God to add time to your life.
SPEAKER_00: That says an immense amount about the greatness of God, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It's a small thing for Him to increase your life.
SPEAKER_00: And if we can't do even that small of a thing that God considers small, then whatever makes us think that we can switch places with him and order our lives the way we want.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is that we invite worry in to eat away at us because we doubt the Father's care and provision.
SPEAKER_00: Worry invades when we doubt the Father's care.
SPEAKER_00: If God so clothes, verse 30, the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you?
SPEAKER_00: O you of little faith?
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
SPEAKER_00: What about the trust in God?
SPEAKER_00: Anxiety overtakes us when we doubt God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe our expectations are too high.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we expect the Father to give us clothes by Versace when it's his kind intention to give us secondhand clothes.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we get anxious about what he may or may not do for us or to us.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we worry about how God might care for our health and well-being.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we have wrong perceptions of what we need.
SPEAKER_00: And so God doesn't give us what we wrongly perceive to be a need, and the next time we we then doubt his care and provision.
SPEAKER_00: So we say, God, I need this, and and God doesn't give us this.
SPEAKER_00: So the next time we need something, we doubt that God's going to provide it.
SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't say anything about God because we had the wrong perceptions of need in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: But that misperception allows worry to come right on in.
SPEAKER_00: What are your perceptions of what you need?
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have time this morning because I just thought of it this morning to get a page that my dad had pasted in the front cover of his Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It was a page that he had found or written, I don't remember which now, uh, early on in his life.
SPEAKER_00: And it laid out what he hoped God would do for him in his life.
SPEAKER_00: That if God was gracious, God would do X, Y, and Z.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't remember what those things were.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I had it here with me to read to you.
SPEAKER_00: But the one that I remember was that he he hoped that one day God would let him live a long life to where he would be an old man with sparkling eyes, bouncing grandchildren on his knees.
SPEAKER_00: So it was that that kind of thing where he thought, this, this would, if I could, if I could lay out my life, this is what it would look like.
SPEAKER_00: I would like it to be this, this, and this.
SPEAKER_00: But then it turned around and it said, but but if God doesn't do that, instead of if God decides to take my family away, if God decides to give me cancer, if God decides to do this, there were three or four things that he put there.
SPEAKER_00: He said, if even if God doesn't do this, but instead does this, I'm gonna trust him through it all.
SPEAKER_00: It was amazing my dad had that in there.
SPEAKER_00: He had the date on it from when he was a young man, right after he got married.
SPEAKER_00: All of the things that were in the second half of the list, if God takes my family away, if God gives me cancer, every single thing in that list, God brought to him.
SPEAKER_00: God took his family, God gave him cancer.
SPEAKER_00: God never allowed him to see his grandchildren.
SPEAKER_00: But he trusted him.
SPEAKER_00: What is your perception of your life?
SPEAKER_00: Is it your perception that whatever comes into your life, it is because of the care and the provision of your God, or is it because you think he's not faithful?
SPEAKER_00: How are you going to trust him in that?
SPEAKER_00: Will he not much more clothe you?
SPEAKER_00: There's only one answer to that question.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Anything else is doubt, is worry, is sin.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 14 tells us that anything that does not come from faith is sin.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not faithfully trusting your father's care and provision, it's sin.
SPEAKER_00: Is there any area of life where you doubt, where you let doubt invade you because you question the gracious care of your heavenly Father?
SPEAKER_00: Doubt invades when we pursue provision, like the world.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?
SPEAKER_00: For the Gentiles, the world, the unsaved, the unchristians, the non-Christians seek after these things.
SPEAKER_00: But your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
SPEAKER_00: These things are the basic provisions of life that God knows we need.
SPEAKER_00: Food to eat, something to drink, clothes to wear.
SPEAKER_00: The world, without God, pursues those things with fervor, with energy, with desire to build them up, to stockpile.
SPEAKER_00: But those who belong to the kingdom of heaven put those energies into pursuing Jesus and his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: They do that because they know that their father knows what they need.
SPEAKER_00: And they can let him worry about the provision.
SPEAKER_00: See, worry invades when we perceive that we do not have enough.
SPEAKER_00: Worry invades when we perceive that we need more than what God is giving us.
SPEAKER_00: When becoming more like Jesus takes second place to what we think we need, worry seeps in like an acid.
SPEAKER_00: Worry invades when we doubt the Father's knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: Your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
SPEAKER_00: Your Father.
SPEAKER_00: Then why would we ever think that he doesn't know what we need?
SPEAKER_00: If he knows us that intimately, why would we ever imagine that he doesn't know what we need?
SPEAKER_00: Here's why.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why we do that.
SPEAKER_00: We wonder that because we consider our needs from our perspective, not his.
SPEAKER_00: And when we pursue our own kingdoms, worry invades.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them.
SPEAKER_00: But you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and he'll take care of all of your needs.
SPEAKER_00: Your father, the one who made you, knows.
SPEAKER_00: When our focus is pursuing Jesus and the things that he cares about, then our care and concern shifts away from the cares of the world to looking to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And don't blame Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, they started it all.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve were the first ones to pursue something else.
