MORE LIFE & LESS WORRY MATTHEW 6:25-34 Series: Life With Our Father - Part Nine Pastor Steve York* November 25, 2007
(Open by playing first
portion of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” by Bobby McFerrin )
Name that tune?
Here is a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry be happy
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy......
“Don’t Worry, Be Happy” was Bobby
McFerrin’s 1-hit wonder.It was the #1 pop hit in 1988, and it won the
Grammy for Best Song of the Year.Listen to
some more of the lyrics and tell me, doesn’t this have
to be one of the most annoying, insensitive songs ever
written?
Ain't got no place to lay your head
Somebody came and took your bed
Don't worry, be happy
The land lord say your rent is late
He may have to litigate
Don't worry, be happy
I mean, really, come on!Isn’t that
one of the most irritating songs in the world?
When he wrote this song, you’ve
gotta wonder, on what planet was he living?
Think about it for a second: here
is your life: you are struggling to pay the bills, you
lose your job, you car breaks down, your health fails, a
loved one dies…. And Bobby McFerrin
sympathetically counsels: “Don’t worry, be happy!Hey, just a
bit of trouble!Don’t
worry, that’s life.Be happy!”
And who is this guy, anyway, to
tell me not to worry but to be happy? Here’s a funny story: Bobby
McFerrin used to live in Marin County, and shortly after
this song became popular, his car broke down on Highway
One near the Golden Gate Bridge.The San
Francisco Chronicle reported that motorists stopped to
help, and, once they saw who was behind the wheel of the
stalled car, shouted “Don’t worry, be happy,” and drove off.
Well, two thousand years before Bobby McFerrin,
there was a man named Jesus… he didn’t compose and sing
“don’t worry, be happy”, but he did say some pretty
strong things about not worrying.
Please open your Bibles with me to Matthew
6:25-34:
Jesus says:“Therefore I tell you, do not
worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or
about your body, what you will wear.Is not life
more important than food, and the body more important
than clothes?Look
at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or
store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them.Are
you not much more valuable than they?Who of you by
worrying can add a single hour to his life?And why do
you worry about clothes?See how the lilies of the field grow.They do not
labor or spin.Yet
I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was
dressed like one of these.If that is how God clothes
the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow
is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe
you, O you of little faith?So do not worry, saying, ‘What
shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall
we wear?’For
the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly
Father knows that you need them.But seek first his kingdom
and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well.Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for
tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough
trouble of its own.”
Before we dive into this passage, we need to be
careful about our approach.One option is for us to come to
this passage like we would to Bobby McFerrin’s wonderful
song.If
we did this, we would come away seeing Jesus as an
unsympathetic and annoying wise-cracker who looks down
on us in our misery and says with a snicker, “Don’t worry, just be happy!”
The other option - the one we must choose - is to
come to this passage with the knowledge that this is
Jesus speaking, the One and Only King of Kings… who left
his heavenly home to be born among animals, live in 1st century Palestine as a commoner, and eventually
succumb to beatings and whipping culminating in death on
a cross.We
must also remember that this Jesus is the same one who
said that those who follow him would likely have a
similar lot in life, suffering persecution and even
death.
In light of who Jesus is - and in light of the
reality of suffering that we all experience in this life
- what in the world are we to make of this command: “Don’t worry!”
Of all people, Jesus, the all-knowing God - who is
the only one who sees this world for the mess that it
really is - you’d think that HE of all people would know
that there is PLENTY to worry about.Hell is real.People are
going there.People
are sinful - hating each other, killing each other -
this is an evil world!Jesus, of all people, should know this, right?How in the
world, then, can he say, “Don’t worry”?When we read
the Bible, we see that the Bible gives us plenty of
things to worry about!
So - What does Jesus mean?What is Jesus
saying in Matthew 6:25-34?
Well I don’t know.Don’t worry about it.
Be happy.
Let’s close in prayer.
Just kidding.
These are some serious questions, and it would be
wise of us to think through this passage and ask
ourselves:
What is Jesus saying?And how can we apply it to our lives?
One of the first things that we need to remember is
that God loves us.Jesus came to give us LIFE.Certainly his
commands are meant for our good.Certainly his
teaching is meant to teach us how to truly LIVE.
Jesus is not saying, “Life stinks, get over it and be
happy.”
Jesus IS saying: “I came to bring my Kingdom into
your hearts… I came to tell you how to live the life
that God has planned for you – I came to teach you how
to live in the Kingdom of God.”
What Jesus is
teaching us in Matthew 6:25-34 is that in the midst of
this sorry world that we live in - beset by sin both
from without and from within – in the midst of this
‘reality’ that we live in, we can have LIFE as God
intends for us to have.We can have it by doing one thing and one thing
alone: trusting in Him.
