Nov. 27, 2016 Afternoon Service Beatitudes Part 20 by Pastor Josh Sheldon

The Setting in Matthew 6 and the Prior Teachings on Treasure and Single-Mindedness

To the Word of God in the Sermon on the Mount, which we've been going through since the afternoon service began. We are now in chapter six of Matthew's Gospel, beginning at verse 25 and going through verse 24.

Having just last week gone through those three paradigms, if you will, about where we lay up our treasure, where is our heart? Our heart is with our treasure. Two choices for where our treasure shall be, either on earth, which treasure is which we can see and touch and smell and count, or in heaven, where by faith we believe because God says so that they are being accumulated.

The lamp of the body, what are we allowing in to illumine ourselves? And if it be darkness, how dark is that light that we are letting in? If it is other than a single-minded, a single eye upon God, and the last one, Jesus warns us, a truism, a proverbial sort of saying, you cannot serve two masters.

The one upon whom that eye is focused, you cannot split your time between him and the God who it should be, which is the God of heaven. You cannot serve two masters. You will love one or hate the other or hate the one and love the other.

You cannot serve God and money. You cannot serve God and earthly riches. And with that as the backdrop for what we have here this morning, I read to you Matthew 6, verses 25 through 34. The words of our Lord Jesus.

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to the span of life?

And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you?

Oh, you of little faith. Therefore do not be anxious, saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after 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. Therefore do not be anxious, excuse me, yes, excuse me. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself, sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Why Jesus Says “Do Not Be Anxious”

So therefore, the word therefore, as I said, and if you've been with us during the exposition of Romans that we've been in for the last several weeks in the morning, therefore is something we always have to ask, what is therefore, therefore?

Well, it has to hearken us back to something. It's a conclusion drawn from what came before. And Jesus, in this syntax, just as Paul in Romans as you've become accustomed to, when he says therefore, he's saying because of these things, what I've just established for you.

Because of those things, a logical conclusion or ramification or consequence of these things is this. And if we divorce the section that we're in this morning, verses 25 through 34, from what came before, then what are we left with?

And what I just read to you a moment ago, what are we left with? Just an exemplar command. Just something like, stop worrying, it's faithless. As you've heard me say before, the gospel is more than that.

The gospel is not a preacher just standing up here and rubbing his finger in your face and poking you in the eye and say, stop being bad. Be better, do more, be more faithful. Stop not believing all the time, that's not the gospel.

That's not our Lord Jesus Christ, it's more than that. Our Lord isn't just saying, don't worry, as if when we hear a dread diagnosis from a doctor about a loved one, nor is he saying, be unconcerned with our God-given responsibilities of providing for ourselves, our families, by the sweat of our own brow, or nurturing our children in safe and godly homes where they're raised in the fear and the admission of the Lord.

And when that's put at risk, he's not saying, well, just don't even worry about it, don't be concerned about it. Just stop and give it all to God. No, that's not what he's saying here, because otherwise all we're left with is this sort of preaching, this sort of lesson which just says, we don't do good enough.

I don't think that's the message here. Therefore, brings to mind these relative valuations, as I said a moment ago, is what we can see and touch better esteem than what God promises. That's earthly treasure versus the store we have in heaven.

What light illumines us, worldly ways characterized by greater concern for here and now are God's ways. Whichever way our lives are directed, that tells us who or what we are serving. Now, if we've rightly assessed things, then the things of this world, as the hymn tells us, will go strangely dim.

What shall we eat, what shall we drink, what shall we wear? You know, Charles Spurgeon called these the world's trinities, the world's trinity of cares. Now, the word for anxious, Jesus says, do not be anxious.

It also carries the meaning of not being distracted, not being pulled away from your primary focus, from a more important attention. Don't let other things get in the way. If you're going 360 degrees, you're going due north, don't go 359 degrees or one degree the other way.

Don't let yourself be pulled to the left or the right. Stay on the path, don't be distracted. Don't let anything else but God and his ways, the treasures of heaven, the kingdom of God, which we are to seek first, get in the way or dominate us.

Gentiles, which means unbelievers generally, Gentiles seek after such things. It's their continual preoccupations, what Jesus means. We need food just as much as our unbelieving neighbor, don't we? And we need to dress ourselves before we step out to weed our yard, to mow the grass, to bring in the garbage or go to work just as everyone else does.

But don't let it be your preoccupation. Let it be something which if God has provided it to you yesterday without presuming upon him that you know something about tomorrow or as if he owes you something which we would not communicate to God.

But trust him. Your heavenly father knows you have need of them. He knows our need before we pray, but we still pray to him to give us what he knows we must have. That's not illogical, that's not circular or silly logic or reasoning.

We pray to a God who is worthy to hear our prayers. We pray to a God who provides our needs. And if he already knows it, if he's already decreed in his own will, his own secret will, to give it to us, then we can ask, Father, you know my need.