SPEAKER_00: When they chose that fruit, they pursued their own kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: God made it very easy.
SPEAKER_00: You can pursue my kingdom by not eating from that tree.
SPEAKER_00: That's simple.
SPEAKER_00: But by eating the fruit, they pursued their own kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And human beings have done this very same thing ever since.
SPEAKER_00: We pursue our own kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Worry fills us when we give in to our own perceptions of reality.
SPEAKER_00: When we look at the world around us, when we look at our lives, when we look at our schedules this week, when we look at the wreck that our home is in, when we look at work and get all stressed out about what's coming up, when we look at our our health, when we look at our families, when we look at our futures, and we look at it all from our own perceptions of reality, worry filters in.
SPEAKER_00: And it's then that our efforts go into creating boundaries and walls to protect our own little kingdoms.
SPEAKER_00: And then we begin to fill up those walls of our own little kingdoms with things that make us feel good.
SPEAKER_00: And every aspect of our own kingdom building only opens another door for worry as we seek more and more control over our own little kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: When we focus on our comforts, when we focus on our felt needs, we we seek our own kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: When you pursue Christ's kingdom, and when you seek to conform your life, your soul, your thinking, and your actions to his righteousness, worry gets stripped of any opportunity to invade.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, worry seeps in, invades when we believe we have power over tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be anxious about tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we think it's crazy that we would believe that worry can add time to your life, right?
SPEAKER_00: Of course it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: We know we know that.
SPEAKER_00: Worrying is not going to increase your life.
SPEAKER_00: But somehow it's normal to act as though worrying about tomorrow will fix tomorrow's troubles.
SPEAKER_00: How does that make any sense?
SPEAKER_00: We functionally believe as though if I worry about tomorrow, it's all going to get worked out.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
SPEAKER_00: Worry is not what fixes that.
SPEAKER_00: Why would we believe that when we don't believe that worry can increase your life?
SPEAKER_00: When we believe or act as though our anxiety or worry will impact future events, we open the door for worry and say, Come on in, friend.
SPEAKER_00: So many ways for worry to invade our souls.
SPEAKER_00: How many of them do you entertain?
SPEAKER_00: Now, my guess is that the more of a worrier you are, the more of these elements you're going to entertain on a regular basis.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here we have an opportunity to grow in wisdom by knowing ourselves, by knowing how much we need to be more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So take time this week to pray through this list.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's available to you at the front desk.
SPEAKER_00: Pray each day through this list, asking the Lord to reveal to you areas where you let worry invade.
SPEAKER_00: And don't celebrate those.
SPEAKER_00: Confess them because they're sin.
SPEAKER_00: Confess them and ask the Lord to bring restoration through trust.
SPEAKER_00: More on that next week.
SPEAKER_00: But speaking of trust, trust begins to pervade our lives.
SPEAKER_00: When we have a biblical view of humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we're only going to be able to touch on these elements.
SPEAKER_00: John Calvin said that a portion of wisdom is found, and I quote, in seeing our weakness, our misery, our vanity and vileness to fill us with despair, distrust, and hatred of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Now, much of our modern world doesn't like to talk about hatred of ourselves in a positive way, but that's how he means it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the reason we need to hear it.
SPEAKER_00: We need to learn about our own humanity to move us to distrust ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: That's been Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: Now you might say, well, Pastor, I don't remember that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember hearing that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus has been teaching us that our natural bent is to trust ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Think back with me.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what have we covered in the Sermon on the Mount?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has taught us that our natural bent is to please God by what we do.
SPEAKER_00: Just like the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we do naturally.
SPEAKER_00: And because our natural bent is to please God by what we do, those tendencies end up being wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Those tendencies are that as human beings, our natural bent is to be angry, to be lustful and to covet, to use language inappropriately, to retaliate and exact vengeance, to hate our enemies instead of love them, to be spiritual in a way that gains approval and applause from other people.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's not enough, Jesus went on to say that we treasure up treasures on earth instead of heaven, that we struggle to see with spiritual eyes of enlightenment, and we try our hardest to serve multiple masters, money and God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, that's what you're like.
SPEAKER_00: All of those natural tendencies that are in our humanity must motivate us to distrust ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Because when we trust ourselves, when we think well of ourselves and believe that we're seeing things rightly, we we perceive things from our vantage point, not from God's.
SPEAKER_00: We wrongly believe that we know all there is to know.
SPEAKER_00: And we act and make decisions from a tainted, self-centered place.
SPEAKER_00: But when we think biblically about our humanity, we are less likely to trust ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: But if we're less likely to trust ourselves, then we must have our trust redirected to the proper place.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what Hebrews 12 tells us?
SPEAKER_00: Lay aside every weight in the sin that clings so closely.
SPEAKER_00: And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
SPEAKER_00: How do we run the race?
SPEAKER_00: Looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Having a biblical view of ourselves moves us to mistrust ourselves, but to then redirect our trust to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Trust pervades when we have a biblical view of God.