This passage is not about how sinful we are because
we worry.Jesus
is not trying to guilt trip us into not worrying.
Jesus is saying, “I love you.I want you to
really live.Listen,
I will tell you words of LIFE.I want you to have more life!”
So do you trust his words?Do you want this LIFE that our
loving Lord offers us?Do you want to experience this Kingdom-living?
This is the key:We can experience the Life God has for us by
trusting Him to care for us.If we want more LIFE, we must
trust him and worry less.
If there is one thing that God is saying to us from
this passage, it is this: “Trust me.”Jesus knows your pain.He knows your struggles.He knows
everything about your life, and he pleads, “Come to me, and I will give
you LIFE.Trust
me.”
That’s it.That’s
the application from this passage!Nothing more.Trust Jesus.
But because we sometimes don’t understand what that
really means, and how we can do it... Jesus gets more
specific.As
we look at this passage in more detail, we’ll see
clearly four things that we can DO to trust God.
We can experience the Life God has for us by
trusting Him to care for us.
So what can we do?
The first thing you can do is this:
Make up
your mind (decide what LIFE is all about)
Let’s look at verse 25:Jesus says:
“Therefore I tell you, do not
worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or
about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more
important than food, and the body more important than
clothes?”
The first thing you’ll notice, because we go to
Creekside, is the word “therefore.”Some of you
are hearing that word and wisely asking, “Wherefore the Therefore.”Or you may be wondering, “What is the Therefore there
for?”Two weeks ago we talked about the passage
preceding this.That
passage emphasized that whatever we seek out, chase
after, that thing is our Master - the boss of our lives.If we’re
chasing after riches, that greed will control us.If we’re
chasing after God, he’ll rule us.In the last
passage, we saw we can find our pleasure only in God and
not in money, and we saw that we can maximize our joy
from money by investing it in the Kingdom of God.Therefore,
since we are not seeking money and the goods of this
world, but seeking God, Therefore… don’t worry about
having the goods of this world.
Listen again to what Jesus says:
“Therefore I tell you, do not
worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or
about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more
important than food, and the body more important than
clothes?”
Did you notice the question that is not really a
question?Jesus
says, “Is not
life more important than food, and the body more
important than clothes?”
Life is about more than food and clothing, right?
Jesus here tells us not to worry about our lives…
about what we’ll eat or drink or wear.Why?Because
that’s NOT what life is all about!
Are you convinced?If you have plenty of clothes and plenty of food,
are you living the life that God created for you to
live?Are
we complete as human beings - fulfilled and enjoying all
the pleasures we were created for - if we have food and
clothing?
Of course not!We have this hunger for God!Deep inside
of us we yearn for the love of God.We yearn for
a relationship with our Almighty Creator.If we eat,
drink and then die… what a WASTE of a life!
The Bible throughout teaches that LIFE is all about
God.Jesus
is the LIFE.If
we know HIM, we have LIFE.If we don’t know HIM, we don’t
have LIFE.
Are you convinced?
Is your life all about God?
This is the first step to trusting God.If we want to
trust God, we must trust Him when he says: “You will find satisfaction
only in Me.”
Most of us in this room would agree, right?Fulfillment
isn’t found in surviving for a long time, or in
accumulating stuff, being famous, or any other worldly
thing we might chase after.Most of us here today would say
that fulfillment is found in glorifying God and living
out His purpose for us.
At the heart of worry is the assumption that we need
to sustain ourselves in order to fulfill whatever
purpose we have here on earth.But that’s God’s job.Part of the
problem is that we assume life is just one long episode
of Survivor, and we’re here just for the sake of
existing, and we must do whatever we can to stay on for
another week.Instead,
we should recognize that life is all about God and trust
Him to do with us what is best for His glory.
Consider Paul!He was put in
prison for telling others about Jesus.And from
prison, instead of complaining, saying, “I tell people about Jesus,
and this is what I get from God!” no, instead of saying that, Paul says “Now I want you to know,
brothers, that what has happened to me has really served
to advance the gospel.” (Philippians
1:12).
Do you see where his heart is at?All Paul
really cares about is the Glory of God!Paul doesn’t
even care if he dies!He says, “For
to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
Life is not about food and clothing.Life is not
about securing our comforts and having all our ducks in
a row. Life is not about how many toys we have or how
many vacations we can go on.Life is not about glorifying
ourselves.
Life is about God.Life is all about Jesus.You exist for
his purposes, and he’ll do what it takes to keep you
alive until that purpose is fulfilled.Our survival
is His business.He
has it covered.