You know what I need in order to accomplish even your purposes that you've given me for your church or at my work or in my neighborhood. Lord, I trust you for it. So faith then, faith is something incompatible with worry, with an over-weaning, an over-anxious, a domineering, attention-diverting kind of anxiousness and worry.

It would be illogical. It's illogical that something as insubstantial as worldly things, if by faith we believe they're insubstantial or unsubstantial, if by faith we believe that, then Jesus is really saying here in a way, just put them in their proper position.

We don't have to be Cambridge or Oxford educated to figure this out. He says it fairly plainly here. Keep things in their perspective. Do you believe that the heavenly treasures are so much more valuable than the earthly?

That what you can touch has infinitesimally small value, if any value at all, compared to what's in heaven? Do you believe that by faith? If so, then this is fairly simple logic. Put it where it belongs.

Put it in the scale of things where it should be. Not a command to be unconcerned. Concern and worry are two different things. It's a call to live like citizens of a kingdom ruled by a great king, one whose eyes on each of his subjects and whose concern for them never flags.

God doesn't run out of endurance. God doesn't suddenly say, well, this one over here has used too much of my attention, too many prayers, too many needs, and I'm tired of it for a while because now I have to put some of my attention over here.

God's not like that. He's an infinitely, eternally, unimaginably powerful and good and loving and giving God whose attention doesn't need to be divvied up and allocated amongst his various subjects because it's all at the same time.

It's all within his will. He can do all things. Jesus does not insist that we don't care about fulfilling our responsibilities. That would be ridiculous. What he does insist on is that we keep our eyes singularly fixed upon him even as we go about providing for our needs, including what we eat, including what we drink, including what we wear.

Being concerned for it is different than having continual anxiety over it. Two different things. Birds, even flowers, Jesus says, as he argues from the lesser to the greater. These are the lesser things, birds and flowers, and he's gonna argue from them to us.

He says, look at them and just think about for a second. Reason about them for a moment. Look how wonderful these things are. Look carefully at the simplest flower and ponder the God who made something so gorgeous.

How much more you, the pinnacle of creation. How much more you, a member of the human race, the final act of creation, as God brought all that he had made to his purpose, which was to sustain you. And how much more so you, whom he ordained before the creation of the world to be in Christ Jesus, his only son.

How much more concern for your clothing than for a simple flower, which today is and tomorrow is not. Today is a gorgeous, blooming, budding flower that would just astonish us. And sometimes Jesus stops us in the track and we have to pull off the side of the road, get out the camera, take a look.

It's so beautiful. How much more you, going from the lesser to the greater. Very simple way of reasoning this. All the worry that we can conjure up has no bearing on tomorrow, has no bearing. We can't do anything about it.

We can't add a single moment, not a single breath to our span of life. God who does all things right, God who, as this morning, as mercy endures forever, he has determined our days. And when those days are up, we say without being fatalistic, we say those with faith and joy in our hearts, they're up.

So what are you gonna worry about tomorrow? Your very life is in God's hands and we don't know what tomorrow brings. We don't know if we're gonna lose any more hair, if more of our dark hairs are gonna turn gray.

We don't know what's gonna happen to our health, our safety on the roads. And if all we do is ponder and fret over it, Jesus asks in a very simple way. Not scolding so much, I don't think. I can't see him with a stern voice.

In this part, plenty of the Sermon on the Mount is very stern. But here I hear a gentler kind of voice, just right here. Says, why do you worry if there's nothing you can do about it? If tomorrow is so completely out of your hands and you are trusting your Father in heaven, in whose hands is every second of your life, if that be the case, don't worry.

Don't worry. Don't fret. Don't let it overcome you. Because earthly treasure is transient and ultimately will not satisfy. Therefore, therefore, don't let it cause you to worry. Because our eye is to be singly fixed on heavenly matters and priorities, therefore, don't let earthly things climb too high in prominence.

As I say that, remember, concern. Concern over your God-given responsibilities is different than being anxious or worrying or fretting. Two different things. Because God will not share you with an idol such as money, you cannot serve both.

Because this is true, and God will not share his glory with another, and you and I, because we're in Christ Jesus, are in a sense showcases of God's glory as we follow his will, as we do the works that he laid out in advance for us to walk in them.

Therefore, do not allow money, earthly, material gain. Don't let those things dominate your concerns. If he's allowed a hard providence to come upon us, like the medical trials that were just prayed for by our brother Steve, what are we to do?

Do we say, well, I'm commanded not to worry, so I'll just carry on like nothing has happened? No, that's not at all what the Lord Jesus is saying. When God's providence brought an end to poverty, when God's providence brought an end to his friend Lazarus' life, even knowing that he would bring him back to life, what does it say in John's Gospel, chapter 11, verse 42?

It says, Jesus wept. Many different opinions on what elicited those tears from our Lord. Was it anger over death, having overcome his friend, death even existing when it wasn't in God's original intent?

Or was it Jesus, the man, without stopping being God, was it Jesus, the man, weeping as you and I would over the death of a friend? I would vote for the latter. Jesus, even knowing he would bring him back to life, over God, his fathers, who he knew more intimately and better than we can ever imagine, yet he wept.