SPEAKER_00: Just from this own, from this, from this single passage of scripture, from these handful of verses, verse 25 of chapter 6 through the end of the chapter, what do we learn about God?
SPEAKER_00: Well, some things that I jotted down.
SPEAKER_00: Just from this section of Scripture, we learn that He is our loving Father.
SPEAKER_00: He is our caring Father, our providing Father, our sovereign Father, our powerful Father, our creating Father, our gracious Father, our glorious Father, our attentive Father, our knowing Father, our righteous father, and our ruling Father.
SPEAKER_00: When you know your father, not just in an intellectual way, but in a way that you grow to love him and to trust him with all that you are and all that you have and to thank him and praise him for who he is, then he will begin to replace your worry with trust and faith will begin to rule in your life.
SPEAKER_00: When you study to know him more than you study to know yourself, then you will find that he begins to hold off the acid in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Again, more on that next Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Trust pervades when we have a biblical view of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: Seek not the things that the world seeks, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: What you are seeking can be determined by answering a single question.
SPEAKER_00: Who is your life?
SPEAKER_00: And that's a strange, strange sounding question.
SPEAKER_00: But if you can answer that with yourself, I am my life, then you're seeking the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Seek the things that are above where Christ is.
SPEAKER_00: Seated at the right hand of God and set your minds there.
SPEAKER_00: Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because you've died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
SPEAKER_00: When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
SPEAKER_00: What God has begun in you, if you are a follower of Christ, if you have come to the end of yourself and placed your faith and trust in Christ alone, who died on the cross for your sins and rose again, if you are there, God will be, will complete what he has begun in you.
SPEAKER_00: That's Philippians 1.
SPEAKER_00: Your life in Christ's kingdom is about pursuit of his righteousness and pursuing eternity with him.
SPEAKER_00: And if we are doing that, then we can trust that he has every step along the way prepared and planned and perfected to bring about that final day of appearing with him in glory.
SPEAKER_00: It's as good as done.
SPEAKER_00: If we are guaranteed to appear with him in glory, then nothing here is worthy of worry.
SPEAKER_00: If Christ is truly our life, then nothing in this life is worthy of worry.
SPEAKER_00: Trust pervades when we have a biblical love for God.
SPEAKER_00: You remember the parable of the soils?
SPEAKER_00: When a farmer cast out seed and some of the seed fell in thorny ground, and says the thorns grew up and choked out the seed.
SPEAKER_00: You remember that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the reverse is true as well.
SPEAKER_00: When our pursuit is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind and all of our strength, that love for Him begins to choke out the cares and the concerns of the world.
SPEAKER_00: One more.
SPEAKER_00: When we have a biblical view of the future, worry is pushed out and trust pervades.
SPEAKER_00: Here I mean tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow and and the day after that.
SPEAKER_00: And the day after that.
SPEAKER_00: And every day of our planning.
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
SPEAKER_00: Do you do you believe that that you plan out your life?
SPEAKER_00: That you plan your way, that you establish it?
SPEAKER_00: Or do you trust what Solomon trusted, that the heart of man plans his ways, but it's the Lord who directs his steps.
SPEAKER_00: Because God is the one who ultimately directs our paths.
SPEAKER_00: So who are you going to trust for your path?
SPEAKER_00: Let's say that you spent months or even years of dreaming or making plans for an aspect of your life or for the way you want your life to go, and then disaster strikes, and you have to go in a completely different direction, what happens to you?
SPEAKER_00: Does worry and anxiety invade?
SPEAKER_00: Or does trust in the one who directs your path lead you forward?
SPEAKER_00: If our view, if our view of ourselves causes us to hold our plans for life loosely, and our view of God moves us to trust our Father more implicitly with our lives, and if our view of salvation causes us to grasp that whatever happens here and now is of small impact to a guaranteed eternity with Christ, and if our love of our gracious and caring Father is increasing day by day because we know more and more of who he is and our understanding of his daily care of us grows, then worry about tomorrow will happen less and less.
SPEAKER_00: It's a cause and effect situation.
SPEAKER_00: Do you need to begin expressing trust in God in any of these ways?
SPEAKER_00: Have you sought to dethrone God and rule in his place?
SPEAKER_00: Take time this week to understand yourself, to know, to know how you open up the doors for the acid of worry to invade.
SPEAKER_00: And then don't stop there.
SPEAKER_00: Then take a moment to express your trust in the God who provides each and every day.
SPEAKER_00: To say to him, I don't know what you're bringing today, but I'm going to trust you in it.
SPEAKER_00: And next time we're going to see how all of this, what all of this looks like in action and to see God's plan to transform us into a trusting kind of people.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, we confess our sin to you that we we fail to trust.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, so often it's it's just the easiest thing to look at life in our own eyes, from our own way of thinking and our own perceptions of reality and to live off of that.
SPEAKER_00: But we acknowledge that that just doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: Please take away the asset of worry and anxiety in our lives, and replace it with a trust in the one who is always faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Do that in us, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: May our God of hope fill you with all peace and believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit we may abound not in worry, but in hope.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.