And in the event that God drops the ball, there’s
this:(slide)
The Quantum Sleeper.The Safest Rest You’ve Ever Had.Protection
from bio-chemical terrorist attack, natural disasters,
kidnappers, stalkers, bullets, samurai swords, you name
it.My
favorite feature is the one-way mirror, that black part
at the head of the bed, so you can cower inside and
watch your attacker get all flustered trying to get at
you, and he only sees his sorry reflection.The Safest
Rest You’ve Ever Had….Oxygen not included….Does not protect against bed bugs.
Don’t waste your time dreaming up schemes to sustain
your life.If
we want to experience the life that God has for us, we
need to trust Jesus; we need to make up our minds that
LIFE, true LIFE is all about God, his purposes.If our
continued existence is in the best interest of the
Kingdom of God, the big picture, he’ll find a way to
keep us alive.
The second thing we can do to experience the Kingdom
life that God has for us is this:
Observe
God’s Sovereign Care
Consider verses 26-30:“Look at the birds of the air;
they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet
your heavenly Father feeds them.Are you not
much more valuable than they?Who of you by worrying can add a
single hour to his life?And why do you worry about clothes?See how the
lilies of the field grow.They do not labor or spin.Yet I tell
you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was
dressed like one of these.If that is how God clothes the
grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is
thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you,
Oyou of
little faith?”
If we want MORE life.. if we want to be living the
LIFE that God wants for us, we need to observe His
sovereign care.
Can you picture Jesus as he is teaching these things
to his disciples?Can you picture Jesus looking up in the air and
saying to his disciples, “Look at the birds of the air….”
He says the same thing to us today… “Look around you.Look at the
world around you and observe.Look at how I take care of my
creation!Look
how feed the birds!Look at the fields… see the beautiful flowers?Aren’t they
lovely?I
take care of them!I clothe them!And you matter so much more to me than they do!I made you in
my own image!Don’t
you know I care for you more than I do for these
flowers?They
are here today and then gone tomorrow… but you are my
children forever!Don’t you see?I love you!I care about you!I will take care of you!Trust me!”
Observe God’s sovereign care.We Americans
are arguably the most well-fed and best-dressed humans
in history, and yet we still spend our time chasing
after these things.Jesus reminds us to look around and compare His
provision to what we frantically scrape together
ourselves.I’ll
give some visuals:
God’s fashion: (slide)
Human attempt: (slide)
God’s design: (slide)
Man’s attempt: (slide)
God’s provision: (slide)
Man’s attempt: (slide)
Whatever you think you can
provide for yourself by worrying, God can come up with
something more beautiful, and more dignified.
Some of the best proof of God’s providence is that
we are sitting here, alive.‘Is not life more important than
food?’ It’s much more complicated to sustain a human
life than to throw together a meal.Those of you
who hosted Thanksgiving may disagree with that, but I
think that’s what Jesus is getting at.When we worry
about our basic needs - what will I eat? What will I
wear? - the core of our anxiety is the fear that we’ll
be neglected and die.We want to do whatever it takes to preserve our
fleeting lives, and so we become preoccupied with
finding things to sustain us.So much so, we overlook the fact
that God has been keeping us alive since we were born.God will
sustain us for as long as we need to be sustained.
Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian Holocaust
survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during
World War II, wrote, “Worry is a cycle of inefficient
thoughts whirling around a center of fear.”
Worry will not make us better fed or better dressed.The matter is
much better kept in God’s hands.Proof is all
around you, in nature, and most likely, in your own
history.
How can we have MORE life?We can have more life by observing
God’s sovereign care… and trusting Him to care for us.
So the first thing we can do is to Make up our minds
that life is all about Jesus.
The second thing that we can do to is to Observe
God’s Sovereign Care.
And as we consider verses 31-32, we’ll see that the
third thing we can do is:
Run away
from worldliness
Jesus says:“So do not worry, saying,
‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What
shall we wear?’For the pagans run after all these things, and
your heavenly Father knows that you need them.”
There were two types of people in Jesus’ day: Jews
and Gentiles:God’s
people and “not” God’s people.The same is true today; there are
two types of people today, those who trust God, and
those who don’t.Believers
and unbelievers.
Those who don’t trust God worry to themselves and
ask, “What am I
going to eat?What
am I going to drink?What am I going to wear?”Jesus says that those who do not belong to God “run
after these things” of the world.The Greek
word here that is translated as “run after” means “to be seriously
interested in or have a strong desire for.”
So
there are two types of people in the world today: there
are those who have a strong desire for the things of
this world, and there are those who trust God.
Which ones shall we be?
Certainly we want to be
people who run away from worldliness.We want to be
people who have a strong desire for God and not for the
things of this world.There are certainly things of this world that we
need.We
need food to eat and clothes to wear; without these
things we will die!God created us with these needs.It is
obviously not wrong to satisfy these needs, but it is
wrong to fret and scramble after these things instead of
trusting that God knows we need them.