Not anxious, not nervous, not worried, but concerned that his friend Lazarus had to experience death, that his sisters had to experience that trial of mourning and sorrow. The apostle Paul even says in 2 Corinthians 11, 28, that he had daily anxiety for the church.

So in this context, we ask simply, what does it mean not to worry? It means to believe that even as the food on our table is uncertain, while our clothes might be in tatters and we're barely able to go out in public in them, it means that when our life, or the life of a loved one, has suddenly become less certain than it was yesterday, that we not forget that it is all in God's hands, we not forget that he is a loving father and that he means everything that happens.

He works all things to our good. Remember that. Even as we go about being concerned for and doing all we can to responsibly discharge our duties, and even as we do that and make plans, make reservations about tomorrow, so that God willing, tomorrow, we can again execute our God-given duties.

Seeking First the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness

I think that's what he means. The ultimate point here is in the last couple of verses. Verses 33, 34, 23, 24. I'm sorry, no, 33. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. We hear this term about the kingdom of God. Seek first the kingdom of God.

Seek first his righteousness. Rather than worry, rather than this anxiety, look first to God and let that overcome what might otherwise turn into worry and anxiety and fretting. You know, when a Christian loses his job, he or she works just as hard as the unbeliever to land a new one.

And we've seen that here many times. He may even be concerned daily about being able to continue to provide for his family. So what's the difference between the two? The Christian precedes the job search with prayers of trust, prayers confessing need, prayers of supplication, prayers of complete confidence that God will do for him or her what is right.

Confessing his need to God, asking God to lead him to the path that would allow him to fulfill these duties and also to give him, to give God all the glory. Now here's a quote I picked up from Martin Luther.

And I picked it up from John Stott's book on the Sermon on the Mount. Martin Luther said this. You see, Christ is making the birds our schoolmasters and teachers. It is a great and abiding disgrace to us that in the gospel a helpless sparrow should become a theologian to the wisest of men.

Whenever you listen to a nightingale, therefore you are listening to an excellent preacher as if he were saying, I prefer to be in the Lord's kitchen. So I wonder if this is something the sons of Korah had in mind when they wrote in Psalm 84.

Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young at your altars, oh Lord, of hosts, my God and my King. This is very like what Jesus is saying. If these birds can go to God's house, God's altars, and there find a place to safely take care of their young, this lesser thing, how much more you.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise. Isn't this just the same logic? I think more beautifully stated by our Lord Jesus as we might expect, but the same idea. If God watches out and gives a home to the sparrow, to the birds, just in the altars of God, how much more will he do so for you?

Anxiety, Prayer, and Putting God First in Daily Life

The problem with anxiety or worry is that it dominates us once we let it take root. Some people become physically ill because of anxiety. We get ulcers from it. We become nauseous to the point where we lose our appetite and then we start really getting sick and then we really start worrying whether we'll recover from the sickness which was caused by our lack of appetite, which was caused by our overweening anxiety and on and on and on it goes and how do we pull ourselves out of it?

Well, I think when we find ourselves in this cycle, the first thing we do is run to a brother and sister and say pray for me. We've got to break this cycle. I need to get my focus back on Christ and pray with someone.

Open your scriptures, perhaps read the very passage we're going through. Get your mind set back on the things of heaven where our heavenly father is, where Jesus is at his right hand, where one day you will be if your faith is in him.

A psalm says don't fret, it only tends to evil. Other translations say it only causes harm. How true that is. It can so overtake all else that it becomes an idol, the like of which we eventually become as the psalms and the prophets both attest, those who make them shall become like them.

It doesn't have to be a statue. It could be exactly what I'm talking about. Constant anxiety as if we don't serve a heavenly father who knows what we have need of before we ask. Now why does he tell us to ask him?

Why does he tell us to come before him with all our needs, everything we need? We come to the throne of grace and there find help in time of need so he can stroke his chin and look down imperiously down his nose at us, say well I wonder what I'll do with this one this time.

Of course not. That's not our God. We serve a God who loves to receive glory even as he cares for us. So we can say give God the glory for this need that was met. May we be found trusting our God. May we as a church for our many needs which have been prayed for here in the afternoon, Wednesday nights so often, may we be found those who put our prayers, our supplication, we cast our cares upon the Lord as Peter says in 1 Peter 5 .8 and there leave them and leave the throne of grace confident that they are now in the hands of a good and giving God and he will do with them as he knows is best.

Doesn't mean we don't pray about him the next day if it's not his will to have fulfilled on the day we pray. We can go to him constantly as in Luke 18 with the widow before the unjust judge. How much more will our father meet our needs if in the parable of the unjust judge, he finally just to make her be quiet met her needs.

What about our father who's not an evil unjust judge but the judge of all the earth? How much more he, may we be found trusting God knowing that he knows what we need and may we by his grace and the power of his spirit keep all things in the right perspective, amen.