Jesus said that we are “not
of this world.”We’re foreigners here.We aren’t
supposed to fit in or keep up with the Joneses, because
the Joneses are an entirely different species (apologies
to Everett and Debbie).If we don’t dress the same as everyone else,
that’s okay, because we are different from the people
who belong to this world.We’re not slaves to Gucci or any other fashion
trend.We
are different.The
things of this world are cheap and fleeting compared to
the things of Heaven.
Janelle had a friend in
high school who was a French exchange student.Do you think
a Parisian teenager fretted about fitting in with
American fashion trends?No, they’re way ahead of our fashion scene.And how much
do they care if they miss the window of opportunity to
eat McRibs-
at McDonald’s for a limited time!They aren’t
worried about it.They know “where they came from and
where they’re going,” as Jesus said, and they
don’t fret about the opportunities they miss here.
If we want to experience
the Kingdom life that God has for us, we will:
1)Make up our
minds that life is all about God 2)Observe God’s
sovereign care 3)Run away from
worldliness
And
finally, the fourth thing we will do is…
Enter
into Kingdom-mindedness
Let’s read the last two verses of our passage.In verses 33
and 34, Jesus says:“But seek
first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these
things will be given to you as well.Therefore do
not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about
itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
These two verses encapsulate the message of this
passage.Entering
into Kingdom-mindedness is the goal of this entire
passage.The
reason we should not worry is that it is antithetical to
Kingdom living.
Worry has self as focus,
Kingdom-living has God as the focus.
Jesus says, Seek first his Kingdom and his
righteousness….
Seeking God’s Kingdom means actively working to
increase the reign of God in our own lives and in the
world.
Seeking God’s Kingdom first means finding our
greatest pleasure in the glory of God.Are you
pleased when Jesus is shown to be the all-satisfying God
that he is?
One who is seeking first the Kingdom of God is one
who is not so interested in having the latest toys.He is more
interested showing the world that Jesus is who he says
he is.
Most of us are familiar with Rich Mullins: (slide)
He was a Christian musician; he wrote “Awesome God,”
and many other popular worship songs.He died in a
car accident in 1997, when he was 42.
His life serves as an example to me of
Kingdom-focused living.He was a 12-time Dove Award winner, sold millions
of records, and could have been living it up on his own
private island if he wanted.Instead, he was more concerned
with advancing God’s Kingdom.He established a ministry teaching
music to kids on Indian Reservations in New Mexico and
Arizona.Though
his albums and concerts generated millions of dollars,
he lived off about $25,000 a year, in a trailer park on
an Indian reservation, and invested everything else into
ministry.His
church managed the distribution of his money, and he
requested they not tell him how much he was making.He was known
for dressing shabbily and bumming lunch off his friends.He was also
known for leading a peaceful life.He didn’t
have to worry that someone would break into his mansion
and steal his big screen TV.He didn’t have to stress over
someone scratching his perfect Ferrari.Everything he
had was God’s, and it was God’s responsibility to take
care of it.That
included all he had – his stuff, his reputation, even his life.In his song
“Elijah,” he wrote:
Well, if they dressed me like a pauper
Or if they dined me like a prince
If they lay me with my fathers
Or if my ashes scatter on the wind
I don't care
But when I leave I want to go out like Elijah
With a whirlwind to fuel my chariot of fire
And when I look back on the stars
Well, It'll be like a candlelight in Central Park
And it won't break my heart to say goodbye
Can you say that?Would it break your heart if you had to die and
go home to God?On
a lesser note, would you get all worked up if you had to
eat or dress like a pauper?How much does it matter in the
grand scheme of things?God will provide what’s appropriate to complete
the big picture.You
don’t have to break your back trying to pull things
together; you’re his child, and he has it covered.
Living for God’s Kingdom frees us from the bondage
of worry.He
came that we may have life, and have life abundantly.
We get more life and less worry if we:
Make up our minds and decide what
life is all about,
Observe God’s sovereign care,
Run away from worldliness, and
Enter into Kingdom-mindedness.
Jesus, who was homeless, had no place to lay his
head and knew the torture laid out for him - this Jesus
walked through life without worrying. But he had an
advantage:He
understood how short human lives are here, he understood
how long eternity is, and he understood how perfectly
the story would unfold.
Let us take him at his word, and
cast our anxieties upon him, for he cares for us.
Let’s pray.
_______________
*At the
time Pastor Steve York shared this message he was
serving on the pastoral staff of Creekside Evangelical
Free Church of Merced.His ministry focused on young couples, college
students, and middle school and high school
students. Steve has a B.A. in linguistics from UC
Santa Barabara and a Master of Divinity from Michigan
Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MI).
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